The really terrifying thing about Lampeter was that he was so ordinary. Neither large nor small, neither intellectual nor brutish. Running decently to fat, as a man may at forty-five. Wearing glasses for reading. The only really surprising thing about him was that he was still a bachelor. You would have thought some woman would have picked him up and popped him in her pocket long ago.
And whatever dragons lived inside his head, whatever dread familiar stood at his elbow whispering commands that could not be disobeyed, whatever worlds he created and whatever worlds he destroyed, they left no mark at all upon his placid face. No single ripple distorted the surface of the dark lake to give warning of the creature that laired in the depths.
How Mr. Robinson and Mr. Smith found out the truth about Lampeter is a mystery. The Robinsons and the Smiths know everything. They live by knowledge. Almost the first time they saw him, Mr. Robinson, who spoke five languages, said to Mr. Smith in one of them, “Here is our man.”
And Mr. Smith said, “I believe you are right.”
“There’s going to be an all-time record scrum,” said “Tabs” Milligan. “Every paper in the land’s here.”
“Of course there’s a scrum,” said “Polly” Flinders. He was first photographer for the Trumpet, and conscious of the prestige this conferred. “It’s not an itsy-bitsy little film star. Tabs. It’s Paraman. He is news.”
“There’s old Cummins, looking like a constipated crab. Clever with outdoor work, though. Lots of faces I don’t recognize.”
“If they don’t get a move on it’s going to be too dark to take proper photographs,” said Polly. “And this is one we don’t want to miss, isn’t it? Prime Minister of England shaking hands with Paraman. Think of that!”
“It is a sign of the new age,” said a small, dark man with a beard.
“It’s a bloody miracle,” said Polly. “And, boy, here she comes.”
The four-engined airliner swung in a majestic curve across the airport, headed into the wind, centered itself on some invisible mark, and came down as firm and straight as if it had been ruled on paper. The pilot picked up the eighty tons of metal and laid it down on the runway as lightly as a feather.
Lines of men in blue began running.
“They’ve got as many police here as the Coronation and May Day put together,” panted Milligan. He was trotting forward with the other newspapermen.
It was superbly organized.
One minute the landing strip was empty. The next minute there was a thin but unbroken blue line round the airliner, fifty yards from it. Unbroken on three sides. Through the fourth, in three well-regimented platoons, each with its roped approach way, came the Deputation of Welcome (morning dress and smiles), the Security Detachment (bowler hats and frowns) and the forty or fifty photographers, in every variety of dress and with no time at all to bother what they looked like.
Landing steps were quickly run out.
But someone had miscalculated. Insufficient frontage had been allowed for the photographers to form a single line. Normally this might not have mattered a great deal, but this was by no means a normal occasion.
The line shifted and spread. Two policemen tried to hold back the ends. They might as well have tried to grasp quicksilver. The policemen were evaded, their protests unheeded, as the line elongated, then swept round in a half circle, until the right-hand end rested almost under the shadow of the great airplane.
Down the gangway walked two large men, in brown coats and black hats. They saw the stretching line of photographers, and frowned. But events were moving too fast for them, too.
For, behind them at that moment, appeared the world-famous figure photographed a hundred thousand times, but until then never seen in the flesh in the Western world. The small beard, the face, almost startlingly brown, the graying hair, the smiling tired eyes. The eyes that had seen everything and forgotten nothing.
The battery of newsreel cameras on the parked vans started to purr in grateful unison. The flashlights of the photographers winked almost simultaneously.
The Prime Minister stepped forward with an impulsive gesture of boyish charm (rehearsed behind locked doors until it had achieved a polished spontaneity), and thrust out his hand. Paraman grasped it, and said something with a broad smile.
The Prime Minister looked round for the interpreter—and in that very moment it happened.
Paraman pulled has hand away and laid it over his heart. A look of wonder came into his eyes. It was as though a question, often asked, had surprisingly been answered.
Then his knees folded under him and he dropped, quietly and without fuss, onto his face on the concrete runway.
“For a moment,” said the Prime Minister, “I thought he’d had a heart attack. That would have been bad enough. Then I saw the blood on his hand.”
“Yes, sir,” said Commander Elfe.
“Even then I couldn’t grasp it. Murder!”
“Extraordinary timing,” agreed the Commander. His own head was loose on his shoulders at that moment, and none knew it better than he. “We do appreciate the importance of clearing this up quickly.”
They were standing in the magnificent Privy Council room in Whitehall. The Prime Minister moved over to the bow window and stared across at the waters of St. James’s Park.
He had, in fact, and quite cold-bloodedly, considered whether or not he should sack the head of the Special Branch, and had come to the conclusion that for the time being he had better support him.
“I don’t want to exaggerate this,” he said, “nor, God knows, to minimize it. I don’t think it will mean war. Their radio’s been white-hot, of course, but the world’s outgrown the Sarajevo days. On the other hand, if we don’t catch the man, and prove that he did it, and why he did it, and clear the whole thing up, why, it’ll leave a legacy of distrust for ten years—in just that part of the world where we most need trust.”
He came back into the room. The Commander was not quite certain whether the Prime Minister added, “And it will certainly lose us the next election.” Spoken or not, the thought was there.
“I’m sure you’ll do your best,” the Prime Minister concluded, shaking hands almost formally with Commander Elfe.
“Like a doctor,” said the Commander to Superintendent Bliss, “who has just pronounced sentence of death with a hope, a very faint hope, of reprieve. How are you getting on with those bloody photographers?”
“There are exactly forty-five of them,” said the Superintendent, “and they are all precisely what they said they were, if you follow me.”
“Yes.”
“About two-thirds of them were from newspapers. Some old and tried hands. Some new boys. In every case the newspaper concerned says they were absolutely reliable.”
“Of course.”
“The other third were from private news agencies, large and small. But since there’s nothing to stop anyone forming a news agency—it only needs a man, a boy, and a back office near Fleet Street—”
“Quite so,” said Elfe. “I suppose we’re concentrating on the smaller agencies. Was it a camera gun?”
“I think so. It would be the obvious way, wouldn’t it?”
“Have the experts made anything out of the weapon you found on the runway?”
“It’s a small air pistol of a very powerful new type. The pressure’s too high for ordinary loading methods. It’s fired with a compressed air capsule which, incidentally, gives it a higher muzzle velocity than a .38.”
“And therefore higher accuracy.”
“Yes. A real murder weapon. Two other points about it. It’s got no sighting apparatus of any sort, and the exterior of the muzzle is screw-threaded an inch from the end.”
“That sounds conclusive to me,” said Elfe. “It was specially made to screw into the socket of a camera. And it was calibrated to the camera sights. Right? When the cross wire of the camera viewfinder was over the victim’s heart, the murderer simply pressed the button. All right. You’ve got all the cameras. It shouldn’t be difficult to see which one’s been tampered with.”
“It shouldn’t,” agreed the Superintendent. “But it is. Most of the cameras are made to be taken apart, and all of them, except the very smallest, could have been used to hide a gun. But none of them has actually got a socket that fits the screw threads on the gun we found. Of course, we’re not dealing with fools. It would have been quite easy to make the thing in two parts, with an outer metal bush that fits into the camera and is screw-threaded in the center to take the gun.”
“I’m afraid that’s right, too.” Elfe thought it out slowly. His mind was not working with its usual calm precision, and that wasn’t only because he had been up for two nights. For the first time he was beginning to weigh the odds against them. “I take it that as soon as he’d fired, the assassin would unscrew gun and bush—quite a natural sort of gesture—if anyone did spare him a second glance, they’d think he was removing an exposed plate or something. Drops the gun down his trouser leg and onto the ground. Puts the bush in his pocket. Just an ordinary small piece of metal. By the way, they were searched pretty thoroughly, weren’t they? Was anything of the sort found?”
‘‘No. But by that time they’d crossed two hundred yards of grass field, and been standing about for half an hour. It could easily have been trodden into the ground. Or dropped down a drain.”
“All the same, we’d better search for it,” said Elfe. “And find it. We can’t hold forty-five photographers on suspicion, even in a case like this.”
There was a great deal to do, but, unfortunately for Elfe’s peace of mind, very little that he could do himself.
There were forty-five men, with forty-five backgrounds that needed checking. There were forty-five cameras and one gun that needed a laboratory going-over; and thirty editors and fifteen agencies who had to be told why they couldn’t have the photographs their men had taken of the biggest news event of the century.
(“As long as no one gets a photograph, I don’t mind,” said the editor of the largest paper of all, quite genially. “But you release a single one to anyone ahead of anyone else, and you’ll raise a head of steam which will blow you out of Scotland Yard.”)
Much of this could be attended to by the regular organization. But there were other matters, more subtle, less objective, which could be attended to only by Elfe’s own department. The motives behind the killing. Known terrorist organizations. Pressure groups. The dim politics of the half world of secret agents, official and unofficial, of military attaches who had never been in any army and of trade delegates who dealt with anything but trade.
It was not at all plain, for example, to whose advantage the killing of Paraman, at such a time and place, might have been. To his successors? Yet it seemed clear from their reactions that it had come as a bigger surprise to them than to anyone else. To those who wished to increase the tension between England and Paraman’s country, and might profit from such tension? Elfe was not a great believer in the figure of the world financier who manufactures wars and revolutions for his own enrichment. Most of the big financiers he knew were timid men who liked a thirty per cent margin of security for their money.
The really frightening thought was that the killing was probably quite illogical. There were at least three groups in England who would kill merely for killing’s sake. Imaginary grievances, sterile causes, which were rooted in terror and flourished in the occasional sensational stroke.
“When we get to the bottom of the matter,” Elfe said to Bliss, “we shall find that Paraman was killed because his predecessor had someone’s aunt flogged in Poland twenty years ago.”
“Doesn’t matter who it is,” said Bliss, “as long as we catch them. Did you see the Trumpet headline today?”
“I never read the papers,” said Elfe.
Nevertheless, the writing was on the wall. In forty-eight hours at the most, the Foreign Secretary was going to be on his feet answering the questions of a critical House; and unless he had some answers to give, public opinion was going to demand a scapegoat. And Commander Elfe had no delusions as to who would be cast for that role.
Early that evening, he left his office and walked slowly down Parade Street, into the Park, past the south end of the Palace, and out into Buckingham Gate. In a lesser figure, his method of progress might almost have been described as furtive. He paused in front of the modest building which houses the Director of Public Prosecutions, and then, almost as if it were an afterthought, went inside.
The Commissionaire saluted as Elfe said, “Has Mr. Hughes gone home yet?”
“I don’t think so, sir. Shall I tell him you’re here?”
“I’ll announce myself,” said Elfe. He walked up one flight of steps and stopped outside a door marked Deputy Director, and underneath that, Gladwyn Hughes, and underneath both, KEEP OUT!
He opened the door without knocking and a white-faced black-jowled man who was plotting something on a large sheet of graph paper pinned to the table roared, “Get out!” and then, looking up, “Come in. I thought it was that fool Langley. You don’t happen to know a function of seven that combines with itself to produce either nought or infinity?”
“Not being a mathematician or a magician, no.”
Gladwyn Hughes was both a mathematician and a magician. He completed the Times crossword puzzle every morning between Woking and Surbiton, had played contract bridge for England, and was capable of thinking in three different planes simultaneously. He had come to the D.P.P.’s office via the Legal branch of Scotland Yard, and would one day head the C.I.D.
“You’re worried about the Paraman case?”
“I’d like your help,” said Elfe.
“Of course. Anything I can do. What do you want?”
Elfe sat down in the shabby armchair. It was very comfortable. “What we really need,” he said, “is a fresh mind on the problem.”
“Do my best,” said Hughes. “I’ve read about it, of course. Tell it from the beginning to end. It’ll help you as well as me.”
The long hand had gone right round the old-fashioned clock on the mantelshelf before Elfe had finished.
“It’s a stinker,” said Hughes. “If we were a totalitarian country, we’d have all those cameramen in cells now, giving them Number One treatment, and the first to break down would be awarded the starring role in the forthcoming trial, and everybody else would be covered with coats of whitewash.”
“Except me,” said Elfe.
“Well, yes. I expect you’d have been shot already. Pour encourager les autres.” Hughes looked curiously at Elfe. As a psychologist, it always interested him to see how his superiors and colleagues reacted under pressure. He thought Elfe was doing quite well. A little tight round the mouth, but plenty in reserve still.
“Could I see the films?”
“Now?” said Elfe. “Yes. I expect so. If I telephone from here, they could have them ready by the time we get there.”
In the basement of Scotland Yard there is a tiny private cinema, at which very odd films are sometimes shown. The two men settled into their seats, and the white fanlight of the projector cut across the darkness.
“This is the longest version,” said Elfe. “Unfortunately, the focus is on the Prime Minister and Paraman. You can see the photographers, but they’re a bit blurred.”
“Again,” said Hughes a little later. And still later, “Again.” The second time he had a stop watch in his hand. The third time he made notes.
As they came out of the projection room, Hughes said to Elfe, “I want to get hold of one of those newsreel cameramen. A reliable one. Can you do that? I’ve got the glimmering of an idea. If it comes to anything, where can I find you?”
“At my flat,” said Elfe. “I don’t suppose I shall go to bed.”
It was two o’clock in the morning when Hughes arrived. His eye was bright, and he said “No” regretfully to the whiskey Elfe pushed across. “I’ve been drinking with an Irishman called Milligan. I survived, but only just. Now, I’m going to strike a bargain with you.”
Elfe cocked an eye at him.
“If I give you the idea that leads to the man you want, will you let me stay in on the case until the end?”
Elfe hesitated barely a second, then said, “Yes, of course.”
“All right. Then here it is. All you’ve got to do to locate your chap is to develop all the films and plates in their cameras.”
“There are about three hundred of them.”
“It doesn’t matter if there are three thousand. What my cameraman told me—and, remember, they see dozens of receptions every week—was this. The normal drill at an airport is that the photographers are marshaled up in a sort of column. They’re not allowed to dodge all over the place. The ones in front take their shots and then it’s an understood thing that they then stand aside and the next lot take theirs—and so on. It works quite well normally, because if you’ve got a lot of agency boys there, they don’t all want the same picture. One lot will take the exit from the plane, the next will snap the walk across the tarmac, the next the ceremonial handshake, and so on. You follow me?”
“Yes, but—”
“Wait. Unfortunately, in this case, it didn’t work that way. The occasion was unique. Everyone was impatient. Instead of staying put and doing the thing in an orderly way, the photographers behaved like a lot of bobby soxers, dodged the police, and strung out in a single line across the runway.”
“Yes. The film showed all that, but—”
“Wait again. That meant they all had an equal chance of taking a photograph. And I’ve no doubt at all that they all did. Except one. He couldn’t. He had a gun in his camera. Remember?”
Elfe breathed out slowly. Then he mumbled, “I said it needed a fresh mind. Keep in touch.”
At eleven o’clock the next morning, the red telephone on Mr. Hughes’s desk sounded off and the voice of Elfe said, “Bull’s-eye, Gladwyn. It’s a Mr. Lampeter. Works for the Multum in Parvo Agency in Shoe Lane. Founded three months ago. Directors Mr. Smith and Mr. Robinson.”
“What are you going to do?”
“We shall try some shock treatment,” said Elfe. “Stay where I can reach you.”
Lampeter was worried. He had done just what he had been told, both at the time and afterward.
“Afterward is important,” Mr. Smith had said. “Just behave quite normally. They’ll confiscate your camera, of course, but it won’t tell them anything. You’ve got another. Go out and get on with the job.”
So, for two days and the beginning of a third, Mr. Lampeter had sat in the backroom office, with the deaf and dumb girl, and had sallied forth to photograph two weddings, a presentation of athletic trophies, and the birth of triplets.
But he wished They would get in touch with him. They had told him it would be soon—but three days! And then the incident of that morning. It had upset him.
The dumb girl made a mooing noise to attract his attention and he looked up. The red light was showing above the side door—the one which led by the emergency staircase to the back entrance in Pepys Court.
He jumped to his feet and unlocked the door. Mr. Smith and Mr. Robinson came in, and something in their faces chilled the welcome from Mr. Lampeter’s lips.
“What is it?” he said. “What’s happened? Is something wrong?”
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Robinson. “What happened to you this morning?”
“At the wedding?”
“Yes.”
“It was all a mistake. A big man bumped into me in the crowd. He apologized. Somehow I lost my wallet. It was found later in the corner of the room. I suppose I must have dropped it there.”
“Was there anything in it?”
“Just some money. And my commutation ticket. How did you know about it? Were you there?”
“We were there,” said Mr. Smith. He did not think it necessary to explain that Lampeter had not been out of their sight since he left the airport.
“The man who bumped into you. Did you know he was a detective?”
“A detective! Are you sure?”
“Of course, I’m sure. His name is Sergeant Hibley. And he is in the Special Branch.”
“But why?”
“I should think it’s quite plain,” said Mr. Robinson brutally. “They wouldn’t pick your pocket for love.”
There was silence in the tiny dusty office. The deaf and dumb girl broke it by pushing an envelope into her typewriter and addressing it noisily. She disliked the shape of Mr. Robinson’s mouth, and Mr. Smith’s eyes frightened her.
“You remember,” said Mr. Lampeter breathlessly. “You promised that if anything went wrong you would look after me.”
“Of course,” said Mr. Smith. “We said it and we meant it. The car’s outside. Get your hat and coat.”
Mr. Robinson wrote on a piece of paper, “We shan’t be back today. Lock up when you go,” and pushed it in front of the girl, who looked at it indifferently. Men, with their comings and goings and self-importance, meant little in her private world.
“The car’s outside,” said Mr. Smith. He looked at his watch and made a calculation. It was five o’clock on an early summer evening. They had almost four hours of daylight ahead of them. It should be enough.
“I’ve always wanted to see how you manage this part,” said Gladwyn. He sank into the back seat of the car. “When do we sight them?”
Elfe nodded absently. He was busy with a roll of large-scale maps. Beside the driver, a young police wireless operator with black eyes and a cheerful, gypsy face twiddled the dial of the set.
“We flushed them ten minutes ago,” said Elfe. “Shoe Lane, up Ludgate Hill, along Cannon Street, over London Bridge. New Kent Road. Old Kent Road.”
“If you’re not following him,” said Hughes, “who is?”
“No one, really. That isn’t how it works at all. This is the first part of Operation Network.” He demonstrated on the map. “There are a limited number of places you must go past when you leave London. If he breaks Southeast, I give the codeword and about twenty-five posts are manned—each with a wireless—easy, really… Has he got past New Cross, Illingworth?”
“Coming up to it now, sir.”
“Right or left?”
There was a moment’s pause, then the set crackled. “Left, sir.”
“Looks like A2.”
“What happens when he gets out in the open country?”
“You’ll see,” said Elfe.
The car slid on through the warm summer evening.
“A2 it is, sir,” said the operator. “We’re going to air control now.”
“Do you mean to say you do it with airplanes?”
“One airplane, way up, to coordinate. The real work is done by helicopters. They are the ideal answer to a car in open country. Keep above a closed car and a bit behind it, and ten to one the people inside don’t even know it’s there. The real limitation is speed. If the controlling aircraft sees that the helicopter is getting left behind, it whistles up another from in front.”
“I see,” said Hughes. “Have you any idea where those characters are taking Lampeter? Or what they’re going to do with him?”
“Bypassing Dartford,” said the operator. “On Rochester Road.”
Elfe marked the location on his map and said, “I could guess the answer to the second question.”
Mr. Robinson was an expert driver, and he drove his car hard. Lampeter sat in the back with Mr. Smith.
Once, as the milestones showed Rochester approaching, he said, “Where are we going?”
“To the coast,” said Mr. Smith. “We’ll have to hide you until we can get you out of the country.”
“I see,” said Lampeter. He shivered a little, and Mr. Smith looked down at him curiously. “There’s nothing to be frightened of.”
“I’m not frightened,” said Lampeter. “I had a feeling that I’d been asleep for a long time, and was just waking up.”
“Perfect,” said Mr. Smith. “We turn off here, I think.”
The car threaded a network of byroads, which degenerated into country lanes. Ahead of them lay the sea. Lampeter could sense it.
“Down here. It doesn’t look like much of a track, but it’ll take the car.”
Suddenly they were out of the close country and on the marsh. A short, straight, sandy track, pointing out like a finger to a tumbledown house and barn.
“Is this where I hide?”
“This is where you stop,” agreed Mr. Smith.
The car came to a halt. Mr. Robinson cut the engine and they climbed out.
In the silence they could hear the birds at evensong, the distant complaints of the marsh cattle, and the buzzing of a million insects.
Lampeter pushed open the door of the old house and went inside. A few minutes later he came out, a puzzled look on his face.
“There’s nothing there,” he said. “Nothing for cooking, no bed—”
He stopped. Mr. Robinson had come round from the back of the car. He carried a spade. Mr. Smith was taking something from his pocket.
For a fattish man in bad training, Lampeter moved quickly. And he moved in the one direction that gave him a chance—between Mr. Smith and Mr. Robinson.
Mr. Robinson swiped at him with the spade and missed. Lampeter ran with the speed of fear. Then there was a sharp crack, and a curious sound like the clapping of soft hands as the air opened and shut over his right shoulder. Then it was as if steel fingers had gripped him by the arm. The force of it almost spun him round, but he kept on running. There was a gate ahead and a line of bushes. And through the bushes something winked suddenly, in the sun. It was the windshield of a car, moving.
“Help,” croaked Lampeter through dry lips. Then something caught him full in the back and the earth rose up at him and the red globe of the sun swung round full circle and he was diving into merciful blackness.
As he went down he seemed to hear, far off, two more shots.
Elfe looked down at the three men. Mr. Smith and Mr. Robinson were both dead.
“That’s always the way of it,” he said to Gladwyn Hughes. “If things go right, they’re terrific. If things go wrong, they destroy themselves. In their code, it’s the only answer to failure.”
“Is Lampeter dead?”
“Three parts. But I think we’ll be able to pull him back.”
“Why bother?” said Hughes. He looked at the spade and mattock. “Wouldn’t it be easiest to finish the job, and bury them all?”
“My dear Gladwyn,” said Elfe. “You can’t be serious. Our job is to patch the little man up, then put him in the dock and deal with him according to law. Right? Right.”
AUTHOR’S POSTSCRIPT: When walking on a quiet summer evening through the Queen Anne period streets which lie to the south of Buckingham Place, I found myself opposite the door of the Director of Public Prosecutions office, which was a charming building in Buckingham Gate. The door opened and a middle aged, white faced, black-haired man, wearing a black homburg hat walked slowly out. He was evidently deep in thought, and I could not help wondering what criminal’s life might be affected by the outcome of his meditation. Finally, he drew from his pocket a copy of the Times newspaper, and with great satisfaction inserted a word in the bottom right hand corner crossword. This was the beginning of the story.