At eight-fifteen I left them, and went immediately to the Observer, where for two hours I was in conference with the Editorial Director, Edgar Soames, who told me that the story could not be published without the complete documentation of the text. The Observer, as Soames pointed out, had its reputation as a journal of fact to remember and not even the paramount importance of my story could be permitted to override that.
Very well, documentation. I returned to O'Hara's flat in Bloomsbury by eleven o'clock. O'Hara was not there, or was that splendid red-haired creature who—well, they were gone, and their few belongings were gone, and the flat itself, so I was told repeatedly by the manager of the properties, had not been occupied at all for the past three years. Surely I was mistaken—O'Hara? Never heard of an Emmett O'Hara!
No, the manager had never heard of an Emmett O'Hara. And neither, I soon discovered, had anyone else. He seemed to be a delusion I had suffered. I had spent those two hours listening to his amazing Report, and there had never been such an O'Hara in the International Patrol and the letters that I had earlier received from him had never been written. Or they were forgeries, perhaps—yellow journalism!
Someone had moved very swiftly. But whether it was O'Hara himself, or whether it was the Bureau of Security, I could not determine. It is essential for me—and the rest of us—in this hour of imminent crisis to rely upon faith in his indomitable skill and courage, and to believe he managed his escape. Although he had had his luck twice over.
That was a phrase that O'Hara used himself. "I have had my luck twice over," he told me, and then he laughed, that deep roar of mirth that I remembered from our school days together.
"Twice over?" I answered. "A thousand times, I should say."
"I don't mean this business I've been telling you," O'Hara said. "Or rather, not the hazard of death. Although," he smiled, "there is the hazard of death in this part of it too. Will you come into the next room, I want you to see Nedra."
"Nedra?"
"Yes," he said. "Nedra. You didn't think I'd leave her there?"
I stared at him. "Is this in your Report?"