Dusty Death

by Clifton Robbins

  “Sounds rather unpleasant,” remarked Harrison.

  “He certainly is,” the Baron went on. “I don’t know whether you saw an article in his paper recently about the new motor-cars of League officials. That was his. It certainly was a coincidence that they should have had new cars at the same time, but that was no reason for a cry of extravagance and an economy campaign. Motor-cars in England are not the sole test of wealth, nor are they in Geneva. And all the time he professes friendship for the League.”

  “Thank you very much for the information,” said Harrison. “I shall be on my guard.”

  “That’s good,” replied the Baron. “I hope I haven’t said more than I ought but, at any rate, I’ve kept my part of the bargain. And will you let bygones be bygones and forget any little annoyance we may have caused you. That is agreed?”

  “Certainly,” said Harrison.

  The Baron rose to leave the table and again gave Harrison that emphatic shake of the hand which seemed something more than the warm pressure of friendship.

  As the Baron wandered away, Harrison also rose to go but was stopped by a member of the passport committee who insisted on introducing him to his very charming daughter. Politeness led to an invitation to dance, which was accepted graciously, and Harrison, instead of stealing quietly away to his room, found himself involved in all the social pleasures of a Geneva reception. His partner would not hear of his going off so early—“only blasé Geneva residents do that, it is up to the delegates to keep things going,” she said—and introduced him to an equally attractive friend. So suspicious had he become that, for a moment, he thought this also was a scheme to keep him from his interview with Dawnay, but the young ladies seemed to be so unaffectedly satisfied with his company that he decided to enjoy himself for the moment and, if Dawnay protested, throw his words about taking his official duties seriously back at him.

  The hour was quite late when he managed to excuse himself from his congenial company, although this had only been possible after a number of half promises to arrange other social meetings during his stay in Geneva, and he had reached the door of the hall in perfect safety when Jeanne de Marplay sailed into view and walked obviously and purposefully towards him, cutting off all chances of escape.

  Harrison had to admit to himself that she was looking amazingly attractive—as attractive as anyone in the room—and, in the ordinary way, he would have been flattered by the eager manner in which she came towards him. Perhaps, if he told the truth to himself, he was slightly flattered now, but he dared not admit it, and tried to harden his feelings as best he could.

  “I’m so sorry, Mr. Harrison,” she said, looking to the floor and giving an admirable impression of womanly contrition. “Please don’t frown at me.”

  I’m not,” said Harrison, with a smile. “That’s all finished with now. The Baron has explained everything.” He paused. “Even your sense of humour.”

  “I admit it’s rather difficult to explain,” she said humbly, “but I am really very sorry.” She looked at the dancers, at Harrison, and then at the dancers again, but Harrison made no move.

  “Must I ask you to dance with me?” she said, looking into his face.

  “Really, Miss de Marplay—” began Harrison.

  “I dance quite well, really I do,” she said. “And so do you. I saw you going round just now.”

  “Oh, it isn’t that,” he replied. “Don’t you think me ungallant but I have had a pretty heavy day and I’m getting somewhat tired.”

  “You can’t have done more than I have,” she said. “And I can hold out for another dance. I shall feel you haven’t forgiven me if you are as tired as all that.”

  There was really no answer to this last remark, thought Harrison, and as there was one question he particularly wanted to ask her, after all it might be better so. He therefore went back to the hall with a radiant young woman at his side. She had been right about her own dancing, and Harrison was distinctly enjoying his somewhat unwilling concession. She was feminine to the utmost degree, and as he held her, he realised that not only was she dangerous, as he thought, as an intelligent woman, or, as the Baron said, as a newsgetting woman, but in a third way, a much more dangerous way than either of them, simply as being a woman.

  The dance was finishing and hardly a word had been said by either of them. Harrison broke the silence by saying: “The Baron was very frank.”

  “Was he?” said Jeanne de Marplay, dreamily.

  “You seem to have told him everything.”

  “Of course.”

  “Everything?”

  Her dreamy look vanished and she glanced up at Harrison. “I’m afraid so,” she said. “He wanted all the details. He does when he is angry and knows when he hasn’t had them.”

  “That’s a pity.”

  “I’m so sorry, but I couldn’t help it.”

  “You told him about the suggested dinner in Paris?”

  “Yes.”

  “The white-slave trafficker at Geneva?”

  “Yes, I am sorry, really.”

  “The taxi-cab to the hotel?”

  “Yes.”

  “The face cream?”

  He saw her expression change for a moment. It might have been a look of fear in her eyes, he could not have sworn to that, but he knew her expression had changed and he was satisfied. The whole dance was justified. It seemed cruel to use such a very charming partner in this way, but the job for which he come out to Geneva had to be done.

  “Oh no, I didn’t tell him that,” she said, quickly. “It seemed too trivial. Why did you ask?”

  Harrison laughed. He did not want her to be too suspicious.

  “I only wanted to know the extent of your misdeeds,” he said. “You have succeeded in pulling my leg pretty heartily, haven’t you?”

  They both laughed, she exerting to the utmost the fascination of her attractive eyes and smile. The music stopped and Harrison led her to a convenient chair. This time he really intended to escape, and with a cheerful “good night” he reached the doorway and the staircase leading to his room, without mishap.

  Chapter VIII

  The Story Of The Twinings

  Harrison found his room in darkness when he arrived and mentally criticised himself for his lack of manners in taking so long to follow Dawnay. He switched on the light, preparing to settle down and think over the various items of information he had picked up during the evening, and to his surprise, found that Dawnay had ensconced himself comfortably in an armchair and was sleeping peacefully.

  The light, however, disturbed him and, blinking his eyes, he looked up at Harrison. “So sorry, Mr. Harrison,” he said. “One gets infernally tired here and so, hoping that you might be kept downstairs for a very long time, I turned out the light and went off.”

  “That’s all right,” answered Harrison, taking off his dress coat and replacing it by a monstrously ragged Norfolk jacket. “By the way, no more ‘Mr.’ Harrison, please. We made friends this morning and we finished with formalities of that kind.”

  Harrison lit a cigar and settled into another armchair. As he did so, Henry’s head appeared round the door.

  “Tea, sir?” said Henry, with something suspiciously like a wink.

  “A cup of tea, Dawnay?” asked Harrison.

  “Rather late, isn’t it?” queried Dawnay.

  “Can’t do any harm,” said Harrison.

  “I didn’t mean that,” said Dawnay. “I thought it was rather late to get tea in the hotel.”

  Henry coughed indignantly.

  “No hotel tea for us,” said Harrison. “This will be Henry’s brew. Wherever we are, Henry makes a cup of tea before we go to bed.”

  “Very well,” answered Dawnay. “I shall enjoy it.”

  “Go ahead, then, Henry,” said Harrison. “And your finest cup to impress Mr. Dawnay.”

  Henry departed with a great smile and Harrison waited for Dawnay to start.

  “To be able to get any further with your i
nvestigations, Harrison,” said Dawnay, “you will have to know a bit more about the story of Gilbert Twining. He was a very great friend of mine and even now I find it difficult to tell you. I expect I really could have spared the time this morning, but somehow I didn’t want to do it in the office. I wanted to be in some quiet place, free from interruption. You will understand as I go on. You see I was—I was very fond of Twining’s sister.”

  “I think I understand,” said Harrison gently.

  “She was young—bright, witty and impulsive. Gilbert was frightfully devoted to her. As she grew up she lost both her parents, and Gilbert was, in a way, all the family she had. The great pity was that she had entire control of her own money and, being a bit headstrong, she would listen to no-one. She liked me, but I had to come out here to Geneva and could not see much of her, while Gilbert did not dare say too much. He was afraid of offending her, and so she went her own way. At first she was just extravagant. That didn’t matter much because she could easily stand the strain of a good bit of that.

  “But you know what that kind of spending brings, rotten hangers-on, and, poor kid, she got them. They followed her about everywhere, and spent her money for her.

  “Gilbert spoke to her about them when she started taking them up, but she was so furious with him, threatened to go her own way altogether and have nothing more to do with him, that he gave in at once. She had a lot of catch-phrases about the sacred ties of friendship and all that sort of thing. Gilbert felt almost ashamed of himself, and settled down to be polite to her set. Things got worse, however, and so Gilbert wrote to me. He said I was the only one left who could say anything to Dorothy. It was up to me to get her out of the mess.”

  “Rather hard on you,” said Harrison.

  “I thought it was very unfair of him,” replied Dawnay, slowly. “But I suppose he was right and, after all, he was at his wits’ end to know what to do. I must admit I let it go for a time, but I got another letter from him, still more appealing, and so I settled down to write to Dorothy. It was pretty strong, but I’m afraid the facts justified it and, if I was going to write a letter like that at all, I might as well go all out. The result was, of course, what I expected. I never heard from her again.”

  Dawnay paused and Harrison waited in silence. At that moment Henry reappeared with a tray of tea-things. Harrison looked at him and pointed to the table, and Henry, as if understanding the atmosphere, put down the tray and glided out again with the superb softness of a highly-trained butler.

  “You see, Harrison, it was like signing my own death-warrant. I was very much in love with her and I knew if a man wrote a letter like that to Dorothy, that was the end of him. And yet I had to do it—for I knew, too, that she would read it. I suppose I’m not sorry now, but I cursed Gilbert then for making me do it. I heard from mutual friends what a reception my letter had. I knew it hurt Dorothy by the way she must have talked about it, but she resented it and I had to pay. I was so thoroughly worried that I got special leave to go home to England, but she wouldn’t even speak to me, and, although Gilbert was almost too grateful, I came back here full-tilt and settled down to work like a madman to keep myself from thinking about it.

  “Things, I gathered, got worse and worse until suddenly, Dorothy was fearfully ill. All the unpleasant people drifted off, and Gilbert was left to look after her. And then we made the most horrible discovery of all. She had been doping herself steadily for months. Heaven knows where she got it—from her charming friends, I suppose. But with that, like everything else, she had known no limit, and she had wrecked her health, nerves and everything else with incredible speed.”

  “Poor girl,” exclaimed Harrison.

  “And the terrible irony of it all was,” continued Dawnay, “that here was I in Geneva doing my very humble part in trying to stop the drug traffic while Dorothy was in England buying drugs and killing herself with them. I wanted to go and see her, but Gilbert said it was better not—far better remember her as I knew her, he said—and I stayed here. And that was the story of Dorothy Twining, and even I can’t help feeling that, after such an experience, it was better for her not to live. Of course, very few people knew about it. Possibly Gilbert and I and the doctor and nurse were the only people. I don’t think he even told Miss Graham.”

  “I can assure you he didn’t,” said Harrison.

  “As Miss Graham may have told you, it pretty well knocked Gilbert out. Miss Graham doesn’t know what a blessing she was to him at that time. If it hadn’t been for her he’d have gone mad, I think—committed suicide, or shot some of Dorothy’s rotten set, or something like that. But he gradually became sane again and then he got his fixed idea.”

  “Just a moment,” broke in Harrison. “I feel I must interrupt you now. You have told me the most difficult part of your story to tell, Dawnay, and you have my real sympathy. You are now coming to the point where each detail may be important to me. Let us have a cup of tea and pause for a minute. Then you can start again.” Dawnay agreed, and while the tea was being consumed, Harrison went to the door and looked out.

  “One must take precautions, you know,” he said, closing the door and sitting down again. “I hardly think the next part of our conversation ought to be overheard. We can feel quite happy about it all the same, because as I opened my door—and I thought I did it quite gently—Henry’s head came very cautiously round the door of his room.”

  “Good for Henry,” said Dawnay, whose cup of tea seemed to have calmed him and acted as an invigorating tonic.

  “Now, if you don’t mind, you can go ahead again,” said Harrison. “But I want to be certain that your story begins again about two years ago. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, about two years ago,” answered Dawnay. “That was when Gilbert came out to me here.”

  “He came out to you here,” said Harrison. “Then, of course, his fixed idea is obvious.”

  “I can’t see that, Harrison.”

  “Well, it seems so to me. He intended to help you fight the drug traffic from the start.”

  “True,” answered Dawnay. “He was like a cold-minded madman, if you see what I mean. He intended to save other young women from Dorothy’s mistake, and his mind had obviously revolved round and round the idea. Of course, I hardly knew what to do. I couldn’t take him in here, and he didn’t want to do that, either. He had worked out some kind of a scheme, and all he wanted me to do was to give him what information I could and let him get on with the job in his own way. He said he could work far better if he was single-handed, but we must show him where to start. He was quite willing to spend his time and money tracing the drug-traffickers to their own special hiding-places if we could only give him a few hints as to where they were particularly active.”

  “You could do that, of course?”

  “I am afraid I took a certain amount of responsibility in deciding to help him. I did not tell anyone because I felt that the more people who knew about it the more chance there was of leakage. Don’t think I am criticising my fellow officials, but one incautious word could be so very dangerous that it wasn’t worth the risk.”

  “And the drug traffic is serious?”

  “Very serious, I can assure you, and so far underground that it’s frightfully difficult to track the real people connected with it. I’m not a great believer in these stories of international organisations and plots against the world and all that sort of thing, but I will say that the forces of evil discovered the value of international action long before there was any hint of a League of Nations. Some of the people who do occasionally come to the surface in this business would make most of us look small with their intimate knowledge of any number of languages. And it stands to reason that, as the rewards are very high, the international organisation of the drug traffic must have an efficient machine to run it. I don’t know if all the people in it are essentially bad. Some of them may have the mentality of the pirates we read about, revelling in a sheer lawless love of adventure. But the
re is no doubt of their being unscrupulous and relentless, too. I am assuming that murder would be regarded as a useful measure should circumstances demand it. Further, although I could not say whether there is a central budget—although there must be some central directing head or committee or the like—there must be lots of money as a kind of fighting fund. To fight me and the League, to fight Gilbert, to fight you, if necessary.”

  “Money spent regardless,” said Harrison.

  “Yes, but always with the one object in view, safeguarding the drug traffic. After all, looked at in one way, it’s a vested interest. A lot of capital has been sunk in it and they will fight to the last ditch—like brewers or armament makers—before they give in, and they’ll use any means if they think anyone’s a danger to them.”

  “They,” said Harrison. “Always they.”

  “I’m afraid so,” replied Dawnay. “It’s the only way we can refer to them. We have caught a number of minnows, but the big fish have escaped us. We have often thought we were just up with one or other of them, but they have always managed to slip away. Poor Gilbert, the last time he came to see me, he really thought he had found some of them, but he never told me and now we may never know.”

  “Sorry, Dawnay,” said Harrison. “I don’t want to interrupt too much, but you are anticipating a bit. You’re telling me about your last interview with Twining instead of the first. Do you mind going back a bit?”

  “I must apologise, Harrison,” answered Dawnay. “I’m afraid I got rather carried away. But it can’t do you any harm to give you a real background of the whole business, and that is really all it comes to.”

  “Quite right,” said Harrison. “But I want some more about Twining.”

  “Well, when Gilbert came here first of all, I gave him a rough idea of what he was up against. He listened and seemed to take everything in—some things be repeated as if he were learning a lesson by heart—and when he had gathered what information he wanted—for he seemed really to know what he wanted—he said it was a stiff proposition. He had expected that but his part of it would take some time working out. He was going to get into touch with some of the wonderful people whom we referred to—and still refer to—as ‘they’, but that couldn’t be done all of a sudden. So he would go away and think something out and then come and see me again.”