10

All Through the Night

Neither man spoke again until they reached Whitehall. Loftus was digesting what Hammond had said: Hammond wondering if he had let personal dislike prejudice him. He admitted freely that he did not like the man—and not merely for that truculence and self-assertiveness Washington had tried so vainly to defend. What he felt was an instinctive and possibly quite irrational distrust. But as both men knew, if he were right and Livesey was not to be trusted, there was no reason for placing reliance in Washington.

Half-way up the stairs to Craigie’s office, Loftus said:

‘I can’t go all the way with you, Bruce.’

Hammond smiled in the darkness.

‘I haven’t gone all the way with myself, yet. A few hours’ sleep will help get it clearer in our minds. I wonder what else has been happening?’

Loftus sounded startled.

‘What else are you expecting?’

‘I don’t know. But we cast our net pretty widely—we may have caught some other fish.’ He pressed the button and the door slid open.

As they stepped into the big room, they realised there was something up.

Craigie was hurrying back to his desk—had obviously rushed to the mantelpiece to operate the door—and three telephones were ringing simultaneously.

What was more, Craigie’s desk was littered with paper.

Craigie’s desk, untidy!

Neither man had seen it like that in a very long time. Craigie’s precision in his records was a by-word. But now there was paper everywhere. As Craigie lifted one receiver and began making notes, they reached the desk and grabbed one each themselves.

‘Hallo,’ said a faintly languid voice in Hammond’s ear. ‘Is there someone about? This is Davidson. N-O-S …’

The speaker began to spell his name backwards—the simple formula which had served the Department well over many years. But there was only one voice like that one.

‘Hammond here, Wally,’ he interrupted. ‘What is it?’

‘Much ado!’ drawled Davidson. ‘And a Chelsea policeman doesn’t like me. I’ve been to River Walk—remember?’

‘Go on,’ said Hammond, grimly.

Davidson’s sleepy-sounding voice went on.

At 11, River Walk, Chelsea, there were stationed several of the more important members of the United States Post-War Finance Mission, whose task was to devise workable arrangements for the solving of financial and currency problems after the war. The leading member of the mission was one Ernest Cattino, New York banker, millionaire, philanthropist—a man of more than middle age and respected in all countries.

Cattino had been attacked.

Davidson had been at the house with another agent named Graham. The attack had been too powerfully made for them to prevent it altogether, but they had been able to avert the worst consequences. Two members of the staff had been badly injured: Cattino himself had escaped with minor injuries. Hammond gained a distinct impression that Davidson liked Cattino.

‘Did you catch anyone?’ he asked, crisply.

‘Yes. One nasty little roughneck—‘no talkee’ type. Hence my quarrel with the bobby. He wants to take the little beggar to the station, and I told him I wanted his corpus. What shall I do—let them have him?’

Hammond thought for a moment, then:

‘Yes. But send Graham with him to the station. I’ll call them and make sure they don’t give him a chance to get away or injure himself. Right, then, Wally—I’ve got to go. You stay with Cattino.’

A telephone was ringing in his ear. Loftus was speaking into a third, Craigie replacing a fourth and just about to lift the fifth. Hammond lifted the second and said into it:

‘Hold on a moment.’

There was a pad on the desk in front of him. He made a brief note of what Davidson had told him and tore the page off, anchoring it with the telephone before saying:

‘Right—fire away!’

‘Carruthers here,’ said a voice: ‘S-R-E …’

As he spelled through his name, Hammond jogged his own memory. Robert Carruthers had been to Hendon, where a leading member of Pan-American Airways, one Joseph Patton, was discussing Civil Aviation development with British Government representatives. Patton was famous chiefly for his fiercely outspoken opposition to the Luce term ‘globaloney’.

Carruthers and another agent, he now learned, had reached Patton’s hotel in time to prevent an attack materialising, but too late to catch the two men who had tried to stage it.

Hammond made the necessary notes and rang off.

Loftus was still talking, Craigie scribbling. Another telephone rang.

And so it went on, all through the night.

Of the forty Americans Craigie and Loftus had arranged to have watched, twenty-seven had been ‘visited’ and twenty-three saved from serious injury; in half of that number of cases, the attacks had been thwarted from the beginning. But three of the Americans had been killed, and there were other, minor casualties. Eleven of the assailants had been caught: all of them, for the moment, were lodged in the relevant local gaols.

It was getting towards dawn, when the telephones stopped ringing at last.

Craigie was looking gaunt and grey, Loftus tight-lipped but generating repressed excitement, and Hammond was frankly tired out. Despite his weariness, Craigie began at once to assemble and summarise their various notes, including Hammond’s report on Queen’s Gate, recording his findings and conclusions straight into the dictaphone. Loftus lit a gas-ring and brewed tea. Hammond’s mind was veering tiredly between all he had heard since reaching the office, and the nagging uncertainty of his grounds for distrusting Livesey.

He forced his mind away from Livesey.

Twenty-seven attacks, needing at least two assailants for each one. Fifty-four men at least—no: fifty-five, for there had been three at Queen’s Gate.

Craigie finished dictating and came across to sink into his big winged chair, smiling gratefully as Loftus handed him a cup of steaming tea.

‘Thanks, Bill.’

Hammond, already sipping his, murmured:

‘The tempo fast enough for you, William?’

‘Damn your eyes!’ Loftus growled and laughed shortly. ‘Yes, it’s moving—and proving how much we didn’t know. We have the luck in some ways, though.’

Craigie eyed him thoughtfully.

‘Luck?’ echoed Hammond.

‘Luck,’ Loftus repeated, emphatically. ‘If we hadn’t got the thing moving as soon as we heard about Kearnley, there’d have been nothing to stop it. Three American V.I.P.s murdered will cause sensation enough—twenty-seven would have caused the biggest shindy since Munich.’ He lit a cigarette; he had long since discarded his pipe.

‘The more you think about it, the more you must admit that it’s a brilliant conception.’ And as Hammond made strangled sounds of protest, he went on: ‘Simultaneous attacks on twenty-seven important Anglo-American collaborationists. Even if public opinion in America were persuaded to take it all right, look at the damage it would have done!’

‘Need we dwell on that?’ demanded Hammond. ‘God knows we’re all too horribly aware of it.’

Loftus grimaced wryly. ‘Yes, I’m talking too much. But you know—I’m only just beginning to realise how much depends on Garth. You caught that link-up, at Queen’s Gate?’

Hammond nodded.

‘What’s this?’ asked Craigie.

‘You saw Garth’s description of Russi? Well, Livesey’s description of the man who attacked him, and asked all those questions …’ He began to repeat it, verbatim.

‘You think it was Russi?’ Craigie interrupted.

‘It could be,’ said Hammond, quietly.

‘It probably was,’ murmured Loftus. ‘I’d give a lot to know what that man is doing right now.’

Paul Russi was sitting in the Wimbledon House, meeting the hard stare of Ryall, alias Franklin. Nothing in the expressions of either suggested pleasure or satisfaction. Russi’s round, pale eyes had lost their baby-like clarity. And there was nothing childish about the grim, harsh lines at his mouth.

Ryall was breathing heavily—like a man recovering from a severe shock.

‘Three!’ he rasped, at last. ‘Three!’ he exploded. ‘Three, out of twenty-seven! That is the best you could do?’

‘It’s no use blaming me!’ Russi snapped. ‘Obviously, they had been warned.’

‘They weren’t warned—it would not have been possible!’

‘I tell you they were waiting for us! It’s no use trying to blame me, Ryall—I won’t take it, understand? It’s your end that went wrong! You said you had everything arranged—that no one could guess what was coming.…’

‘There was no leakage!’ bellowed Ryall. ‘You damned fool, what do you think you are? Who do you think you are addressing?’ He rose to his full height—a great shaggy figure; terrifying in his rage. He shook a clenched fist close to Russi’s face; but the American did not shrink away, and there was hatred in his eyes. ‘My arrangements were perfect! A leakage was not possible! You hired men who were useless—fools! You were told to pay for the best—instead, you kept the money yourself, and bought cheap labour!’

‘That’s a lie,’ said Russi, thinly.

‘It’s the only possible explanation!’

‘It is a lie! I hired the best—men who’ve worked for me for years. You don’t have to worry about them!’ Abruptly, he added: ‘Listen here—you did your best; I did mine. I guess something we didn’t expect went wrong.’

Ryall still glowered, but returned to his chair in silence.

It was a little after six o’clock. They had been discussing reports from the attackers for the last hour; had just received the final word on the over-all situation. Each of them was confident of his own part in the venture; each certain the other was responsible for the failure of so many of the attacks. And lurking in the mind of both, was the sobering knowledge that eleven men, at least, had been arrested.

Ryall spoke at last; much more quietly, now.

‘You are right, my friend—we are both so worried by what has happened that we cannot think clearly. Something has gone wrong and we must find what it is. It must not be allowed to happen again. There are other things, also. We are in more danger than we have ever been before.’

‘None of the men knew me,’ Russi told him, flatly.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Say, listen—I’m not a beginner at this game, Ryall! I know how to fix it so they can’t rat on me. The cops might close up two or three contacts.…’

‘Those contacts know you.’

‘Save your breath!’ Russi snapped. ‘As soon as I knew what was coming, I phoned round. They all know what to expect and will be gone before the cops can get near them. I’ve told you before—apart from my eight agents in and around London, none of them know me. Those eight have always paid the men and passed on the instructions, they’ve handled all personal contact. And like I said: they’ve been warned—the police won’t get them. We don’t have to worry.’

‘You’re quite sure?’ Ryall persisted.

‘Damn’ right I’m sure,’ said Russi. ‘I can’t afford not to be.’

Ryall nodded gently, now much more self-possessed.

‘Of course, I know you would not be careless, my friend. So … now, our first task is to repair the damage which has already been done. It will not be easy: the police will be on guard, now. So will our victims.’ He looked ugly as he uttered that word. ‘It will be slower, but …’ he shrugged. ‘We are working well ahead of time, at all events.’

‘We’ve got more to do than simply start again, and you know it! We’ve got to find what went wrong.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Ryall. ‘And I think perhaps we should leave here until we do know. If there should by any chance be a leakage, it may conceivably lead to us. We will not wait till morning,’ he added, decisively. ‘We shall go now!’

‘Go where?’

‘To Kingston, of course—where else?’

‘I guess it’s wise,’ admitted Russi. But he sounded reluctant. ‘Do you reckon to come back?’

‘When we know what went wrong, we can decide that,’ said Ryall. ‘We shall take Ethel with us. If she were questioned, she might well break down.’

A little less than an hour later, all three entered a small private guest-house on the outskirts of Kingston, which commanded a view of Richmond Park on one side and the By-pass on the other.

They reached it by taxi—the same taxi which had taken David Garth from the Wimbledon house to Jermyn Street. The driver did not return to his garage but remained at the guest-house, where a loud-voiced woman greeted them with professed delight.

By half-past seven, all four were in bed. Russi and Ryall both slept for three hours before the maid brought them tea, just as if they were in their rooms at The Elms.

With the tea, were the morning papers.

Russi, in a room next to Ryall’s, was the first to open his. He did not expect any news of the night’s activities for he knew that the papers went to press before the first attack had been staged. But as he read one headline on the front page, he sat up with a jerk. For a moment, his glance flickered over the news-story.

Then he jumped out of bed.

As he grabbed up his dressing-gown, it struck the tray and sent a cup of tea crashing to the floor. He swore viciously as a few drops of scalding tea fell on his bare foot, then snatched up the paper and strode off to the next room.

Ryall was drinking tea and looking pensively out of the window. The newspaper on his bed was still folded.

Russi slammed the door and snapped:

‘Take a look at this, will you?’ His voice trembled with rage as he pointed a quivering finger at the item which had so startled him.

Ryall shot him an irritable glance, then took the paper and read as directed.

‘JUSTIN M. KEARNLEY ATTACKED

American Envoy Badly Injured

Just after dark last night, Mr. Justin M. Kearnley, personal representative of the U.S. President, was the victim of a savage attack near the American Embassy. He is now in the Central Hospital in a dangerous condition. The police …’

‘Just after dark!’ breathed Ryall. ‘Just after dark? The fools—they started early! They started too early.…’

‘That’s all it was, damn their blasted hides! Someone was too goddam clever and started before zero hour. That’s what warned the cops—of course they’d see right off that it could happen to others: it stares you in the face! When I get my hands on the guy that…’

Ryall said shortly:

‘Be quiet, Russi!’ His eyes were gleaming now. ‘Don’t you see? That is all that happened! Our first attempt failed only because of this trivial thing.’ He paused, then went on: ‘So at least it is not a leakage, as far as we can judge. Find out who attacked Kearnley and how the mistake occurred. If it was just a mistake, there is nothing we need do about it. In any case we can return to Wimbledon.’

‘I’ll kill the guy!’ muttered Russi.

‘Don’t be a fool!’ snapped Ryall. ‘That would only make more trouble. You can watch him and deal with him later—but remember we need all the help we can get, now. Including …’ He smiled widely: ‘Mr. David Garth! We shall have even more need of him, now, than we expected.’

Russi nodded, still looking savage.

‘He’ll do what he’s told, that’s for sure.’

‘I’m sure you are right.’ Ryall smiled again. ‘It is a thousand pities that so much went wrong. But we have our contact in Livesey’s ménage, and at the Ministry. Oh, we shall get results in good time, Russi, never fear!’

‘When do we have to finish?’

‘I don’t yet know.’

‘When is he going to tell you more?’ demanded Russi, edgily.

Ryall said softly:

‘We are not in a position to make demands. We shall receive instructions from time to time and carry them out. He is very clever, our friend Brown. But …’ He smiled, mirthlessly. ‘We are not fools, Russi—except when we are foolish enough to quarrel. At the moment, we must carry out our instructions and show ourselves as willing servants. We must even expect a sharp rebuke for what happened last night. But later, my friend—later we shall be able to make capital!’

Russi was almost himself again, now.

‘That’s what I like to hear! Well, I’ll check up on the Kearnley business and then—are you going to see Garth, today?’

‘I think so,’ murmured Ryall, gently. ‘Yes, I think so.’