“He lectured in favour of the Nazi creed. Rosenberg even favoured him with his patronage and appropriated portions of his philosophy, passing it off as his own profound and original thinking, as is his custom. Scrope was introduced to Hitler himself.… Then, he returned to England and began once more his studious seclusion.
“His colleagues wondered. Had he been snubbed in Germany? Had he put his foot in it and fallen into disfavour? Had he returned disillusioned and sick of it all? They thought so, at the time. But that wasn’t the case, was it, Scrope? You’d sold yourself to the Germans. I don’t know what they promised you. Perhaps it was money.…”
“No … no … no …” came almost involuntarily from beyond the door. Then there was a fascinated silence again.
“Well, if it wasn’t money, maybe when they’d conquered us, you were to become a sort of English Rosenberg, eh? Whatever it was, you became the leader of a cell … a colony of spies here. There was a university professor of international repute, who could, within limits, poke about the place gathering information on anything from troop movements to balloon barrages under cover of his science. He brought enough money out of Germany to run a factory!
“Two academic men like you and Braun couldn’t be expected to be tough enough to do the really dirty work. So a Gestapo hireling, Hartmann, with his wife, filled the shooting and bullying parts. Then, you managed to rope-in a misguided half-wit of a man who’d absorbed the hate and vapourings of his stupid fascist son and who was half dotty because his boy had been gaoled.
“There was a cad of a bankrupt playwright, too. He’d do anything for money. He became the go-between from Harwood headquarters to the Fellow of Benfield, who received reports, transmitted them in one way or another to Germany, and picked-up instructions by short-wave. These communications were all in code, and even Carberry-Peacocke, who passed them on, didn’t know what they were all about. He didn’t do all the work, though. There’s another radio group somewhere and we’re going to find that.”
There was a chuckle from behind the door again. Scrope sounded to have seated himself on the floor and to be enjoying himself.
“You were interested in codes, weren’t you, Scrope, long before you took up with the Huns? You were a sort of minor Edgar Allan Poe. Wouldn’t admit yourself beaten by any cryptogram. Very useful. In the course of a long association, your colleagues found these things out. They remembered your German visits; your sudden quietness and dismounting from your Nazi hobby-horse. They even recollected your decoding mania and conceit about it. I’d only to put the questions and they recalled a heap of things which seemed harmless enough at the time, but now are very significant.
“Braun, however, got thinking his job was too menial. He’d been somebody at his old university. Here, he was just being pushed around and taking orders. He resented it and wanted to give the orders himself. In fact, he got a bit dangerous. Scrope decided to eliminate him. After all, nobody but Williatt knew who the chief was. Not even Hartmann could get at him, except through the liaison man. Scrope met the detective who was investigating the case and pretended to know something discreditable about Braun. He made a fuss about digging-out a report of a suppressed lecture delivered long ago by Braun in German and taken down verbatim by a nephew.
“Having found out that the detective didn’t know German, he got careless and gave a faked translation from what he pretended was the lecture. Actually, it was, as I’ve already told you, the MS of an article in an Alpine Club journal.”
Footsteps could be heard climbing the stairs. Cromwell and his men bringing the tools.
“Anything more, Inspector … anything more?” Scrope’s voice had in it a demoniac ring.
“No. Except that after the whole affair blew-up at Harwood, particularly after the deaths of the Misses Pott, Williatt got cold feet and when you contacted him, said he’d had enough. I told you he was a rat. You couldn’t rely on him.…”
“So I discovered.…”
It had come at last. Scrope was losing control.
“So you took the opportunity of killing him and trying to fake a suicide.”
The sergeant and his men appeared. They carried crowbars and a portable clothes-stump borrowed from the college washerwoman.
“Right,” said Littlejohn. “Let’s make a start.”
“Just a minute, Inspector,” came from Scrope. He was scuffling in the room at the other side of the door, but chattering the while.
“First, thanks for a most interesting analysis of a poor scholar who hitched his waggon to a shooting-star. Secondly, I think you’re a brave fellow … I’m not armed—couldn’t use a revolver if you gave me one. But you didn’t turn a hair. I could almost see you through the door. Finally, I’m a great reader of detective fiction. That you know. I’m always furious when the criminal cheats the hangman. It’s not fair of the author and I don’t think it’s true to fact. Perhaps you’ll correct me if I’m wrong. But this time he’s going to cheat you in a most spectacular fashion. No, no, I’m not going to throw myself over the parapet.… Listen.…”
There was a pause, and then before they could make a move to batter down the door, they were almost startled out of their skins by the awful boom of the great bell in the tower. The tenor bell, known as Abbot William, ten tons of metal.…
Scrope must have dislodged Abbot William from his set position. Toll, toll, toll echoed from the tower. Cromwell and the men set-about the door.…
Down below in the quadrangle, mild pandemonium reigned at this sudden alarm. Students rushed from lectures, several dignified men in gowns, college servants, some air-raid wardens, firemen and policemen gathered and held a hasty conference. Then they hurried, like a party of frenzied tourists, to the ringing chamber on the ground-floor, where, no doubt, another surprise awaited them, for there was nobody there.
It did not last long. Just as the oak door began to give way under the efforts of Cromwell and the constables, there was a scream and a sickening crack beyond it.
Scrope had wound the bell-rope thrice round his neck on the downstroke of the bell and Abbot William had dragged him up on the back stroke with a ten-ton pull, cracked his skull like an eggshell and mangled his body against the rafters. Then he returned to fling him like a bundle of old rags and bones to the floor.
They were glad to get down and in the open-air again.
At the gatehouse, a man in his shirt-sleeves and wearing an apron—probably a baker or confectioner—was indignantly telling a tale to the constable there.
“I tell you, somebody from this college chucked the whole bloomin’ lot into my yard. I heerd it come over, a proper crash. Might a’ killed me, if I’d been there.… Not that I’d a’minded if the stuff ’ad been in good condition. Wireless gadgits are hard to come-by these days and these ’as been good stuff … proper good stuff. But as it is, it’s no use to me. Somebody’s got to come and clear up the mess. Lucky I’m not claimin’ damages.…”
“So that’s it,” said Littlejohn to his colleague. “Scrope had his hidden radio-station in the belfry and bolted to get rid of it when we were after him. I don’t suppose anybody goes up there except the man who oils the ringing mechanism. So he pitched it down in our friend’s backyard. No wonder it’s in little pieces.”
They left the baker still arguing. He was threatening to sue the college for tipping rubbish on his premises.…
AU REVOIR, BUT NOT TO EVERYONE
Luc kissed Littlejohn on both cheeks when they parted on the airfield two days later.
“Who knows when we shall meet again,” said the man from the Sûreté to his embarrassed British counterpart.
It was au revoir, though. Luc came back with the Free French in the following July.
Other parties in the Harwood case, however, said goodbye for good.
Mrs. Hartwright, alias Hartmann, was executed. Mrs. Carberry-Peacocke is still in a mental home.
Braun’s two assistants finished on the scaffold, and one cried “Heil Hitl
er” before he took the drop. As for Braun himself, he created an astonishing minor mystery which is as yet unsolved. It turned-out that he was not Braun at all!
The anthropologist was known to be sixty or thereabouts. After two days under detention, “Braun” showed unmistakable signs of youth by growing blonde roots to his hair and beard. Deprived of his dyes and other means of disguise, he proved to be a fake. His skill in playing the part of Braun roused a certain amount of admiration, though. With typical thoroughness, the Huns had chosen an agent of the professor’s build and general appearance. He must have made a long study of the man he was impersonating, for he deceived those who had known Braun in his heyday. That was not very difficult. They were not a very bright lot and too immersed in other-worldliness.
Perhaps after the war the fate of the real Braun will come to light. Prison, concentration-camp, or death? He was always vigorously outspoken, a trait not forgotten by his impersonator. The latter, a strange sight, his hairy face and head partly fair and partly swarthy, foretold a horrible fate at the hands of his countrymen to anyone who did him violence. The executioner ate a good meal after dealing with him.
Chief-Inspector Shelldrake was delighted with the results of the Harwood Hall investigation.
“A jolly good job.… The Special chaps and the Military Intelligence together are hoping to lay hands on a few more spies, thanks to the diary Scrope left behind at the Safe Deposit. He must have fancied himself a second Pepys. It was all in cipher and they’re busy on it now,” he said.
“Yes, I know,” replied Littlejohn, and Cromwell, who was also present, gave Littlejohn a grateful look, for he thought Shelldrake had a cheek talking to the boss as though he were the only one in the know.
“Judging from the diary,” went on the Chief-Inspector, “Scrope’s character and efforts tallied almost with those outlined in your report. I should say he’d gone potty with being thwarted and through bitterness. Well, we’ll have a drink on it.”
And to the surprise of the other two, Shelldrake unearthed a bottle of whisky, poured out three liberal helpings and spoiled it all by using yellow-looking water from his desk bottle instead of soda. Nevertheless, they parted with a glow of goodwill and mutual esteem.
“And, by the way, Littlejohn,” said the Chief-Inspector in parting, “you’d better take three days off to get over that knock on the head. Lord knows when you’ll get another holiday. Things are warming-up and we’ll want all our forces.…”
“Who told you I needed a break? I’m all right.”
Shelldrake didn’t reply, but Cromwell looked sheepish. Littlejohn, catching his subordinate’s eye, melted and left the room with his arm through that of his assistant.
“You’d better take your fishing-tackle and have a rest in the country,” said Mrs. Littlejohn when she heard about it. Her husband had one of his rare fits of excitement.
“I don’t want to go to the country for a rest. I’ve had enough double-sprung hotel beds, food out of tins and joys of the countryside at Harwood to last me a lifetime. I want your company for a change … smoke my pipe with my feet in the hearth, walk on the Heath when the fit takes us, and go to the pictures round the corner when we feel like it.…”
“All right, Tom. It’s all right. I was only trying to be helpful. Don’t get excited.…”
So they began the holiday at the pictures and were vastly entertained by a M. of I. film showing how idle talk assists foreign agents, followed by the feature, in which a master-spy hounded by a G-man turned out to be a Scotland Yard detective.
“It’s been a rest and a change,” said Littlejohn as they stepped into the blackout again. “What are you laughing at?”
THE END
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Calamity at Harwood Page 17
