“Not Sargon?” asked Christina Alberta.
“It might ’ave been. Any’ow, ‘There is no exceptions,’ I says. ‘Not even if you was a close relation. We got no option here. We’re just machines.’ He stood sort of looking baffled for a time. ‘All this must be altered,’ he said in a sort of low, earnest voice. ‘It’s the duty of every king to give audience to every one, every day.’ I says, ‘Very likely it is, sir. But we policemen aren’t in any position to ’elp it,’ I says, ‘much less alter it.’ So off ’e goes. I kind of tipped the wink to the detective at the corner and ’e watched ’im go along the front and then cross over to the monument and stand looking up at the windows. And then ’e shrugged ’is shoulders and took ’imself off. And that’s the last I see of ’im.”
Lambone asked a superfluous question.
“It might be Piccadilly way,” said the policeman, “it might be down towards Trafalgar Square. Fact is, sir, I didn’t notice.”
It was clear that the conversation was drawing to an end.
§ 7
“So that’s that,” said Lambone. “So far, good. He’s still at large.”
He expressed his thanks to the policeman.
“And now,” he said with an air of bringing out the solution of a difficult problem very successfully, “all we have to do is to find him.”
“But where?”