Nigel looked at his watch. It was now four-fifty-two.
“I say, sir. Do you think the American gunman is going to shoot the Russian Minister? He was practicing shots with a rifle out of that window—at a target on the lawn.”
“Deflection shots,” said Blount. “That’s a help. I dare say you’re right, son.” He beamed at the boy. “You’re not—e’eh—wanting a job in the C.I.D.? Looks as if I should be retiring and handing over to you.”
“Hadn’t you better get cracking, mister?” Foxy had recovered his perkiness. “What are we waiting for? Tell you something else. The gunman escaped in that old woman’s uniform—nurse’s uniform. Disguise, see?”
“Come along, sons. Ever seen a wireless truck?”
The boys stared their fill, as Blount transmitted a string of instructions through the signalman at the radio. Then he drew the Company Commander aside, and there was a muttered conversation. The officer presently climbed into the truck, pressed down a switch, and said,
“Army calling R.A.F. Can you hear me? Over.”
“Receiving you loud and clear. What can I do for you, General? Haven’t you won your battle yet? Over.”
“If you can get that god-awful contraption off the roof, you intrepid birdman, I have another job for you. Over.”
“Always happy to oblige. I shall be with you in a moment, dear. Over.”
“It would be well to move fast. The house is on fire underneath you; repeat, the house is on fire underneath you. Your comments will be welcomed. Over.”
“Ha, ha, ha … By God, so it is! I can’t wait to be with you. Shall we meet on that sweet little lawn your horrid vehicles have been cutting up? Over.”
“Rendezvous approved. Mind the flower beds. Out.”
Looking up, the boys saw the helicopter raise itself off the roof, sidle away, tilt, begin to drift gently down. As they reached the lawn, the pilot leaned out and made a rude sign at the army captain, who called up to him, “I’ve got a couple of V.I.P.’s for you. They want to go to London. Can you find London?”
“I might. Of course I’m only a beginner. These gentlemen?” said the pilot, looking at Blount and Nigel.
“Oh well, they might go too. But I meant these chaps.” The captain indicated Bert and Foxy.
“Us?” Foxy exclaimed hoarsely. “Go in that? Gawd blow me down! Didya hear, Bert?”
“Oh boy,” Bert solemnly ejaculated. “Oh boy, oh boy!”
Blount turned away, and blew his nose on his bandanna—a sound like the Last Trump.
“Steady, sir,” called out the pilot. “Mind my machine.”
The boys eyed each other, giggled, broke into convulsions. As the aircraft moved, the Company Commander stood to attention and snapped off a smart salute. Foxy acknowledged it with a grin and a royal gesture of the hand. Bert did not even see it; he was gazing, with the rapture of a faithful Mohammedan first viewing Paradise and its houris, at the helicopter’s instrument panel.
Ten minutes later, while Bert and the pilot were engaged in a highly technical discussion on the subject of aerodynamics, Nigel turned to Blount on the back seat beside him.
“I must say you’re taking all this very calmly—this Albert Hall lark.”
“Oh well now, oh well now.” Blount vigorously slapped his bald dome. “We’ve not picked up this Elmer laddie yet; but he hasn’t an airthly chance of bringing it off.”
“That’s not quite what I meant. You’re being evasive. Was Bert’s information really a surprise to you?”
Blount looked a trifle guilty. “I’ll not say it hadn’t occurred to us that ‘Albert Hall on the 12th’ mighn’t be the meaning. But I’ll admit we were properly foxed for a wee while by the Harwich notion.”
“And I never saw it.”
“Och now, you’d had a sore clout on the head.”
“So my wits were addled? But why didn’t you tell me?”
“There were reasons, Strangeways,” said Blount uncomfortably.
“Ah. I see. Not just the old man being secretive?”
“You were seeing quite a lot of Durbar and his lady. It was just possible Durbar was mixed up in this business. If he was, it wouldn’t have done for him to discover we’d guessed about the Albert Hall. And if you’d known it, he might have got it out of you, one way or another.”
“So I’ve just been a pawn in your large, red hands?”
“Hoots-toots.”
The pilot turned to Bert, huddled up with Foxy on the seat at his side.
“You care to take over, old man? Wheel in front of you. Fly her on the artificial horizon. Nothing in it.”
Bert blushed crimson, swallowed twice, bit his lip, gave one side glance at the pilot—for whom that moment he would willingly have died—then, with a look of religious awe and professional concentration, laid hands on the wheel.
Sir Rudolf Durbar was dressing for the concert. An extremely knowledgeable amateur of music, he looked forward to it with mixed feelings. And it was a tribute to his amazing faculty for—dissociation, should one call it? or concentration?—that these mixed feelings sprang entirely from the nature of the official program, and not from any unofficial contribution to the night’s proceedings of which he might have cognizance. The program would be composed of British and Russian music only. The Vaughan Williams Sixth and Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast were unexceptionable; but the Soviet half of the program, chosen by the organizers after considerable research into the question of which Russian composers were at the moment deemed correct in official circles, looked less desirable. The Soviet Foreign Minister was also an ardent devotee of music; perhaps he should have been asked to choose his own program, Sir Rudolf reflected—on the principle of the condemned man who is allowed to order whatever he fancies for his last breakfast.
As a person inured to the taking of tremendous risks with his own money, Sir Rudolf had no qualms at all about taking risks with other people’s lives. Not that he wanted war, which he well knew would be almost as disastrous for himself as for the world in general. What he wanted was a continuance of the status quo: disarmament, which the success of the present negotiations had turned from a dream to a possibility, would be quite unthinkably inconvenient for him—he had too many eggs in the other basket. Of course, America might not play. But, after last year’s announcement that Russia possessed the hydrogen bomb, even the most chauvinist circles in the U.S.A. had been drawing in their horns. There was no certainty now that the present negotiations would not lead to a world conference on disarmament; already the markets were pointing that way.
While the valet tied his tie, Sir Rudolf switched his mind from music to murder. He did not, of course, think of it in such terms. Nor, on the other hand, did he indulge in any idealistic self-deception about the necessity or virtue of political assassination. Like his financial campaigns, this was a remote-control enterprise: he pressed certain buttons, and through an intricate chain of reactions, a desired effect was produced at the other end. In the present instance, the reasoning had operated like this: if the Soviet Foreign Minister were assassinated, it would protract the East-West impasse for, say, another ten years, and rearmament would continue; if the assassin proved to be an ex-Federal agent, Russian suspiciousness would jump to the conclusion that it had been done with the connivance, at least, of influential circles in the U.S.A.; therefore, the assassin himself must be exposed. If the man, Elmer, were to be killed after shooting the Minister, his identity would be discovered; and also, since dead men cannot talk, any faint chance of his connection with Sir Rudolf being traced would disappear. And this was where young Gray came in….
Alec Gray was dressing for the concert. He had never needed Benzedrine before a raid: the prospect of action, excitement, working upon his own hard, reckless nature, produced all the stimulant he required. He reviewed the plan for tonight—or rather, the two plans; for things were not going to follow quite the pattern which had been laid down when Jameson Elmer was briefed. The Yank would be occupying
, alone, a box on the second tier which had been procured for him, giving an excellent view of the Russian party; the provenance of this box could not be traced to Gray or Sir Rudolf. Gray would sit, with some friends, in the next box but two. The Yank was not to shoot till the very end of the concert, when the Soviet Minister rose to acknowledge the applause of the audience; at that moment every eye in the hall would be upon the Russian party, and Elmer, concealed behind the curtain of his box, could take aim and fire without apprehension of interference. He could then dart out and mingle with the stream of people leaving early, as some always did, to catch the last buses or trains to the suburbs. Gray would be at hand to convoy him from the hall, drive him away to the secret rendezvous where an airplane was awaiting, and pay him off.
Those, at least, were the arrangements agreed upon with the Yank. The thing would not, however, go according to plan—not for Jameson Elmer. Gray had no intention of helping the gunman to escape. On the contrary, he would start a hue and cry after him. Elmer would be intercepted at one of the exits, try to shoot his way out—and that would be the end of him. With so dangerous a man as Elmer, the police would certainly shoot to kill; and, if they did only wing him, the Yank was the type who’d turn his revolver on himself rather than fall into the hands of the Law.
The Yank himself would not have talked; and Gray had dropped him half a mile from Stourford Hall on the night the Quack was shot, so nobody there had seen the two together. Dai Williams had been silenced in time. There only remained the information which that wretched brat, Foxy, had given the police—about the man whom he saw Gray bring to the Durbars’ party. Alec had a story ready to account for that, and a stooge to corroborate it; if Inspector Wright assumed that the man was a burglar, whom Gray had introduced into the Durbars’ house, good luck to him. How fortunate it was that Foxy had not caught the conversation between Durbar and himself in the garden, thought Gray; it’d have been a job to explain this away; but Mac was certain Foxy had not heard it, and Mac would be keeping Foxy out of harm’s way till Gray left the country.
His escape route had been carefully planned. No doubt, what with the kidnaping of Bert Hale, the burglaries, and the message found in his flat, the police were apoplectic with suspicion of him by now. And the only possible reason they had not pulled him in was that they wanted Jameson Elmer even more, and hoped Gray might lead them to Elmer if they gave him enough rope. Well, by God, he’d lead them to Elmer tonight. He would have to undergo a severe grilling, no doubt; but, without more evidence, the police could not hold him—not with Sir Rudolf’s influence at work behind the scenes. And then he only had to slip his shadowers, and there was the airplane ready, and South America at journey’s end, where Durbar’s agents would look after him. He and Durbar knew too much about each other for there to be any danger of betrayal. Gray’s mind went back to that day, some months ago, when Durbar had confronted him with the knowledge of his liaison with Hesione and his activities as inside man for Sam Borch. It gave Durbar a stranglehold over him; but what he had done for Durbar since then leveled the balance. Between them, they had planned the wave of robberies to coincide with the Soviet deputation’s visit, the political incidents, the Yank’s modus operandi. Durbar had the ideas—including the idea of his own house being burgled as a blind—Gray the contacts. It was a fruitful partnership, giving satisfaction on both sides….
When Blount and Nigel arrived at the Albert Hall, crowds were already gathered outside. Ticket holders had been requested to take their places a quarter of an hour before the concert began, but sight-seers had turned up in hundreds to watch the arrival of the Soviet Minister and other celebrities. A cordon of police kept them at a distance from the approaches to the hall. The park railings opposite were lined with spectators. At every door there was a group of policemen, and just inside the doors stood plain-clothes men, each of whom had a copy of Jameson Elmer’s photograph.
“We’re taking every precaution, you see,” said the Superintendent.
“I’d feel happier if you’d got him in the cooler.”
Jameson Elmer had been traced to a railway station five miles from Stourford Hall, where he—or at any rate a person in nurse’s uniform—had caught a train the previous evening. It was a stopping train, the coaches without corridors, and the person could have changed clothes in any empty compartment before reaching the junction. Here the trail had petered out. The local train caught a London express: but, so far, inquiries at the junction and Liverpool Street had failed to identify Jameson Elmer as having traveled by it.
On arrival in London, after arranging for Bert and Foxy to be restored to their parents, Blount had taken Nigel with him to Sir Edward, and made a report. The great man was seriously concerned. It would be possible, of course, to advise the Soviet Foreign Minister not to attend the concert; but he was an obstinate man, who loved music no less than he disliked losing face; nor would it increase the prestige of his protectors if they told him he was in danger for a solitary gunman whom the whole police force of Britain had failed to catch. Moreover, considerations of high policy were involved. The Minister’s presence at this concert would set a public seal on the negotiations of the last ten days, and symbolize the hope of better international relations arising from them. After a brief telephone conversation with Number 10, Downing Street, Sir Edward decided that the show must go on. The measures already taken for protecting the Minister were to be most stringently enforced, and additional precautions taken.
Alec Gray was made aware of this the moment he entered the Albert Hall. Two large men politely asked him to step this way; he was rapidly and thoroughly searched for weapons, before they let him rejoin his party. Not even Sir Rudolf, though he was one of the organizers of the concert, could pass unchallenged; his tickets were carefully examined, and two plain-clothes men took up their positions in the corridor outside his box. The Special Branch had found, only this morning, a loose end in his closely woven fabric of respectability, and it was only a matter of time before the whole thing was unraveled.
“Elmer hasn’t an airthly chance of getting in,” Blount was saying now to his companion. “And I don’t see how he could do anything outside. Just take a look.” He pointed to a knot of policemen on the Albert Memorial; others were scanning trees in the park and windows along the route—any vantage point conceivably within range of the Soviet Minister’s arrival: Blount had been impressed by Bert Hale’s information that the gunman had practiced deflection shots at Stourford Hall.
“He could have got in during the day, couldn’t he?”
“He might,” said Blount grimly. “But, as soon as they got my message from Stourford, they searched the hall—every damned square yard of it. Do you know, it has nearly forty rooms, under the auditorium and behind the platform—absolute rabbit warren. He’s not there. I’d stake my pension on it.”
Blount would have lost his stake. Five minutes ago a smallish man with a drooping mustache, a loose black coat over his evening clothes, had entered the hall. He entered it, carrying a violin case, in company with several members of the orchestra, by the artists’ entrance; at least, the police on guard assumed him to be in their company, and any doubts they might have had were set at rest by the card which he produced—all members of the orchestra and choir had been required, as an additional precaution, to show a pass officially supplied to them. But Jameson Elmer was a master of disguise; if he had to look like a musician, he could be relied on to disappear behind the role.
He went downstairs. Presently, emerging from a lavatory, he entered the band room, where he stood the violin case against a wall, then, slipping out again, made his way through the subterranean labyrinth upstairs toward the boxes. He had a map of the place in his head, supplied by the same thoughtful provider as the evening clothes, the mustache, the pass, and certain other articles which he had found awaiting him, on his return to London, at the rendezvous. Mingling now with the stream of concert-goers, buying his program, having the box unlocked for him by a
n attendant—one of the Corps of Honorary Stewards—who took his ticket, he had somehow changed character again: though his face and dress were the same, he looked like a music-lover, not a professional musician. He walked differently, even—with a slight stiffness, not quite a limp, in one leg. Inside the covered part of the box, he took out from a deep inside pocket of his overcoat the stock of a Winchester rifle, from his trouser leg its barrel—he had transferred them there from the violin case during his brief visit to the lavatory—and rapidly put them together; then laid the rifle along the side wall, drew back a chair over it, well away from the open front of the box, and peered through the curtains. It was in the bag, so far. Without exposing himself at all, he commanded an excellent view of the ceremonial box on the Grand Tier, below him to the right.
In the vast auditorium a stir of excitement manifested itself, as if telepathically communicated by the cheering, inaudible here, of the crowds outside the building: heads turned; the hum of talk kept dying away, then starting again—wafts and flaws of sound, of movement, under the cavernous dome, like the restiveness of the air before a thunderstorm—the storm of applause which broke when the Prime Minister entered the ceremonial box with his distinguished guest, and, leading him forward into full view of the audience, stepped back. The Soviet Minister stood there a moment, stocky and impassive; then, as if thawed by the warmth of his welcome, the granite face relaxed into a smile; he waved, and drew the Prime Minister to his side. The audience were on their feet, the orchestra rose; the conductor held supreme silence poised for a moment on the tip of his uplifted baton. There was a distant, muttering, growing thunder of drums, and the National Anthem began.
As the concert proceeded, Superintendent Blount, from the southwest side of the auditorium, raked the upper tier with his opera glasses. White shirt fronts, white shoulders, orders, jewels, tiaras—it blazed like a July flower bed, bringing back memories of a richer, statelier age. They were certainly doing the Russkis proud. He could see Alec Gray leaning forward, apparently absorbed in the music; the last chance that young thug will have to enjoy himself, thought Blount grimly. There were one or two empty boxes up there, he noticed, feeling vaguely disquieted. Well, God Almighty, they’d been searched, hadn’t they? And every box-renter had had to show his card. I’ve just got an attack of the bogeymen.