“Don’t be a little berk,” he said, as Foxy showed signs of recalcitrance. “We’ve got all night to educate you.”
Foxy pretended to turn milky. It wasn’t difficult. He answered the men’s questions, till they began asking him if he’d gone to the police with his story. He denied it violently at first. But then they worked on him again. After that, writhing with pain and utterly cowed, he could resist no longer. He admitted the police had taken him up after the Portobello Road affray; he said they had forced him to tell them what he knew about Dai Williams’ message and the man he had seen accompanying Gray to the Durbars’ party. Something warned Foxy that it would be fatal for him now if he had also passed on to the police certain words he had heard at this party. So he declared he’d been unable, from his hiding place in the tree, to catch the conversation between Gray and the unknown man: the noise of the band, he convincingly protested, had drowned their voices.
“O.K. Anything else, now you’ve got your memory back?” said the Clydesider. Foxy shook his head vigorously. This was not quite true: Foxy had omitted the episode in the derelict house, which had for the time being slipped his mind.
Fred had already left the cellar, with instructions to “pass it on to the Big Boy.”
“We’d have a right to molder this little bleeder.”
“Chuck him in the river, Mac.”
“Time enough, time enough.”
The mood of exaltation which had brought Foxy here was quite evaporated now. Instead of it, he nursed a boy’s bitter resentment and a determination to get his own back. Hour after hour, while the men played their interminable game of cards, he lay on the paillasse. He was given bread and marge, and cups of strong tea. From time to time one or two of the men, but never all four together, would be away on mysterious assignments, or in response to a slatternly woman who appeared at the stairhead, go up to answer the telephone. So, for two days, Foxy was buried alive….
At seven forty-five that Tuesday night Nigel met Superintendent Blount outside the Kingsway Hall. Since he was supposed to be still in hospital, and would be in the company of a distinguished C.I.D. officer, Nigel had, with the aid of a macintosh, a felt hat, a pair of boots and a mustache, disguished himself impenetrably as a plain-clothes policeman. Blount instantly picked him out in the stream of people approaching the hall.
“So there you are.”
“Ordered to report to you here, sir,” said Nigel smartly, standing to attention.
“Well, I doubt it’s more sanitary than that fearful beard you favored last time,” murmured Blount as they entered the hall.
“Disguise, not hygiene, was my intention,” Nigel whispered back.
“Oh, I get it. You’re dressed up as a sanitary inspector? But where’s the wee black bag with the spanners and washers?”
“My assistant will be bringing it,” replied Nigel austerely.
“Now where’s the bad smell—I mean, the offensive odor—you complained about?”
“The whole place hums, if you ask me. Strong smell of red herrings.”
At the door there had been young women, with spectacles and severe expressions, selling the Daily Worker and Peace News. The stewards wore red rosettes. Up and down the gangways passed men soliciting signatures to a petition for the reprieve of the latest “victims of American tyranny.” The platform was draped with the Union Jack and the Hammer and Sickle. The meeting had been called by various professional organizations concerned in the cause of peace, to support the present negotiations by what Nigel’s Daily Worker called’ “a monster demonstration of progressive intellectuals.” Looking round the audience, he reflected that the D.W. did sometimes hit upon the mot juste. It was disheartening—the way good causes stirred up this scurry of freaks, neurotics, careerists, hairy men and ill-dressed yearners. Then he rebuked himself; for these types, though they caught the eye, were seen on closer inspection to be only a minority among a mass of decent, normal, intelligent-looking men and women, who had come here because they believed it was worth taking some trouble about peace, and were determined not to leave the world’s future to the tender mercy of professional politicians.
Nigel had no more time for audience research. The speakers were filing onto the platform, led by an elderly clergyman. They took their seats; and Nigel was amazed to behold, sitting next to the chairman, no less a person than Sir Rudolf Durbar. Blount dug him in the ribs, muttering, “What about that bee in your bonnet, now?”
“It’s whizzing around still, with a high-pitched and suspicious buzz. Could I interest you in a bottle of our best eyewash?”
The chairman rose. He was not, he declared, the Red Dean, only a Pink Canon. After several more clerical jokes, he gave out the names and qualifications of tonight’s speakers, none of whom, he hastened to add, needed any introduction. He introduced them, however, first en masse, and then at even greater length before each rose to speak. Judging by the wincing and muttering among these distinguished people, as he misquoted their degrees, honors, and attainments, an elementary introduction to them was just what he needed himself.
When the chairman finally resumed his chair, the speakers in turn mounted their several hobbyhorses and galloped vigorously off. An eminent scientist gabbled his way through several sheets of typescript, inaudible even to the party on the platform. An eminent doctor revealed the glories of Chinese medicine and the horrors of Glasgow slums: his colleagues, he declared, were reactionaries to a man, hiding their heads in the sand, etc., etc. An eminent novelist unleashed a flight of paradoxes, whose direction was uncertain though their style was impeccable: he then unbuttoned his Savile-Row jacket and spoke with feeling about the effect of international tension upon authors’ royalties. An aged composer told a number of aged anecdotes. A Civil Servant and a Quaker schoolteacher followed. Then a young painter, glowering at the audience, assured them that only by close co-operation with Russia and the infusion of new blood would English art be rescued from subjectivism and total decadence; as an example of what could be achieved he called attention to four gigantic and insipid figures on the wall behind the platform, symbolic of Peace, Democracy, the Workers, and the Arts, which Nigel supposed had been run up by a gang of mentally arrested children, but which turned out to be the communal work of a number of members of the Painters-for-World-Peace Movement.
So far, everything had followed the usual pattern of such occasions. Some of the speakers had been sincere; others, who found peace a convenient whetstone to grind their own private or political axes on, had struck a few sparks from the subject. The audience applauded each—dutifully, impartially, but without great enthusiasm. One felt that they had hoped for a clarion call, and were politely disappointed to have heard only a set of variations on the penny whistle.
“You know, Strangeways,” said Blount behind his hand, “I don’t care for politicans, but at least they make their platitudes sound convincing. Those wee fellows up there have a lot to learn: they’re terrible amateurs at the job.”
“You should be thankful you’re an English copper. Anywhere else they’d be tossing bombs about, not woolly balls.”
The chairman was on his feet. They had come now to what he ventured to call, with due deference to their other brilliant and distinguished speakers, the bonne bouche of the evening. They had on the platform a dangerous man, a real live capitalist (a mild stir of interest went through the audience, and the chairman smirked); nay, a captain of industry and a king of finance. Sir Rufus Dunbar, er—that is to say—Durban, he went on, peering at the sheet of paper before him, needed no introduction to the audience: he was a household name wherever his products and, ah, his philanthropies were, hum, known. A historical personage known as Jesus, whom he, the chairman, believed to be the Son of God—but of course every man was entitled to his own opinion about that—had said that it was more difficult for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of heaven. Jesus Christ was speaking figuratively, of course. But He had also
said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” So there was hope for Sir Reuben yet. And in short, the chairman concluded, wobbling to a stop like a mechanical toy running down, they were all eager to hear with Sir Rufus Drummond had to say on the vital issues which they had assembled this evening to er, hum, ha.
In the brief silence that followed before Sir Rudolf got up, Nigel heard a New Statesman type, sitting in front of him, say to his companion, “Fancy him in this gallery. Met him once or twice. Used to have a stately home near us, when I was married to Emmeline. Stourford Hall.”
Sir Rudolf was on his feet. “I may be a rich man,” he began, “but I am not a camel. I only wish I was. Camels can go for a long time without a drink.” Sir Rudolf glanced briskly at his wristwatch, then proceeded to hold the audience in the palm of his hand for the exact ten minutes allotted him. Speaking without notes or pomposity, he gave an object lesson in the workings of personal magnetism; the audience, at first suspicious and skeptical, were intrigued, then amused, then interested, and before long convinced of his sincerity. The gist of his speech was that, although he had no love for the Communist way of life and no belief in their economic system, as a practical businessman he could see no dividends in East and West cutting each other’s throats. Sir Rudolf did not attempt to go out of character and present himself as an idealist: he was forceful, witty, a little cynical, down to earth—all of which, after the wafflings of the other speeches, the audience found immensely bracing. He sat down to a storm of applause.
The chairman rose, to put the resolution. At the same moment, a fog-horn voice came from the body of the hall: “I want to ask the last speaker a question.”
“I’m afraid we have not time for questions,” bleated the chairman.
“Is this a free country?” the fog horn inquired.
Other voices, from different parts of the hall, bellowed righteous indignation, to an indignant shushing from the assembled intelligentsia. A scuffle began in one of the aisles, as stewards tried to prevent two malcontents approaching the platform. A smoke bomb was lobbed at the chairman who, like a Homeric warrior under the protection of a deity, disappeared from mortal view in a cloud. Fighting had broken out here and there. The counter-demonstration was obviously an organized one. Policemen poured through the doors. The peace meeting was warming up nicely.
“Come on,” said Blount. “Unless you want another knock on the head.”
“Just a minute.” Nigel caught the New Statesman type, who was ducking out of the affray, by the sleeve. “Excuse me, sir, I heard you mention Stourford Hall,” he said, when they had got outside the main door.
“Scandalous! An absolute disgrace! We pay the police for protection and—”
“Stourford. That sounds like Suffolk.”
“What’s that? Oh, the place Durbar owned? Yes, it’s in Suffolk all right. A deliberate attempt by reactionary elements to block the resolution!”
15
The Weak Joint
“BUT HE DOESN’T own it any longer,” Blount was saying the next morning.
“Who does then? Who lives there?”
“It’s empty. A caretaker. Durbar sold it several months ago, but he hadn’t lived there for some time before that.”
“Who did he sell it to?”
“The solicitors say they are not at liberty to divulge the name of the purchaser. They’re a sticky lot.”
“Sold it to himself, under another name. Or to some figure of straw.”
“Och now, Strangeways—”
“A big empty house, standing by itself in a park, in the southeast corner of Suffolk, under twenty miles from Harwich—my dear Blount, surely you must see that’s the ideal place for this gunman to be holing up in.”
The Superintendent’s face took on its most patient expression. “The decision that the Russian party should sail from Harwich was only made a few weeks ago. Durbar sold Stourford Hall in May. Even if it was a phony sale, the thing just doesn’t connect. He couldn’t have known, in May, that it would be a convenient jumping-off place for—”
“The Russian visit was fixed up in April. Durbar could have planned then for Elmer to hide up in the house until the moment came to strike.”
“You’ve got Durbar on the brain.”
Nigel had lain awake for an hour, the previous night, trying to recapture an elusive memory. At last he got it. Hesione Durbar, when she visited him in hospital, had unconsciously given him the clue. “Do you know the Stour Valley?” she had said; and then something about its being “maternal.” It was after he had asked her if she knew of any hideout Alec Gray might have in East Anglia. Then, by an association of thought, she had switched to her husband’s maternal streak—how, when she was expecting the child who had been stillborn, “Rudie spent hours studying catalogues of baby apparatus.” It must have been at Stourford Hall that she had awaited the baby. But the heir never survived, poor kid.
Poor kid! Nigel started up in bed. “Poor little boy,” Hesione had said, more than once, when she heard about the kidnaping of Bert Hale. And what an ideal place Stourford Hall would be in which to hide, not only a gunman, but a small boy!
“Blount, you know my hunches have sometimes been right,” he said urgently now. “I beg of you to have that house investigated.”
The Superintendent’s face was bland. “The Suffolk police,” he said, glancing at his wristwatch, “are visiting it just about this very moment. We’re like the politicians, you know—we never leave a stone unturned.”
Nigel gave him a long look. “Sometimes, Blount, I wonder why I don’t murder you with my bare hands.”
“You should always use gloves. I’d have thought even your limited experience of crime would have taught you that.”
Bert Hale had carefully planned out what he would do if rescue loomed near. But when he heard at last, this morning, the distant approach of a car, he had no time to put his plan into operation; for the taciturn caretaker was in the room the next moment, slapped some adhesive plaster over Bert’s mouth, blindfolded him, and carried him through the door. Bert’s memorizing of the house came in useful here. In his mind’s eye, he traced their passage, down a flight of stairs, twenty paces on, turn left, then right—into a room: it was the oldest part of the house, and this room had not been visited during their tours. Bert guessed why. From one of its windows the mysterious guest had shot at the target on the lawn. Bert heard a click, and at the same time a bell ringing far away in the house below him. He began to struggle; but he was thrust into what he thought must be a closet. There was a second click, and the hole he had come through became a wall behind him. The closet had a strange smell which Bert could not immediately identify. Also, it was pitch dark. No, it was this blasted thing round his eyes, of course. Bert raised his hands to tear it off, a sudden appalling conviction in his mind that he’d been put into a gas chamber. A voice that instant said, “Keep still, bub! Don’t move, take it easy, and maybe you’ll have a long life.”
The voice whipped coldly, like a snake’s tail. Bert had heard it before. It was the voice of the man who had shot the Quack—the American gunman who, Foxy once told him, smelled as if he sucked violet sweets: this was the strange smell he had noticed in the closet. But it couldn’t be a closet. The voice had come from too far away for that. It took Bert only a few seconds to realize he must be in a secret room—perhaps one of those priest’s holes he’d read about—cooped up with a killer.
It was this knowledge that prevented him drumming with his feet, beating his fists against the wall, when hours later, as it seemed, he heard movements in the adjoining room. He knew that his companion was a killer, and the hands round his throat would tighten if he made a sound. The air was close; Bert became aware that the gunman was sweating. Surely he could not have been living in this hole for the last few days? And if not, the police would find signs of the next room being occupied. But presently the sounds ceased. The police, if it was they, were presumably satisfied.
Bert felt in his pocket the
journal he had been writing. He had always kept the notebook there, for fear of his captors’ finding it. If only he had left it in the nursery, for the police to find! As it was, there would be no clue: the caretaker, Tom, had put Bert’s spectacles in his own pocket before bandaging his eyes; the old woman always tidied the nursery first thing in the morning—not that Bert had any possessions or spare clothes for the police to discover there. Wait a minute! The bed. Although it had been made, the sheets and pillows would not be clean.
The gunman was talking. Bert could not understand half what he said: but, in the close, sweltering little room, the voice went on and on, crackling like a transmitter, reminding Bert of another room, another man who had talked interminably. This man was not mad, like the Quack. He was, though Bert did not realize it, lonely and bored; he had had no company for days but the taciturn Tom and Tom’s imbecile old aunt.
“Hey, son, are you dumb?… Oh, sure, that tape. Don’t raise your voice, I’ve got my gun here.”
Bert felt the muzzle of a revolver against his neck, then a flash of pain as the adhesive tape was ripped away from his mouth. Tears came to his eyes. When he could speak, he said, “Can’t I take this bandage off?”
“No. Take a candy.”
A sweet was put in his hand—a violet cachou. He sucked it, rubbing his sore mouth. The killer was not going to kill him; but Bert felt like a blinded mouse lying between a cat’s paws.