“And the price of eggs! Have you noticed how they’ve gone down? Only tuppence each now. That’s right, and one of my hens was saying to another, ‘Lay more eggs, eh? I should say so. Spoil my figure for two bob a dozen!’”
I switched off then and went back to my newspapers. Did you see it? Not the joke, but something that lay behind? I didn’t—at least, not at that moment. Afterwards I knew how lucky I’d been to have had that cynical mood still on me, for if I hadn’t, then that train of thought would never have returned.
This, then, is what happened. I picked up the Observer and saw that the crossword was one of the less interesting kind to me. But the Sunday Times one was a good stand-by for an odd half-hour, so I felt for my special pencil which had a rubber at one end. It was not in my pocket, so I looked casually around, and my eyes fell on the wireless set again.
Then came the train of thought. Those dreadful programmes that masqueraded under the name of humour, and, as a contrast, the slickness and originality of the same sort of thing relayed from America. My old friend and his gag about the hens. Well, it was not a bad gag once. “I should spoil my figure for two bob a dozen!” Quite an economic sermon could be preached from that text, with its human bearing on the size of families.
Then all at once I was lying back in my chair, fingers at my glasses. Something had come back. Something that Worrack had said, and I was frowning as I tried to remember it. Then came something else, and all at once.
I was on my feet and moving restlessly about the room. A couple of minutes and I was letting out a breath. Then I think I smiled feebly to myself, and the smile was a modest pat on the back.
Another minute and I was sure of everything. By sheer luck I had stumbled on the perfect theory. Perfect wasn’t the word; it was unique! In all my years of theorising I had never known a theory so fool-proof, so comprehensive, and so satisfying. Then as I stood where I was, fingers idly polishing my glasses, new pieces fitted themselves into the puzzle, and each settled snugly into place. A dozen of them, there were, and only one that didn’t quite fit. An important one, too, so it seemed then, and yet I didn’t know. Maybe I had put it in a bit cock-eyed, for it just had to fit. And maybe when I’d had another good look at everything it’d be just as good a fit as the others.
You’ve guessed by now what that brave new theory was, and so you’ll be thinking just how much of a fool I was not to have hit on it before. But if you haven’t guessed it, then I won’t keep you long in suspense. The things I did next should make everything clear.
First of all I looked up that copy of Georgina Morbent’s accounts which her bank manager had given me, and which I’d noted in my book. Then I went down to the telephone kiosk in the vestibule and had a look at the directory. The name I was looking for was W. M. Chataway, and I found it.
CHATAWAY, W. M., M.D., 163, Comport St.
Consulting Physician.
What did I do then? I think I just smiled a bit foolishly and as a kind of mental relief. The main test had been made, and the theory was all that I had claimed for it.
As I walked slowly up to my room again I was thinking of my own hospital. I call it that because I was—still am in a more honorary capacity—one of the Governors. Old Vaughan, the Librarian. He wouldn’t be at the hospital on a Sunday. He’d be at his flat. Or would he be out taking the air? Where could I find his number?
I looked it up in my private book and there it was. There was a tremendous relief when I at last heard his voice at the other end of the line.
“Hallo, Henry,” I said. “This is Travers. Ludovic Travers.”
“My dear chap,” he said. “This is a surprise.”
“I’m on leave,” I said. “Next week I’ll pop in and see you all if I may.”
“Delighted,” he told me. “But why not have some lunch with us to-day?”
“I’d have loved to,” I said, “but I just happened to be engaged. Next week—yes. Oh, and Henry. There’s a little confidential matter I’d like you to do for me now, if you can. It’s like this. A friend of mine is consulting a specialist, and I’d rather like the highly confidential low-down on the man. His name’s Chataway. W. M. Chataway.”
“Chataway,” he said. “I think I can help you. Hang on a moment, will you, and I’ll look something up.”
It didn’t take him more than a moment.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Your friend can go to him with every confidence. He’s an excellent fellow. I knew him at University, and later he went on to Paris.”
“I thought he must be pretty good,” I said. “I often think, between ourselves, that those fellows just off Harley Street are every bit as good as those in it.”
“And cheaper,” he said, and chuckled. “But you can tell your friend that everything’s in order. I won’t say Chataway’s the world’s best gynaecologist, but he’s a remarkably good man.”
“Most grateful to you, Henry,” I said. “Next week we must have that lunch.”
He asked after Bernice and then we rang off. Everything had gone so well that I couldn’t quite realise the full extent of my luck. Then I began planning the next move, and all the while I was cursing the fact that it was Sunday. But I was now too restless to settle to anything, and at all costs I had to get busy on ends that were still a bit loose. Perhaps by evening I might have advanced so far as to be in a position to pay a call on Barbara Grays.
I changed into uniform, which seemed the best available disguise, and outside the flats was lucky enough to catch a bus at once. It was as lovely a morning as I’d ever known in February, and I was on top of the world. The quiet streets had never looked so good and my heart overflowed with feelings of kindliness for my fellow passengers. And as a reward I promised myself lunch at a certain restaurant, and I even began imagining what I’d have. But that was just a bit precipitate, for it was a lunch I was never going to eat.
CHAPTER XIV
THICK AND FAST
I told you I’d been lucky. Well, I was to be more so, and only because of the hour it happened to be. As I came to the far end of Comport Street it was exactly a quarter-past twelve, which shows that I’d lost no time. Had I been two minutes earlier, or later, I should never have had the astounding piece of good fortune that befell me. But in justice to myself I should say that things might have followed the same course, if in a different way and after a loss of at least a day. What I was making up my mind to do, in fact, was to call on Dr. Chataway, give him a dud name and the address of my camp, and say I’d come to consult him on a highly personal matter. I had that matter all ready, and by the Monday, when I would make an appointment, I would have it word perfect.
But I wanted to run my eye over his place, just to get from it, if I could, some rough idea of the lay-out and what the man himself was likely to be. Far-fetched, you may think, and you may be right, but at any rate it was something to do.
Then things happened. I was getting very close to No. 163, when a girl came out of a door just ahead. She passed without a look at me, not that I expected one, but I had a quick look at her, and who should she be but the girl who had met Hamson and Scylla outside that cinema! She looked as if she was going places. Smartly dressed and made up, and carrying a dainty bag beneath her arm, and the sauciest little hat perched above her unmistakable hair.
I looked back after her and then was moving quickly forward. I was right. It was Chataway’s door out of which she had come. There was his plate, and—and then I was whipping round, and just in time to see her turning into Martindale Street. If Goldilocks was going places, then I’d go along too. But I’d keep my distance. If it was Hamson she was meeting, and I was pretty sure it was, then I had to play a mightily wary game.
At the bottom of Martindale Street she crossed over to a bus stop. It was five minutes before a bus came up and it appeared to be the one she was waiting for. I was on her heels as she entered, and giving a quick look at the few passengers. Hamson wasn’t there. If he had been I’d have bolted upstairs, so I
went right down the bus. Goldilocks took a seat so I moved back just behind her, and she didn’t even take one look at me.
When the conductress came along I was fumbling for change, so she took Goldilock’s threepence first. Then I shifted nearer the door and also took three-pennyworth, which would deposit me in Chelsea High Street. Then a man alongside me got out and was good enough to hand me his newspaper. He must have been a good fellow, for though I’ve seen enough solicitude for the troops, this was my first experience of thoughtfulness for a major. But maybe I look older than I flatter myself, or else it was some subtlety on his part, for on the front page there was a lot about a court-martial on a colonel. But I was well hidden behind that paper when Goldilocks got out.
She knew where she was going. Forty yards past the stop she turned into Wilford Lane. Then she took a short cut to Cheyne Walk, and in a couple of minutes was entering a small restaurant which was new to me, and which called itself the Brown Squirrel. Someone who knew squirrels quite well had painted the attractive sign, and I had a good look at it till I thought Goldilocks had found a pew. Then I took a quick look inside.
She was there, and a man with her, and that man wasn’t Hamson. I whipped off my glasses as an additional disguise, then went rapidly to the table I’d reconnoitred. There were then two tables between Goldilocks and me, and each was occupied, but it was the best I could do. She had her back to me and there seemed to be no mirror in which I could be seen, so I put on my glasses again and studied the menu. Prices were half a crown or three shillings and the latter included coffee. I ordered the three shilling lunch, and in a couple of minutes was tackling some not bad soup.
Then I tried to squint round the back of the man in front of me to have a look at Goldilocks’ male friend. When I did so I had a shock that made me go hot and cold. At first I thought I must be wrong, and then I knew I was right. Tall he certainly was, and there was that beard, and the definitely foreign look. His voice I couldn’t catch, for the heads of the two were together and they were talking confidentially across the narrow table. At that moment I’d have given a couple of READY’s fivers for a seat two tables up, for I knew that the man I’d just seen could only be Markovitch.
The meal went on slowly but nothing happened. Now and again I caught a glimpse of the two, and that was all. Then I began wondering who had chosen the rendezvous, for that might give me a clue to what Markovitch was like. But either might have chosen it, for it wasn’t by any means cheap and nasty. The food was plain but definitely good, and the surroundings, though faintly arty, were far from the Olde Tea Shoppe kind of place that flourished there before the war.
I lingered over my coffee and then got behind my newspaper, in case the two should make the first move, and I’d taken the precaution to pay my bill. As it was, the two had passed my table almost before I knew it, so I waited a few seconds and then made my own way out. There they were ahead of me, and making for the High Street. When I got there they were nearing the bus stop on the other side of the road, and I wondered just what I should do next. A bus came up and I saw that only Goldilocks was taking it, so I turned back again. A wave of her hand to Markovitch and she was out of sight. Markovitch smiled to himself, and nodded, and then without hesitating crossed the road.
Two buses came up and he took neither. The third—and again it was very much of a shock—was for Richmond, and that was the one he took. He went on top and so did I, and I sat at the back where I could keep an eye on him. I did see him take out a notebook it might have been, or a piece of paper, and jot down something, but then more passengers were getting on and the glimpses I had of him were only occasional.
Well, we went over Putney Bridge and then turned right, by Putney Common, and finally stopped at Richmond just over the bridge, and there Markovitch got out. As he passed me I had a real good look at him, and he fitted that pawnbroker’s description to his very eyelids. When he moved on along the road I was twenty yards behind him, and that went on for a good quarter of a mile. Then he turned into a garage and I went slowly by.
What I guessed was that he had parked his car there, so I had an old envelope ready. But it was five minutes before a car came out, and I had gone all hot and cold again, thinking that something unexpected had happened. A garage hand ahead of it gave the driver the road. I got the car number as it drew slowly round and as it passed me I saw the driver. Then I made for the man.
“Pardon me,” I said, “but that car that’s just gone out. I think the driver’s someone I know.”
“Perhaps you do, sir,” he said. “Who’d you think it was?”
“Brown,” I said. “Percival Brown, the big contractor.” He shook his head. “That wasn’t him, sir. That was Dr. Halberg.”
“Damn silly of me,” I said. “But Halberg. Wait a minute, though. I do know a Halberg.”
“This one lives at Malcroft,” he told me, and I said he wouldn’t be the one. Then I said I was sorry I’d troubled him, and he said it hadn’t been any trouble at all.
What to do next I didn’t quite know. Where Malcroft was I hadn’t much idea, except that it was well out in the long grass beyond Twickenham, and somewhere north of Staines. So I went back to the bus stop and had a word with a driver waiting to go on duty. He told me there were buses every hour and the next was due in twenty minutes. When he said it was a good hour’s trip I made rather a face, for it would mean getting back to town in the black-out.
“You needn’t worry about that,” he told me. “There’s quite a fair train service. Every half-hour or so.”
Well, I waited for the bus and took it. If I hadn’t been so anxious to get to the other end I’d have enjoyed that journey on top of that bus, for we weren’t long in leaving bricks and mortar behind, and but for a few eruptions of pink tile and asbestos, one might have been far from town. As for Malcroft, it was a sleepy little place. Before the war its main street would have been jammed with cars; now there was hardly a car in sight.
But that street boasted one road junction and I went up to the policeman on duty and asked him where I could find Dr. Halberg’s house. He told me to keep straight on; it was a large red-brick place standing back from the road. I couldn’t miss it, he said, because it was really two houses with a connecting way built between.
It took me just five minutes to reach it, and as I passed I slowed down my steps. It was as the policeman had described it, and there was the covered way on the ground floor that connected the two largish houses. A short drive led to each, and on the gateway of one a brass plate said:
MALCROFT NURSING HOME
On the brass plate on the gate of the farther one was:
J. Harbin-Lewis, M.B., F.R.C.S.
V. Halberg, M.D.
I did not want to make myself noticed so I walked on for a bit and came back on the other side of the road. What I thought was that here was a nursing home to which Chataway possibly sent his patients, though there would be far more in it than that. But I kept straight on to the little town and then made my way to the railway station. There was a train that should leave in half an hour, so I went to the police station.
A sergeant was on duty, and taking things easy, for a tea-tray stood on his desk and he was reading a Sunday paper. By chance I had my Yard papers on me and I handed them to him. Maybe I wasn’t being too wise in questioning him, I thought. Local men have their pull, and the job I was on was a tricky one. Still, I decided to risk it.
“Yes, Mr. Travers,” he said, and cast a quick look at the crowns on my shoulders, “what can I do for you?”
I mentioned Wharton’s name, and he knew that well enough.
“He’ll be down here in all probability before long,” I said. “I’m making the preliminary enquiries, and they’re highly confidential. There’s a Doctor V. Halberg living here, isn’t there?”
He said there was, and a very clever doctor too, so they said, though his own doctor was a someone whose name I didn’t catch. An Austrian, this Halberg was, and he hated the Nazis l
ike hell. He was well vouched for, and had come as assistant to Dr. Lewis soon after the war. But about eighteen months ago, he said, Dr. Lewis had been called up and since then Dr. Halberg had carried on alone.
“A private practice, is it?” I asked.
The question was badly worded but I got the answers I wanted. Dr. Halberg had very little practice in the actual town and the main affair was the nursing home. There were three nurses there usually, though he believed there were only two now.
“Halberg married?”
“No, he’s not married,” the sergeant said. “There’s a housekeeper there, and some staff. A gardener, and a boy as well, I believe.”
I thought that was enough for the moment, so I thanked him and told him again he’d be hearing from Wharton. Then I began making my way slowly towards the station, and it was a good thing that I had plenty of time, for if I’d been hurrying bat-eyed along, the whole course of things might have changed. As it was, I saw the man ahead of me and his back and gait seemed vaguely familiar. With him was a smaller man, and as the two turned into the station yard I knew the taller of the two was Hamson!
Something made me slow up and it was a good thing I did, for when I came to the corner, there was Hamson saying good-bye to the other man, who turned at once and came by where I was standing. I was lighting my pipe and I took a quick look at him. An indeterminate sort of cove, he looked; something like an elderly clerk, and what Hamson should have been doing with a man like that was more than I could guess. Or what Hamson was doing in Malcroft either. But something was telling me to chance my arm and follow the man, and then, again, something was reminding me that it was getting on towards dusk. That last something assured me that if I did follow the man he would only take me to Halberg’s house.
The Case of the Running Mouse: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 19
