The Whisper in the Gloom
“Got writer’s cramp, Sergeant?” The Inspector’s sharp voice recalled Allen to the fact the question and answer had begun again, unrecorded by his pencil. Flushing a little, admiringly thinking to himself that the old————didn’t miss a ruddy trick, Allen resumed his shorthand.
An hour later, about six o’clock that Sunday evening, Foxy observed a policeman approaching the front door of his house. Foxy was what is called in the Notting Hill vernacular “an arab”; and now, like the Arabs, he struck his tent and departed—through the back door. The policeman had been instructed to fetch him for an interview with Nigel Strangeways. But Foxy was not to know this. He already regretted having been persuaded by Copper to tell the police all: they had not arrested him, or roughed him up; but the mere sight of a uniform now reminded him of the little jade idol and Gray’s letter. The police must have somehow discovered that he had planted these on the men arrested in the Portobello Road, and they were going to take him up for it.
Foxy was indeed in deadly peril, though not from the quarter he expected. Alec Gray had, of course, heard about Borch’s arrest before the Inspector informed him; he had also heard that a red-headed boy, whom he identified as that ubiquitous nuisance, Foxy, was mixed up in it. He did not know, however, that Foxy had already been interviewed by the police. After Inspector Wright and Sergeant Allen left, Gray acted quickly. He had never been sure how much, if any, Foxy had heard of the conversation in the Durbar’s garden. If he had heard it, he’d presumably not passed it on to the police—otherwise they would certainly have arrested him, Gray, for complicity in the murder of Dai Williams. But, now that Foxy was mixed up with the police over this other matter, there was a danger that he might come out with that incriminating piece of conversation. The boy must be questioned, and, if necessary, silenced. Nothing must get in the way of what was planned for next Thursday.
Gray had been touched on the raw by Inspector Wright, more than once, during their interview. His animosity now transferred itself to the brat who kept cropping up under his feet. He went downstairs—his own telephone, for all he knew, might be tapped by now—let himself into the flat of a neighbor, who was away on holiday, with a key he had found useful before, and picked up the telephone….
Aimlessly walking the streets, Foxy found himself after twenty minutes in the vicinity of the house where the Quack had been shot. Since, when he’d gone out by the back door, he was on the lookout only for coppers, he had not observed the two youths who detached themselves from the wall of the pub opposite, nor did he notice that anyone was following him now. He was sick of being chivvied around by coppers, all because Lady Durbar had given him a present of a jade idol. It was bleeding unfair. Suddenly he snapped his fingers. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He’d go to Lady Durbar’s house and get her to sign a paper saying the idol was a free gift from her. That’d fix the coppers all right, if they tried to pin anything on him.
The force of this simple idea turned Foxy on his heel, toward Notting Hill Gate again. As he reversed direction, he saw two youths, fifty yards away, on the opposite side of the road, stop dead in their tracks. His arab instinct warned him they meant trouble; his eyes, as he came nearer to them, confirmed it: he knew their sort all right. They began to cross the road toward him, and he darted left up a side street. This was a class neighborhood, and he didn’t think the youths would start any trouble here, but for safety’s sake he kept near a young man and girl in tennis clothes who were walking his way. He had only gone thirty paces when he saw a policeman turn into the street, ahead of him; at the same time he became aware of a bell tolling loud overhead and running footsteps behind. Caught between two converging forces, with a high blank wall on his left and a church on his right, Foxy, who had momentarily lost his head, sought sanctuary in a most appropriate place. He ran for the church.
A bleak-looking man in a sort of velvet gown gazed forbiddingly at him from the main door. The running footsteps caught up with him as he checked. It was a boy he knew at school. Foxy gripped his arm.
“Hello, Foxy,” panted the boy. “Let go. I’m late.”
But Foxy would not let go. “They’re after me. Those two bastards. I’ve got to hide.”
“Come on, then.”
Foxy found himself towed through a side door of the church into a small room filled with men and boys in a garb which Foxy had only seen before on the films.
“Get a move on. You’re late,” said the senior choirman officiously.
Foxy’s friend found him a cassock and surplice. The population of this particular choir was rather a floating one, particularly in the summer holidays. The choirmaster, who would have recognized Foxy as an interloper, was already at the organ. The clergyman, a locum tenens, did not know the personnel of the choir. The choirmen, gossiping among themselves with hearty voices and occasionally shushing the boys, assumed that Foxy was a temporary recruit. Only the choirboys, in the manner of their kind, regarded him with deep suspicion and hostility.
Outside the church, meanwhile, the two youths who had been sent to collect Foxy were at a loss. To them, a church was like a prison—a place you did not enter if you could possibly help it. But, as they lolled against the iron railings, the policeman whose appearance had deflected Foxy’s course moved heavily upon them.
“Any business here, my lads? Move along, then.”
“We’re going to church. Any objection, copper?” said one of the youths.
“That’s all right. Just remember, when they bring the plate round, you put money into it—see?—you don’t fill your pockets from it.”
Conscious of the policeman’s eye upon them, the youths slouched into the west door. Congregations here being sparse, the verger had instructions to show strangers into the front pews. The youths, for all their brash swagger, were overawed by the atmosphere of the place, and followed him tamely right up the aisle.
Cursing under his breath, Foxy had at last done up the apparently infinite series of small buttons down the front of his cassock, and his friend popped the surplice over his head. The officious choirman, commenting unfavorably on the untidiness of Foxy’s hair, thrust him beside another boy in the procession that was forming up. The five-minute bell stopped; the organ swelled; the clergyman said a prayer; and they sallied forth from the vestry at funeral-march pace.
“Keep in step, can’t you, you silly clot,” muttered the boy beside Foxy, hands piously folded on his stomach, eyes gazing angelically before him. Foxy was about to give the boy a hack on the ankle when he saw, in a pew far ahead, the two youths he had run away from. It would be unwise, he thought, to start a brawl just at present. Meekly, he fell into step, nearly tripping over the long cassock in the process.
Presently, without further mishap, they reached the choir stalls, and the parson gave out a hymn. Foxy, ever adaptable, following closely the movements of his companions, found the right book, held it high in front of him, and opened and shut his mouth soundlessly. At the second verse, he felt he had got the hang of it. So he gave tongue. A hoarse, tearing noise ensued, like the rending of calico, as Foxy slurred joyously from note to note. The choir wavered and almost broke down: the organist glanced over his shoulder. Foxy, made aware of a difference of timbre in his own vocalization, subdued himself to a rusty piano.
As they embarked on the third verse, he felt a smart jog in the side. The boy next him leaned his head nearer and piped, in seraphic tones:
O Carrots, who the hell are you?
What are you doing here?
To which Foxy cautiously sang antiphonal reply:
You mind your business, chum, or else
I’ll do you after church.
A sharp tap on the shoulder from a choirman ended these exchanges, and worship proceeded normally for a while. When the parson moved to the lectern for the First Lesson, Foxy was startled by a sort of irregular, tiny fusillade behind him—a sound that might have been made by a file of unskillful trackers snapping twigs underfoot as they prowled throu
gh a forest. Turning his head, he observed that all the choirmen had broken off lengths of licorice or barley sugar, to refresh their larynxes against their further labors. Since this was the form, Foxy had no scruples about reaching under his cassock for a bag of toffee in his trouser packet, and openly offering it to his neighbor. An outraged choirman behind him at once knocked the bag from his hand: it fell, with a loud clack, on the marble floor of the chancel, and remained there—a spectacle totally demoralizing the choirboys during the rest of divine service. Foxy brooded on the injustice of life, which imposes one law for the young and another for the old.
He was thinking hard, too, as the parson read through the prayers, how he could evade those ill-favored youths in the front pew. They had already made covert signs to him, whose import was unmistakable. His only hope was to leave the church in a convoy of choirmen, but he had no idea what the proceedings would be when service was over. Perhaps he could slip out by some back door. But did churches have back doors? As it turned out, however, these speculations were wasted: for, in a few minutes, Foxy was to see the light. It began to dawn when the parson, having climbed into the pulpit, gave out his text.
13
No. 3 Berth
“FROM THE GOSPEL of St. John; Chapter 15, Verse 13,” announced the parson. “‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’”
It was not a very orthodox sermon. The parson, once a regular chaplain in the R.A.F., had been invalided out toward the end of the war. He had a small country living, which afforded him no money for holidays, and in lieu of them he took occasional locum tenens duty for a London friend. The Reverend James Roland’s theology was shaky; his Christian zeal had been blunted by ten years of Church Parades and seven years of preaching to meager, lethargic congregations such as he faced this evening. As a parish visitor he was inclined to be lazy, while he treated his churchwardens with a certain officer-class brusqueness which did him no good in his own parish. It is doubtful whether he had converted a soul to his religion.
The Reverend Roland had, however, one sheet anchor and saving grace. He was a true hero-worshiper. Nothing would ever be so alive, so real for him as his friends in the R.A.F. who had ragged him, drunk with him, then gone up into the air to die. When he spoke of them, as he was speaking this evening—telling stories of self-sacrifice and courage—his mediocrity, his failure fell away from him, and he took on a little of the greatness which he was describing.
Foxy listened, enthralled. This was the goods. His cynical, perky, opportunist young mind, which up to the present had fed on the doctrine of sauve qui peut and on the nasty little crumbs that fall from Fleet Street and Hollywood tables, responded to an appeal it had never before encountered. If the Reverend Roland did not make a convert of Foxy, he at least set him on a new course. Bert Hale was his friend, Foxy said to himself. If he had gone to the police sooner, Bert would never have been kidnaped. He and Copper had gone their usual ways, since the kidnaping, with hardly a thought for Bert; it wasn’t good enough, reflected Foxy, listening to the slangy, commonplace, heartfelt sermon. A God hanging on a cross in Palestine to save the world meant nothing to him. A pilot, whom the parson called by his Christian name, flying a crippled bomber back over England, ordering his crew to bail out, then turning out to sea again and going for a Burton so that the 1000-pounder jammed in the bomb bay should not endanger anyone on home soil—this was something Foxy could take in and be exalted by.
The mood would not last long, perhaps. But so exalted was Foxy at the moment that, if he could have saved Bert by hurling himself on the razors of the two youths in the front pew, he would have done it. Nothing so simple, however, was called for. A much more cold-blooded courage would be required to carry out the project forming in Foxy’s mind. The youths, he believed, must belong to the mob which had snatched Bert. Why else should they be after him? And the only way he could hope to rescue Bert was to let the mob take him; then, keeping his ears open and his wits sharp, try to find where they had put his friend and escape with the information.
When the service was over and the choir disrobing. Foxy extricated himself from the awkward questions they were beginning to ask him in the vestry, darted out of church, and walked steadily over to the two youths who were waiting on the other side of the road. The congregation had dispersed. The rest of the choir had not yet emerged. No one saw Foxy walk away with the youths; and it was the best part of forty-eight hours before a description of them, gleaned from members of the choir, the verger, and the policeman who had spoken to them outside the church, could be circulated.
Nigel’s first intimation that the boy he wanted to interview had disappeared came by telephone next morning, not long after a call from Sir Rudolf’s secretary, inquiring on his employer’s behalf about Nigel’s progress.
“Please thank Sir Rudolf, will you? And tell him I’m getting on all right, but apparently they won’t let me out for several days,” Nigel had replied.
Clare, who was sitting with him, raised her eyebrows.
“I believe you positively enjoy being—what’s the word?—hospitalized. You look perfectly healthy to me.”
“What a suspicious-minded girl you are,” said Nigel, reflecting that she had every reason to be in this case; for he intended to leave hospital secretly very much sooner, and future inquiries would be answered by the news that Mr. Strangeways had had a relapse. But this it was inadvisable for Clare to know. She had been given a part to play which she would play better if she believed in it.
“You’re not nervous about tonight, are you, my dear?” asked Nigel.
“Not nervous, no. The prospect just fills me with repulsion, that’s all.”
The prospect Clare alluded to was a dinner-and-dance date with Alec Gray, which, on Nigel’s instructions, she had successfully angled for the previous day.
“I wouldn’t mind being used as a cross between a tethered goat and a call girl,” she broke out, her dark eyes flashing, “if only I knew what it was all about.”
Nigel took her hands. After a mutinous little struggle they remained in his. “You’ll make a much better goat if you don’t know.”
“But what am I supposed to talk to him about?”
“Oh, the weather, the crops, the dance floor, Epstein—anything you like,” Nigel offhandedly replied.
“Damn you, Nigel!” she exclaimed, snatching her hands from his. “Sometimes you’re absolutely inhuman.” She paced the room with that swift, swirling movement of hers which suggested flying draperies, silver-flashing limbs, arrows, Artemis.
“I’m sorry, darling,” he said. “What I mean is, don’t start up dangerous subjects like burglary, kidnaping, or N. Strangeways. He mustn’t get the impression that you’ve been laid on to pump him. If he broaches them it’s another matter. You listen, you encourage him, you know nothing about anything except that I was searching for Bert Hale and am now hors de combat.”
“Oh well—”
“The one important thing is to keep him there as long as possible, and when he’s leaving, go to the ladies’ room and telephone this number.” Nigel gave her a slip of paper, which she put away in her handbag.
“You are mysterious! What do I say?”
“Just say—let’s think—say, ‘Bobbles is on his way.’”
Clare gave her delicious giggle. Then her face clouded again. “Do I have to come back with him? In a taxi? I’m sorry, Nigel, but I don’t like the idea. You know what he is.”
“Certainly not. What do you take me for? I’ve ordered a hired car to bring you home. It will be waiting outside for you. The driver is a friend of mine, an ex-pugilist. If young Gray starts anything, just tap on the window and the pug will look after him.”
Clare beautifully tilted her head, smiling a secret smile. “I take it all back,” she said. “You’re a wonder, and the joy of my life.”
“Good Lord! You saved my life, didn’t you? The least I can do is to preserve your honor. Have you got t
he key?”
“Here it is.”
“Good girl,” said Nigel, as Clare handed him the key of Alec Gray’s flat which he had arranged with Lady Durbar to borrow.
“I suppose this is the key to some little love nest you and Hess are setting up.” Clare’s voice did not sound quite as light as she meant it to.
Nigel’s pale blue eyes regarded her steadily. “If ever I set up a love nest again, it won’t be with her. And you know it.”
When Clare Massinger had left, he turned over the key in his hand. It was the weakest point in this scheme. Hesione must know very well what he wanted it for, and he could not be certain that her past infatuation for Gray would not cause her to repent of thus betraying him. Well, the risk had to be taken. Someone must go through Gray’s flat, and the police had good reasons for not doing it themselves as yet: a police search might spring the mine sooner than was advisable—Gray must not know just how close upon his heels they were; and secondly, Superintendent Blount had informed Nigel that very considerable influence was being brought to bear upon the Yard, from a quarter his Assistant Commissioner would not divulge, to lay off Alec Gray. The Yard, Nigel knew as well as Blount, was politically incorruptible. But it meant that any action taken against Gray must be backed by an absolutely watertight case, or else there would be a most unholy row and heads would roll.
That afternoon Nigel was smuggled out of the hospital and driven to a friend’s house. A little before seven-thirty in the evening, the decorum of Radley Gardens was assailed by music from an ancient, wheezing gramophone. This instrument was being slowly pushed up the street in a pram, which had painted on its sides: Old Clown. Out of work. Spare a tanner for Toto. The individual pushing the pram would have wrung the heart of a Scrooge: tall, stooping, cadaverous; tattered plimsolls on his feet; in filthy, patched clothes, his wrinkled face almost invisible behind a jungle of hair, Toto tottered up Radley Gardens, radiating an aura of utter melancholy which the gramophone, tinnily screaming out I Pagliacci, did nothing to alleviate.