Circus

  ‘Oh, come on now, Henry. He hasn’t got a weasel face, just thin, that’s all.’

  ‘He’s English,’ Henry said inconsequentially.

  ‘I’ve met some Englishmen who weren’t criminals. And you haven’t overlooked the fact that this is a British ship?’

  Henry was persistent. ‘I’ve seen him follow you half a dozen times. I know, because I’ve followed the two of you.’ She looked at him in surprise, but this time without smiling. ‘He also follows my uncle.’

  ‘Ah!’ She looked thoughtful. ‘His name’s Wherry. He’s a cabin steward.’

  ‘I told you he shouldn’t be here. Keeping tabs on you, that’s what.’ He checked himself. ‘A cabin steward. How do you know? Your cabin steward?’

  ‘Your uncle’s. That’s where I saw him first. In your uncle’s cabin.’ Her thoughtful expression deepened. ‘Now that you mention it, I have seen him around rather a lot. And, two or three times when I’ve been walking about, I turned around and found him close behind.’

  ‘You bet you did.’

  ‘And what’s that meant to mean, Henry?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘But I’m making no mistake.’

  ‘Why should anyone follow me? Do you think he’s a detective in disguise and I’m a wanted criminal? Or do I look like a counter-spy or a secret agent or Mata Hari fifty years on?’

  Henry considered. ‘No, you don’t look the part. Besides, Mata Hari was ugly. You’re beautiful.’ He adjusted his glasses the better to confirm his judgement. ‘Really beautiful.’

  ‘Henry! Remember this morning? We had agreed to confine our discussions to intellectual matters.’

  ‘The hell with intellectual matters.’ Henry thought and weighed his words with care. ‘I really believe I’m falling in love with you.’ He thought some more. ‘Fallen.’

  ‘I don’t think Cecily would – ’

  ‘The hell with her, too – no, I didn’t mean that. Sorry. Although I did mean what I said about you.’ He half-turned in his seat. ‘Look, Wherry’s leaving.’

  They watched him go, a small thin dark man with a small thin dark moustache. At his nearest approach to their table, which was about ten feet away, he flickered a glance at them then as quickly looked away again. Henry leaned back in his seat and gave her his ‘I-told-you-so’ look.

  ‘A criminal. Written all over him. You saw that?’

  ‘Yes.’ She was troubled. ‘But why, Henry, why?’

  He shrugged. ‘Do you have any valuables? Any jewellery?’

  ‘I don’t wear jewellery.’

  Henry nodded his approval. ‘Jewellery is for women who need it. But when a person is as lovely as you are – ’

  ‘Henry, it’s getting so I just can’t talk to you. This morning I said it was a lovely day and you put on your soulful expression and made disparaging remarks about the day. When I commend my peach melba you say it’s not half as sweet as I am. And when we looked at the beautiful colourings of the sunset tonight – ’

  ‘I have a poetic soul. Ask Cecily. No, on second thoughts, don’t ask Cecily. I can see that I’m going to have to keep a very, very close eye on you.’

  ‘I should say that you are making a pretty good start already.’

  ‘Ah.’ An unrepentant Henry, eyes slightly glazed but not from alcohol, made no attempt to switch his adoring gaze to pastures less green. He said wistfully: ‘You know, I’ve always wanted to be someone’s Sir Galahad.’

  ‘I wouldn’t, if I were you, Henry. There’s no place in the world today for Sir Galahads. Chivalry is dead, Henry. The lances and the bright swords and the days of knightly combat are gone: this is the era of the knife in the back.’

  Alas for Henry, all his senses, except that of sight, were temporarily in abeyance. Her words fell on deaf ears.

  On the fourth night out Dr Harper joined Bruno in his stateroom. He was accompanied by Carter, the purser, who had been so busy with the debugging equipment on the first night out. Carter extended his customary courteous good evening, wordlessly repeated the search performance, shook his head and left.

  Harper nodded to the cocktail cabinet, poured himself a drink, savoured it and said with some satisfaction: ‘We will pick up your guns in Vienna.’

  ‘Guns?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘You have been in touch with the States? Doesn’t the radio operator raise an eyebrow?’

  It was Harper’s night to indulge himself to a moderate degree. He smiled. He said: ‘I am my own radio operator. I have a very high frequency radio transceiver, no bigger than the average book, which can’t possibly interfere with normal ship’s frequencies. As Charles says, it could reach the moon. Anyway, I transmit in code. Show you the thing some time – in fact, I’ll have to show it to you and explain its operation in case you have to use it. In case something should go wrong with me.’

  ‘What should go wrong with you?’

  ‘What should have gone wrong with Pilgrim and Fawcett? Now, we’ll be picking up two guns for you, not one, and that for a reason. The anaesthetic dart gun – the missiles are more like needles, actually – is the more effective, but the word is that Van Diemen has a long-standing heart condition. So, if you should have to quieten him, the use of a dart gun is, as they say, contra-indicated. For him, the gas gun. Have you figured out a way to get inside yet?’

  ‘A battery-powered helicopter would be splendid only there are no such things. No, I haven’t figured out a way into the damned place yet.’

  ‘Early days and fingers crossed. You know you’re slated to dine with me at the captain’s table tonight?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Passengers are rotated for the privilege. A normal courtesy. See you then.’

  They had just seated themselves at the table when a steward approached, bent and whispered something discreetly into the captain’s ear. The captain rose, excused himself and followed the steward from the dining saloon. He was back inside two or three minutes, looking more than vaguely perturbed.

  ‘Odd,’ he said. ‘Very odd. Carter – you’ve met him, he’s chief purser – claims that he has just been assaulted by some thug. “Mugged”, I believe, is the American term for it. You know, caught round the neck from behind and choked. No marks on him, but he does seem a trifle upset.’

  Harper said: ‘Couldn’t he just have taken a turn?’

  ‘If he did, then his wallet left his inside pocket of its own volition.’

  ‘In which case he’s been attacked and his wallet – minus the contents, of course – is now probably at the bottom of the Atlantic. Shall I have a look at him?’

  ‘It might be wise. Berenson is holding hands with some silly old trout who thinks she’s having a heart attack. Thank you, Doctor. I’ll get a steward to take you.’

  Harper left, Bruno said: ‘That pleasant, courteous man. Who would rob a person like that?’

  ‘I don’t think Carter’s character would come into it. Just someone who was short of money and reasoned that if any person would be liable to be carrying money it would be the ship’s purser. An unpleasant thing to have happen on one’s ship – in fact I’ve never known or heard of an instance before. I’ll have my chief officer and some men investigate.’

  Bruno smiled. ‘I hope we circus people don’t automatically come under suspicion. Among some otherwise reasonable citizens our reputation is not what it could be. But I don’t know more honest people.’

  ‘I don’t know who is responsible, and the question, I’m afraid, is of academic importance anyway. I don’t think my chief has a hope in hell of finding him.’

  Bruno leaned over the taffrail of the Carpentaria, gazing contemplatively at the slight phosphorescence of the ship’s wake. He stirred and turned as someone came up beside him. He said: ‘Anyone in the vicinity?’

  ‘No one,’ Manuelo said.

  ‘No bother?’

  ‘No bother.’ The startlingly white teeth gleamed in the darkness. ‘You were quite right. The unfortun
ate Mr Carter does indeed take a regular – what do you call it –?’

  ‘Constitutional.’

  ‘Right. Takes his constitutional at that time of evening on the boat deck. Lots of shadows on the boat deck. Kan Dahn kind of leaned on him a little bit, Roebuck took the purser’s cabin keys, brought them down to me and kept watch in the passageway while I went inside. I didn’t take long. There was a funny electrical gadget inside a brief-case – ’

  ‘I think I know about that. Looked like a small radio except there were no wavebands on it?’

  ‘Yes. What is it?’

  ‘A device for locating listening devices. They’re a very suspicious lot aboard this boat.’

  ‘With us around you’re surprised?’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘There was fifteen hundred dollars, in tens, at the bottom of a trunk – ’

  ‘I didn’t know about that. Used?’

  ‘No. New. And in sequence.’

  ‘How careless.’

  ‘Looks like.’ He handed a piece of paper to Bruno. ‘I wrote down the serial numbers of the first and last numbers.’

  ‘Good, good. You’re quite sure they were genuine notes?’

  ‘My life on it. I wasn’t in all that hurry and I passed one out to Roebuck. He agrees.’

  ‘That was all?’

  ‘There were some letters addressed to him. Not to any particular address but to Poste Restante in a few cities, mostly London and New York.’

  ‘What language? English?’

  ‘No. I didn’t recognize it. The postmark said Gdynia. That would make it Polish, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘It would indeed. Then everything was left as found, door locked and the keys returned to the sleeping Mr Carter.’

  Manuelo nodded. Bruno thanked him, left, returned to his stateroom, glanced briefly at the serial numbers on the piece of paper that Manuelo had given him then flushed it down the toilet.

  To no one’s surprise, Carter’s assailant was never found.

  On the evening before their arrival in Genoa Dr Harper came to Bruno’s stateroom. He helped himself to a Scotch from Bruno’s virtually untouched liquor cabinet.

  He said: ‘How goes the thinking on this entry business? Mine, I’m afraid, has bogged down to a halt.’

  Bruno said gloomily: ‘Maybe it would have been better, especially for the sake of my health, if mine had bogged down, too.’

  Harper sat up in his armchair and pursed his lips. ‘You have an idea?’

  ‘I don’t know. A glimmering, perhaps. I was wondering – have you any further information for me? Anything at all? About the interior layout of the west building and how to gain access to the ninth floor. Take the roof. Is there any access by way of ventilator shafts, trapdoors or suchlike?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know.’

  ‘I think we can forget the ventilator shafts. In a maximum security place like this the air circulation probably vents through the side walls and would have impossibly narrow exit apertures. Trapdoors, I would have thought, they must have. How else could the guards get up to their towers or the electricians service the electric fence when the need arises? I can hardly see them climbing up ninety feet high vertical steel ladders bolted to an inside wall. Do you know whether the Lubylan runs to lifts?’

  ‘That I do know. There’s a stairs shaft runs from top to bottom in each building with two lifts on either side of the shafts.’

  ‘Presumably it services the ninth floor as well as the rest. That means that the lift-head – you know, where they have the pulley mechanism for the cables – must protrude above the roof. That could provide a way in.’

  ‘It would also provide an excellent way of having yourself crushed to death if you were descending the shaft as the lift came up. It’s happened before, you know, and not seldom either, with service men working on top of a lift.’

  ‘That’s a risk. Walking a frozen two-thousand-volt cable in a high wind – we have to assume the worst – isn’t a risk? What’s on the eighth floor? More laboratories?’

  ‘Oddly, no. That belongs to the east building – the detention centre. The senior prison officers and prison staff sleep there – maybe they can’t stand the sound of the screams, maybe they don’t want to be around in the detention centre if the enemies of the State manage to break loose – I don’t know. All the prison offices and records offices are kept there. Apart from the guards’ sleeping quarters and dining quarters, all of the detention centre is given over to cells. Apart, that is, from a few charming places in the basement which are euphemistically referred to as interrogation centres.’

  Bruno looked at him consideringly. ‘Would it be out of order for me to enquire where you get all this detailed information from? I thought that no stranger would ever be allowed inside and that no guard would ever dare talk.’

  ‘Not at all. We have, as they say, our man in Crau. Not an American, a native. He was imprisoned some fifteen years ago for some trifling political offence, became what we would call a trusty after a few years and had the complete run of the building. His privileged position did not affect in the slightest the complete and total hatred he nourishes for the regime in general and Lubylan and all those who work inside it in particular. He still drinks with the guards and warders from the Lubylan and one way or another manages to keep us reasonably up to date with what’s going on. It’s over four years since he’s been discharged but the guards still regard him as a trusty and talk freely, especially when he plies them with vodka. We provide the money for the vodka.’

  ‘It’s a messy business.’

  ‘All espionage and counter-espionage is. The glamour quotient is zero.’

  ‘The problem still remains. There may just be a solution. I don’t know. Have you mentioned any of this to Maria yet?’

  ‘No. Plenty of time. The fewer people who know – ’

  ‘I’d like to talk to her tonight. May I?’

  Harper smiled. ‘Three minds are better than two? That’s hardly a compliment to me.’

  ‘If only you knew it, it is. I can’t afford to have you too closely involved with anything I’m doing. You’re the co-ordinator and the only person who really knows what is going on – I still don’t believe that you have told me everything I might know, but it doesn’t seem all that important any more. Besides, I have courted the young lady assiduously – although it was under instructions I haven’t found the task too disagreeable – and people are accustomed to seeing us together now.’

  Harper smiled without malice. ‘They’re also accustomed to seeing young Henry squiring her around, too.’

  ‘I shall challenge him to a duel when we get some suitably central European background – the atmosphere has to be right. I don’t need Maria’s ideas. All I want from her is her co-operation. No point in discussing it with you until I have it.’

  ‘No harm. When?’

  ‘After dinner.’

  ‘Where? Here?’

  ‘Not here. It’s perfectly proper for my doctor to come and see me – anxiously caring for one of the circus’s prime properties. But, as you say – or as you infer from Carter’s antics with his bug-detector – it’s just possible that someone might be keeping a wary eye on me. I don’t want them keeping a wary eye on her, too.’

  ‘Then I suggest her cabin.’

  Bruno thought. ‘I’ll do that.’

  Before dinner, Bruno went into the lounge bar, located Maria sitting by herself at a small corner table, sat beside her and ordered a soft drink. He said: ‘This is intolerable. Incredible. Maria Hopkins sitting alone.’

  She said with some asperity: ‘And whose fault is that?’

  ‘Never mine, surely?’

  ‘I’m treated like a pariah, an outcast. There are lots of very nice men here who would love to buy me a drink and talk to me. But no, I’m the plague. The great Bruno might come in at any moment.’ She brooded a bit. ‘Or Henry. He’s as bad. Not only is he the light and the joy of his uncle’s heart – and it woul
d be well to remember that his uncle is the big white chief – he’s also developing a very intimidating line in scowls. The only person who doesn’t give a damn is that enormous friend of yours. Do you know that he calls me your lady-love?’

  ‘And are you? That’s what’s usually referred to as a keen, probing question.’

  She treated his remark with silent disdain.

  ‘Ah, well. And where is the rival for my ladylove’s hand tonight? I’ve just been talking about it with Dr Harper. Henry and I are going to fight a duel when we get to the Carpathians. You should come and watch. After all, it’s over you.’

  ‘Oh, do be quiet.’ She looked at him for a long moment, smiled widely in spite of herself and put her hand on his. ‘What’s the masculine equivalent of “lady-love”?’

  ‘There isn’t one or if there is I don’t think I’d like to hear it. Where is Henry?’

  ‘He’s gone sleuthing.’ Subconsciously, she lowered her voice. ‘I think he’s watching someone or shadowing someone. Henry has spent a great deal of time these past two days following someone he swears is following me.’

  Surprisingly, Bruno was not amused. He said: ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’

  ‘I didn’t think it important. I didn’t take it seriously.’

  ‘Didn’t? And now?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Why should anyone be following you?’

  ‘If I knew I’d tell you, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Have you told Dr Harper?’

  ‘No. That’s the point. There’s nothing to tell. I don’t like being laughed at. I think Dr Harper’s got his reservations about me, anyway. I don’t want him to think that I’m a bigger ninny than he already probably thinks I am.’

  ‘This mystery shadower. He has a name?’

  ‘Yes. Wherry. A cabin steward. Small man, narrow face, very pale, narrow eyes, small black moustache.’