The Whisper in the Gloom

  “And a box of matches?”

  “Beg pardon, sir?”

  “Matches, Allen: there were none on the body. There’s not a box in the house. And where’s the lantern? Would the murderer waste time getting into the house and removing the lantern, after he’d shot his man?”

  Allen grinned. “I reckon I’m off the beam this time.”

  “But suppose a gang of kids decide to camp out here, for a dare. That’d account for everything—including the door bolt, which they oiled but hadn’t the strength to force back. And it must have been recently. Last night, maybe. They may have heard the shot—been eyewitnesses, even. Those crumbs are still fresh. And then there’s the writing on the wall.”

  Sergeant Allen started and looked up where the Inspector’s thumb had pointed, as if he half expected to see a moving finger write.

  “Up there. ‘Foxy loves Lady Durbar.’ Foxy’s that boy Strangeways told us about. And Foxy didn’t know Lady Durbar till he gate-crashed her idiotic party, three nights ago. Foxy, or one of his young friends, more likely, must have written that.”

  “Another coincidence, sir?”

  “Coincidence be damned! Wherever we move in this case, we find boys under our feet.”

  “Turn a stone and start a cherub’s wing, sir.”

  “Cherubs! Blasted little arabs,” said Wright bitterly. “And I told you to lay off the literature.”

  “Sorry, sir. You were saying?”

  “I said, coincidence be damned. Who wrote that anonymous letter? The murderer? One of his gang? Not on your life. It’s the way a boy would write. We’ve got to find this Foxy now—or one of his dear little playmates.”

  A few streets away the police were making their inquiries, when Alec Gray turned on the six o’clock news. There was a police message; and the millions listening in had never heard a stranger one. Would the boy who was sailing a model speedboat on the Round Pond on Sunday afternoon, August 1st, and was later approached by two men with a view to purchasing his boat, etc., etc.

  Alec Gray switched off the radio, stood for a moment in thought, then hurriedly changed into his dinner jacket and rang for a taxi. The plain-clothes man, Jones, heard him give the address of The High Dive to the taxi driver. Jones caught a taxi himself, a few minutes later, in Church Street, and arrived at the night club just after Gray had entered it. Gray’s taxi man informed Jones that his fare had stopped on the way to telephone from a public call box. Jones instructed a policeman on the beat to put through a call for him, then settled down to watch the club entrance, and wait for his relief. He was properly browned off with all this hanging around, but he was a disciplined man and did not relax his vigilance.

  Alec Gray found Mr. Borch on the premises. They had a brief conversation. Presently Mr. Borch escorted Gray through the cellar up into the room behind the second-hand clothes shop: there were no guests in the club yet, and Mr. Borch took care that the few waiters who had so far arrived should not see his companion’s departure. Putting on an overcoat and hat, borrowed from the shop’s stock, Gray walked out into the alley, turned left, and opened the door of the car which was waiting a hundred yards away. He gave the driver some instructions, then untied a parcel lying on the back seat. The parcel contained a policeman’s uniform, complete with regulation boots; and it contained one or two other items, also suitable for fancy dress.

  Although the attempt to grab Bert Hale last night had failed, the organization had not failed to follow the subsequent move which had deposited Bert in Essex. The police appeal on the radio rendered it imperative that the boy should be dealt with. This time, there must be no mistakes; that was why Gray had taken on the job himself. Of course even now it might be too late. But farmers were slow-moving people: suppose the boy had heard the first radio appeal, and come clean to his uncle and aunt, there was still a fair chance they would not contact the police till tomorrow morning. But what Gray chiefly banked on was that, since the boy had presumably not yet told even his mother about the speedboat episode—otherwise, she would surely have gone to the authorities—he would not tell his uncle or aunt now.

  The car shook itself free of traffic, and accelerated along Eastern Avenue toward Chelmsford.

  Bert Hale had indeed heard the radio appeal on the six o’clock news. His uncle was out milking, his aunt was laying high tea, when it came through. The appeal roused conflicting emotions in Bert’s bosom: he felt like a hunted criminal, and imagined the row he would get into for having lied to the policeman this morning; he felt rather grand, at the thought of the B.B.C. appealing to him, Bert Hale, to disgorge his secret; he felt, above all, an overmastering sense of relief that soon this secret would no longer be hanging round his neck like the albatross in the poem.

  “You’re looking pale, my dear,” said his aunt. “You must eat a good supper and go to bed early.”

  Bert opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, and crammed in a buttered scone instead.

  “That’s a funny message on the wireless, isn’t it? Wonder what he’s been up to. Something bad, I’m sure, or they wouldn’t wireless for him.”

  Bert choked over a mouthful of milk, then bent down to stroke the cat, and conceal the guilt which must be written on his face. His aunt’s comfortable, basket-chair voice creaked on: she was lonely on the small farm, and it was nice to have someone to talk to, though young Bert didn’t seem as bright as usual.

  Presently they heard Bert’s uncle at the back door, taking off his Wellingtons and washing his hands in the sink. The aunt fetched a hot dish for him out of the oven. As he ate, she told him about the radio message.

  “You’re one for model boats, eh, boy?” he said to Bert; then, winking at the boy, “we’ll not let on to the coppers, though, shall us?”

  Bert went scarlet, grinning uncertainly. Every moment that passed seemed to make it more impossible for him to come out with his secret: it was like having to confess to—a murder. The thought brought flooding back all the horrors of the previous night, which he had kept dammed up at the back of his mind for the last few hours.

  At eight-thirty his aunt sent him to bed. He was glad enough to go, for he had determined to own up next morning, and in the meantime it was no fun sitting with his aunt and uncle, expecting all the time that they would recur to the subject of the radio appeal. Bert did not undress immediately. He looked out of the small, low window at the farm buildings, the rooks fidgeting in the ash trees, the deeply rutted track which led through flat fields to the farm gate.

  Up this track, a few minutes later, he saw a uniformed policeman walking. The farm dogs barked; the rooks flustered in the elm tops. Daylight was fast on the ebb.

  “Oh, bother!” said Bert, but halfheartedly; he was certain the policeman had come for him, and glad on the whole that the initiative would be taken out of his own hands.

  Bert’s aunt answered the knock on the door.

  “Mrs. Johnson?” asked the constable—a youngish man, freshfaced, with a blond mustache, and very nicely spoken, as she afterward described him.

  “You have a small boy staying her, madam—name of Hale—I believe.”

  “Yes. He’s not got into trouble, I hope. He’s my nephew.”

  “The police have reason to believe he may be the boy for whom an appeal is being broadcast. Perhaps you heard it, madam?”

  “Yes, we did. But Bert’d have—” she broke off, looking uncomfortable as she remembered how Bert had reacted to the radio appeal. Her husband came to the door beside her.

  “Your nephew didn’t say anything to you about the broadcast? Or to you, Mr. Johnson?”

  The farmer and his wife shook their heads.

  “Made no comment at all?”

  “No. It’s not like him, I said to myself. He’s usually such a talkative little chap.”

  “I’d like a word with him, please.”

  “Oh but he’s gone to bed. Wouldn’t it do tomorrow?”

  “I’m afraid it’s rather an urgent matter,” said th
e constable, adding drily, “we don’t make broadcast appeals otherwise.”

  Mr. Johnson called upstairs, and Bert was down in a moment, still fully dressed.

  “The constable wants to ask you a question,” said Mr. Johnson. “Don’t be frightened of that, my dear.”

  “We’ve had a message from London, asking us to inquire—”

  The constable did not have to proceed further. White-faced, but standing straight up to it, Bert declared, “Yes, I’m the boy you’re looking for. I heard the broadcast. I was going,” he lamely added, “to tell Uncle in the morning.”

  “Well, fancy that now!” exclaimed Mrs. Johnson, a little shrilly, her gaze groping toward her husband.

  “I’m afraid I must ask you to let me take your nephew into Chelmsford. The Super wants some information from him. Don’t worry yourself, madam. We’ve a car in the lane—didn’t like to bring it down this track—and we’ll have him back here in an hour.”

  “But look here,” said Mr. Johnson. “What’s this all about? How do we know?”

  The constable, beckoning him aside, muttered in his ear, “It’s a murder inquiry, sir. The boy has unwittingly come into the possession of some information which may be of vital importance.”

  Uncle and Aunt watched Bert receding along the track at the constable’s side. He swung his arms, looked almost jaunty—as well he might, with such a load off his mind. He turned once, and waved to them. The constable turned, too, raising his hand in cheerful salute.

  “Very decent young fellow, that seems.”

  “Yes. Not a local man, though, I reckon.”

  “Whatever’ll Lily say when she hears of this? You know the way she spoils him. Too soft with him, I always say.”

  “The way you talk, anyone’d think Bert was being arrested. They only want some gen about a murder.”

  “A murder, Bob?” exclaimed Mrs. Johnson with a faint shriek.

  Bert got into the back seat, beside the friendly constable, and the plain-clothes man at the wheel drove off. The lane, heavy with its late-summer leaves and the lowering twilight, was deserted. The constable asked Bert if there’d been a message on the bit of paper in his boat.

  “Oh yes, rather,” said Bert enthusiastically. “That’s what those two blighters must’ve been after.”

  “What did it say, son?”

  “Well, that’s the extraordinary thing. It just had my name and age written on it.”

  “Go on!” remarked the constable.

  “Honestly! And I tried it for invisible writing. Must have been in code, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose it must. Let’s have a crack at it—I’m quite hot on codes.” The constable produced pencil and notebook. “Write it down here—exactly what was written on the bit of paper: it’s easier if you can actually see the words.”

  Bert began to write. The motion of the car made it difficult, and at one point of the message the pencil jerked, altering a letter. He finished, then surveyed what he had written.

  “Jees!” he exclaimed. “Look at—”

  But what the constable was to look at remained unspoken. Bert, feeling the car brake hard, glanced up. They had just rounded a bend, and there was another car ahead of them, stationary, almost blocking the narrow lane.

  “It’s a stick-up!” squeaked Bert.

  “Get down on the floor, and keep quiet,” the constable ordered. Bert did so, having first, with great presence of mind, tom the sheet from the notebook and put it in his mouth. As he frantically chewed at it, he listened for the sounds of battle. None came. What did come was a pair of blue serge sleeves from behind him, a pair of hands which slapped adhesive plaster over Bert’s mouth and a scarf round his eyes. He felt himself lifted out of the car, carried, thrown down again, his hands and legs trussed: then the ground on which he was lying jerked violently, and he realized it must be the floor of a car—the other car. It all happened with such dazing swiftness that he had no time to be frightened. He had not even had time to swallow the paper. It was agonizing to move his jaws, with the adhesive plaster binding his mouth, but he finally got the paper swallowed.

  Not till he had done so did he realize that it was a useless gesture; for, now that he had collected his wits, he remembered vividly the blue serge sleeves. It was the friendly “constable” who had betrayed him, gagged and blindfolded him; and he had seen the message which Bert had copied out in the notebook—had time to see it, anyway—just before the fake stick-up. Well, of course it was not a stick-up at all. For some reason, Bert clearly perceived, it had been prearranged by the gang that he should be transferred to another car. The “constable” and the original driver would now be speeding back to London, or wherever they had come from, with Dai Williams’ secret in their possession.

  Bert’s reasoning was correct. A little before eleven P.M., dressed in his dinner jacket and borrowed overcoat again, Alec Gray unlocked the door beside the second-hand clothes shop, passed through into The High Dive, and made for Sam Borch’s private room upstairs. An hour later, Jones’ relief saw Alec Gray emerge from the front door of the club, assisted by a doorman and at an advanced stage of intoxication, to be driven off in a taxi.

  Meanwhile, Bert had begun to worry—not so much about his own predicament as the effect his disappearance would have on his aunt, uncle, and his mother. He did not think the gang would kill him; they could have done so before, if they’d wanted to. There object, he thought, must be to prevent him communicating Dai Williams’ message to anyone else. What they did not know was that Foxy and Copper shared the secret; no doubt his friends would go to the police as soon as they heard of his disappearance, but on the other hand they did not understand the significance of what Dai Williams had written on that piece of paper, and it might well escape the police too.

  The car, which had been winding this way and that along a bumpy road, now moved faster, straighter, on a smoother surface, and other cars from time to time whirred past. They must be on a main road: but Bert had not the faintest idea whether they were traveling north, south, east, or west. He wriggled again with wrists and feet, but he had been lashed up too efficiently. There seemed to be no one else in the back of the car; and if the driver had a companion, he must be dumb or asleep, for not a word was spoken. This silence began to get on Bert’s nerves. It was like being in an empty car, a runaway car, tearing through the night: sooner or later it must hit something, it would catch fire, and he would not be able to get out.

  Bert, momentarily overwrought by this appalling fantasy, tried to yell. The adhesive plaster cruelly nipped his mouth, and he gave a loud whimper instead.

  “Pipe down, kid,” came a man’s voice. “Not far to go now.”

  The voice was not harsh, was almost reassuring. Bert’s mind threw up a sort of composite figure of all the rugged jailers in history and fiction, softened by the appeals of their young captives. But he could not appeal till this filthy thing had been taken off his mouth, and it seemed ages of darkness and pain before the car stopped, a gate was opened, and then they moved forward again with the wheels bumping over a rough track.

  He was picked up, still in silence, carried up some stairs, along a passage, and finally put down on a bed. Footsteps came and went. Hands untied the scarf from round his head, and the ropes. A woman was bending over him, vigorously massaging his wrists and ankles, clucking to herself—a homely-faced old woman, utterly different from the gangster’s moll he had expected.

  “I’ll get some hot water, ducks,” she said, “and that plater’ll come off easier. A cruel shame, I call it.”

  For a moment, Bert wildly thought he must have been rescued, not kidnaped. But then he heard a key turn in the lock after the old woman had gone out, and saw that the window of the room was barred. The next thing he saw, by the light of the shaded bulb overhead, was a rocking horse, its red nostrils sneering at him from a corner of the room. The wallpaper had a pattern of Noah’s arks and animals; on a Prussian blue cupboard sat an array of golliwoggs an
d teddy bears. He was in a nursery.

  Whatever effect, if any, his captors might have intended by this, Bert’s environment provoked him to seething rage. The indignity of putting him, the president of the Martian Society, in a room full of kid’s toys—all of them brand new too, it seemed, as if the room had been fitted out for him! Who the hell did they think he was?

  His indignation carried him through the painful business of removing the plaster, and it was tears of rage rather than grief which came to his eyes. The old woman, entering with a basin of hot water, had said,

  “Now, Master Bert, before we take that horrid thing off, you must promise me not to call out or do anything silly. No one will hear you, so you might as well save your breath to cool your porridge. Your word of honor, Master Bert. Nothing naughty.”

  Precluded from speech, Bert nodded his head. The unpeeling operation was performed, with only a few stifled moans from the boy. The woman produced a bag of sweets from her apron pocket.

  “That’s a good boy,” she said. “You can have a sweetie for being so brave.”

  “Who are you?” asked Bert, sucking the sweet.

  “You can call me Nanny” she said, in a cozy, creaking voice which reminded him of his aunt’s. Bert suppressed the glare of indignation he was tempted to bestow upon the silly old hag. She was obviously touched in the head; and Bert’s instinct for playing up adult weakness was at once aroused. If the old fool has delusions that I’m a kid, let her keep them; maybe it’ll put her off her guard. Assuming an infantile tone which made him sick to the stomach, he said, “Where am I, Nanny?”

  “Ah, that’d be telling, ducks. Ask no questions and you’ll hear no lies,” she crooned.

  “Why have I been kidnaped?” Bert persisted.

  “Now, Master Bert, that’s a very naughty word. I don’t like to hear that sort of words from my babies.”

  Bert shuddered strongly.