Benedik.
I note your report on this case. It is highly unsatisfactory. The preliminary investigations seem to have been conducted with intelligence, but the work of the Department after the preliminaries seems puerile.
Benedik was shot on the 29th of last month. Three weeks have elapsed. There is no doubt whatsoever that the murderer was Boswell Marsh, and Marsh has not been taken. Why? A man of such distinctive appearance cannot easily hide himself. The ports have been watched, and all his usual places of resort, and yet you have not got him.
I expect to hear of his arrest within the next ten days.
STYNG.
18
(Memoranda covering period April 29th to May 31st, 193—.)
From Chief Commissioner to Superintendent Shanter.
BOSWELL MARSH.
Please report. STYNG.
From Superintendent Shanter to Chief Commissioner.
BOSWELL MARSH
Regret have no further progress to report.
T. SHANTER, Supt.
From Chief Commissioner to Superintendent Shanter.
BOSWELL MARSH.
Ref. my memorandum of last week. Please report.
STYNG.
From Superintendent Shanter to Chief Commissioner.
BOSWELL MARSH.
Much regret Department has no further information yet to hand in regard to the above.
T. SHANTER, Supt.
From Chief Commissioner to Superintendent Shanter.
BOSWELL MARSH.
Reference previous correspondence and our meeting of Tuesday, have new steps produced any information regarding whereabouts of Marsh?
STYNG.
From Superintendent Shanter to Chief Commissioner.
BOSWELL MARSH.
Much regret new steps produced so far nothing further re above.
SHANTER, Supt.
19
(Extract from Minutes of Chief Commissioner’s weekly meeting with Superintendents, Scotland Yard, dated July 2nd 193—.)
17634. DECIDED that Standing Item No. 4—Boswell Marsh—shall in future be deleted from the agenda, no further progress or information having been forthcoming. Matter to be raised at every sixth meeting.
REEL THREE
SEQUENCE THE FIRST
1st October 193— 1.30–2.30 p.m.
1
THE restaurant of Monsieur Isidor Laplanche is in Dover Street. Its small and neat exterior gives to the unsuspecting client who tries it for the first time no indication either of the excellence of Monsieur Laplanche’s food, wines and cooking, nor of the preposterous charges made by Monsieur Laplanche. Monsieur Laplanche started the Restaurant Pyrénées in the middle of May of this year, 193—, exactly five months before the date with which this Sequence deals.
Peter Rickforth had never happened before this day to enter the Restaurant Pyrénées. She did so now. As usual, Peter was late. As usual, Tony waited for her. With Tony was Peter’s father—a Samuel Rickforth even pinker, even plumper, even—though this may seem impossible—more prosperous seeming than when we last saw him. Tony, save perhaps for an increased likeness to F. X., is unchanged.
Peter, as she comes through the swing door held deferentially open by a gigantic Nubian who looks like the King of Abyssinia but really comes from Agamemnon, Ill., and, strangely enough, is proud of it, seems changed only in that she is, incredibly, even easier to look at.
Tony looked at his watch.
‘It is,’ said Peter, coming up to them, ‘absolutely useless … Hullo, Parent! If you will wear waistcoats like that I don’t think you ought to put chains across them … It’s absolutely useless, Tony, to do that tongue-clicking, watch-gazing stuff with me.’
‘I know,’ said Tony, to his betrothed, ‘I know. But I shall always do it. Have a drink?’
Samuel Rickforth shook his head. ‘No, no, not here. That table’s been waiting twenty minutes now, and I don’t think, my dear,’—he took his daughter’s arm—‘you can know Laplanche’s chef. If you did, you wouldn’t suggest any more delay.’
They went out of the lounge and through the centre swing doors and were in the small saloon. They sat at a round table in a window which was frosted up to the half of its height to prevent, so Peter suggested, Monsieur Laplanche’s customers from seeing the felinities of Monsieur Laplanche’s larder. Peter tasted the soup of the chef of Monsieur Laplanche. Peter approved. She approved continuously throughout the luncheon. This, seeing the size of the bill which her father would have very shortly to pay, was fortunate for her father’s peace of mind.
‘And how,’ said Peter over her coffee, ‘is business? No, I’m not asking you, Parent. They never tell you anything, you know. You get all the “Yours of the 5th to hand” and “is receiving our earnest attention” stuff. I’m talking to Anthony Xavier.’
‘Business,’ said Tony, ‘is big. Or just about to be big.’
‘My dear boy!’ Samuel Rickforth was aghast. ‘Just about to be, you say! It is! It is!’
‘That’s nothing,’ said Tony, ‘to what it’s going to be. It’s going to be so BIG in about another three months that what it is now will look like two-penn’-orth of cold gin by comparison.’
Peter leaned forward, holding out a white hand. ‘Give me another cigarette,’ she said. And then, ‘Serious?’
Tony looked at her. Their eyes met. He nodded. ‘Stone cold serious,’ he said. He looked at Rickforth. ‘This morning,’ he said slowly, ‘we heard from Hamburg and Brisbane. Both cables confirmed the orders.’
Samuel Rickforth’s glass, luckily with only a small puddle of wine at its bottom, dropped from Samuel Rickforth’s fingers. Samuel Rickforth stared.
‘God bless my soul!’ he said at last. ‘… you don’t mean it, my boy?’
‘I never,’ said Tony, ‘say anything I don’t mean.’
‘Except,’ said Peter, ‘when you mean to.’
‘God bless my soul!’ said Samuel Rickforth again.
‘Hamburg,’ said Peter, ‘sounds like sausages. Brisbane sounds like I can’t think what. Am I to take it that Hamburg and Brisbane …’
‘If you,’ said her betrothed rudely, ‘didn’t talk quite so much, you’d hear a lot more.’
‘Ha!’ Samuel Rickford exploded. ‘Quite right, my boy, quite right!’
Peter looked at her father sternly. ‘Trousers!’ she said.
Samuel Rickforth winced and endeavoured to cover his wincing with a jovial laugh and failed quite signally.
Peter looked once more at Tony. She said:
‘And will Hamburg and Brisbane make you so busy that you won’t have time to remember that we’re supposed to be getting married at the end of next month?’
‘I shouldn’t,’ said Tony, ‘think so. I tell you what, I’ll ask Woolrich if he’ll give me leave.’
Peter’s eyes blazed. ‘As much as mention that man’s name to me, young Benedik, and I’ll …’
‘Now, now!’ said her father. ‘What’s the matter with Woolrich, anyhow? I must admit that when Tony wanted to make him a partner I wasn’t altogether in favour of it, but since he’s been one, I must say I’ve had an even higher opinion of his capabilities than I had before.’
‘His capabilities,’ said Peter, ‘are, thank Heaven, nothing to do with me. I do not like thee, Doctor Fell … And nor do you, Tony.’
Tony shrugged. ‘Whether I like him or not don’t matter two hoots. As a matter of fact I don’t mind the fellow at all. Still a bit too fond of slipping off to the country, but then he always was. I remember the Guv’nor used to pull his leg about it. The Guv’nor’—Tony’s face as he spoke now was so reminiscent of F. X. that even Samuel Rickforth opened unimaginative eyes—‘stood it, though, and Woolrich wasn’t a partner then, and if F. X. stood for a man taking day’s holidays every now and then without asking until he came back, well, you can bet that man’s a good man. And Woolrich is a good man. That Brisbane show’s entirely his.’
‘Wool me no more riches,
’ said Peter. ‘I don’t like him. I don’t like him. I don’t like him. If you grasp my meaning, I don’t like him. The conversation having thus been tactfully changed, I will ask you, Xavier—now I’m being quite serious, darling—exactly why Frankfurt and Melbourne—sorry! Sorry! Whatever the places are—why they make such a tremendous difference.’
Tony looked at her. His grey eyes softened. He knew his Peter. He said:
‘All right, I’ll tell you. They’re going to make this big difference not only because they’re big orders in themselves for Paramata, but because of what they’ll lead to. At Brisbane that new motor-tyre centre’s starting. It’s the nucleus of what’s going to be in a few years almost Australia’s biggest productive enterprise. And Brisbane are doing that on us, as you might say. And an order from Hamburg means, you can bet your boots, twenty other orders, most of them bigger, from other parts of Europe. RYNOX is straight now, and has been for quite a while. It’s even been making money—all out of Paramata—but, Peter, the money it has been making is going to look like Little Leonard’s Post-Office Savings Book … Yes, absolutely! I mean it!’ He knocked the ash off his cigar and got to his feet, a tall and heavy but lightly moving and graceful figure.
Peter looked up at him. ‘Going?’ she said.
He leaned on the table and looked down at her, giving a slight and sidelong glance at Samuel Rickforth. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘RYNOX never sleeps. Come with me; you’ll be able to see your friend Woolrich.’
‘I think,’ Peter said, ‘that I almost dislike you … Good-bye, darling.’
COMMENT THE FIRST
RYNOX has recovered; RYNOX is upon the edge of Big Things. But the edge of Big Things is a narrow edge. And narrow edges are slippery. If any trouble—even such as may be caused by malicious rumours—were to come to RYNOX now, before the edge of Big Things had become a plateau, RYNOX would be in for such a fall that every bone in its body would be broken.
RYNOX may not know it, but RYNOX must be careful and very careful.
SEQUENCE THE SECOND
October 2nd, 193— 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.
1
To Basil Woolrich, sitting in the room at the top of Rynox House which had used to be that of F. X., came the clerk Harris. Harris, who had knocked four times and then, getting no answer, had taken his courage in both hands and entered, walked over the thick-piled carpet to the big table in the window. To Harris’s eye there presented itself only the smooth, golden poll of the junior partner. Harris coughed.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Harris.
Woolrich looked up. In these last months of hard work much of the tan had faded from his face. A deep frown had carved permanent lines between his brows. The corners of the well-cut mouth were perpetually downdrawn.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Harris, ‘but there’s a gentleman in the outer office …’
‘Most,’ said Woolrich, ‘extraordinary!’ Then sharply: ‘Well! What of it?’
Harris smiled dutifully at the dubious joke.
‘It’s only, sir, that …’ he said, ‘well, to tell you the truth, sir, we can’t get rid of him. Says he’s got very important business with the firm. Won’t see anyone except yourself or Mr Benedik. We’ve tried all ways, sir, but we can’t get him to state his business or to go. As a matter of fact’—Harris’s tone grew eager—‘I was wondering whether you would think it best if I got Fred and Fred and I were to …’
For a moment Woolrich smiled, and the flash of white teeth seemed momentarily to take ten years from his age. He said:
‘No, I don’t think so, Harris. What’s his name?’
With something of the air of an apprentice and diffident member of the Maskelyne family, Harris produced a card. He laid it upon the blotter of the junior partner.
‘James?’ said Woolrich, ‘Captain James? Never heard of him.’
He picked the card up and examined it. A cheap affair, printed, and recently printed, for with his thumb nail Woolrich succeeded in blurring the capital C of Captain. The card bore no address; no club; nothing save those two words: CAPTAIN JAMES.
Woolrich dropped from his fingers the little piece of pasteboard, which lay, now face downwards, upon his blotter. Woolrich looked at Harris. Woolrich said:
‘What’s he look like?’
Harris put his head upon one side; considered a moment.
‘A toughish lot, sir,’ he said, after a pause, ‘very toughish. Looks as if he’d just come back from some tropical country, sir, and there he is, sitting in a chair between Miss Pagan’s desk and mine looking as if it would take a charge of dynamite to shift him.’ Harris grew eloquent. ‘Like some sort of heathen idol, sir. He’s sitting there; he’s not saying anything, sir; he’s not doing anything. He’s just sitting there staring across the room and every time we say anything to him he just repeats like some unholy sort of parrot: “I want to see Mr Benedik and if Mr Benedik’s not here, I want to see one of the other partners.”’
Woolrich rose from his chair and stretched himself; walked over to the window and stood a moment looking out. Harris waited, shuffling his feet silently this way and that on the thick carpet.
Woolrich swung round at last. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Shove him along, Harris.’
The face of Harris became three o’s—eyes and mouth—of interrogation; aghast interrogation.
‘You don’t mean to say, sir …’ Harris began.
‘I said, Harris, fetch him along.’ Woolrich’s tone was once more that coldly official, perfectly courteous and yet offensive tone for which most of the staff so cordially detested him. Harris muttered apology in his throat and was gone.
Woolrich went slowly back to his table and picked up the card and looked at it. He threw it down and sat. As he reached out to his ash-tray to crush out a stub which had for some time nearly been burning his fingers, there came another rap on the door.
‘Captain James, sir,’ said Harris.
Woolrich rose. A tall, beautifully built and easily graceful figure. He was even taller than F. X. or Anthony. His face wore the wooden mask of gravity with which the ordinary English business man will meet any caller the nature of whose call is unannounced beforehand.
Harris, leaving himself upon the outer side, shut the door with a soft click. The newcomer crossed the room towards Woolrich. He was, this Captain James, a short and thick and extraordinarily solid-seeming man. While his height could not have been an inch more than five-feet six, his weight, and all good hard weight by the look of it, must have been nearer fourteen than thirteen stone. His gait was rolling, but somehow with the roll neither of horses nor the sea but rather a mixture of both. He was clean-shaven. His face, which was a square, mahogany-coloured and uneven slab, had eyes in it which seemed to be set almost midway down its length; very small eyes of a curious faded blue whose whites were white no longer, but an even, angry crimson. His clothes were an old and faded suit, double-breasted, of the kind which one immediately associates, for no known reason, with pilots.
Woolrich looked at him.
‘Good-afternoon,’ said Woolrich.
Captain James smiled, revealing a jagged and irregular set of tobacco-coloured teeth. With Captain James, there came towards Woolrich a miasma of Holland’s Gin.
‘I’m very pleased,’ said Captain James, ‘to make your acquaintance.’ His voice was just the sort of voice which Woolrich imagined would proceed from that mouth and body—a deep booming sound somehow out of tune.
Woolrich pointed to a chair. ‘Sit down, won’t you?’
‘I don’t mind,’ said Captain James, ‘if I do.’ He sat, placing, one upon each knee, square, short-fingered, powerful hands whose backs were matted with a thatching of black hair.
Woolrich remained standing. He looked with disfavour—disfavour which he did not endeavour to conceal—upon his visitor. But his visitor went on smiling and his visitor’s eyes went on steadfastly holding Woolrich’s gaze. Woolrich, looking away, sat himself down behind his table.
; ‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ he said, ‘stating your business as quickly and briefly as you can …’
The smile of Captain James disappeared and suddenly Captain James’s face became, most improbably, like the face of a vulture.
‘My business,’ said Captain James, ‘is with the other partner, Benedik.’
Woolrich got to his feet. ‘In that case …’ he said, coldly.
‘One moment, one moment!’ said Captain James. ‘And not so much of the smooth stuff, either. I am seeing you, Mr Woolsack, because I want to make quite sure that I do see this Benedik. I want your assurance that I will see this Benedik.’
‘I fail to see’—Woolrich’s tone was now in itself an insult—‘how I can ensure you an interview with Mr Benedik if I don’t know what your business is with Mr Benedik.’
‘Isn’t that,’ said Captain James in tones of admiration, ‘said pretty!’ Once more his square lipless mouth opened to show the discoloured fangs. ‘But I’m not here for that sort of stuff, Mr Woolsack. I’m here on business. And very, very important business!’ Suddenly Captain James leaned forward and raised his right hand from his right knee and pointed with stubby, vast forefinger at his host. ‘See here, Mr Woolsack,’ said Captain James, ‘this Rynox is a big concern, isn’t it? This Rynox, from all they tell me, is going to be a lot bigger. But suppose this Rynox was to get a nasty smack in the eye! How about that? Suppose a story was to start round about Rynox—a nasty story, Mr Woolsack. How about that, eh? I’m just showing you how important my business is … A nasty story … and nasty stuff happening to Rynox and about Rynox just now … Well, that’d just about put Rynox in the ditch, wouldn’t it now?’
Woolrich rose. ‘If this is a sample of your business conversation, I think the sooner we put an end to it the better.’
‘Ve-ry smooth!’ said Captain James. ‘It’s a gift, that’s what it is. But it doesn’t go down with me. Not on your life it doesn’t. And you can push all your pretty little buttons for all I care and bring in all your damn’d little clerks. They won’t stay here very long.’
The Rynox Mystery Page 9
