Death of an Airman

by Christopher St. John Sprigg

  After its circuit, the incoming biplane side-slipped over the hangars and touched almost on the tarmac. Then it taxied up to the Customs entrance.

  As the pilot climbed out of the cabin, Creighton gave a startled exclamation. “By Jove, that’s Sally Sackbut! She’s the manager of the flying club at Baston. You remember, I mentioned her, Bray? Don’t let her see me!”

  Creighton concealed himself in the inner office. He was surprised and yet elated. Here was a curious link between Furnace’s murder and the clue they were following.

  Meanwhile Grierley and Bray walked up to her. “Hello, Miss Sackbut; it’s a long time since I’ve seen you?” said the Customs man.

  “Yes, Mr. Grierley, I’m helping Gauntlett out of a fix. Somebody hit Downton on the head with a bottle in a café row in Paris and laid him out temporarily. Gauntlett was in a flat spin with nobody to take the machine back and all his pilots still out on charter jobs, so I slipped over on the night boat. I say, why are you mauling all those bundles about? Damn it, the paper delivery is regular enough, isn’t it! Do I look like a smuggler?”

  Grierley gave a significant wink at the Inspector, who was, of course, in plain clothes. “Someone from head office,” he whispered. “I’ll have to do the job thoroughly this time. I’ll be as quick as I can.” Miss Sackbut accepted the story without hesitation, and Bray did his best to look like a Customs official.

  When Grierley and Bray had finished their search of the aeroplane and its contents the Inspector was prepared to agree with Grierley that even a smell couldn’t have been smuggled in. Grierley gave his hieroglyphic approval, and the scarlet-and-yellow Gauntlett Air Taxis porter hustled the papers on to a trolley and loaded them into the waiting aeroplanes, whose engines were already turning over. Meanwhile, Sally turned the Dragon round and a minute later was heading for Baston.

  The Inspectorate held another council of war.

  “I can’t help feeling I’d like to follow this thing through,” said Creighton. “The girl turning up has made me suspicious even if you do give her cargo a clean bill of health. You know she’s the only one who had the opportunity to put a bullet through Furnace’s head, and if only I could pin some kind of motive on her it would make all the difference.”

  “Well, let’s do it,” said Bray. “I’m game. I say, Grierley, do you think we could get somebody here to follow one of those little taxi ’planes?”

  He laughed. “My word, you sleuths do take some shaking off! I don’t think you’ll find it possible to follow them; it won’t be easy to trail an aeroplane through this muck that’s blowing up and those Leopard Moths are pretty fast. I tell you what—there’s Thorndike over there, one of Gauntlett’s pilots. He hasn’t seen you nosing among the papers, Bray, so I’ll introduce you both as people who’re trying to get a charter flight to Glasgow. Then you can travel with the actual boodle. Do your best to look like rich young men in a hurry!”

  Bray studied Thorndike closely. He seemed a likeable and perfectly honest young man. If Gauntlett’s Air Taxis was a criminal organization, it certainly seemed to have been able to draw into its meshes some remarkably ingenuous-looking people.

  Thorndike gave a casual glance at Bray and Creighton. “What do you weigh? About one hundred and fifty pounds each, I suppose! I can just carry you in my Leopard Moth with the papers if I take only enough petrol to get me to my first stop. You’ll have to have a couple of piles of newspapers on your knee—do you mind? It’ll cost you ninepence a mile each, by the way. Cash!”

  Fortunately Bray and Creighton’s combined resources survived the calculation, and presently they were seated, one behind the other, gazing past Thorndike’s red head at a landscape with the delicate colouring of early morning, but obscured by fleecy masses of flying vapour that grew increasingly thick as they sped northward.

  “The Super will raise a squeal when he sees this on my expenses!” was all the comment the airscape awakened in Inspector Creighton.

  Wide stretches of blackened country beneath a pall of melancholy smoke. Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool.…Fleeting glimpses of the sea.…Mountains…Glasgow and the arm of the Clyde, and the little hill-locked aerodrome of Renfrew.…

  A small van came to meet them. Bray had an inspiration.

  “I say, can we get a lift in this delivery van to Glasgow?”

  Either Thorndike was very guileless or very sure of his organization. He agreed with alacrity, and put them in the van, explaining the position to the driver.

  The Glasgow bundle of La Gazette Quotidienne consisted of several smaller parcels, each of which was sealed and bore a newsagent’s name. At the fourth newsagent Bray got out of the van on the pretext that the place was sufficiently near their destination.

  They looked round. It was a squalid neighbourhood. Dirty children played in the gutter, washing hung forlornly from windows, and the streets were filled with rubbish. “Funny place for French visitors to come to!” exclaimed Creighton.

  They looked at the newsagent’s shop at which the newspapers were delivered. It was a typical slum newsagent’s and tobacconist’s business, with a few weary sweets in the window, tipsters’ posters, and various highly coloured weeklies in a rack.

  Bray peered in. “The scholarship of Scotsmen is proverbial, but, even so, the demand for French newspapers in a shop of this kind does seem extraordinary.”

  They went inside. A sandy-haired, red-eyed fellow without a collar was behind the counter. Bray asked for an unusual brand of cigarettes, which he was pretty certain they would not stock; and this gave him an excuse to discuss indecisively the merits of other brands. It was a one-sided conversation, but took enough of the red-eyed man’s attention to allow the detective’s eyes to roam round the shop. There was no sign of La Gazette Quotidienne, delivered in bulk so recently.

  Having at last settled on some cigarettes, Bray proclaimed that he had lost his way, and this opened up fresh conversational possibilities. It was as these were beginning to be exhausted that the first customer looked in.

  He also seemed a little out of keeping with this part of Glasgow. He was a corpulent gentleman, with puffy fingers, puffy eyes, and too much jewellery, but very neatly dressed. He placed two pennies on the counter.

  “A copy of the Gazette, please.”

  The red-eyed man leant below the counter, flung a copy of La Gazette Quotidienne on it, and resumed his conversation with Bray. The customer folded the paper up carefully, put it in his pocket and walked out.

  “Fancy seeing La Gazette here!” exclaimed Bray. “By Jove, I’m going to France this evening; I’d like a copy.”

  “That’s the last,” answered the man shortly.

  “But I saw some more under the counter.”

  “They’re all ordered for regular customers.”

  Bray tried a different tack. “Look here, I know more than you think. I was recommended here by a regular customer.”

  “Come inside,” said the red-eyed man without altering his expression. He held open the door to the parlour, then followed the detective in.

  “Now, what’s all this about your Gazettes?”

  “Simply that I was told by a regular customer that I could deal here for my wants.”

  “His name?”

  “I don’t think I ought to tell you that. Why all this fuss? I’ve money.”

  “I don’t want your money. Come on, now, didn’t this man tell you to say something to me?”

  “No—at least he may have done, but I’ve probably forgotten it,” parried Bray. “I was a bit drunk at the time.”

  The man’s wary expression changed to one of anger.

  “You’re makin’ a plain fool of me with your Gazette. Get out of my shop if you can’t do better than waste my time!”

  Bray accepted the rebuke. That the man was engaged in some illicit business he felt sure. But he knew too well how imposs
ible it was to get into such affairs without an introduction or “cover.” He passed out of the shop with Creighton.

  “Well, I pinched a copy of the paper while you were in there with that unpleasant-looking merchant,” said Creighton.

  “Good man! We’ll hang round here for an hour or two to have a look at our friend’s customers.”

  The customers confirmed his suspicions. Certainly most of them were poor people who fitted in with the scenery, but with them came a mingling of well-dressed men and women, who had a faintly furtive air. Three of these emerged openly carrying the Gazette. The two detectives returned to the station and went into the tea-room to have a look at their capture.

  They opened the paper, scanned every line, turned it inside out, warmed it, and squeezed a lemon over it. It was inscrutable. Its bourgeois aspect and perfectly orthodox appearance gave no loophole for suspicion. It was everything it purported to be—a typical copy of a typical French newspaper of the moderate Right.

  “And it cost us £20 and a day’s work to get it,” commented Creighton bitterly.

  Chapter X

  Appointments of Royal Personages

  Creighton returned to Thameshire. Bray was left with the copy of La Gazette Quotidienne and a stubborn feeling that somehow, somewhere, he would be able to find a connection between the cocaine found in Glasgow, that shop with the curious demand for French papers, Gauntlett’s Air Taxis, and the murder of George Furnace.

  He had read and re-read the newspaper until he had almost every word of it by heart. He had spent hours over the advertisements, because it seemed to him that a clue might be hidden in some apparently innocuous “small.” Bray flattered himself he had a good nose for a code, but he could detect none here.

  “I wonder if a journalist could see something I’ve missed?” he thought, gazing blankly at the paper. The idea of “journalist” suggested to him Archie Brown, crime reporter of the Journal, and associated with Bray on more than one tangled mystery. He could generally rely on finding Archie in Bride’s, the Fleet Street coffee-house, about lunch-time, and he dropped in there now.

  “Hallo, what are you doing in here?” exclaimed Archie as he caught sight of the policeman. “This looks bad. Is the dope distribution system of London centred at Bride’s?”

  “No, I came here to meet you, as a matter of fact.”

  “Really? How sweet of you. Or could it be that you want free advice?”

  “I came here for the company, of course,” answered Bray. “But I do happen to have a little problem for you, Archie. Here is a French paper.”

  “So I perceive, Holmes. And I deduce from the title that it is the Gazette. This was Romain’s little hobby, I believe. Or did he sell it recently? I can’t remember.”

  Bray outlined the circumstances which suggested that some message might be concealed in the Gazette. He mentioned no names, but Archie’s eyes brightened. “This sounds a fruity mystery! Are you going to give me the story?”

  “Sorry, I can’t, because it’s not entirely my pigeon. But if you can help me, I’ll put you on to the local bloke who’s running the thing and leave you to ferret it out in your well-known style.”

  “H’m.” Archie turned the pages over rapidly with lean fingers, then he tapped the table with his tortoiseshell spectacles. When these were on, his pale narrow face had looked insipid. The removal of the glasses revealed a pair of bright, intelligent grey-green eyes in which all the expression of the face seemed concentrated.

  “Look here, Bray, you talk of a message being concealed in some way. What do you suspect? I mean if there is a message by some third party it must be in the advertisements, but I take it you’ve tried them?”

  “Yes,” admitted Bray. “There are only ten smalls, and they’re completely ordinary.”

  “Right. Well, then, the only other way a message could be got across would be by some displacement of type—in which case there must be a compositor or stereo man in the pay of the dope organization—or else by a code-word or message in the news—in which case they’ve tampered with a sub or a proof-reader. Do you suspect they’ve gone as far as that?”

  “I see what you mean. Frankly, I’m completely in the dark. It might be done in either way. I haven’t the vaguest idea who is in the conspiracy, or even if there is a conspiracy.”

  “That makes it rather difficult.” Archie resumed his glasses and read the paper with slow attention. Starting at the first page, he followed it item by item to the last. Bray watched him anxiously. It was perhaps a hopeless task, and hardly fair to Archie to ask him to pick up a clue without some pointer.

  Archie finished his lunch with the newspaper propped up in front of him. He gave a grunt and skimmed through it once more. Then he pointed to a paragraph.

  “Here’s something that arouses my suspicious nature. This three-liner stating that it is expected the Crown Prince of Kossovia will be able to visit the All-French Cycling Competition on Thursday.”

  “Suspicious?” replied Bray, puzzled. “Good lord! Why on earth?”

  “Because the Crown Prince of Kossovia was in South America when that paragraph was written, and therefore couldn’t possibly be back in France in time to attend any function which takes place next Thursday.”

  “But don’t journalists make mistakes?” asked Bray.

  “Repeatedly,” declared Archie. “But not about the movements of Royalty of a country so closely connected politically and economically with France as Kossovia is.”

  Bray looked at the paragraph. “What message suggests itself to you?” he asked. “It’s a short paragraph.”

  “The sentence may be in cipher, in which case, as you’re probably better at cipher than I am, I leave it to you. But if it’s not cipher, and it certainly sounds lucid enough, then I fancy the Crown Prince of Kossovia is a code-word for some person and the cycling competition a code-word for some place which the person is supposed to visit on the date mentioned.”

  “That’s probable,” admitted the detective. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t help us much unless we know the code.”

  “You suspect dope distribution in this, I gather? Well, might the place be the centre where these people who buy the papers have to go for dope?”

  Bray shook his head. “I don’t think so, because this paper goes to towns as far apart as Bristol and Glasgow, and there couldn’t be one centre for all of them.”

  “Perhaps it’s a different paragraph for each centre?” suggested the journalist. “For instance, the mention of Kossovia might mean the message is intended for Glasgow dope-fiends. A message for Bristol addicts might be signalled by the movements of Mr. Einstein, and so on with other news personalities.”

  “That’s possible. But we’re still up against the difficulty that it’s a purely arbitrary code, that we can’t possibly decode it except by pure luck.”

  Archie got up. “Look here, come with me to the Junior French Correspondents’ Club. I know the secretary, and they probably have the Gazette filed for the last few months.”

  Archie took Bray down a queer alley and up some winding little stairs to a room in which lurked a bearded man with a depressed air and the widest black silk ribbon in his pince-nez that Bray had ever seen. He seemed to take Archie’s request as a matter of course and turned up a dusty pile of Gazettes.

  “Thanks, Georges,” Archie said to him. “Bernard, I suggest we try the theory that these messages appear on definite days in the week. That Gazette you got was Monday’s. Let’s look at an earlier Monday.”

  Archie unfolded some papers and dashed through their contents with the avid rapidity of the journalist.

  “What about this?” he said with a sudden cry of triumph. “In the same column of short paragraphs and at the top, as the last message was. An announcement that the Princess Royal of Iconia is expected to open the Marseilles Fair on Wednesday.”

 
“By Jove, it’s a queer coincidence! Could it really be anything to do with the other message, though?”

  “Here’s another Monday’s Gazette. Oh, boy, listen to this! ‘The Hereditary Duchess of Georgina,’” translated Archie “‘is indisposed and will be unable to attend the State opening of her Diet on Monday, as was intended. The session has accordingly been postponed to Tuesday.’”

  Now really excited, Archie was making the Gazettes fly in all directions.

  “Here’s another. Still in the same place, at the top of the column of short news items. They all seem to come on the first Monday of a month. ‘The Archduchess Edna is arriving at Nice on Wednesday’.”

  Surrounded by scattered papers, the two men gazed at each other jubilantly. “Obviously, a royal personage is the key-word,” exclaimed Bray. “You’ve spotted it, Archie. But what the devil do you make of it? It seems enchantingly vague.”

  “I think that the royal personage and the place are both merely ‘cover.’ I suggest the only important thing in this message is the date,” answered Archie. “All it means is that the supply of drugs will be available in the usual place, or in the usual way, on the date mentioned. Evidently in the case of the Hereditary Duchess some hitch occurred, and it was necessary to alter the date from a Monday to a Tuesday. It’s a delightfully simple code, because you can always drag Royalty into the news, and the Crown Prince of Kossovia blunder was pure carelessness.”

  Bray looked despondent. “I’m afraid you’re right. So it can’t really help us very much.”

  “It suggests one very odd point, though,” Archie reminded him. “Why the devil do they use this extraordinarily clumsy apparatus of a foreign paper to deliver their message? It means, of course, that they’ve got a friend on the Gazette staff, presumably the man who edits that particular column. But, even so, why rely on a French paper? The obvious thing to do would have been a ‘Personal’ in The Times or the Daily Telegraph. A very silly message would have done: ‘Babs. Meet at the usual place on Thursday. Hector’, for instance. It would have been just as effective as the Gazette business and much cheaper and less suspicious.”