The Cummings Report

by Christopher Hodder-Williams

  As if to confirm this statement, there came a staccato knock on the door, phrased in a definite rhythm. Abe threw a casual look in Buche’s direction as he sauntered over. “See what I mean?” he said, almost humorously.

  *

  And so I met Victor Buche for the first and only time. As I followed Loring into the compartment, I remember looking at this lank, distinguished-looking scientist, and wondering what kink in his brain had led him to suddenly become a Judas, a betrayer.

  And yet something about his demeanour now told me that he was making a last, desperate stand; that at the split second before the twelfth hour some spark had ignited that complex mind back to a smouldering determination to hit back, both against himself and those who had contaminated him.

  Abe told Loring in a few words what the situation was. And Loring almost snarled, like one of those once-hand-some great dogs — the Alsatian — that has been corrupted by the innate, moribund lust for blood, and turns, sneering treacherously at its master, ready to strike him down when opportunity might permit. But what had caused Loring to sell out didn’t interest me; I just didn’t want to know. There is sometimes a rottenness latent in the minds of human beings from the very start, which only shows itself when things get tough; when there isn’t enough money (and for some there is never enough) or when there is only one parachute among six occupants of a stricken plane. It is then that the Lorings of this world pull out a gun and grab the only chute, leaving their helpless comrades to die in the inferno. For Loring’s total spectrum of emotions ranged between the narrow limits of lustful greed and the instinct for survival.

  But Loring did not feel cornered yet, by any means. If he could deal with one difficult customer he could manage two. And within twenty-four hours he could be out of the country anyway, with all tracks covered in preparation for the next visit, and the next job ...

  And so he turned to his primary victim. “You’re expecting company, are you, Buche?” he said between lips that hardly moved. “I take it this was a clumsy attempt to lead us to our intended doom; but how clumsy can you get? Surely you could have done better than that?” Loring noticed that Buche was peering at me. “Oh, forgive me!” exclaimed Loring, “I haven’t introduced you, have I? This is Mr. Joel Cummings, an Englishman; very much wanted, I’m afraid, by the police. An innocent man, too! It seems most unjust.”

  “You’re behaving like Fenton again,” I reminded him. “Can’t you people ever resist the temptation to behave like the heavies in the movies?”

  Loring raised his eyebrows. “Mr. Cummings objects,” he said to Buche, “to any form of sarcasm. Being well brought up he considers it the lowest form of humour. However, I don’t think he is in any position to be fussy, at the moment.”

  Buche ignored this. “Just what is he doing here?” he demanded. “I gather he is not one of your people.”

  Loring helped himself to a large whisky. “That’s a very good question,” he said. “But I’m afraid I haven’t got time to go into details now.” His tone changed abruptly. “Shapello, let’s get down to business. I want Cummings to have his injection before we get any interruptions. You see, Cummings,” he explained to me, “I have thoughtfully provided for the necessities of your life; and as you have already informed me, your injection is overdue. Unfortunately though, this serum isn’t quite the one you’re supposed to have. In fact it is a drug with rather strange properties, which no doubt your distinguished analyst could tell you all about. To put it in a nutshell, it produces roughly the symptoms that you have found so troublesome before.” He saw my reaction. “Well, surely,” he added, “you didn’t think I would rely on Mother Nature providing me with everything exactly how and when I wanted it, did you? Your recovery in the car on the way to Idlewild should give you the answer to that.”

  While Shapello covered me with his gun, swinging it with apparent carelessness through an arc to cover both Buche and myself, Loring opened a suitcase and produced the familiar equipment for administering an injection. Unlike Dr. Jefferson, however, he did not trouble to sterilize the needle.

  “Now, Mr. Cummings,” he continued, “do exactly as I tell you; because otherwise I shall just have to kill you, which would be no trouble at all. But since you are, so to speak, my alibi, I would prefer you to stay alive. Also,” he said, snapping off the top of the phial and inserting the needle, “to put your mind at rest, let me explain that I have both a spare needle and serum, so don’t think that by taking any sort of evasive action you will be doing anything more than postponing the inevitable, and risking Abe over there losing his patience and pulling the trigger. He’s such an impetuous character!”

  I have always hated injections of any kind, but this one had a sinister, Edgar-Allen-Poe-like character all its own. Yet, to my surprise, I felt dead calm; my hand was not shaking as I removed my coat, obeying Loring’s curt instructions and listening to his sneering comments. He was, after all, the same animal as Fenton exactly, but with an American accent and a less feminine approach to life.

  “Now all we have to do is to wait,” he said. “Are you good at waiting, Cummings? Of course there’s waiting andwaiting. Waiting for a pretty girl to turn up for a date; a most luxurious kind of waiting I think you’ll agree (provided of course that she turns up at the end of it). Or waiting, trapped in a burning house and wondering whether they’re going to get you out in time. That’s not so pleasant. But I’d say your kind is the worst; wouldn’t you, Cummings?”

  You had to hand it to him; if taunting was his favourite sport then he had done a splendid job on me.

  “How long,” I asked as casually as I could, “does this stuff take to work?”

  “About a quarter hour,” said Loring. “You’ll know.”

  And still the train rumbled on, carrying hundreds of ordinary business men — families on their way to see the great Capital City, engineers returning from duty, G.I.’s returning from leave ... a host of perfectly ordinary people packed into a succession of hollow metal boxes on wheels, hurtling through the night at better than seventy miles an hour. And among them, in just one small cubic section was a group of four individuals fighting their own secret war; a war that might affect every single occupant of the train in years to come.

  I could see that Loring’s nerves weren’t any too good. He got up again, restlessly, and poured himself another stiff drink from Buche’s bottle.

  “This guy better come soon,” he said at last.

  “He will,” said Abe. He inspected his gun critically, and blew a microscopic piece of dust from the barrel. “Won’t he, Buche?”

  “I didn’t say I was expecting anyone,” said Victor. “Has it got you worried?”

  “Why should I worry?” said Coring, draining the glass.

  “Exactly!” I exclaimed. “Why should you worry? You’re holding all the aces, aren’t you? Except you weren’t expecting visitors. Still, you can’t expect to have everything your own way, can you?”

  “Shut up!” he said curtly. Then to Abe: “What time have you got?”

  Abe transferred his gaze lovingly from the revolver to his black-dialled wrist watch. “Twenty-five after,” he said.

  Loring was fiddling with a coin he had in his hand. “I don’t like to wait too long,” he said. “There’s a lot to do before we stop the train, and we must pull the emergency brake at the right moment — otherwise we’ll be miles from the waiting car. You know what to look for?”

  “Yeah, sure I know what to look for!” exclaimed Abe impatiently. “I know the route like the back of my hand. We got about seven minutes left, yet.”

  “Seven minutes. Well, I’ll give this character as long as I can to show up. We don’t want him on the loose when we hop the train; got to get rid of him first.”

  “Maybe there won’tbe anyone,” said Buche. His voice was strained, but I could see what he was trying to do. And he had already planted a seed of doubt in Loring’s mind.

  Loring and Abe both spoke simultaneously. “Maybe
there isn’t anybody, Abe!”

  “I tell you Iknow he’s expecting someone ...

  They looked daggers at each other.

  I said: “You can’t decide whether Buche is bluffing or not, can you, Loring?”

  And still nobody came.

  “I’ll give him two more minutes,” said Loring through high-tensile lips. “After that we must start moving. You know what to do, Abe. I’ll cover these two while you seal off the car at both ends. You have the keys?”

  “I have the keys.” Boredom. Boredom and contempt in his voice now.

  Loring covered up this silently lost point by bluster. “And don’t forget; I want every drawing-room in this car locked from the outside. Understand?”

  No one spoke. There was about thirty kilovolts of electricity in that little compartment now.

  And then it came. The door was thrust open and Major Russell stepped into the compartment, to find himself looking down the muzzles of two revolvers. He did not flinch.

  “Move round by the seat there and shut the door,” snapped Loring to Abe. At the same time he flanked round so that Shapello was not in his line of fire.

  “So you set a trap for me, Buche?” said Russell, without emotion. “I might have thought you would.”

  Buche tried to transmit a message with his eyes. But if Russell understood he did not give the fact away.

  But the stark fact which neither Buche nor I could know, and that Buche would never have believed, was that nobody had been informed of Major Russell’s intentions. By acting as a lone wolf he had set a most effective trap for himself.

  I found that my powers of concentration were ebbing, and dimly realized that it must have some connection with the drug I had been given. I had the impression that I was unsure of the order in which things were being said. I was beginning to lose the sense of time. This sensation was not really in the least like that I experienced during an epileptic paroxysm.

  “Who are you?” Loring was saying.

  Russell stood rigidly erect — almost at attention. “Major Russell, U.S. Army. And I am placing you all under arrest.”

  Loring had more or less got back in his stride again. “Well, Major, we’ll take your word for it. But I am afraid we cannot stand upon ceremony now. Let’s take the whole thing as read, huh? Abe, fix those doors, and get back — fast.”

  Shapello almost managed to amble out of the compartment, but actually he moved pretty quickly.

  “Sit down, Major,” ordered Peter Loring quietly.

  Russell seemed to contemplate refusal for a moment; then he changed his mind and sat down. Buche looked at him hopelessly. “Did you come alone?” that look seemed to say.

  We waited silently for Abe to return. I was now experiencing an extraordinary dreamlike sensation. All that which was happening in the compartment became confused with the wildest fancies of my mind; so that only by carefully sifting the muddled memories of those few tense minutes have I been able to reconstruct the scene.

  But I know that Shapello came back into the drawingroom, and said: “Two minutes to go, Peter!” before the lights went out.

  I remember also hearing the hissing of compressed air as the brakes came on. That must have been at about the same instant, because Loring said in a voice that rose to a scream:

  “You fool!You damn fool,Shapello,you’ve stopped the train two minutes too soon!”

  I remember hearing a shot then, and Shapello’s voice shouting: “I didn’t touch it! I didn’t touch the brake! Let’s get the hell out of here ...”

  Then I blacked out.

  *

  There was Major Russell. Who else? Everything was still going round like a runaway carousel. Yes, another army officer, this time in uniform. A Colonel.

  We were still in the train, still in that same compartment. The train was moving at speed.

  “He’s coming round,” a voice said.

  My first conscious thought was that the law had caught up with me at last. There was no escape now. Questions: Which was the worst: to be in the hands of Loring’s crowd or to be faced with trial for treason and God knows what else? Where was Buche? Had Loring and Shapello got away? But I said:

  “Will somebody please give me a drink?”

  I was given one, by this large, pleasant-looking Colonel. I gulped it down and began to feel better.

  “My name’s Frean,” said the large Colonel. “And, in case you’re wondering, you are no longer under suspicion, Mr. Cummings. In fact, you are probably regarded as something of a national hero — British style.”

  “Good God!” I said. I would have liked to have savoured the moment for a while, but my curiosity got the better of me. “What happened?” I asked. “Did they get away? And what about ... ?”

  “Buche?” interpolated the Colonel. “I’m afraid he is dead.”

  “Yes, I thought I heard a shot,” I said quietly. But this was no time for condolences, though I think two of us at least felt sorry about him. Yet, what would the alternative end have been for the man?

  “I think,” said Russell, “I had better put you in the picture, Cummings. Colonel Frean may possibly feel restricted in what he can say, out of consideration for me.

  “You see, Buche telephoned me this afternoon — or rather, yesterday afternoon as it is now — and made an urgent date to meet me in Pittsburgh. Why, he wouldn’t say. But I guessed — at least in part. What I did not realize was that he was trying to lead his former colleagues to the kill. If I had informed the department — as I should have done — of his intentions, they could no doubt have had enough men on the train to prevent Buche’s murderers from getting away; indeed, they might well have prevented Buche’s murder, for which I must therefore accept the blame.”

  These were just facts; there were no pleas, no excuses. I respected him for that.

  I turned to Frean. “But who stopped the train?” I asked. “And how did you get here?”

  “Back at headquarters we were in the process of deciphering a radio-telephone conversation between what, for various reasons, we were pretty sure was Buche and an Unknown. By 9.30 tonight we were able to unscramble one end of the conversation — Buche’s end. From that we learned that a plan for getting a certain highly secret piece of equipment out of the country was scheduled for implementing later on today — twenty-two hours from now, in fact. Knowing that Buche had left Chicago, and that Major Russell, who as you have probably gathered was acting, shall we say, on his own initiative, had left Washington, I guessed the rest. Of course there were other considerations that I won’t bother you with — such as Russell’s long-standing relationship with Buche — which indicated pretty clearly what was in the wind.”

  “The secret equipment you refer to is, of course, PERISCOPE?”

  “Oh, then you know that? You’d better tell us all you do know; for we have exactly twenty-two hours in which to get on to their trail. You can probably help us a lot.”

  “I will, Colonel,” I said, still trying to reorientate myself. “But first, would you satisfy my curiosity on one point?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Where is your headquarters ... ? Washington, I take it? Well, would you mind telling me how the heck you managed to get to Pittsburgh in the period between 9.30 and now? I mean, you couldn’t have left Washington until, say ten, if you didn’t finish work on this code you mention until 9.30? And where did you suddenly appear from — did you borrow H. G. Wells’ time machine? Or were you on board the train when we left Pittsburgh Station itself?”

  Frean smiled. “It wasn’t so difficult really,” he said. “There is an airstrip not far from where we stopped the train; we realized we wouldn’t make Pittsburgh in time to make the connection without holding it there — and for various reasons we didn’t want to do that. Anyway, to cut a long story short we flew up from Washington by jet-plane — myself and two members of my staff — and had the train stopped by calling up the crew on the radio-telephone. We also told them to turn off the
lights as a precaution. Unfortunately we were just too late to save Victor Buche.”

  “I see.” I lit a cigarette with a hand that was still shaking. “I suppose I’d better start by giving you a description of the men you want.”

  “Major Russell has already furnished me with that. But you probably know a little more about them.”

  “Yes, I think I do. And I think I know where they might be heading for.”

  “They had an escape car waiting, I presume?” asserted the Colonel, and I nodded. He went on: “We’ve put out a Priority One dragnet, and we may catch them. If not, you’re going to tell me that they are heading forPete’s Diner, in Brooklyn, no doubt.”

  “You seem to know a good deal, Colonel Frean!” I observed.

  “We didn’t know; but Buche has been followed there on one occasion. What we really want is the identity of the men.”

  “I’ll tell you,” I said. “But I’d better start at the very beginning.”

  “Start from the day you disappeared, having just visited the headquarters of R7 in London.”

  The effects of the drug had left me stiff all over. I stood up painfully, and moved over to the window, where Abe Shapello had stood.

  “The first thing I remember,” I began, “is waking up in an aircraft, with that slug Adrian Fenton standing over me ...”

  CHAPTER 21

  “ONE thing I promise you,” said Miles grimly, “we’ll find this man Fenton somehow. Scotland Yard have got every man they can spare on to hunting him down ... He is using aposte-restante address at Rimsworth Garden City. He hasn’t picked up any mail in the last twenty-four hours so he may be suspicious, but we’ll find him. He won’t get out of the country this time, now that we know they were calmly using the Bristol Channel as a private base for flying-boats.”

  The voice at the other end, as clear as if it were in the next room, spoke crisply from that certain office in the Pentagon.

  “We put Cummings on a B.O.A.C. flight for London. He seems to be in reasonably good shape. And he’s had his injection — the right one this time!