The Whisper in the Gloom

  As soon as the old woman retired with his breakfast tray, after making the bed and pottering about with a duster, Bert settled down to write a message. He dared not make any rough copies, in case they should be discovered later and betray him; he must get it right first time. So he worked out alternatives in his head. Satisfied at last, he wrote, in large letters, on the drawing pad he had found among the children’s books:

  BERT HALE, THE KIDNAPED BOY THE POLICE ARE LOOKING FOR, IS IMPRISONED IN THE HOUSE WHERE THIS DUSTBIN WAS COLLECTED FROM. PLEASE INFORM THE POLICE AT ONCE. VERY URGENT. S.O.S.

  BERT HALE.

  Bert’s plan was based on his observation of the London dustman. He had often seen them, before decanting a bin into their refuse lorry, poke about among its contents. If it contained anything of value, they set this aside; they seemed particulary interested in wooden boxes—perhaps they were all amateur carpenters. Having written his message, Bert cast about for the best receptacle. It must be something he could take out to the yard in a pocket—small enough not to create a suspicious bulge, but not so small that it would escape a dustman’s notice. Looking through the toy cupboard, he rejected a pencil box, a carton of crayons, a cardboard container full of draftsmen, and finally chose a small box encrusted with shells: it would fit into his pocket, and it would be more likely than the others to attract attention when lying in a heap of refuse. Into this Bert put his message. The lid seemed fairly firm. Only when the box was safely tucked away in his trouser pocket did be begin to think what might be done to him if the message were intercepted.

  After lunch, Nanny brought in a stalwart man of about thirty, who proved to be as silent as his aunt was garrulous. Bert had selected, from a number of woolly and rubber balls in the cupboard, one whose colors were less atrociously sissy than the rest, and now he followed the man, whom Nanny called Tom, out of the room. They descended three flights of stairs, went along a short passage, and entered what had once been the servants’ hall and was now a sitting room for the caretakers. Bert, noticing a telephone on a shelf in one corner, involuntarily slowed. It was only the slightest check, but it did not escape the man. He spoke, for the first time, in a voice which sounded to Bert like a rusty key turning in the lock of a dungeon door.

  “No, sonny. The blower’s not for you. Keep moving.”

  They went through an enormous, cobwebbed kitchen, into another passage, and then Tom was unbolting the back door. What Nanny had called “the yard” was very different from Bert’s experience of yards in London. It proved to be an expanse bigger than the school playground, composed of cobblestones with grass sprouting between them. On his right was a high wall; in front of him a line of buildings, which resembled a London mews: to the left lay a gateway, flanked by lichened stone pillars and giving a view of a drive curling round toward the front of the house: a stone drinking trough stood in the center of the yard. The place was desolate and anonymous, as if a plague had passed over it. Even the pigeons had been silenced by the afternoon heat. Bert jumped a little when the man beside him broke this silence.

  “No funny business, see? I can run faster than you, and we don’t want no excitement. Bad for you, after your nervous breakdown. And don’t try your high notes, or I’ll kick you in the railings.”

  The intention, if not the exact meaning, was clear enough to Bert. Despondently he nodded. This was not going to be like those stories in which pathetic young prisoners soften the hearts of surly jailers. The man, Tom, moved off to the left, stationing himself between Bert and the yard gateway; he had locked the back door and pocketed the key, so there’d be no chance of escaping through the house. On the other hand, against the house, between the back door and the gate, stood a couple of dustbins.

  “Well, go on,” said the man. “You wanted to play ball. Play!”

  That moment was the nadir of Bert’s young life. It sharpened the nightmare quality of his isolation to an unbearable pitch. He felt broken open, utterly exposed: tears of self-pity and exasperation pricked his eyes, and he kicked the idiotic colored ball viciously, aimlessly against the wall on his right. It slapped against the wall with a sort of elastic sound which filled the empty courtyard. Bert took a run at the ball, and kicking it again, stubbed his toe against a cobble. As he danced on one foot, in pain, the man Tom guffawed.

  “You’re no bloody good at this, mate,” he said.

  It brought Bert to boiling point.

  “Bet you I can get it past you. Go on,” he said furiously, “you stand between those pillars. That’s the goal. If you’re so damned good at football—”

  “Temper, temper!” said the man. “All right, cock, see what you can do.”

  Stubbing out his cigarette, Tom went to stand in the gateway. He stopped a few shots from Bert, with contemptuous ease. Then the boy got one past him, and began to jeer at him. Tom was taking it in earnest now, crouching with outspread arms. Bert knew his chance had come. After a few deliberately feeble shots at goal, he pretended to lose his temper again, took an almighty kick at the ball, and sent it curling over the wall to the right of the gateway. Tom disappeared to retrieve it. Risking observation from the back window, Bert whipped off a dustbin lid, buried the little box from his pocket just under the surface of the refuse, and had replaced the lid before Tom reappeared in the gateway.

  In the hospital that same afternoon, sitting up in a chair now, Nigel Strangeways fretted at his uselessness. As so often happens when the mind is both overtired and overexcited, he kept covering the same ground again and again, like a golfer searching for a lost ball; his thoughts brooded over the lunch party at the Durbars’. It was impossible to avoid the conclusion that either Hesione or her husband had ordered the attempt on his life. Hesione had denied telephoning when the others were looking at Durbar’s pictures; but of course, if guilty, she would deny it. Sir Rudolf had pressed them to stay a little longer; and, on hearing that Nigel would escort Clare home, had gone out of the gallery to fetch the Van Dyck. He could have telephoned then, informing Gray of Nigel’s exact movements; and previously, when the secretary called him out of the room, he could have rung up Gray, or whoever his chief strong-arm man was, to order a state or readiness.

  It was incredible to Nigel that either Sir Rudolf or Lady Durbar should have a gang of thugs on tap. He could have imagined Hesione innocently telling Gray, during a telephone conversation, that her guest was searching for a boy called Bert Hale, whom no one else was in a position to identify; he could have imagined it, if Hesione were still on intimate terms with Gray. But, after the things she had told him yesterday about her exlover, this seemed out of the question. As for Sir Rudolf—well, Superintendent Blount had said to him only this morning, after hearing Nigel’s suspicions, “You might as well accuse the Bank of England of cooking the petty cash. Big men like Durbar don’t employ cosh boys. They don’t need to. And they wouldn’t know where to find them, if they did need.”

  This, so far as it went, was sound enough. The Superintendent, a most experienced and able police officer, could always be relied on to puncture the bubbles of Nigel’s fancy: as a professional, Blount could not afford to indulge in the irresponsible conjectures which his friend sometimes threw off. Nevertheless, thought Nigel now, many crimes have been committed from behind a cover of respectability—of apparently inculpable eminence, even. Durbar was the kind of man who, if he wanted something arranged, would find the right man to arrange it, pay him well, and expect the work to be well done. He had spent hours, before his child was born—so Hesione had said—“studying those catalogues of baby apparatus”: the job of buying them would be handed over, no doubt, to a well-qualified underling: Sir Rudolf would not descend into the market place himself.

  And, if he wanted violence done, he would entrust the working out of ways and means to suitable hands, washing his own of the whole matter. Sir Rudolf, then, produced the ideas; his middlemen would retail them. Whatever Sir Rudolf was up to—assuming he was up to something other than doing down his business ri
vals in the normal, near-legal way—Gray would be imagined as a highly effective middleman. But it was just here that the whole thing became incomprehensible. Alec Gray was Durbar’s only known link with the violent and the shady. But Gray had also been the lover of Durbar’s wife: and Durbar was “a bit of a pasha.” Was it conceivable that Durbar should use such a man as his instrument?

  Yet he had not forbidden Gray the house. Even as recently as the night of the party, the two—according to Lady Durbar—had “seemed quite thick.” Perhaps it was Sir Rudolf himself whom Foxy, up in his tree, had overheard talking to Gray. No wonder the latter had it in for Foxy. One thing was certain—Durbar would only use his wife’s lover for a criminal purpose if that purpose were more important to him than his own pride or his relationship with his wife. His “interests,” his financial empire would be more important; and, if the present negotiations with Russia were successful, if they paved the way toward better international relations, Durbar’s interests would suffer. Though Sir Rudolf had given nothing away at the lunch party, he had not relished Nigel’s probing; his manner had shown that this was a tender spot.

  But the incidents which were occurring during the Russian visit, although they could be part of a campaign, could hardly be its main object: they had been, so far, nuisances and pin pricks, at the worst. Men were not murdered and boys kidnaped to safeguard so amateurish a guerrilla warfare as this. Some decisive blow must be preparing—or else Nigel was off the track altogether.

  His thoughts now revolved around Hesione’s curious revelation. Gray had attacked her viciously because she had heard him talking in his sleep. “Elmer Steig” and “something about a gun for sale” were the operative words. Elmer Steig was an American-sounding name, and the man who shot the Quack had spoken, according to Foxy, with an American accent. One could hardly suppose that a killer had been smuggled in from U.S.A. just to rub out the Quack. There must be bigger game in view. And the leading character of A Gun for Sale was a man hired to assassinate a peace-making statesman. Furthermore, for what it was worth, Foxy had told Inspector Wright that the man whom Gray brought to the Durbars’ party walked like a gunman on the flicks.

  In high excitement, Nigel took up the telephone. At last a theory was forming which made sense of the disjointed, random occurrences of the past week. When Nigel got through, however, Inspector Wright was not available to receive the benefit of his theory.

  The Inspector, at this moment, was engaged upon one of the trickiest jobs of his lifetime. Alec Gray’s studied insolence was riling enough; but that was nothing to the difficulty of forming questions which should not betray the extent of the police’s knowledge about Gray’s activities or the nature of their suspicions.

  “On the evening of the 6th, last Thursday,” Wright was saying, “you went down to your cottage in Hampshire, returning by car the next morning?”

  “So I said.” Gray flicked cigarette ash onto the carpet. “But if your snoopers have discovered I wasn’t there, I’ll make it somewhere else.”

  “You wish to alter your first statement, sir?”

  “I don’t wish to. But I’m always ready to oblige.”

  “With the truth, this time?”

  Alec Gray’s small, congested eyes looked the Inspector up and down. “I don’t recommend your taking that tone with me. It is rude, and it won’t work.”

  “Your original statement, that you were in Hampshire that night, is not true?” said Wright equably.

  “I was in London. In bed with a girl. I didn’t want her brought into it.”

  “Her name and address, if you please, sir.”

  Gray scrawled them on the back of a visiting card, and flicked it at the Inspector.

  “You wished to protect her honor?” said Wright, in his most neutral tone; a faint quiver of the mouth suggested his skepticism as to Gray’s capacity for any such honorable motive, but the man was not so easily to be drawn.

  “Does this young lady—” Wright tapped his nails on the visiting card—“own a sun-ray lamp?”

  “I just couldn’t tell you.”

  “I was wondering how you got the sunburn which you told Miss Massinger you got driving back from Hampshire.”

  “What a damned silly question!”

  “You prefer not to answer it?”

  “I never said so. I was sunbathing on my roof that afternoon.”

  Detective-Sergeant Allen, taking down shorthand notes at a desk in Gray’s flat, gave his superior officer a fleeting glance. Wright’s polite, interested expression had not altered.

  “Coming to the next evening, Friday,” he said, “you were at The High Dive from six-thirty to midnight?”

  “We’ve had all this before.”

  “You don’t wish to alter that statement too?”

  “No. I’m quite happy about it. Aren’t you?”

  “I would be happier, sir, if any of the waiters or barmen had seen you there. No one seems to have noticed your presence till eleven P.M.”

  Gray stared superciliously at the Inspector, and swung his legs up on to the arm of the chair he was lounging in.

  “Presumably the doorman saw me come in, and presumably your snooper didn’t see me come out.”

  “What were you doing in the club between six-thirty and eleven P.M.?”

  Gray sighed, as if in exasperation. “Having dinner, my good Inspector. With Sam Borch. In his private room. Antrobus, the manager, brought in the victuals. I’ve told you this before. No doubt Borch and Antrobus have corroborated it. I find you rather a bore.”

  “Yet the day before, Borch told me he was not on intimate terms with you.”

  “Do you have to be on intimate terms with everyone who gives you dinner? You must move in very peculiar social circles, Inspector. I put a bit of money into the club recently, and I suppose I’m entitled to discuss business matters with Borch and his manager?”

  “Business matters. Ah yes.” Wright was never one to signal his punches. “You know,” he went on quietly, “that Sam Borch has been arrested?”

  Gray’s bullet head came slowly round. The public-school drawl was accentuated. “The devil he has! What have you pinned on the poor old sod?”

  “He will be charged with receiving stolen property. An article belonging to Lady Durbar was actually found in his possession.”

  Alec Gray threw his cigarette in the fireplace, lit another, and expelled a jet of smoke toward Inspector Wright. “I see. So that’s what you’ve been getting at. I’m supposed to be a cat burglar, or something, who passes on the takings to our Mr. Borch. That was the point of your heavy little act about the business matters he and I were discussing. Well, my God, what silly clots you policemen are!”

  “Borch has not divulged the names of any of his associates. Not yet. Are you surprised to hear, sir, about these criminal activities of his?”

  “I can’t say I am. I’m prepared to believe anyone may be a crook, until it’s proved to the contrary. But I should have thought women, or dirty post cards, were more his line. Not that he’s ever actually whispered the address of some cozy little piece into my ear.”

  “No, I imagine that would not be necessary,” remarked Wright, again in his most colorless tones. Unexpectedly, Gray took no offense at this; indeed, he almost smirked. Wright went on, as if talking to himself, “Egotism. Overconfidence. Conceit. They’re the common factor in all criminals. You’d be surprised, sir. It’s really pathetic—the way their conceit always betrays them, sooner or later. Just rank, infantile conceit.”

  “I got the idea first time.”

  “Sam Borch, for instance. Blind with vanity. Thought he could fiddle and diddle his way happily forever afterward. Now he’ll fall to bits and spill the beans all round. He’s just like every other crook: take away his shell of conceit, and there’s nothing but a soft center inside—a miserable little embryo of a human being.”

  Sergeant Allen glanced up again from his shorthand notes. He had not heard the Old Man in this vein before, a
nd it was highly instructive; moreover, he seemed at last to have got under Alec Gray’s skin. The man’s smooth, pinkish face was becoming suffused; the eyes showed more anger now than arrogance. But Gray’s self-control, when he cared to exercise it, was remarkable; he made no other response to the Inspector’s baiting.

  “Take another instance, sir,” the Inspector resumed. “The fellow who kidnaped that boy, Bert Hale. I dare say you’ve read about it in the papers. Dresses up as a policeman, puts on a false mustache, and walks off with the lad. Overconfidence again. We’ve only got to paint in a similar mustache on the photographs of our suspects, and the boy’s uncle and aunt will pick out the right man at once.”

  “Why don’t you do it, then?” drawled Gray. “Or are you still waiting for some suspects to turn up?”

  “Because we want the boy more than we want the criminal. We believe he’s got some information which would enable us to break open all these recent big—” The Inspector broke off, giving an admirable rendering of a police officer who has fallen into a grave indiscretion. “Well, that is as may be. My point is that arresting the kidnaper won’t, at this juncture, find the boy for us.”

  “Too bad,” remarked Gray coolly.

  Sergeant Allen, wooden-faced at the desk, had got Inspector Wright’s drift. It was the old, ever-new maneuver—the same for the three-card operator as for the general about to launch an offensive: trick your opponent into thinking you intend to strike here, and then strike elsewhere. Wright had been ever so subtly forcing Gray’s attention toward the burglaries, and holding it there—giving all the time the impression that the burglaries, and the kidnaping only in relation to them, were the center of police interest. This, no doubt, was why Wright kept his strongest cards in his hand—the conversation, for instance, which Foxy had heard from the tree in the Durbars’ garden. There was some bigger game afoot, and Gray was involved; all Wright’s efforts were being directed toward inducing Gray to leave that flank unguarded.