He had finally lost the man. He hadn't come to London to be noticed. He moved out of
Herefordshire into the city, because he wanted to come as close to invisibility as
he could possibly get within the context of the physically possible. To be dead and
burnt, and the ashes shattered in the wind, or buried in an unmarked grave -- that
would be good too. But he wasn't ready to give up on his life, some things still
needed to be done. Sixty-seven was a good age to die. And he would die soon, he
realized, he ate poorly and lived in unhygienic circumstances. On some days it
seemed everything was hurting at the same time -- and whatever didn't hurt, was
itching, which was a good alternative. In fact, the irony was, that now, after a
life that had been much too long for him, he would still have to hurry up at the
end. This delay had been dreadful for that reason.
A man, well-dressed, pale in the
face, obviously an aristocrat, had emerged from D. Coffee-House, and walked, a
little way behind him, in the same direction as he. And was subtly scanning the
crowd. Too subtly to be noticed by most people. But he had such an aversion to being
noticed, and had in fact grown so unaccustomed to it, that he couldn't help sensing
the man's eyes aimed at his back. He felt it almost as if it was a kind of physical
pain. "Is this a coincidence?" he asked himself, and walked on.
The man kept on
walking in the same direction, and looked at him once and again. Night was falling.
This could no longer be coincidence, and neither was it likely to be just someone
who had taken an interest in him. This person must be someone who was taking a
special interest in his case. Somebody who had somehow known he would pass by
D. Coffee-House in the course of that evening, and would follow him on from
there.
It was raining a little, but he didn't much care. He couldn't go to his
destination as long as this man was following. He had to get rid of him. How
tenacious would the man be? Not too tenacious. He had taken to measuring his life in
months now, where it had been years in the past. But still, that was quite a lot of
time. It meant he could take hours or even days to lose his persecutor. He had to
take a good look to figure out who this person might be. He went into a
cross-street, and there slowed down his step. This way, he hoped to lure the man
into walking closer to him. And it worked, the man was now only some five or ten
yeards behind him.
He crossed the street, one time, than another time, and once
more, in order to catch some glimpses of the man's appearance. The man, by now, must
have known that he knew he was being followed. But that was all right. The man was
of average height, and he was dark-haired and rather pale in the face, with a thin,
stylish moustache. He looked almost as if he was a Frenchman, but no, perhaps rather
an Englishman or even an American who liked to style himself a Frenchman. He was in
his early thirties, and well-dressed indeed, an artistocrat. How it was that this
man had become interested in his case, he found hard to fathom. Perhaps someone had
hired him, or perhaps he realized what the true purpose of these events were.
He put his hands under his jacket, his left hand on the diamond and the right hand
on the dagger. He wanted to go unnoticed, because he and his affairs couldn't stand
the light of the big world. That world of aristocrats, of Parliament, of
fox-hunting. He was so relevant to that world, that he needed to be hidden from it.
Now a harbinger from there had come to disturb his complacency. Terrible, simply
terrible.
What would the man's name be? August, he guessed. This is a man who would
carry the name August.
He stopped in the street for a moment, as disgust and anger
were fighting within him. Why not turn around and stab the man to death, right away?
But his better judgement won him over. What would happen to him, if he would kill
Sir August, or Lord August, on an ordinary London night? He would be arrested, and
be in the clutches, not only of the law, but also of the press. The man who had
killed Lord August. He didn?t really have a choice, he would have to lose him.
"Goodbye, August, I may be a nobody while you are wealthy and respected and
everything, you may be young while I am old, but you can trust me to know these
streets better than you do."
And he started to walk, ceaselessly, sometimes going faster, then slowing down
again, sometimes moving into different and stranger neighbourhoods, then retracing
his steps, sometimes literally retracing his steps. It went on like this for hours.
The night passed, and the day passed, and it became evening again, and August was
still shadowing him. When night was falling, and they had been walking like this for
twenty-four hours, they came by D. Coffee-House again, and here he decided to
just turn around and walk exactly in the opposite direction.
August, with a tired
expression on his face, and his beautiful clothes having become dirty, was just
standing there. He passed by August, no more than one foot between them, pretending
not to notice. He could almost hear the man's resolve break as he did so. He knew he
had won, and disappeared into the streets of London, no longer followed, and ready
to do his bidding.
