And the effect was altogether satisfactory. The bank attendant jumped like a bullock stung by the gadfly in June and fell to circling the room with gestures of the largest menace. ‘Gettahelloutahere,’ said the bank attendant. ‘Scram.’ And the clients, who all seemed of a kind accustomed to being held of small account, picked up their inferior offerings and began an abject and obedient shuffling from the room.
The young lady at the desk looked helplessly from Meredith to her telephones and back again. ‘Of course, we know they’re a low lot,’ she said apologetically. ‘No class at all. It’s just that we try to clean up that kind at the end of the day.’
‘No doubt,’ said Meredith. And he looked at the young lady as nastily as he could. ‘As it happens, I’m feeling rather like a bit of clean up myself.’ He began to contort the muscles of his face into the semblance of a horrible scowl. Then, glimpsing an altogether more refined conception of his role, he transformed this into a sweet and – as he hoped – wholly spine-chilling smile. ‘A bit of clean up,’ he repeated softly; ‘just a little bit of straightening things out.’
The obscure displeasingness which Meredith contrived to insinuate into this simple metaphor spoke much for the vigorous tone of the most unpresentable regions of his unconscious mind. ‘Of straightening things out,’ he reiterated lingeringly. And the repetition, though indulged in after the manner of the political orator who requires time to think, was so effective that the man with the revolvers sank down upon a shiny chair and made gulping noises in his throat.
For the moment, Meredith judged, he dominated the room. Were he to order the gulping man to shoot the young lady dead the command would be unhesitatingly obeyed. Were he to order the young lady to stand up and sing the Jewel Song from Faust she would do so with the automatism of one in a heavy hypnotic trance. There was, in fact, only one thing that Meredith at this juncture had no chance of carrying off – and that was turning round and departing as he had come. For purposeful and aggressive advance was the essence of the part he had been driven to play, and were this to fail for a moment the illusion would snap. He would scarcely have passed the Giotto and the Titian before the end would come with a bullet in the back. His only safety – and the only safety of Mr Collins’ luckless loan – was to continue marching breast forward as he had begun.
Meredith therefore advanced. He advanced upon the door which it appeared to be the young lady’s function to guard, and as he did so he saw her hand hover over the switches of her box. ‘You needn’t announce me,’ he said drily. ‘We’ll just make it a little surprise.’
The young lady’s eyes widened in dismay. ‘Mr Bubear is in cahnference,’ she said – even in her consternation giving the right filmic intonation to this announcement. ‘Mr Bubear is in cahnference, Mr Birdsong–’
Meredith blinked. It was extremely valuable to know that he was Mr Birdsong: at the same time, and to one with mild feelings on descent and lineage, it had its disconcerting side. Birdsong at morning – he thought with one of his worst lapses into inconsequence – and starshine at night. It would be nice to be tolerably assured that he would ever know either one or other of these natural phenomena again… ‘Is he, indeed?’ said Meredith. ‘All the same’ – and his voice sank to an ecstatically sadistic whisper – ‘I think we’ll make it a little surprise.’
And Meredith threw open the door and took the second of his decisive steps into drama.
III
Mr Bubear’s conference was with a female friend – a good-looking girl, but dissipated, Meredith judged; and with something in her eyes that suggested drink or drugs. He had the impression that she had been sitting on Mr Bubear’s desk and leaning eagerly towards him – this after a fashion equivocally suggesting either business or dalliance – and now as she slipped rapidly back into a chair she gave Meredith a glance which was first appraising and then fleetingly surprised. Meredith had time to reflect that she was intelligent as well as pretty before bracing himself to meet the first shock of encounter with Mr Bubear himself. Mr Bubear was a pasty-faced man grown thin and dyspeptic in what was demonstrably a mistaken vocation; he would not last long, but meanwhile was sufficiently formidable by reason of the intense nervous energy he was pouring into the effort of holding down the job.
Meredith got as far as this in analysis while Mr Bubear blustered – standing behind his desk in a tremble and calling upon the Devil to tell him who was this. Adopting the technique that had proved so startlingly successful hitherto, Meredith made no attempt to think like lightning, but simply eyed his antagonist with an unkindly smile while arranging his ideas at leisure. This, however, was not so instantaneously effective as before. Mr Bubear’s indignation at being intruded upon mounted. ‘And who the Devil’, he repeated furiously, ‘are you? And what damned fool let you into this office?’
Meredith, who felt that this was a very improper way to speak in front of any woman, glanced by way of apology at the young person who had retreated to the other end of the room. When he looked back at Mr Bubear he found that he was being aimed at – ‘covered’ was surely the word – with a revolver, and that his unwilling host was at the same time urgently seeking information through the system of snarling boxes which connected him with his secretary in the outer room. The reply, more urgent still, consisted of a single word. ‘Birdsong’, the box exploded and hissed – and the gulps of the bank attendant could be heard as a faint accompaniment.
And at this Mr Bubear dropped his revolver, disposed an expression of revolting cordiality over his face, and advanced across the room. ‘My dear Herr Vogelsang,’ he exclaimed, ‘how truly delighted we are to welcome you at last!’
To be transformed incontinently from a tolerably familiar Meredith to a totally unknown Birdsong had been disconcerting enough; now – and at the mere crossing of a further threshold – to be hailed as that Birdsong’s Teutonic equivalent was bewildering in the utmost degree.
Meredith, however, clicked his heels in an appropriately Germanic manner, bowed coldly, and at the same time held up a hand which uncompromisingly forbade Mr Bubear’s nearer approach. Then he pointed to a chair – quite an insignificant chair and remote from this now grovelling person’s desk. ‘Mr Bubear,’ he said briskly, ‘please take place.’ The situation, he reflected, was becoming increasingly problematical, but a little stiffness in point of English idiom could hardly be out of the way.
Obediently Mr Bubear sat down – whereupon Meredith crossed over to the desk and sat down in its vacant swivel chair. Lying in front of him was now the weapon which Mr Bubear had just abandoned. This successful coup de théâtre he had by no means intended, and he looked from Mr Bubear to the revolver with considerable misgiving. Could he fire the thing? Could he discharge it with sufficient accuracy to hit Mr Bubear between the eyes, or in the stomach? And would this be at all helpful? Would it be at all helpful to take the less conclusive step of shooting him through the arm or leg?
These were questions outside the common run of Meredith’s experience and required – like so much else in this extraordinary situation – a little reflecting on. Meanwhile, something had better be said – and it would be advantageous if a tone of reprobation could be maintained. Herr Vogelsang therefore looked sternly at the agitated Bubear – whom he was meeting, he remembered, for the first time. ‘Herr Bubear,’ he said chillily, ‘es freut mich sehr Sie kennen lernen zu dürfen.’ He paused on this extreme of formality, which, whether intelligible or not, seemed to serve its purpose of having a further depressant effect upon the person to whom it was addressed. ‘And the Titian,’ he continued suddenly, ‘the sogenannte Venus: you let it lie about like a sack of potatoes, yes?’
Mr Bubear raised imploring hands. ‘But, my dear sir, the crate is being made at this moment! I assure you that every instruction is being attended to. And the painting stands, as you must have noted, well in our porter’s view. A well-armed and resolute man, Herr Vogelsang.�
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Meredith, with much artistic restraint, responded with some moments’ silence and a smile in which nastiness was modified by absence of mind. Then he fell to tapping the desk slowly and gently with his little finger, and was pleased to observe that Bubear hung upon the sound as if it were a knell. ‘Your porter’, he said in measured accents, ‘I do not greatly care for. And your man in the shop above’ – Meredith paused and smiled again – ‘must go.’
‘But certainly, Herr Vogelsang.’ And Bubear bobbed after the manner of a tailor of whom one has bespoken a new suit. ‘Allow me to make a memorandum.’ Bubear’s shaking hand dived into a pocket and produced a notebook and pencil. ‘He will be removed tomorrow and a reliable replacement made. There will be no difficulty.’ And Bubear smiled ingratiatingly. ‘A suitable incident shall be arranged.’
This was an unexpected disaster – and Meredith saw at once that the continued existence of the wretched tobacconist whose doom he had so lightly pronounced was a charge upon his conscience prior even to the safety of the Duke of Nesfield’s Juvenal. ‘You may let the man be,’ he said sombrely. ‘Give him work on – on the crates, and so forth. He may be useful later in some hazardous assignment. I will see that he is placed on the expendable list.’
Bubear bowed respectfully – plainly more impressed by the cold-blooded flavour of this than inclined to notice the nice turns of native English speech to which it ran. ‘The Giotto’, he said – plainly anxious to vindicate his stewardship somewhere – ‘arrived very inadequately packed. And I have had a little difficulty in obtaining a sufficient quantity of wood wool. But this has now come, Herr Vogelsang, I am glad to say. The fresco, as well as the Titian, will be ready for transmission tonight. In fact, they will make the journey with the same consignment as yourself.’
‘Um,’ said Meredith – impressively as it turned out, but actually because he was too disconcerted to say anything else. He might have apprehended something like this. For if Mr Birdsong alias Herr Vogelsang had been expected it was likely enough to be by way of fulfilling some known programme. Which was awkward. So was the fact that there was presumably a real Herr Vogelsang, the imminence of whose arrival had alone made possible the strange misapprehension which had occurred. At any moment, in fact, Herr Vogelsang might walk in at one door, and Meredith himself would have to take what slender chance might be of getting safely out through another. At roughly similar situations one used to laugh unrestrainedly when visiting an Aldwych farce. But at the moment Meredith felt not at all like laughing. He felt only like getting away. And, provided he were able to take his dispatch-case with him, he did not at all care whether his exit was as undignified as any ever contrived for the inimitable Mr Robertson Hare.
But need it be undignified? Might he not leave with an air, even as he had come? Meredith took out his watch and consulted it with every appearance of leisured ease. ‘The consignment,’ he asked, ‘–at what time does it leave?’
Bubear looked fleetingly surprised. ‘At ten o’clock, Herr Vogelsang; the usual hour.’
‘Also!’ Meredith, who did not like that flickering surprise, put an extra dose of sinister inwardness into this harmless Teutonic expletive. ‘Also – gut! At nine I shall return, Herr Bubear. Auf Wiedersehen.’ And Meredith rose from behind the desk and paused like one accustomed to obsequious attendance upon his occasions.
For a second’s space uncertainty – what might even be dawning suspicion – flitted across Mr Bubear’s pasty face, discernibly sweating under the nervous stresses of the interview. And then – what Meredith positively felt as a waft of cool air blowing in from freedom – the bluff worked. Bowing and scraping like a shop walker of the old school, Bubear began to usher Meredith towards a door in the farther corner of the room. ‘Zu Befehl, lieber Herr Vogelsang!’ he exclaimed – and paused in evident pride over this scrap of Germanic courtesy. ‘May I venture to hope that you will honour me by joining in a light collation before your final departure?’ His hand was on the door knob. ‘By the way, you do not yourself wish to interrogate the prisoner?’
‘The prisoner?’ Meredith, much perplexed, contrived to speak coldly.
‘An obstinate girl.’ Bubear again betrayed that flicker of surprise. He turned towards the body of the room again. ‘A very obstinate girl indeed.’
Meredith had forgotten the girl who had appeared to be sitting on the desk, and who had slumped so swiftly and quietly into a chair. But he looked at her attentively enough now. And the girl looked equally attentively at him. It was only for a moment. But what passed between them was full of obscure intimations. ‘Ah, yes,’ said Meredith softly – and more than ever before his whole soul, for some reason, went into sustaining his sinister role. ‘Ah, yes – das Mädel. Your interesting little prisoner, my good Mr Bubear. You have been ineffective, yes? Let me talk to her, by all means.’
Bubear’s hand fell from the handle of the door. Meredith returned to the desk. It would have been possible, he reflected as he sat down, simply to get away, and find a policeman, who would in turn have found more policemen. But in the meantime the real Vogelsang (or Birdsong) might have arrived, or through any of a dozen channels overwhelming suspicion might have poured in upon the hitherto hypnotized intellectuals of the man Bubear. In which case what might not happen to this girl – and to the Titian and the Giotto too – in the interval before effective aid could be marshalled? There was nothing for it – Meredith decided without any sense of heroic decision – but to stick it out. Juvenal and he (and he set the dispatch-case carefully on the desk beside him) must sit on the wicket and continue to play for time.
He looked at the girl. He looked at her with an extreme of nastiness and no compunction – this because he realized that she was not deceived. She knew very well that he was not Vogelsang; even knew (Meredith guessed) that he was a mere outsider, strayed in by fatal inadvertence, and from minute to minute extemporizing a part. But what did he know of her? That his first impression of drugs and dissipation had been altogether wide of the mark; that she had appeared to be sprawling on Bubear’s desk not in dalliance, but because Bubear had been bullying her; that she had slumped into a chair as she had because of some extreme of physical exhaustion. This, and that Bubear called her the prisoner – the obstinate prisoner…
As all this dawned on Meredith he looked down at the desk and absently pushed the dispatch-case aside. For suddenly Juvenal seemed very unimportant and the one fact really relevant to the situation was this: that somewhere on the desk still was Bubear’s revolver, with which Bubear could be killed. There it was – and Meredith slid his hand towards it. He looked again at the girl and saw that once more she knew very well what he was about. She was sitting, perfectly relaxed, on one of the establishment’s hygienic chairs, and it was evident that she was deliberately recovering what physical resources she could. Less evident – just perceptible, indeed – was the fact that she was shaking her head. The revolver might be a card in reserve, but this was not yet the moment to play it.
For the second time Meredith had the odd experience of hearing his own voice take charge of the situation without any apparent intervention of the will. ‘Don’t you think’ – it was a gentle, almost caressing voice – ‘don’t you think you had better give in?’
There was a moment’s silence. Meredith found that, although thus resourceful in utterance, he could now hardly trust himself to look at the girl. For she was haggard and heavy-eyed; her legs, carefully relaxed as they were, intermittently trembled; there was a tear in her dress. To save himself from grabbing at the revolver outright, he repeated, harshly this time: ‘Don’t you think you had better give in?’
The girl raised her head wearily. ‘I’ve told him it’s no good. I’ve told him and I tell you. I just don’t know who intercepted your Consignment 99, or where the stuff was taken to. It wasn’t our lot – see? It just wasn’t Marsden’s lot. There’s still plenty of phoney traffic av
oiding the main North Road, and plenty of hi-jacking of cargoes whose drivers can’t afford to start shouting for the village copper. I don’t know who took your Mykonos Marbles. Maybe it was folk who thought they were getting a good haul of Colonial burgundy or canned pork. Probably it didn’t happen until right up in Scotland. Off to Moila yourself tonight, aren’t you, to join forces with Bubear’s boss? Perhaps you’ll never get there with your precious news of what you’ve filched from the rubble of Berlin. Perhaps you’ll be hi-jacked yourself and big boss Properjohn just won’t see you ever. If he does – and feels like talking to you after your losing the marbles for him – just tell him they didn’t fall to us, worse luck.’ The girl paused. ‘It won’t be a very nice topic, will it, seeing that you’ll be meeting him for the first time?’ She laughed shakily but with convincing malice. ‘Don’t I just see it? “Chicago’s going,” you’ll say. And Properjohn will answer: “Maybe so. But what you and Bubear have to explain, Herr Vogelsang, is why the Mykonos Marbles have gone.” Isn’t right? “Titians are nice,” he’ll say, “and shipments of Giotto frescoes are something new. But what Mr Neff and the others are really wild for is real, genuine archaic stuff. And Marsden’s lot are coming forward with it on very keen quotes – very keen quotes indeed, Herr Vogelsang!” That’s what Properjohn will say, more or less. And maybe he’ll think to have what you call a nice little clear up. I hope he remembers your poor stooge Bubear here, not to mention your filthy porter and hellcat of a secretary.’
‘Very obstinate, indeed, Mr Bubear; very, very obstinate, indeed.’ Meredith, thus ingeniously flooded with vital, if still bewildering, information, spoke the first appropriate words that came into his head. ‘And it appears that your situation is rather awkward. The Mykonos Marbles, above all things, should not have been let slip.’ He looked sombrely at Bubear, who first advanced upon the girl as if with some venomous intention and then, changing his mind, made a gesture of despair and sank down on a seat. And Meredith nodded. ‘That is right, Mr Bubear. Please take place. This had now better be left to me. For it does not seem that you have distinguished yourself my friend. I think you were warned not to underestimate Marsden’s men here. When I get to Moila all this will have to be discussed, you may be sure. And decisions will have to be taken – decisions, Mr Bubear.’
From London Far Page 3
