“Look ’ere,” said Ashling desperately, “what time’s this wedding of yours?”
“Half-past two.”
“It’s five o’clock now; if you run you’ll just get there in time.”
“Round this corner,” said the infuriating George, taking no notice. Ashling jibbed again, but at that moment Mr. Leggatt of Connecticut came out of an antique shop and Ashling fairly dived round the corner, dragging the thin man with him.
“You do change your mind a lot, don’t you?” said George plaintively. “First you will and then you won’t and then you will and then you won’t and then you——”
“Oh, cheese it,” said Ashling.
The next event which made any real impression upon his mind was finding himself in a church and being urged to ascend a winding stair. He would have refused but for the sound of a feminine American voice behind him saying in a loud whisper that three hundred and sixty-five stairs was not what the doctor ordered for her insteps and a masculine voice saying he guessed that went for him, too, only it wasn’t insteps; it was figure. Ashling went up the stairs like a startled rabbit dashing into its burrow. He went round and round until it seemed as though he were marking time in the same place upon a revolving tower; behind him he heard the persevering steps of George, who must have been a much fitter man than he looked, especially when one remembered the overcoat with the fur collar. At last the stairs came to an end and they emerged at the top, glad to find somewhere level to stand upon and plenty of air to draw into their labouring lungs. Ashling drew a long breath, blinked once or twice, and found himself looking straight into the face of Mr. Hawksworth of Michigan.
Ashling never remembered going down those stairs. He had some recollection of passing through the streets of Boston, because somebody shouted at him when he cut it rather fine across the nose of a car. When he really came to himself he was trotting steadily along a country road with no idea where he was going.
He sat down on the bank by the roadside and lit a cigarette. How pleasant, how soothing to be all alone. The few motors which passed took no notice of him, and there were no pedestrians in sight till a tramp came along from the direction of Boston.
Ashling waited till the man drew level with him and then said, “Say, mate! Where’s this road go to?”
The tramp stopped and said it depended how far you went along it; he had heard it said that you could get to the Land’s End if you kept on long enough.
Ashling said that he didn’t think he wanted to go quite as far as that tonight, thank you; all he wanted was a quiet, decent place where he could get a bed for the night—and a shave, he added, fingering his scratchy chin.
“Somewhere where they’d make you pay for it, I suppose?” said the tramp.
“I wouldn’t mind,” said Ashling, secure in the possession of Mrs. Ferne’s ten pounds. The tramp recommended Swineshead about six miles farther on, and Ashling sighed and rose to his feet. The tramp said there would be a bus along presently; in the meantime the two walked along together, speaking of this and that. Later on they passed through a small village where the tramp suddenly crossed the road for a reason which only became obvious when Ashling saw a neat cottage standing by itself in a garden. Near the gate was a notice board with notices pinned on it headed “Lost” and “Swine-Fever” and “Stolen” in large black capitals. It was a police cottage. There was a man in shirt sleeves leaning over the gate, enjoying the evening air; the tramp shot a sideways glance at him and quickened his pace slightly. The man in shirt sleeves straightened up suddenly, took his pipe out of his mouth, and said “Oy!” in a loud voice. “Here! I want you!”
The tramp went off as though someone had fired a pistol to start the hundred-yards race, and Ashling instinctively did the same. But the policeman was young and active, and flying footsteps behind steadily gained on them. Presently an arm came forward and grabbed the tramp, who stopped at once, and so did Ashling.
“ ’Ere,” said the tramp between gasps, “you can’t arrest me like that. You ain’t got your armlet on.”
“Tell that to the magistrate in the morning,” said the constable, “while you’re telling him what you did with those blankets you pinched off the line at the Red Lion six months back. You,” to Ashling, “what were you running for?”
“Because I thought you didn’t want me,” said Ashling with pained dignity. At that moment a bus came along the road going towards Swineshead; he boarded it with a sigh of relief and left the tramp behind.
Next day he made his way southward by stages, still shying at the railway, and slept the night at Oxford. When he got to Reading the following morning he thought it safe to ring up Warnford.
“You know,” said the amused Marden, “you must have led a singularly unspotted life until now.”
“Why, sir?”
“You’ve had so little experience in running away.”
7. The Desmond Diamonds
Tommy Hambledon sat in his room at the Foreign Office with a letter upon the table before him. He was reading it aloud, with marginal comments, to Denton, who was occupying the secretary’s chair during that gentleman’s absence for lunch.
“Tell me what you think of this,” said Hambledon. “It begins in stately and measured prose, ‘—— Hambledon, Esq. Sir: I am writing to express to you in a fuller and more adequate manner than was possible in the few moments at my disposal the other night my sincere apologies for eavesdropping upon your telephone conversation with the Southampton police.’ ”
“Oho,” said Denton. “That fellow.”
“Yes. He goes on, ‘Please believe me that no consideration on earth other than the welfare of the country would have induced me to take so distasteful a course.’ I like his rolling Georgian periods, don’t you?”
“Very much. I don’t know why a burglar shouldn’t be literary.”
“Burglar my foot,” said Hambledon energetically. “Listen to the rest of it. ‘I was very interested to read in the paper of the large amount of dope you found in the cellar. I must be very unobservant; I didn’t see any during my little stroll round the property. Perhaps it was under the coal.’ Is that sarcasm or humility?”
“Ask me another.”
“I hope it isn’t sarcasm; it reminds me of Goebbels, and I don’t like Goebbels. To continue: ‘Probably you already know it, but in case you don’t, the so-called Smith whom you arrested at Victoria was on his way to Ostend to stay with a brother of his. At least he said it was his brother. According to him, he is the manager of the Hotel Malplaquet in the Rue de la Chapelle.’ D’you know the Hotel Malplaquet at Ostend, Denton? No. Then I’m afraid you soon will.”
“I hope they can cook,” said Denton gloomily.
“Take some bicarbonate of soda with you. He goes on, ‘I think you heard that Smith called at a private hotel in Princes Square, Bayswater, because you had one of your men outside, the little man with a bowler hat and an umbrella. Smith——’ ”
“I think the little man in the bowler hat wants the sack,” said Denton.
“He seems to have slipped up somewhere, doesn’t he? I am informing Scotland Yard; I won’t have this kind of thing. These men will be coming home with chalk marks on their backs next: ‘I am X 37 of Scotland Yard, watch your step.’ However, to return to the letter: ‘Smith went to call on a Mrs. Ferne who lives there. She keeps cats. If it’s not an uncharitable suggestion, she seems to keep Smith, too, judging by the amount of money she gave him on demand.’ You’d really think the writer was there, wouldn’t you?”
“What about Smith’s friend?”
“I’m coming to him presently. This man says, ‘Here are the numbers of eight pound notes which Smith gave away. I am sending the notes themselves to Dr. Barnado’s Homes as I prefer, at the moment, to remain anonymous.’ There follows a list of eight numbers. ‘I hope you will find these useful. I understand you have means of tracing notes.’ ”
“Did Dr. Barnado’s get them?”
“Don�
�t know yet; the police are enquiring, but I don’t doubt it for a moment. The letter ends, ‘If I come across anything else which I think will interest you I will give myself the pleasure of sending it to you.’ That’s all.”
Denton began to laugh. “I remember a time when you were driving the Foreign Office mad by writing them anonymous letters. You know now what they felt like.”
“Yes, but I couldn’t help it; I had a perfectly good reason. I wasn’t doing it for devilment like this fellow. Or has he got a good reason too, Denton? I’d like to know what his reason is, if he’s got one, wouldn’t you? I’d like to get into a nice quiet corner all alone with the writer of this letter,” said Hambledon wistfully, “and say to him, ‘Now tell me your life’s history. Whose baby are you?’ ”
“What about Smith’s friend who was arrested with him? And who, by the way, went with him to that Princes Square hotel, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he did. But he didn’t write this letter; at least I don’t think so. Allen, as he calls himself, is the old-soldier type, talks quite uncultured English, and might be a hotel porter or somebody’s servant, according to the police. No, this letter was written, I think, by the man who talked to me on the phone, at which time Allen was at the cinema with Smith. That has been established. But he and Allen are in this together, since only Allen could have told about Mrs. Ferne paying out money. I think they’d do that in private; I wonder they let even Allen see it. And the bit about the little man in the bowler hat—that was Allen’s story too, wasn’t it? And Smith’s alleged brother’s address in Ostend.”
“So there are two of them in it,” said Denton. “No, three.”
“Three. There were two of them tying up the Johnsons in Apple Row that night while Allen entertained Smith. They planted Allen on Smith for that purpose, of course. Somewhere, Denton, there are two men, one of whom has a servant whose name probably isn’t Allen. They have a down on the Johnsons for some reason, so they break into the house. What for, I wonder? Not the spoons, I’ll bet. They find the telephone. Then their servant walks into the trap they digged for another. He was let loose next morning and followed, but he gave the police the slip and hasn’t been seen since. I am very curious about that trio, Denton. Why not come out in the open about it? There must be a reason, and I want to know what it is.”
“Perhaps he wants to corner the market in sausage skins for himself,” suggested Denton sleepily.
“Either that or some other market,” said Hambledon significantly. “In our trade we don’t always love each other, you know, even if we are on the same side.”
“Aren’t you jumping to conclusions?”
“Tell me how they knew where to look for the telephone,” answered Hambledon.
* * *
Marden suggested to Warnford that they ought to get to know some of the Foreign Office people by sight; it would be very useful to be able to recognize them if only to avoid them if necessary. Warnford agreed, and they made a practice of hanging about outside the Foreign Office to see those who entered or emerged, to talk to the policemen on duty outside and watch the cars drive up, wondering which of those who came and went was —— Hambledon, Esq. Neither of them ever had the moral courage to ask. They were not so conspicuous as one might think in doing this; there were always groups of people waiting about outside the Foreign Office at the end of August 1938, when the war clouds hung heavy over Europe and the lightning flickered uneasily on the borders of the Sudetenland.
However, there came a day when four Army officers of high rank came walking together along Whitehall with red tabs on their collars and medal ribbons across their chests, and one of them was Warnford’s late colonel. Marden heard a sort of gasp at his side and looked round to find his friend had gone. After that Marden usually went by himself; Warnford had something else he wanted to do.
There was a silver-grey Duesenberg rather frequently in evidence among the cars parked along the curb, and one day Marden remarked upon it to the policeman. “That’s a nice car. Who does it belong to, d’you know?”
“King’s Messenger,” said the policeman. “Yes, it’s a nice car, and he’s not half proud of it either. Always drives himself—well, you’d pretty well have to with a two-seater like that, ’less you wanted your chauffeur in your pocket all day. All bonnet and dickey, those cars are, in my opinion. I’d rather have something I could take the family out in. Excuse me, sir.”
The Prime Minister’s car drove up, and the policeman went to salute the lean, anxious figure upon whom so great a burden was laid in those historic days. A subdued cheer came from the crowd; Mr. Chamberlain turned to raise his hat in acknowledgment before he went indoors, and Marden strolled restlessly away.
“You feel you can’t settle to anything these days,” he said to Warnford when he got home. “I think I shall work out a nice juicy burglary somewhere, just to take my mind off Hitler.”
“Have a shot at the crown jewels in the Tower,” said Warnford with a laugh. He knew perfectly well that Marden would never go on a real housebreaking expedition from the flat they shared together, and he intended to make their partnership last as long as possible, since what had begun as business had continued as friendship. If this should come to an end a time would come when Marden would be short of money, and something would have to be done about it. No burglar can expect to be lucky always, and the thought of that cheerful, sensitive face behind bars in Dartmoor made him shiver.
“As a matter of fact, I don’t want any more jewels at the moment, crown or otherwise,” said Marden in a slightly more serious tone. “I seem to have rather too many as it is.”
“Why? What’s the matter?”
“The Desmond diamonds. There were quite a lot of them, you know, and of course I didn’t put them all on the market at once. In fact, I’ve been parting with ’em more or less one at a time; they ought to keep me in modest comfort for years with care. But Palmer is getting fidgety.”
“Who’s Palmer?”
“My tame fence. He is a prosperous pork butcher and an even more prosperous receiver of stolen goods in Hoxton, where he lives. He knows, of course, that I’ve got the Desmond diamonds and he doesn’t like having ’em doled out in penny numbers. He has to pay more for ’em that way, for one thing. For another, he wants to retire, he says. If he had all the lot to deal with at once he’d make up the amount he’s been saving for years to buy a little place in the Highlands, God preserve Scotland. He wants to wear a kilt, he does, and take up shooting and fishing, believe it or not. So he’s putting the screw on me.”
“Blast him. How?”
“Quite simple. He will inform the police.”
“Then he won’t get any more diamonds at all,” said Warnford.
“I pointed out that jailbirds don’t lay golden eggs, but he says it will have such a good moral effect on his other clients. I temporized while I thought things over. After all, I’ve got a lot more sympathy for the Desmonds than I have for him.”
“Don’t they want their diamonds back?”
“Bless you, no. The family’s desperately hard up and couldn’t sell the things; they’re heirlooms. The insurance money’s set them on their feet for the first time for five generations. Can’t let the poor wretches down now—they’d have to pay it back.”
“We shall have to deal with Palmer,” said the amused Warnford. “We can’t have the Desmonds victimized, to say nothing of you. I was just thinking,” he went on, “that a little change would do us good. We’ve been in London all the summer.”
“Come down to my cottage,” said Marden. “My summer tenants went home in a hurry yesterday; I heard from old Butt this morning. International situation unsettling them, I expect.”
“I’d love to,” said Warnford. “What I was going to suggest was a run over to Ostend for a look at the Hotel Malplaquet. If war breaks out and Hitler attacks us it mayn’t be so easy to get there.”
“British understatement,” said Marden cheerfully. “If Hitler attacks
us now I don’t think any of us will ever see Ostend again. I don’t see what we’ve got to stop the German Army with, at the moment. By all means let’s go there while we can; Halvings can wait.”
But when they reached Ostend their chances of being received into the Hotel Malplaquet or anywhere else seemed remote in the extreme, for the town was packed with people streaming home from all over the Continent and especially from Germany and those countries so geographically unlucky as to be her neighbours. The booking clerk at the Hotel Malplaquet shook her hands in the air and said they had no accommodation, none. Even the bathrooms were occupied. Perhaps in four weeks, or five, if this crisis passed, “si le Boche ne vient pas,” they would have room. At present nothing, nothing, nothing.
Marden asked if they could see the manager.
“It is of no use to see the manager. He will only tell you the same as I do, and in any case he is too busy to see anyone. In four or five weeks’ time, messieurs, if there is no war. If there is——”
“If there is, we’ll come back when it’s over,” said Marden stoutly. “Au revoir, mademoiselle.”
Warnford had left his friend to do the talking and was leaning against a gilt pillar with a red plush curtain looped against it—for the Hotel Malplaquet was like that—looking at the people. They seemed to be mostly family parties, the elders either sitting anxiously watching the doors or roaming restlessly about the lounge while the children revolved round them asking questions. “Mummy, why are we here?” “Mummy, may I go on the sands?” “Daddy, when are we going home?” “Nanny, when is Mummy coming?” Presently a woman near him said, “There is the manager,” and half rose to her feet as a fat little man passed swiftly through the lounge. He was accompanied by a tall man with a black beard whose general appearance struck Warnford as familiar, though he could not remember ever having known anyone with a black beard like that, stiff and pointed at the end. They walked through the lounge too quickly for anyone to stop them and disappeared through a door labelled “Private.”
Without Lawful Authority Page 8
