Somebody at the Door
Page 10
At about 11.30 the two agents nazis came in and went into the glass annexe after staring at Harold. They talked in low voices.
At 12.15, when at last he smelt cooking, Harold noticed two French policemen walking quickly across the square—at least, one was in uniform and the other looked more like a plain-clothes man than a true civilian. They walked into the hotel and straight towards the annexe, Harold saw the two “agents” jump to their feet and one, he thought, made a queer swift movement with his hand. He could not be sure, for an uproar had broken out, at the end of which the two men were escorted out of the hotel by the police, obviously under protest.
Harold did not follow the crowd. He went into the annexe as soon as they had gone, and examined it thoroughly, even digging his fingers into the dry earth round the dead palm. At last he found what he was looking for. It was an envelope containing papers, casually—that is, to all appearance casually—thrust inside a copy of the magazine Je Sais Tout. Harold was fairly sure that it had been pushed there in a hurry by one of the “agents.”
He put it in his pocket quietly, ate his lunch, packed his rucksack and cycle bag and asked for his bill. As he waited, he saw the two men come back into the hotel with triumphant smiles. He paid his bill, and the last that he saw of them they were moving about the annexe. Searching, he thought; but he could not be sure.
He was a little nervous about his theft and did not look inside his envelope until he was safely on board the Channel boat a good mile beyond the coast.
These were its contents, eleven papers in all:
(1) A small piece of paper on which were written these figures in a slanting hand:
525
650
700
745
800
815
825
830
835
845
915
1015
1200
1250
1300
1310
(2) A piece of paper the same size on which were written:
J. Reynolds. Ewelme Delancey AV.
O. 772 Minories.
R.R.G. Cafe am Z.
Q.P. AV. V.H. 7. Str.
L.A. R. de Riv 81.
Hot. de Fr. Gde Place St.-0.
The last entry was in pencil. Then there was a bundle of letters which had no dates, but appeared to be in an order. At the top of the first was written in chalk, “CT: R” They were in German.
(3) Dear Sir,
I am very grateful to you for the arrangements for the delivery of the goods, of which I have been informed verbally to-day. I confirm that twenty-five per cent, of the value of these goods shall be handed to you in return for your assiduity in fixing this up. I shall pay fifteen per cent, of this sum to your agent Herr Gross in evidence of good faith on Monday, and the rest will be paid upon delivery of the goods and at the place of delivery. I confirm that the weight of the goods will be in all 140,000 grammes.
Believe me when I say that my expressions of thanks are not merely formal.
Yours very truly,
Marta Goltz.
(4) Dear Herr Opell,
I have handed 15 per cent, to-day to your agent and am awaiting despatch of the goods. The instructions on your invoice handed to me by your agent will be followed exactly.
Yours very truly,
M. Goltz.
A tick was put against the above letter. The next ran:
(5) Dear Herr Opell,
I am very much disturbed at the non-arrival of the merchandise. It should have been notified to me two days ago.
The weight was 140,000 grammes and all specifications were exactly fulfilled. Please send advices at once.
Yours truly,
Marta Goltz.
(6) Dear Herr Opell,
I cannot understand why you send me no word. It is not possible that anything could have happened. I beseech you to communicate with me. If there is any hitch it may be possible to make further financial arrangements. But I beg of you to send me some further information. I have recently been to see Herr Gr. several times, but he is not in his office. I do entreat you to send me word.
Yours truly,
M. Goltz.
On the back of this was:
(7) Copied and sent to D. June 20. Action: June 22.
Typed, with a different hand in the signature:
(8) June 10th. Berlin Office. Memorandum. Re Goltz Goods.
Entrusted delivery to J. R. Departure June 11.
Point: Kehl. June 12. 14.45. Please notify receiver directly yourself. 140,000 gr. R. R. G.
In still a different hand:
(9) Re Goltz. Received as per schedule. See VB 13/6/38 3, 2. Will deliver Paris 15/6/38 140,000 gr.
J.R.
A second sheet in the same hand:
(10) I much regret that I was prevented by interference this side which I had not expected from reporting at Paris. I shall give further details when we meet.
J. R.
Only possible arrive St. O. June 25. An illegible pencil mark was on the last slip.
Apart from these, and crumpled as if it had been thrust into the envelope afterwards, was a torn half sheet of the Völkische Beobachter, page 3, the top half showing the date June 13th. A cross had been marked with a blue pencil against one news item in column 2, as follows:
(11) A fresh arrest was made yesterday at Kehl by the admirable customs staff, which has during the past five years been entirely renewed and imbued by the spirit of National Socialism.
A man giving the name of Goltz was observed attempting to cross the river on a ferry boat disguised as an official. He had over 2,000 RM. in currency upon his person which he was endeavouring to smuggle into France. His manner was abject when he was discovered and he offered a bribe to the S.S. man who questioned him. A few good German blows from the fist of the insulted Aryan taught him proper behaviour.
He was brought within an hour before the Extraordinary Tribunal, and the double offence of smuggling currency and endeavouring to corrupt a member of the Reich forces justified a sentence of death. The proceedings were in camera, but it is understood that the criminal’s name is not really Goltz and that under the degenerate Weimar regime he was a well-known banker. He is, of course, a Jew.
Sentence will be carried out to-morrow. The prisoner has not as yet confessed the names of his accomplices, but it is believed he will be induced to do so.
Harold puzzled over them for some time, but the transaction, whatever it was, was something outside the usual business of a printing office, and he could make nothing of it. As a hypothesis, he assumed that someone called Goltz who tried to smuggle out German money had been caught and the correspondence concerned that and was in a sort of code. He tried to work out the code, but couldn’t do so. He noticed a reference to what looked like a rendezvous at St. Omer, but decided to turn the whole packet over to David and his colleagues for them to pick at.
2
A full session—apart from Herron the docker—was held to examine the papers, more thrilling as they were than any crossword puzzle; and approached, unfortunately, in rather the same spirit. Indeed, the clues, if such they were, were so grabbed from hand to hand by the excited investigators that Diana Evans called them in and made copies for each sleuth. After a while silence and a rough division of labour was secured.
David Ellerton took for his first subject the list of figures:
525
650
700
745
800
815
825
830
835
845
915
1015
1200
1250
1300
1310
He added them up first. 14560 was the total he got. He considered whether this might not have some relation to the 140,000 grammes continually mentioned in the correspondence. Add a nought and the sum was very similar. Suppose eac
h group represented a packet, in tens? It didn’t seem very probable. Still, it was a possibility.
He then noticed two points about the list: there was no figure of two digits, and none of five. None below 100, nor more than a thousand-and-something. Also, every figure ended in 0 or 5. This suggested that sums of money might be concerned. 5.25 dollars, for example, might be the first. But that would only make the total sum 145 dollars and 60 cents, about £30. Or 5 francs 25 centimes would give 145 francs and 60 centimes, which was less than a pound. Neither seemed satisfactory. Nor did this idea explain why the figures went continually upwards in value. That must be so for some reason, and if he could only find the reason, he believed he would be in a fair way to interpret the whole thing. A series of figures, going upwards, by fives. He tried to find a rhythm in the spacing, but there seemed none. He irritably wished he had had a scientific education. Probably it would shout its secret aloud to a scientist. No doubt there was some graph. Or something called a geometrical or arithmetical progression.
His annoyance was not decreased by the fact that Preston was obviously making rapid progress with the second slip of paper:
J. Reynolds. Ewelme Delancey Av.
O. 772 Minories.
R.R.G. Cafe am Z.
Q.P. Av. V.H. 7. Str.
L.A. R. de Riv. 81.
Hot. de Fr. Gde Place St.-O.
“This is a list of addresses,” he said.
“My dear Holmes !” sneered David.
“—and some of them are fairly easy to interpret. The last, added in pencil, is where you stayed, Harold, and where they had a date to meet the ‘J.R.’ of the letters. You see he says in his note, ‘St. O. June 25.’ The other addresses I should think are the addresses of persons regularly concerned in this business, whatever it is. Possibly ‘J.R.’ is J. Reynolds, of Delancey Avenue. Since the next address, Minories, is a London address, then I think Delancey Avenue is in London too. We could look, anyway.”
“It might be New York. There’s a street there with a name something like that,” said David, anxious to keep his end up.
“It might be anywhere,” said Preston coldly, and went on: “O. may be this Herr Opell: or may not; 772 the Minories should not be hard to find. As for the others, I can give you two and the third beats me. ‘Q.P. Av. V.H. 7’ is Avenue Victor Hugo number seven. There is an Avenue Victor Hugo in every French town—that was easy. And “Str.’ is almost sure to be Strasbourg: at least I don’t know of any other French town important enough to be known by its initials alone.”
“It may be quite a small one, which happens to be known to them all because they work there or something,” offered Diana.
“It may be. We’ll never find it, if so. Then ‘L.A. Rue de Riv. 81’ has no town mentioned, and therefore is Paris. Obviously Rue de Rivoli number 81,” said Preston proudly.
“And ‘R.R.G. Cafe am Z’?” asked Diana.
“Don’t know.”
“I do,” said David, at last able to intervene. “The Café am Zoo is the huge café in Berlin. As famous as the Café Royal here. Look at letter 8. It is clear that R.R.G. is Herr Gross who is despatching something which Marta Goltz hasn’t received. I suppose he uses the café as his office. Sounds a bit fishy.”
Diana looked at document 8.
“June 10th. Berlin Office. Memorandum.
Re Goltz goods
Entrusted delivery to J. R. Departure June 11.
Point: Kehl. June 12. 14.45. Please notify receiver directly yourself 140,000 gr.
R. R. G.”
“Yes,” she said. “He delivered the goods to J.R. in whose hands they vanished—or something—and J.R. crossed to St. Omer to explain things away. It could be that. Kehl is opposite Strasbourg on the Rhine. I suppose ‘Q.P.’ was to be there to receive it.”
She hesitated, feeling there was something more if only she could grasp it.
“How would this do?” she went on slowly. “The explanation is in this cutting from the German paper. According to how you translate it, David, it means that somebody called Goltz was trying to get out with some money. That means: there weren’t any goods; there was a person, Mr. Goltz. And the reason he never got through was that someone was double-crossing and tipped the Nazis off.”
“I believe you’re right. You’ve got it. You are a clever girl.” David tipped her face up and kissed her.
“Oh, shut up being silly,” she replied with a Fifth Form gaucheness, and turned scarlet.
Harold, who had been an admiring watcher till then, broke in with a comment of his own.
“I think there’s a greater complication. I don’t believe that the two men whom I saw were anti-Nazis. I don’t think they were trying to get Mr. Goltz out. They were crooks and thugs if ever I saw one. Besides, the man told me they were Nazis.”
“That’s not much to go on,” said Preston. “An impression of people’s faces and café gossip. But if they were Nazis, they may possibly have picked up this whole pile of correspondence in rounding up people when they seized Goltz. That may have given them the chance to break up a ring. It seems pretty beastly. But I don’t know what we can do. It’s all over now.”
“It’s more beastly than that,” persisted Harold, with mild obstinacy. “Look at document 9. J.R. did receive the goods. And what did he do with them? He says—‘See V.B. 13/6/38.’ Well, you can see Völkische Beobachter, 13/6/38 can’t you? He handed the goods over to the loyal customs service, who killed Mr. Goltz. The only trouble was about the 140,000 grammes which he ought to have delivered in Paris. And I bet that was really a bribe or something.”
There was a silence while the company considered that.
“Nothing else fits in,” declared Preston at last. “It means that the owners of these papers pretended to export a Jew from Germany and at the same time notified the Nazis. They presumably split the fee with the Nazis.”
“That’s nasty,” said Diana, and shuddered.
“It’s Nazi,” corrected Preston, but did not get a laugh.
There was another long pause. Then Harold said: “It isn’t really true there’s nothing we can do. We can go and look, at least.”
“Look?”
“I mean, we’ve got two addresses in London. We could go and see if there’s anything to be seen. I might recognize if either of the two people I saw in St. Omer were around. Though even then …” His voice trailed away.
“I know where to ask about refugees,” said Preston. “I could go to the Central Office in Bloomsbury and find out about people named Goltz. There’s about half a dozen other places, too, which know about these things.”
There was a certain amount more talk, and it was agreed that Preston should make all the enquiries he could about refugees named Goltz who had been expected and had not arrived. Diana Evans should go to 772 Minories and list the offices there, Harold Birch should find out from the directories at his employers’ office, whether there was a Delancey Avenue in London, and if so, visit it in the hope of recognizing one of his St. Omer narks. David Ellerton was to receive and co-ordinate—more briefly, to do nothing.
3
Thursday night found them slightly advanced.
“Boss” Preston had been told by three refugee organizations that they knew nothing of any Goltz who would fit the conditions of the case. But at one, a dark Jewish girl clerk had hinted that she knew of certain things which were done “on the side” and she was taking time to consider whether she would confide in him. It was agreed (the meeting was formal to-night) that he should show her copies of the documents in an endeavour to persuade her.
Harold Birch had found that there was one Delancey Avenue in London, in the far south-east. You could reach it by going down the Old Kent Road, turning east at New Cross and going up the Brockley Road. Off that were a number of suburban roads, apparently rather respectable, called such names as Allenby Road, Plomer Road, Haig Road, and Foch Road. Among them were four curiously named—Delancey Avenue, Zenger Avenue, Phillipse Avenue,
and Hamilton Avenue. He had not had time to visit them. It was agreed that he should go there as soon as he could and see if there was a house named “Ewelme” and watch out for either of his St. Omer acquaintances.
David and Diana had been to 772 Minories. There were several suites of offices there. One was called “The London and Hamburg Direct Importation Company.” It had five names painted up in one corner on the opaque glass door. One was H. W. Opell. Diana had gone in and enquired for a Mr. Alfred Greenberg. She had been told there was no such person there, but had secured a general idea of the layout of the office.
Harold offered to go himself next day, Friday, either at lunch-time or immediately after work in the evening, down to Delancey Avenue, to look it over and watch for any suspicious characters. This was unanimously agreed; he may or may not have thought it odd that no offer of action was made by any of the others.
4
The fact, which he did not suspect, was that the others were intending to act without his knowledge. He suffered from two handicaps in their view. Firstly, he had to work. He had to be at his desk from nine to six; and he could not afford to be irregular. He was not available for stunts during the day, and he disliked very much going to bed later than ten. Secondly, he was too scrupulous and too little adventurous. He had modified his pacifism to the extent of declaring that a time might come when Nazism would have to be opposed by force. But apart from that he was the most strictly law-abiding young man south of the river, and turbulence, even the mild turbulence of organizing reprisals against Mosley thugs, was the last thing he liked. Therefore, when he rang up David at lunch-time next day, he disturbed a cabal of which he did not know. David never worked, Herron was a casual labourer and could be very casual at need, Diana took the liberties at work that pretty young women often do, and Preston’s services were only intermittently needed, like those of so many workers in 1938. They were working out a project of which they did not really want Harold to know. Fortunately, he was not suspicious.