The Big Book of Espionage

by The Big Book of Espionage (retail) (epub)

  His train of thought was obviously miles past me, but I leaped figuratively for the caboose. “May I have a description of this Hencken woman?”

  He leaned forward, highly pleased at my grasp on the matter in hand. “None available,” he said, staging a pantomime with fingers and head to emphasize the utter unavailability of a description of the woman Hencken. “Just have to do the best…”

  “Where do I—” I began desperately. If whitecoated attendants had rushed in and thrown Kaspir into a straitjacket at that moment it would not have raised a single pulsebeat of surprise in me.

  Kaspir rose, all six and a half feet of him. “Rhys-Eccles demands quiet—no distractions. Camp Greenwood. Got tickets here.” He rummaged in his pants pockets. “He’ll be Martin Rice, author. You’ll be Potts, his secretary”—still digging deep—“Get it? Your name’s Kettle. You’ll use Potts. Easy to remember?” A laugh rumbled up from his ample belly. Both hands came up clutching wads of what looked like waste paper, and a roll of greenbacks tumbled to the floor. Kaspir frowned down at it. “Maude!” he bawled.

  * * *

  —

  Neither of us had seen the blond woman poised statuesquely in the doorway. Now she stepped forward with a purposeful swing of her rangy hips. She retrieved the money, slapped it down on the desk. From Kaspir’s hands she snatched the crumpled papers. She sorted them swiftly, efficiently, and handed me two railroad tickets. She faced Kaspir. “May I put in my dime’s worth now?” she inquired, plucked eyebrows arched.

  “Why, of course!” Kaspir was genuinely hurt at the implication that he was a petty tyrant.

  Maude turned fine brown eyes on me.

  “A joint British and American commission has just completed a survey of our war industries,” she said. “Potential production, potential aid-to-Britain—that sort of thing. Dull but extremely important.”

  I sighed with relief as the room’s atmosphere became tinged with sanity.

  “It adds up to three hundred-odd separate reports,” went on Maude. “They need a digest of this material in London at once. Rhys-Eccles is a political economist and a bit of a mental freak. They brought him along just for the job. He’s to go off to some quiet place with these reports. They say that in three days he’ll be able to come up with a four or five-thousand word summation which will give the British government a basis for immediate formulation of policy.

  “Section Five has been assigned to look after Rhys-Eccles. We’re sending him up to Camp Greenwood in the Blue Ridge. You’ll go along to do his typing, give him whatever assistance you can, and see that he lives to finish the job.”

  Kaspir was pacing up and down inspecting his fingernails. “I told him all that,” he put in, bored.

  “Keep him alive?” I said.

  “Just this,” said Maude. “The Gestapo people most certainly know of the commission’s work. We have reason to believe they’re keeping an eye on Rhys-Eccles. We even have information that an agent named Maria Hencken has been assigned to obtain his summary. About Maria Hencken we know nothing.”

  “Nothing,” neighed Kaspir from the window, with gloomy pleasure.

  “Rhys-Eccles is at the Tuart Hotel under the name of Martin Rice. You’ll be George Potts, his secretary. Pick him up tonight at eight. Your train leaves at eight thirty. Take a portable typewriter, of course. You’ll find Rhys-Eccles difficult. Put up with him as best you can. And if anything should happen—”

  “Call me,” said Kaspir over his shoulder. I scribbled down the private number Maude gave me.

  “Now run along and be a good boy,” ordered this surprising woman, bestowing a motherly kiss on my forehead as she pushed me gently toward the door. The kiss sent a tingle down to my heels. Outside, in the hall, I paused to stuff the tickets into my wallet.

  “Now,” I heard Kaspir say menacingly, “where did you put ’em?”

  Maude’s voice was full of shrewish satisfaction. “I threw ’em every one out of the window.”

  Kaspir’s shrill moan rattled the door. “The whole box?” he screamed.

  “If you think, with your figure,” said Maude acidly, “that you’re going to sit in that office and stuff down those nauseating chocolate cherries all day…”

  I hurried away to preserve what remained of my reason. The Negro houseboy–Columbia law graduate let me out. His intelligent mouth broadened at my dazed expression, but his “Good-day, suh,” was strictly in character.

  * * *

  —

  That was how I met Colonel Stephen Kaspir, the strange head of Section Five. Now I sat beside Rhys-Eccles’s cooling corpse. Voices in the night told of the return of the rest of the picnic party. I went out to take charge of things until Kaspir arrived.

  I relayed Miss Ogilvie’s account of the attack on Effie Davis and the finding of Rhys-Eccles’s body to Colonel Kaspir as soon as we had laid him on the bed in Rhys-Eccles’s room. It was two A.M. and he had just arrived, wobbling into the guest cabin supported by Maude, resplendent in mink over a dazzling dinner gown, and Joe, the chauffeur. Kaspir was in full evening dress, very rumpled, and there were spots on his shirtfront.

  Maude said crisply to Joe: “Bicarbonate of soda. Plenty of it.”

  She turned to me. “Plane-sick all the way from Washington. When he got out at Lynchburg he got ground-sick. In the station wagon he was car-sick.”

  She wheeled on Kaspir, who lay with his eyes shut, his broad face the color of a mud beach at low tide. “Have a chocolate cherry?” she cooed cruelly, throwing off the mink wrap and filling the room with the glitter of sequins. “Well, what happened, Kettle?”

  So I told everything. Kaspir struggled up on an elbow. His eyes were on the sheeted figure in the big chair, but I could feel him listening. When I got through he rolled himself to the edge of the bed.

  Maude smoothed the sequins over her hips. “Well,” she said to Kaspir, “what about it, Steve? Do we form a posse and beat the woods for the masked intruder?”

  Kaspir pursed his lips contemptuously. When he spoke, it was to me, an unintelligible mumbling accompanied by a village-idiot waving of the hands.

  “In English,” said Maude resignedly, “that means ‘where is everybody now?’ ”

  “Professor Davis and Effie are in the room overhead, of course,” I replied. “The others are all in their rooms. The Ogilvies are next to the Davises. The Hinkles—that’s the bride and groom—are in the suite next to this one. The servants are in their own quarters. Sparklet, the owner, has rooms at the main lodge. I told him to stay there.”

  Kaspir spoke clearly now. “What else did you do?”

  “Not a thing, except call you,” I returned defensively. “Murder’s not in my line. My specialty is propaganda.”

  Kaspir chuckled delightedly. “We’ll make something of Kettle yet.” He was on his feet now, a monolith of black broadcloth and smudged line. The weakness seemed to have passed.

  “I hope so,” I said sourly. “Something in Propaganda preferred.”

  “Balderdash,” said Kaspir goodnaturedly. “You haven’t seen a lady bareback rider in camp, have you?”

  “Not a spangle of one.” What could you do but humor the big maniac? “Unless its Mrs. Hinkle. Why?”

  “Hinkle?” said Kaspir. “First name?”

  “Martha.”

  “Hmmm!” He addressed the silent Maude. “Heard today that the Hencken female used to be a circus performer—”

  His bulk became suddenly animated, so unexpectedly that Maude and I both jumped. He minced over to the big chair and twitched the sheet from Rhys-Eccles with a magician’s flourish. Bending with a grunt, he peered into the dead man’s face. Then he drew a forefinger down the stiff left cheek, like a man sampling wet paint, and stared myopically at the fingertip, clucking softly to himself. I glanced sardonically at Maude. To my surprise, her expression was no
longer scornful. She was watching Kaspir intently.

  Kaspir flung the sheet carelessly over Rhys-Eccles’s peaked face and turned to the paneled wall beside the chair, his back to us. The next instant he walked with short steps over to the French windows and flung them open, sticking his head into the night, still clucking. He withdrew his head after a minute and slammed the French window. A pane of glass fell in gleaming shards at his feet.

  “Clumsy, eh?” He was beaming. He looked at the big chair. “Poor little guy. Not much to live for now, except his job. Done that.”

  He addressed me directly. “Keep Maude amused. Gotta see some people.” And he left the room, apparently under the impression that because he was tip-toeing he was making no noise. The door banged behind him like a studio sound effect.

  Maude looked pityingly at me. “You’re bearing up better than most,” she said. “He gave one man Cheyne-Stokes breathing.” She passed me slowly in an aura of gardenia perfume and once more brushed my forehead with her lips. Again I tingled. She sat down on Rhys-Eccles’s bed, crossing her admirable legs. “Listen,” she said.

  So we listened, and my muddled brain conceived the notion that Rhys-Eccles was listening, too. I had a feeling that if I removed that sheet I would find a mocking smile on his thin lips.

  Colonel Kaspir was very busy. We needed no television set to follow his progress through the guest cabin.

  He clumped up the steps and went to the Davises’s suite, directly overhead first. His chat with Professor Davis was mild and brief. Next we heard him knocking at the Ogilvies’s door, and for a few minutes high, harsh, undistinguishable words caromed about the whole cabin. The door slammed.

  Then the stairway shook again and he pounded on the Hinkles’s door down the hall from us. He involved himself in a neighing altercation with John Hinkle that gradually simmered into whispers.

  Next he poked his head in our door and Maude, after a long look at the grimace on his face, got up.

  “Come on,” he neighed gaily. “We’re all going up to Effie’s room.”

  * * *

  —

  I’ll never forget that brief quarter-hour in “Effie’s room,” which was really her father’s.

  In the first place, it was strangely like a courtroom, with the child herself, propped up in bed, chalk-white except for the bruised area on her face, as the judge. A little red wrapper around her shoulders hid most of the long-sleeved, old-fashioned nightgown she wore. The white edge of the plaster cast around her right wrist framed the wrist like a cuff inside the black silk sling.

  Kaspir sat mountainously on the bed beside her, fingering a heavy oak walking stick belonging to Professor Davis. As the company straggled in, the Ogilvies heavy-eyed but apparently sober, the Hinkles oddly apprehensive, I noticed that Professor Davis shifted, too casually, to a position beside John Hinkle, and that Hinkle was breathing hard.

  Kaspir drew a bead on John Hinkle with the walking stick.

  “Left the picnic awhile, didn’t you?” he asked unpleasantly. His blue eyes glinted. “Effie,” he said very gently, his other hand touching the child’s thin shoulder, “Mr. Hinkle was the man you saw leaving Mr. Rice’s room—the man who knocked you down—wasn’t he?”

  Effie’s eyes were riveted on Hinkle. We could barely hear her “Yes.”

  Hinkle’s laugh was a feeble effort.

  “I want,” said Kaspir with flute-like clarity, “that report.”

  But Hinkle was gone, tearing himself from Professor Davis’s frantic grasp, upending an Ogilvie sister as he dived for the hall. Davis was after him like a fighting hound. Kaspir, clutching the oak stick, materialized beside me and shot after them, screaming “Close the door!” I ran after Kaspir, jerking the door shut.

  Davis and Hinkle were struggling on the floor at the head of the stairs as Kaspir and I reached them, a tangle of thrashing fists and feet. Kaspir took what I instantly saw to be very bad aim with the walking stick. Before I could catch his arm it hissed downward. A dull sound of wood on scalp and bone.

  “Ah!” said Kaspir, straightening himself and looking down at the unconscious figure of Professor Davis. He stretched out a long arm, helped Hinkle up. “Stay with him,” he said to Hinkle, indicating the prone Davis. “Also,” he added, turning away, “thanks.”

  We re-entered the bedroom. I was quite resigned now. Somebody was crazy. I only hoped it was Kaspir, not me.

  Kaspir lumbered over to the bed. “Your father’s quite safe, Effie.” His ironical tone was like a slap at the child’s face. An Ogilvie sister stepped forward angrily. Maude held her back.

  “Let me see that arm of yours, Effie,” demanded Kaspir, stretching out his left hand. His right still gripped the stick.

  Then I went sick inside.

  For Kaspir snatched the plaster cast-enclosed arm from its black silk sling and was battering the plaster to pieces with the handle of the walking stick—

  I can’t remember the rest in detail, but I do remember something flashing in Effie’s free hand and Kaspir screaming, “Little devil!” and his great hand shaking out and closing around her little throat.

  Then there was turmoil among the spectators as Kaspir and the child flopped across the bed in an absurd, squirming battle that was awkward but deadly.

  It ended with Kaspir flinging Effie heavily against the headboard. The impact dazed her. We crowded around the bed as Kaspir rolled off and got to his feet. I heard Maude gasp. The Ogilvie sisters clung to each other, whimpering.

  The struggle had ripped away the upper portion of Effie’s nightgown. A single glance explained many things to me: why Effie always wore long-sleeved dresses and little cape-like coats, why she spoke in a whisper, why woolen stockings always encased her spindly legs.

  For Effie Davis was a woman. Her torso, bare, made that very plain. And her thin arms were weirdly muscular.

  A midget, if you like, but a woman.

  Kaspir paid no attention to her, even when she stirred, sat up, and cursed him shamelessly in a shrill, evil voice.

  He was plucking bits of plaster from the Rhys-Eccles Report, newly freed from the plaster cast that had encircled Effie’s “broken” arm. He said quietly: “I suppose that thing out in the hall is your husband, eh, Maria?”

  Effie’s reply, describing her relationship to Davis, was unprintable.

  * * *

  —

  “Handkerchief business, you see o’ course,” mumbled Kaspir thickly through a ham sandwich. He gulped two mouthfuls of scalding coffee. “Powder on the old boy’s cheek. That gin-swizzling female don’t use it. Clean plaster on cast, too. And porch. Got that?”

  Maude’s sequins rattled venomously as she tossed pad and pencil to the bed, lit a cigarette, and fixed Kaspir with a grim, uncompromising eye, “Tell it straight and I’ll take it down,” was her ruthless ultimatum.

  The relaxed hulk of Kaspir filled the big chair lately vacated by Mortimer Rhys-Eccles, who had been removed and deposited on the bed in my room. The Hinkles were present by invitation. Upstairs the Ogilvies slumbered alcoholically. Behind the main lodge, we knew, Annie and Joe sat with shotguns before the strong door of the vegetable dugout, serving as a detention cell for Maria Effie Davis Hencken and her “father.”

  Kaspir looked diffidently at Maude.

  “Oh, all right,” he said mildly. He put the sandwich down, leaned forward. Maude reached for the pad, poised the pencil above it in her slender crimson-nailed fingers.

  “Little she-Judas strangled Rhys-Eccles, o’ course,” began Kaspir. “See a lot o’ midgets doing bareback stuff—acrobatics—in circuses around Germany, Poland, Hungary.

  “Old Miss Gin-Swizzler lays Fraulein Judas on bed after coming back from picnic. Miss Gin-Swizzler goes to own room. Little she-Judas eases outa bed, slips off plaster cast, slides down porch support to Rhys-Eccles’s porch—” He nodded
toward the French windows. “Taps on window,” he said.

  “Who’d Rhys-Eccles open French window for but child? Lost his own in London. Likes children. They probably knew that—reason they used little Judas-devil. He opens window, lets her in, sits down in chair. She, affectionate, goes coyly around back of chair, slips arm around his neck. About time Rhys-Eccles begins to wonder where plaster cast on arm is, little she-Judas tightens arm around his neck—braces herself against back of chair.

  “You saw that arm. Like wire rope.”

  Maude’s pencil flew across her pad. The Hinkles were hunched forward in their chairs.

  “Garroted, Rhys-Eccles was, by that little arm. But he fought. Banged Fraulein Judas’s head against wall. But he caved in. She took report, shinnied back up to own room, unlocking hall door of this room before she left.

  “Face badly bruised, though. Must be explained somehow. Ties handkerchief around head to hide bruise, replaces cast on arm, goes to old Miss Gin, tells her she’s going out to play. Goes downstairs. Stamps feet, cries out, tears handkerchief off, lies down, swears she’s been struck down by mysterious man. Bruise visible now. Ha! Simple!

  “Rest’s easy. Davis and little she-Judas get rid of old cast, make new one around Rhys-Eccles Report.

  “Powder was give-away. Fraulein Judas had to powder up to look pale and frail. Left some on Rhys-Eccles’s cheek when she”—here Kaspir was human enough to shudder—“cuddled her cheek against his. Also some on wall when face banged against it. And how could child with broken arm tie handkerchief around head, unless she used ‘broken’ arm?”

  “But why that scene with Mr. Hinkle here?” I protested.

  “Davis armed,” growled Kaspir. “Wary, too. So told him Hinkle was man—get ready to help. Very pleased to, Davis was. Wonder what Davis’s real name is. Maybe Washington knows.”

  He yawned cavernously. The Hinkles got up, silent.

  “Siddown,” ordered Kaspir hospitably. They sat. “Chat with Maude and friend Kettle-Potts here.” He glanced at his watch. “We leave at daylight, and that’s only an hour.”