It was still quite early when I woke up next morning. And I have noticed that when I have been well and truly soused the night before I always wake up an hour or so earlier than usual—which means that I don’t miss even a single moment of the hangover.
In the circumstances, I behaved with considerable dignity and self-restraint. Knowing that my little friend of last night was watching me from behind the bedclothes, I assumed an air of easy and tranquillising nonchalance. Going over to her mirror, I first of all examined the eye that the sailor had bunged up for me. Then I put on last night’s collar and combed my hair down.
The mistake that my companion made was in sitting up on one elbow to say good-bye. She had the sort of good looks that get better as the evening grows later. Seen in the dawnlight, there was the disconcerting appearance of something that had just been dredged up from the bottom of the Sound. I was glad that I had spent the night in the armchair.
I caught the first Torpoint ferry of the day. And I was back in Bodmin by nine. But the actual homecoming wasn’t exactly what I had expected. Naturally I didn’t go up to the front gate. Instead, I swung in at the side entrance and garaged the car in the coach-house where I always kept it. I was just heaving my legs out over the coachwork when somebody stepped forward. It was a policeman, and just behind him was standing an inspector.
“Good morning, officers,” I said, speaking a trifle on the loud side, as I always do when I am trying to appear bluff and hearty. “You’re quite right. It is out of date. But the new one’s in the post. Very smart of you to detect it. I’m afraid this licence business must give you an awful lot of extra work.”
The constable looked a bit taken aback and confused at that. He began passing his tongue backwards and forwards across his lips as though they didn’t work properly when dry. But the Inspector was a different kind of animal altogether. If I had caught his eye a little earlier I might even have dropped my voice instead of raising it. It was a cold, ice-like eye.
“Dr. Hudson?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Would you mind, sir, accompanying me to the Director’s office?” he asked.
It was one of those polite commands that are all the more commanding for being so polite.
But I was doing some pretty quick thinking.
“Anything wrong, officer?” I said.
And the reply was the usual one.
“Just a few questions we’d like to ask you, sir.”
Nothing very revealing in that. But also nothing very reassuring. Nothing very reassuring either in the fact that he asked the constable to stand by the car and not leave it until he had come back again. Inside me, I felt a cold patch developing.
And, as soon as I saw the Director, I knew that something really serious must have occurred. He was sitting at his table, hairy and miserable, with his chin supported in his hands. He looked like the Forsaken Merman. And I can’t say that his face brightened up when he saw mine. Not that this surprised me. I hadn’t brightened up myself when I had seen my own face.
Then I noticed something else. The whole Institute seemed to be exuding policemen this morning. There was one standing over in the corner just behind me.
The Inspector got down to work straight away.
“Would you mind telling us where you spent last night?” he asked.
That was awkward. I had come down to Bodmin to make a fresh start. And I had seen enough to know that the Director was the kind of keen family man who might not like the idea of having his assistants temporarily occupying top rooms in Plymouth.
So I started lying.
“As a matter of fact, I slept in the car,” I said.
“Why did you do that?”
“I’d drunk rather too much cider,” I said. “When I’d had the second half-pint I decided it was safer not to risk anything. So I just parked the car and dossed down.”
“Where was that?”
“In a lane.”
“Whereabouts?”
“Oh, about thirty miles from here. Say thirty-five. I didn’t measure it.”
“Can you name anywhere it was near?”
“It was between Okehampton and Exeter,” I said finally. “On the left as you go up.”
At that moment I accidentally caught the Inspector’s eye, and then avoided it again.
“Okehampton and Exeter are about twenty-five miles away from each other,” he told me.
“You don’t say,” I answered.
“Well, can you be a bit more exact?”
I shook my head.
“Sorry,” I said. “If I’d known you’d be interested I’d have looked it up for you.”
“Well, can you describe the spot?”
“Oh, yes,” I said confidently, “I can do that. There was a sort of hedge on one side and a gate on the other. I’d know it at once because there was a haystack just a bit farther on. And a tree. I’m practically certain there was a tree.”
“It must have been cold in the car, wasn’t it?”
“Nice of you to ask,” I said. “As a matter of fact, it was.”
“Did it rain?”
“I was asleep,” I answered.
“There isn’t any hood on your car, is there, sir?”
“No,” I said. “That’s another thing.”
“Were you wet?”
“Very,” I said. “The dew’s terrible in these parts. Especially at night. I wonder nobody’s done anything about it.”
“Were you alone?”
“All the time.”
“See anyone you knew?”
“Didn’t even see anyone I didn’t know. I’ve told you: I was asleep.”
“Fell against the windscreen.”
“Can you remember the name of the public house you went into?”
I paused.
“Well, I can’t be sure,” I said. “But no doubt you can check it. I think it was The George. Or it may have been the Duke of Something. Or possibly The Chequers. There are such a lot of pubs, aren’t there? It wouldn’t surprise me if you said it was The Crown.”
The Inspector drew in a deep breath as though he needed one.
“Are you ready to sign what you just told me?” he asked.
“Pencil, please,” I answered.
It wasn’t until I had joined the others in the common room that I learnt what all the fuss was about. And, when I did learn, I didn’t like it. During yesterday evening somebody had opened up the Old Man’s safe and made off with the one slope that counted for anything. In short, Gillett’s culture was missing.
There were some strangely glassy-looking eyes all round me. But that may have been because nobody was allowed either to enter the building or leave it. The entering part didn’t matter. But the not-leaving-it bit was different. It doesn’t take more than about five minutes for a normal healthy man to develop a sense of claustrophobia. And some of the people weren’t exactly what I would call healthy and normal to begin with. There was little Dr. Mann, for instance. He was behaving as though he had still got the missing culture hidden on him somewhere.
“Now, it is terrible,” he said. “Like a prison camp.”
“Well, let’s hope they soon find it,” I said. “There won’t be any let-up till they’ve got it back again.”
But that didn’t suit him either.
“It will only be good if they never find it,” he replied. “Never. Never.”
“Don’t say it so loud,” I advised him. “If you do they may take you up on suspicion.”
Dr. Mann turned several shades paler. His face went turnip colour. This was most disturbing, but it was turnip-shaped already.
“Why me?” he asked. “Please say that you do not mean me. It could not be me. I can account for myself all the time, no? It is very frightening when there are police.”
It was Hilda who tried to soothe him. But she wasn’t looking her best this morning. She was pale, and had shadows under her eyes. A person who’s just had an entirely sleepless night might look rather that way.
“But our police aren’t frightening, really they’re not,” she said. “They only want to find out everything.”
The Dioscuri apparently thought differently, however. Swanton was the first to speak.
“Why not call it a Police State and be done with it?” he demanded of no one in particular. “It’s much better calling things by their proper names.”
Kimbell ran his fingers through his hair-fuzz, and nodded approvingly.
“Our friend here”—he indicated Dr. Mann, who recoiled visibly as soon as he saw that stained finger-nail pointing at him—“will soon be able to see the wonderful British police force at close quarters. They’ll be arresting me next for playing chess with a foreigner. Then we can all compare notes.” He turned to me as he was speaking. “Have you been done yet?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Rubber truncheons, pins under the nails, and all the rest of it,” I told him. “But they didn’t get anything out of me.”
It occurred to me afterwards that perhaps rubber truncheons and torture-chambers weren’t really so very funny to the Dr. Manns of this world. But it was too late now. The door had just opened and the Director’s secretary stood there.
“Dr. Mann,” she said. “Would you mind going over to see the Director, please?”
It was impossible to get down to any really serious work while the Gestapo stuff was still going on in the Institute. In the result, we packed up and spent the next few hours of Government time simply talking things over. Hilda and the demure one had both withdrawn. We were thus just one big unhappy stag party. And there were one or two quite interesting side-lights on human nature by the time we had finished.
For a start, young Mellon was obviously feeling rather pre-occupied about something.
“Say,” he asked at last, “are those guys thorough? D’you reckon they check up on what you tell them?”
“The English police force,” I said slowly, “is the mother of all the police forces in the world. If you think you’ve made the least slip in anything that you may have said to them I should correct it now before it’s too late. They’re always ready to make allowances for carelessness. But deliberate lying—never.”
Mellon began fingering his gold lighter-cum-cigarette case. It was a very comprehensive piece of Fifth Avenue jewellery, and looked as though there might be a portable wireless built into it somewhere.
“Aw, hell,” he said. “It isn’t that. I told ’em all right. It’s just that I don’t want the dame’s husband drawn in. We haven’t ever been introduced socially you see.”
Dr. Smith raised his eyebrows.
“You’d much better call your lawyers,” he advised. “But, in any case, the Embassy will probably stand by you. They can always plead diplomatic privilege if it comes to it.”
“But not matrimonial.” It was Bansted who had spoken. He looked more than ever like a bank manager to-day. “I happened to run into an old friend of my wife’s yesterday,” he went on. “Purely accidental, of course. Hadn’t seen her for years. But it could look bad, all the same. I know just how Mellon’s feeling.”
As he said it he gave a little laugh that sounded like the jingle of handcuffs. And I took up from there.
“Were you seen together?” I asked.
He nodded.
“It was over at the Royal Crescent at Newquay,” he replied. “I booked a table for eight-thirty. Name of Jones. Her idea, not mine. All most unfortunate. You see, she’s waiting for her decree to be made absolute.”
“Bad luck,” I told him. “Anyone see you?”
Bansted paused.
“Not exactly,” he said. “But the waiter’s bound to remember us. I upset the claret. He had to put a clean napkin over the tablecloth.”
“That’s tough,” I replied. “But I shouldn’t worry. It’s a test tube, not a woman they’re looking for.”
I was careful to conceal the admiration in my voice as I said it. It seemed to me that he had sewn up his alibi very neatly. Upsetting a glass of claret shows the hand of real experience, and I wondered how often he had used that old dodge before.
But Dr. Smith was speaking again. And, when he had finished, he revealed that he was better at almost anything else than being consoling.
“Do you really think so?” he asked. “I should have imagined that if something were missing the first thing that the police would look for would be an accomplice.”
“But why advertise the meeting place?” Swanton demanded.
I think that he was playing his part quite straight at this moment. I liked him best when he was applying his mind to problems where the Daily Worker hadn’t told him the answer already.
Dr. Smith merely re-raised those eyebrows of his.
“That will be for Bansted to explain,” he said.
Then Rogers began to wriggle as though he too wanted to make his confession. Altogether it was becoming more and more like the Oxford Group every moment.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I was with a woman myself last night.” He paused rather obviously for effect. “Only in my case, it’s different. She happens to be my wife.”
“Then what have you got to worry about?” I asked.
“We aren’t living together,” Rogers replied. “I suppose that much is obvious. Or I shouldn’t be here. As a matter of fact, she came down here to discuss a separation.”
Bansted coughed.
“Isn’t this rather personal?” he asked. “I mean, you don’t have to tell us if you don’t feel like it.”
Rogers frowned for a moment.
“Not so personal as all that,” he said slowly. “You see, it was something to do with politics we parted over. She’s been mixed up in it all her life. She’s secretary of an Anglo-Russian Fellowship Group at this moment. It may look a bit fishy, you know, having her down here on the night the thing was stolen.”
“Distinctly so,” Dr. Smith agreed. “Did you tell the police?”
“Only in general terms,” Rogers replied. “I didn’t want to blacken her character more than it’s already blackened.” He was silent for a moment. “Extraordinary thing politics,” he said. “She’s a very brilliant woman, my wife. Ph.D. and M.Sc, and all that.”
His voice curtsied almost visibly as he spoke of the degrees.
“Better go back and tell them the rest of it,” Dr. Smith urged him. “Save time all round later on.”
There was a kind of gloomy virtuousness about our Dr. Smith that I found increasingly irritating this morning.
“Come to that,” I said, “where did you spend the evening?”
Dr. Smith smiled rather wanly.
“In bed,” he answered. “I was tired and gave myself the whole day in bed. What’s more, I feel much better for it.”
“Anyone come to see you?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “I particularly gave orders that I wasn’t to be disturbed. I looked after myself entirely.”
“So we’ve only got your word for it that you were there at all?”
Dr. Smith smiled again.
“Precisely,” he said. “And it will be rather interesting to see whether the Inspector appreciates the significance of that fact. There is no corroboration whatever.”
He regarded his finger-nails for a moment.
“Come to that,” he went on, “Kimbell’s and Swanton’s alibi is no better. A reciprocal alibi is really no alibi at all.”
“Meaning what?”
Kimbell swung round on him as though up to now his word had always been taken for his bond.
“Meaning that you and Swanton went for a walk on the moors,” Dr. Smith said quietly. “It would have been possible for the two of you to have made an assignation with a third party, who again was either not seen or not noticed by anyone else. Someone in a car, for instance. There are roads across the moor, you know.”
“And Russia has vast fleets of helicopters,” Swanton reminded him.
But by now Kimbell was frowning at Swanton, and I got the impression that he didn’t want to figure in the conversation much longer.
“In any case, we aren’t the only ones,” he said. “What about Gillett, for instance?”
“I understand,” Bansted replied, “that Gillett spent the whole day with his fiancée. Una had a cold and they didn’t go out at all. The Director himself vouches for both of them.”
“And Hilda?” It was Kimbell’s Manchester voice that asked the question.
“Church bazaar at St. Clynt’s. She was in charge of it. Whole village saw her there.”
It was Rogers who supplied this piece of information, and he had the knowing air of someone who had been asking a few questions on his account.
Then Dr. Smith turned his smile on me.
“And how did Dr. Hudson spend his time?” he asked.
I did not reply immediately. But when I did I gave the answer loud and clear.
“Mackerel fishing,” I said. “I was out all night. Alone. I only saw one submarine. It wanted to know the way to Murmansk and I told it. That’s all that occurred. Nobody’s got anything on me.”