He heard the Busy inquire after him, and his father’s puzzled voice, “He was here a minute ago.” The Busy said he would wait. Foxy became acutely conscious of the little jade idol in one pocket, and in another the letter he had pinched from the Gray bastard; also, a wasp was turning its attention from a squashed plum to Foxy’s nose. It was time to scarper. He wriggled from under the barrow, at the end opposite the Busy’s boots, and merged into the crowd, followed by a yell from the unspeakable Gloria, “There he is! Hey, Foxy, you’re wanted!” Snatching the cap from the head of a gormless lad who was gazing at a nylon-and-brassière display, Foxy put it on the conceal his carroty hair, and moved smartly up the hill again, bumping and boring through the crowd.
Mr. Borch, too, was a familiar figure in the Portobello Road market. Like many another person who, by his own unaided efforts has risen from poverty to affluence, he loved bargaining for its own sake and was wont to chaffer interminably for an article which he did not really want and could have afforded to purchase by the gross. He was something of a connoisseur, besides; when Sam Borch approached, stall-holders abandoned their usual patter and prepared for a stiff tussle. But, here as elsewhere, Mr. Borch combined pleasure with business. Antisocial types could rely on finding him here at certain hours; and a few muttered words exchanged, in the thick of a crowd, while the speakers were examining objects on a stall, were a safe and often fruitful method of communication. This was all the more so just at present, when Mr. Borch, fully aware that the police had turned on the heat, had felt it advisable to close down certain other channels of communication for a while.
This afternoon, Mr. Borch was in search of information rather than objets de vertu. Things had been happening in his world, or on its fringes, which puzzled him. Notably the murder of the Quack. He was not interested in the Quack professionally; but it had disconcerted him that this individual should have been ironed out so soon after the police had inquired at The High Dive about him. That sort of thing aroused nasty suspicions in the official breast. Indeed he had already been interviewed on the subject; and the fact that he possessed a genuine, guaranteed alibi for the hours in question did not altogether remove his uneasiness. He felt, in short, that things were rather less under control than normally.
They were far less so than Mr. Borch apprehended. An observer—and the C.I.D. were keeping him under observation at this very moment—noting Mr. Borch’s large, genial face, his pearl-gray Homburg and suit, his Malacca cane, might well have supposed that here was a man on top of the world. Equally, one might admire the solidity and opulence of a table which is actually infested by white ants and will soon crumble to dust before its owner’s eyes. The C.I.D. had been burrowing for some little time now into the structure of Mr. Borch’s interests. His downfall, however, was to be brought about, not by the forces of abstract Justice, but by those passions which, as the poet correctly tells us, spin the plot.
Mr. Borch sauntered toward the pitch where the clerical-collared man and his band were entertaining the children. As their voices rose in song, Mr. Borch exchanged a few words, his lips barely moving, with an unwholesome-looking character who had also drifted that way. He then moved back into the market, for he had seen a red-faced man, of the commercial-traveler type, making an almost imperceptible sign in his direction. His progress did not go unmarked, and his presence at the market on other occasions had been noted, too. So that, just as Mr. Borch was approaching this person, he felt a violent concussion which sent him reeling and knocked off his hat. A boy had run into him full tilt. Mr. Borch’s expression changed. He lifted his cane and slashed the boy viciously across the buttocks. Foxy let out a howl of anguish.
In an instant the crowd was pressing round them. The few who had seen the incident were hostile to Mr. Borch, the rest were all ready to take sides as soon as they knew what it was about. Mr. Borch picked up his hat, saying, “Let me pass, please,” and tried to move away.
“What’s the hurry?”
“Who the hell do you think you’re pushing?”
“He hit the boy. Give him some of his own medicine!”
“The arab knocked his hat off. Serve the little bleeder right!”
“You think so? You want to make something of it?”
The red-faced man had now worked his way into the ring, with several of the wide boys behind him.
“Lay off it,” he said menacingly. “Let this gent pass.”
Foxy, white-faced with pain and fury, pointed to the new arrival, yelling at the top of his voice,
“Get that———! He tried to kidnap Bert Hale. He’s in the snatch racket!”
Copper, turning up that moment, also recognized the “commercial traveler” who had hung around Mrs. Hale’s house, and sang out, “That’s right! He’s wanted by the police!”
“Cut it out, you little—!”
“What’s he say?”
“Bert Hale. Kid in the papers who’s disappeared. That chap done it.”
The wide boys had whipped out their razors and bicycle chains. They formed a tight round Mr. Borch. It was the last think he wanted—this sort of publicity. And there was worse to come.
The red-faced man shot out his hand and gripped Foxy. Copper, snatching up a hugh vase from a stall, swung it at the man’s knees; he roared with pain, and released Foxy. A police whistle sounded from the higher end of the street. It was the C.I.D. man who had been shadowing Sam Borch, but found it impossible to break through the milling crowd. The mobsters began to move away from the sound of the whistle, down the hill. Mr. Borch, willy-nilly, had to go with them. Intimidated by the razors and whirling chains, the crowd pressed back to the sides of the street. Several stalls were overset and wrecked by the pressure. Their owners began to bombard the wide boys with their stock-in-trade, and at once the bystanders joined in: a fusillade of tomatoes, plums, cabbages were directed against the enemy.
Mr. Borch’s Savile-Row suit was soon ruined. He had been protesting vigorously if incoherently, and the crowd now got the idea—not altogether unfounded—that he was being carried off by the mobsters against his will. Some of the hardier spirits advanced to rescue him, closed with his apparent captors, and an ugly hand-to-hand fight started. This was Foxy’s opportunity. He had got it in for Mr. Borch, and when Foxy’s blood was up, there was no holding him. Streaking through the melee, closely attended by Copper, he hurled a tomato full in Mr. Borch’s face, snatched his Malacca stick and gave him a ferocious blow across the buttocks. Mr. Borch, who now resembled the losing end of a heavyweight contest, staggered away, to be tripped up by Copper’s outthrust foot. Foxy jumped up and down on Mr. Borch’s stomach, preparatory to doing him a permanent injury, but was knocked sprawling by a clout from the “commercial traveler.” The latter, though hampered by the bash across the knees he had received from Copper, was still very much in the fight. He made a limping dash. Copper, who had learned jujitsu from his father, interposed and sent the red-faced man flying, on his own impetus, in a graceful parabola which landed him on the much-enduring Mr. Borch’s kidneys.
Police whistles now sounded close at hand and the crowd began to melt at its outer edges. Dizzy with the blow he had received, Foxy nevertheless retained enough sense to know he must get rid of the incriminating articles in his possession, lest the police should nab him. Mr. Borch and the red-faced man, inextricably mingled, were struggling to get to their feet, buffeted by the reeling, milling figures around them. They were in no condition to notice it when Foxy’s creeping up to them, transferred certain objects from his own pockets to theirs. For good measure, he gave each of them a powerful kick where it would hurt most, then darted back to the pavement.
The two policemen who had been watching the Communist meeting, together with the plain-clothes men detailed to shadow Mr. Borch and pick up Foxy, had now got the situation under control. Three of the mobsters were already in custody. Mr. Borch and the “commercial traveler,” both groggy still, were arrested for disturbing the peace. A Black Maria, with
reinforcements, soon arrived, and the tedious business began of getting statements from eyewitnesses, some of whom needed medical attention. The battle of the Portobello Road was over. Whistling innocently, looking like battered cherubs, Foxy and Copper strolled away from the battlefield.
11
Hospital Visitors
THERE WAS A gleam in Inspector Wright’s eye when he came to visit Nigel the next morning.
“Things are moving at last,” he said. “We’ve got that oily old basket, Borch, where we want him.”
Wright told Nigel of the fracas in the Portobello Road. A number of arrests had been made: three small-time mobsters, and two bigger fish—Sam Borch, and a man called Percy Chalmers, who designated himself as a commercial traveler. Both men were searched. In Borch’s pocket was found a small jade idol. This object had not been listed among the articles stolen at any of the recent robberies; but Wright had sent a man round to make inquiries from the victims. He had drawn blank at two houses. Then Lady Durbar’s personal maid (her master and mistress were out to dinner) identified the idol as one which had stood on a table in Lady Durbar’s bedroom. The room was full of knickknacks, and the maid had not noticed before that this particular object was missing; nor, presumably, had its owner.
“We can get a search warrant on this. We’re holding Borch, and we’ll go through The High Dive and his private apartments tomorrow.”
“What does the great Borch say about it?”
“Full of righteous indignation. Accuses us of framing him. Says he’d never set eyes on the niddy little idol before.”
“Had he set fingers on it?”
“He’s a receiver, not a thief.”
“I mean, were his fingerprints on it?”
The Inspector gave Nigel a long, long look. “Now, sir, what awkward questions you do ask.” His quick smile flashed once, like an Aldis lamp.
“So they weren’t?”
“Oh but they are. Sam—er—handled the object when he was confronted with it at the Station.”
“I see. How resourceful our police are. So the theory is he’d just been carrying a piece of stolen property round in his pocket? Though he must have known he was under observation?”
“Sam is a bit of a connoisseur. Perhaps he’d fallen in love with the piece, and couldn’t bring himself to part from it. Ugly little brute—that idol. But I never did like chinoiserie mascots, and they tell me it’s valuable enough.”
“Mascots,” said Nigel in a speculative tone, remembering the guilty look on Foxy’s face at a certain point during the episode in Clare’s studio. “Was the boy Foxy mixed up in this Portobello Road affair?”
Inspector Wright’s eyes sparked again. “He was. I’d sent a man to look for him. He was directed to a barrow owned by Foxy’s dad. Foxy had been there a moment before. And eyewitnesses of the fracas said it began with a red-headed boy accidentally running into Sam Borch and getting a whack across the bottom with his cane.”
“And Foxy had the run of the Durbars’ house on the night of the burglary. And boys have a passion for mascots. But he’d want to get rid of it if the police began crowding him too close.”
“Looks like we shall have to interview him again—after we’ve got Sam Borch tidied up,” said Wright with a meaning intonation.
“You’ve seen him then? Foxy?” Nigel’s voice was eager.
“Oh yes, sir. We caught up with him last night.”
“And you’ve got Dai Williams’ message?”
Inspector Wright sliced the air before him with the edge of his hand. “We’ve drawn a blank there.”
He had extracted the boys’ stories when Foxy and Copper were brought to the Station—how Bert had shown them a piece of paper, how they had set up on their own as detectives, put a bogus message in the boat, and palmed it off on the crooks. The original “message” had been destroyed. But they had both seen it. “Bert Hale, 12.” Copper was convinced now that Bert had been pulling their legs—had substituted for the piece of paper Dai Williams gave him one on which he had written a more interesting, mystifying message. Bert was quite capable of it—both boys agreed.
“Do you agree?” said Nigel.
“Well, it doesn’t make sense otherwise, does it? I showed the boys a specimen of Dai’s handwriting. They admitted that, as far as they could remember, it was like the writing on the bit of paper Bert showed them. But Bert could have roughly copied the writing of the real message.”
“So we’re no further till we’ve found Bert?”
“I wouldn’t quite say that, sir. We have much stronger links with Gray now. Your Foxy believes he saw Gray receive the fake message they’d concocted from the spiv Bert failed to sell his boat to. That’s what set them off shadowing Gray.”
“When Foxy followed him into the Durbars’ party?”
“Yes. Foxy was unforthcoming about the party itself. But he gave me a description of a man who accompanied Gray to it—and of a conversation he overheard between Gray and some other unknown man which suggested to him that Gray’s companion did the robbery. It doesn’t quite suggest that to me.”
The Inspector repeated the conversation which Foxy had heard from his hiding place in the tree.
“My word!” exclaimed Nigel. “So he heard Gray talking about the fake message in Bert’s boat and the need to get the real message out of him? It seems to me we’ve got Gray cold.” Nigel paused, and added, “You’re not going to be precipitate and arrest him, I hope?”
“Not on your life, sir. I shall be asking him some carefully chosen questions this afternoon—give him a mild shock and plenty of rope, and see where he leads us.”
“He’s got to lead us to Bert. I’m worried about that lad. The character Foxy described—the one who came with Gray to the cannibal party—”
“Walks like an American gangster. Has violet-smelling brilliantine, or sucks violet sweets. That’s about all Foxy could tell me. Chap’s face was blacked for the party. But—” the Inspector paused, “the man who shot the Quack speaks with an American accent. Of course, half the young toughies in this country affect American accents and walks—”
“Where did you get this from?”
“Your friend Foxy again. He and Bert were present at the liquidation of the Quack. Foxy wrote us that anonymous letter about where to find the body. His chum, Copper, made him come clean about it.”
Wright passed on the whole story. “And what made them choose that particular house for Bert to go to ground in? Their damned detective game again. They were shadowing a red-faced man who had been making sinister inquiries after young Bert. He stopped outside this house, not many hours before the Quack was murdered there, to light a cigarette. No doubt he was prospecting. And this red-faced man has now been identified as Percy Chalmers.” Wright sketched a gesture of a wheel coming full circle.
“You’re making my head go round,” said Nigel. “Who is this Chalmers, then?”
“Bad type, Mosleyite before the war. Done a stretch for extortion. Commercial traveler, plausible, sex appeal, bored housewife or pretty daughter goes a bit too far with him, anonymous letters presently—pay up or I’ll tell hubby or dad as the case may be. He’s a newcomer to my manor. We found this letter on him.”
Nigel read it: D street party off. Too hot. All laid on for Kingsway. “Translate, please,” he said.
“Chalmers isn’t gaffing. Put on an act he’d never seen it before. Like hell he hadn’t! It’s a stone ginger the message is about these political demonstrations. I’ve passed it to the Special Branch. Downing Street demonstration called off. Everything ready for Kingsway Hall—there’s a big peace meeting there on Tuesday night, and I suppose they’re going to break it up.”
“Some staff work behind this.”
“You’ve said it. The Special Branch are hopping mad. Their plans for the Downing Street reception were very comprehensive and very secret. Whoever’s organizing these demonstrations must’ve been tipped off from high up that Downing Street wouldn’t be
healthy.”
“And this Chalmers is one of the ex-Mosleyite scum. I wonder what clubs our friend Gray belongs to—apart from The High Dive.”
“We’re digging into his past.”
“Good luck to the archaeologists. I shall do a bit of spadework myself presently. Lady Durbar is coming to visit me….”
At midday Hesione entered, dressed as if she were going on to a Royal Garden Party. She swooped toward the bed, releasing a gust of Femme and a torrent of solicitousness about Nigel’s injury; then sat down, crossing the famous legs which had drawn full houses at Drury Lane and in the provinces. She took out a cigarette, put it away again, turned over a book on the bedside table, inquired after Clare, cast surreptitious little glances at the mirror.
“First-night nerves?” murmured Nigel.
“You wicked man!” She slapped his forearm lightly. “You see too much. Well, I am nervous. I never did like these places since I had my appendix whipped out when I was a small girl. The public ward for me, of course, in those days. So my bedside manners are shocking. Have they found out who did it?”
“Swiped your jewels?” said Nigel, deliberately misunderstanding.
“Oh, damn them. No, the men who attacked you, I mean.”
“Not yet. Mr. Gray saw the number of the car they drove away in, but it was a false number plate. I should be very grateful to him for turning up when he did.”
Hesione was fidgeting with a ring on her third finger—a magnificent sapphire which reflected the sapphire of her eyes. Suddenly she came out with,