All trace of exhaustion seemed to have left him. He was getting energy back, sucking it out of his listeners apparently, in great vitalizing draughts.
‘Take the Doc who got me out without knowing what he was doing,’ he went on. ‘He didn’t face the fact that was under his nose and yet he knew. He knew, mind you. He said something one day which made me stare. He said “Oh, I see, Havoc. You believe with one of our great Prime Ministers that interest never lies.” You could have knocked me down! He knew it and then he couldn’t see it. Naturally he had to pay, didn’t he? He was asking for it. It wasn’t me. I was only giving him what was coming to him.’
Only the man from Tiddington understood what he was saying and he did not like it.
‘That’s sense,’ he said cautiously. ‘As long as it’s worth my while to go along with you I’ll go along. That’s me, Gaffer. That’s fair.’
‘It’s the living truth,’ said Havoc. ‘You can forget the fairness.’
‘Did you see the stuff, Gaffer?’ Despite himself, Roly could not keep quiet. ‘You never said. Did you see the stuff all lying there?’
The immemorial romance of treasure trove, gold in bars and jewels in bucketfuls spilling out over a cave, shone out of his ridiculous mind in glorious technicolor.
Havoc clicked his tongue against his teeth.
‘You sound like a kid dreaming of ice-cream,’ he said. ‘No, of course I didn’t see it. It was well hidden. That’s why it’s still there waiting for us, if we can pick it up quickly. Listen, this is what happened on the raid. After we’d done the job we were alone, Elginbrodde and me, in the house. The orders were that I was to do the necessary and he was to verify they were dead. He didn’t like it, he wasn’t that sort. He’d had his mind filled up with all sorts of fancy stuff the world has never had time for. He wasn’t yellow, but he hadn’t got what I have and wasn’t expected to have. He got into the house and made the recce, and I went into the bedroom and did the job while he waited. When I came out he went in. He came back white as a paper bag, but quiet, as he always was, and gave me the okay. We had one or two things to do, and when they were done instructions were that we were to come out at once and get back to you on the beach before anyone came up the road. It was dead quiet. You could have heard a petrol engine coming five miles away. When we reached the little garden behind the house he stopped me.’
As he listened, Geoffrey caught some of the stillness of the spring night, the scent of the herbs in the little French close, the noise of the sea, soothing and for ever, and behind the two, in the bedroom still warm, the dreadful necessary thing.
The re-created atmosphere was all the more startling because Havoc had not found it terrible. It was his absence of emotion, his impersonal picture of the appalled young officer carrying out orders with a perfect but unfeeling weapon, as it were a living knife, which produced the horrific effect.
Havoc was still talking. ‘Elginbrodde said to me, “Keep a look-out a minute, will you, Sergeant? I just want to have a squint at something to see it’s still all right.” He left me standing there, but presently I saw where he was from a glimmer from his pencil-torch. He had gone into a sort of stone hut there was by the wall. I went after him, naturally, because I didn’t want to miss anything. The way he’d spoken had interested me, see? There he was, letting the little light spot over the stone. The place was empty as a poor-box. He told me afterwards it was an ice-house, a thing they had before fridges to keep the food in. It was just a bare hole with a decorated drain running through it, and a garden image at one end of that. There was nothing else so I said “They’ve got it, sir, have they?” He laughed. I just saw his teeth before the light went out. And he said “No, it’s safe, thank God. They’ll never find it now unless there’s a direct hit, and then it’ll hardly matter.”’
‘But he brought some of the stuff.’ Roly’s anxiety was pathetic. ‘He give us all a Souvenir. Don’t you remember, Gaffer? ’E give us each – ’
‘That was from the house.’ The voice was soothing. ‘We’d got to make the Jerry think it was a burglary. That was the big idea. No one was to know it was enemy action. It was to look like a civvy job. The place was full of lovely stuff so I knew that if there was something hidden it must be damned well worth hiding. We just made a mess and cleared the gilt cabinets in the front room. Some of the bits Elginbrodde kept for you chaps, and we chucked the rest in the hedge. I kept one or two, but we were practically naked and we’d got to get back down that ruddy rock-face.’
‘You was a long time getting back.’ Roly’s resentment sounded across the years.
‘Of course we were. But that’s how I came to know what I do. If you’ve forgotten the moon, I haven’t. One minute the sky was like a featherbed and the next the blasted lamp shone out like a searchlight, and there was me and Elginbrodde on the brow of the cliff looking like a couple of lighthouses ourselves. We dropped and lay there. There was nothing for it but to wait. Elginbrodde kept thinking he heard a car coming up the lane. It was his windiness which made him talk. I saw I could handle him and I started asking him about the ice-house.
‘“What have you got down the well, sir?” I said. “The family plate?” He shook me. He wasn’t thinking of me as another man at all, see? I was just his chap, an object he’d got to get back safely. It made him talk to me as if I was his rifle or something. “No, Sergeant,” he said, “that’s the Santa Deal treasure there, and it’s still all right. I didn’t know about it until I was twenty-one or I’d have got it out of the country. By then it was just too late, and I had to hide it. I’m the last of us. No one knows now but I.” I did my best to make him repeat the name, but he wouldn’t. It sounded like a ship’s treasure to me.’
The secret of a ship’s treasure handed down in a wealthy family to an orphan boy at twenty-one; technicolor was inadequate for that fantasy. It lit up the cellar with a radiance which was more enchanting than moonlight itself. Roly was past speech and Doll’s mouth dry.
From the street above the sounds from the market were beginning to float down to them. The men on the other side of the room fidgeted a little but they did not move. Havoc’s murmur, forceful with the weight of six years’ dreaming, held his listeners spellbound.
‘Then I asked him what was going to happen if he got hit. “In that case it stays there for ever, I suppose?” I said.’
‘What did he say?’ Roly was trembling.
‘He said the damnedest thing I ever heard a man say. He said “Then it’ll be up to the man my wife marries. I’ve left full instructions in a sealed envelope, and he’ll get it on his wedding day. She couldn’t manage it alone, but she’ll choose someone like me, always.”’
Lying on the sacks, his head not three feet from the speaker, Geoffrey felt his heart turn over slowly and painfully in his side.
This was the key. He heard the incredulous rumble from the others, like mutterings from another world, but he had recognized the unmistakable ring of truth in the reported words. Of course that was what Elginbrodde had done. When one knew Meg and old Avril, one realized that it was the only thing he could do. Moreover, it was exactly the bold, simple but unobvious step which in similar circumstances he must have taken himself.
He found this so amazing that his own predicament with all its danger was temporarily eclipsed. Elginbrodde had been so right. The more he heard about him the more evident that became. They were alike, both the same odd mixture, practical but imaginative, conventional but ready to take a chance. All the jealousy Geoffrey had ever felt of Martin flared up to its highest peak in a searing sweep, and died outright like an exhausted flame. He felt freed-of-it suddenly, as Meg became, mysteriously, entirely his own.
Meanwhile his immediate danger was becoming more acute. Havoc was growing practical.
‘Now,’ he was saying, ‘keep steady. I’ve been working on this and so far I’ve done absolutely nothing I didn’t mean to do if it came to it. I arranged with myself that I’d go about it just as we went
about the raid, good planning, good organization, and unhesitating execution. Those are the things which don’t fail. No softness, no funking, and no witnesses. The first thing to do is to get the envelope Elginbrodde left. That’s vital. The raid was a top-secret job. None of us knew where we went, except Elginbrodde, and you could have crucified him before he’d have told you. We thought it was France, but it might have been anywhere along the whole west coast of Europe. We’ve got to have the exact location of the house, and the position of the stuff in the house. There’ll be legal documents, too, papers giving the bearer permission to take the stuff away. Elginbrodde will have thought of that. He wanted his wife’s new bloke to get it without any trouble. That was his whole idea. Once I hold those documents, the foreign police’ll be on our side. They’ll help us shift it, if necessary. We want the lot, don’t we, not a handful each?’
Tiddy Doll sat motionless, his chin raised, the dark glasses hiding any expression in his eyes.
‘’Oo’d Major Elginbrodde give the letter to?’ he said at last. ‘’Is wife?’
‘No. She’d open it. Any woman would. I didn’t worry about that. I made certain he’d leave it with his lawyers.’
It was the first time the word had been mentioned and at once the atmosphere became tense. Doll wet his lips.
‘You went to their office last night to see, didn’t yer?’
‘Yes.’ The drawl had returned to the over-careful voice. ‘I always meant to do that. As soon as I’d seen a contact of mine and changed my clothes, I went down there.’ Havoc paused and in the respite Tiddy Doll did a terrifying thing. He slid out a foot and kicked the bed on which Geoffrey lay. He did it very stealthily, but it was a definite movement guaranteed to call the occupant’s attention to anything about to be said.
‘That’s where you went on the bash, ain’t it, Gaffer?’ he prompted gently.
‘Yes. No interference allowed, that was the rule I made.’
There was silence at the conference table and after a long time Doll spoke uneasily. Now that the dream which had kept him going for so long was becoming a reality, it was losing its comfort and his resolution wavered.
‘What makes you so certain the stuff’s going to be there after all this time, Gaffer?’ he asked.
‘Because it’s waiting for me.’ The conviction in the tone was absolute and it impressed them. ‘I’m meant to find it. I knew that as soon as I heard of it, that night on the cliffs.’ He laughed softly. ‘You won’t understand this, but I’ll tell you. Elginbrodde had to confide in me, and probably the blasted moon had to come out just at that moment to make him do it. We had to go on the trip together in the first place, and you can tell that’s true by the queer way it happened. I was special, see. There were half a million other sergeants in the army who might have been chosen, but they had to find me for the job, and do you know how they did it?’
He drew them closer to him, pouring out the essence of his belief into their uneasy ears.
‘You’ve never heard of a Hollerith, have you? It was a thing they had in the army, based on an American business invention. I can’t explain it to you but it was a great room-sized machine, like a glorified cash register, I’ve heard. They decided on the things they wanted in a chap – athletic, combat-trained, been in a few scrapes, reckless, able to climb and if necessary carry someone who couldn’t, age twenty-six, not particular, not known to have a family or a woman, good with men, or anything else they thought of right down to the colour of his eyes. Then they pressed all the buttons and up came his card with his name and number on it. If there were two or three chaps there were two or three cards. Sound like magic to you, Corporal?’
It sounded like something else to the man from Tiddington. He licked his dry lips.
‘Go on, Gaffer.’
‘I was found by that machine,’ said Havoc earnestly. ‘Mine was the only card that turned up, and do you know where I was? I was under guard waiting for court martial. It was looking as though I’d come really unstuck at last. But suddenly I was fetched out, all forgiven, rank restored, allowed to volunteer, trained, and paired with Elginbrodde. They wanted me. I was the one. It was a tricky time and they were in a jam and I appeared.’
He leaned back on his box and Geoffrey’s bed shook a little as he touched it.
‘You’ll say there’s nothing in that,’ he went on. ‘That’s a straight invention by a scientist. But the rest isn’t. While I was training with Elginbrodde I took the trouble to inquire about him, and do you know what I found? I found I knew the people he knew, and that he was a man I could always keep my eye on. He was the one and only officer in the whole army who I was in a position to watch all the time. I knew someone who was close to him, see? And they were as close to me as anyone has ever been. That’s why, as soon as he spoke to me on the cliff, I knew that what he said was important to me and part of my life.’
He waited for their reaction and when they merely shuffled uncomfortably he laughed again.
‘I told you you’d never understand it. It’s when you’re alone hour after hour in a cell like a monk that you see these things. To you it sounds like a coincidence, but there aren’t any coincidences, only opportunities. Keep your feet on the ground and you’ll see that.’
‘Sounds like a religion to me,’ said Bill and he giggled because he was thrilled and drawn by the emotion ruffling the smooth voice.
Havoc regarded him sombrely. ‘Religion nuts! This is the thing religion goes soft on. Call it the Science of Luck, that’s my name for it. There’s only two rules in it: watch all the time and never do the soft thing. I’ve stuck to that and it’s given me power.’
‘That’s right, Gaffer, you’ve got power all right.’ Doll spoke hurriedly. He knew men were often a little queer when they came out after a long prison term, but he was frightened all the same. ‘You’ve been able to watch Elginbrodde’s wife while you was inside?’
‘Of course I have. I’ve watched you all. You can hear more in stir than you can out if you give your mind to it. I got all the information I wanted in, and all the orders I had to give out. I knew she was going to marry again two months before the engagement was announced.’
‘Married again?’ This was news to them all and Roly sat back, ludicrous horror on his sharp-featured face. ‘You’re not tellin’ us she’s done it? The new feller ain’t got the envelope?’
‘No. He doesn’t know about it yet, but he will, and that’s the hurry. When I got the news I couldn’t make my break immediately. The Doc I was working on was showing interest, but he wasn’t ripe, so I got the word out to Duds and he’s been doing the stunt which we arranged if ever this should happen when I was inside. It was a beautiful idea and it was working like a dream. My contact expected the wedding would be called off, but now Duds has come unstuck. He did something soft or it wouldn’t have happened. Duds was soft. He got us shopped last time because he wouldn’t stick a man he’d been drinking with. We had to wait for another, and by that time the luck had changed. I don’t know what he did this time. Perhaps the girl’s new bloke got him.’
So it had come. Geoffrey waited for the next words with the stabbing pain of fear taking his breath away. One of the three must put two and two together now.
But when Doll spoke his mind was still on the envelope, that magic Open Sesame which would unlock the cave.
‘And it weren’t at the lawyers,?’ he said thoughtfully.
‘No. I’d made so sure of that.’ Havoc sounded introspective, as if he were searching for some flaw which could account for his lack of success. Bright eyes like rats’ eyes were watching him from the farther wall. The men had their coats on and sat hugging their wretched instruments, waiting for breakfast and the new day.
‘I shall get it though,’ he said. ‘I tried one other place tonight. It was an address I had given me when I got out. My contact had it ready for me. I went to the new bloke’s house, the one he’s getting ready to take the girl to when he marries her. It was no good, t
hough. They hadn’t moved in properly. There weren’t any papers in the place at all.’ He laughed abruptly. ‘I nearly walked into trouble there. I saw a busy outside, but I took the risk and went on in. I thought I had plenty of time with the fog so thick, but they must have been waiting for his call for they came along in strength, and I had to jump for it. There was someone in the house, too. A woman. I smelled her face powder.’
Geoffrey’s scalp was crawling and his lips moved helplessly against the gag.
‘She couldn’t have seen me,’ Havoc was saying. ‘She was out on the stairs when I was in one of the rooms. I didn’t waste any time on her. It wasn’t because I went soft. The police cars had turned up by the time I noticed her, and I had to slip off.’
‘It must have been ’er.’ Roly spoke in a whisper, as if he were himself hiding in a surrounded house. ‘It must ’ave been the Major’s widow ’erself. There ain’t no servant girls now, Gaffer. All that’s been done away with while you was inside.’
‘What?’ The question sounded appalled. The unexpectedness of its passion startled them all.
‘It was ’er,’ Roly repeated. ‘Must ’ave been. Now if you ’ad only woodened ’er, we’d have ’ad all the time in the world,’ he added weakly.
‘I didn’t know.’ Havoc’s voice grew high. ‘I tell you I didn’t know. I did like the smell of the powder, but I didn’t know.’
‘That ain’t sense, Gaffer, and you know it.’ Tiddy Doll’s intervention was instinctive. He alone recognized Havoc’s superstition for what it was and he dragged the man back to solid ground. ‘What I want to ask is, why was the busy outside the new bloke’s ’ouse at all? Did this private contact you keep talking about tip the p’lice orf? Or did one of their dicks spot you was after something of Elginbrodde’s when you was at the lawyers’? If so p’raps they’ve stopped all the gaps in the hedge.’
The Tiger In the Smoke Page 19
