When he had finished, Nigel handed over the piece of typewritten paper. Sid Edward’s bushy eyebrows were just perceptibly raised. After a long silence, he said, “Well, Blount, it looks as if our first idea about ‘Bert Hale 12’ was wrong.”
Nigel felt a bit mystified by this. Had Blount been keeping something from him? Sir Edward turned to him, “You understand what this means, Strangeways?”
Nigel began to explain the Dai Williams reference, but his host raised a hand, saying gently, “Oh, I know all about that. No, my dear fellow, I meant the message itself. I—er, we must all be grateful to you.” Sir Edward sipped his whisky. “You realize that the Soviet representatives leave this country on the 13th. It has been officially stated that they will go, as they came, by air. In point of fact, however, that statement was part of our security measures. The real arrangement is that they are to sail—it’s a party of eleven, plus the Minister, as I expect you know—to sail from Harwich in a ship which will be docked at No. 3 berth. That, I should say, was the real arrangement. Thanks to you, my dear chap, we shall now alter it.” Sir Edward’s gentle voice grew gentler still. “What is, er, somewhat disconcerting—what we must all get down to, Superintendent—is this leakage of information. You see, Strangeways, there are only four people in the country—there should have been only four, I mean—who knew about No. 3 berth at Harwich.”
14
Peace, Perfect Peace
TUESDAY, FOR NIGEL, got off to a quiet start. He slept late at his friend’s house in Chelsea, had breakfast in bed, glanced idly through a magazine. His thoughts kept flitting back to Dai Williams’ message. It was a pity that the newspaper from which the scrap of paper had been torn had never been found—blown into the Round Pond, perhaps, or picked up by a bystander, or removed by one of the men instrumental in Dai’s murder. Dai must have overheard those words about No. 3 berth under suspicious circumstances; otherwise, he would hardly have made a note of them in his last moments, for they could not themselves have held any sinister significance to an informer engaged upon ferreting out information about robbery and receiving. Nigel was in no doubt that they now had the correct substance of the message; but he would have liked to know if Dai had also jotted down, on the margin of the lost newspaper, any note as to how he had come into possession of it.
No. 3 Berth all 12 sailing Harwich 13th. Two men had been killed, two boys kidnaped, to keep the secret of that message; the enemy had removed Foxy, so Nigel imagined, partly to obviate the danger of his identifying for the police the unknown man to whom Gray had talked in the Durbars’ garden. It was amazing that a message upon which so much depended should be left lying in the breast pocket of an old coat. Amazing, but not at all impossible. Little, flagrant carelessnesses were always tripping up criminals; they made the most elaborate, tortuous plans, then ruined them by a neglect of the obvious. And it was in Gray’s reckless character to stuff such a piece of dynamite into his pocket, and forget it was there.
Alec Gray. Nigel’s hand went to the telephone, and he rang Clare’s number. She was evidently startled to hear his voice.
“But they told me you’d had a relapse, when I rang the hospital just now.”
“Oh, they’ve given me up as a hopeless case and pushed me out to expire off the premises. Last night go all right?”
“Yes. I think so. He behaved very correctly.”
“Bad luck.”
“But I still don’t understand why—”
“Come along here this afternoon.” Nigel gave her the address. “And don’t tell anyone, repeat anyone, that I’m out of hospital.”
“You sound awfully mysterious and cheerful, darling.”
“It’s just the effect of delirium. I’m longing to see you. Good-by till then.”
An hour later, Inspector Wright looked in, a picture of cheerfulness. He announced that they had got Sam Borch cold at last. The police search of the High Dive on the previous day had been more successful than Mr. Antrobus realized. They discovered the previous wine bin that swung back on a hinge, and the secret passage. On Wright’s advice, the Divisional Inspector in charge of the search agreed to play ignorant about it. After the surfaces had been fingerprinted, and the direction of the passage explored, they left everything as they had found it, even sifting a little dust artistically over the bin. Mr. Antrobus was informed that everything seemed in order down in the cellars.
A few minutes’ work on a sketch map indicated the point which the secret passage must lead to. The police entered the second-hand clothes shop from the alley, took the woman in charge, and began a rigorous search. In one of the rooms above the shop a very cleverly concealed safe was at last discovered, and in the safe some of the proceeds of the recent robberies. Confronted by them, the woman broke down. She turned out to be a Pole, a cousin of Mr. Borch, who had been doing slave labor for the Germans during the war, and then come to Britain. Borch had set her up in the clothes shop. For a year or so, her business had been a perfectly honest one. But then Borch compelled her into less reputable activities. If she did not comply, and keep her mouth shut, Borch would have the authorities informed of her being in England with a forged passport, and the result would be deportation.
The woman’s new duties were not very onerous. If anyone came to the shop with some old clothes, and said that “Stanley had recommended it,” she was to take the clothes, tell the person she would pay him in a week’s time, and lock them up among a selection of garments in an upstairs room. Mr. Borch paid frequent visits to this room, transferred the valuables from the pockets or linings of the clothes into his safe, and gave the woman an appropriate sum, in pound notes, to hand the customer on his next visit.
It was all remarkably simple and innocent-looking. Indeed, the procedure had worked so well in the past that the police decided to continue it for a while. A policewoman was substituted for the Polish tenant, and a discreet watch kept on the shop. But Borch’s arrest had shaken the criminal grapevine too violently, and only one fly was to walk into the parlor—a cracksman who had been rusticating and was not au fait with recent happenings in the underworld.
The only setback Wright could announce was that both Borch and the commercial traveler, Chalmers, would not give tongue. They were, quite evidently, frightened men. Borch, of course, had to confess to receiving, when he heard the evidence against him; but under no inducement would he admit to any criminal association with Alec Gray. The man Chalmers, taxed with his attempt to kidnap Bert Hale, remained obstinately silent. He would not say where his orders came from, or who were his accomplices; and he persisted in denying all knowledge of the letter which had been found in his pocket.
“So there we are,” Inspector Wright summed it up. “The set-up is obvious now, though we’re almost as far as ever from proving it. Gray could get all the necessary information about these big houses that have been burgled. He passes it on to Borch, who distributes it among the professionals. And it’d be through Borch that Gray contacted the thugs he needed for the other job.”
“Gray’s got at least one ex-Commando on tap, too.”
“Yes. Superintendent Blount’s told me about that photograph you found. We’ve got a net out for the chap.”
“Has Gray reported a burglary yet?”
“Some people have a nerve,” said Wright, rather ambiguously, his nostrils twitching with amusement. “He rang us up at midnight. Created like hell. What does the taxpayer support the ruddy police for, etc., etc.? Young Allen went along. Had a great time, by all accounts. Seems he forgot to mention to Mr. Gray that the trapdoor to the roof had been broken open from inside.’”
“How very odd,” remarked Nigel equably. “Well, now you’ve found a secret passage at The High Dive, bang goes Gray’s alibi for the night Bert Hale was kidnaped. I hope to God that boy’s all right….”
Bert was, in fact, engaged upon writing his autobiography—or rather, plunging in medias res, a detailed account of his adventures during the past ten days. It would be of int
erest to the police, if not to posterity, should he ever get out of his bizarre prison. An only child who, until he went to school, had had to provide his own amusements, he was less afflicted by captivity than most boys would have been. Also, he was buoyed up by the hope that his message would at any moment pass, via the dustman, into official hands, and that rescue was imminent.
In this, alas, Bert was doomed to disappointment. The shell-covered box had indeed been discovered, but only after the contents of the bins were tipped onto the Urban District Council rubbish heap. The box attracted a dustman’s attention: he took it home and gave it to his wife, who has it still on her mantelpiece. But, when it was tipped out into the dump, its lid flew open, and the message it contained fell out and disappeared from view.
Bert had not been allowed outside the house again. But yesterday, and again this morning, in response to his wily argument that boys need a great deal of exercise, the old woman took him for a walk through the huge house. Her nephew insisted on accompanying them—no risk of Bert’s bolting was to be taken: but the boy quite enjoyed these perambulations through the tall, empty rooms, which Nanny garrulously peopled with the house-parties and junketings of former days, when the old master and mistress were in residence. Not only did these conducted tours help to pass the time; Bert was memorizing the layout of the mansion, and he believed that, after a couple more of them, he would be able to draw an accurate diagram of the rooms and passages on each floor.
Meanwhile, whenever he heard a sound outside, he rushed from his memoirs to the window, expecting it to be the harbinger of rescue. A distant tractor was the engine of a police car approaching; a blackbird fluting or an owl calling was a signal to the police cordon closing in. Even after hope began to fade and Bert to admit that he was kidding himself, he kept up the fantasy. It was consoling.
“Now, let’s take things one by one. Elmer J. Steig first.”
Superintendent Blount, embattled behind the desk at New Scotland Yard, raised an index finger. “The American authorities have no record of such a man.”
Nigel’s face fell. He had hoped for results from what Hesione Durbar had told him.
“But,” continued Blount, in his deliberate, Scots manner, “they offer us a gentleman by name of Jameson Elmer. A former Federal agent, got the rap for corruption two-three years ago, took to crime, from the—e’eh—the nonprevention end. He was always a crack shot; and the G-man training stood him in good stead, no doubt, when he became—”
“I’m sorry, Blount, but what’s this to do with our man?”
“Jameson Elmer, it seems, has an ungovernable passion for sucking violet cachous.”
“Ah. That’s better.”
“He disappeared from view about three weeks ago. The U.S.A. authorities have radioed a photograph to us, and they’re flying a selection of photographs over. The radio one isn’t much help. It might be you or me. You, anyway. A villainous-looking smudge.”
“Thanks very much. So this Elmer could be the ‘gun for sale.’ Height, walk, etc., correspond more or less with Foxy’s description of the man Gray brought to the Durbars’ party?”
“They are not—e’eh—inconsistent with it,” replied Blount cautiously.
“Presumably Dai Williams, while he was tailing his ‘toff,’ Gray, stumbled across Elmer—overheard some conversation between him and Gray, maybe. But that’s by the way. The important point is, why should Gray bring this gunman to the Durbars’ party? And lock him in the study? The thing’s crazy, unless it was for a rendezvous between Elmer and Sir Rudolf himself.”
“Oh, well now, Strangeways, you know that’s a vairy wild sort of conjecture, and—”
“I know Sir Rudolf is God Almighty, and his name mustn’t be taken in vain. All right. We pass on to the Quack. The Quack was shot by a man with an American accent. Elmer being encouraged to keep his hand in. The next morning, Gray returns from a long drive. He is freshly sunburned. And the sunburn markings suggested the direction he’d come from. It’s a reasonable inference that he drove Elmer north-east that night—to catch a boat at Harwich, we conjectured at first. And we weren’t so far out, either. I bet you Elmer’s holed up in Harwich, or somewhere near it, waiting for the boat the Russians are supposed to be sailing on.”
“We’ve just had a report from Harwich. A man answering to Gray’s description turned up for breakfast at the Alexandra Hotel early on the Friday morning. He was alone, though. We’re following it up.”
“Good. That’s that, then.”
“Sir Edward takes a very grave view of it,” said Blount.
“The American angle, I mean. If the Soviet Minister was assassinated by an ex-Federal agent, on British soil, you can imagine what the anti-West clique in Russia would make of it. It’d be the end of any hope of a rapproachement for ten years: the cold war would continue, or be hotted up. It’s just the pretext the isolationist element in the Kremlin will be praying for.”
The police were going to turn Harwich and its environs inside out, said Blount. This screening would convince the enemy that there was no alteration in the secret plan for the Russians to sail from this port; and it might catch the elusive Elmer. But their best chance of catching him was through Alec Gray, the gunman’s only known contact in this country. Gray must be left at liberty for a while yet, lulled somehow into a sense of security, and every movement of his watched. Blount had already put a team of picked men onto this job. For it was not enough to change the plan for the Soviet delegation’s departure; there might be another leakage of information, and as long as the gunman was at liberty, the Soviet Minister’s peril would be acute.
“The only way to stop the leak,” said Nigel, “is to put Sir Rudolf in the cooler for the next few days.”
Superintendent Blount raised his eyes to heaven. “When will you get that bee out of your bonnet? Mind you, the Security people are investigating this last leakage—Sir Edward is chasing them all right; and if anything is turned up which points to Sir Rudolf—”
“By that time, it’ll be too late.”
“I see I’ll have to take you in hand, Strangeways. You’d better come to the Kingsway Hall meeting with me tonight. Perhaps that’ll cure you of these hallucinations.”
“I don’t see—”
“You will, my lad, you will.”
Soon after Nigel got back to Cheyne Walk, Clare arrived. With her hands on his cheeks, she gave him a long scrutiny, then turned abruptly, her black hair swirling, and sat down.
“Couldn’t you have trusted me?” she said.
“About what, Clare?”
“How long have you been out of hospital? I—it was cruel, letting me think you’d had a relapse. Don’t you care about my feelings at all?”
“You know I do. And about your safety even more.”
“Yet you order me to spend the evening with that brute, just so that you can—” Clare broke off.
“So that I can what?” asked Nigel gently.
“Was it you who burgled his flat?”
“It was a poor old superannuated clown called Toto.”
“A poor old cl—?” Clare’s angry expression changed into an April radiance, and she began to laugh. “Oh, Nigel, d’you mean to say that filthy old man was you? And I never recognized you!”
Nigel made her tell him all about the evening with Gray. There were certain points at which she did not meet his eyes, and Nigel guessed that she was feeling a little guilty about something: perhaps she had come for a moment under Gray’s spell, was ashamed of it now, and being a woman, had taken it out on Nigel instead. Unaware of the ease with which her mind was being read, Clare chattered on about the dinner party. Nigel always wanted to know exactly what everyone had said, and she enjoyed telling him.
“So he seemed excited about something, all the way through?”
“Yes, I assumed he was working up to make a pass at me. But the pass never really materialized. Most humiliating. It was—I dunno—as if he was just passing the time.”
“That’s very interesting,” said Nigel. “Passing the time till something happened?”
“Yes.” Clare looked puzzled; then her face lit up. “I couldn’t think what it reminded me of. Now I’ve got it. You know those anglers you see on piers. Smoking and gossiping away to one another. Not even holding their rods, sometimes—just leaving them propped up against the railings. Do you see what I mean?”
“I suppose so. But I’ve never felt a strong inward excitement radiating from those old geezers.”
“Oh Nigel, you’re so literal. What I mean is, it was as though he knew he could haul me in at any time, but it was so enjoyable on the pier, with the sun and the wind and the gossip, that he wouldn’t bother yet. Of course, he’s madly conceited. He’d assume I was on the hook. You know, I believe he’d enjoy hauling one in and then just throwing one back into the water.”
Clare had spoken rapidly, almost breathlessly. Nigel gave her a quizzical glance.
“So you had no trouble in the car?”
“No. He was rather distraught, coming back. Didn’t even try to kiss me good night. Just jumped out and scampered away upstairs. Perhaps he was expecting to find some other girl lusciously disposed on his bed. Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I was looking at your funny little word-pictures. You’re an illuminating creature. And very disturbing.” Nigel blinked, shaking his head, as if to clear it. “‘Lusciously disposed on his bed,’ indeed!”
In a cellar near the Shadwell docks, Foxy lay nursing his bruises, twisting on the filthy paillasse and heap of rags. Four men were playing cards, with a packing case for table, and the air was foul. It seemed far longer than two days since he had given himself up to his pursuers. The youths had hurried him along to a backyard near Notting Hill Gate. Then he was pushed into a small van and driven off. On arrival at their destination, the man traveling in the back of the van had stunned Foxy with a vicious blow to the temple: when he recovered consciousness, he was in this cellar. The men soon got to work on him. They gagged him first, then knocked him about for a bit—“just to loosen up his tongue.” His chief tormentor, a hulking Clydeside Irishman, invited him to talk first, if he didn’t want to be bashed properly next time. An evil-faced man called Fred drew a knuckle-duster from his pocket, and gave Foxy a light, agonizing rap across the cheekbone, after removing the gag.