“I’m just wondering, Algy, if I’m being a complete halfwit, or if I’m not. By the way, Andrews did say, didn’t he, that one of his minions was going to be on guard outside Dinard’s door tonight?”
“He did, and there he is. Further, there is one on guard in the corridor. I’ve just been up to fill my cigarette case and I saw ’em.”
“Good. Then let’s go to bed. I’ve probably got the mental jitters.”
* * *
—
It was half an hour later that the door of Algy’s room opened. He had just smashed his tooth glass with his slipper, in an unsuccessful attempt to swat a mosquito, and was engaged in picking up the fragments when Drummond came in.
“Unless I’m much mistaken, Algy,” he remarked quietly, “strange things will be abroad tonight.”
The other one stared. “What sort of things?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” said Drummond. “So the curtain goes up on a completely unknown play.”
“You annoying blighter,” cried Algy, “can’t you be a bit more explicit?”
“I can’t,” answered Drummond simply. “I give you my word of honor, I’m completely in the dark.”
* * *
—
And he still was the following morning, when by ones and twos the guests drifted into breakfast. For nothing had happened in the night, except that, in common with most of the others, he had been bitten by a mosquito. Once in the distance he thought he had heard the sound of a motor being started and driven away; beyond that, nothing had occurred. And with the coming of dawn he had slept.
Breakfast over, he strolled out of doors—followed by an openly derisive Algy. And outside the open window of the billiard room, he paused and looked through at Billy arranging his Army, now dry, in new formations, whilst fresh victims were being prepared for Stedman’s art. Then, still in silence, he walked on with Algy beside him.
“What did you think was going to happen, old boy?” asked that worthy for the tenth time. “Or what made you think that anything was going to happen?”
“The Cameron Highlanders,” said Drummond. “Anyone who is sufficiently interested in toy soldiers as to paint them ought to know the color of their kilts. Hullo—what has Andrews got hold of?”
Coming toward them was the Inspector, with one of his men, holding in his hand what seemed to be a long, thin twig.
“Good morning, Captain Drummond,” he cried cheerfully. “What do you make of this?”
On closer inspection, it proved to be part of the top joint of a salmon rod, snapped off about three feet from the end. But the interesting thing was the small attachment. About an inch below the top of the rod was a small muslin box, fastened securely to the rod. The box was about two inches square, and the framework was made of wood with the fabric stretched taut between. To one side was tied a piece of fine string, which passed through the top ring of the rod in the fashion of an ordinary fishing line, and now hung trailing on the ground.
“As you can see,” said Andrews, “when you pull that string, you open the box. And unless you pull the string, the box can’t open because the lid is held in position by that bit of elastic inside.”
“Where did you find it?” asked Drummond.
“Snapped off in the bush which is Jenkins’s hiding place by day. Moreover, it was not there yesterday or he’d have seen it then.”
“Which means it was broken off last night. Any footprints?”
“None. But with the ground like a board, one wouldn’t expect any help in that direction.”
“What do you make of it, Andrews?” said Drummond.
“Since it obviously didn’t get there by itself, there must have been someone prowling around last night carrying the rod of which this is the top. In the darkness it got tangled up in the bush and snapped off, and whatever was inside here escaped. It was something, Captain Drummond, that he intended to poke up from outside through a window in the castle and allow to escape into the Comte de Dinard’s room. ‘Guns are useless,’ don’t forget. But when he broke his rod and the thing escaped, the whole plan failed.”
“Somehow or other I don’t think I’d have left that in the bush even if it was broken,” said Drummond thoughtfully. “That little muslin box is beautifully made and could be used again on another rod.”
“But he did leave it there.”
“Yes. But I wonder if it was on the way to the castle. I wonder if by any chance he did just what you have suggested, then got alarmed or something and broke it on the way back, when the box was no longer of any use and he didn’t mind losing it.”
“Ingenious, my dear Captain Drummond, except for one point you overlooked. You forget that so far as any outsider could know, I was occupying the Comte’s room. And you may take it from me that nobody flapped boxes outside my window last night.”
“No, I hadn’t overlooked it, old boy,” said Drummond quietly. “Anyway, the great point is that the Comte’s health, judging by his verbosity at breakfast, is quite unimpaired.”
The Inspector looked at him curiously. “You’re not satisfied, sir?” he said.
“I’m not,” answered Drummond. “Though I daresay I shall prove utterly wrong.”
“But what’s stinging you?”
Drummond frowned. “The fact that the kilt of the Camerons is reddish in hue.”
The Inspector looked at Algy. Algy looked at the Inspector.
“He’ll be better after he’s had some beer, Andrews,” he said. “Captain Drummond gets taken like this at times.”
* * *
—
That afternoon, the party broke up, and a few days later the whole episode was beginning to fade from Drummond’s mind. He had made a mistake: his suspicions had been fantastic. In any event, the Comte de Dinard was still going strong in Paris, which was all that really mattered. No harm had come to him at Oxshott Castle—the worthy Andrews deserved full marks. And, so far as he knew, no harm had come to anyone else. So it came as almost a shock to him when, returning to dress for dinner one evening, he found the Inspector waiting for him in his sitting room.
“Have you a few minutes to spare, Captain Drummond?” he said gravely.
“Certainly, Andrews. As long as you like. I see,” he added, “that something has happened.”
“Something so strange that I have come straight to you. I remember that you were not satisfied when you left the castle, but at the time you would say nothing. Now you must.”
“Go on,” said Drummond quietly.
“Have you ever heard of yellow fever?” asked Andrews.
“I have. A tropical disease,” answered Drummond, surprised.
“And a very dangerous one. It is fatal more often than not. Do you know how it is carried?”
“I can’t say that I do,” Drummond acknowledged.
“By mosquitoes.” Andrews paused. “You may remember there were a good many mosquitoes at the castle,” he continued.
“There were,” agreed Drummond.
“You may also remember that little muslin box?”
Drummond nodded.
“And our theory as to what it was for? To let out something—we knew not what—into the Comte’s bedroom?”
Once again Drummond nodded.
“We were right. And what is more, you were right when you suggested that the rod had been broken after the owner had been to the castle and not before.”
“I was, was I?” said Drummond softly.
“That muslin box, Captain Drummond, contained mosquitoes carrying the germs of yellow fever. And the owner of the rod succeeded in reaching the castle and liberating those mosquitoes. Only he set them free in the wrong room. This afternoon Mr. Stedman died of yellow fever in the Hospital for Tropical Diseases.”
There was a long silence, then Drummond rose and began pac
ing up and down the room.
“You may further remember,” continued Andrews, “that you told me you hadn’t overlooked the point when I alluded to the nocturnal visitor coming to my window. That now requires elucidation. Have you any idea as to why he went to Mr. Stedman’s? Or was it a fluke?”
“It wasn’t a fluke,” said Drummond gravely. “I sent him there.”
“You sent him there?” The Inspector shot out of his chair as if he had been stung. “What on earth do you mean?”
“You needn’t think I took him by the hand and led him there,” answered Drummond with a faint smile. “Until this moment I didn’t even know he’d been there. In fact, I’ve never seen him or spoken to him. For all that, I sent him there. Listen, Andrews, and I’ll tell you.
“You remember the billiard room, don’t you, with its broad window sill? Before we went to bed that night, a tray of newly painted toy soldiers was placed on the sill. They had been painted by Stedman for the little boy, and we were all of us instructed not to touch them. They were arranged in single file—twelve infantrymen and one large man on a prancing horse. And one of the infantrymen was a Highlander in whom I was particularly interested, because of an argument on kilts that I had had with the artist. And my Highlander was placed so that he was just in front of the horseman.
“Then quite unexpectedly it was announced that the Comte de Dinard was going to change his room. He protested but complied, and everybody went to bed—everybody, that is, except me. I wasn’t feeling sleepy, and I sat down in an alcove in the room with a book. I was practically hidden, so that when Stedman returned he didn’t see me. And he crossed to the window, remained there a second, and then went out again.
“So after a moment or two, I also went to the window—and there I noticed a very strange thing. My Highlander, in whom I was so interested, had changed places with the field marshal!”
“Good heavens!” whispered Andrews.
“You see it, don’t you?” said Drummond gravely. “Stedman neither knew nor cared anything about soldiers, but hearing that little Billy did he thought of a darned original scheme for indicating the Comte’s bedroom to someone on the outside. Soldiers that had to be painted and so couldn’t be moved. A tray placed on the windowsill so that any man looking in from outside could see it and see where the field marshal was. Thirteen bedrooms were on our floor—thirteen soldiers were on the tray. And when the Comte moved into the next room—” Drummond shrugged his shoulders.
“I wonder why Stedman wanted to have him murdered,” he went on thoughtfully.
For a space, there was silence whilst Andrews stared at him.
“Stedman’s bedroom was third from the other end,” he said at length.
“I know. That’s why the field marshal made yet another move. Just before I turned out the lights and went to bed, I placed two men in front of him. Have a drink.”
The Traitor
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
THE STORY
Original publication: Cosmopolitan, September 1927; first collected in Ashenden; or, The British Agent (London, Heinemann, 1928)
NOTED AS ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR and successful authors of the twentieth century and the most highly paid author of the 1930s, William Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) was an important historical figure in the world of mystery and thriller fiction. His groundbreaking work, Ashenden; or, The British Agent (1928), variously called a novel (inaccurately) and a short story collection, is generally regarded as the first modern book of espionage fiction.
In Ashenden, secret agents are portrayed as ordinary people in unusual circumstances, not as dashing heroes whose lives are filled with beautiful, compliant women, secret societies, and cliff-hanging adventures.
It was Maugham’s World War I experience with British Intelligence that provided him with material for the connected stories about Richard Ashenden, a well-known author who meets a British colonel known to the Intelligence Department only as R., who asks the author to work as a secret agent.
It is thought that his profession as a writer will allow him to travel freely without causing suspicion and that his knowledge of European languages will prove useful. The last advice that R. gives to Ashenden before his first assignment impresses the author: “If you do well, you’ll get no thanks, and if you get into trouble you’ll get no help.”
Ashenden admires goodness in others but has learned to live with evil. His interest in other people goes no further than the scientist’s feelings for experimental rabbits. They are source material for future books, and he is as realistic about their bad points as he is about their good qualities. Never bored, he believes that only stupid people require external stimulation to be amused; a man of intellect can avoid boredom by using his own resources.
Ashenden, a quiet, gentlemanly figure, was to a degree based on the exceptionally shy Maugham himself, and is said to have inspired some of the characteristics of Ian Fleming’s own espionage agent, James Bond—though only some, as it would be difficult to think of 007 as shy.
THE FILM
Title: Secret Agent, 1936
Studio: Gaumont-British Pictures
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenwriters: Charles Bennett, Alma Reville, Ian Hay
Producers: Michael Balcon, Ivor Montagu
THE CAST
• John Gielgud (Ashenden)
• Peter Lorre (The General)
• Madeleine Carroll (Elsa Carrington/Mrs. Ashenden)
• Robert Young (Robert Marvin)
• Percy Marmont (Caypor)
• Florence Kahn (Mrs. Caypor)
• Charles Carson (R.)
• Lilli Palmer (Lilli)
Secret Agent makes liberal use of two of the stories in Ashenden with important elements of the film based on the incidents in “The Hairless Mexican,” “The Traitor,” and a play by Campbell Dixon (1895–1960), an Australian film critic who had adapted Maugham’s book for the stage, though it does not appear ever to have been produced or published. It is Dixon’s play that adds a woman and a love interest to the storyline.
Another major difference between the stories in Ashenden and the screenplay, as noted by British censors, is that in the original, R. is never shown as suggesting that murder would be acceptable, nor that he would countenance it. It was not until many years later that any British secret agent would be portrayed in popular fiction or motion picture as having a “license to kill.”
At the outset of World War I, novelist Edgar Brodie is invited to serve as a secret agent under the nom de guerre Richard Ashenden. His job is to identify a German spy who is believed to be at a Swiss hotel and, it is tacitly understood, to kill him with the assistance of an odd companion, a killer known variously as “the Hairless Mexican” and “the General,” though he is not Mexican, hairless, or a general.
When Ashenden arrives at the hotel, he finds that he has been teamed with an attractive “wife” as part of his cover. Ashenden has determined that the suspicious, secretive Caypor, a guest at the little hotel, is their man but, after the “Hairless Mexican” kills him, they learn that he was not the spy after all.
For filmgoers, Hitchcock resorted to the tropes of many of his other films, as well as of other popular films, adding an attractive woman to the core of the plot, which is why Dixon’s play is given credit above Maugham’s book. It worked for Hitchcock with The 39 Steps (1935), his much-loved previous film, which also starred Madeleine Carroll, a character added to John Buchan’s novel; it also did not have a female love interest.
Remarkably, John Gielgud shot the film with Hitchcock during the day while starring on the London stage at night in Romeo and Juliet with Edith Evans, Peggy Ashcroft, and Laurence Olivier.
Perhaps even more remarkably, the organist Louis Vierne was found dead in 1937 with one foot on
a pedal note at the organ of Notre Dame in Paris—the exact same fate that befell the organist in Secret Agent.
Although Secret Agent is not a candidate for the honor roll of the greatest Alfred Hitchcock films, it certainly bears his directorial flair, notably with a great train wreck that serves to end the chase after an enemy agent, and a police chase through a chocolate factory, the unlikely headquarters of the spy ring. Incidentally, the Hays office cautioned Hitchcock that the scene in the Swiss chocolate factory should be handled with “careful consideration” in order “not to give offense to the Swiss nation.”
Hitchcock had wanted Robert Donat, who had teamed with Madeleine Carroll in The 39 Steps, to be reunited with her in Secret Agent but he wouldn’t commit, so he tried to get Leslie Howard, who was under contract to another studio and would not be released. When he settled for the lesser-known John Gielgud, Hitchcock had the roles of a couple of subsidiary characters beefed up so that he could cast the popular actors Peter Lorre and Lilli Palmer.
THE TRAITOR
W. Somerset Maugham
HAVING TAKEN A ROOM at the hotel at which he had been instructed to stay Ashenden went out; it was a lovely day, early in August, and the sun shone in an unclouded sky. He had not been to Lucerne since he was a boy and but vaguely remembered a covered bridge, a great stone lion, and a church in which he had sat, bored yet impressed, while they played an organ; and now wandering along a shady quay (and the lake looked just as tawdry and unreal as it looked on the picture-postcards) he tried not so much to find his way about a half-forgotten scene as to reform in his mind some recollection of the shy and eager lad, so impatient for life (which he saw not in the present of his adolescence but only in the future of his manhood) who so long ago had wandered there. But it seemed to him that the most vivid of his memories was not of himself, but of the crowd; he seemed to remember sun and heat and people; the train was crowded and so was the hotel, the lake steamers were packed and on the quays and in the streets you threaded your way among the throng of holiday makers. They were fat and old and ugly and odd, and they stank. Now, in war-time, Lucerne was as deserted as it must have been before the world at large discovered that Switzerland was the playground of Europe. Most of the hotels were closed, the streets were empty, the rowing boats for hire rocked idly at the water’s edge and there was none to take them, and in the avenues by the lake the only persons to be seen were serious Swiss taking their neutrality, like a dachshund, for a walk with them. Ashenden felt exhilarated by the solitude, and sitting down on a bench that faced the water surrendered himself deliberately to the sensation. It was true that the lake was absurd, the water was too blue, the mountains too snowy, and its beauty, hitting you in the face, exasperated rather than thrilled; but all the same there was something pleasing in the prospect, an artless candour, like one of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, that made Ashenden smile with complacency. Lucerne reminded him of wax flowers under glass cases and cuckoo clocks and fancy work in Berlin wool. So long at all events as the fine weather lasted he was prepared to enjoy himself. He did not see why he should not at least try to combine pleasure to himself with profit to his country. He was travelling with a brand-new passport in his pocket, under a borrowed name, and this gave him an agreeable sense of owning a new personality. He was often slightly tired of himself and it diverted him for a while to be merely a creature of R.’s facile invention. The experience he had just enjoyed appealed to his acute sense of the absurd. R., it is true, had not seen the fun of it: what humour R. possessed was of a sardonic turn and he had no facility for taking in good part a joke at his own expense. To do that you must be able to look at yourself from the outside and be at the same time spectator and actor in the pleasant comedy of life. R. was a soldier and regarded introspection as unhealthy, un-English, and unpatriotic.
The Big Book of Reel Murders Page 89
