The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  “Going to Sowdale, are you?”

  It was his turn to be startled.

  “How’d you guess that?” he snapped at me.

  “Guessing and proving are two different things,” I couldn’t help telling him. “All the same, you seemed to have done the proving for me.”

  I could almost see him glare. A moment or two and there came a faint chuckle. George is in some ways an Oriental. Fond of duplicity himself, he can admire the little tricks of others. “Come on,” he said cajolingly. “How did you know?”

  “That’s one of the things I’m not going to tell you—just yet,” I said. “All I will say is that the conversation you listened to was probably between Mrs. Brende and Major Passenden.”

  That took the wind out of his sails. I was trying to put the question of what they had talked about, when George recovered first.

  “You’ve been to the Hall, have you?”

  “I did just drop in,” I admitted.

  “What did you learn? Who did you see?”

  “I’ll make a bargain,” I said. “You tell me what you overheard and I’ll tell you what I learned.”

  “Come on, come on; I’ve got a train to catch.”

  I thought he wouldn’t dodge the bargain, so I played fair. Briefly I said Ledd was still frightened about something but wouldn’t talk; Newton would talk about everything but the photostats, and Riddle was easy again in mind. George interrupted me.

  “Ledd was still worried, you say?”

  “He struck me as so. Mind you, he was in a bad humour about some coal.”

  Then I had to tell him all about that. He didn’t seem any too grateful when I’d finished; all he wanted to know was if I’d actually spoken to Mrs. Brende. Naturally I said I had, though by accident. Then again I had to tell him everything that had happened at the summer-house, and how she suspected murder.

  “Now your side of the bargain,” I said. “What did you overhear?”

  He had me, as I might have expected, though I must say I thought he was telling the truth.

  “She told him the lady was dead. He said what sort of a death. She said she didn’t know but she suspected the worst. He said it was the last thing that could have happened, and that was all, except that he’d be seeing her soon. She didn’t ask what he was doing or where he was speaking from, or anything. He simply said he was grateful and then he rang off.”

  “And you discovered he was speaking from Sowdale?”

  “He wasn’t. He wasn’t many miles away though.”

  Then before I could think of anything else he was giving me instructions. I had better keep away from Mrs. Brende unless it was she who approached me or requested me to call. I should not be able to get in touch with him, he said, because he would be here, there, and everywhere, but if anything turned up which I considered really important, I was to ring the local police and give the information to the Superintendent only. If Passenden rang me up, I was at once to inform the local people, who’d trace the call and pass the information on.

  “Good luck to you, George,” I said, just before ringing off.

  “I’ll need it,” he told me grimly. “That fellow Passenden is a regular will-o’-the-wisp.”

  Then I just caught him again in time.

  “About young Craye and the lady? Do I have to wait till I see you again before I get any news?”

  “I’d forgotten that,” he said. “I’ll arrange to get the information to you direct. I believe we’ve already picked up the scent.”

  Something else did happen as a kind of tail-piece to that conversation, and it was something that made me just a bit annoyed with Wharton. A night or two previously I had inspected the tunnel guards, and as a result I considered certain changes might reasonably be made. Harrison and I talked them over, and the morning after that telephone conversation with Wharton, I decided to have a daylight look round, so off I went and one of the Company Commanders concerned was with me.

  It was about eleven hours when we drove slowly through the town, and while we waited at the traffic lights, whom should I see but Wharton, small bag in hand, and making for the railway station. As we got well through the town, a train for Buxton and the north actually overtook us, and Wharton was almost certainly on it. I couldn’t see why he had thought it necessary to lead me to think he was going to Sowdale or thereabouts at once when he had no such intention. Then it struck me that he really had intended to go the previous night, but something had cropped up to keep him till the morning. What did not occur to me was that that something might have arisen out of the report I made of my afternoon enquiries and experiences at the Hall.

  And now if you are expecting things to happen, you will be badly wrong. Three days were to elapse before I was to see Wharton again, and then things did certainly happen, but those intervening three days brought for me what George Wharton once vulgarly but aptly told me was a diarrœa of theories and a constipation of ideas. What I did think does not matter because you have probably been thinking too, and have ideas of your own, and since nothing happened there is nothing to relate. But there I am wrong.

  Something did happen, though it had no bearing on the main case except for the purpose of elimination. The morning after Wharton actually left Dalebrink, the post brought me a tiny package from—of all people—Benison, and inside a note.

  DEAR MAJOR TRAVERS,

  I have been thinking the matter over and, as there are no other troops in the immediate neighbourhood except those under your command, I will turn a certain matter over to you, and if nothing comes of it, then nothing more need be said.

  You will remember that when you were good enough to see Dove and myself, we both harped on the kind of men you had at your Camp. This, I can now divulge, is the reason. The morning when that burglary was discovered, I picked up the enclosed button from the floor of a room at the Vicarage. Perhaps it will convey something to you. I recognize it, but naturally can take no action.

  I should be grateful if you will let me know results of your enquiries. As a man of peace, however, I would not like any action to be taken against the offender or offenders.

  Very many thanks,

  Yours sincerely,

  L. BENISON.

  PS.—The Government have made a great blunder over Dove, and one they may live to regret.

  That button did set me thinking, and that same afternoon found me at the Hall. Ledd admitted me as usual, and I asked him to find Riddle. When the two came I mooched along the corridor mysteriously till I found an empty room. Then I produced that button, bearing the crest of a famous London regiment.

  “This is yours, I think, Ledd. You dropped it at the Vicarage.”

  He shot a quick look at his tunic, and then at Riddle.

  “Don’t deny anything, either of you,” I said. “You two raided the Institute and the Vicarage. One of you left Camp by the back and one by the front, and you came in the same way. Why did you commit that crime?”

  Ledd opened his mouth first, then Riddle was butting in and saying the idea had been his own. He had been fed up, he said, with the Negger activities and how the Government were letting them do as they damn pleased, so he had talked the matter over with Ledd and they had agreed to try and get their hands on something definitely incriminating, which would force the Government to take action. If they had found anything, Riddle had intended to make a clean breast to Hush, who, you may remember, was due at the Hall in a day or two. Nothing had, however, been found. And nothing had been said because both he and Ledd were of the opinion that the affair had been forgotten.

  I cursed several kinds of hell out of the pair of them. I don’t often let myself go, but honestly, what I told Ledd would have been well worth bottling. Riddle’s tail was specially well twisted.

  “You,” I said, “doing a man’s work, and work of vital importance, and endangering it and your whole career for a bit of so-called patriotism. What action I shall take I don’t know. What I do know is that if either of you ever lets
out a word, I’ll break you both.”

  There was more to it than the above well-censored reprimand, and the two crawled off with tails well down. When I had cooled off I had to do a furtive smile. Boys, the pair of them, and with never the foggiest notion of what their prank implied. And I could feel a certain furtive admiration for the fact that they had at least done their nefarious work in first-class style. Perhaps I shouldn’t have felt that way if Benison had caught them red-handed.

  I rang Benison that same evening, thanked him and said that suitable action had been taken. He thanked me and that was all, but as he was nothing of his ponderously loquacious self, I rather gathered that the loss of Dove had chastened him considerably. In other words, it was Ichabod for the Neggers.

  Then the afternoon before I saw Wharton again, something else happened. One of Wharton’s men called at the Camp, and he had quite a lot of information for me. Craye’s lady friend had been traced, and she was living in furnished rooms under the name of Mrs. Rawlins. Her so-called husband—Mr. Rawlins —was none other than Craye.

  “Looks to me, sir, as if he’s installed her there,” the detective-sergeant said. “Probably one of his fancy pieces he used to run before the war.”

  “What’s she actually like?” I said.

  “You never can tell with that sort,” he said. “I must say she struck me as superior.”

  “You actually questioned her?”

  He hadn’t done that, he said. He had followed her into a shop and heard her talking to the assistant, that was all. His questioning had been done with the landlady who occupied the rest of the house. The young woman had passed muster with her; there wasn’t any question about that.

  “Mr. Craye spent the Saturday night there?” I asked.

  “He came in at about half-past ten,” he said. “The landlady saw him and he told her he’d been on duty, visiting some guards. She said his wife had a hot meal ready for him. I reckon she’d been poking her nose in to see what was going on.”

  I didn’t like to ask the sergeant just how much he knew of the Hall happenings, so I thanked him and off he went. Then I prepared to see Craye. What he had obviously done was to visit all the guards by twenty-two hours or thereabouts, and to arrange at each to have the later times put down as already done. I was not prepared to say he’d been able to bribe every N.C.O. in charge, for he had probably produced specious reasons or even said he had permission to make such arrangements.

  I told Harrison I would prefer to see him alone, so in he came to my office. He looked both washed-out and worried. I said I was giving him a last chance to spill all the beans, but once more he said he had nothing to confess.

  “You arrived at a house called ‘Silverglade’ at twenty-two-thirty hours on Saturday,” I said, “and you spent the night there with a woman known as Mrs. Rawlins. I’m now about to make close enquiries into what arrangements you made to set you free from visiting the various guards. From now on you are under close arrest.”

  His first surprise had given way to a kind of stupor. I gave him a look as if inviting him to speak after the eleventh hour as it were, but he had nothing to say.

  “Now I must tell you something much more serious,” I said. “It is believed that your cousin’s death was not a natural one. To put it bluntly, somebody may have killed her. By your own admission she was a rival of yours for your aunt’s money—that’s putting it crudely, but the police, you’ll find, are crude people who call spades spades. Do you honestly think the evidence of this woman will be good enough to give you an alibi for the whole of that night?”

  “Evidence?” he said, and stared. “You mean there’ll have to be an enquiry?”

  “My dear Craye, use your common sense. If there’s an inquest both you and the woman will have to give evidence in public.”

  He was shaking his head and breathing a bit hard. Then he asked if it would be published in the local papers.

  “It most certainly will,” I said, seeing no reason to tell him that peculiar secrecy which the case demanded would almost certainly mean that there would be no public or other inquest.

  “That you’ll have ruined your career is another matter.”

  His eyes were on the floor and he was still shaking his head. So utterly wretched did he look that I was already feeling some sneaking sympathy.

  “If I tell you something, sir, will you keep it a secret?”

  “Pretty late in the day, isn’t it?” I said. “Still, say what it is you’ve got to say!”

  “Then it’s my wife I was with, sir. We were married when I had that long week-end leave.”

  “This is the truth? Not made up for the occasion?”

  “The absolute truth, sir.” I’d known that already since he had taken no offence.

  “Why this secret marriage? That’s against regulations, as you know.”

  It all came out like a penny novelette. His aunt had a wife in her mind for him, and he was afraid to risk offending her. The girl he had married was twenty-two, like himself, and a games’ mistress at a private school near Buxton.

  “You priceless young fool,” I said. “I don’t mean about getting married, but all this hole and corner work. Has she any money? Have you?”

  Neither had a bean beyond his pay and allowances, and, as I told him, his story was no mitigation of his military offence. In some ways it aggravated it.

  “As for this other business,” I said, “you’re in a more parlous case than ever. As your wife she can’t be asked to give evidence for or against you. There’s also obviously no value in any evidence she might give for you. What you’ve been trying to avoid by keeping your mouth shut, is what you’ve achieved. Your marriage must come out.”

  “All right, sir,” he said. “I’ll take what’s coming to me. And may I ask a favour, sir? Might I see my wife? I’ll give you my word of honour, sir, that I’ll come straight back.”

  “You give me your word now that you’ll stay in Camp till I give you permission to leave it,” I said. “Then I might leave things as they are at the moment. After that, we’ll see.”

  First I thought he was going to blubber and then that he wanted to grab my hand, but out he went in any case. I’m several sorts of a fool, as you’ve doubtless gathered, and now all this sentimentality had landed me in a hole. I had begun by hating the sight of young Craye. Then I had gradually realized that he had the devil of a lot of good qualities. From that I had come to have a bit of a liking for him, and now I was being the world’s worst disciplinarian. I could even say, when he left my room, that there, but for the grace of God, went Ludovic Travers. I could even begin wondering if his career could be saved after all. Soon I was going further and wondering if I could anyhow smooth over the situation between Craye and his aunt.

  But I could see no way of doing that, and then I began to feel the obvious reaction, and be furiously angry with young Craye for the mess into which he had landed both himself and myself. Nor did I see why I should lose the friendship of his aunt for the sake of one who had behaved so badly. Then, of course, I began wondering what sort of girl the wife was.

  That evening I did something else that only a fool would have done. I saw young Craye and took him down town in my car. I saw his wife and I liked her enormously; indeed I had the idea that that marriage would do the pair of them an enormous deal of good. What I didn’t see was how I could smooth things over with the aunt. Later on a way was to present itself, and the circumstances were some of the strangest in my brief career.

  On that eve of Wharton’s return something else happened. I caught sight of Passenden in Dalebrink. There was no mistaking him, but I couldn’t stop my car as I was taking young Craye back to Camp. That night it slipped my mind that I ought to have informed the local superintendent, and then we had an air-raid which kept me up half the night, and in the morning I slept late. When I did get in touch with the local police I was informed that Wharton was already on his way back.

  CHAPTER XV

  The
Finding of Brende

  IT was in the early evening when Wharton turned up at the Camp. Not only did he look worried but he was just the least bit peevish.

  “Any luck at all?” I asked him.

  “Yes,” he said. “Damn bad luck, and nothing else. Couldn’t clap my hand on Passenden, even though I had him as near as dammit. All over the place he was, and when I thought I’d caught up with him, away he’d be. Then yesterday morning I lost him altogether. Couldn’t hang about there all my life, so I thought I’d come back and try another tack.”

  “When you say you lost him, what do you mean?” I asked.

  “What I say,” he told me grumpily. “We’d follow up a trail and find where he’d spent the night. He’d be away and gone and by the time we’d found out which way, he’d be gone again. Devil of a country to get lost in too. Like wandering about in the Alps.”

  Well, I had to get it over, so I took a deep breath and blurted out.

  “I saw Passenden in Dalebrink last night,” I said. “When I rang the local police they told me you were coming back here. That was at about noon to-day.”

  You never saw such a look as he gave me. At first it fairly blasted me, then it turned to the most pitiable reproach. At my excuses and explanations the look became merely more reproachful.

  “Saw him last night,” he said, and clicking his tongue. “Where did you see him?”

  “He was walking,” I said. “Just as I caught sight of him he turned down some side street or other. I couldn’t even be sure of telling you which.”

  There was another click of the tongue.

  “Every theory knocked to blazes,” he said, and then all at once his eyes were popping. He raised a finger as for silence, and then was helping himself to the phone. It was the local superintendent to whom he spoke, and he wanted to know if Major Passenden was staying at the same hotel as before. The information and anything else relevant was to be sent at once to the Camp number.