“Is that the Southampton police? Can I speak to the superintendent or inspector—whichever is on the premises at the moment? . . . Thank you. . . . Good evening. Hambledon, Foreign Office, speaking. I want you to send somebody aboard the Havre boat tomorrow as soon as she docks and collect a man calling himself Gray who is coming over on that boat. I want him brought to me here, by car, under escort. He is not to communicate with anyone, and no fuss will occur on the quayside or elsewhere.”
“Don’t forget his luggage,” put in Denton.
“His luggage will accompany him,” said Hambledon into the telephone. “Here is his description,” and there followed a detailed catalogue of height, colouring, and physical characteristics. “Got that? . . . Good. I shall be much obliged if you will kindly attend to this little matter for me. Good-bye.” Hambledon started to take the receiver away from his ear but hurriedly replaced it, an expression of extreme astonishment crossed his face, and he gestured to Charles Denton to pick up the other receiver. A perfectly strange voice had intruded upon the line.
“Excuse me,” it said. “I do apologize for eavesdropping, Mr. Hambledon, and for butting in like this, but I think you ought to know that your line has been tapped.”
“Dear me,” said Hambledon blankly. “Who are you?”
“I am speaking from 23 Apple Row, Westminster,” said the voice, and Denton snatched a pencil to write it down. “This telephone is in a safe concealed behind an electric fire in the front sitting room of this house, on the ground floor. Door left of the front door as you enter. The two owners, Percy and Stanley Johnson, are trussed up on the kitchen floor at the back of the house. I think they have regained consciousness; I hear mooing noises.”
“How very interesting,” said Hambledon.
“The servant—they keep one manservant—will be out until about ten minutes past ten; the time is now—er—nine-twenty. I will leave the safe standing open and the front door unlocked to save you trouble, as no doubt you will wish to take some action in the matter.”
“You bet I will,” said Hambledon, “but who are you? Here, half a minute—don’t go. Dammit, he’s rung off! Denton, put down that receiver; I’m going to ring Scotland Yard. What did you think of that, eh? . . . Is that Scotland Yard? . . . Special Branch, please, urgent; this is the Foreign Office. . . . Thank you. . . . Please send some men AT ONCE to 23 Apple Row, Westminster——”
* * *
Warnford put down the receiver and laughed. “How was that, Marden? All right? I think we’d better scram without a moment’s delay. Got the tools? Good. We’ll leave this light on, I think, put the front door on the latch. No, leave the wireless set for the police; perhaps it might amuse Mr. Hambledon, whoever he is, to play with it. He sounded an incisive sort of bloke. All ready? Well, shall we go?”
* * *
Charles Denton strolled into Hambledon’s room at the Foreign Office the following evening and found him there together with a wizened little man who was examining a portable wireless set.
“Sorry to breeze in again like this,” said Denton. “Fact is, I found your story last night so enthralling I had to come in and hear the next instalment. I’ll come back later if you’re busy.”
“This is part of the next instalment,” said Hambledon. “You two know each other, I think; Denton—Reck. I believe you met in Köln at the end of the last unpleasantness.”
“Lord, yes,” said Denton as they shook hands. “I remember you quite well. How are the silkworms?”
“Silkworms I no longer cherish,” said Reck, speaking with a strong German accent. “They were not at any time remarkable-for-sparkling-animation companions.”
“This wireless set was found at 23 Apple Row,” said Hambledon. “Reck is looking it over.”
Reck gave much the same account of it as Warnford had given to Marden, adding that this set probably had a duplicate—or possibly more than one—tuned in with it. When the transmitter on the corresponding set was switched on, this bell—called the relay bell—would ring. By turning that switch the loud-speaker would be brought into action and the message received. If it was desired to reply, the loud-speaker was turned off and this switch put on instead, which awoke the transmitter to a sense of duty. Very neat little set, very. Made in Germany.
“That’s very interesting, what?” drawled Denton. “Regular Demon Kings, these Germans, always popping up, aren’t they?”
“Anything more you can tell us, Reck? How far would this thing send a message?” asked Hambledon.
“I can better decide,” said Reck, “if the other correspondent speaks. Perhaps tonight, perhaps tomorrow; how can I know? This will not for a long distance carry; two-three miles perhaps, four at most, and that in the open.”
“Oh. Well, we must hope for the best.”
“What happened to the two birds trussed up in the kitchen?” asked Denton. “Have you grilled ’em yet?”
“The police started by making a few routine enquiries for me,” said Hambledon. “The men are twin brothers, Percy and Stanley Johnson, born in Avenue Road, Chiswick, on September 22nd, 1890.”
“And were they?”
“No. At least Somerset House never noticed it. They were privately educated and started life as office boys in Medstead & Higginbotham’s, wholesale bacon merchants, in St. Mary Axe. They were then fifteen, so that was in 1905. Or ’06.”
“Was there such a firm?”
“Oh, certainly, and still is. Well known and deservedly respected. Unfortunately for our victims, Medstead & Higginbotham have kept all their records. They have, of course, had office boys named Johnson, but not between 1900 and 1910, and never two Johnsons at once. However, our Johnsons stayed on there, without the firm’s noticing them, till 1914, when they joined the Army and served in France from 1915 to 1917 with the Middlesex Regiment. Percy was wounded in February 1917 and Stanley in August of the same year.”
“And were they?”
“I haven’t heard yet, but I shall. Confirmation is made more difficult by the fact that they can’t remember which battalion they served in. Curious, isn’t it?”
Denton laughed.
“After the war,” went on Hambledon, “they inherited a couple of thousand pounds each from an uncle named Ebenezer Harris who lived in Castle Street, Wimbledon. He died in 1920.”
“What does Somerset House know about that?”
“Nothing, strange to relate. The will of the late Ebenezer Harris also passed unnoticed.”
“Curiously unobtrusive lives your friends have led.”
“Yes, haven’t they? With the proceeds of this legacy they started in a small way as importers of sausage skins from Germany in a tiny office in a turning off Leadenhall Street. This part is true. The business prospered and they moved, in 1926, into Leadenhall Street itself, where they still are, or were until yesterday.”
“And their secret telephone?”
“The Foreign Office private line passes their front door. I don’t know how they discovered that and I probably never shall. They dug through the front wall of their cellar till they met the cable—it runs nearly four feet below street level—and connected up. I had them in here this afternoon and asked them to tell me all about it.” Hambledon paused and smiled reminiscently. “They were a sorry pair. Percy has a wonderful black eye and a nose about twice its normal size, which is saying something, believe me. He looked like Cyrano de Bergerac. Stanley’s jaw hurt him; he had also bitten his tongue.”
“The gentleman with the charming voice who spoke to us on the telephone last night,” said Denton, “must have had a busy five minutes.”
“According to the Johnson brothers, there were two of them. One was tall, black-haired, and quite young, the other much smaller and older too. The younger one looked like a soldier. The Johnsons would know them again; at least Percy would. They were kind enough to suggest that if I would let them go they would try and find our friends for us.”
“Suffering from swollen cheek too,” said Denton.
> “I thanked them kindly,” said Hambledon, “but said I thought I could find them some other little jobs to do in the immediate and prolonged future, such as picking oakum or sewing mailbags.”
“How did they explain away the telephone?”
“They didn’t. They knew nothing about it, they said. They didn’t know there was a safe behind the electric fire. They thought it was just an ordinary fire; it worked all right. It did too; the police tried it. Yes, they’d seen a lot of wires in the cellar but thought they were part of the ordinary house wiring; they are not electricians. The secret telephone must have been installed by the previous owner, who died there; they bought the house from his executors. They didn’t know anything about it, kind sir; really they didn’t. Nor about an envelope found under a loose board in the front sitting room. It contained a transcript of the last four days’ telephone calls from the Foreign Office, bless their little innocent hearts. When I brought that out they turned so green that I had them removed; I thought it wiser.”
“Quite right,” said Denton. “It’s so disconcerting when one’s guests are sick at a party. No luck with the wireless yet, Reck?”
“Not yet,” said Reck. “Presently, perhaps.”
“What about the blighter on the Southampton boat?” asked Dent on.
“Oh, he’s all right. We found what we were looking for wrapped up in a bit of oiled silk in the middle of a stick of shaving soap. Quite informative it was too. We are keeping him on ice for a few months while we deal with the matters arising, as they say on committees. He was foolish enough to assault the police in the execution of their duties—he really did—so that’s easy. He’ll go into the cooler for six months. He brought a list of information required from various people; one of them was that fellow at Newcastle——”
The electric bell in the wireless set rang suddenly and Hambledon stopped abruptly. Reck sat in the secretary’s chair with the set on the desk before him, waiting for a voice to begin talking; when it did he turned the set about till the voice was at its loudest. It was speaking in German.
“Come to me at once, please. I want to speak with you,” it said. A man’s voice, not unpleasant to listen to, and not too peremptory; just calmly giving an order he knew would be obeyed. After a moment’s pause the phrase was repeated, after another pause repeated again. “Reply, please,” finished the voice.
“On the wings of a dove if only I knew where you live,” said Hambledon thoughtfully. “You haven’t turned over to transmitter, by any chance, have you?” he added in an anxious whisper to Reck.
“I am not yet senile,” said Reck acidly.
“No, no. I only thought—habit, don’t you know——”
“Pity we can’t ask him for his address,” said Denton. “ ‘Sorry, old bean, where do you hang out? Slipped my memory.’ ”
Five minutes later the bell rang again, and the voice repeated its remarks in a rather less patient tone.
“Where d’you think he is, Reck?”
“Not more than two miles far, in that direction,” said Reck, indicating a line passing directly over the inkpot. “In some house on that line, under two miles.”
“There would be at least two thousand three hundred and fifty houses within two miles in that direction,” said Denton gloomily. “That’s practically due north.”
“Perhaps a little less,” said Reck in an encouraging tone.
“Two thousand three hundred and forty-nine houses,” said Denton. “It’s somewhere round Euston. Think of all those squares and terraces full of hotels and boardinghouses.” He sighed audibly.
The bell rang again, and the message was repeated at intervals for the next two hours. The voice became by turns contemptuous, commanding, and finally infuriated, and wound up by calling the Johnson brothers “pig-faced imbeciles.”
“He should see Percy now,” said Hambledon. “Not so much pig as anteater.”
“Or baby elephant?” suggested Denton.
“No. Elephants are comparatively refined. You haven’t seen Percy.”
“By the way,” said Denton, “didn’t they keep a servant?”
“Yes. He arrived at the house with a friend of his and walked straight into the arms of the police. We didn’t get much out of them. The Johnson retainer didn’t know anything, not even where he was born nor exactly how old he was; this may be perfectly true—or may not. The other fellow was merely a friend he’d spent the evening with and seemed to the police to be genuine enough except that he gave a false address, but quite a lot of people can’t remember where they live when the police ask ’em suddenly. He said he’d never been inside the house and wouldn’t know the Johnson brothers from a bar of soap. So we let them go, to see where they went to after that. I shall receive reports in due course, no doubt.”
The bell rang again. “Come to me at once,” said the voice. “I wish to speak to you.”
5. The Lady Who Liked Cats
Marden was sitting in his usual armchair in Warnford’s flat next evening, reading the paper, when he came across a paragraph which interested him. “Dope Traffic Discovery,” said the headlines. “Cocaine Haul in Westminster.” Marden read it aloud. “ ‘As a result of smart work by the metropolitan police, a large quantity of cocaine and other drugs was discovered in the cellars of a house in Apple Row, Westminster, last night. The tenants of the house, Percy and Stanley Johnson, sausage-skin importers of Leadenhall Street, E.C., were taken into custody and will be charged with unlawful possession of dangerous drugs. As a result of this discovery the police have come into possession of information which they hope will enable them to break up a powerful and dangerous drug ring which has been operating in this country for some time past.’ There, what d’you know about that?”
He looked across at Warnford, whose jaw had dropped with astonishment. “Drugs?” he said incredulously. “Drugs? Am I batty, or are they, or what did we barge into?”
“Not a word,” said Marden, “about unlawful possession of an unauthorized telephone. Of course that cellar may have been stocked with cocaine for all we know; there were some boxes down there and we didn’t examine them. But I don’t know that I believe it, somehow.”
“Is this the kind of thing Hambledon does when he goes into action, d’you think? My hat, I wouldn’t like to get the wrong side of him!”
“You said he sounded incisive on the telephone; I think you were more than right. Well, I suppose we shall never know the truth of the matter. Not a word, you notice, about their servant. Wonder whether they roped him in too.”
“No mention of ours, either. I wish Ashling would come in,” said Warnford uneasily.
“He’ll be all right; he can look after himself.”
“Yes. You don’t follow me, evidently. The point is this. If Ashling has been caught and says he’s a friend of Smith’s, or if Smith says he is, and Ashling is traced back to us—I was accused of trading with the enemy before. What would they think now? If Hambledon gets his claws into this——” Warnford shivered.
Marden put the paper down. “If I may say so, I think you are letting that suggestion of Rawson’s get on your nerves,” he said. “You were never accused of that officially, and no independent evidence was forthcoming to support it. Unless Hambledon reads through the evidence in detail he will never hear of it, and I doubt if the record of a military court-martial will be available to any civilian, will it?”
“Hambledon would get it,” said Warnford with conviction, “if he wanted it. And this business would be corroborative evidence, don’t you see? At his old tricks again, they’d say,” he went on with increasing bitterness. “Rawson is clever, you know; you can’t deny that. I expect he thought I’d nose around and try to find out something about the people who took the plans. Well, any man would. So he took the trouble to discredit in advance any move I might make in that direction. Very clever, you must hand him that. It’s more than I was, you know. It makes me laugh, looking back at all that. I made friends with him when
nobody else would. I thought they were all just prejudiced against the poor chap. In fact, I thought it was rather nice of me. Funny, isn’t it? I never asked what the other fellows had against him, and, being a friend of mine, of course they never said a word. I wasn’t really frightfully interested in what they thought; I was only interested in tanks, and so was Rawson—damn him! So he and I rather ran in couples, and I thought I was doing him a good turn, whereas all the time I was being played with like a blasted rag doll. Thought I was such a bright boy and all the time I was being had for a mug.” Warnford laughed unpleasantly. “Why don’t you laugh too; can’t you see a joke? Then I’m made use of; no doubt he had my key copied, and not only that, but he damns me in advance with his foul suggestions because he thinks I’ll never dare go within a mile of anything that looks like espionage for fear the British authorities think I’m mixed up in it. They probably will too. Don’t you see?” went on Warnford, hammering his knee with his fist. “If I do get on the track of anything he’s only got to get the word round to Hambledon, and I’ll go down for fifteen years for white-slave trading or something equally foul——”
“Stop that at once,” said Marden authoritatively. “You’re getting hysterical. Sorry, old man,” he added in his usual gentle tone, “but you’re letting this get on top of you. What makes you think your brother officers believed one word of Rawson’s story? Especially as he didn’t produce any evidence to prove it. That surprises me, you know. I should have thought he would. Some seedy waiter who’d seen you with a bullet-headed man talking guttural German at a corner table in some shoddy restaurant.”
“It wasn’t necessary,” said Warnford obstinately. “The hint was enough. Far more artistic, you know.”
“I thought you said,” persisted Marden, “that the remarks were not well received. You said something about a purple silence, if I remember rightly.”
“That won’t make any difference to Hambledon. The suggestion is there if he likes to put two and two together.”
Without Lawful Authority Page 5
