The Superintendent’s heavy eyelids flickered.
‘I’ll buy it,’ he said.
Rowley laughed and winked at Campion.
‘Isn’t he an old duck?’ he said. ‘A dear harmless, friendly old duck. He’s taken a fancy to me and he just wants to know why I’m so happy.’
‘That’ll do, my lad. Not too much impudence, if I were you.’ In spite of the protest, Oates still maintained his unnatural docility.
Rowley turned away. ‘You almost break my heart,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘You almost spoil my celebration.’ The final word appeared to attract him for he repeated it and suddenly wheeled round again. ‘I’ll tell you,’ he said. ‘Do you know why I’ve been treating myself like a long-lost son all the afternoon? Do you know why I keep giving myself little drinks and jolly encouraging smiles in the mirror?’
‘I’d make a darned good guess.’ Oates’s earlier humour showed signs of returning. ‘Either you’ve just made an ungodly fool of yourself again or you’re just going to.’
‘Wrong,’ said Anthony Rowley triumphantly. ‘Wrong. Prosaically wrong. Your mind leaps to material facts as usual. You wouldn’t understand, so I shan’t give you the whole low-down, but because you’re an old acquaintance I’ll let you in half-way. I’m gloriously happy because I have had a beautiful thought. This will be lost on you because, dear good chap though you are, you’re not the sort of man who has really beautiful thoughts. Don’t take offence and don’t worry about it. You can’t help it; you’re just not that sort of person. You understand that don’t you, sir?’
His final remark was addressed to Campion, who made no attempt to hide his smile.
‘A beautiful thought,’ Rowley repeated. ‘A peach. A delicate masterpiece of exquisite construction. An epic gem. Or, if you prefer it, a fizzler. Excuse me, I must go and brood over it again.’
He drifted away, only a trifle uncertainly, and Oates looked after him with a dour and introspective eye.
‘He’ll never forgive himself when he sobers up, will he?’ he said presently, and for the first time that afternoon a brief, satisfied smile passed over his face. ‘Poor chap, I’m almost sorry for him. That’s my sporting instinct again. So he’s on to something, is he? I’ll get the lads to look him up at once.’
Campion’s pale eyes behind his horn-rimmed spectacles were kindly.
‘I wonder what it was,’ he remarked. ‘He seemed delighted.’
‘He seemed tight,’ corrected Oates dryly. ‘He was a very different chap last time I saw him. Not nearly so chatty, believe me. He belongs to the type of crook I’ve no patience with at all. He’s not even very good at his job. You heard him admit it just now. Damn it, he’s almost proud of his incompetence. Bream safes, that’s his line. No one else’s safes, mark you; just Bream’s. He served an apprenticeship with the firm when he was young, learnt just as much as he needed to know and no more, and now no Bream safe is proof against him.
‘They say the modern crook has to be a specialist,’ he added, ‘but that lad overdoes it. It’s rank incompetence in his case, and he’s lazy. He gets on my nerves.’
‘I think you’re unreasonable.’ Campion made the criticism mildly. ‘A man with a trade mark like that must play right into your hands.’
‘Ye-es. So he does.’ Oates was strangely reluctant. ‘So he does,’ he repeated. ‘In a way. Yet he’s slippery. Once or twice he’s pulled a very fast one and we haven’t been able to collect sufficient evidence to prosecute. We’ve known he was our man, and we’ve brought him in, and then he’s wriggled out again.’
‘Infuriating chap,’ murmured Campion. ‘He had more brains than the average, I thought.’
The Superintendent got up.
‘That’s half his trouble,’ he said heavily. ‘He doesn’t use ’em, or doesn’t use ’em all. However, he’s done it this time. He’s opened his heart to the wrong man. That’s why I think I’ll just get back for half an hour or so. After all, when the mouse puts his head out of the hole it’s silly not to pounce. You don’t mind, do you?’
‘Not at all,’ Mr Campion was polite but tickled. ‘Our delinquents must be taught to be efficient at all costs.’
Left to himself, it occurred to Campion that he might as well take a little food, and with this in mind he went downstairs to the restaurant.
The big ugly room was full, as usual, with a fair sprinkling of people present whom nearly everybody else knew at least by sight. He nodded to young Lafcadio, the painter, avoided Mrs Beamish, waved to Lily O’Dell, and was just settling down to half a dozen oysters when he caught sight of young Green.
Brian Green, whom Campion had last seen at the Oxford and Cambridge match, was in the uniform of a private in His Majesty’s Territorial Army, and he was alone. He was also visibly depressed, but, on meeting Campion’s eye, he brightened a little and came lumbering over, six-foot-three of yellow-haired good temper.
‘Not so hot,’ he answered in reply to the inevitable question. ‘I’m on the lights, you know, down in the country. This is the first day of leave.’
‘Sounds all right to me,’ said Campion, waving him into the chair opposite. ‘Why the lonely state? Hasn’t she turned up?’
Brian’s smile vanished once more.
‘Well, yes,’ he began awkwardly as he dug a small pattern on the tablecloth with a fork. ‘She came all right but – er – well, she’s gone.’
There was a brief silence between them, since Campion could not think of any comment which could possibly be considered helpful. The boy’s depression increased.
‘You’re so tied, aren’t you?’ he observed at last. ‘When you’re in the Army, I mean, you can’t be on the spot.’ There was a wistfulness on his good-natured freckled face which made his host feel suddenly old. ‘Of course,’ he continued seriously, ‘she’s very young.’
Mr Campion checked the impulse to inquire if the woman was out of the cradle, and did his best to look intelligently indulgent.
‘I thought she would rather like the uniform,’ the boy added naïvely, ‘but apparently she’s got bitten by the Ministry idea.’
‘The Ministry? What Ministry?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. She did tell me. Some awfully important Ministry, she said. Apparently all the intellectual lads have crowded into Supply and Defence and Economic and whatnot – at least that’s her idea – and that’s what’s taken her fancy at the moment. It sounded too like the Post Office to me, and I told her so. She didn’t like that. She’s known me so long, you see, that she hasn’t any illusions about my brain power. Anyway, that was why she couldn’t go on to a show with me tonight. She had a date with one of these intelligent lads.’
‘She’ll grow out of that,’ said Campion with conviction.
‘Do you think so?’ Brian was pathetically eager. ‘We’ve been running around together ever since we were at school. She’s a wonderful girl. Dances like a dream. We used to get on marvellously before she got interested in brains.’
‘My dear chap, they recover from that. It falls from them like a cloak.’ Campion spoke with great earnestness. ‘Meanwhile, if you’ll allow me to prescribe for the evening, food.’
‘Food? Do you think so? I rather thought …’
‘Food,’ insisted his host. ‘As from one who knows. Vast quantities of beautiful food. Wait a moment, we’ll consult George.’
Three days later Campion met Brian again. To be exact, it was not so much a meeting as an ambush. He came hurrying into his own flat with a brief couple of hours in which to get through a month’s correspondence, only to discover two young people sitting in suspiciously nonchalant attitudes, one on either end of his settee. The girl had been crying, and there was a damp patch on Brian’s khaki shoulder. The soldier got up.
‘Oh, there you are,’ he said with relief. ‘I do hope you’ll forgive us barging in on you like this, but you were the only person I could think of to come to in the circumstances. By the way, this is Susan. Miss Susan Chad; Mr Campion.’
Susan was a dear. As soon as Campion set eyes upon her he forgave Brian much of his youth and understood many of his problems. Changing fashions produce changing women and years of progress and emancipation are thought to have altered the sex unrecognisably, but there is one type of girl who never differs. In tiger skins, crinolones, or A.T.S. uniform she remains herself, dear, desirable, and chuckle-headed as a coot.
Susan raised a small round face to Mr Campion’s own with a sweet dignity which had forgotten to take into account the teardrop on the edge of her cheekbone, and said with devastating humility:
‘I’ve been so frightfully silly and just a little tiny bit dishonest. What would you advise?’
‘If you could convince her it won’t mean the Tower it would be something,’ muttered Brian out of the corner of his mouth.
‘The hopeless thing about it is that it wasn’t really my fault,’ the girl protested. ‘It wouldn’t be so bad, somehow, if I’d done anything. It was the man in the station cloakroom. I didn’t even look, or at least hardly.’
‘I blame the fellow for saddling you with the responsibility in the first place,’ said Brian stolidly. ‘That was an unheard-of imposition.’
‘No, Brian. You mustn’t say that.’ Susan was very serious. ‘No, you can’t blame him. I wanted the responsibility, and I was very honoured by his confidence. That’s why this is so absolutely awful. I simply daren’t face him. I’d rather die.’
‘It’s a code,’ said Campion, who had been listening for some time with his head on one side. ‘My bet is that it’s a code. You’ve lost the secret password and the figures don’t add up.’
The girl blinked at him reproachfully.
‘I don’t know what it is,’ she said. ‘I haven’t been so indiscreet as to look. It’s all those seals which are going to cause the trouble.’
‘Seals?’ muttered Campion, taken off his guard. ‘I give in. Mention a couple of whales and I fly screaming from the room.’
Brian smiled apologetically at Susan before he eyed his host sternly.
‘Perhaps we’d better explain,’ he suggested.
‘Perhaps you had,’ agreed Campion huffily. ‘What’s up?’
‘I’ll tell it, Brian,’ the girl put in firmly. ‘There’s one side of it that you don’t see, and that’s the part which matters rather a lot from my point of view. Mr Campion, I admire Tony tremendously, and that makes all the difference, doesn’t it?’
‘Oh indubitably,’ said Campion, allowing the fog to close over his head. ‘Let’s start from there.’
‘I’d like to.’ Susan was still quiet. ‘Tony is in a frightfully important Ministry, Consolidation of Defence, I think; I can’t quite remember. But anyway, he’s way up in it, and he’s terribly responsible and utterly overworked. Last time I saw him we were going to a show, but he was suddenly called out of town on something he couldn’t tell me about, and we had to dash back to his place and collect some things. It was all desperately urgent and, as he didn’t know when he would be back, he gave me a small attaché-case containing some very secret papers and made me promise to take care of it for him. I swore I would, of course, and he left me on my doorstep with the case.’
‘Of very secret papers,’ echoed Mr Campion stupidly.
‘That’s what he said, anyway,’ she protested. ‘Only, of course, it was more impressive than I’ve made it. I – I’m not impressive.’
‘My dear girl, forgive me.’ Mr Campion was contrite instantly. ‘I was only assimilating the facts. I’m not too bright this afternoon. He gave you an attaché-case to mind and you’ve lost it. Is that right?’
‘Oh, no,’ Susan grew crimson at the suggestion. ‘No, I’ve not lost it, thank heaven. It’s not as bad as that.’
‘Here, let me tell it.’ Brian came forward protectively. ‘Susan isn’t quite the little wet she sounds. She believes in this chap, you see, and evidently he realises the sort of kid she is, absolutely dependable, and thoroughly first-class. Anyway, he wanted to leave this attaché-case in perfectly safe hands for a day or so. It was late at night, on that same evening when I met you, as a matter of fact, and there was no chance of shoving it in a bank or in his office, so he gave it to Susan.’ He hesitated and blushed. ‘You may think that unlikely.’ He went on stoutly, ‘but I don’t, knowing Susan.’
Campion accepted the rebuke meekly.
‘Oh, rather not,’ he said with what he trusted was convincing enthusiasm. ‘That’s as far as I’ve got. Where does the seal come in?’
‘It was the seal which got broken. That’s the trouble,’ murmured Susan. ‘The cloakroom man did it – or rather he stood over me while I did it. It was too impossibly awkward. Tell him, Brian.’
The young soldier sat down on the arm of the settee.
‘It’s a perfectly simple story,’ he said. ‘Susan kept the case that night and most of the next day, but then she got the wind up, as anyone might. You know how you keep shifting something terribly important. Wherever you put it, it never feels quite safe. Finally it got on her nerves, as it would on anybody’s, and so, very reasonably, she thought she’d stick it in a station cloakroom. Well, that was all right, but she’d forgotten the I.R.A. scares and the new regulations at some of the stations, and when she got down to Waterloo or wherever it was, the fellow in the office asked her to open the thing. She objected rather guiltily and that made him awkward. You know how these things happen. Finally there was a bit of a row and people started to collect.’
Susan looked at Mr Campion appealingly. ‘I didn’t dare to hurry away with it. It would have looked so suspicious. It was terrible,’ she said earnestly.
‘I can well imagine it,’ he agreed. ‘So you opened it, of course? Bursting the lock, no doubt. What did you find inside?’
‘A package,’ cut in Brian. ‘This is the difficult part. There was a squarish package inside simply plastered all over with official seals. Frankly, the long and the short of it was that Susan had to break these. When the fellow saw that there was only a great wedge of forms and things inside he apologised, but that didn’t help. For nearly two days Susan has been in agony waiting for this chap to turn up. When he does she’ll have to explain, and she’s afraid that he may get in a frightful row since the seals are broken. It’s a jam, isn’t it?’
‘Jam indeed,’ consented Mr Campion cautiously. ‘Er – if it isn’t a foolish question, what exactly do you expect me to do?’
Susan looked at Brian, who had the grace to hesitate.
‘It was I who thought of you,’ he said at last. ‘Susan came to me because she – well, she regards me as a sort of brother, so she says.’ He was blushing furiously, and Campion admired his chivalry. ‘We thought that if the seals could be somehow … replaced, I don’t know how or who by, but … well, you’re mixed up with all sorts of authorities, aren’t you?’ His voice trailed away and his shoulders drooped dejectedly.
‘It was a wild idea,’ he muttered apologetically.
Campion had not the heart to agree with him as profoundly as he felt.
‘Where is this incriminating bundle now?’ he inquired.
Susan fished under the sofa on which she sat.
‘I haven’t dared to let it out of my sight since then,’ she said pathetically. ‘I wish I’d never seen it. I used to think I’d be pretty good at this sort of thing, responsibility and secrets and all that, but I’m not. I’m bad. I’m hopeless, I’d never take it on again.’
In the face of this humility, any criticism which Mr Campion might have felt inclined to offer was stifled at birth. He took the small attaché-case with becoming reverence and raised the lid. The package with the broken seals lay before him.
To do it justice, it was an impressive parcel with quite two pennyworth of red sealing wax plastered about it and a length of green tape as binding. As he stood holding it in his hands, with the eyes of the two young people upon him, inspiration came to him as if from some psychometric source.
‘Oh, by the way,’ h
e said, ‘and in strictest confidence, of course, what is Tony’s name? I’m afraid you’ll have to tell me that.’
‘Of course. I don’t think that matters. You may even have heard of him.’ Susan spoke with a pride which seemed a little hard on Brian. ‘He’s Anthony Rowley. The Anthony Rowley,’ she added hopefully.
Mr Campion saved the parcel and his equanimity with an effort, and the girl who was watching him caught her breath.
‘You have heard of him,’ she said. ‘Then you will do all you can for me, won’t you?’
Campion set down the package. ‘All I may,’ he said seriously. ‘Tell me did Mr Rowley put these seals on this himself?’
‘Oh, no, I don’t think so.’ The idea was a new one to Susan, and she looked a little bewildered. ‘He might have, of course,’ she added presently. ‘He was away some time when he went up to the study to fetch it. That’s an official seal though, isn’t it?’
Campion studied one of the blobs of wax. There was certainly the imprint of a lion and a crown upon it, but many medallions bear this device, certain sixpenny pieces amongst them. He glanced up.
‘All this happened on Tuesday, did it?’ he said. ‘On the evening I met Brian?’
‘Yes. That’s why it’s so frightfully urgent. Tony may come back any time now. It’s going to be unbearable. I’d rather die than have to tell him.’
Brian put an arm round her shoulders.
‘Trust Campion,’ he said. ‘It’s quite possible that he knows some important bug who will take a personal interest in the whole case, Rowley and all. Can you think of anyone like that, guvnor?’
Campion ran an easing finger round the inside of his collar.
‘Someone does come to mind,’ he admitted. ‘To deny that would be wrong. Yes, definitely, someone very important does come to mind.’
Forty minutes later Mr Campion and Superintendent Oates sat looking at each other across the desk in the policeman’s solid old-fashioned office. The attaché-case lay open between them, and a pile of buff-coloured forms which had been in the sealed package now rested on the Superintendent’s blotter. Oates, never an emotional man, was wiping his eyes.
Mr Campion & Others Page 26
