Shroud of Darkness

by E. C. R. Lorac

  “Good. Well, shortly after I left you I went along to Poloni’s for a quick meal, to save having to turn out again. I habitually go there—it’s in the Marylebone Road, just off the Edgware Road. While I was there Garstang asked for me on the phone. He said he’d rung the housekeeper at my chambers and she’d told him I might be at Poloni’s. He wanted to come along and see me when I got home. Well, I may be being quite unreasonable, but I’m rather anxious not to meet Garstang until I’ve looked into things and had a word with you. I’m sorry about that boy—Greville.”

  “What are you sorry about?” asked Macdonald.

  “Why—he’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “No. He’s not dead and he’s not going to die: who told you he was dead?”

  There was only a blurred sound in reply: then a clatter, followed by the rising tone which announced that the receiver had been put down or the lines disconnected.

  Macdonald swore softly and James looked at him with raised eyebrows. “That appears to be that—no more from a call box on the North Circular road—or will he come back?”

  “There are moments when I could consign the automatic telephone system to perdition,” said Macdonald. “You can neither argue with it nor ask why, who, or where.”

  During the next few minutes a lot of instructions went out from the telephone and radio system of Scotland Yard. Police cars in the northwestern area of London heard the call on their H.F. sets, and the cars began to patrol the length of the North Circular road from Willesden to New Southgate: police cars in the West One area turned towards Wimpole Street and Lancaster Gate Crescent. Macdonald, meanwhile, dialled Garstang’s number, but he got no reply. Then a member of the Flying Squad came on the air from Wimpole Street.

  “Calling from 500 Wimpole Street. The houseman says Dr. Garstang must be out; he doesn’t answer his bell. Are we to search his flat—the houseman has a passkey. O.K.?”

  “How the hell did he get out?” growled James. “You’ve got a man outside, haven’t you?”

  Macdonald sat and waited—it was one of those occasions when waiting paid a premium. Then the radio cackled another message.

  “Garstang’s flat is empty, but there’s a fire escape leading from his bedroom window: it goes down to within nine feet of the ground to a yard at the back, and the yard connects with that bombed site in Harley Street. We’re going round there now. Garstang must have got out that way. He didn’t come out into Wimpole Street. Reporting again in five minutes.”

  “He’s beaten it, Jock. He saw the red light and went,” said James.

  Macdonald sat thinking—thinking hard. “The North Circular road . . . I wonder,” he said slowly. “I couldn’t even swear that was Weldon’s voice, the line was muffled . . . but what was the idea? Did he think we should go raging up there ourselves? But with this qualified automatic business, that call might just as well have come from Croydon, or anywhere else in the London area.”

  “En route for the London airport?” murmured James. “I believe he’d have got it taped. Back to Germany again somehow, and pick the old threads up again.”

  “Maybe, but not by air, to my way of thinking,” said Macdonald. “An aircraft’s like a trap to a fugitive. We’ll warn all airports, but I don’t think it’ll be that way.”

  “It won’t matter to Garstang what route he takes. He knows them all,” said James. “If he could seep through German-occupied Europe in wartime, the frontier checks of today won’t worry him any. And I bet the great idea behind that phone call was to make us believe Weldon’s still alive, which he probably isn’t.”

  “You don’t know—and neither do I,” said Macdonald, “but it’s my belief that any fugitive who uses his brains won’t try flying to get out of the country. The cross-channel boat would be a safer bet. It’s easier to ‘seep’ from a seaport than an airport.”

  “Something in that,” agreed James (who had plenty of experience of “seeping” on his own account), “and if he’s done that, he’s been clever. Held us up just long enough to miss the Victoria boat train—the Dunkirk Ferry. Was that the idea?”

  Again Macdonald pondered. “It’s by way of being an idea. . . . We can’t be in more than one place at once, but I feel inclined to put my money on the night boat. I think you’ve got something when you maintain that Garstang will head for Germany—and crossing the Channel’s his first lap.”

  “Well, he’ll probably make it. He knows more about simple disguises than any man I know: he’ll probably embark as an English porter and disembark as a French one,” said James morosely, “and there’s damn all we can do about it.”

  “You’re wrong there. We can do quite a lot,” said Macdonald. “We’ve got to wait for further reports, but I can ginger up the A.C. to ask for co-operation from the R.A.F. They’re always drooling around with their night flying. They can oblige with transport if the right people ask them—and they can land in places the charter companies dare not touch.”

  “Fly to Dover? Well, that’s the evening’s great thought,” said James more cheerfully. “If you make it snappy with the high-ups we can still beat the boat train hollow—and sort things out on the Dunkirk Ferry. Come to think of it, Dunkirk would be a lot more convenient to him than Calais. . . . He won’t risk a sleeper, you know . . . he’ll just walk on. . . .”

  “If you must talk, talk to yourself,” snapped Macdonald.

  2

  It is not often that the C.I.D. asks for the co-operation of the R.A.F. in the matter of transport: once the decision had been taken the arrangements were of the simplest. Within half an hour of the request being made (with the authority of the Commissioner’s Office behind it), Macdonald and Reeves and James were being driven out to Hendon in a police car which had a motorcycle escort preceding it to get the traffic-control officers on their toes. It was an exhilarating ride, speeding northwestwards to the Watford by-pass turn from the Finchley Road, speeding through Hendon and Mill Hill with klaxon sounding and police lights up. Sometimes young hooligans catcalled at them, horrified drivers of other cars pulled into the kerb, bus drivers honked the V. signal on their horns, and pedestrians scuttled out of the way like rabbits.

  “Road-hogging: doing exactly what we tell other people not to,” said Reeves. “If we kill anybody will they bring it in as justifiable homicide?”

  “Cut it out, mate,” grinned the police driver, who was enjoying himself. “The only reason they pay me a bonus is that I can do this sort of thing without killing anybody. Here we are. Beaten my own record. I’d fly the plane for you if the Raf’d let me. I’m hot on night flying—and I tell you it’s a damned sight harder than jumping the traffic lights on an arterial road. There’s your bus: all warmed up. Oh boy, take me, too. . . .”

  It was no sort of joy ride in the aircraft. This was no luxury passenger plane; there were hard let-down seats and no trimmings, and the pilot grinned from ear to ear at the thought of a bunch of policemen as passengers.

  “Twenty minutes or so to Dover and land you on the old crashlanding ground—it’s the nearest we can offer,” he volunteered chattily. “The boys used to pancake their Spits there in ’41—if they were lucky. They’ve laid on transport to get you to the harbour, and emergency landing lights—we hope. Nice night when you’re through the overcast.”

  It was a lovely night: the waxing moon floated serenely over trails of whitest gossamer and starlight glimmered in the ethereal vault, high above the smoke and grime and ground mist of the mighty Wen. Reeves sat silent, not pretending to enjoy the outing: James folded his arms, closed his eyes, and accommodated his person to a hard seat and occasional air pockets. The only time Macdonald spoke was to James.

  “Did they send you photographs of Dorward?” he asked.

  James woke up and grinned unsympathetically. “Yes. They did. Plenty of ’em. So guess again.”

  A few minutes later James added: “Garstang’s seen that boy’s face—without the bandages. He was there when they changed the dressings. Funny to t
hink of: we’ve none of us seen his face—not to say seen it.”

  “No,” said Macdonald. Then he added: “What colour was Dorward’s hair?”

  “Black. Sorry to be so unobliging. Oh God, this is it. How often I’ve wished I had a removeable stomach. This boy’s playing us up for fun. . . .”

  The plane banked, turned, swooped: the passengers lurched, swallowed, held on tight and endured it.

  “No nice comforting air-hostess patter for the likes of us,” said Reeves, “but they’ve obliged with the landing lights. Very good organisation in the time. Are we playing the goat, Jock? It’s a long shot.”

  “It was the only available one,” said Macdonald. “I may kick myself for doing the wrong thing, but I’d have drowned myself if I’d let it go without a try.”

  3

  The C.I.D. men slipped inconspicuously through the customs sheds, after reporting to the local super, and having a look at the county men who were there to co-operate—if there was anything to co-operate about. They had beaten the boat train comfortably, but some passengers had already gone aboard.

  The steamer at the quayside seemed to be garlanded in lights, green and red and white shining out from masthead, from fore and aft, from ports whose reflection glimmered gaily on wet gangway and quay and flickered in long ribbons of reflected radiance on the water which slapped choppily against the steamer’s sides.

  Macdonald left Reeves and James tucked away behind customs and passport officers respectively, reflecting that it certainly wasn’t easy to evade the shepherding of authority on the approach to a Channel steamer:

  “Passports ready, please”—pass between two watchful though seemingly futile officials who handled passports without appearing to examine them—and “Pass along please” again and hand the same passport to another officer whose examination of it appeared to be quite chancy or perfunctory—or both.

  “Customs, please. Is this all your luggage? How much English money have you? Any jewellery?” The customs officers did at last look at their customers: their watchful eyes often seemed more concerned with the faces of those they questioned than with their baggage.

  Macdonald, in borrowed oilskin and sou’wester, went and stood on the quayside and watched the passengers embark up the gangway. There weren’t a great many—this cold December night held no attractions for tourists, and prosperous persons preferred the warm brevity of an air passage. A few porters carried baggage on board, and Macdonald found himself agreeing with James that a porter’s disguise would be a brilliant idea on a night crossing—the bowed figures with their rather shapeless clothes and peaked caps well down over their faces looked so anonymous.

  Despite all his years of experience Macdonald was conscious of a stirring of excitement: he was taking a chance, backing a hunch, having arranged matters his own way. It might be a complete flop. There was a perfectly good chance that Weldon might be lying in a coma—or dead—in some hidden corner near the North Circular road: that Garstang might be walking round and round the Outer Circle. But there was still the slim chance that one—or both—might be aboard this steamer.

  The arrivals thinned out, ceased. Reeves and James, also in oilskins, went aboard, and Macdonald went last up the gangway, just before it was withdrawn, and a few minutes later the vessel vibrated softly and began to slip away from the quayside. Reeves and James had their own instructions: one stood near the Passport Office, where passengers had to show their papers and get their landing tickets; one was searching the passengers’ quarters, quietly and unobtrusively. Macdonald avoided the brightly lighted alleyways, saloons, and buffets. He moved forward, towards the shadows in the bows, disregarded by any member of the crew. Here in the open, quite unsheltered, a thin, cold mizzle of rain blew spitefully, and spray flew up when a choppy sea smacked the ship’s sides as she cleared the shelter of harbour. Ashore, lights twinkled out, gay and confident—an abiding delight to any man who remembered the dour negative of wartime blackout. Macdonald leant over the rail and realised he was enjoying himself—which was no part of his programme. He would probably have to fly back in a few hours’ time, having spent a futile vigil on the English Channel, and his first job tomorrow would be to interrogate the surly farmer who was being brought to London by Fordworthy on the night train.

  As he pondered over his case, Macdonald became aware that the shore lights had faded out, that the vessel was lifting to a choppy sea, and that no passenger at all had chosen to brave the chill drizzle and cutting wind as the steamer left the shelter of the cliffs and ploughed stubbornly towards mid-channel. Moving aft a little, on a deck whose angle was abrupt and ever-changing, Macdonald found the shelter of the superstructure and leant his back against the bulkhead, where he was concealed by deep shadows. There was a high sea running now, and the sturdy craft was pitching as well as rolling: with legs well astride, back to the bulkhead, he swung easily with the roll of the vessel and thanked his stars he had never felt seasick. In the spumey darkness he thought over his case, visualising every move in it with an imaginative faculty which was the essence of a detective’s mind.

  Macdonald believed his quarry was making a bolt for it—alarmed through no move of the C.I.D. The alarm, if it had been given, had probably been through the medium of a telephone message, an enquiry, perhaps: a name mentioned when that name was held to be long forgotten. If that theory were sound, there might well be two fugitives on the cross-channel steamer tonight.

  Macdonald could produce a straight narrative, with logical reasons to explain every event in the tangled story he had pieced together: he believed he knew what had happened, from the night of the Plymouth blitz to the night when Dick Greville was knocked out at Paddington Station. But like every policeman, he knew that his own beliefs were valueless: what he wanted was evidence: he was here, on the Dunkirk Ferry steamer on a dirty December night, because he hoped for the one item of evidence which could give substance to his own theories.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  MACDONALD had been standing in the darkness for over an hour, with the crash of the sea and the whistle of the wind as a background to his thoughts, before he realised that somebody else was moving forward of him, close to the rail, in the bleak bitterness of the night. He could just make out a man’s form as a blacker blackness against the murky sky. At first he thought it might be one of the crew, but then he saw the man sit down on a bollard, with his arms braced against the rail. A thought flashed into Macdonald’s mind: “I suppose a man who is a strong swimmer might risk jumping for it once we reached the lee of the jetty: on a night like this he wouldn’t be seen and he might make it. For a powerful swimmer it wouldn’t be any more hazardous than jumping from a train, and plenty of good blokes escaped that way.”

  Even as he thought of it, Macdonald hoped very much that nothing would compel him to jump overboard after a fugitive that night: no matter how near the shore, the prospect was singularly uninviting. His thoughts went to Reeves and James: he knew just what they would be trying to do if they had spotted their quarries on board: far from challenging them, the two wily detectives would be shepherding the suspects fore, towards Macdonald in the bows, not obviously, but by the method of showing that accommodation aft was being patrolled. The two C.I.D. men would urge their suspects forward in the manner of well-trained sheep dogs, with never a bark or a snap, just by patrolling aft, apparently seeing nothing, certainly saying nothing: just obtaining the required result by the menace of their presence.

  And then, at long last, Macdonald believed his hunch was justifying itself: a second man had moved quietly forward, towards the unsheltered bows, whose only merit on this night was darkness and probable solitude.

  Feeling silently in the shadows, Macdonald found the end of a rope locker—doubtless used as a seat by passengers on sunny summer days—and he crouched down beside it: from here he could see the blurred silhouette of the figure squatting on the bollard. The second man stood still for a moment, feet well apart, braced to swim with the ro
ll of the vessel; then, as another rain squall blew spitefully across the deck, he moved aft towards the bulkhead and sat down on the locker within a yard of where Macdonald was crouching. Leaning close to the shelter of the deckhouse, he struck a match between his cupped hands and for a second or two his face was illuminated fantastically as he lighted a cigarette: it was Garstang’s face. Macdonald saw his sharp profile before the match blew out, and then saw it again more faintly in the red glow from his cigarette.

  2

  It was not only Macdonald who saw Garstang’s face; the man sitting on the bollard stood up, steadied himself by the rails, and then moved aft towards the bulkhead and stood against it.

  “So it’s you, Garstang—going while the going’s good.”

  The voice came clearly to Macdonald’s ears, so close were all three men together in the shadows and spray and driven sleet.

  “I don’t know that the going’s particularly good for either of us,” retorted Garstang’s ironical voice. “There wasn’t time to argue. I realised—much too late—that there was a fifty-fifty chance of proving the truth if I got to a certain place before you did. Scotland Yard’s out after both of us, as you probably realise—but I’ve been in a tighter corner than this and managed to wriggle out. I admit that it’s a matter of which of us gets there first.”

  “I don’t know what in hell you’re talking about,” rejoined the other, “but I’ve every reason to believe you knocked Greville out because he recognised you—remembered where he’d seen you before. But there’s a chance I’m wrong, and I wasn’t going to put my facts before the police till I’d proved my point. If you can prove to me that you weren’t at Paddington Station last Monday evening I’ll throw my hand in—the rest doesn’t matter.”

  “It doesn’t matter where I was last Monday evening,” said Garstang impatiently. “The C.I.D. and M.I.5. are both barking up the wrong tree, though they’ve got the right facts if they could only correlate them.”