The Sun Chemist Read Free Page B

was sitting up in bed in a small ward with three other men, all smiling as they listened to their headphones. Hopcroft was smiling himself, but not wearing headphones. He was wearing a pad of lint, like a little skullcap in his bushy hair, and he was smiling at a corpulent old lady with a dewlap who was not noticeably a nurse. She nodded and moved away as I approached, and Hopcroft said in an undertone, ‘Nice old thing. She’s a visitor. Her father was Skene, you know, the biographer of ‘the Liberator,’ O’Connell. She read Modern History herself under Namier at Manchester. Namier. Odd, isn’t it?’
    It was odd, but even odder (though I’d noted before his natural ability for the work) was the speed with which Hopcroft had extracted this information. Allowing time off for having his injuries dressed, and his clothes taken away, and for the insertionof himself into pajamas, and into bed, he couldn’t have had long with her.
    I said, ‘Hopcroft, what on earth happened to you?’
    ‘It takes a bit of beating, doesn’t it?’ One lens of his spectacles was cracked and there was a small blue bruise on his forehead. His bushy little mustache put me again in mind of one of Wells’s wistful counter-jumpers, some colleague of Kipps or Polly. He was an ageless twenty-four. ‘I mean, the whole thing happened in a flash. There was nothing I could do.’
    ‘Where did it happen?’
    ‘Tancred Court. I was just going out. Didn’t they tell you?’ He seemed rather disappointed.
    ‘They simply said you were knocked down.’
    ‘And how. Whang. I went over like a tree. Incredible, really.’
    ‘You were knocked down outside the block of flats?’
    ‘Not outside. I hadn’t even got outside.’
    ‘You were knocked down inside the block of flats?’
    ‘Like a light. I mean, boff ! I came down in the lift and this chap at the bottom said, “Can you give us a hand, Guv?” And I thought somebody had been taken ill or something, he looked so anxious. It’s just at the back of the hall, there’s a sort of recess, and there was another man there and he said, “Could you see your way to helping us out with a quid?” And I thought, Oh-oh. I mean. I’d got six quid in my wallet. I didn’t want to sort of flash it. But at the same time it occurred to me, I’d been reading the paper in the tube, about people being laid off, these power cuts, and I thought. Well, reason with them, they might need a job, you know, sort of start a chat.’
    Hopcroft had started a chat, and one of the men had hit him on the head.
    ‘I mean – boff ! I didn’t even know what happened. I was just lying there. No wallet, no case – that smashing executive case of mine! I did notes on it, marvelous case, my mother gave me it. And I sort of staggered about, blood all down here, and the porter came out from somewhere, and that’s it. I mean, you know, cool, eh? Broad daylight!’
    ‘Fantastic!’
    ‘Isn’t it?’ Hopcroft said, pleased at my reaction. ‘Mugged inthe middle of Swiss Cottage, at lunchtime. I’d not two minutes before been having a plate of soup with Olga – Doctor Green. She wanted to fry up a bit of veal, she was having some, but there was no phone, and I’d promised you, so I said, no, well, I’d better dash. And zap!’
    ‘Did you – did you have anything in the case?’ I said.
    ‘Oh, well, crikey, yes. I found the agreement for his lease on the Featherstone Laboratory, 1931. That was yesterday’s – I forgot to tell you about that. I got it from a solicitor in Gray’s Inn. Copy of it. Quite interesting, too. I think he understated his expenses – you know, when he was going on about how modest the whole budget was, five hundred a year to cover the rent and salaries and so on. That would be a bit tricky. The rent was three hundred. Interesting point, eh? Though, of course, we can always get another copy, now we know where it is.’
    ‘Yes. Anything else?’
    ‘Something today. What was it? I had a bit of a