“Very well,” said Marden. “Give up the idea, then. I always thought it was hellishly risky—told you so at the outset, if you remember.”
“Give up the idea!” blazed Warnford. “Will I hell! I’ll get Rawson someday or get shot at dawn myself; it won’t matter if I do. I’ve nothing more to lose.”
Marden saw it was no use arguing and relapsed into silence; after a few minutes Warnford went on more calmly: “There is one thing I’m very sorry about, very sorry. We had practically fixed up about your coming to live here; that won’t do now. I’m not dragging you into this.”
“You’re not keeping me out,” said Marden bluntly.
“I won’t have it.”
“You’ll have to. I am not leaving you alone to make a whole lot of damn-fool mistakes and hand yourself to Rawson on a plate——”
“I’ll see I don’t, and if I do it’s my own fault. But you aren’t——”
“I am. If you’ve changed your mind about wanting me here that’s O.K.; I can go on as I am, but I shall continue——”
“It’s not that; you know that perfectly well. I want you here very much, and more than ever since this idea has dawned on me, but——”
“Very well. I move in tomorrow,” said Marden calmly, and nothing Warnford said made the slightest difference. At last he gave it up. “I think you’re mad,” he said, “but have it your own way.”
They waited two more days for news of Ashling, till Warnford was really anxious, and even the patient Marden admitted that things had gone on too long, whatever the “things” might be. “If Ashling doesn’t turn up by midday today,” said Warnford, frying eggs for breakfast, “I’m going to ring up all the hospitals I can think of. He must have come to grief somehow. If he’d been arrested, too, the papers would have said so, wouldn’t they? Besides, why arrest Ashling?”
“They wouldn’t arrest Ashling. They might have kept him overnight and questioned him in the morning, but no more than that. Is this toast brown enough for you?”
“Yes, quite. I shall ring up——”
The telephone bell rang, and Warnford went to answer it. “Ashling ’ere, sir,” said the voice at the other end.
“Thank goodness. Where the hell have you been all this time? I was just going to hunt the hospitals for you.”
“I’m very sorry, sir, but I thought it best,” said Ashling in a mysterious tone.
“Oh? Why? Where are you now?”
“Reading, sir.”
“Reading? Why Reading?”
“I don’t know, sir; it just ’appens to be Reading, if you get me.”
“No, I’m hanged if I do. What are you doing there?”
“On my way ’ome, sir. Would it be possible, begging your pardon, for you to meet me with the car at Guildford?”
“Er—I could, I suppose. But why not come back by train?”
“I don’t like railway stations, sir.”
“What?”
“Not London ones, anyway.”
“Ashling, have you been on the drink?”
“No, sir,” said Ashling promptly, “though what I’ve ’ad ’as been enough to make me.”
“Oh. Very well. I’ll meet you outside Guildford Town Hall at—it’s nine o’clock now—at twelve. Can you make it?”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
Ashling kept his story till they got home again; in fact, he slept in the car all the way from Guildford. He seemed tired.
“Now,” said Warnford, when lunch was over and pipes were lit, “let’s have it.”
On the night when Warnford and Marden raided the house in Apple Row, Ashling and the Johnsons’ servant spent some time in a cinema near Victoria, were bored with the second film and came out again, repaired to a house of refreshment where they were known, and stayed there till closing time, drinking a quiet glass or so of beer and talking to their friends. When the place closed Smith said it was time he went home, and Ashling said he’d see him as far as the door.
“I wish I ’adn’t now, sir, but I always did, and I didn’t like to do any different that night from usual. I thought you’d ’a’ got ’em all trussed up quiet so things’ud seem jus’ the same as always and I’d say good night at the door and walk on same as usual. But, oh dear, I did get a shock.”
The two servants walked along Apple Row, which seemed as quiet and deserted as it always did; Ashling said good night as Smith put his key in the keyhole. The front door opened suddenly, and a policeman about seven feet high and four feet wide appeared in the doorway and said, “Come in ’ere, both of you.”
Smith turned to bolt, but a long arm shot out and grabbed him and he passed inevitably into the house. Ashling also turned very promptly to leave and cannoned straight into another policeman who was standing just behind him. “And the dear knows where ’e came from, sir; ’e wasn’t there the second before.”
The servants were marched through the house into the kitchen and told to sit down on two hard chairs till somebody was ready for them. Ashling was completely fogged. He had no idea why the police were there unless Warnford and Marden had somehow been overpowered and arrested; even so, why arrest him and, particularly, why Smith? The Johnsons’ servant sat beside him, tense but motionless and silent; eventually Ashling gathered that he was intently listening and also that Smith might have been horrified but that he was not surprised.
From where they sat they could see nothing of what was happening along the passage, but sounds came to them, heavy steps on the stairs, furniture being moved, and bumping noises. Smith was leaning slightly forward, his lips parted and his pale blue eyes darting quickly from one side to the other at every sound; on the other side of the kitchen a constable stood by the cellar door, watching. Presently voices sounded from another place and steps ascending; two men in plain clothes came up the cellar stairs, and their hands and faces were black with coal-dust.
Smith relaxed suddenly with a sigh and leaned back in his chair. Ashling shot a glance at him and noticed that his usually pasty complexion had turned a greenish white and his eyes momentarily closed. Sounds of a car stopping outside the front door were followed by voices in the passage. An unmistakably English voice said, “Come along, now. This way, please,” and there were footsteps. A thick voice was raised in protest. “This is an inconceivable outrage. I will have a question asked in Parliament,” to which the English voice merely replied, “Mind the step.”
Ashling began to feel better; evidently it was the Johnsons who were being arrested and not his master, unless the police had arrived on the premises in time to catch them too. The car drove away.
“I couldn’t let you know,” said Warnford. “I didn’t know where you were. We set the police onto those blighters and then left before they arrived. I’ll tell you why presently. Carry on.”
“I saw in the paper next morning, sir, as they’d been pinched for drug smuggling.”
“Yes,” said Warnford and smiled. “I’ll tell you all about that later. What happened next?”
Ashling and Smith were taken to a police station, told they would be questioned next morning, and locked up in the cells for the night, Ashling not daring to protest because he did not want to bring Warnford’s name into it and he wanted time to think up a story. He was not one of those from whom ingenious explanations flow naturally on the spur of the moment.
Next morning he gave the police the name of Allen which he had adopted for Smith’s benefit, and a false address, told them that he was out of a job at the moment but was going to one in Liverpool in three days’ time, that Smith was merely an acquaintance with whom he sometimes spent an evening, and that he didn’t know the Johnsons at all, had never seen them and wasn’t interested. After which they told him he could go; he was shown into another room where Smith was waiting, and they walked out together.
Smith looked better when they got outside in the fresh air; Ashling said little and waited for him to talk. The first thing he did was to buy a paper in which he read t
he paragraph about the drug charge.
“Drugs!” said Smith with a snort. “Ridiculous.” He showed it to Ashling.
“Lumme,” said Ashling tactfully, “what a thing to say!”
Smith looked at him carefully and said, after a moment’s pause for thought, that drugs were disgusting and he wasn’t going to be mixed up with it. “I shall leave that job,” he said.
Ashling refrained from pointing out that the job seemed to have left him and merely remarked, “Quite right. I sh’d do the same.”
“I think I shall go abroad for a spell till all this ’as blown over,” said Smith.
“Abroad? Why? You’ll get a job easy enough in England.”
“If I stay in England maybe they’ll call me up to give evidence in that case, and I won’t be mixed up in it. I’ve got a brother lives in Ostend; I’ll go to ’im for a few months.”
“Ah,” said Ashling wisely. “You’d be out o’ reach there.”
“Yeah. I’ll get some money and go across today, I think.”
“Going back to the house?”
“Oh—presently, perhaps. I suppose the police’ud let me in,” said Smith casually, but Ashling did not believe him. “You could ’ear in ’is voice, sir, as ’e’d no intention of going.” Warnford nodded and Ashling went on, “Then ’e asks me what I meant to do. I said I didn’t rightly know; I expected I’d lost my job, being out all night without leave. ’E said, ‘ ’Ow much money ’ave you got?’ and I counted up what I ’ad on me, which was four and threepence.”
“One moment,” said Warnford, interrupting. “Smith said the drug charge was ridiculous, but he didn’t seem to expect them to be acquitted of it.”
“No, sir,” said Ashling. “I noticed that myself, but I didn’t feel called on to say so.”
“No, quite. Please go on.”
Smith very kindly said he didn’t think four shillings and threepence was enough if Ashling was to be turned out on a cold world at a moment’s notice. “Better come along with me; while I’m getting some money for myself I’ll get some for you too.”
“You’ve got some useful friends,” said Ashling enviously.
“I have. They might be good friends to you, too, if things fitted in that way.”
Ashling didn’t quite like the way this was said for some reason; there was nothing offensive about it, but it made him wonder what he would be expected to do in return. However, said Ashling, money is always useful stuff to have about and, what is more, it would be interesting to see something of Smith’s friends, so he agreed. Smith called a taxi and gave a number in Princes Square, Bayswater. This turned out to be one of a number of residential hotels; Smith told the taxi driver to wait, glanced at Ashling, hesitated a moment, glanced at Ashling again, and finally said, “You’d better come in too. Come on.”
They walked up the steps into the usual hotel hall, with a red Turkey rug on the floor, a bamboo hatstand with an aspidistra in front of it, several framed announcements of current theatrical shows on the walls, and a staircase going up at the back. A porter in a striped linen jacket came to see what they wanted, and Ashling kept close enough to Smith to hear him ask if Mrs. Ferne was in. The porter said she was and showed them into a small room to wait.
“Mrs. Ferne is a very nice lady,” said Smith, fidgeting about the room.
“Oh, yes?” said Ashling.
“Very fond of cats.”
“Cats?”
“Cats. Got about ’alf a dozen of ’em ’ere.”
“Don’t the ’otel people mind?”
“Don’t seem to. Lovely cats, they are. Fact is,” said Smith in a burst of confidence, “she ’ad one of ’er cats stolen once, and I got it back for ’er. She was grateful! Never been able to do enough for me since then.”
“I see,” said Ashling, who, as a matter of fact, was getting more puzzled every moment. Mysterious telephones are merely to be expected in a spy hunt, and even dangerous drugs fit in quite well; loaded automatics or a dagger or two only add to the local colour, but why cats?
The door opened quietly, and a magnificent blue Persian trotted in, followed by a tawny Siamese with black muzzle and paws. A gentle voice outside said, “Come along, Elvira, then! Do make up your mind.” A tortoise-shell cat stalked in with an elderly lady immediately behind. Smith bowed jerkily from the waist and said, “Good morning, Mrs. Ferne. I’ve brought a friend of mine to see you, name of Allen.”
“Good morning, Mr. Allen. I am glad to meet any friend of Smith’s. He found my lovely Heliogabala for me when she was stolen; did he tell you? So cruel. The loveliest grey Persian. I hope you like cats, Mr. Allen.”
Ashling murmured something polite and felt a complete fool. Mrs. Ferne was a very charming old lady with soft blue eyes and a lovely complexion. She was stout and walked with a stick; she dressed in trailing black draperies which showed rents here and there from the impulsive affection of her pets. Altogether she was a model of harmlessness in Bayswater, and yet there was something about her which puzzled Ashling.
“She seemed such a nice person,” he told Warnford. “One of those large soft old ladies you see by the dozen trailing off to St. Mary Abbotts Sunday mornings, each with ’er little prayer book. But there was something wrong about ’er, and not till I was sitting at Reading Station this morning waiting for a train did it strike me what it was. She ’adn’t got enough wrinkles.”
“Looked too young for her age,” said Warnford.
“Not so much that, sir. But she ’ad not got enough wrinkles.”
“Perhaps she’d had her face lifted,” suggested Marden.
“Not she, sir; she wasn’t that type.”
After a little more casual conversation between Mrs. Ferne, Ashling, Smith, and the cats, Smith drew the lady apart into a window embrasure and said something to her in a low voice. She said, “Why, of course. I am very glad you came,” and Smith said something else inaudible to Ashling. Presently Smith came across the room, gave Ashling a pound note, and said, “You go and pay off the taxi, will you? I’ll be with you in a minute.”
Ashling went out and found a little man in a bowler hat talking to the taxi driver. Apparently he was asking if the taxi was disengaged, for the driver merely jerked his thumb towards his flag, which was up, and made no other answer. The little man said in a flustered voice, “Oh dear! I beg your pardon; I do really,” to Ashling and the driver collectively, and wandered off along the pavement, trailing his umbrella behind him. Ashling had a vague idea that he’d seen him before somewhere, but it did not seem important. He paid off the taxi driver, and the cab drove away, overtaking the little man. Ashling watched them idly, thinking, “The old gink can ’ave it now.” To his surprise the man made no attempt to hail the taxi.
Surprise awakened Ashling’s memory, and he remembered where he had seen the little man before. In the police station that morning, while he was waiting to be interviewed, the man in the bowler hat had passed through.
Ashling felt himself go cold. The police were trailing them. He was supposed to be a friend of Smith’s. Smith was mixed up with a gang of German spies if he wasn’t one himself. The police would follow Ashling and discover that he was Warnford’s servant; they would think he was the go-between if they remembered that—Rawson’s suggestion. They might even pull Warnford in to be questioned about it, and the whole wretched business would start again just when he was beginning to cheer up.
Ashling started violently as someone clapped him on the shoulder, but it was only Smith with a friendly smile, holding out a comfortable-looking wad of pound notes.
“Startled you, did I? Must ’ave something on your conscience. Cheer up, ’ere’s ten quid for you.”
Ashling thanked him confusedly and said something about paying it back when he got another job, but Smith dismissed the idea; what was ten pounds between friends? Besides, the lady would be offended; mustn’t do that. “She wants you to go in and see ’er any time you’re this way. I wish you would, too; she’s a
nice lady and got nobody to do things for ’er, ’specially after I’m gone. Say you will.”
“Don’t know what I could do for the likes of ’er, but I’ll certainly go. I owe ’er something if she won’t let me pay this back,” said Ashling, who meant to avoid not only Princes Square in future but the whole Bayswater district if possible.
“That’s right. You stick to that. Now, I’m going to stop this taxi and go to Victoria; come and see me off? Oh, come on. I ’ates going off anywheres all on my own,” said Smith, grasping him in a friendly but firm manner by the arm with one hand and signalling a crawling taxi with the other. Ashling hesitated; after all, the man had just given him ten pounds; one could hardly rush off and leave him then and there.
Smith opened the door of the taxi, propelled Ashling gently inside, and told the driver to call at a Cook’s office on the way to Victoria. “Always get my ticket at Cook’s whenever I go abroad,” he said. “Saves trouble. Book you right through, trains, steamer, and all.” He chatted cheerfully on the way to Cook’s. “You’ll be all right, won’t you? Look, if you can’t find a job maybe I can ’elp you to one. I could, easy. Or Mrs. Ferne would. ’Ere’s Cook’s; I won’t be a minute.”
He dashed across the pavement and dived into the office. Ashling would have got out of the taxi and disappeared at once, only he could see Smith watching him through the glass panel of the door. Ashling gnawed his thumb as an aid to thought. Look such a fool bolting off without a word like a scared rabbit. Easy to slip off at Victoria in all that crowd.
Smith came out again, said, “Victoria!” to the driver in a commanding tone, and they drove off again.
“Better give you my address in Ostend,” he said. “I’ll write it down for you. ’Ere you are. ’Otel Malplaquet, Rue de la Chapelle—that’s just Chapel Street in English. My brother, ’e’s the manager there. Clever chap, my brother.” He looked at his watch as the taxi swung into the station yard. “Quarter to eleven; just timed it nicely.”
“What time’s your train?”
“Eleven o’clock.”
Without Lawful Authority Page 6
