The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  Fantastic it may sound, but things far more fantastic have happened since. My measure of belief in my own theory is shown by the fact that I nearly grabbed the phone to submit it to Wharton, but when I actually saw him I didn’t even have the temerity to mention it at all.

  It was just before lunch-time when a call came for me from the Hall, and to my surprise it was Mrs. Brende. I was even more surprised when she asked if I were alone.

  “The telephone’s perfectly safe,” I told her laughingly, and it rather struck me that she had absent-mindedly forgotten that we were using the phone.

  “People sometimes overhear,” she said. “I want you to do something for me, and I’d like you to keep it just to ourselves. Could you possibly put a guard over my bedroom?”

  “But”—I’m afraid I rather stammered for a bit—“I don’t quite follow. Look here. May I come round and see you about it? Confidentially, of course.”

  “Oh, no,” she said promptly. “I’m not going to have you laughing at me to my face. I can be much more bold and persistent over the telephone.”

  “You’re really serious?” I said. “You want a guard posted over your bedroom?”

  “I do. I know I’m a silly, nervous old woman, but I’d be happier.”

  I gave a grunt or two while I collected my thoughts. There had been no humour in her voice to show that that self-deprecation was some sort of joke, and Mrs. Brende was the last person in the world to be put in the categories in which she had just placed herself.

  “Then I’m frightfully sorry,” I said, “but it can’t be done. I have to account for every one of my men, and I simply daren’t put one over your room. What I can do is this,” I hastily went on, “I can have a man outside your window. Your room has a sound lock to it?”

  “I think so,” she said.

  “Then everything should be all right,” I told her. “And— you’ll pardon my suggesting it—you might have Annie or someone sleep in your room with you.”

  There was quite an interval before she spoke. Then she said, and she sounded enormously grateful, that she was now much easier in mind.

  “You’ll have the man put outside to-night?”

  “Yes,” I assured her. “I’ll see to it at once. And will you pardon another personal question. Just why are you so alarmed? Or aren’t you?”

  “Well, after what’s happened,” she began lamely, and then broke off. “I told you I was foolish and nervous.”

  “You’ve been reading too many detective novels,” I laughed at her. To my relief she laughed too.

  “I expect that’s what it is. Annie told me she’d seen you yesterday, by the way.”

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “I caught her in the act of aiding and abetting. But you do as I say from now on and there’s no need to be alarmed.”

  “There’s no news, I suppose?”

  “Not a thing,” I said. “If I do hear anything, I’ll let you know. Good-bye, then. And no more worry.”

  There was a peculiar sound in the phone as if she were clearing her throat or half-formulating a word. Then she did speak.

  “Are you still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wonder if you’d do something else for me. Very confidentially. You won’t laugh at me?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Well, it’s this,” she said. “If you have a spare revolver, would you lend it to me?”

  Once more I was taken pretty considerably aback.

  “A revolver’s a dangerous lethal weapon,” I managed to say. “Are you sure you can handle it?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said confidently. “When we were in India I did quite a lot of shooting. We had a little indoor range, you know.”

  I did a grunt or two to make time.

  “I have got a little automatic of my own,” I said. “What I’ll do is send it along unloaded, and a dozen rounds. By the way, you’d better send me a confidential receipt.”

  “You are good,” she said, “and I’m really very grateful. Whoever brings it, let him ask for Annie, and I’ll have the receipt ready.”

  “Fine,” I said. “And when am I coming to tea with you again?”

  She gave a little laugh.

  “I’m not going to let you make fun of me—just yet. On Sunday perhaps. You’re not busy on Sundays?”

  As I hung up I was doing some hard thinking. Why Mrs. Brende should have these sudden alarms was beyond me, and as for her claims that she was a foolish old woman, nothing was further from possibility. Absolute coolness was one of her characteristics; moreover, she was definitely trying to avoid me for fear I should ask awkward questions. And yet I hardly knew. When all was said and done, she was a very lonely woman who must have suddenly become more lonely, and no loneliness can be more frightening than that of the dead of night.

  After lunch I found that little automatic, cleaned and oiled it, and sent it by my batman together with a further confidential note and a dozen rounds of ammunition. I also pencilled a draft amendment to the standing orders of the Park guard, and submitted it to Harrison with an explanation that seemed to convince. It was soon after that when a telephone call came from Holby and Caddis. The speaker said the name would probably convey little to me. I admitted it was unfamiliar.

  “I’m John Holby,” he said, “the senior partner. Our firm have handled Mrs. Brende’s affairs for a good many years now. What I want to do is to see her at the Hall to-morrow morning, on private business, and I understand I must have a pass.”

  While I hesitated he was going on again.

  “I can give you every possible reference, Major Travers. I’m in the Home Guard myself, and so is my boy. I think you’ve run across him, by the way.”

  “It wasn’t references I was thinking of, Mr. Holby,” I said. “What I can’t do is get you a pass through by the morning. What I can do is this. I’ve got a certain discretionary power to issue special passes. In other words, if you call here on your way tomorrow morning, we’ll see what we can do.”

  “I understand,” he said. “I’m very much obliged. Will about half-past ten suit you?”

  “I shall be here,” I said. “But I ought to put one question to you, even if I am anxious to oblige both yourself and Mrs. Brende. As I said to a recent applicant for a pass, why shouldn’t the mountain come to Mahomet?”

  He laughed. “I’d rather not put that to a client. Too much competition these days. But seriously, you’re sure it will be all right?”

  I assured him it would, and then I was once more beginning to theorize. Important business with Mrs. Brende might mean alterations to her will. No sooner did I think that than I was seeing various implications. Was Mrs. Brende of Wharton’s opinion that the Colonel was dead? Or was it that her will was not up to date, and she was realizing, after the raids, that life was an uncertain business these days? Or was there some connection with her requests to see me that morning? Did she know something that she had not revealed? Did she really think she was in some personal danger, and was that why she was putting her affairs in order?

  Then, as usual, I began to hedge. Having given theory a free rein, I pulled in. And I decided I ought to say nothing to Wharton. After all, he had a habit of making himself conversant with most happenings, and his own men would doubtless make him aware of Holby’s visit to the Hall in the morning. After that, one so manipulatory with women as Wharton boasted himself to be, could find out from Mrs. Brende direct not only the reason for the lawyer’s visit, but also what lay behind her alarms.

  Wharton rang me up to see if I could meet him at that tea-shop in the town. I duly turned up, and while we were waiting for the order to come, asked him if it wasn’t rather too prominent a rendezvous. Some of his friends in the City must surely use that tea-shop.

  “That City business is all over now,” he said, and then was leaning forward mysteriously. “Have a look in your paper to-morrow.”

  “Why shouldn’t you tell me now?” I suggested.

  He thought for a mo
ment and then was leaning forward again.

  “Old Dove has just been collected.”

  “No!” I said. “What have you pinned on him?”

  “Mustn’t tell you,” he said. “General subversive activities is good enough. Nothing to do with this other affair, unfortunately.”

  “And what about John Knox?” I said, using that camouflage because the waitress had suddenly popped up with our tea and toast.

  Wharton didn’t reveal much, but he did say that Benison was only a stool-pigeon. Harking back to the subject of the danger of the tea-shop rendezvous, I instanced Penelope, one of whose favourite haunts it seemed to be. Wharton shelved the question.

  “I was with her just now,” he said. “Had some business at the Hall. She’s worried, that young lady.”

  “Perhaps she knows she may lose a cushy job,” I said.

  “How do you make that out?” he fired at me. “You’re always talking about logic, and where’s the logic in that? I wouldn’t have called that job of hers cushy? Long hours and loafing about and not much company.”

  Before I could mention possible compensations, he was hauling out his wallet, and making final comments on Penelope while he looked for some paper or other.

  “Besides, she was worried before this affair cropped up. Those anonymous letters upset her I expect. I saw some sleeping tablets in her bedroom that morning. And now what do you make of this?”

  He handed me three photostats, and I spotted them at once as salvage from the burnt note-book. Wharton said they were all that the experts had been able to treat, for the charred paper he had sent them had been in a bad state of disintegration. The three photostats I was given represented about an eighth of a page from each of three pages of the original, and they were reasonably distinct considering what those originals had been through. In one of them could be seen a portion of a diagram. The rest of it, and the whole of the others, was mathematical fomulae, which naturally began nowhere for me and ended nowhere. I told Wharton as much. My mathematics went no further than a sixth form at school, and I had done nothing in that line at Cambridge.

  “And I thought you were one of these brainy ones,” Wharton said reproachfully.

  “You did algebra at school, George,” I said. “Could you have solved a problem if you had no idea what x and y and z and all the rest of it stood for? Look at this,” I said. “About half the letters of the Greek alphabet, and every sign from cube root to sigma. I don’t know where Brende was starting from or what he hoped to arrive at.”

  “Can’t you guess?”

  “Oh, yes, I can guess,” I told him. “Taken in conjunction with this fragment of diagram, I’d say he was working on the curvature of curves.”

  “And what the devil’s that?”

  “Well, in simple terms it’s this. Assume he was working at interception or detection of enemy planes at night. A plane takes avoiding action by diving or climbing, and its course is a curve. He was working on such curves. Sorry I can’t be more helpful, but why don’t you tackle Newton? He’s the one to see daylight. I’d even be ashamed to mention the word mathematics in his presence.”

  George began putting the photostats back in his wallet, and he was pursing his lips. When he spoke again his tone was that gentle, conciliatory one which I well knew.

  “As a matter of fact I gave him three for himself.”

  “The devil you did!” I said. “And what did he say?”

  Wharton chuckled. “Asked me if I hadn’t any old Egyptian hieroglyphics and things so that he could start on them and work his way up. Very sarcastic he was.”

  “I see,” I said, and nodded heavily. “Newton had no more idea than I have, and yet you had the nerve to question me.”

  “What’ve you got to grumble about?” he asked me, and glared. “You ought to be damn pleased I had such a high opinion of you. But talking of Benison—”

  “We weren’t,” I said. “We were talking about your nerve in expecting me to know what Newton didn’t.”

  “You’re too touchy,” he told me. “But listen to this. I got something out of Benison about that picket. While they were there a big car came from the Hall direction at about midnight. His men were on the qui vive, and as this car went by, one hollered that the rear light was out. All the car did was to shoot on as if it had been stung.”

  “Which way. City or town?”

  “The town. And a woman was driving it.” Up went his hand. “Don’t ask me what woman. I know nothing about it. All I know is that a man thought the car was slowing down, so he ran after it to say the rear light was out, and he said all he could see was a woman driver, and he wouldn’t swear on a stack of Bibles even then. No one knew what the car was either, except that it was a big one. Rather wide, he thought, like a big Austin or a Daimler. It was a dark night, you remember, and that picket wasn’t worrying about cars.”

  I understood all that, and that the car might have been one of no interest to us, in spite of the fact that George’s deductions from the tyre cast were that a big car had been used to carry Brende away.

  “How’re your bloodhounds getting on?” I asked.

  “Ah!” said Wharton. With wide sweeps of his handkerchief he wiped his moustache and mouth, and pushed aside his plate. Then he was leaning forward again.

  “Your friend Passenden’s not having too good a time in Scotland.”

  “Oh?” I said. “And why?”

  “Because he isn’t there. Where do you think he went to from here? Up to that Sowdale place where Mrs. Brende’s people used to live. He stayed a night in a pub there, and then we lost him.”

  “Lost?”

  Wharton shrugged his shoulders. “That’s it—lost. He paid his bill and off he went to the local station with his luggage. My man got there in time to find out he’d left the bag at the booking-office, which does for a left-luggage office, and then he simply disappeared. That’s all there is to it. My man’s still hanging around.”

  “Why shouldn’t he go back to his old haunts?” I said. “Or perhaps Mrs. Brende asked him to do something for her. Also he may have spotted your man and been a bit annoyed. Passenden’s just the man who’d take a delight in throwing him off the scent.”

  Wharton agreed so readily that I knew he had something more up his sleeve. Also he changed the topic and began telling me what he was doing generally. To my relief he was interested in the three Huns who had baled out before the raid on the Saturday night. At least I thought he was interested. With Wharton you never could tell, and he might have been throwing dust in my eyes for some obscure reason of his own. He also said everything was very difficult on account of the secrecy required. No use to search for Brende when there was all England to search in, or at least an area as large in radius as that big car could have travelled before dawn on the Sunday, or even later. All he could do was to hope for something from the police, or for a stroke of luck.

  I couldn’t tell him about Mrs. Brende, so I kept things going by asking what he thought about Pattner. I said, rather too lamely, that I hadn’t seen him till the day of the conference. Wharton shot a suspicious look at me, then said that Pattner was a very good chap. He had been very thick with Penelope Craye at one time, he added, and they still got about a lot together, though there was nothing serious in it. I guessed that one of Wharton’s men had seen me snooping round that side street and I changed the subject.

  “By the way, George, did it ever occur to you that our lady friend might have composed those anonymous letters herself for some obscure purpose? I do think it was rather fishy that yarn of hers about not showing them to Brende in case he’d be worried?”

  Wharton was getting to his feet, and nodding enigmatically.

  “I’ve got it in mind,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of things in mind.”

  He paid for the tea, or the taxpayers did, and out we went. Once more he said he’d not be seeing me for a day or two, and then he said he’d be glad if I’d have a word with Newton about those photosta
ts.

  “You can manage that all right,” he told me cajolingly. “Don’t tell me you’re ashamed of your ignorance, and all that bosh. You worm out of him what he knows.”

  “Then he does know something?”

  “I didn’t say so,” he put in hastily. “Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. You and he go over those photostats together.” Some hopes, I thought amusedly as Wharton drove off. I’d just as soon call on Einstein and say, “Here’s a little paper I think you’ve dropped, Albert. A prolongation of that little relativity business of yours, by the look of it. What about us two putting in a half-hour on it?”

  What else I thought doesn’t immediately matter, and I probably forgot most of it because things again began to happen. After dinner that night I was called to the phone.

  “Call coming for you, sir,” orderly told me as he gave me the receiver, and in a few moments I was talking to Passenden.

  “What a surprise!” I said. “And how’s Scotland?”

  “Not too bad,” he said. “Still standing where she did. What I’m worrying you about is to know if you can tell me if there’ve been any developments over you know what.”

  “Nothing that I know,” I said.

  “Not a word or anything? No demand for . . . hush-money shall we say?”

  “Not a thing,” I said.

  “Right,” he said. “I’m much obliged to you. Just thought I’d get the low-down if I could, being a bit worried and so on. Ringing from a friend’s house, by the way, so I’d better ring off before the pips go.”

  As Passenden had said nothing about secrecy or confidence, I got hold of Wharton at once. He wanted to know everything about the call—exact time, what exchange had said, and so on— so I knew he would be trying to trace its origin. He also asked if I were sure that it was really Passenden who had been speaking. I said I had no doubt whatever.