9. Dark Deeds in Kent
Hambledon shared a flat overlooking St. James’s Park with Reck, the wireless expert, and a stout elderly lady, Fräulein Ludmilla Rademeyer, who mothered them both and was beloved in return. Hambledon had not, therefore, far to go when he was rung up on the telephone and asked to go to the Foreign Office immediately as there was a curious matter claiming his attention. He was in the act of undressing for bed as it was then past midnight, but curiosity would awaken Hambledon at any hour, so he resumed his tie and coat and walked into Whitehall.
Here he found a group of four policemen arranged round a silver-grey Duesenberg which he recognized. The dickey seat was shut and locked, but there was a curious bumbling sound proceeding from it, and occasionally the car rocked slightly as by an unseen hand. In the passenger’s seat in front sat the King’s Messenger, alone and sound asleep. There was no other person in the car.
“What,” said Hambledon, “is all this?”
One of the policemen explained that when he returned from the other end of his beat he found the Duesenberg standing outside the door of the Foreign Office just as it was now; he had not seen anyone get out of it, though presumably someone had driven it up, alighted, and gone away.
“But didn’t Mr. What’s-his-name—the gentleman inside—drive himself up?”
The policeman didn’t think so. He had walked past the car and noticed the gentleman inside; he knew him well, of course. He seemed to be asleep and might have been waiting for somebody. As time passed and no one came the policeman opened the car door to ask if he could do anything and found a label tied to the gentleman’s lapel.
“Where is it now?”
“Still there, sir, look.”
The policeman shone a torch into the car, and Hambledon read the message written on the label. It ran: “The poor man has been doped with some narcotic. Black coffee seems to help him. Please inform Mr. Hambledon AT ONCE. Further details later.”
“Dear me,” said Hambledon mildly.
“So I informed the night porter at the Foreign Office, sir, and he——”
“Yes, yes, of course. Well, we’d better get this chap indoors and send for a doctor. What’s this?”
It was a key, with another label attached to it, hanging from the dashboard.
“That, sir, would appear to be the key of the dickey, sir, which is shut and locked.”
“It would indeed; in fact, it says so. ‘Key of the dickey, for Mr. Hambledon with compliments. Open carefully.’ Really, anybody would think this was my birthday, wouldn’t they? Such interesting presents. Get the King’s Messenger out, men, and carry him indoors; after that we’ll open the other parcel.”
When they unlocked the dickey, a couple of constables standing by with truncheons at the ready, just in case, they found Johan still firmly tied up on the floor, but conscious. He did not speak because he was still gagged, but his face was full of expression. There was yet another label attached to him which read:
“Christian name, Johan; surname not known. Nationality presumably German. Suffering from concussion due to scythe handle and cobblestones, probably cramp also. Concerned in abduction of the King’s Messenger.”
“ ‘Little man,’ ” hummed Hambledon untunefully, “ ‘you’ve had a busy day.’ ”
* * *
Hambledon’s office telephone rang on the following morning, and the secretary reported that it was some man who wouldn’t give his name but who wanted to talk about a Duesenberg car.
“Leave him to me,” said Hambledon, picking up the receiver. “Good morning. Thank you for your nice presents. Now tell me all about them.”
“The King’s Messenger,” said Warnford, “was doped somewhere on his way to Dover. Near Addington he ran his car off the road and went to sleep. He was at once removed, car and all, and taken to an unoccupied farmhouse in the Meopham district by four men. One is dead; one has a broken leg; the third was delivered to you last night, but I’m sorry to say the fourth got away. I don’t know his name, but he’s a tall fellow with a black torpedo beard, and five days ago he was in the Hotel Malplaquet at Ostend, talking to the manager.”
“Noted,” said Hambledon.
“Blackbeard has the papers but doesn’t know he’s got them. I will try to get them back for you.”
“I sincerely hope you succeed.”
“I think that’s all, except that I’m sorry about the farmer. A Mr. Humphreys with a hasty temper—I’m afraid I annoyed him. Police-Sergeant Coot will tell you all about it; he also has the man with the broken leg.”
“Where is Sergeant Coot?”
“I don’t know the name of his village, somewhere near Meopham in Kent. You will be able to find him, won’t you? There was a car accident, so I rang him up to report, according to law.”
“I like ‘according to law’ from you,” said Hambledon. “Was either of the cars yours?”
“Oh no. One—the Paige-Jewett—was Blackbeard’s or his gang’s; the other was the farmer’s Ford. I’ll send you a full account of the affair in writing, shall I? After that I’ll see about getting that satchel back.”
“Please do both. It would give me great pleasure,” said Hambledon earnestly, “if you would dine with me at the Café Royal tonight at eight.”
“I am so sorry, I can’t manage it tonight. Someday I hope I may. Good-bye.”
“Here, stop a minute! Where are you speaking from, a call box?”
“No, as a matter of fact, I’m talking from the Regent Palace.”
“Tell me your name,” said Hambledon in persuasive tones, but the only answer was a laugh and the click of the replaced receiver.
Hambledon immediately sent two Special Branch police to the Regent Palace Hotel in the remote hope of identifying the man who had telephoned to him from there. In the meantime he ascertained the whereabouts of Police-Sergeant Coot, rang him up, and received from him a description of the scene of the accident and of what he found in the barn.
“The farmer,” said Hambledon, “what’s he got to say?”
Apparently he had had a good deal to say, but the gist of it was that he had found a dangerous lunatic in his barn who had expressed a wish to borrow two ploughs for five minutes and, when this was refused, locked him in the barn for ten minutes or so, during which there was an appalling crash outside. The lunatic then came back, bound Mr. Humphreys hand and foot, and left him there with a dead man and another badly injured, who, when he recovered consciousness, talked some foreign language. In fact, he was still doing so when Coot arrived, sent for the ambulance, and had him removed to hospital and the dead man to the nearest mortuary. The inquest would be held next day, which was Friday, and the farmer was prepared to swear that his car was well off the road heading towards the barn. It must have been backed across the road by the lunatics.
“Listen,” said Hambledon, “and make sure you get this right. There were no lunatics.”
“Sir?”
“Nobody was there at all except the farmer. He—had he been out harvesting?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s it. He had a touch of the sun and suffered a temporary delirium. The Ford’s hand brake jumped off—is there a slight slope up to the barn door?”
“Quite a slope, sir, but——”
“There you are, then. The Ford’s brake came off; it ran back down the slope and stopped across the road, and the Paige-Jewett came round the sharp bend you describe and ran into it. That’s all.”
“But, sir——”
“But what?”
“Who rang me up on the telephone?”
“Oh, some passing motorist on a primrosing expedition.”
“Not in August, sir.”
“Oh, don’t be so difficult. Mushrooms, then. I was only trying to account for a strange car wandering about.”
“But the farmer was still all tied up when I got there,” objected Coot, who saw the case of a lifetime being whittled away before his eyes.
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p; “I have already said that that was an illusion on the part of the farmer. You don’t mean to tell me you suffer from illusions too, do you?”
“Certainly not, sir, but——”
“Splendid. Well, that’s settled. You know now what case is to go before the coroner, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” said Coot unwillingly. “But who’s goin’ to persuade Mr. ’Umphreys as ’e’s sufferin’ from delusions?”
“Don’t try. Pass the word round the village that that’s what it was and it won’t matter what he says. He wasn’t tied up when you got there, mind that.”
“Yes, sir,” said Coot sulkily. “But——”
“Don’t keep saying ‘but’!” snapped Hambledon.
“Who put the accident victims in the barn? ’Cause they was there when the ambulance came, and I didn’t.”
“The passing motorist who rang you up, of course; that’s simple. By the way! Did you untie the injured man before the ambulance came? You said he was roped up too.”
“Only ’is ’ands tied be’ind ’im. Yes, sir, I did.”
“Well done, Sergeant. I think you have handled this distressing affair admirably. I congratulate you on your presence of mind and I will see that an official commendation of your behaviour reaches the appropriate authority. Good-bye.”
Coot put down the receiver, walked round to the back door of the Chequers, and obtained a large whisky for medicinal purposes, since it was out of hours. He needed it.
Presently the two Special Branch policemen returned from the Regent Palace and reported that they had been unable to trace Hambledon’s telephone caller but handed in a large envelope addressed to —— Hambledon, Esq. They said that after making vain enquiries on the ground floor they had gone upstairs to interview somebody who might know something—he didn’t—when the girl at the reception desk came to them. She gave them this envelope and said she had been asked to do so by a gentleman who had just left the building. He told her to tell the detectives that the man they were looking for had gone and asked that the envelope should be handed by them to the addressee, with compliments.
Hambledon murmured something inaudible and slit the envelope open. Inside were a number of typewritten sheets of Regent Palace Hotel paper, headed:
DARK DEEDS IN KENT
Chapter I
The Case of the Angry Farmer
Hambledon ran his eye over them. They contained a detailed account of the events of the preceding day and up to the time of the telephone message from the Regent Palace. They ended: “His police have come to look for me; I think I had better leave.”
“Did you see the gentleman who left this letter for me?”
“Not to our knowledge, sir. There is a row of telephone boxes at the Regent Palace and people going in and coming out all the time; nobody takes any notice of them.”
“Were there any gentlemen there dictating letters to typists?”
“Yes, sir, several. I made enquiries of them all as to whether they had telephoned from the Regent Palace within the past hour, and they all said they had not.”
Hambledon thanked the police and told his secretary to ring up the reception clerk at the Regent Palace. When he was connected Hambledon asked if she could describe the gentleman who gave her a note to hand to the detectives that morning. She said he was a tall gentleman with dark hair and dressed in a grey suit.
“Anything else remarkable about him?”
Nothing remarkable except that he was ever so nice and she would know him again at once if she saw him.
“If you ever see him again, anywhere, get to the nearest telephone and ring this number,” said Hambledon, giving it; “ask for Mr. Hambledon and tell me all about it.”
The reception clerk agreed but privately determined to do nothing of the sort. The gentleman this morning was ever so nice, but this one sounded like trouble.
“You have a typist’s office there, I understand,” went on Hambledon. He was put through to it and asked to speak to the typist who had typed out the first chapter of a novel called Dark Deeds in Kent that morning.
“Speaking,” said the voice.
“Oh. Well, I’m a—a publisher. I have received this manuscript, but there’s no name or address on it. Do you know who the gentleman is and where he lives? I want to get in touch with him.”
“I’m sorry, sir, he didn’t say. I expect he forgot to put it in.”
“I expect so. He might be someone I know; could you describe him?”
“He was a tall gentleman—I noticed that—and I think he’d got dark hair. He was ever so nice, easy to work for, you know. Didn’t get impatient like some of them. He’d got ever such a merry laugh, but his eyes looked sad, as though he’d had trouble.”
“Most writers have,” said Hambledon darkly, “especially letter writers. What colour were his eyes? What sort of face; can you describe it?”
“Dark eyes, I’m sure of that. I don’t know how to describe his face; it was very aristocratic, you know; you’d know he was a real gentleman wherever you met him. Well, he reminded me a bit of the pictures of Anthony Eden, only he didn’t wear a black hat.”
“I see.”
“But there, I’ve no doubt he’ll write to you when he doesn’t hear, won’t he? He’s sure to; it’s only waiting for it.”
“Yes, but I don’t like waiting,” said Hambledon truthfully.
Denton came into the room while this conversation was in progress; when it was over Hambledon sent his secretary out to lunch and poured out his story.
“It’s so dashed awkward,” he complained. “You see, I don’t suppose he knows how desperately important those papers are. There was even a Cabinet meeting about it this morning; that’ll show you.”
“What is all this fuss about?” asked Denton frankly.
“Russia. Of course we’ve been on rather distant terms with Russia for a good many years now, but it isn’t going to last much longer. They are beginning to explore stones and turn avenues and all that, to see if we can find a ground of mutual agreement to start talks on. It’s all terribly hush-hush, and a week ago a detailed account of conversations in London with representatives of the U.S.S.R.—in code, of course—was flown to our Ambassador in Russia. At least the plane started for Russia but crashed in flames just this side of the Polish frontier; the pilot was killed and the papers burned. That’s the story, anyway.”
“What actually happened?”
“Well, one of our fellows was floating about in the neighbourhood where the plane came down, though he wasn’t actually on the spot when it crashed. He says it definitely wasn’t burning in the air; he’d have seen it. It was blazing furiously when he arrived on the scene, but not yet entirely destroyed. He says there were bullet holes in the wings.”
“Shot down, eh?”
“Presumably. The case, though serious, was not desperate, because they hadn’t got the code. Things are different now, because a copy of that cipher was among the papers which the King’s Messenger was taking to Paris.”
“Oh, ow,” said Denton dismally.
“Quite. If they’ve got the code they can decipher the papers, and the cat will be among the canaries with a vengeance.”
“I don’t wonder there was a Cabinet meeting.”
“No. But can you imagine me explaining to them that I think some young man I don’t know is trying to get them back for us? I said the matter was having my sleepless attention and I hoped for results in a couple of days. I do passionately desire to meet this young man; that’s why I sent policemen hot-foot to the Regent Palace to try and catch him for me. It was a fool’s errand. I only hoped something might happen; it didn’t. He just looked at them with his sad brown eyes and walked out on them with a peal of merry laughter.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“I am going down to Kent,” said Hambledon, “to try and convince the coroner that my version of the Frog Lane accident is the correct one. It’s a much more reasonable explanati
on than the farmer’s, anyway. I shall then interview the tough with the broken leg, though if he’s anything like his pal Johan I might just as well talk to myself in the looking glass; I should at least be sure of getting a civil and intelligent answer—if I may say so.”
“Johan wasn’t much help, then?”
“Johan, like the rest of the Nazi party, is a throwback to the Dark Ages when they tortured prisoners to make ’em talk, and after half an hour’s chat with Johan you understand why. I don’t think he knows anything important, actually; he is just the useful thug. You may be more fortunate; you are going to the Hotel Malplaquet at Ostend to try and pick up Blackbeard. He may have bolted back there after all this excitement.”
“Taking the papers with him, presumably. He has had twenty-four hours’ start,” said Denton.
“Presumably, but I don’t know. Our young friend told me that Blackbeard had the papers but didn’t know he’d got them, whatever that means.”
“Why don’t you put Scotland Yard onto him? All this Boy’s Own Paper stuff is all very well for trifles, but this is serious.”
“I agree,” said Hambledon anxiously, “it is, but I don’t like to turn the police onto him. Goodness knows what they’d find. He may be someone they’re looking for for something else, and the next thing I’d hear might be that he’d got fifteen years in Dartmoor for coining or something, and he’s much more useful to me loose. If he gets the code back he can make all the coins he likes for all I care; there isn’t nearly enough money about, anyway.”
So Hambledon went into Kent, interviewed the coroner and Police-Sergeant Coot with satisfactory results, and visited Frog Farm, where he found a camp bed, a few picnic necessaries, and an empty tin which had contained tongue. These last were examined for fingerprints, but it was useless, as they had been wiped clean.
Denton caught the afternoon boat to Ostend and failed as completely as Warnford to get a room at the Hotel Malplaquet, for the backwash of international crisis still eddied through its corridors. He did manage to obtain a bedroom in a house near by and arranged to have his meals at the hotel, which was nearly as useful. He settled down and looked round for a tall man with a black beard who was a friend of the manager’s. Unfortunately, men with black beards are a common feature of Continental life, and Ostend was thick with them; anyone would think, said Denton bitterly to himself, that the Société Anonyme des Barbes Noires was holding a convention in Ostend. Quite a lot of them seemed to know the manager of the Malplaquet.
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