The five Father Christmases walked slowly on, oblivious alike of the children who gaped at them and the man-hunt that was taking place under their noses. Georgia followed them, glad she had kept on her fur-coat beneath the robe, for the leather straps of the sandwich-boards were already biting into her shoulders. They were far down the street now; out of the danger-zone, she thought. Her heart sighed with relief, and she began to plan the next move. The war of attrition was over. A period of mobile warfare had begun. Her safety depended on moving fast and keeping moving. Already she chafed at the slouching, tortoise-gait of the sandwichmen. Even a car drawn up by the kerb, round which the procession had to deviate, seemed a delaying obstacle. She walked past it, brushed against the front mudguard, fell into place again along the gutter. As she did so, the high heel of her left shoe caught in a grating and made her stumble badly. She recovered herself, moved on, unaware that a man had noticed the little accident and slipped out of the passenger’s seat of the car.
It was one of the E.B. cars, its nose pointing away from the department-store, ready to begin the chase in the event of Georgia getting through the cordon and trying to escape by taxi. The driver started his engine, kept it ticking over while his companion caught up with the tail of the sandwich-board procession.
Georgia knew nothing of this till, half a minute later, a man passed her, walking rapidly along the pavement edge, transferring cigarettes from a Player’s carton to his silver case. When he was a couple of yards ahead of her, he fumbled with the case and several cigarettes fell into the gutter. The man bent down to retrieve them. It was all over in a few seconds. She perceived the tensing of his figure as he caught sight, bending down, of the high-heeled shoes that were the only part of her not disguised by the Father Christmas dress.
Damn, damn, damn! My Achilles heel. Why did it have to trip me up just then? Now I’m back at the start again. Worse, for they would scarcely have dared to start anything in the shop; but out here, out in the open . . .
She heard the car creeping up behind her, imagined the stunning impact, the hands lifting her solicitously into the car, the car driving away—but not to hospital. Why they did not employ upon her the same methods that had been used against Sir John, she never knew. Perhaps they wanted to make sure of searching her, without interference at the start. Policemen have a way of cropping up out of the ground as soon as an accident has happened.
At any rate, nothing happened for a while. The car had turned and gone back towards the shopping centre, the cigarette-dropping man strolled along a little distance behind the Father Christmases. They reached the Green Man. With a hurried glance round, the leader popped into the pub, followed by the others. Georgia knew her only hope now was to stick close to them: the car would be bringing up more of the E.B. agents and the pub would be surrounded.
The Father Christmases were having a quick one: a very quick one—already they were wiping their snowy moustaches and making for the door again. Through the glass partition between public bar and smoking-room, the old man whose clothes Georgia had borrowed was gesticulating to her violently but in vain. Soundless oaths took shape on that wizened old face behind the glass. Georgia pretended not to notice him, and followed the procession out into the street.
The walk back to the department-store was her worst ordeal. It seemed as if their leader wished to display the posters through every street in Manchester before they returned. Georgia had managed to slip into a middle place in the parade when they left the pub, so that there was less danger of her being cut off: but every passer-by now looked like an enemy, and at any moment, in whatever unexpected form, the attack might take place.
If only they could get back safely to the store! A plan was forming in her head—a desperate last resort, but now her only hope. At last they approached the alley beside Hallam and Appleby’s. Here, in this narrow, blind passage, she would be most vulnerable. Only five old men to protect her, and they without a glimmering of an idea that any protection would be needed. She could imagine the alley blocked at either end, the gleam of weapons, the deliberate hustling, the senile stupor of the Father Christmases. No, she was not going into that alley, not at any price.
As they passed the door of the toy department, Georgia suddenly unhitched her sandwich boards, swung them hard against the shins of a man who tried to intercept her, dropped them, and whipped in through the door before either commissionaire or E.B. men could lay a finger on her. A shop-walker seized her arm and muttered angrily, his face still wreathed in an obsequious smile for the benefit of the customers, “Here, you. What the hell are you doing in here? Get back to—no, modom, leather fancies first floor up—I’ll see you’re fired for this, you old fool.”
“Take your hands off me, you wax dummy,” Georgia replied gruffly, “or I’ll give you such a kick in the pants it’ll send your spine out through the top of your head—if you have a spine, you invertebrate son of a misbegotten jellyfish.”
The shop-walker’s hand fell nervelessly from her arm. His mouth gobbled, and his eyes bulged after this outrageous Father Christmas who now proceeded leisurely through the toy department, pausing occasionally to pat a child on the head. “Did you hear what he said to me?” the shop-walker exclaimed when he had found his voice. “That’s the thanks we get for picking an unemployed man off the street and giving him work. By gum, he’ll find he can’t treat Hallam and Appleby’s like that. I’ll—I’ll report him to the manager.”
“Report whom,” said an assistant sweetly. “There’s half a dozen of those Father Christmases. You’ll have to use a divining-rod, Mr. Prendergast.”
“None of your sauce, my girl. Ah t’cha.”
Meanwhile Georgia had made her way into the passage that led to the staff-lobby. She took off her disguise, rolled it up, and flung it round the corner amongst the Father Christmases. Then, returning through the ladies’ room, she began to perambulate slowly around the crowded departments again. The house-detective, who was shortly summoned to keep an eye on her, decided she was the most blatant and unskilful shop-lifter he had ever seen. Must be one of them kleptomaniacs, he said to himself as she stowed away two pairs of silk stockings, a bottle of expensive scent and a shopping-diary.
CHAPTER XVII
THE EPISODE OF THE PANTECHNICON’S PROGRESS
THE HOUSE-DETECTIVE PLACED his hand under Georgia’s elbow. “The manager would like a word with you, madam,” he said.
“The manager? I don’t understand. Why, what——?”
“He would wish you to explain the presence of certain articles in your bag.” The house-detective appeared to speak more in sorrow than in anger. He was constantly tripping up these loopy dames who couldn’t keep their fingers off Hallam and Appleby’s stuff. All in the day’s work. You gave ’em a fright and pushed ’em out again: prosecutions didn’t do the House any good. He was quite used, also, to the icy but brittle hauteur with which this woman replied:
“I’m afraid I don’t understand you. Please leave go of my elbow. It’s outrageous. Are you suggesting——?”
“Better wash the dirty linen in private, madam,” he said paternally, indicating with a slight movement of the head the curious glances which other shoppers were beginning to give her. “This way, please.” She followed him like a lamb. They always did. Nothing these respectable dames dreaded so much as a scene. A queer go, they were and all: afterwards, some of them even tipped him for dealing with their little mistakes so tactfully.
Outside the manager’s door Georgia, still playing her part, took out her compact and mirror and touched herself up a bit. All went well so far. The manager would turn her over to the police. Unless she struck unlucky, and these particular officers were in the pay of the E.B., she could count on a safe night in the cells, time to think out her next move. That risk had to be taken, for it would be sudden death to set a foot outside this shop now without an escort.
The manager, sitting behind his desk as they entered, gave her a surprise. She had expected som
e middle-aged, pasty, self-important, wing-collared individual. Mr. Dickon, however, turned out to be quite young, dressed in a stylish tweed suit which, with his horn-rimmed glasses and bushy moustache, gave him more the appearance of a successful author.
“Sit down, won’t you?” he said. “Mrs. er——?”
“Mrs. Smith. Mrs. Percy Smith. I demand to know by what right——?”
“Would you mind opening your bag?” asked the young man, his tone an odd blend of diffidence, authority, and faintly bored amusement. Before she could reply, the house-detective had lifted the bag neatly off her lap and laid out the stolen articles on the desk. Then he returned it to her, the papers of Plan A rustling inside.
“You know, this is very naughty of you, Mrs. Smith—Mrs. Percy Smith.”
Georgia buried her head in her hands and broke down—convincingly, she hoped. She heard the manager say, not unkindly, yet in a detached voice:
“Now you mustn’t distress yourself. It was just a little mistake. Forget all about it. Hallam and Appleby’s never prosecute first offenders.”
Georgia sat up, gazing at him in consternation. Her whole scheme lay in ruins. He was not calling in the police: she still had to get away from this wretched shop of his unaided. She tried to stammer out thanks, her heart raging with disappointment. Mr. Dickon motioned the detective out of the room. Then he tilted his chair back at a dangerous angle, smiled at Georgia quizzically, and said:
“And now, Mrs. Strangeways, what can I do for you?”
Georgia had had quite a few shocks during the last forty-eight hours, but none that disconcerted her more than this. She stared at the young manager blankly.
“I heard you lecturing at the Travellers’ Club a couple of years ago,” he explained. “I used to do a bit myself—went on one of the Oxford University expeditions, to the Antarctic.”
“But——”
“I know enough about you, Mrs. Strangeways, to be quite sure that—if you really wanted to pinch things out of this place—you’d have no difficulty in getting away with it. So, you see, I asked myself, why does the astute Mrs. Strangeways allow herself to be caught red-handed? And answer came there none. Perhaps you’ll elucidate?”
Georgia, silent for a little, looked Mr. Dickon over. Everything now depended on her faculty, trained in strange places among strangers, for summing up character at a glance. If he was all right, as he looked, he could be her salvation: if, on the other hand, he was a member of the E.B., she might as well pack up straight away. The fact that, though she had been caught out shop-lifting, he was for letting her go scot-free, told against him. But there was a candour, a humorousness in his eyes which persuaded her to trust him. She gestured towards the window of his office.
“That looks out on the front of the building, doesn’t it? Just go over and glance down. See those groups of men hanging about by the entrances?”
“M’m.”
“They’re there to get hold of me. I’m working for the Special Branch—counter-espionage. It’s vital that I get to—get away from here this afternoon. This is something big, Mr. Dickon. So big that I daren’t tell you more. I may have been mistaken in telling you so much, and in this game one isn’t allowed to make more than one mistake. You follow?”
“What about the police?”
“They must not be brought into it.”
“I see.”
Mr. Dickon drew some geometrical diagrams on his blotter. He had that astonishing faculty for not showing astonishment, which Oxford imparts to her sons. Georgia’s heart warmed to him: he was a traveller too; the most bizarre phenomena would be greeted by him with just that faint lifting of the eyebrows, that carefully concealed exultation. He asked for no explanations, intent upon the matter in hand.
“Where—roughly where do you want to get to? London?” he said at last.
“Farther west, shall we say?”
Georgia grinned back at him. Mr. Dickon touched a button and spoke into the house-telephone.
“Furnishing department? What vans have we going out this afternoon? . . . Yes . . . No, he’ll have to start earlier. Make it three o’clock. Who’s the foreman? . . . Send him and the driver up here in five minutes.” Mr. Dickon looked up at her. “How much can I tell them?”
“Are they absolutely trustworthy?”
“Yes. They’re staunch Trades’ Unionists.” His eyes studied her shrewdly. “I imagine that’s the type you’d feel safest with in—er—the present circumstances.”
“Mr. Dickon, I feel you perhaps suspect more than is healthy for you.”
“What Manchester suspects to-day, madam, England will suspect to-morrow. By Jove, I wish I could come with you,” he exclaimed boyishly. Then, the efficient manager again, he said, “We’d better have a diversion as well. Let me see . . . Are these people out to shoot at sight?”
“No. Kidnapping’s what they’re after.”
The efficient Mr. Dickon pressed another button. “Tell Miss Jones I want to speak to her in quarter of an hour’s time.”
In a dream Georgia watched him organise the detail of her escape. She was to travel in the pantechnicon, scheduled to leave for Plymouth this afternoon. Trousers, coat, shoes, white overalls, cloth cap appeared as if by magic, and she retired into the manager’s wash-place to put them on. He opened the window, rubbed his hands on the sill outside, and artistically smeared Manchester grime over her face, neck and hands. “We supply all your needs,” he said, fastening a black, toothbrush moustache on her upper lip with spirit gum. He was enjoying it all enormously in his quiet way. The driver and foreman, sworn to secrecy, had already been told what they must do.
Miss Jones, a head clerk in the accountancy department, a woman of Georgia’s height and build, was to supply the diversion. Thirty seconds before the lorry left the yard, she would hurry out of a shop door dressed in a fur coat similar to Georgia’s and a hat with an eye-veil. The E.B. watchers would intercept her, and shortly discover their mistake: but their attention would have been distracted for a minute from the outgoing van. Miss Jones, a leading light in amateur theatricals, could be relied on to make the most of the episode
“And now,” said Mr. Dickon, “I’ll have lunch sent up. Just pop into the other room till they’ve brought it. You’ll need a hearty meal if you’re going to help load furniture. Let’s see, now.” He became absorbed in organising the menu.
“Darling Mr. Dickon, I’ll really have to take you with me on an expedition some day. What a comfort you’d be.”
“That’s a bargain . . .”
At four o’clock Georgia was sitting between driver and foreman in the wide cab of the pantechnicon. They were now twenty miles out of Manchester, roaring steadily south into the gathering darkness. Georgia had the papers of Plan A tucked away in a wallet in her coat pocket, and in the pocket of her baize apron lay a revolver supplied by the inexhaustible Mr. Dickon. She was feeling—of all unlikely emotions at this juncture—a dull boredom. The progress of a pantechnicon does not conduce to any lively excitement, for one thing: and besides, Georgia was no soccer enthusiast, and her two companions were already deeply involved in controversy about the respective merits of Manchester City and Manchester United. Statistics, reminiscences, judgments of form, dark hints of the machinations of managers, less guarded comments on the physical infirmities of referees, beat to and fro about the cab like bats’ wings in a dark cave. Driver and foreman had replayed every move of the last three matches won by their respective teams when the sound of an electric horn stabbed the night and a mobile policeman, swerving past the pantechnicon, halted his motor-bike thirty yards ahead and raised his hand for them to stop.
Georgia was already slumped back in her seat, feigning sleep. She heard the driver slide back the side window and the policeman speaking through it. The police were stopping all cars and lorries, he said: they were looking for a woman, last seen in Manchester, wanted on a charge of car-stealing. Georgia’s hand felt for the revolver in her pocket. She hoped sh
e would not have to use it.
“Got no girls with us on this trip—worse luck,” said the driver.
“My orders are to search the van.”
“Search away, cock, I’m not stopping you. But you’ll have to sign my road-book to show I’ve been delayed. I’m running to schedule.”
“None of your lip, my lad. Come on, open up.”
“You sign my road-book, cock, or I’m not opening this van. We haven’t got all night to chat with fancy coppers on stink-bang machines.”
After some blustering, the policeman signed. Then he stood his motor-bike in the road behind the pantechnicon so that its headlight shone into the interior which, with a good deal of passive obstruction from the growling foreman, he proceeded to search thoroughly. Georgia heard him stumbling about amongst the furniture, and suggestions from the foreman that he might care to unload this wardrobe and take it home with him to examine at leisure.
“What say we lock oop t’bleeder inside and take him along with us?” the driver whispered to her.
“Better not, Joe. I don’t want to get you into more trouble than I can help.” Later, Georgia was to regret she had not accepted the driver’s suggestion. At last the policeman declared himself satisfied. Poking his head into the cabin, he told the driver he could get on with it.
“What about your mate? He seen anything? Sleeping pretty sound, isn’t he?”
“So’d you be, if you ever did any work.”
“Wake him up,” ordered the policeman brusquely.
“Here, cock, have a heart.”
“Wake him up, I tell you.”
The Smiler With the Knife Page 20
