My respect for Wilton had never been greater than at this moment. Everyone else was in a flap. The Inspector, assisted by half a dozen extra policemen from Plymouth, was going round the Institute interviewing everyone. Gillett and Bansted and Rogers had constituted themselves a special branch of the Bodmin Beagles and were combing the moor in search of spent cartridge cases and that kind of thing. But Wilton did precisely nothing. With the circles under his eyes showing up like half-crowns, he just locked himself away and remained invisible.
The only piece of violent and dramatic display from his whole department was when one of the cub captains suddenly shot off to Bodmin in the staff car, driving as though he would have used the siren if there had been one. But that turned out to be only because word had just reached Wilton that a fresh supply of Players had just arrived, and he wanted to snap up a couple of hundred while they were still going. He seemed extraordinarily unconcerned about attempted murder.
All the same, I wasn’t too happy about Wilton’s behaviour. When a man orders two hundred cigarettes and promptly shuts himself away from everyone it usually means that he is thinking about something. And I didn’t like it any better when he suddenly asked me to drop over and see him.
What I wasn’t prepared for this time as I went inside was to find that Wilton had other company there. And of all extraordinary choices he had picked on Dr. Smith for a drinking companion. Moreover, from all the signs, Dr. Smith had apparently just succeeded in being clever. The smirk that was on his face might have been applied with a builder’s trowel.
“ . . . Around the turn of the century,” he was saying, “the best brains in the chess world grew tired of the limitations imposed by the conventional game. Any number of variants have been tried out at one time or another. But it was Capablanca who took things furthest. He introduced the Marshal and Chancellor. It proved too difficult. The Emperor game was more successful. With nine pieces aside and the Emperor himself combining the moves of Queen and Knight while leaving those pieces themselves with their full powers, the new combinations were practically limitless. Indeed . . . ”
Dr. Smith was in full flood by now. Since the death of Macaulay the world can hardly have seen anything like it. The sheer bad taste was simply appalling.
“So there could be an ‘E,’” I said, turning to Wilton.
“And there could be squares that don’t seem to exist on a chess-board. It must have been Emperor Chess or whatever it’s called that Kimbell was playing.”
Wilton, however, was still only uncoiling himself after the interruption. And even when he was right way up, with his various limbs in approximately their correct places, he still didn’t reply immediately.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “Dr. Smith here doesn’t know anything about the game that Kimbell’s been playing.”
“Sorry I spoke out of turn,” I answered.
I wouldn’t have upset Wilton for anything. Not just at present, that is. But Wilton wasn’t all that easily upset.
“Let’s ask Kimbell to come over,” he suggested very casually. “You and I can have a drink, while he and Smith play chess together.”
This proposal, however, brought the great Dr. Smith as near to open panic as I have ever seen him. He actually blushed.
“If you don’t mind I’d rather not,” he said. “You see, I don’t actually play chess, I’m only interested in the mathematical theory. That’s quite different. Also”—here he began pawing the ground a bit—“Kimbell and I haven’t really got very much in common.”
This didn’t seem to put Wilton out in the slightest. Indeed, he hardly seemed to be listening. He was pouring out another drink for Smith while he was still speaking, and obviously couldn’t care less who were Dr. Smith’s little play-chums and who weren’t.
“Oh, well,” he said, “just say good evening to him and slip away quietly. No one’ll notice.”
I admired Wilton for the way he had got in that last bit.
But already I was busy admiring Wilton for something else. The suggestion that Kimbell should come over had evidently not been quite the afterthought that it had sounded. Because at that moment there was a knock at the door, and Kimbell and the Captain arrived with the bond of invisible handcuffs between them.
I have never seen anyone quite so ill at ease as Kimbell. He kept his eyes to the carpet, and shifted his weight from one foot to the other as though he had on a pair of very tight new shoes. It was his palest duck-egg blue complexion that he was wearing this evening.
Simply judging from his appearance I’d have been ready to suspect him of anything. And I noticed that when Wilton thrust a glass into his hand he promptly put it down again. Evidently he wasn’t going to risk getting talkative.
But what was even more marked was the episode of the cigarette case. It was a rather nice plain gold one that Wilton carried about with him. And he offered Kimbell a cigarette along with the drink. But Kimbell, who was naturally a thirty-to-fifty-a-day-man, refused it out of hand. I may have been imagining things, but I got the impression that he did not want to touch that plain gold cigarette case for fear of leaving fingerprints.
But Wilton was an expert as a society hostess in not noticing when one of the guests is behaving a bit queerly. He just went straight on in his tired, dreary-sounding voice as though the whole idea of counter-espionage was a frightful sort of bore that fortunately had its funny side.
“We had a warrant out for your arrest last week,” he said. And he dropped his voice so low while he was speaking that Kimbell had to ask him to repeat what he had just said.
“Your arrest,” Wilton repeated. “We had a warrant out.”
Kimbell drew in his lower lip, and began biting at it. There was a long pause.
“Did you?” he asked. He sounded about as casual as a man who has just been told that the house is on fire.
“All because of those chess games of yours,” Wilton went on.
Kimbell’s particular shade of egg-shell went about two tones paler.
“How d’you mean?” he asked lamely.
Wilton was lighting another cigarette. And that always took a little time because he didn’t seem to know about things like matches and petrol lighters. His idea of the sacred fire was a wisp of smouldering tobacco at one end of a sodden and discoloured butt about quarter of an inch long.
“It was all a mistake,” he said. “Rather a silly one come to think of it. Only nobody in the department plays chess, you see. It was Smith here who solved it for us.”
But Wilton’s last remark seemed to have annoyed Kimbell. It was the first thing that had roused him in the slightest. You could now see more than a hint of a yolk beneath the shell.
“Have you been discussing my affairs with Smith?” he asked.
Wilton nodded.
“Expert witness,” he said. “Cleared things up in a moment.”
“And is Hudson here supposed to be an expert in something?” he asked.
“He reached the eighty-first square before we did,” Wilton answered. “De-coding could make nothing of it.”
“De-coding?” Kimbell asked sharply.
“Naturally,” Wilton answered. “If you can’t read anything, you send it to De-coding. It’s what they’re there for. They’ve had a strip torn off them this time.”
“And what are you doing about it now?” Kimbell asked.
“Playing the game right through,” Wilton answered.
“We’ve got someone from headquarters staff to help us. Used to play second board at Hastings. He’s rather good.” Wilton paused. “I’m afraid I’ve got some rather bad news for you,” he added.
“Bad news?” Kimbell asked. There was no attempt to keep the anxiety out of his voice.
Wilton nodded. “Received his report this morning,” he said. “Takes a very poor view of your position. Advises you to resign. More dignified.”