“Exactly. There will be a car waiting for us. But I advise you to leave the arrangements to me, Mr. Graham. Remember, I am just as interested as you are in seeing that nobody’s suspicions are aroused.”
Graham affected to ponder this. “All right then,” he said at last. “I’ll leave it to you. I don’t want to be fussy, but you can understand that I don’t want to have any trouble when I get home.”
There was a silence and for a moment he thought that he had overacted. Then Moeller said slowly: “You have no reason to worry. We shall be waiting for you outside the Customs shed. As long as you do not attempt to do anything foolish-you might, for example, decide to change your mind about your holiday-everything will go smoothly. I can assure you that you will have no trouble when you get home.”
“As long as that’s understood.”
“Is there anything else you want to say?”
“No. Good night.”
“Good night, Mr. Graham. Until to-morrow.”
Graham waited until Moeller had reached the deck below. Then he drew a deep breath. It was over. He was safe. All he had to do now was to go to his cabin, get a good night’s sleep and wait for Mr. Kuvetli in cabin number four. He felt suddenly very tired. His body was aching as if he had been working too hard. He made his way down to his cabin. It was as he passed the landing door of the saloon that he saw Josette.
She was sitting on one of the banquettes watching José and Banat playing cards. Her hands were on the edge of the seat and she was leaning forward, her lips parted slightly, her hair falling across her cheeks. There was something about the pose that reminded him of the moment, years ago it seemed, when he had followed Kopeikin into her dressing-room at Le Jockey Cabaret. He half expected her to raise her head and turn towards him, smiling.
He realized suddenly that he was seeing her for the last time, that before another day had passed he would be for her merely a disagreeable memory, someone who had treated her badly. The realization was sharp and strangely painful. He told himself that he was being absurd, that it had always been impossible for him to stay with her in Paris and that he had known it all along. Why should the leave-taking trouble him now? And yet it did trouble him. A phrase came into his head: “to part is to die a little.” He knew suddenly that it was not Josette of whom he was taking his leave, but of something of himself. In the back streets of his mind a door was slowly closing for the last time. She had complained that for him she was just a part of the journey from Istanbul to London. There was more to it than that. She was part of the world beyond the door: the world into which he had stepped when Banat had fired those three shots at him in the Adler-Palace: the world in which you recognised the ape beneath the velvet. Now he was on his way back to his own world; to his house and his car and the friendly, agreeable woman he called his wife. It would be exactly the same as when he had left it. Nothing would be changed in that world; nothing, except himself.