He went through into his own room again and sat down to Her Great Romance, the sheetful of figures propped before him.
10. 16. 27. 1. 103. 8. 9.… On the simplest plan this would be page 10 line 16, page 27 line 1, page 103 line 8. But then how did you know which word or letter of line 16 to pick? If it was a letter, perhaps the third number gave it—say the twenty-seventh letter of the sixteenth line on the tenth page. No, that was a wash-out, because in the next group it would give you page 1 line 103, which was absurd.… Come back to page 10 line 16.
He flicked the pages over and found the place. Round about line 16 a girl called Gloria was putting on a yellow hat. The Y of yellow had a faint pencil mark under it. It was the second letter in the line, the first being A—“a yellow hat”—just like that.
Peter wrote the Y down on a slip of paper and turned to page 27 line 1. The first letter of line 1 had a just visible pencil mark under it. It was an O—“‘One life, one love, one fate,’ said Lord St. Maur.” Peter said “Well, well,” and wrote the O down after the Y.
On page 103 line 8 the ninth letter was marked, and it was a U. Peter said “Eureka!” He had a perfectly whole possible word on his paper, and he saw how the thing was worked. The first number, 10, was a page number, and the second, 16, was a line number, and the next number, 27, was a page number; but to get the letter number of page 10 line 16, you took the 2 from 27, which was the next page number. The next group gave page 27 line 1, and the 1 from the next page number, 103, as the letter number. And so forth and so on. Simplicity itself, and a quite unbreakable cipher if Spike Reilly hadn’t been so free with his pencil marks, and so careless as to carry only one novel in his suit-case.
If Her Great Romance had been unmarked and lost in a crowd of other similar romances, a lot of things might have happened differently. One man might have lived, and more than one might have died. Terry Clive would probably have come to a sticky end.
As it was, it took Peter no more than a quarter of an hour to collect the dotted letters and arrange them in words and sentences. He tried to hold his mind back from making sense of them, because something kept telling him to hurry, but some of the meaning got through and he finished the job in a state of tingling excitement. The deciphered message ran:
“You are to come over here. I have work for you. Double pay and bonuses. Cross Thursday. Go Preedo Library Archmount Street. S.W. noon Friday. Say you expect call. Await instructions.”
There was no signature.
Peter sat and looked at the words. This was Tuesday. If one crossed on Thursday as the note suggested, one would naturally make a point of being on hand to take that call in Preedo’s Library, wherever that might be. And someone could be told off to find out who was at the other end of the line. A word to Garrett would fix that all right. These thoughts moved on the surface. They fell into place and made a neat picture. But underneath something disturbed and disturbing took shape and came blundering into view.
Peter got to his feet, got to the door, got to the head of the stairs, and stood there listening.… Nothing. Nobody. He went back to his own room, half drew out his pocket-book, and slid it back again.
Crazy—that’s what it was.
Well, with a strong enough motive you took a crazy risk.
In this case just how strong was the motive?
And the answer to that was, ask Garrett.
For his own part, he had an idea that Garrett was fussed—and Garrett didn’t fuss easily.
He thought about Garrett’s last letter: “The thing is a snowball. I don’t know where it’s going to roll or what it’s going to pick up on the way. It started with picture-lifting, fairly plastered itself with blackmail from the insurance companies, and has now added a murder. No knowing where it’ll stop—” Well, he had been roped in because he had stumbled on something odd, and because he wasn’t a regular agent. The novelist is a privileged Nosey Parker. It is his job to watch people and listen to them. It flatters some, and flutters some but no one suspects him of being in with Scotland Yard or the Foreign Office.
Peter contemplated the impossible—the plan which had come surging up in the middle of his neat picture—and found angles from which the impossible began to look possible. Of course if the doctor were to come butting in, the whole thing blew up. But there didn’t seem to be any sign of the doctor. The Dupins didn’t hurry, hadn’t hurried, wouldn’t hurry. There would be time enough and to spare.
No harm in having a look at the passports anyhow. He went through into the next room. Took out Reilly’s pocketbook, extracted Reilly’s passport. Took out his own pocketbook, extracted his own passport.
Well, here they were, side by side.
James Peter Reilly.
Accompanied by his wife? (Apparently and most fortunately not. Children ditto.)
National status—British subject by birth.
He turned the page.
Place and date of birth—Glasgow, 1907. (Glasgow Irish, was he?)
Domicile—Glasgow.
Colour of eyes—grey.
Colour of hair—brown.
Special peculiarities—scar on back of right hand.
Peter laughed suddenly.
“And that settles it,” he said, “because—” He lifted his own right hand and made a fine wide gesture. The impossible, thus warmly invited, advanced and made itself at home. Peter’s hand with the long white scar across the knuckles came down on his own passport.
John Peter Carmichael Talbot. (Also, thank heaven, without a wife or any other encumbrances.)
National status—British subject by birth.
And over page:
Place and date of birth—Harrogate, 1910.
Domicile—Europe, but the passport said London.
Colour of eyes—grey.
Colour of hair—brown.
Special peculiarities—scar on back of right hand.
“And a very nice usual place to have a scar. Mine was old Ellen Updale’s cat—the time Peggy and I did her up in red white and blue streamers on Armistice Night. I wonder what his was. One of life’s unsolved mysteries. Not my fault if the doings at Preedo’s Library are another of them. Well now, what about the photographs? They’re the real snag.”
He stared at the two passport photographs. Spike Reilly had a good bit more hair on him than Peter Talbot. The photograph showed no parting, and a sort of all-over, brushed-back appearance.
Peter went into his own room, tousled his hair, damped it, and slicked it back. The effect was quite revolting, but a good deal more like the photograph of Mr. Reilly. Spike Reilly was clean shaven, and so was Peter Talbot. He went over to the glass and experimented. He could get that sulky twist of the mouth and the frown between the eyes well enough. With chewing-gum to bulge the cheeks, he ought to be able to scrape past anyone who hadn’t an unnaturally suspicious mind. The trouble was that Suspicion was that sort of bloke’s first, last, and middle name.
All the same he could do it. He felt the sort of certainty with which a leap is measured and accomplished before the muscles tense and the body rises. He could get away with Spike Reilly’s passport.
But what about Spike Reilly getting away with his? The Dupins had seen them both. Well, it had been very, very dark in the office—rain outside and thrift within—one didn’t waste good electricity at four o’clock in the afternoon. The Dupins had seen precious little of Peter Talbot—a hat, a raincoat and a muffler. As for Spike Reilly, no one is surprised if a dead man looks a bit different from his photograph when alive.
Of course he mustn’t let the Dupins see him again—not to say see him. He must leave at once while the light was bad—pay something, not too much, and get out. A corpse in the next room would be a good enough excuse. Yes, that was it. He’d march down with his suit-case, call for a drink—he could do with one—say he hadn’t bargained for corpses, and clear out. They couldn’t stop him.
“Anyhow, here goes!”
He had plumped for the crazy adventur
e, and the next thing to do was to set about it with the same careful attention to detail as if this were chapter one of a thriller, and he villain or hero with a crime to conceal. Not murder, thank heaven. But he would certainly be in a nasty mess with the local police if he was found out trying to pass off the man on the bed as the corpse of John Peter Carmichael Talbot.
None of his own clothes were marked. He didn’t suppose Spike Reilly went round labelled, but he would have to make sure.
He made sure.
The next thing was to change pocket-books. He emptied both and made a thoughtful redistribution of the contents. There must be plenty to identify the dead man. Half a dozen cards inscribed Mr. Peter Talbot made a good start. Then the notes—Spike Reilly could keep his own money to bury him. And he had better have a letter or two as well as the cards. An invitation from Marion von Stein—“Oh, Peter, I think your poems are great. No, really I mean it. Do come and read me some more …” And Aunt Fanny’s last weekly budget—“And, my dear boy, I do wish you would give up this roving life and settle down. And I haven’t even a proper photograph. You have always been so obstinate about being taken. I am sure that snapshot on my mantelpiece isn’t a bit like you. I was showing it to Terry yesterday, and she said it might be anyone, and Miss Hollinger said so too. But of course Terry hasn’t ever seen you, as I’ve only just got to know her. And I don’t think Miss Hollinger had ever met you either, but she says she did once, when you brought me home after that matinee I enjoyed so much. We met her at the gate, and it was nearly dark. So she couldn’t really give an opinion about the photograph, because she didn’t really see you. And I told her it wasn’t a bit like you, and it isn’t. And now I must tell you about Terry. I have made a new friend—you will laugh, but I feel she really is a friend—a most charming girl called Terry Clive, I believe it is short for Theresa. I missed the step coming down off a number nineteen bus, and she very kindly picked me up and brought me home. I should so much like you to meet her.…”
Peter showed all his teeth in a grin. Miss Fanny Talbot’s nets were so perseveringly and so artlessly spread. Her letter went in on top of Marion von Stein’s, and the pocket-book into the pocket of Spike Reilly’s coat. Peter added his own cigarette-case with the initials J.P.T. and took in reluctant exchange a much more ornate affair without initials at all.
“Well, that’s that!” he said.
There was a sound of footsteps on the stair. He went through into his own room and shut the door.
CHAPTER IV
Colonel Garrett sat at an office table and drove a spluttering pen. He was a little sandy man with bottle-brush hair and small grey eyes which could sharpen until they looked like two points of polished steel. A scarlet bandana with a lively blue and magenta pattern bulged from the over-full pocket of a really outrageous tweed jacket, in colour ginger with an over-check of maroon and green, in cut quite indescribable. It was a moot point among Garrett’s friends whether he had an unnaturally depraving effect upon his clothes, or was the subject of some subtle revenge on the part of a criminal mind which evolved these nightmares as a punishment for having been at some time or other landed by one of Garrett’s nets.
The pen drove. There was a knock at the door. Garrett scowled, cast his pen at the blotting-paper, where it stuck quivering, and snapped, “Come in!”
The man who came in was a long, lazy person, most beautifully dressed. He had a single eyeglass, and fair hair in process of receding from a brow already high. He was, in fact, Mr. Fabian Roxley, and he was a good deal more intelligent than he looked.
Garrett’s scowl departed.
“Yes, yes, I wanted to see you. Come in and shut the door. Always a damned lot of draughts in this damned place. Sit down!”
Mr. Roxley was careful with the knees of his trousers as he sat.
“Everyone is yapping,” said Garrett. “I’ve had the Sureté on the line over the last picture that was lifted from the Louvre.” He grinned rather like a terrier who sees a rat. “I told ’em I wasn’t Scotland Yard—said ‘Try Whitehall 1212,’ and rang off. They’ve got a bee in their bonnets—a whole hive of bees—think there’s something political behind it. Odd how that keeps on cropping up.”
“I can’t see anything political in it myself,” said Fabian Roxley in his cultured voice. “As long as insurance companies will pay to get a picture back, it’s a profitable job to steal a famous picture and hold it to ransom. They paid out five thousand on that little Romney, and, I believe, as much as thirty thousand on the Gainsborough.”
“No affair of ours,” said Colonel Garrett. “I’ve said so all along. We get dragged into it because every time Scotland Yard gets flummoxed they think the Vulture has cropped up again, and because the Vulture was our pigeon they come down on us. And I tell ’em—” Colonel Garrett banged the table “—I tell ’em they can catch their own picture thieves. At least that’s what I ought to tell ’em.”
“Instead of which?”
Garrett scowled.
“I put my young cousin Peter Talbot on to trailing a fellow who had a pal on the outskirts of the Vulture’s gang—name of Grey.”
“And your man’s name?” enquired Mr. Roxley.
“Fellow called Spike Reilly. I got something about him from Munich. The letter to the Earth Insurance was posted in Munich. The letter about the Gainsborough was posted in Vienna on the fifteenth of September. I told Peter to see if he could pick up any trace of Spike there about that time. He got that—Spike was there all right. And he got something else. I told him to follow Spike round and see what he did. This is what I got from him yesterday.” He pulled a letter out of a drawer and tossed it over.
Mr. Roxley read it attentively, from the Cher maître with which it began to the Cher maître with which it closed. Then he said,
“What was the other thing he got?”
“He’s a damned insolent young pup!” said Garrett.
Fabian Roxley retained his lazy calm.
“You said he got something else about Spike Reilly. What was it?”
“I didn’t say it was about Reilly—it wasn’t. Remember the Fragonard that was taken out of Medstow Hall in July? Peter was in a café, and he heard a man say the name Medstow, and the man who was with him hushed him up. The first man was English, and a bit tight. He may have been Spike Reilly. The other man was French. He tried to shut him up. The Englishman said, ‘Some day I shall find out who he is, and then I’ll have a lot of money in my pocket.’ The Frenchman said, ‘Money’s no good if you’re dead, my friend—and I think you would be dead.’ And after that they kept their voices too low for him to hear any more. He couldn’t find out who they were. There was a demonstration going on outside, and when they went away he lost them in the crowd.”
“Not very much to go on,” said Mr. Roxley in a dubious tone.
Garrett glared.
“Who’s going on it?” he said rudely. “You can go over and see Scotland Yard and tell ’em to catch their own picture-thieves! What are they for?”
“It’s not only picture-thieving since last Saturday—it’s murder. You know, that’s funny. This fellow—this picture-thief—he’s in a big way of business, making pots of money out of the insurance companies and getting away with it every time. What’s he doing messing about with fire-arms and shooting butlers? It’s all wrong—most inartistic. What’s he want shooting Solly Oppenstein’s butler? The thing’s ludicrous.”
“Go and tell all that to Scotland Yard,” said Garrett. “Murder’s their job. Tell ’em about Spike Reilly. You can give me Peter’s letter back, and I’ll scrag you if you let on about his impudence. Oh, and you can tell ’em I’ve had another line from him—it’s just come in. It says to look out for all telephone calls to Preedo’s Library, Archmount Street, S.W., round about noon tomorrow, Friday. The person who calls up will probably be the man they’re looking for, and if they look lively they may get him. They are not on any account to interfere with the person who is waiting for the call. It
may be Peter, or it may be Spike Reilly shadowed by Peter. In either case the police had better stand clear. Here—read for yourself.” He tossed a single sheet of paper over to Mr. Roxley, who read in Peter Talbot’s small, legible hand:
“Very important. Spike warned to be at Preedo’s Library, Archmount Street, S.W., to get his instructions by telephone. I suppose you can arrange to have all calls traced. Spike’s appointment is for twelve noon, Friday. I shall be there. J.P.T.”
The lazy eyebrows lifted a trifle.
“Can I take this along?”
“If you like.”
Mr. Roxley got gracefully to his feet.
“I should like to know why the fellow shot the butler,” he said in a lazy voice.
Garrett gave his terrier grin.
“Perhaps the butler knew too much. Butlers sometimes do.”
“It doesn’t always pay to know too much,” said Fabian Roxley, and took his leisured way out of the room.
Garrett watched him go with impatience, yet when the door had been softly closed he continued to stare in that direction. His expression changed. He looked uneasy, uncertain. Then with a jerk flung round to the table again, plucked his pen from the blotting paper, and began to write.
It was perhaps ten minutes later that the telephone bell interrupted him. He picked up the receiver, jammed it against his ear, and snapped.
“What is it?”
A voice said, “Miss Talbot on the line, sir. Will you speak to her?” and Garrett snapped again.
“Oh Lord—I suppose so! Put her through!”
There was a click against his ear, and then his cousin Fanny Talbot’s voice, breathless and tearful:
“Frank! Oh, is it Frank—”
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