by Eric Ambler
“It was kind of you.” The belated acknowledgement came in a friendly tone. Then a suspicion took the warmth from her voice. “What are you doing here?”
“I had to see you. About Brussels. There was no time to write, so I came out on the chance.”
She looked completely mystified. “Why should you want to”
“To warn you.” It tumbled out as if that had been his sole purpose. “I wanted to reach you before the police.”
“The police! What on earth are you talking about?”
“I was afraid you mightn’t have heard,” he said. “Kusitch is dead.”
“Kusitch?” She frowned impatiently. “Let me get it clearly. Somebody named Kusitch is dead. Is that what you said?”
“Yes. He was taken from the Risler-Moircy. He was murdered. The Brussels police found his body in the Bois de la Cambre.”
“Kusitch?”
“Yes. Shot through the head.”
“And my name is Ruth Meriden? Is that right?”
“Let us be serious, Miss Meriden,” he suggested. “This man was on the plane from Athens to Brussels. He had your address written down in a Green Line Coach Guide. Also he was carrying a review of your show at the Blandish Gallery.”
“This address?” The girl seemed genuinely puzzled. “You mean he was coming here to see me? If he was that interested, why didn’t he speak to me on the plane?” She shrugged helplessly. “I never heard of anyone named Kusitch. Am I supposed to have done so?”
“You may have known him by another name.” “I knew no one on the plane. Did you say he was a Greek?”
“I said he joined the plane at Athens. He was from Yugoslavia, from Dubrovnik. And you’ve just come from Dubrovnik, haven’t you?”
“Yes, I have. What about it?” Her voice rose. “What is all this?”
“That’s what I want to find out, Miss Meriden. I came here in the hope that you might be able to tell me.”
She surveyed him coolly. Then she put her hand out and stopped the revolving pagoda.
“What exactly do you want, Mr. Maclaren?” she said curtly.
“Doctor Maclaren,” he corrected her.
The absurdity of the correction was to occur to him later. At that moment it was important that she should find him a responsible person. The word “Doctor” always reassured displaced persons.
It did not reassure Miss Meriden. She looked faintly but not agreeably amused.
“Is that what the police call you?” she inquired.
Andrew stared at her. “The police?”
She nodded. “You must know the kind of thing,” she said sweetly: “’John Smith, alias Andrew Maclaren, alias The Doctor. Poses as medical man or art critic. Works new version of old Spanish prisoner confidence trick using mysterious Yugoslav as bait.’ How much are you after, Dr. Maclaren, and where do I send the money?”
For a moment he stared at her speechlessly. Then he exploded.
“Well, of all the confounded impertinence,” he began.
She turned away contemptuously. “’Blusters when challenged,’” she added. “Have you any proofs of your identity? Of course you must have. False passport and false identity card all complete. Well now, Doctor-or should it be ‘Doc’?-do you get out or do I call the police?”
For a space of about ten seconds he stood there silent. He was shaking with anger now and could feel the blood tingling away from his face. With an effort he brought his voice under control.
“I think you’d better call the police,” he said. She glanced at him over her shoulder. “Aren’t you taking things a little too far, Doc?”
He felt in his pocket. “I’m going to take them a great deal farther, Miss Meriden. As far as I’m concerned you can go to blazes’ and stay there, but you’re going to apologise to me first. Now then..” He put the contents of his breast pocket on the bench. “Passport and identity card, forged of course, but nice pieces of work. Then there’s a document accrediting me to the International Red Cross organisation. Again forged. And there’s this letter appointing me to the staff of the Kingsland Road Eye Hospital. That’s a risky one, of course, because you can easily telephone the hospital and check on it. But the bluff usually works. Take a look, Miss Meriden.”
She was watching him now. His eye met hers. Then she stepped forward and, picking up the papers, glanced through them quickly. He watched her vindictively. When she came to the letter she paused, then went back to the beginning of it and read again.
“Well?” he demanded.
Suddenly she began to laugh.
He stared at her angrily.
She went on laughing. “Oh dear, oh dear,” she gasped, “my dear Dr. Maclaren, I do apologise, but really…” A fresh paroxysm seized her. “I’m truly sorry,” she managed at last, “but you must see how funny it is… ‘Blusters when challenged.’… Oh dear! I am so sorry…”
And then Andrew began to laugh too.
After a bit it was arranged that he should stay to lunch.
Over the pie, which emerged eventually from the oven, he told her the story from the beginning. But when he paused expectantly at the point where the Mary Isabella came into it, she looked blank.
“I still don’t see what all this has to do with me,” she said. “Is the Mary Isabella important?”
“Well, it should be. It’s a yawl-rigged fishing craft and your father bought it in Yugoslavia before the war.”
“My father?”
“Isn’t John Quayle Meriden your father?” She sighed wearily and without replying got up from the table.
“What’s the matter? Isn’t he your father?”
She gripped the back of a chair firmly. “My father,” she said a trifle bitterly, “died when I was five. John Meriden was my uncle and my guardian.”
“Was?”
“He died four months ago. I am his heiress.”
“Oh.”
She flung an arm out dramatically. “You see this house?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Mine. You saw that rubbish in the grounds?”
“It was difficult to miss.”
“Mine.” She sat down again somewhat violently and leaned across the remains of the pie. “Uncle John,” she said venomously, “was what polite people call an eccentric. In fact, he was what the Americans call a jerk. He made his money betting on the Stock Exchange. He was on the lunatic fringe. He bought anything he thought looked like a bargain-anything worthless going cheap. Where near-idiots feared to tread, Uncle John clumped in with both feet. But when any near-idiot would have lost his shirt-if you can follow the metaphors-Uncle John, the full and complete idiot, hit the jackpot. Not once, but four times! He’d have soon lost the lot again, of course, in the ordinary way and serve the old fool right. Unfortunately, he had an honest stockbroker to deal with and this idealist absolutely refused to handle any more of Uncle John’s fancy business. He said it was silly. Either Uncle John put his fancy money in some decent securities or he could take his account elsewhere. In what must have been Uncle John’s last moment of sanity, he agreed. But that was his last moment. From then on he became the world’s number one bargain-hunting nitwit. Anything going cheap he bought. You see this house? A fleabite! There’s stuff all over the world as far as I can see. Bargains! It was snuffboxes one week, anchors the next. A steam yacht, a 1922 Grand Prix racing car… do you know why I went to Yugoslavia?” “I was wondering that.”
“He even bought a palace! A palace! I ask you! That’s why I had to go. There’s the Yugoslav Bureau of Alien Property mixed up in it. I had to go in person to agree to an inventory and sign papers. We’ll end up by owing them money of course. You see, he collected lawsuits as well.”
“What about fishing boats?”
“Wait a minute. I’m trying to think. Zavrana’s the port near this ridiculous palace of his-of mine that is. Uncle John was at Zavrana with the yacht, Moonlight. Moonlight! A silly great tub of a thing that ran away with a fortune. If I wanted a few pound
s for schooling, you’d have thought I was asking for the earth. But he spent enough on Moonlight in a week to educate an army. There wouldn’t have been a penny left if the Admiralty hadn’t requisitioned her during the war. Luckily she was sunk, so it may not be so bad in the end. Uncle John wouldn’t settle for the compensation they offered, but I shall. At least I think so. Nobody knows yet whether the estate’s bankrupt or solvent.”
“Isn’t there anyone who can help you?”
“There’s Aunt Clara in Brussels.”
“Is that the one who met you at the airport?”
“Yes, but she’s nearly as dotty as Uncle John.”
“What about Mary Isabella?”
“Oh yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to run on so. I’ve been thinking. There was something about a boat. The Yugoslavs wanted to know if Uncle John had taken it to England with Moonlight.”
“And did he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Perhaps he did. Kusitch must have thought it was here if he’d come all the way here to look for it.”
“But how do you know he was looking for it?” she asked.
“I’m guessing. Did your uncle never mention the boat at any time?”
She sighed. “He mentioned so many things. There might be a note about it in one of his diaries.” “Diaries?”
It seemed that, characteristically, Uncle John had been an inveterate diarist. For years he had made it a habit to write down all the dullest happenings in his life from day to day. If he had ever heard of the craft again, he would surely have recorded the fact. The difficulty would be to comb through the books. There were quite a number of them.
“They’re in the Battery Office downstairs,” Ruth Meriden explained. “The gunners left some useful shelving. Shall we go down?”
The room was small and overcrowded. A pine folding table of a stark military pattern was straining under the weight of ceramics and more statuary. Great jars that looked like stage properties for the Forty Thieves stood on the floor, and there were a few broken chairs to complete the junk-shop effect. The shelving climbed all the way up one wall and it was piled with a varied collection of books in heavy bindings. Stacked against the other walls, or leaning here and there in solitary state, were great oil paintings in monstrous gilt frames. A portly figure in mayoral fur and chains of office stared challengingly across at another portly figure in a navy blue jacket and white yachting cap.
“Uncle John,” Ruth Meriden explained.
“Both of them?”
“Both of them.”
The man had a terrifying jauntiness, and an equally terrifying complacency. The twinkle in the eye and the cocksureness of the carriage told you that life must have been lots of fun for John Quayle Meriden, though the obstinate mouth and the idiot-blue eyes might make you doubt whether it had been quite so funny for the people who had had to deal with him. You could be sure, anyway, that he had exacted some devotion to his interests. He looked very well fed and cared for. Someone had polished up that chain of office till it shone. Someone had pressed those nautical slacks till they were fit for the commodore of any fleet. He was king baby with a teething ring suspended from his neck. He was mother’s little sailor boy just before he was sick over his nice new uniform. He was egotism incarnate. He had been, as Miss Meriden had indicated, a jerk.
The diaries were readily distinguishable from the rest of the books. They were of a quarto shape issued annually by a firm of stationers, and quite uniform except for slight variations in binding style over the years. They stood together neatly and in chronological order. They went back to 1912, and reached forward to the current year.
It was a formidable collection, but Andrew could console himself with the thought that he would not have to go back beyond the start of the war in 1939 for possible references to the yawl.
“I haven’t much spare time just now, but I’ll help you as much as I can,” Ruth Meriden said. “It’s going to be quite a job, isn’t it? You’d better take some of the books back to town with you.”
This trustfulness, this confidence in him, was an agreeable development, but he had to admit it was offset by the hint that, now that the joke was over, he had better hurry about his business and leave her to her work. He made a pile of diaries, and she found a piece of string for him.
“If the police call on you,” he said, “there’ll be no need to tell them about the yawl. Unless they ask you specifically about the registration number.”
“Why should we hold anything back?” she demanded.
He had no wish to discuss his motive, his disgust with Jordaens and his determination to teach the fellow a lesson.
“We ought to find out the meaning of the yawl,” he asserted; “try to discover why Kusitch was so interested.”
“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “We might get some information from Captain Braithwaite. He used to be skipper of Moonlight. He lives at Thames Ditton these days.”
He rose to it eagerly. “Is he on the phone?”
“Yes, but I’m not. I had it cut off.” She smiled enchantingly. “So you see I couldn’t really have called the police. I’ll come down to the village with you on your way home. We’ll call him from the post office.”
Here was another hint that she was bustling him off, but he had no cause for complaint. She was being helpful. She also jotted down his address and telephone number, in case she needed it. She looked at her watch. She knew the coach times by heart. He would be able to catch the three-sixteen. That would allow ample time for everything, if they started fairly soon. She walked him rapidly to the post office, got Captain Braithwaite on the telephone, then handed over the instrument. “You talk to him,” she said.
The Skipper remembered the yawl quite clearly, and what he had to say confirmed the final details of Charley Botten’s story. John Meriden had wanted the craft for use as a tender, but it had never been brought into commission. It had been drawn up on a slip at Zavrana and was undergoing repairs when John Meriden bought it. The repairs were still under way when the war broke out, and John Meriden had sailed away hastily in the Moonlight, abandoning the newly bought tender.
“Most likely the Italians grabbed it when they overran the coast,” Captain Braithwaite said. “If so, they probably beat the insides out of it. In any case, it would cost more than it’s worth to recover it. You tell Miss Meriden she’d better write it off. Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t at the bottom of the Adriatic.”
“You don’t think Mr. Meriden brought it back to England?”
“I’d be amazed if he did. Anyway, I wouldn’t know. We had a quarrel on that voyage home, and I left him to do a job of work for the Navy. I never spoke to him again. I never wanted to. What are you, a lawyer of his?”
“No. A friend of Miss Meriden’s. If her uncle had recovered the yawl, have you any idea where he would have moored it?”
“Son, you take a map and stick a pin in it. Left to that fellow, it might be among the houseboats of Srinagar or in the middle of the Gobi Desert. Tell Miss Meriden not to bother about it. It wouldn’t be worth a Chinese dollar today. Ask her to speak to me.”
Her contribution to the conversation seemed to be mainly laughter. He watched her face through the glass side of the booth. Most people looked quite ugly when they laughed. Oddly enough, she didn’t.
“Not much help from the old boy,” she commented when she emerged. “Perhaps we should take his advice and forget about the yawl.”
Andrew shook his head. “We’ll forget about it when we know it’s at the bottom of the sea.”
“You must be a good doctor,” she said. “You never give up.”
She walked a little way with him. She asked about his work, and they talked of Greece. The trip to Yugoslavia, she said, had offered her the opportunity to see Greece, otherwise she would have stayed at home.
They parted at the turn into Wyminden Lane, and now she impressed on him that he must hurry. He hurried. He looked back and sa
w her going down the road to Cheriton Shawe. When he looked back a second time she had disappeared. A sudden discontent seized him; but it was a sweet discontent. He hurried.
On the coach to London, he opened one of the diaries and began to read:
Resigned from board of P.H. amp; D.B.- Gave C.H. a piece of my mind.- Not satisfied with Ruth’s school report; money not justified. Fear she is complete blockhead.
He did not go on with the reading. His mind was full of the blockhead. He saw her as he had seen her going back to Cheriton Shawe with the sun in her hair. The image was still with him when he reached home and opened the door of his borrowed flat. It was several seconds before he realised the change in the place. Then his heart gave a bump and he stubbed the toe of one shoe against the rug as he moved forward into the room.
Papers were strewn on the floor, desk drawers turned out, cupboards ransacked. There was the same state of disorder in the bedroom.
As the first sense of shock subsided, he began to think. There had been nothing here, nothing that any sane burglar would want, nothing of any conceivable consequence except the notes Charley Botten had made about the yawl.
He felt hastily in his pockets. Then he remembered that he had tucked the slip of paper away in a pocket. Jacket? No. He had been wearing his dressing gown.
The garment had been cast down on the floor by the intruder. Andrew picked it up and searched in the pockets. The slip of paper had gone.
Eight
For a moment or two the loss seemed a calamity, then Andrew came to his senses. The page from the telephone pad merely recorded certain facts about the fishing craft. For the whereabouts of the craft, if that was what the thieves wanted, they might just as well have followed Captain Braithwaite’s advice and stuck a pin in a map.
The first shock having given way to a feeling of murderous annoyance, Andrew made a careful examination. It was easy to see how the flat had been entered. Anyone who watched for an opportunity could walk into the building unobserved, as the front door was invariably left open during the day. Once the upper landing was gained, the problem presented little difficulty to the intruder. He had merely to split off a section of the doorjamb by the lock and force back the latch with a pliable blade.
