Greybeard

He walked down to the end of the street, picked up a taxi from the regular rank, and told the driver to take it as fast as he could. Once over the Anacostia bridge, they hit tight traffic, as the capital moved in to do its day’s work. Even swamped as it was by wartime congestion, Washington kept its beauty; as they filtered past the Capitol, the sward about it now peppered with emergency office buildings, and swung westwards along Pennsylvania Avenue, the white stone caught a flush from the clear sky. The permanence and proportion of the buildings gave Timberlane a little reassurance.

Later, as they headed north, the impression of dignity and justice was broken. Here the unsettlement of the times found expression. Name- and sign-altering was in full swing. Property changed hands rapidly, office furniture vans and military lorries delivered or removed furniture. And there were other buildings standing unaccountably silent and empty. Sometimes a whole street seemed deserted, as if its inhabitants had fled from a plague. In one such street, Timberlane noticed, stood the travel offices of overseas airlines and the tourist bureaux of Denmark, Finland, Turkey; the shutters were up; private travel had closed down for the duration, and the big airliners were under United Nations’ charge, flying medical aid to war victims.

Some districts showed evidence of suitcase damage, though an attempt had been made to cover the desolation with large advertisement hoardings. Like all the great cities of the world, this one, behind its smile, revealed the rotting cavities that nobody was able to fill.

“Here’s your destination, bud, but it don’t look like anyone’s going to be home,” the taxi-driver said. “Do you want me to wait around?”

“No, thank you.” He paid the man, who saluted and drove off.

The home of the God’s Sufferance Press was a drably pretentious five-storey building dating from the turn of the previous century. FOR SALE notices were plastered over its windows. The iron folding gates giving access to the main swing door were secured in place with a strong chain and padlock. By the name plates in the porch, Timberlane saw how the Press had occupied itself. It was mainly a religious publisher catering for children, issuing such periodicals as The Children’s Sunday Magazine, The Boys’ Bugle, Girls’ Guidance, more popular lines such as Bible Thrills, Gospel Thrills, Holy Adventures, and the educational line, Sufferance Readers. A torn bill slid across the porch and wrapped itself round Timberlane’s leg. He turned away. On the opposite side of the road, a large block of flats rose. He surveyed their windows, trying to see if anyone was watching him. As he stood there, several people hurried by without looking at him.

There was a side alley flanked by a high wall. He went down it, treading through rubbish. He slid one hand to his revolver, and held it ready for action in his pocket. With pleasure, he felt a primitive ferocity grow in his chest; he wanted to smash somebody’s face in. The alley led to a waste lot at the back. In the middle distance, framed between two shoulders of wall, an old black man with round shoulders flew a kite, leaning dangerously back to watch its course over the rooftops.

Before Timberlane reached the lot, he came on a side door into the Press. It had been broken open; two of the little squares of glass in its upper half were shattered, and it stood ajar. He paused against the wall, remembered procedure for army house-to-house fighting, kicked the door open, and ran through it for cover.

In the gloom, he peered cautiously about. Not a movement, or a whisper of movement. Silence. The Big Accident had decimated the rat population. It had been almost as hard on cats, and human hunger for meat had probably accounted for most of the rest of the feline population; so that if rats came back, they would be more difficult than ever to check. But as yet this gaunt building obviously needed no cat.

He was in a broken-down store. An ancient raincoat on a peg spoke mutely of desertion. Piles of children’s religious reading stood about gathering dust, their potential purchasers either dead or forever unborn and unconceived. Only the footprints across the floor to an inner passage were new.

He followed the prints across the room, into the passage, and along it to the main hall, conscious of the sound of his own footsteps. Above grimy swing doors, through which dim figures could be seen passing in the street, was a bust and an inscription in marble: “Suffer The Little Children and Let Them Come To Me.”