He tried the telephone boxes and the second worked. By a miracle, even the S-Z directory was intact and, more amazing still, the Straight and Steady Minicab Service of Islington North had paid for the privilege of heavy type. He dialled the number and while it rang out he had a panic that he had forgotten the name of the signatory on the receipt in Vladimir’s pocket. He rang off, recovering his two pence. Lane? Lang? He dialled again.
A female voice answered him in a bored singsong : ‘Straight-and-Stead-ee! Name-when-and-where-to please?’
‘I’d like to speak to Mr J. Lamb, please, one of your drivers,’ Smiley said politely.
‘Sorr-ee, no personal calls on this lin-er,’ she sang and rang off.
He dialled a third time. It wasn’t personal at all, he said huffily, now surer of his ground. He wanted Mr Lamb to drive for him, and nobody but Mr Lamb would do. ‘Tell him it’s a long journey. Stratford-on-Avon’ – choosing a town at random – ‘tell him I want to go to Stratford.’ Sampson, he replied, when she insisted on a name. Sampson with a ‘p’.
He returned to his bench to wait again.
To ring Lacon? For what purpose? Rush home, open the cigarette packet, find out its precious contents? It was the first thing Vladimir threw away, he thoughe in the spy trade we abandon first what we love the most. I got the better end of the bargain after all. An elderly couple had settled opposite him. The man wore a stiff Homburg hat and was playing war tunes on a tin whistle. He wife grinned inanely at the passers-by. To avoid her gaze, Smiley remembered the brown envelope from Paris, and tore it open, expecting what? A bill probably, some hangover from the old boy’s life there. Or one of those cyclostyled battle-cries that émigrés send each other like Christmas cards. But this was neither a bill nor a circular but a personal letter : an appeal, but of a very special sort. Unsigned, no address for the sender. In French, handwritten very fast. Smiley read it once and he was reading it a second time when an overpainted Ford Cortina, driven by a boy in a polo neck pullover, skidded to a giddy halt outside the cinema. Returning the letter to his pocket, he crossed the road to the car.
‘Sampson with a “p”?’ the boy yelled impertinently through the window, then shoved open the back door from inside. Smiley climbed in. A smell of aftershave mingled with the stale cigarette smoke. He held a ten-pound note in his hand and he let it show.
‘Will you please switch off the engine?’ Smiley asked.
The boy obeyed, watching him all the time in the mirror. He had brown Afro hair. White hands, carefully manicured.
‘I’m a private detective,’ Smiley explained. ‘I’m sure you get a lot of us and we’re a nuisance but I would be happy to pay for a little bit of information. You signed a receipt yesterday for thirteen pounds. Do you remember who your fare was?’
‘Tall party. Foreign. White moustache and a limp.’
‘Old?’
‘Very. Walking stick and all.’
‘Where did you pick him up? ‘ Smiley asked.
‘Cosmo Restaurant, Praed Street, ten-thirty, morning,’ the boy said, gabbling deliberately.
Praed Street was five minutes’ walk from Westbourne Terrace. ‘And where did you take him, please?’
‘Charlton.’
‘Charlton in south-east London?’
‘Saint Somebody’s Church off of Battle-of-the-Nile Street. Ask for a pub called The Defeated Frog.’
‘Frog?’
‘Frenchman.’
‘Did you leave him there?’
‘One hour wait, then back to Praed Street.’
‘Did you make any other stops?’
‘Once at a toy-shop going, once at a phone-box coming back. Party bought a wooden duck on wheels.’ He turned and, resting his chin on the back of the seat, insolently held his hands apart, indicating size. ‘Yellow job,’ he said. ‘The phone call was local.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I lent him twopence, didn’t I? Then he come back and borrows himself two ten p’s, for in-case.’
I asked him where he was calling from but he just said he had plenty of change, Mostyn had said.
Passing the boy the ten-pound note, Smiley reached for the door handle.