It was six-thirty next morning when they called me. And, as nothing else happened until nearly a quarter to eight, I could feel the whole day going sour on me.
When the cell door did at last open again, I saw the Inspector and one of the cub-Captains as well as the Station Sergeant all standing there.
“Morning, boys,” I said.
Then I noticed that the cub-Captain had a long strip of sticking-plaster down one side of his face. He must have scratched himself while the three of them had been romping together at the bottom of that bunker. And I didn’t see why he should be allowed to forget it.
“Cut yourself shaving?” I asked. “Surely you don’t have to do it every day.”
The cub-Captain said nothing, and the Inspector cleared his throat.
“I have here a warrant authorising your transfer,” he said.
I turned and faced him.
“You can’t do that,” I told him. “This may seem a poor sort of place to you. But it’s still home.”
The Inspector ignored that one altogether.
“Captain Lawther will be escorting you,” was what he said.
“I’ll take every care of him,” I promised.
Captain Lawther was the fair-haired one. The one I disliked. He was in mufti. That meant that he was wearing something pretty deplorable in the way of a sports coat. It had knobbly leather-covered buttons of the sort that should only be allowed on very small children’s overcoats. And I resented the fact that his tailor had given the jacket two slits up the back. The two-slit style is something that should be reserved for men of my age and substance.
But I didn’t want him to feel awkward or self-conscious about things.
“Well, come on,” I said. “Let’s get cracking. I haven’t got all day to waste.”
But they apparently had. In the result, it was nearly teatime, with the lamps of Bodmin shining palely in through the cell window, before we got started. And even then we had to go through the ceremony of the handcuffs again.
And this gave me an idea. As soon as cub-Captain Lawther had turned the key on us both, I spoke to him. “Sure it’s comfortable?” I asked.
Q
“Doesn’t hurt anywhere?”
Still no answer.
“Quite sure it’s firm?”
Silence.
“Better make certain.”
The jerk I gave it brought Captain Lawther right into my arms with a rush. But I pretended not to notice.
“That’s fine,” I said. “Now it doesn’t matter if you fall. I’ve still got you.”
I was about three inches taller than Captain Lawther, and at least two stone heavier. The more I thought about it the more I was looking forward to being tied on to him.
And I had a feeling that it wouldn’t very long remain that way round.
It was only the first part of the journey that was by car. After that, it was British Railways again. And that suited me perfectly. Captain Lawther was every bit as embarrassed as I was by having to go about like a slave-dealer making a trade delivery. There weren’t very many people on Bodmin platform. Just an old lady and her daughter, a farmer with his hat too far on the back of his head, the Vicar of some-where or other, and a couple of porters. But I didn’t see why any of them should miss the predicament that Captain Lawther and I were in.
“Show them the pass,” I said rather loudly when we got to the barrier. And then, before my escort could say anything, I added: “You can keep it, son. I shall know where it is if I want it.”
With that, I gave a knowing wink in the direction of the ticket collector, and began leading Captain Lawther up the platform. It was here that he made the mistake of trying to stand still. But I knew that if it came to a tug-of-war he wouldn’t stand a chance. Soon he was sliding after me like a puppy.
“None of that, please,” I said sternly.
The old lady and her daughter heard every word of it. And, as with all really nice people, their sympathy immediately went out towards the little man.
“Oo, see that, Mum?” the girl asked.
The daughter stood there glaring at me. The old lady, however, evidently wanted to avoid a scene at all costs. She began to move away. But I saved her the trouble.
“That’s all right, ma’am,” I said. “He’ll come quietly.”
That was when I began to lead him up the platform in among the milk-churns. There were rather a lot of milk-churns, and he must have hurt his knee quite badly against one of them. I heard the little beast suddenly cry out in pain. And it was what I had been waiting for.
“Why not take these things off?” I asked.
“Not bloody likely,” he replied.
He was wearing the kind of expression that suggested that at any moment he might burst into tears from sheer torment and vexation. But I could see that he was being very brave about it. And I knew that he was using bad language just to persuade himself that he was really tough and grown up.
“Well, better keep moving,” I said. “Doesn’t make us so conspicuous.”
I led him through the milk-churns again, only a bit faster this time. And we got into trouble with a porter’s trolley. Between the two of us the thing nearly went over on to the line, and I fairly barked at him for all the trouble he was causing.
It was then Lawther asked if I’d mind lowering my voice a little. That pleased me. It showed that the treatment was working.
“Don’t you think we had better have them off?” I asked again, quite quietly. “They’re only making your wrist sore.”
This time he paused before replying.
“Not till we get in the train,” he said.
“Just as you please,” I answered. “But I’m not standing about here to be stared at by anyone.”
I was really quite nice to him this time, and I didn’t lead him anywhere near a farm harrow that I’d noticed lying on the platform near the parcels office. There was no need for it. He’d said all that I wanted him to say.
It was all quite simple and straightforward when the train drew in. The guard and the station-master both knew all about a reserved compartment, and I let Captain Lawther show the pass without saying anything. I even allowed the train to draw right out of the platform before I raised the matter of the handcuffs. Then I thrust my wrist out.
“You win,” I said. “I might have bolted if you’d done it sooner.”
Captain Lawther flushed. This was clearly his moment of triumph. He looked like a choir-boy who had just swamped the anthem.
“I know damn well, you might,” he said.
But the rumble-rumble of the wheels evidently reassured him. And pulling out his key-chain with his free hand, he unlocked the handcuff that was on his wrist.
“That’s all right,” I said. “Don’t bother about mine.
You’ll want to do it up again when we arrive there. I don’t want to start getting you into trouble.”
This seemed to relieve Captain Lawther. He sat there rubbing his wrist and the bad place on his knee where he’d hurt it on the handle of the milk-churn, and finally he lit a cigarette. I could see that he felt all big and magnanimous because he remembered to offer me one. But I only shook my head.
“No, thanks,” I said. “Don’t feel like it. It’s all right for you. You’re in for promotion. I’m in for about seven years.”
That left him glowing all over with thoughts about being Major Lawther, and it left me free to look out of the window. This was rather important. We were getting back towards the moor by now, and the train was putting on more speed than I cared for. The telegraph poles were beginning to whizz past us in the darkness.
“Mind if we have the window down?” I asked. “You’d better do it. I don’t want you to think that I’m going to jump out or something.”
Captain Lawther had learnt by now to do exactly what I told him. And he moved over towards the door like an obedient younger brother. This suited me perfectly. His back was towards me, and his overcoat was on the rack just above my head. It was a large mock-Harris ulster that he had been wearing, bought specially to go with that bogus sports suit, I imagine. But I couldn’t have asked for better. There were yards and yards of the material. And when I suddenly wound them round his head and tied the two arms tightly together somewhere just under his chin, he must have thought that we had reached the tunnel. He kicked about a bit. But because he couldn’t see what he was kicking, he didn’t hurt me. And I didn’t even want him to hurt himself. Just so that he shouldn’t roll about and fall out after me, I laid him carefully on the floor and pushed him under the seat like a holdall.
Then I opened the door—hung for a moment on the footboard, and jumped into the cold and the blackness and the roaring night.
There are some people—film supers and others—who spend their whole lives jumping off moving trains and fire engine escape towers. They know how to fall.
I didn’t. I can see now that it would have been more sense to face the way the train was going. It may have been that fact, however, that saved me. Because after the first crack that felt as though I’d run smack into a brick-lorry at about sixty miles an hour, I began to do a series of back somersaults. I dimly remember three of them—all that part is a bit confused—with my face catching the ballast once every revolution. And then, with a final cartwheel that nearly separated my spine, I suddenly found myself feet upwards in a ditch.
I have to thank the extreme coldness of the water for the fact that I didn’t drown then and there. It brought me to again and I fairly thrashed my way out of it. Then I lay on the edge of the embankment, gasping. I wondered if I was still alive, and felt pretty sure that I must be. That was because I was still thinking the same thought that had been uppermost in my mind as I jumped. “Silly little basket,” it ran. “Who’s going to be made a major now?”
But there was no time for gloating. Away in the distance there was the quite unmistakable sound of an express train putting its brakes on. That could mean only one thing. Permanent Captain Lawther must have got his nose out of his ulster, and he was evidently hanging on to the communication cord. That meant that I had to set off straight away across the open moor like a cross-country runner.
The Institute was the one place that I wanted to get to. I had everything worked out in my mind. I was working on one of my hunches—and of Dr. Mann’s. Though I couldn’t prove anything, I was now perfectly certain that it was the great Professor Sonnenbaum, alias Dr. Smith, who was the guilty one. And it all seemed to fit together—his anti-Americanism, the way he had kept out of it when Mann himself had been arrested, his absence during the search for Una’s assailant, his striking complacency in the face of an inefficient police force. But I was perfectly realist about it. I didn’t even kid myself that I could prove anything. Romantics like me have our place in the world: we’re the yeast in the human mixture. It is the cold, shrewd efficient type that usually does the job when the romantics have shown them how.
There was only one of the right type in the whole Institute —Gillett. I wasn’t under any illusions about him. If he hadn’t possessed a blood-stream that would have set a Newfoundland cod shivering, he wouldn’t have chased Dr. Mann off to his suicide. There was nothing in the least over-heated about Gillett. The great thing about him was that he possessed the scientific attitude. And if I could drop the hint I knew that he’d go on from there.
I covered the mile and a half in about thirty-five minutes. I couldn’t make it faster because I’d hurt my ankle when I jumped. And it was from the annexe side that I finally approached the Institute. I saw at once, too, that I was lucky. There was a light on in Gillett’s room. I made my way straight towards it. Literally straight, I mean. I wanted to avoid meeting people. And rather than go up the stairs, I decided to use the window.
This wasn’t difficult because the ground sloped up from that side of the annexe, and the bedroom windows were on practically bungalow height. Gillett’s window was open about three inches at the bottom. I put my finger through, and drew back the curtain. And I felt a queer pang as I did so. It was the absolute innocence of Gillett’s occupation that overcame me. He had his ski-ing kit out on the table before him, and he was adjusting the guard on one of the sticks. Then I drew my lips in tighter. I’d just remembered what I’d be doing while he was getting on with his jumps and Christianas.
It was at this moment that I heard somebody coming. Unless I was going to be nabbed again before I had even had time to say my piece, there was nothing for it but to heave up the window, and do the “Spectre de la Rose” leap in reverse. But I was a bad Nijinsky. I landed on the wrong ankle, and fell almost on top of the table at which Gillett was working.
Then, to avoid the stag-at-bay kind of melodrama, I deliberately eased up.
“Just dropped in for a quiet chat,” I began, thrusting my hand in my pocket because I felt a bit self-conscious about the handcuffs.
But it was Gillett who had the stag-at-bay look, not me. Evidently my sudden entry must have upset him more than I had realised. You could practically hear the hounds baying all round him.
“What the . . . ” he began, and then broke off.
He got up, and began backing away from me. Rather a poor show, I thought. But, as there was an audience of only one and as he could deny afterwards that it had ever happened that way, I supposed it didn’t really matter. And he was rapidly putting on his act again.
“I suppose this place is surrounded?” he asked quite calmly.
“Afraid so,” I said.
“Are they covering us?”
“Just about,” I answered.
For my part, I was determined to keep the conversation light and airy. Otherwise, in his present state, Gillett still looked as though he might start yelling out for help. And that was the last thing I wanted.
“Had the pleasure of a long talk with Wilton to-day,” I went on. “We discussed quite a lot of things, and finally we got round to you. That’s why I’m here. . . . ”
But that was as far as I got. For Gillett suddenly took over.
“So I was right,” he said.
“I don’t doubt it.”
But Gillett wasn’t listening. Simply wasn’t hearing me. He was staring in front of him—at the table, I think it must have been. And because even a ski-stick might be quite a useful instrument if you start swiping about with it, I picked it up first.
Gillett looked up.
“You think you’re damn clever, don’t you?” he said.
“Used to,” I admitted.
“Well, I knew who you were the day you came.”
“Pity you didn’t tell me,” I said. “I’ve often wondered.”
Gillett ignored that.
“Why didn’t you have your face lifted?” he asked.
“I can’t help my scar,” I told him.
“It nearly kept you out of the Party once,” he said.
“Too conspicuous.”
I raised my eyebrows. That was because I had suddenly become suspicious even of my best hunches.
“Was that why you left that first note for me on my pillow?” I asked.
Gillett seemed to be wondering whether to reply or not. “I thought you might still be one of us,” he said at last. “I might have been,” I told him.
“Then I guessed you were in with the police. You and Wilton spent too much time together. Not very subtle about it, were you?”
“It worked.”
“You dirty traitor,” Gillett said.
He was moving up in the direction of the bookcase while he was speaking. But he still seemed quite willing to go on talking.
“And then you sent all those other messages just to get me foxed up?” I asked.
Gillett nodded.
“That worked, too,” I said.
There was a pause.
“All one typing?” I asked.
Again Gillett nodded.
“And all intended for me?”
Gillett was leaning up against the bookcase by now.
“No,” he said. “They were intended for Mann originally. I knew he was a Party member, too. I thought that was why he’d come here.”
“So you did a sort of switch over?”
This time Gillett just nodded again.
“And you planted all the stuff on Mann?”
“I wanted Wilton to find it.”
“Was it Mann’s revolver?”
“Mann never had a revolver. It was my spare one. I put the case in the basket, and the revolver in his drawer. I guessed he’d know what to do with it.”
“You guessed right . . . ” I began.
But the note of bitterness was all wrong. I didn’t want to risk offending Gillett. Not yet, at least. There was still too much to learn. So from there on I kept everything deliberately light and casual.
“Oh, by the way, about that pass of mine,” I went on. “It was you who pinched it, wasn’t it?”
Gillet nodded.
“Nearly came in very useful,” he said. “Got someone else in the Party to use it. With average luck all this trouble could have been avoided.”
“Just what I was thinking,” I told him. I was rocking up and down on my heels by now to show how much at ease I was. And I tried one line purely at random.
“Why did you break with Hilda?” I asked.
I was quite prepared for Gillett to go all silent and clamlike. But apparently he had put his inhibitions behind him.
“Because I didn’t trust her,” he replied. “She belonged to the opposite side.”
“And is that why you tried to kill Una?”
Gillett frowned. It could have been either because he had tried, or because he had failed. With his sort of profile you couldn’t tell.
“Found she’d been rifling my personal belongings,” was all he said. “Too inquisitive.”
“Not surprised,” I told him. “You had us all guessing when you said you’d been fired at.”
For a moment there was just a flicker of a smile on his face. It was an amused, superior sort of smile.
“Exactly what I intended,” he replied.
We were getting along famously by now. So I led up quietly to the closing line.
“Well,” I said, “better hand over the culture, and we’ll call it quits.”
Gillett suddenly reached his hand out to the bookcase beside him. But I had to take the risk on that.
“Not there,” I said. “Una gave it to me. Then Bansted borrowed it. I think it’s in the Black Museum by now.”
Gillett smiled. It was one of the nicest, and most genuine smiles I’d ever seen on him.
“You bloody fool,” he said.
As he said it, he pushed aside a copy of Simpson’s Morphology and made a grab at something on the bookshelf. It was a revolver. A nice new one, too, from the look of it. I had the feeling that it had been bought specially for me.
“Did you think I was going to tell you everything, and let you get out of here alive?” he asked.
“Seemed like it,” I replied.
And, as I said the words, I slung the ski-stick hard at him. It wasn’t a bad shot. Another six inches to the right, and it would have got him full between the eyes. As it was, he side-stepped it. But it was the best I could do. A ski-stick was never made for in-fighting.
What’s more, this particular one apparently hadn’t even been made for ski-ing. It wouldn’t have stood up to the strain of it. Because even the quite mild battering that I’d given it had knocked the end clean off. The guard came away completely, and a little metal capsule rolled out. It was the ink cylinder of a ball-point. Just like the one in which little Dr. Mann had stowed away his penicillin.
“So that’s how you were going to get the culture out of the country, is it?”
Gillett looked down for a moment.
“Don’t bother now,” I said, “I’ll pick it up for you later.”
But this time Gillett shook his head.
“This is where I’m going to kill you,” he said quietly.
It certainly looked as though we’d reached that point. And I couldn’t think how to string things out much longer. But I had a queer feeling all the time that even postponing matters by a few seconds might make the answer come out different.
“Do you mind counting up to three before you pull the trigger?” I asked. “It’s the bang I can’t stand.”
“You won’t hear it,” Gillett answered.
I shrugged my shoulders.
“I’ve given up being sure about anything.” Gillett squared himself.
“One!”
“One what?”
But it was no use. I didn’t seem able to distract him now. “Two!”
I closed my eyes and waited. I was feeling rather swimmy by now.
“Thr . . . ”
The report when it came sounded simply terrific. My whole head jerked back, and seemed to burst open from the concussion. It wasn’t immediately that I even realised that the report had come from the wrong place. It had come from the window instead of from the direction of the bookcase where Gillett had been standing. And already a pale, tobacco-stained hand was drawing the curtains back. It was Wilton’s hand. His left one. That was because he still had the revolver in his right.
“I told you it was either you or Gillett,” he said.
“Then why the hell didn’t you arrest both of us?”
My patience with Wilton had worn a bit thin by now, and I felt another attack of bloody-mindedness coming.
Wilton finally managed to get his long legs over the window-sill. Then he crossed over and looked down at Gillett. But there was nothing to be done there. At that range even I couldn’t have missed.
“I wanted to see if he’d get careless once you were removed,” he said.
There was a pause. A full-length Wilton pause.
“He did,” he added.
I picked up the capsule, and handed it to Wilton.
“Well, that’s about the end of it,” I said.
“Not entirely,” Wilton answered, without even remembering to say thank you.
“Meaning what?”
“Somebody’s got to tell Una,” Wilton remarked quietly.
I smoothed my hair down, and straightened up my collar.
“Not me,” I said. “Not after this. The Old Man had better break it to her. Or you can. Anyone but me.”
“Come better from you,” Wilton answered.
I caught his eye as he said it. In a half-light it was quite an understanding sort of eye.
“Perhaps you’re right,” I told him.
And as I went towards the door Wilton stood back to let me pass.