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Danger Calling
A Benbow Smith Mystery
Patricia Wentworth
CHAPTER I
IT HAS BEEN SAID that life would be intolerable if we could know what was waiting for us round the next corner. Sometimes, of course, one is sure that one does know. On that Monday morning, coming back from a last bachelor week-end with the Raynes, Lindsay Trevor was sure.
This was Monday, and on Saturday he was going to be married to Marian Rayne. They would spend a honeymoon month in Italy, and when they returned they would have a flat in town and live happily ever after. He had not the least idea when he got into the train at Guildford that he was stepping off the path that he had so pleasantly mapped out. He bought a paper, closed the carriage door, and settled himself into a corner seat.
He was still unfolding his paper, when the door was wrenched nervously open and Miss Alethea Witherington got in with two bags, a basket, and a dog, and an attaché case, and some parcels. The parcels dropped, the basket caught Lindsay on the ankle, and the dog yapped. Lindsay supposed that it was a dog. It was very small and fluffy, and it wore a pale blue collar with three gilt bells, and was attached by a blue lead to a bony middle-aged lady with an enthusiastic eye and odd clothes. She settled herself in the opposite corner, and just before the train started a tall man with a stoop drifted in and sat down with his back to the engine. He at once produced a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles and began to read a shabby book which he pulled out of his pocket.
The train moved out of Guildford station, and Miss Alethea Witherington began to talk cooingly to the little fluffy creature on her lap.
“Didums like a puff-puff—didums then? Didums like to travel with ’urns mother, a precious?”
Lindsay looked over the top of his paper and caught her eye.
“I hope you don’t object to dogs,” she said at once.
He murmured something polite and went back to the golfing news.
Miss Witherington continued to talk to Didums. Perhaps if she went on talking, the young man would put down his paper and see what an exceptionally beautiful and intelligent creature Didums was. It was the chief object of her life to collect admirers, not for herself, but for Didums. The old gentleman was no good at all. Old gentlemen hardly ever liked animals—in railway carriages they sometimes approached rudeness; but young men liked dogs. This was a pleasant-looking young man, quite a gentleman—such a nice grey suit, and really pleasant features, without being handsome. Everyone couldn’t be handsome, but this young man was decidedly pleasant looking and quite a gentleman.
She talked on. Was Didums warm? Was Didums cold? Was Didums hungry? Was he a clever, clever, clever boy? She had the sort of penetrating whisper which comes through everything.
Lindsay gave up trying to read, and merely kept the paper up because he felt certain that if he lowered it, he would be inveigled into a conversation about Didums. He envied the man in the far corner, who read his book with an air of classic calm. He himself was naturally impatient, and the woman was getting on his nerves. She was asking Didums again if he was hungry, after which there was a storm of yaps and an overpowering smell of banana. A paper bag crackled, and Didums was seized with a joyous frenzy.
“Sit then!” said Miss Witherington. “Sit up! No—not on Mother’s knee! Oh, no, a precious—sitting up good and clever on the seat like a grown-up boy!”
Lindsay took another look round the paper. The creature was balancing its inches of fluff, waving its minute paws, and goggling brightly at the banana which Mother was peeling.
“Trust now!” she said. She pinched off a bit in her fingers and stuck it on the fluffy nose. “Trust!”
Lindsay withdrew. He could see that she was simply dying to gather an audience. There was an Ancient Mariner look about that enthusiastic eye, and quite definitely he declined the part of the wedding guest.
Miss Witherington continued to hope. After all, he had glanced once—and was it possible to glance at Didums once and not wish to glance again? Miss Witherington did not think so—not in the case of a young man who was quite a gentleman and so pleasant looking. Now that she had had another peep at him, he had quite a look of Lady Lorrimer’s grandson—the one who had taken a scholarship and was such a comfort to her; not the one who got into debt at Oxford and so very nearly made a most unfortunate marriage,
Didums performed his whole repertory of tricks to the back of The Times. Miss Witherington no longer whispered, but the same penetrating quality informed her louder tones. The last trick was the best. Surely no one could be unmoved by the sight of Didums dying for his country.
“Die for your country, a precious! Die for your country, a clever, clever, clever boy!”
Didums died very realistically with one glistening eye on the last bit of banana. The Times was not lowered. No applause came from behind it. And then the train ran into Woking station and stopped.
Miss Witherington’s colour had risen. She was revising her opinion of the young man opposite—an insensible person, and not really like that charming Mr Lorrimer at all. She gathered up the slighted Didums, and his basket with the pale blue lining, and the attaché case, and the paper bag full of bananas, and another bag full of biscuits, and precipitated herself out of the train and on to the neck of the stout red-faced woman, who was Ida Clement and her dearest friend. Ida loved Didums and had invited him specially to spend the day.
She embraced Mrs Clement more warmly than usual, and did not notice that she had dropped her paper bags until Lindsay picked them up for her. He picked up the basket too, and retrieved the parcels, which she had forgotten, and was snapped at by Didums for his pains. Ultimately he got back into his seat, a porter slammed the door, and the train began to move.
The train drew out of the station. The man in the corner turned a page and read on with that air of being in another century. Lindsay was wondering whether he so much as knew that there had been a dog in the carriage, when he laid his book down upon his knee, pushed up his spectacles till they rested on his forehead, and said, in a gentle cultured voice,
“How would you like to die for your country?”
CHAPTER II
LINDSAY TREVOR LOOKED ACROSS the carriage with a sort of startled amusement. How would you like to die for your country? What did one say to a total stranger who asked you a question like that?—a distinguished looking stranger, who gazed, not at him but past him at the window which framed a section of railway embankment? He might have been admiring the view, but it did not seem very likely. Lindsay began to wonder whether he was committed to making the rest of the journey with a lunatic.
As the thought passed through his mind, the distinguished stranger smiled very slightly and shifted his gaze. It rested now upon the cushioned back of the seat a little to the right of Lindsay’s head. He spoke dreamily:
“Yes—you would naturally think so. But”—here for a moment he looked straight into Lindsay’s eyes—“I am afraid I am quite responsible for my actions.”
Lindsay experienced a curious shock of surprise. The smile was gentle, whimsical, and the eyes were as steady and sane as the multiplication table.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, “but you asked me a question.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“And may I ask why?” said Lindsay Trevor.
The stranger took out a white silk handkerchief and another pair of spectacles, which he began to polish in an absent-minded manner.
“Yes,” he said—“yes. Why does one ask anyon
e anything?”
“I suppose because one wants to know.”
He breathed on the right-hand lens and rubbed it.
“You see, that is my point—I want to know. But if I ask you what I want to know, you jump to the conclusion that I am mad—a little madder, that is, than the vast mad majority. You see”—he stopped polishing—“I really have a reason for asking you whether you would die for your country.”
He was not mad. It was curious that Lindsay was able to feel sure of this. He was an impressive person—and he was not mad. Lindsay began to have a vague idea that at some time he had seen him before. The pale classic features and thick grey hair, and the air of gentle abstraction, produced some far-away response of memory. He had the impression that here was someone he ought to be able to recognize, and yet he could not believe that they had ever met.
He leaned forward a little, his interest deepening.
“That is your question, sir—but I asked one too.”
“Yes,” he said—“yes.”
“I asked you—advisedly—whether you would die for your country.”
“And I asked you why you should ask me such a question.”
He nodded slowly twice. Then he put his handkerchief on the seat beside him, laid the second pair of glasses on the top of it, and took out a very old Russia leather pocket-book. He extracted a card, a letter, and a photograph, and then laid the case down on the seat between him and the handkerchief. The initials lay uppermost—Gothic letters in tarnished silver—B. C. H. S. With the photograph in his hand, he leaned forward and proffered it to Lindsay.
Lindsay stared at it. The face was as familiar as his own—four years at Harrow, two years of the war. He had the duplicate of this photograph in an album at the flat.
“Jack Smith!” he exclaimed.
“Yes—John Warrington Smith—a nephew of mine.”
Looking vaguely past Lindsay, he handed him the card which he had taken out of his pocket-book.
Lindsay took it with a good deal of curiosity. The lettering was old-fashioned, and the names corresponding to the four initials on the case were sufficiently remarkable. The card was inscribed:
MR BENBOW COLLINGWOOD HORATIO SMITH.
Light broke upon Lindsay Trevor. He had shared a study with Jack Smith, and it was in a frame on that study wall that he had seen Mr Smith’s rather striking features. Some kind of a vague idea emerged that Jack Smith’s uncle was rather a big bug in his way—some connection with the Foreign Office—with public events of the first magnitude. He had written a book—yes, that emerged quite clearly—a book in which he had not only forecast the war, but also its social and economic consequences. He rummaged for the title. … The European Problem—yes, that was it—published somewhere about 1910. Only last week Hamilton Raeburn was quoting from it, and Egerton … no, he couldn’t recall what Egerton had said; but whatever it was, it helped to make a background for Mr Benbow Collingwood Horatio Smith.
Mr Smith had by now unfolded the letter which he had taken out of his pocket and put on the second pair of glasses he had been polishing. With the first pair riding above them on his high white brow, he spoke, gazing sometimes at the space above Lindsay’s head, and sometimes, with an effect of not really seeing it, at the paper in his hand.
“If I had to recognize you from a description, this would, I think, be a good one—and yet a description is at the best a mere catalogue.”
He read: “Lindsay Trevor. Height medium—say five foot nine and a half. Slight build. Light brown hair. Light eyebrows and lashes. Eyes grey to hazel. Distinguishing features none. Marks and scars none.”
He glanced up.
“I have a memorandum here. Confirm this.”
He continued to read from the letter: “Voice of medium timbre. Strong facial resemblance to—er—I think that’s all.”
Lindsay felt a vigorous curiosity. The description was an accurate one. But why describe him? He was neither a celebrity nor an absconding criminal. The unfinished sentence was decidedly intriguing. If he bore a strong facial resemblance to some unspecified person, he not unnaturally desired to know who that person was, and why Mr Smith should have stopped short of the name.
Mr Smith did not seem to be going to impart any more information. He folded the letter and put it away in the pocket-book with the initials. Then he held out his hand for his own card and his nephew’s photograph.
“A little puzzling,” he said. “But then you haven’t answered my question.”
All at once there was something immensely serious in the air. Lindsay could not have described it. He had a moment of confused thought such as is apt to follow upon a shock. In the confusion was a mingling of curiosity, excitement, and apprehension, with a hard-running undercurrent of something which threatened to take him off his feet and out of his depth. He did not know what this something was.
Mr Smith was putting away his pocket-book. Lindsay made a movement and spoke.
“I’ve heard of you, sir. Jack and I were at school together—I expect you know that. Why did you ask me that question? Were you serious?”
“Oh, entirely—entirely.” He did not look at Lindsay. “I am a very serious person, and any question I ask is undoubtedly a serious affair.” He paused, and added in a perfectly casual manner, “It might be serious for you.”
“I suppose it would be—if I died.”
It was a laughable thing to say, but Lindsay did not feel like laughing. He felt that current catch him by the feet.
“Yes—yes,” said Mr Smith. And then, after a silence, “You have not answered my question.”
A serious question, seriously asked—would he, Lindsay Trevor, like to die for his country? Theoretically, every decent citizen is prepared to do so—a good many of them did it in the war—Lindsay had taken his chance with the rest for two years. …
It was a long time ago. A junior partner in a publishing firm isn’t really in the running for laurel wreaths. He said so.
Mr Smith nodded.
“Publishing … just so … an adventurous business.”
“Not always.”
“If I had to read some of the books you publish, I should be inclined to welcome death!” said Mr Smith.
Lindsay wondered more than ever what he was driving at.—
“What are you asking me to do?”
“Oh—a job.” He folded his hands on his book and looked up. They were beautiful hands, very white and carefully kept. They looked strong too. “Yes, decidedly a job—for, if we take the definition given in the Oxford Dictionary, a job is—’ a piece of work, especially one done for hire or profit’—the labourer being worthy of his hire, and the profits accruing to the state. The second definition would, I think, have to be inverted. The dictionary gives it as a transaction in which duty is sacrificed to private advantage’; where-as—” he paused, removed the upper of the two pairs of spectacles he was wearing, and balancing them between his thumb and forefinger, continued—“in your case it is your private advantage which you are being asked to sacrifice. The word duty has a highfalutin sound, but—well, there it is.”
Lindsay was watching him closely. He was being played, as an angler plays a fish. The question was, would he allow himself to be played, or would he break the line and make off? He could, naturally, at any time. The fact was, he did not want to. The whole business had a lure, and in other circumstances he would probably have jumped at it. As it was—
“You’re offering me a job of some sort—a dangerous job?”
“Well—” said Mr Smith in non-committal tones.
All at once the line snapped.
“I’m afraid, sir, that I have got a previous engagement.”
Mr Smith swung his spectacles by the bridge.
“Engagement?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.” Lindsay hesitated, and then put himself
out of temptation’s way. “I’m being married next week, sir.”
The spectacles swung on Mr Smith’s finger. He gazed at them earnestly. After a moment he spoke:
“Ah—yes—married. That is rather a pity—but I suppose you will not think so. May I congratulate the lady?”
“You may congratulate me,” said Lindsay.
“Ah yes—of course,” said Mr Smith.
He put the spectacles away in his waistcoat pocket, picked up the shabby book which he had been reading, and leaning back in his corner, retreated into the classic past. Lindsay could no more have addressed him than he could have addressed the emperor Marcus Aurelius with whom Mr Smith was engaged.
He too sat back in his corner. It was astonishing how hard temptation had tugged at him. A job—a dangerous job. Why? It was just as if the clock had been set back twelve years. His mind filled suddenly with pictures of his two years’ work under Garratt in the Secret Service. The pictures came with such a rush that they ran one into another, quivering, blending, breaking; but each broken bit was astonishingly alive.
Lindsay sat and wondered at himself. If it hadn’t been for Marian …
The train slid into Waterloo station. Mr Smith dropped his shabby brown book into his pocket and drifted out of the carriage in the same way that he had drifted in. On the platform he turned, however, and put out his hand, not in conventional farewell, but in a gesture vague yet arresting.
“If you change your mind—” he murmured.
“I only wish I could.”
The words had spoken themselves. Lindsay had certainly not meant to say them, and he was aware of something like contrition. But Mr Smith had already turned and was making his way down the platform, a tall figure with a certain air of old-world distinction.
Lindsay Trevor watched him go. He had not meant what he had said; it had just slipped out. He put the whole thing from his mind and tried to realize that by this time next week he and Marian would have been married for nearly two days. It did not seem possible, He went on trying to make it seem possible.
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