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“Living off the wits of his subordinates—well, maybe that’s leadership these days.”
    “Really, Roddy, I can’t help you,” said Smiley weakly. “I never knew Percy as a force, you see. Only as a—” He lost the word.
    “A striver,” Martindale suggested, eyes glistening. “With his sights on Control’s purple, day and night. Now he’s wearing it and the mob loves him. So who’s his strong left arm, George? Who’s earning him his reputation? Wonderfully well he’s doing, we hear it from all sides. Little reading rooms at the Admiralty, little committees popping up with funny names, red carpet for Percy wherever he goes in the Whitehall corridors, junior ministers receiving special words of congratulation from on high, people one’s never heard of getting grand medals for nothing. I’ve seen it all before, you know.”
    “Roddy, I can’t help you,” Smiley insisted, making to get up. “You’re out of my depth, truly.” But Martindale was physically restraining him, holding him at the table with one damp hand while he talked still faster.
    “So who’s the cleverboots? Not Percy, that’s for sure. And don’t tell me the Americans have started trusting us again, either.” The grip tightened. “Dashing Bill Haydon, our latter-day Lawrence of Arabia, bless him; there you are—it’s Bill, your old rival.” Martindale’s tongue poked out its head again, reconnoitred and withdrew, leaving a thin smile like a trail. “I’m told that you and Bill shared everything once upon a time,” he said. “Still, he never was orthodox, was he? Genius never is.”
    “Anything further you require, Mr. Smiley?” the waiter asked.
    “Then it’s Bland: the shop-soiled white hope, the redbrick don.” Still he would not release him. “And if those two aren’t providing the speed, it’s someone in retirement, isn’t it? I mean someone pretending to be in retirement, don’t I? And if Control’s dead, who is there left? Apart from you.”
    They were putting on their coats. The porters had gone home; they had to fetch them for themselves from the empty brown racks.
    “Roy Bland’s not redbrick,” Smiley said loudly. “He was at Saint Antony’s College, Oxford, if you want to know.”
    Heaven help me, it was the best I could do, thought Smiley.
    “Don’t be silly, dear,” Martindale snapped. Smiley had bored him: he looked sulky and cheated; distressing downward folds had formed on the lower contours of his cheeks. “Of course Saint Antony’s is redbrick; it makes no difference there’s a little bit of sandstone in the same street, even if he was your protégé. I expect he’s Bill Haydon’s now—don’t tip him, it’s my party, not yours. Father to them all, Bill is—always was. Draws them like bees. Well, he has the glamour, hasn’t he; not like some of us. Star quality I call it, one of the few. I’m told the women literally bow down before him, if that’s what women do.”
    “Good night, Roddy.”
    “Love to Ann, mind.”
    “I won’t forget.”
    “Well, don’t.”
    And now it was pouring with rain, Smiley was soaked to the skin, and God as a punishment had removed all taxis from the face of London.

3
    “S heer lack of will-power,” he told himself as he courteously declined the suggestions of a lady in a doorway. “One calls it politeness, whereas in fact it is nothing but weakness. You featherhead, Martindale. You pompous, bogus, effeminate, nonproductive—” He stepped widely to avoid an unseen obstacle. “Weakness,” he resumed, “and an inability to live a self-sufficient life independent of institutions”—a puddle emptied itself neatly into his shoe—“and emotional attachments that have long outlived their purpose. Viz., my wife; viz., the Circus; viz., living in London. Taxi!”
    Smiley lurched forward but was already too late. Two girls, giggling under one umbrella, clambered aboard in a flurry of arms and legs. Uselessly pulling up the collar of his black