by Eric Ambler
Andrew decided that the question was not one he need answer. He asked: “Are you still in M.I. five?” “Resigned years ago,” Charley answered. “I’m in business. Anyway it wasn’t M.I. five.”
“What I really mean is do you still go in for ciphers and puzzles and things?”
“Certainly. I’m a stockbroker. What can I do for you?”
“I want to see you urgently. May I call? I’ve got something I can’t make out.”
“So have I. I think it’s ulcers but it may be a delayed hangover. Come along at once.”
Face to face with his caller, Mr. Botten was more cordial. He listened to some account of Mr. Kusitch and then examined the enigma in the Coach Guide. He was an expert of experts; he had volumes of information in his head and quite a small library within reach, but he shook his head over that SS 729.
“You say this fellow Kusitch tracks down war loot?” he said. “If that’s true, this sequence may be merely the catalogue number of a museum piece.”
“I don’t know,” Andrew answered. “I think there’s more to it. I think it’s the thing he wanted to hide, though why he should write it down if it means anything dangerous, I can’t make out. He could have memorised it.”
“Probably no head for figures.” Mr. Botten laughed with the good-natured tolerance of those who have no heads for anything else. “Let’s look at it this way. He makes these notes in the Guide, thinking they’ll be safe enough in the normal course. Then he is forced off the normal course when he has to spend the night in Brussels. Suddenly, while you’re preparing to go out to dine, he remembers the Guide, gets a bit nervous about it, and shoves it under the carpet. It may not be all that important, but he doesn’t want to carry it on him or have anyone fool round with it while he’s absent. Didn’t he give you any hint about it in his talk?”
“Nothing that I can remember, except that he lives in Dubrovnik, or did.”
“What has that to do with it?”
“Probably nothing. Dubrovnik’s a port.” “I’m quite aware of that. Where’s the connection?”
“I did think at first that the SS might stand for steamship.”
“It might stand for Schutzstaffel. The figures could represent a unit or a regimental number. It ties up with the Nazis and their loot.”
Andrew objected. “I’ve an idea it has something to do with this country; that it ties up with the address and the timetable.”
Charley Botten wrote the symbols down on the back of an envelope and glared at them.
“I can’t get the idea of this search for loot out of my head,” he said. “The catalogue number is quite feasible. The SS could be a sign for sculptures. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” He had not said anything about Ruth Meriden or the review of her show, and he was reluctant to start on further explanations. “You’re probably right,” he said. “No doubt Kusitch had to deal with sculptures.”
“He also had to deal with thugs. If I were you, chum, I’d forget all about the business. If something has happened to your pal Kusitch you don’t want it happening to you.”
Andrew laughed. “You were too long with M.I. whatever-it-is. If you’re not careful, you’ll be seeing cloak-and-dagger men round every dark corner.”
“A few days ago you were seeing them in Brussels in broad daylight.”
“They gave up when I went to the police.”
“That’s what you think. I wouldn’t be too sure.”
“Anyway, that was Brussels.”
“And this is London. Splendid! If the prospect doesn’t appal you, let’s go out and sample some English cooking. Unless you’d prefer a moussaka? You’re dining with me.”
It was after eleven when the two parted and Mr. Botten’s hangover had been treated. Andrew took the Central Line to Holland Park, and came up in the lift with quite a crowd of passengers. He liked the underground. It was home, it was London. For the first time since his return he had the feeling of being absorbed by the throng. These people who pressed into the lift were Londoners. They couldn’t be anything else. They conveyed to him a friendliness from which he had been away too long. Charley Botten would say it was all imagination, or sentimentality. He would deny that London was any safer than Brussels, but Charley had become cynical. That war job of his had warped him, distorted his perspective. How could one not feel safe among these friendly people? Of course they might murder one another occasionally, but not in the underground, not in crowded lifts or busy streets. Not very often, anyway. This was London.
Andrew maintained the lyrical mood for a couple of hundred yards along Holland Park Avenue. Then, as he waited to cross the road, he had a twinge of uneasiness. There was a man on the curb a few yards away from him, and Andrew could have sworn that he had seen the same fellow in the lift. One of the friendly ones; a jolly-faced man of forty-five or so with smiling eyes; a small man, getting portly. When the traffic lights changed, he crossed the road behind Andrew, but surely there was nothing in that to worry about? It was a free road. Anyone could choose which side he walked on.
The friendly one loitered at a bus stop for a moment or two, but merely to light a cigarette. When Andrew looked back, he was about fifty yards behind. Andrew turned off the main road. Instead of going on along the avenue, Jolly-Face turned, too, and, by the time he rounded the next corner, he had closed the gap a little.
It was absurd to think there was anything in it. Plenty of people lived in Holland Park; quite a lot in Pemberley Crescent, and Jolly-Face could be one of them.
This was London. Unworthy suspicion must be banished. It arose, of course, as a result of the Brussels incident and the melodramatic nonsense of Charley Botten.
Andrew tried to clear his mind of the nonsense, but every time he looked back the man was still there, and there was no one else in sight. Not another soul in all the long street.
A few more yards and Andrew could no longer frame arguments to counter his uneasiness. A few more and the situation was no longer merely odd; it was a little frightening. There was a stretch now where a street lamp had failed. There were shadows under overhanging trees. There were lightless houses and dark, ominous gardens behind closed gates. Andrew fought against a desire to accelerate his pace. He heard the footsteps coming along behind him, keeping an even distance. One shoe rasped slightly with each step as if a metal protector had been driven into the sole. Except for their footsteps, the two progressed in a pocket of silence. The noise of traffic along Holland Park Avenue was a distant murmur, and the two moved on into deeper silence. Not a single car came round the curve of Pemberley Crescent. The next time Andrew looked back he saw the man throw away his cigarette. It tossed up a little spray of sparks when it hit the roadway.
Then Jolly-Face began to whistle a tune, and he repeated it over and over. At first Andrew could not identify it; after a few repetitions he recognised it as a phrase from Till Eulenspiegel. The whistler was trying to work it up into something, but he was not very musical.
The tension in Andrew eased. That human trick of whistling seemed to make the fellow less formidable. And Andrew was also comforted by the thought that there were only a few more yards to go. Then, with an accession of confidence, he wondered if he should go on, past the house. If the whistler were really following him, it must be to mark where he lived, for the man had made no attempt to catch up with him.
For a moment Andrew thought of going back to Holland Park Avenue and leading the fellow a chase by bus and tube and taxi with the object of throwing him off. He was in front of the house now. He hesitated. Light from the hall came dimly through the ribbed glass panels of the heavy door. Shadows moved in front of the panels and two men came down the steps. There was no longer any choice for Andrew. He knew the taller of the two men at once, and the recognition left him rigid, momentarily incapable of movement. He stood with one foot advanced, waiting, staring. Inspector Jordaens wore a sparely cut raincoat that had the effect of emphasising his leanness, and his hat-a black fel
t with a high crown and a very narrow brim-conveyed an immediate suggestion of something alien. He raised it courteously.
“Good evening, Dr. Maclaren. We have been waiting for you for some time.”
As Andrew moved forward Jolly-Face passed. He stopped whistling and glanced at the three figures on the steps. Then he was gone. A few yards beyond the house he resumed his musical experiment. The rhythmic theme from Till Eulenspiegel died away in the distance.
Inspector Jordaens introduced the shorter man. “This is my friend Detective-Sergeant Stock of Scotland Yard. We have been trying to make contact with you all the evening, Dr. Maclaren.”
It did not take any special gift to know what was coming. Andrew could have shaped the answer for himself as he asked the obvious question.
“What do you want with me?”
“Perhaps you will be good enough to invite us inside. It is about your friend Kusitch. His body was found in the Bois de la Cambre early this morning. I have been studying very closely the statement you gave me in Brussels. I wish to ask you some more questions.”
Six
Inspector Jordaens was a very painstaking man. It was after three o’clock in the morning before he left.
Kusitch had been shot through the head but other, less pleasant, things had happened to him first. Jordaens had a theory but it only made things more mystifying. The kidnappers, he thought, had not taken Kusitch from the hotel bedroom merely to murder him. If that had been their aim, they could have accomplished it without going to all the trouble of smuggling the man out of the Risler-Moircy. And with less risk, the Inspector insisted.
No. It was obvious that Kusitch had been abducted because he possessed some information that the assassins wanted.
“What was that information, Dr. Maclaren?”
Something in the tone, or it may have been in the impassive air of Jordaens, irritated Andrew.
“How should I know? I was not one of the assassins.”
“According to our knowledge, you were the last person to talk to this man; the last to see him alive.”
“Except for the assassins.”
“Assuredly, except for the assassins. The peculiarity, Dr. Maclaren, is that you came to me with the fear that Kusitch was in grave danger.”
“If there is any peculiarity, Inspector, it is that you would not listen to me.”
“Ah, please, Doctor!” Jordaens rustled his notes of the interview at the Commissariat. “But you wouldn’t,” Andrew insisted. “You rejected the idea completely.”
“What convinced you that there was danger?”
“I wasn’t convinced. I told you my reasons: the man’s behaviour, his fear of enemies.”
“Did you tell me everything?”
“Of course I told you everything. Why shouldn’t I have told you?”
“Exactly, Dr. Maclaren. Why?”
The Inspector was watching him with narrowed eyes. The Scotland Yard man was staring gloomily at the carpet.
Andrew experienced a momentary guilty panic. Then he lost his temper. He stood up quickly.
“If you think I had anything to do with it, why don’t you say so?”
The challenge had a startling effect. The Scotland Yard man’s head jerked up. The Inspector looked deeply shocked. It was as if some unacceptable obscenity had been uttered. There was a moment’s embarrassing silence, and then Andrew turned away and poured himself another drink. He heard a faint sigh of exasperation from the Belgian.
“My dear Doctor,” said Jordaens primly, “you misunderstand. Naturally, your own movements have been closely checked. I am quite satisfied that you were here in England at least twenty-four hours before Kusitch died.”
Andrew sat down again. Inspector Jordaens regarded him coldly.
“I merely asked a question, Dr. Maclaren.”
“I beg your pardon,” Andrew said, “I thought you were cross-examining.”
“Please concentrate, Dr. Maclaren. It is a very important point. Are you sure there is nothing you missed in your statement to me? Some little detail, for instance, that may be enlarged by the knowledge you now possess?”
Andrew wanted time to consider. Except for the detail of the Coach Guide, he was sure there was nothing he had withheld, but the Coach Guide had become the all-important factor. He sipped his drink. The man from Scotland Yard was staring at him with expressionless eyes. Jordaens cleared his throat.
“I want you to think hard, Dr. Maclaren. You collected the articles left in the bathroom. Did it not occur to you to look in the bedroom for other things that Kusitch might have neglected?”
“I glanced round when I entered from the corridor. I saw nothing.
“That was the first time you entered the bedroom.”
“I made that quite clear in my Brussels statement.”
The Inspector made the pages of the statement rustle again. “Yes, I see you did,” he agreed. “Yes, yes.” Reading, he turned the pages. Then he looked up sharply.
“I have it that you went back to the hotel from the air terminal after cancelling your seat on the morning plane.”
“Yes.”
The Inspector went on reading. An itch ran over Andrew’s body in the intolerable pause.
“Exactly.” Jordaens cleared his throat again. “You went back to see if any word had come in from Kusitch. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“We have since had talks with the hotel staff. You revisited the bedroom, saying you had forgotten something. You entered by way of the bathroom and bolted the door against the chambermaid. Why did you do that?”
“I didn’t want the maid to follow me. I had an idea that Kusitch might have been murdered in his room. I wanted to look in the clothes cupboard.”
“So!” Jordaens forced a small measure of geniality into his voice. “I was sure you would have a perfectly reasonable explanation. But why not say?”
Andrew had a deep mistrust of that affability. He answered sharply, “I didn’t see what there was to say. It was absurd, the idea of expecting to find a body in the cupboard.”
“Possibly.” The Inspector shrugged away this lay opinion. “Am I then to understand that you had no other reason for revisiting the bedroom?”
“No. There was another reason.”
It had to come out now. He must hand over the Coach Guide. The circumstance of murder made that imperative. For better or worse, Inspector Jordaens was the man in charge of the investigation.
“Yes, Dr. Maclaren?”
“I had remembered something,” Andrew confessed. “I saw Kusitch push an envelope under the carpet in his room. I wanted to see if it was still there. I thought it might contain money. I believed that if it were no longer there it would be proof that Kusitch had left of his own free will.”
There was a silence and, for Andrew, an accusation in every moment of it.
“It was there,” he said. “But it wasn’t what I expected. It was an English timetable, for the Green Line coaches.”
The Scotland Yard man made a movement. A gleam of interest showed in his eyes.
Jordaens was severe. “Why did you not tell me of this in Brussels?”
“Because you treated me as if I had been imagining things.”
“An entirely false impression. I cannot accept it, Dr. Maclaren.”
“I don’t care a damn whether you accept it or not,” Andrew said calmly, “I’m telling you the facts. I thought myself that this business of the Coach Guide was fantastic. I was afraid you would dismiss the whole story if I told you about it.”
“What has become of the Coach Guide? I hope you are not about to tell me that you threw it away?”
Andrew took it from his pocket and handed it over. “You’ll find some marks on page one-three-eight,” he said. “And this was inside it.” He produced the art criticism from his wallet. “I wasn’t aware of it till I was on the plane for London,” he added.
Jordaens studied the page, then read the cutting. Detective-Sergeant S
tock was interested enough to rise and look over the Belgian’s shoulder.
“Ruth Meriden!” the Inspector exclaimed. “That is the name of the woman who was on the plane from Athens. She proceeded by the morning flight to London.” He referred to his notebook. “Also, she stayed at the Hotel Risler-Moircy. You knew that, Dr. Maclaren?”
“Yes.” Andrew felt uncomfortable under the probing gaze. “It’s curious,” he added.
“We learn, my gifted colleague and I, that things so reasonable and logical are not to be characterised as curious.”
The gifted colleague, back in his chair, nodded glumly.
“The Risler-Moircy,” Jordaens announced, “was one of the few hotels that could offer accommodation to the air line. Therefore, you will be wrong, Dr. Maclaren, to conjure on the theme of a contrived coincidence.”
“I’m not conjuring on anything,” Andrew said irritably. “I just think it’s curious that Kusitch should have had in his possession that cutting about a fellow passenger.”
“But what is more likely? Kusitch is interested in art. This lady is an artist. He is on his way to England. Perhaps he hopes to see her work, to become acquainted. He has noticed her name on the list of passengers, and”-the Inspector produced a rather astonishing leer-”I understand the lady is quite personable. You observed that yourself, Dr. Maclaren?”
“Yes, I did. All right then, the cutting’s unimportant.”
“It may be so. You knew this lady?”
“I don’t know anything about her.”
“No? You did not even speak to her?”
Andrew felt a tightening sensation in his stomach.
“I spoke to her at the airport, if that’s what you mean. She seemed to be in some difficulty with a porter. I offered my help.”
“As you might have done to any lady in distress, young or old.” Jordaens achieved a dry chuckle. “By coincidence, your little encounter was observed. We have always a detective on duty at the airport. By another coincidence, the same man was given the task of guarding you when you left my office. He remembered you.”
There were enough coincidences to bring a prickle of sweat to Andrew’s scalp.
