That was how, a few minutes later, Sir Henry Merrivale and Richard Fleet climbed several flights of dark steep stairs, and emerged under a metal hood with a door opening on the northwest corner of the roof.
Clear evening light, with a softness of air which could be felt like a touch, lay over the concrete surface. The roof, a hundred feet square and perhaps forty-five feet from the ground, had its floor painted light brown. At equal intervals, from north to south across the middle, stood the low white oblongs of the chimney stacks.
Just-before-the-war porch-furniture, of dulled chromium tubing and orange canvas seats, stood scattered about the roof. There were tables with orange tops, like the colour of the awning down over the front door. Two beach-umbrellas lay on the floor, ready to be put up. All these H.M. surveyed with displeasure.
A faint breeze moved here. Some distance over across the road you could see the three higher gables of the Dragon's Rest; and, on slightly rising ground behind them, the vast expanse of Guideman's Field and the wood called Black Hanger. To the north, much farther away, you could distantly study the round grey bulk of Pentecost Prison: its tiny windows unwinking, its air repellent even from here.
H.M., fists on hips, turned round.
"Oi! Son!"
"Yes, sir?" Ricky, the muscles tight down his lean jaws, kicked moodily at the floor.
"Don't let Jack Stannard get your goat" H.M. hesitated. His face seemed to swell and grow cross-eyed with embarrassment "Looky here. Did you like your old man very much?"
"It wasn't that" Ricky shrugged it away. "The governor's very dim in my mind. He had his faults; he could wallop you like blazes. But—"
"But?"