Well, as you may imagine, this Marten Overbatch wasn’t much of a social star. For one thing he was too busy working. He had one great friend, who knew him intimately, a young man called Claude Venn, and beyond that one contact he kept pretty well to himself. But of course he did go out sometimes, as everybody must do, and on one of these rare occasions he found himself at a party talking to a Captain and Mrs Saunders.
The Saunders were an attractive, worldly couple, full of gaiety, and I daresay Overbatch couldn’t help being a bit flattered by the obvious attention and deference they paid him. At any rate when they asked him to go down to their place for a week-end he surprised himself by saying that he would.
Claude Venn nearly had a fit when he heard that the Professor was joining a house-party and pulled his leg no end about it.
***
The Saunders had a big rambling house at a remote little place called Innfin in Essex. I don’t know if you know Essex at all (yes, please, another pint), young men nowadays don’t seem to know anything. Essex is a pretty lonely county all told, and you can take it from me that this tiny little hamlet where the Saunders lived really was off the map. A man could have murdered his mother-in-law there, slowly and scientifically, and even if she had screamed her silly head off nobody would have been any the wiser.
The house itself was luxuriously run and the Professor, who liked his creature comforts, thoroughly enjoyed his week-end. It wasn’t made any less pleasant for him by the presence of a friend of Mrs Saunders, a Miss Leaming, a real dyed-in-the-wool good-looker and as smart as the new paint on her pretty fingernails.
Miss Leaming took an immense liking to the Professor; in fact he had a bit of a job on the last evening to keep her out of his room; and for a woman who had no mechanical knowledge at all it was astonishing how soon, and how naturally, she worked the conversation round to aircraft.
When the wind veered in that direction the Professor didn’t actually smell a rat, but just on the general principle of safety first he shut up like an oyster. When he talked, he talked like a dictionary; when he didn’t want to talk, he could be as dumb as a doughnut.
***
The Professor enjoyed the week-end so much that he made up his mind to go on another as soon as he could; but when he got back to the queer little mews in Bloomsbury where he lived and worked, his experiments made him forget all about week-ends. He was a bachelor and lived altogether alone. A real old-fashioned London charwoman, a George Belcher type named Mrs Benson, used to come in daily to do for him. She was stupid and almost illiterate, but she and the Professor understood one another perfectly and got on famously.
His usual routine was to get up about half past ten and eat an enormous breakfast; three eggs and a couple of sausages was a normal sort of allowance. Then he worked till five, or a bit later, and it was God help Mrs Benson if she disturbed him for any reason whatsoever. At five he went out for a walk and got a meal somewhere; and at about half past six he would be back again, working till all hours of the night.
Of course, people round about got to know his habits. He was as punctual as a clock in everything he did, being as precise in his habits as he was in his speech; and it would have been a fairly easy matter for anyone who wanted to, to find out what hours he kept and what his routine was.
***
Be that as it may (yes, let the girl fill it up again, will you, it’s thirsty work telling you this yarn) be that as it may, it happened a few days after the Professor got back from his week-end that, as he turned out of his mews one evening a minute or two after five o’clock, a car overtook him slowly and somebody waved to him from it. The car stopped and when he investigated he found that it was his friends the Saunders and, a little it must be confessed to his excitement, Miss Leaming was sitting in the back. She was as smart and attractive as ever, and beamed on him glamorously.
“Fancy running across you in this part of the world,” Captain Saunders said.
“Hardly astonishing,” the Professor laughed, “seeing that I live here.”
Great surprise was expressed at that. “We’ve got a flat just round the corner,” Mrs Saunders said, “you must come round for a drink.”
“Yes, do come,” Miss Leaming added from the back. “Jump in” and without the slightest hesitation the Professor opened the car door and jumped in. Believe me, my young friend, fly (and a clever fly at that) never went more unsuspectingly and cheerfully into spider’s parlour.
What Saunders said about having a flat there was quite true, which wasn’t surprising seeing that they had taken the place only three days before; and within ten minutes of having stepped into the car the Professor was sitting on an ultramodern steel monstrosity called a chair, gulping down one of the best cocktails he had ever tasted.
Saunders talked amusingly, and between him and Miss Leaming the time simply fled by, and when Marten Overbatch chanced to look at his watch he was astounded to see that it was already a quarter to seven.
He jumped up at once and said he was sorry but he must be going. An odd sort of silence occurred when he said that, and then, just as pleasantly as ever, Saunders went on: “Don’t go for a minute or two, Overbatch; there’s a bit of business I want to talk over with you.”
“Business?”
“Yes. You’re a clever man, we all know that; and I’ll do you the compliment of thinking you are a sensible one as well. I’ll put my cards right on the table. You are at work perfecting the Overbatch Aerial Interference Apparatus, aren’t you?”
The Professor got a shock when he heard that; these brainy chaps are often very much out of touch with everyday reality, and because he had not said a word about his experiments except to two men very high up in the Air Ministry, and to Claude Venn, he had firmly and fondly imagined that no one else in the wide world knew a thing about them.
“I haven’t the slightest idea what you are talking about,” he said slowly.
Saunders laughed. “Drop it, Overbatch,” he advised. “You’re a poor liar anyway. Act honest, like I am, and we may get somewhere. You are working on your Aerial Interference-Apparatus; we know that. And we also know that you are due to give a vital demonstration before the Air Ministry in about a fortnight.”
The Professor gaped; the actual date was ten days ahead. He didn’t see much use in further lying, so he said:
“If I am, what about it?”
“Now you’re beginning to talk. People think it helps to tell lies. It doesn’t. I’ll prove it. I’ve told you your plans; now I’ll tell you mine. I represent a concern who are interested in selling aircraft. You’ve heard, possibly, of the Night Demon. The unintelligent end of the Air Ministry here is just making up its mind to order quite a nice little batch of them. In three weeks the contract will be signed, and that signature, Professor, is worth fifty thousand pounds to my little gang in commission. We don’t make the stuff, we are simply putting the deal through, and fifty thousand is our rake-off. Do any comments occur to you?”
“No.”
“A pity. Listen, Overbatch, if you show the Ministry this apparatus of yours, all working and complete in a fortnight’s time, it stands to sense that they won’t be signing contracts for any more aeroplanes for a bit. They’re bound to mark time and see how your invention is going to influence things. Even a Government department would have enough sense for that; and the Air Ministry aren’t fools, believe me. If they see your apparatus in the next fortnight our contract is off. But suppose you found unexpected difficulties about completing your apparatus, a last minute hitch which may invalidate the whole thing; wrap it up how you like and say you must have another couple of months to finish it; then it’s a hundred to one that the buying department won’t hear anything about it, and our contract’s safe. Get it?”
“You want me deliberately to fail in my experiment?”
“No, no, I don’t. I know how touchy you creative people are
. I don’t want you to fail. Go ahead with the good work and get it done—but just play possum for a bit, Professor, mark time; you’ve been a goodish time working on the thing, what’s another eight weeks? Nothing. But those eight weeks will be worth ten thousand pounds to you.”
“Ten thousand pounds?”
“Cash down. And you’ll get paid by the Ministry for your Interference Apparatus when you do finally show it up, so what’s the odds?”
“What is the total price of the contract you are trying to get signed?”
“It’s big money. One and three quarter million, and our rake-off is fifty thousand.”
“I see. So you are asking me to swindle the country out of one and three quarter million pounds in order that I may make a personal profit of ten thousand?”
“That’s the idea. What’s a million or two on the National Debt?—nothing. And anyway, who pays? The taxpayer—you and me and all the other mugs. We’re only swindling ourselves, Professor, when you look at it.”
“You forget one thing—”
“What’s that, Professor?”
“That some Englishmen still have a sense of honour left. I wouldn’t touch your dirty scheme with a barge pole. It’s the likes of you, hanging on the fringes of national life like a lot of vultures, who have made public things stink in the nostrils of every decent man. Stop my work for you? I’ll see you all roasted on the hottest spit in hell first.”
***
You can’t help admiring the Professor (ex-Inspector Morton went on), but he ought to have played his cards differently. The other side had given away too much, and he ought to have realised what must be coming to him.
Three seconds after he had finished speaking he was staring down the steadily-held muzzle of a silenced automatic. Saunders spoke again, and in a very different voice this time.
“That’s your line, eh?” he snarled. “One squeak out of you, or one movement beyond what I tell you, and you’re dead. See? Dead. You can roast in hell yourself, then, and finish off your experiments down there. I’ve killed men before, and for a lot less than fifty thousand. So don’t kid yourself, act queer and you get it.”
Marten Overbatch didn’t act queer. He stood stock still, breathing a bit faster than usual and waiting to see what would happen; trying to make himself believe that all this was taking place in the middle of Bloomsbury in the year of grace 1937.
Presently Saunders was talking again. “I’ve offered you a square deal,” he said, “and you won’t take it. That’s your fault. But you are not going to stop us getting our money, so don’t think it. We’ve had the pleasure of your company at the place we’ve got in the country for a week-end, now we are going to have it for a little longer. We’re all going to motor down there tonight, and you will stay with us for a month; when the contract is signed, and we’ve got the money and cleared out of the country, you can come back to your precious apparatus. We don’t give a tinker’s damn what happens then.”
The Professor wasn’t exactly scared, but at the same time he was uneasy. What Saunders had said about kidnapping him for a month cheered him up a bit, though, because he knew if he didn’t turn up at the flat without saying anything to Mrs Benson, that faithful old thing would raise all hell and Cain to trace him, and he thought things might not go all one way after all.
***
He was surprised to see that Saunders, still holding the automatic in his right hand, was putting out pen and ink and a writing pad. “And the first thing you do,” Saunders said, as soon as all the things were arranged, “is to write a note, at my dictation, to that stupid old caretaker fool of yours, so she won’t start meddling round looking for you.”
The Professor’s face fell a bit and Saunders gave a short laugh. “Pick up the pen,” he said, “and get on with it; and write just exactly what I tell you, not one word more.”
“Dear Mrs Benson,
Don’t expect me at the flat for three weeks or more. I’ve been working hard lately and inclined to rather overdo it a bit, and I feel I must have a holiday. I am off to Normandy today for a walking tour. I want you to clearly understand that there is nothing to worry about.
Don’t bother about letters, I’ll see to them all when I come back. I want you to simply carry on as usual and come each day to keep the place clean, etc.
Marten Overbatch.”
Saunders read it through twice, and put it in an envelope which he made Overbatch address. Then Miss Leaming ran round with the note to the Professor’s flat so that Mrs Benson would find it when she arrived next morning. Within ten minutes of having written the note the Professor was conducted downstairs at the point of Saunders’s automatic and by the same cogent argument persuaded into the back seat of the saloon car. Miss Leaming drove, and away they went into the wilds of Essex.
***
Saunders was clever, mind you. He had found out a great deal about Overbatch; among other things he had discovered that more than once the Professor had chucked everything on one side and gone off for a tramp by himself all of a sudden.
The last thing that Saunders wanted was a hue and cry after his man, and he reckoned that Mrs Benson would be perfectly happy with the dictated note. So she was. She arrived next day, let herself in as usual and discovered the note. Even aided by a pair of spectacles tied up with string, she took about ten minutes to read it. When she finally ploughed through to the end, she could have repeated it by heart; that’s one of the advantages of being about a quarter educated: you come by knowledge so laboriously that it sticks.
Her gentleman had gone off in his wild way, that was what it amounted to; and it had nothing to do with her, except that she earned her money more easily, having no cooking or bedmaking to do. She did as the note told her, and carried on as usual.
***
Three days later Claude Venn called round to see the Professor. All he found, of course, was Mrs Benson busy scrubbing the floor. She told him that the Professor had gone off, quick like, in one of his moods.
Venn nodded; he wasn’t alarmed or even surprised; he knew it was exactly the sort of thing Overbatch would do.
“How long for?” he asked.
“A matter of three wicks.”
“Any idea where?”
Mrs Benson searched the narrow cupboard of her memory but the word “Normandy” had refused to lodge itself firmly therein. She fumbled in the tattered remnants of what had once been an ample bosom and displayed her letter.
“You better read it for yourself, Mr Venn,” she said.
Venn read the letter perfunctorily at first; but when he had been through it once he read it twice again with growing concern.
“You are quite sure the Professor wrote this?” he asked—a silly question, because Overbatch had a most distinctive and unmistakeable hand, which Venn knew a good deal better than Mrs Benson did.
“Of course ’e wrote it,” Mrs Benson said indignantly.
“I mean—there was nothing wrong with him last time you saw him—he wasn’t worried or upset about anything?”
“Never ’appier in his born days,” Mrs Benson declared.
***
Venn nodded, and showed his sense by going straight to the local police station. You see, Venn had been a bit nervous about the Professor for some time; he knew that he had got hold of a secret which was invaluable, and he didn’t altogether like the idea of the dapper little man going about without anyone to look after him.
When he got round to the station he told them his trouble. Of course he didn’t go into details about the Professor’s secret, but he let them know that there were reasons why the Professor might possibly be in danger.
“And what makes you think he is, sir?” the sergeant asked.
Venn produced Mrs Benson’s letter, and the sergeant studied it. “You think it’s a fake, sir?”
“No, I don’t think t
hat. I don’t believe anybody could make such a miraculous forgery of such a frightful hand.”
“Well, what do you think about it, sir?”
Venn hesitated. “It’s wrong,” he said at last. “Marten Overbatch never wrote that letter.”
“But you’ve just said—”
“Yes, I know. I think he did write it, but he never ought to have written it.”
The sergeant already had his pate pretty full with facts which he knew were crimes, without going in for any theorising. I honestly don’t see how you can blame him. He was perfectly polite and courteous.
He handed the letter back and said, “Can’t say as I see anything very fishy about it, sir; not enough to act on anyway. If you hear anything more definite as gives you further grounds, perhaps you’ll let us know.”
No; you can’t blame him; you must remember that more lunatics come into a police station in a day than go into the Reading Room of the British Museum, and that’s saying something, believe me.
***
Claude Venn wasn’t satisfied. He took the letter away with him and read it again; and the more he read it, the less he liked it. It happened that he had a bit of a pull with somebody at the Yard and that’s how I first heard of the business. Venn was brought up to me with the letter. I asked him the same sort of questions that the sergeant had asked and he gave me the same sort of replies. Finally I said I couldn’t see anything wrong with the letter. He read it through to me slowly; I was beginning to know the thing by heart then.
“Look here,” Venn said. “‘to rather overdo’—‘to clearly understand’—‘to simply carry on’.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
The Long Arm of the Law Page 5
