by Howard Mason
Ergo, they should have it.
I would provide them with a bishop; a red bishop; but not my own.
My own piece had been photographed for the front page of the Pictorial, but the picture had been badly focused, and small; and unless Rivera or Hedge or Agag were somehow intimately acquainted with my own bishop, I saw no reason why they shouldn’t be fobbed off with one that was similar in size and general outline. It was worth trying, anyway; and among all those chessmen I had seen in Constantine’s shop, there seemed to be a good chance of finding a piece that wasn’t too different from mine.
I left the bus at the next stop, and hailed a cruising taxi to take me to Church Street.
Constantine’s shop was dark and shuttered, but I rang the bell and waited. After a few minutes, Constantine opened the door and peered at me. He was wearing a dressing-gown and carpet slippers. He looked at his watch ostentatiously; and glancing at my own, I realized that it was past midnight. Still, now that I’d got him out of bed, there was no point in turning back.
I said: “I’m very sorry, but I want to borrow a chessman—urgently.”
He stared at me. “At this time of night?”
“Yes. A bishop. It must be something like the one I brought to show you.”
He hesitated for a moment; then, grumbling softly to himself, he got out his keys and led me into the shop. He switched on an overhead light. The room was cold and shuttered; along the walls the silent armies, red and black and white, stood in their serried ranks among the shadows, lances poised, stern, faintly sinister. I moved slowly round the shelves, inspecting them.
“What about this?” I picked out a bishop from a set in a style not unlike mine. Setting it on the counter, I pulled out the little figure in my pocket, and compared the two. It wasn’t a bad likeness.
“Can I borrow it?”
The old man shuffled up beside me. “Borrow? How do I know you’ll bring it back?”
He had a point there, I thought. If all went according to plan, I wouldn’t be able to bring it back at all.
I said: “I’ll give you a deposit.”
He looked at me, slyly. “It would have to be a deposit on the whole set. I couldn’t afford to break the set.”
“How much?”
“The set?” He mused. “Thirty-five pounds.”
This was annoying, and I could see I was going to be landed with an incomplete set of expensive chessmen. Suddenly an idea occurred to me.
“Suppose I leave you my own piece? As security?”
It would be safer in Constantine’s hands, I thought. I didn’t want to make any slips, and my own bishop would be better out of the way; in this place, it’d be as safe as a piece of hay in a haystack.
Constantine wasn’t letting me off that easily, though. I had to pay him twenty pounds on deposit for his piece, and he promised to look after my own. I told him I’d be back for it in a day or two, but I didn’t see much hope of recovering my twenty pounds. I got him to write me out a receipt for the deposit and the bishop, and I left him, staring through the glass door after me as though he thought I was mad.
When I got back to Flood Street, it was nearly one o’clock, and I found Nobby preparing to send out a rescue-party. I set Constantine’s bishop on the mantelpiece, and then I found the paper parcel which the original had arrived in, and laid that out too, as though newly unwrapped. The whole arrangement had, I thought, a touch of artistry.
I told Nobby what had happened, and suggested that he should sleep with a poker under his pillow, as we might be expecting visitors. I put a revolver under my own.
As a matter of fact, I didn’t think Hedge and Rivera would come that night. Hedge might have recognized me in the yard of the Seaman’s Rest; and if he had, he would probably postpone the attempt. Still, I left the front door unlocked, just to make things easy for them, in case. I wanted them to be able to do the job quietly, without apparently disturbing my rest; I intended to remain awake, ready to go after them if they turned up.
Once my head hit the pillow, though, I found it difficult to keep awake. I stirred once or twice, thinking I heard something; but by three o’clock, I had given up expecting them that night, and fell into a deep sleep.
* * * *
In the morning, Constantine’s bishop still surveyed me from the mantelpiece, and I knew that no attempt would be made before nightfall. I sent Nobby off to Old Nick again, to see what further information another ten pounds would bring forth. The whole game was becoming rather expensive, and I was beginning to wonder whether I’d ever get my money back. I had a sneaking feeling, that morning, that I was making a dud investment, and I was in half a mind to ring up Churt and put him on to the Seaman’s Rest. But a gambler’s optimism made me keep going in the hope of seeing some return for my stake.
For most of that day I hung restlessly about the place, trying to do a bit of work. In the list of runners for the three-thirty at Hurst Park on the following day, I noticed a horse called Bishop’s Scarlet. Recklessly, I rang up my bookmaker and put on a tenner each way. After that I felt better.
It was late when Nobby returned, and the expression on his face was ominous.
I said: “Any news?”
“Too much.” Nobby regarded me with disgust. “If you ask me, you’ve been backing the wrong horse.”
“What’s up?”
“Agag is taking a holiday. A holiday abroad.”
“When?”
“To-morrow,” said Nobby succinctly. “At five-twenty pip-emma, Greenwich Mean Time. The Dover-Ostend boat.”
I stared at him. “How did you find that out?”
Nobby got down to his story, then. It was as follows:
Old Nick had introduced him to a friend of Pablo Rivera’s: a man called Moke. Moke was, to be precise, no longer Rivera’s friend; Rivera had tried to swindle him out of his share of the proceeds of an evening’s hard work among the jewel-cases of a stockbroker’s wife in Surrey. This had left Moke feeling aggrieved, and he had proved willing to air his grievance over a few pints of stout.
Rivera had got rid of their loot through Agag, but was showing a reluctance to part with Moke’s share. Moke suspected him of trying to leave the country without paying his debts, and had therefore been following his movements assiduously. And he had seen him book a passage for a car with three occupants on the afternoon boat from Dover on Friday, March 31st.
He had confronted Rivera, who had pacified him by saying that he was going on a trip with Agag; and that when he returned, he would be in a position to pay Moke his debt with redoubled interest.
Nobby, at this point, had slipped Moke a few pound notes to cheer him up, and come straight back to find me.
“So if Agag wants to take your bishop along for the ride, he’s leaving it a bit late,” said Nobby. “If you ask me, he’s scratched from the race. I reckon he’s on a different course altogether.”
I said: “Did Moke know where they were going from Ostend?”
“No. But he reckoned the trip had been planned for some time.”
“Who was the third passenger to be? Hedge?”
“Moke didn’t know that either.”
I got up and crossed to the fireplace, picking up Constantine’s little figure. It didn’t look as though it was going to serve any useful purpose; at least I’d be able to get back my twenty pounds. Unless Hedge or Rivera came for it to-night. But as Nobby had said, it was leaving things very late. And Agag and Rivera, with a third person who might or might not be Hedge, were leaving Dover at five-twenty to-morrow. If Agag’s trip had been planned for some time, why had he sent Rivera after my bishop? And why had he given up the second attempt? Whichever way you looked at it, it didn’t make sense. I didn’t even know what the hell they had wanted the bishop for in the first place.
I said aloud, “I don’t see it. What’s the answer, Nobb
y?”
“I don’t know,” said Nobby, yawning. “All I know is, that’s what I found out, and furthermore you owe me a tenner.”
“What?”
“That’s what the information cost us, and cheap at the price, if you ask me.”
“Look where it gets us,” I said, snappishly, and took out my wallet.
It wasn’t until I had counted out ten pounds in notes into Nobby’s hand that I noticed it. Constantine’s receipt had been tucked in the flap, and now it was gone.
I searched my pockets, turning them inside out, but I knew that I hadn’t taken it out of the wallet; and the wallet had been lying in my coat, on a chair in my room, the night before. I had slept too soundly, after all.
I reached Constantine’s shop just before six. He was putting up the shutters, but he let me in. He looked startled.
“Your bishop? Why, your man came round for it this morning. Yes, why, yes, I gave it to him; he had the receipt.”
I asked him for a description, just to make sure. When he got as far as the greenish bowler-hat, I nodded, and told him in a few well-chosen words what he’d done. After that I returned the piece I had borrowed from him, and recovered my twenty pounds. It looked as though I was going to need it.
* * * *
Agag was due to sail at five-twenty on the following day.
I didn’t know where he was going, or why, except that he was starting from Ostend. There were a lot of places you could go to from Ostend. One of them was Germany, and Germany was where Johann Braun came from; that was the only clue I had, and it might mean everything or nothing. The only way to find out was to follow the expedition till it reached its destination.
Clearly there wouldn’t be room for both of us on the same steamer. The only thing to do was to get to Ostend first and wait for them. It meant banking heavily on Moke’s information, but that was a chance that had to be taken. There was, I found, an afternoon crossing at twenty minutes past one.
There was plenty to do before then. Most of it couldn’t be done before morning; the bank, visas, tickets. I rang up my editor and told him I was taking a holiday. He didn’t sound very pleased, and said did I have to go just when the flat season was starting? I said I was sorry, and that I strongly recommended Bishop’s Scarlet for the three-thirty. I rang off before he could say any more.
I rang up Churt, too, and told him I was going after Hedge. I wasn’t going to tell him about Agag and Rivera, not yet; he’d have had them locked up before they reached the boat. There was the car to stoke up, then; I wished there was time to exchange it for a more unobtrusive model, but there wasn’t, so it couldn’t be helped. We just had to hope for the best.
* * * *
At eleven-thirty the next morning, we were on the Dover road.
The back of the car was filled with a jumbled assortment of food, clothing, spare petrol, maps, and a couple of Service revolvers thrown in on top of a crate of beer. The beer was Nobby’s idea. We had forgotten to bring a bottle-opener, but it was nice to think the stuff was there. Nobby had also brought his travelling medicine-chest. This was supplied with sea-sick remedies, anti-mosquito ointment, quinine, several bottles of concentrated halibut liver-oil, and a rather obscure kind of vaccine against the tsetse fly. Nobby has his hypochondriacal side, but in this case I must say I thought he had overdone it.
We reached Dover at five minutes past one. The boat was not a crowded one, and the Customs men saw us quickly through. It was a dull crossing. We ate some lunch, and slept for a bit, and after that we studied the maps and indulged in some idle speculation about Agag’s destination. The whole expedition was beginning, to me, to have a faint air of unreality, and every now and then I stopped and asked myself what the hell I thought I was doing in the middle of the English Channel well outside the tourist season.
There was no doubt that the race ahead of us was extremely open. The starters would soon be lined up at the post; but as yet I hadn’t much idea of the direction of the course, nor even of the nature of the finishing-post. All I knew, in fact, was that the prize stakes were worth something that looked like three-quarters of a million pounds. On the whole, the odds against us seemed remarkably long.
We arrived in Ostend with a little under four hours to wait.
I drove around the town a couple of times, in order to familiarize myself with the routes out of the town in each direction. I also noted some useful short cuts, and got the hang of the one-way streets. Once the chase was on, there wasn’t going to be time for any mistakes. Before we were through, Nobby and I had a good deal of the map by heart.
To fill in the time, I sent Nobby to buy some dark blue paint, and we painted over the gold crest on the Rolls’ door. I didn’t suppose that Agag was well up in heraldry, but you never knew. As an afterthought, I removed the notice which had hung in the windscreen ever since the car arrived, and read: “house of lords motoring clubs.” In the circumstances, it seemed a bit ostentatious.
By this time it was getting on for eight-thirty, and we still had an hour to wait, so we made for a restaurant in the centre of the town. There was an illuminated kiosk outside it where they were selling the late London papers. I bought a Standard, and glanced at it while Nobby was parking the car. I turned to the stop press, looking for the result of the three-thirty at Hurst.
It had been a close race, and Bishop’s Scarlet had won by half a length.
I entered the restaurant and ordered an expensive dinner.
* * * *
At a little before half-past nine, we drove back to the quayside, parked the car carefully in a spot which I had earmarked, which gave us some cover, a good view and a clear run out, and settled down to wait.
Punctual to the minute, as some clock chimed the half-hour, the Dover boat chugged gently up to its mooring-point.
We watched in silence as the gangways were brought out and swung into place. The cars began to crawl slowly out of their floating shell, like black slugs emerging from some marine plant, to settle, with a plop of relief, upon the shore. One by one they drew past into line; we scanned each one. No familiar face appeared. We could only look out for the small fry, Hedge and Rivera; Agag, the big fish, was an unknown quantity. It was getting pretty dark now, and I strained forward, worried.
Then Nobby nudged me and whispered: “Hedge…
I glanced towards the passenger gangplank. Hedge was walking down it, unhurried; he stopped, on the quay, and turned to wait. He looked about him with a lost, idle air.
The last car glided gently down the slope, drew up by Hedge, stopped; Hedge mounted the running-board. Now we could see the driver’s face: it was the Spaniard, Rivera. The rear windows, in the fading light, seemed opaque, filmy, like the eyes of a very old man. I leaned forward. The car drew nearer, came within a yard of us, loomed by. It was a large, black, shining Hispano-Suiza; and behind the glass of its tall back windows, the white silk blinds were drawn.
Blank, aloof, and discreet as a hearse, the great car preserved its secret, and sailed on.
“Ah…” breathed Nobby, on a long, soft sigh, “the big fish.”
CHAPTER V
Some twenty-five minutes later, with the Rolls in her wake, the Spanish car slipped out of the town on the Bruges-Ghent road and began to gather speed.
Darkness was creeping down as we made our way through the twisting streets of Ostend. As we came out on to the high road, it began to rain. The gleaming black hulk of the car ahead became a faint, misty outline beyond the reach of my headlamps. I kept my eyes glued to its double tail-light. To keep up my distance of sixty or seventy yards, I had to urge speed out of the elderly Rolls as though she were a weary, retired racehorse. She grunted and heaved a bit, her windpipe wasn’t all it used to be; but her breeding told; she responded well enough. The dark rain lashed at the windscreen, and the world outside shrank to a stretch of grey darkness with a pair of r
ed eyes in its centre.
I had two advantages. The first was that, thanks to Agag’s desire for privacy, the rear window of the Spanish car was shuttered, and his driver used only an outside mirror. The second was that Agag was not expecting pursuit; so far, the Rolls’ persistence would not excite comment. But I didn’t know how long this immunity would last.
Bruges was fairly easy. We crawled through the town at a couple of lengths’ distance, and were joined by a few outsiders as we came out again on to the straight. This was the Ghent road. I let a saloon car slip in between me and my quarry for a stretch, just for the sake of variety. I didn’t want the Rolls’ headlamps to become too familiar. I had no fear of losing the quarry; there wasn’t anywhere much they could go except straight ahead.
I was pretty certain by now that they were making for Germany.
What clues I had, pointed that way: the man Braun, and the chessman of German make. But I couldn’t be certain, until we came through Ghent without stopping and continued due east. I knew then that it was full speed ahead from Ghent to Aix; with gallop, gallop all the way, only without the Good News.
We were speeding into the midnight all right, keeping the great pace and never changing our place. All I hoped was that the Rolls wasn’t going to roll neck and crop over, like the horse in the ballad, and lie dead as a stone with circles of red for her eye-sockets’ rim. She was puffing a bit by the time we got to Dendermonde, and I was getting worried about her stamina. After all, she’d been out to pasture for some time, before this trip; Stony hadn’t put much mileage on her.
It was at Dendermonde that they stopped to take in petrol.
Thanking heaven for my full tanks, I swept past the waiting car, drew in some three hundred yards ahead, round a bend, and waited for the black car to take the road again.
Beside me, Nobby struck a match and peered at the map on his knee.
“How far have we come?”
“Fifty-five miles, more or less.”
I looked at my watch. Eleven o’clock. We’d been driving for only a little over an hour. It seemed longer.
