by Nevil Shute
She sank down on a chair beside the table. “We had considered this,” she said, and as she spoke the tears fell slowly from her eyes. “We knew that if the thing went wrong there would be most desperately . . trouble. It seemed worth it, then. And it has gone .” wrong.
I laughed. “Then I hope it still seems worth it,” I remarked. I turned serious. “You’d better answer my questions. If you don’t, I shall tell all I know. I shall disclose your cousin Peter as the murderous scoundrel that he really was. I shall disclose your part in it.” She had nothing apparently to say to that. “If you tell the truth I’ll go away and leave things as they are, maybe, and you can square your conscience in whatever way you choose to kid yourself.”
I paused. “I’m doing this because I think you saved my life, that night upon the beach. But for that fact I’d blast you up and down the country, in and out of gaol, until I had you dead. I’ll give you this one chance.”
She laid her head down on her arms. “You don’t understand,” she sobbed. “You don’t understand at all.”
“I’m dealing with a pack of murderers,” I said. “I understand that part of it all right.”
“You don’t understand,” she sobbed again. And then she said: “It was all for the election.”
I have had many experiences in the life that I have lived, and sometimes I have been afraid. But I do not think that I have ever before experienced the feeling of sheer horror that came over me when she said that. She had said something utterly incredible. In that one swift moment there came to me all the manœuvrings of the hustlings and the polling booths, the sordid trickery that forms a background to political affairs. I cannot describe in words the feelings that came over me as I stood there and listened to her sobbing at the table, the tense horror of this first hint that all that had been sacrificed and lost was staked upon some move in party politics.
I strode across and knocked her head up from the table. “Just listen here, young woman,” I said angrily. “Now tell me what you mean.”
She sobbed: “It’s true, and now you’ve got it, and I wish that I was dead.”
I said: “What’s this about the election? By God, you’d better speak the truth!”
I held her head up from the table, and I held her tear-streaked eyes with mine. “The guns had to be hidden at Trepwll before the election. And then they were going to be discovered just before the polling day. It was the only way to save the country from the Socialists.”
I let her head drop back upon the table, and she lay there sobbing unrestrainedly. I walked over to the window and stood there for a little time, staring out into the sunlit garden and the rhododendrons. Little by little in my mind the monstrous story fell into its place. Long ago the Zinovieff letter lost an election to the Labour Party; the incredible fact appeared to be that this affair had been conceived as such another. Guns had been brought into the country by some politician of the opposing group, and planted in a disaffected area. I could well see that if these arms had been discovered a few days before the poll and evidence supplied that they had come from Russia, the country would swing solid to Conservative.
One thing was evident; this girl had got to tell me all she knew. I crossed the room to her, and laid my hand upon her shoulder. “Come along,” I said, perhaps a little more gently than I had done up till then. “This thing has gone awry. You tell me this thing is just a fake, a movement in some game of party politics. Six people have been killed in playing it, and now it’s got to stop. More may be killed before it runs its course. Sit up, and tell me how it came about.”
And with a little encouragement she dried her eyes, and told me everything. She had hardly said two sentences before I stopped her with a question.
“Who is the directing influence behind this thing? Who organised it, and paid for it?”
She hesitated.
“Come on, now,” I said harshly. “Out with it. If not, I put it with the police.”
The tears fell from her eyes again. “It was Professor Ormsby,” she replied.
I pulled an envelope and pencil from my pocket to make notes. “Christian names, and address?”
“Charles Hemming Ormsby. He’s a Professor of Political Economy. A Fellow of Nicholas — Cambridge.”
I thought about this for a minute. “Who invented the name for the carpet sweepers — the Greek scholar? Was that him?”
She nodded tearfully. And then, little by little, out it came, until at last I had the whole affair.
I had been shocked by the revelation of the nature of the gun running. I do not know that I was less shocked at the high ideals that lay behind it all, and at the spirit in which it had been carried out. For the root of it lay in a real patriotism and a love of England, distorted but sincere. And here I may say at once that I found no villainy about the thing. Merely an overwhelming vanity, that could not brook another view of what was beneficial for this country that we live in now.
So far as I could understand, Professor Ormsby, the boy Marston, and this girl, his cousin, were the chief participants in the affair. It had no connexion with official Conservatism at all; it could have none, of course. It was a secret enterprise, conceived by Ormsby and carried out by young Marston in his bawley, whose object was to place a Conservative Government in power in England for the next five years. The whole affair had been most cleverly conceived. The guns had come, in fact, from Russian sources, and Russians had co-operated in the smuggling wholeheartedly. I did not hear the details of that part of it — all that had been manœuvred by Professor Ormsby, but the essence of it was that Communism had been invoked in this affair to bring about its own defeat.
In Marston Professor Ormsby had found a resolute young man, secretive and well suited to carry out the detail of his part. The girl had been introduced by Marston at a later date to help him in some business connected with the bawley; I could well imagine that it was a job that called for company of some description. I found strong evidence to lead me to believe that the man they knew as Palmer was Professor Ormsby himself; I do not think that there was anybody else in the affair at all.
If ever people played about with fire it was that little crowd.
Every trip they made they carried Russians to and from the country; almost immediately their smuggling became a means of introducing agents into England who could not get through the immigration barriers. They had been powerless to prevent this traffic, and contented themselves with the knowledge that it would not last for long. From the first their lives were carried in their hands. They served their country secretly, as criminals, and the reward that they were earning was a heavy burden to be carried to their graves. They were out to fool the country for the country’s benefit, and no country takes that sort of trick too well.
The girl knew nothing of events for two or three days prior to the end, but from her knowledge she could reconstruct them well. It was impossible that Marston should have taken part in the murders at my house; he would have been down with the bawley at the entrance to the harbour mouth. I am inclined to doubt, in fact, if he had ever known that violence had been done; there was no occasion for the gunmen to have told him, and every reason why it should be kept from him if they desired to make a getaway. He was the only sailor among them, it is to be presumed.
At last it was all done. I had been there two hours, and for the last hour she had been talking collectedly, giving her evidence in a straightforward way. I had three envelopes of notes; I glanced them over and got to my feet. “That’s all?” I inquired. “If there is anything else whatsoever you’d better tell me now.”
She said that there was nothing more to tell. She asked, a little nervously, what I was going to do.
I stared at her. “God knows.” And then I laughed quietly: “Getting a little bit afraid of your own skin, now, I suppose. Well, you needn’t. If what you say is true, you’re out of it. No worse can happen to you than publicity.”
She faltered. “Will it get into the newspapers?”<
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“God knows,” I said again. Her question sickened me; for the moment I had been back again in Dartmouth with a braver girl than this. I turned upon her viciously. “There were three of you,” I said. “Between you you murdered two men and a harmless girl. That’s what you’ve done, and you’ll remember it.”
There was a little pause. “One of you three is dead, and I shall see the other soon. And you’ll be left alone to live your time out through the years, with all your memories.” I took my hat from the table. “I must wish you joy of it.”
I drove back up to town and garaged the car, and went back to my club to write. I settled down there in the reading-room, and because I was tired and feeling not so well the stream of tumblers came and went beside my elbow, for the bell was at my side. I wrote on steadily, page after page, and never paused till it was time to drain my glass and go and change for dinner, and then the writing was but half done. And I remember, as I crossed the landing to the stairs, I passed behind two men and heard one say:
“Can nothing be done about that fellow in the reading-room? The boy tells me he’s had seven whiskies in the last two hours, and last night just the same. One doesn’t expect to see that sort of soaking in a club like this.”
I smiled a little and passed on. This was the England Ormsby had set out to fool. The task had not proved very difficult, perhaps.
I dressed with infinite exactitude, and went downstairs and dined alone. It seemed but a moment till I was sitting writing again, and yet I must have lingered over my dinner, for it was nine o’clock when I sat down again in the reading-room. I wrote on steadily into the night, and the little pile of manuscript grew steadily at my elbow, and from time to time the boy came to me again, and went.
At last it was finished. It was very still and silent in the reading-room, still with the silence of an empty London club at night, muffled in repose. I settled down to read my story through, and presently the swing doors parted and closed, and the night porter came to me.
“Will you be wanting anything further tonight, sir?”
I stared at him absently. “What’s the time?”
“Five and twenty past one, sir.”
I shook my head. “You might bring me a few biscuits and a double whisky. I shall be going up in a minute.” And I settled down in the deserted room again.
At last I was finished. I addressed three envelopes: one to Jenkinson and one to Norman, and the third and bulkiest to the editor of the Morning Herald, a paper in which I had a holding at that time. I put all these in one large envelope and sealed them up, and addressed it to Jenkinson: “To be opened in the event of my death.” Then I went to bed.
I suppose I slept that night, but it escapes my memory. I know I heard the clocks chime all the hours of the night, and as soon as it was dawn I pulled my curtains and lay back and tried to read a volume of essays that I had picked up downstairs. And so the night passed, till at last I heard the sound of movement, and I could get up and have my bath.
I put in a trunk call to Cambridge at about nine o’clock and talked for a few moments to the porter at Nicholas. Then I got through to Professor Ormsby, and heard a voice say: “Who is that?”
I smiled a little. “This is Commander Stevenson,” I said, “speaking from London. I must introduce myself on the recommendation of a Miss Adela Jennings, of Esher. I had a most interesting talk with Miss Jennings yesterday over the matter of some carpet sweepers that I believe you are interested in, too. I was wondering if I might come down today — say this afternoon — and have a talk with you about them?”
He had guts, that fellow; there was only the slightest pause. “Certainly,” he said; “I should be very pleased to see you. Shall we say half-past two, in my rooms here?”
“That’s all right for me.”
“Very well, Commander Stevenson,” he replied; “I shall expect you then.” And he rang off.
I had nothing to prepare. At about ten o’clock I left the Club and went and got the Bentley and drove down to Cambridge. It was a lovely day, high summer; in the country it was warm and fresh. I drove with a more contented mind than I had had for many days; looking back upon it now I think that I enjoyed that drive. I was going to a clean-cut issue, going unarmed to meet a man who might be dangerous, with no other weapon but my wits. I was inviolable, for I had nothing left to lose.
I lunched well in Cambridge and went on to Nicholas at the appointed time. The porter took me across the court to a staircase in the southern corner, up some dark stone stairs, and tapped at the door for me. A voice called to me to come in, and I went forward into the room.
He was alone. I found a tall, spare man with very pale blue eyes, a man of perhaps fifty years of age, going a little white about the temples and a little bald on top. It was the room that I had expected I should find, lined with bookshelves on all four walls, and with an oar slung up above the mantelpiece. It was all very quiet and peaceful on that summer afternoon. I close my eyes and I can see it now.
He greeted me cordially enough, and asked me to sit down. He indicated an easychair, but I drew up a chair to the table in the middle of the room and sat down there, resting my arms upon the table and facing him as he stood by the fireplace. “I think we can cut the preliminaries of this quite short,” I said. “I had two hours with Miss Jennings yesterday. She told me a good deal about this gun running, that had not been quite clear to me before.”
He did not deny or argue it; he was too good a man for that. “Exactly,” he said quietly. And then he said: “Before we begin, I should like to know just where your interest lies, if I may inquire? Am I to take it that you represent the police?”
I shook my head. “I come in my own interest.”
He raised his eyebrows a little. “Ah, as a private individual.”
I stared at him grimly. “That is so. It is wiser to leave drunken men alone, you know. Once you start violence things begin to go wrong.”
He nodded slowly. “I think that is so. From the first moment that I heard of that affair I was afraid that trouble might arise from it.” He broke into a smile. “And now it has. I am sure that you will not accuse me of trying to disarm you if I offer my apologies for the treatment you received, in which I had no hand?”
I stared at him. “You are right in fearing that trouble might arise from me. It has. Bad trouble.”
He met my eyes. “I think you had better tell me what you want,” he said quietly.
I considered for a moment. “This is Wednesday,” I said at last. “The country goes to the poll on Friday week, in ten day’s time. On Saturday next, in three day’s time, a story will appear in all the Labour Press which will bring certain charges against you, personally, together with Miss Jennings and the boy Marston, who was drowned. You know the story. You will be accused of having attempted to bias this election with a trick, to swindle the whole of England with faked propaganda in the Conservative interest. That story will be supported with concrete evidence which will bear examination, and it will be true.”
He had gone very white.
I sat there staring at him from behind the table. “I have come to you now,” I said in a hard voice, “because I am merciful. This story will appear on Saturday. I am giving you three days in which to cut the country before you are arrested on a criminal charge.” I paused. “This thing is now in train,” I said. “I mention that, in case you may be thinking of more violence.”
There was a long slow silence in the room. Out in the court through the open window, I could hear a hum of voices, undergraduates going to and fro, and laughter now and then. There was a bee or two about a great bowl of wild flowers in the window seat, and the air was fragrant with the scent of them. And presently he moved forward and sat down at the table opposite me. “Let me explain a little, if I can,” he said.
He thought for a minute, and then he began. And what he gave me was a clear-cut reasoning, as logical as a judgment in the High Court, of the motives which had led him to the actio
n he had taken. He started in and took me, very simply and concisely, through the economic history of England since the war, and he drew parallels all through with the period that came after the Napoleonic wars. I sat there at his table in that summer afternoon and he talked to me as he would have expounded his knowledge to an undergraduate, showing me cause and effect in the kaleidoscope of politics and economic law.
And so he proved to me the essence of his creed. I call it a creed, for it was one to him; I had no doubt of that. On his premises, as he gave them me, it was inevitable that a further Labour Government would bring the country to an irretrievable disaster. He sketched the country as a blind man walking along the edge of a precipice, who follows the contour up and down in little slumps, and always straying nearer to the abyss. He proved this with economic logic that I could not controvert — upon his premises. And so he led me to the centre of his whole belief: that the one duty of a patriot who saw the country with unclouded eyes was to prevent this frightful thing — by fair means or by foul.
He told me that this had come to him a year or more before, and he had justified his implications in the intervening time. He sketched for me, very lucidly, the possible courses that could be taken if the country were to continue with a Labour Government, and he showed me in each case the irretrievable disaster which in each case lay ahead within ten years. And then he went on and told me, very briefly, of the steps which had led him to enlist the services of one of his pupils to prevent this thing, and how the enterprise had been conceived.
It would be idle to deny that he impressed me with his reasoning. He had a keen, clear mind, and much of what he said was pitifully true. I sat there motionless as he was talking, staring out of the window to the bright sunshine of the court. I had lost everything I had to lose in this affair. Had I been altogether wrong in my demand for justice, too severe?
