The Case of the Running Mouse: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

She slept at the hotel that night, as he’d told me, and then the next morning she had a visitor. When the desk clerk said, “What name, sir?” this caller said she’d know. He was a man slightly below normal height, and sparely built, and he spoke with what the clerk described as an Irish accent. Mrs. Graves had a small suite consisting of sitting-room, bedroom, and bathroom, and the caller spent a good hour with her and left about an hour before lunch.

  Mrs. Graves had all her meals in her room, and she rang down to the office to say she’d be leaving that evening soon after dark; a private car, of which she was to be warned when it arrived, would be calling for her. That car duly drew up. The hall porter went out at the tooting of the horn, and a voice said that it was the car for Mrs. Graves. The voice was foreign in quality, and that was all that could be said about it. The trunk, which had been brought down in readiness, was put in the back of the car, which was a black or dark saloon, and naturally the porter didn’t think of taking its number. Mrs. Graves had already settled her bill, and went out to the car at once. The porter heard no greetings. The car, as far as he was concerned, simply drove off, and he found his tip waiting for him at the desk. As for the direction the car went, he had no idea. The hotel is approached by its own circular drive, and where it went after leaving the drive it was impossible to say, or to check.

  That was all, and I didn’t need to put many questions.

  “There’s one vital thing,” I said, “and I shan’t blame you if you don’t know it. It’s this. Mrs. Graves, as she called herself, told the hotel people that she’d be leaving on the Thursday at dusk, shall we say, and that a private car was coming for her. When did she say that? Before the caller came on the Thursday, or after?”

  “After,” he said promptly.

  “You’re dead sure?”

  “Dead sure.”

  “Don’t mind my being persistent,” I said, “but why are you sure?”

  “Because I put two and two together, like you are now,” he told me with a grin. “It was the visit of that Irishman that made her change her plans. She’d booked the rooms for two nights.”

  “I’ll agree,” I said. “But how did she get in touch with the private car or the people who sent it?”

  “There was a telephone in her room.”

  “Agreed, but did she report the use of it when she paid her bill?”

  “I didn’t think of that,” he told me regretfully. “But something I did think of. I asked if the accent—described as foreign—of the man with the car was really an Irish accent. The porter insisted it was foreign. His idea was that it was French. He’d fought in France in the last war, by the way.”

  “Good work,” I said. “But you’d better clear up that matter of the room telephone and you might see if it’s possible to trace the call. And now take this name and address. William O’Clauty, Gilland Lodge, County Dublin.”

  He repeated it as he wrote, then was asking if that was the caller. I told him all I knew—with reservations.

  “No possible chance of your getting over there?” I said.

  He shook his head. “I could fake a letter,” he said, “but there’d be the devil to pay if I got caught. I daren’t take the risk, Mr. Travers.”

  “Any means of finding out where O’Clauty was at the relevant times? When he crossed and when he went back?”

  “That’s easy,” he said. “A man in Dublin will do that for me. Might cost a packet for telephoning, though.”

  “You get the information,” I told him, “and I’ll do the worrying about the cost.”

  I strolled back as far as Piccadilly, for it was a glorious morning; as fine a spring day, in fact, as I’d ever known, even if it was still winter. I didn’t do any thinking, except in one direction, and even then I didn’t know if it would be discreet to ring Worrack up. And I doubted if I’d get him. There was that business with Georgina’s bank manager on which he was supposed to be engaged.

  In Piccadilly I treated myself to a coffee at Moroni’s and then took the Tube. Before I had been in my flat five minutes, there was a ring at the bell, and who should be there but Hamson.

  “I’ve come to throw myself on your mercy,” he said, and with a disarming smile.

  “Heave away then,” I told him.

  “Lewton-Molde seemed rather attracted by you last night,” he said. “He told me you looked a very good sort and he was angling for further acquaintance. Said he was probably at school with your brother.”

  “Maybe he was,” I said, “except that I never had a brother.”

  “I thought not,” he said. “Still, he was very importunate, so I gave him your address, which I got from Worrack. Then my conscience smote me and I thought I’d slip round and give you the tip.”

  “Thanks,” I said dryly. “And when’s he likely to roll up?”

  “I should say at about an hour before lunch,” he said. “That’s when he usually blinks out on the world. Unless he’s very anxious indeed to make your closer acquaintance.”

  My eyebrows lifted. “What’s his racket?”

  “I wouldn’t like to say,” he told me, and then gave a slight grin. “I don’t know the gentleman well enough, and you’re too wily a bird.”

  “Glad you think so,” I said, and wondered if I dare ask him a certain question. Not that one about the money but something a bit trickier. Then I decided not to, and at that moment the telephone bell rang. Hamson got to his feet but I told him to sit tight.

  It was from Worrack. He’d had bad luck at the bank, he said. The manager knew him but managers are punctilious to the point of exasperation. All he had induced that one to do was to have a quick look over the account. The manager had done so and had then grudgingly stated, and in the very closest confidence, that no recent payments had been out of the usual run.

  “I tried passing the buck to Barbara,” Worrack said “and when she gathered what I’d been doing, she was absolutely furious. I mean furious. Blue, blazing mad. Speechless too—after a bit. Just slapped back the telephone.”

  “You didn’t mention me?”

  “Good God, no!”

  He must have gathered something from the non-committal nature of my other remarks, for he was asking then if I was alone. I said I wasn’t, then told him Hamson was with me.

  “Good,” he said. “And this for your private ear. I’ve decided I can’t stand all this any longer. Some time to-night I’ll pass on something that’ll interest you. I don’t give a damn about Barbara.”

  “Pass it on where? At the club?”

  “That’s right,” he said. “And I’d be obliged if you’d give Hamson the same tip. Tell him to be there.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No,” he said. “Except that I’d be glad if you could find Hamson something to do. You know, along the lines we discussed.”

  “I remember,” I said vaguely.

  “Any news from your end?”

  “No,” I said. “But there certainly will be to-night.”

  I heard him let out a quick breath. “Sure you can’t tell me now?”

  “Quite sure,” I said, and, “Right-ho, then. See you to-night. Trust me to give you any information when I happen to think fit.”

  “That was Worrack,” I told Hamson casually.

  “He’s up and about early?”

  “Yes,” I said, “and he’s anxious for me to find you some sort of job.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Got one in mind?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. I hoped he didn’t think me too casual but I wasn’t thinking about him. The gesture was one that put the onus on Worrack for intruding on what was my own jurisdiction. Still, if Worrack wanted Hamson to help, I did have a job in mind.

  “The first condition I lay down is that you ask no questions,” I said. “You just do as you told and trust me to give you any information when I happen to think fit.”

  “Suits me,” he said.

  “Then find out this,” I said. “When does Jean come on duty at the clu
b?”

  To my surprise he was whipping out a small notebook. I repeated the instructions slowly.

  “Find out what time Jean has to report for duty at the club and especially at what time he reported on the night of Thursday the fourteenth of January. Also, if he can drive a car, and anything further that’s likely to be useful.”

  “Anything else?” he asked when he’d got that down.

  I told him that Worrack had as good as ordered me to tell him that there might be a certain disclosure at the club sometime that night, and he was to be sure to be there. While he was nodding, the door bell went, and his look turned to a grimace. I motioned to him to sit tight. Half a minute and Molde was coming in.

  By daylight he didn’t look so good. If he wasn’t a dope fiend, then my name was Blunt. Did I tell you that he had the air of some patrician trifler with the arts? Hair rather long and brushed well back, and a general air of the slovenly intellectual. His colour was bad and there was a faint scent of pomade about him, and his fingers had little nervous twitchings.

  “Morning, Blunt,” he said, and then appeared to have caught sight of Hamson. “Hallo, Hamson; you here?”

  “Any objections?” Hamson asked amusedly.

  I broke into my last bottle of sherry and poured three tots. Molde plunged straight into the object of his call. I said my brother hadn’t been at that particular school—I daren’t mention its name—but probably he was thinking of my cousin Charles. That’d be it, he said, and I couldn’t help giving Hamson a surreptitious wink. When he asked after Charles, I said he was soldiering in North Africa.

  We talked about the war for a minute or two, then he said he would be going, and would I lunch with him some time. I said I would, and I asked if I’d be seeing him at the club that night. He said he rather doubted it.

  Hamson said he’d be moving too, so I accompanied the pair of them to the hall door and saw them go off together in the direction of town. Then Frank, the hall porter, hailed me. He was a cheerful, garrulous soul.

  “The gentleman found you then, sir? I knew he was making a mistake.”

  “Found me? What do you mean?”

  “Well, he asked me for a Mr. Blunt and I said we hadn’t no one of that name. Then I asked him to describe the gentleman, sir, and I knew he meant you. It’s Major Travers you want, sir,’ I told him. ‘No it isn’t,’ he said, ‘his name’s Blunt.’ ‘You go up to the flat, sir, and enquire and I think you’ll find I’m right,’ I said. ‘What’s his Christian name?’ he said, and I told him. Then he was shrugging his shoulders. He might have told me he was wrong, sir, mightn’t he?”

  “He certainly might,” I said. “Very good of you, Frank, all the same.”

  If that wasn’t a piece of bad luck, then I don’t know what would be. I knew very well why Molde had made that flagrant excuse to see me. Scylla had told him about that contretemps in Worrack’s office, and his visit therefore had been exploratory. But a visit to Blunt wouldn’t have mattered. What was most devilishly exasperating, and indeed dangerous, was that he knew now that my name wasn’t Blunt. He knew, in fact, that it was Ludovic Travers, and it seemed only reasonable to anticipate that before many hours had passed he would know precisely who Ludovic Travers was.

  “Damn the whole case!” I said, and knew only too well that the annoyance should have been directed against my incompetent self. Nothing was wrong with the case; what was wrong was the equivocal, butter-fingered way I’d handled it. But to blazes with it in any case, I said, and tried to settle down to my crossword. Just as I’d ordered a service lunch, the telephone went. It was Bill Ellice, calling up from Richmond.

  “Something fishy about that business, sir.”

  “How?”

  “When she paid her bill she didn’t say a word about a telephone call. On the other hand, she took a stroll in the garden that afternoon and I guess she’d done her ’phoning from outside. There’s a sub-post office with a call-box, not two hundred yards away and that’s where she did ’phone from.”

  “Then it can’t be traced,” I said.

  “Afraid not,” he told me. “It could hardly have been a long-distance.”

  “Well, see what you can do about it,” I said. “And do your best to trace that car. A needle in a haystack, I know, but do your best.”

  That afternoon I strolled along to the Yard to see if there was any news of George Wharton. Something told me to go to a certain department and ask guardedly if there was anything known about Molde, then I thought it too dangerous. Hamson I might have enquired about, perhaps, with a hint at a confidence trick, but I gave that the go-by too. Then I went to Moroni’s in case any of the crowd should be there, but there was devil a soul I knew. Then I walked all the way back to my flat, because what was wrong with me was too much wondering just what it was that Worrack was about to disclose that night, and whether even the disclosure would be either a red-herring or a fake.

  Before nine o’clock I was ready to push on to the club, and that was far too early. I had not heard from my wife, so I decided to ring her up and make it a party to party call. Then I poured myself a beer and settled down to waiting till I should be rung by Exchange.

  It was half an hour before I found myself speaking to my wife. A letter was in the post for me, she said, and I said the same. She might be getting local leave before I went back to duty, she said, and we agreed to fix something up. I said there was a strict rule about keeping to three minutes but did she happen to know a Mrs. Grays by any chance.

  “Has she a sister, Georgina?” Bernice asked.

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “But you know her, darling,” Bernice was trying to point out. “Wasn’t she on that hospital committee of yours, just before the war? You must remember her, darling! A bit aggressive but awfully nice when you got to know her.”

  I said I’d just remembered and then, before she could ask any more questions, the time indicator began, and all I could do was make a hurried and husbandly conclusion and hang up. Then my fingers went to my glasses.

  “Oh, my God!” I found myself saying aloud. “What the hell’s going to happen next?”

  Still, it couldn’t be helped, more bungling on my part though it was. I knew I’d seen Barbara Grays somewhere, but that didn’t matter now. There was some excuse for my forgetfulness, after three years and more of war, and with hospitals consisting as they did of scores of women and perpetual change. Not that that mattered either. What did matter was that yet another person knew precisely who I was.

  Then I gave a gasp of something like horror. Bernice’s habit of wifely eulogy! The way I’d had to administer gentle reproof about her admiration for my talents so guilelessly and publicly expressed, but rarely I’m afraid in my private ear. No wonder Mrs. Grays had asked my opinion on that Stock Exchange tip! Bernice had doubtless told her I was a financial wizard. And that, in another of my many spheres, I was the mainstay of Scotland Yard! In fact, it was a million to one that Barbara Grays had spotted me the very moment I had entered Moroni’s with Worrack the previous day. That was why she had been so annoyed and damnably off-hand. Blunt indeed, I thought grimly, and, oh, my God, how I hated that name!

  I’d mooned so long over those introspections that when I realised it was past ten o’clock, I had something of a new horror. Then, before I could get clear of the room, the telephone went. It was Ellice again.

  “Sorry, sir, but I can’t get any further down here.”

  “Keep on trying for just one more day,” I said. “Anything from Ireland yet?”

  “There couldn’t be till late to-morrow,” he said.

  That was that, but another five minutes had gone down the drain. Then I took a wrong turning in the black-out and it was a quarter-past ten when I got to the club. Still, I found the side door and George let me in.

  “Mr. Worrack expecting me?” I asked. “If so, I’m a bit late.”

  “You don’t call this late, sir,” he told me cheerfully. “But here’s your in
vitation, sir. No, nothing to pay.”

  As we went upstairs he told me that Worrack wasn’t feeling any too fit. He’d been in the office and then, as soon as things were started, he’d gone out. George thought it was for a breath of air. He had little nervous fits at times, he said. Just a hangover from that Dunkirk business, and a spell of fresh air did him good. George also told me that I was the twenty-first to arrive.

  The first thing I noticed on entering the main room was that Tubby and three other men were playing poker. Roulette was in full swing, and I recognised most of the previous night’s crowd. Barbara Grays spotted me and gave me quite a nice smile. My tail wagged at that, because I thought I knew something—that she hadn’t really been annoyed at my duplicity in using the name Blunt. After all, if Bernice had given her my life history, then she should have known that I couldn’t very well be seen in that room in my own name. Maybe she was being charming to me to show that she regretted that display of petulance at the lunch at Moroni’s.

  Hamson was there, sitting between Tubby’s girl and Molde. Molde I remembered, had said he wouldn’t be there, but he was, and Scylla was facing him as usual across the table. George had sold me ten pounds’ worth of chips. I took up a position behind Scylla, and once more fooled around on red and black. At about half-past eleven Worrack came in. He didn’t come over to the tables but went straight through to his office, and from the quick look I had at him I thought he looked tired and ill.

  There was no point in my going to the office, for I knew he’d send for me and say what he had to say in his own good time. Thinking about that, and puzzling my wits over what it could be that he had to reveal, brought me a bit of luck, for I’d doubled a pound stake on the red and forgot to remove it, and red turned up again. Then, just before twelve Worrack came out and Jean began laying the tables. The wheel went round for the last time and when we closed down for supper, Molde buttonholed me and began talking about my non-existent cousin Charles. He talked quite a lot, and his hand seemed even more unsteady than usual. I thought he’d probably forgotten to give himself a shot of whatever his particular dope was, before coming out. At any rate I couldn’t dodge him, and I found myself at the same table with him. Barbara Grays had been sitting there, and again she smiled at me as I sat down.