Текст книги "A Rough Shoot "

Автор книги: Geoffrey Household

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I poked about inside the other end of the cylinder and, sure enough, I found a metal slide with a small knob on the end lying along the cardboard. Lex could have got at this knob from the outside of the case by thrusting a finger into the cheap, pliable material and feeling for it. He couldn’t possibly have pulled it; so I put an overcoat over my face, in case I was wrong, and pressed it. It slid home with a comforting click.

There were probably no other risks, but I wasn’t going to find out. I cut the stitches that held the cardboard roll to the side of the case, cut the tape, and slipped off the roll. Inside was a metal cylinder, rather larger than a fat fountain pen, still attached by its plunger wire to the interior of the latch. So far as I was concerned, it could stay attached.

I gave Sandorski full marks as a commanding officer. He had made none of his staccato and intelligent suggestions, and had remained perfectly quiet, confident and close to me through the whole business.

We withdrew the papers from their container, and unrolled them. They were important enough to justify the extreme precautions that senders and recipients had taken, and for Sandorski they completed the picture. I forget the exact words he used, but his explanation left me with an image of a cone made, let us say, of separate wires, within which he stood. He knew already the circular base of the cone and varying lengths of the upward course of the wires. What these documents gave him was the apex where they all met. We had:

1. List of cover names.

This was without heading or remark, and was a fairly harmless document if kept apart from the others. It gave us the national leaders who were in correspondence with each other. I can’t say they were very impressive, but they had this in common, according to Sandorski: that they were sincere.

2. Files of leading fascists who were still at large in Italy, Germany and the free countries of Europe, with notes on their reliability.

3. Propaganda directive for Heyne-Hassingham, with unintelligible code references which looked like dates for action.

4. A letter to Hiart asking for a report on the family connections, political sympathies and past of certain financiers in Sweden and America who had offered money.

5. Draft of an agreement for either signature or initialing by Heyne-Hassingham.

There it was, all the old stuff of the logo’s in a brand-new dress! A revolution of the little man to answer the revolution of the littler man. There were to be simultaneous coups d’etat in the states of western Europe, and the immediate promise of peace and unity; and until that millennium arrived, all the weapons of communism were to be used to defeat communism. For me and my like it merely meant that the flag over our concentration camp would be white instead of red.

The strength of the movement was in Hiart and his opposite numbers abroad. Since these officials were the most trusted servants of state, the damage they could do by collaborating with each other behind the backs of their governments was incalulable. None of the political chiefs expected anything spectacular of Heyne-Hassingham; but, even so, they had fallen into Ribbentrop’s mistake. They thought that his precious People’s Union could make such a nuisance of itself that British policy would be forced to be neutral.

“That’s the end of Heyne-Hassingham,” I said. “Now we go straight to the police.”

“Do we? Colonel, my lad, the value of all this just depends on my reliability and yours.”

“I don’t see it.”

“Don’t you–ha? Your security people get this sort of thing once a week. Wild political accusations. Just what you’d expect from a bunch of unemployed Polish officers who wanted money. I might have forged all this–easily.”

Up to then I had followed his lead blindly, for I was in such a mess that there was nothing else I could do; but now my responsibility, my duty, had become equal to his.

“No complications,” I said. “I insist on immediate action.”

He went all general, and treated me as if I had been some Polish officer who dared to question his patriotism. I didn’t mind. I knew he was loosing off the accumulated strain of the last hour. He told me–if it can be called telling–that because he was anti-communist, it didn’t mean he was a pro-fascist traitor.

“Patience, not politics!” he shouted at me. “Do you understand? Patience is what we need.”

“We do,” I said drily.

He barked at me, and fumed and fretted for a moment, trying, for the sake of his pride, to work up his temper again. It couldn’t be done. He apologized with a most wholehearted grace. His words were so gallant that they might have been addressed to a woman. The art of the apology has been lost in countries where the duel is out of fashion.

“I’ll get off to London tonight,” he said, “and take Lex with me.”

“Will he go?”

“Go? Why not? Doesn’t know where he is. Doesn’t know who I am. What can he do? Shove his head out of the window and howl for Heyne-Hassingham? Lex will come like a lamb so long as we don’t frighten him. Look the blighter up!”

We found Lex on the list of cover names. Sandorski knew of him, but they had never met. He was a Czech of Austrian descent, and had been, in better days, a prominent lawyer with a taste for wildcat politics. We also found Pink’s true name. He was the tough and eccentric son of an obscure English peer, and he had been fired out of the Navy for gross insubordination. Evidently he had been under the impression that he was Nelson.

Peter Sandorski boldly made his arrangements by telephone. There was no reason to suppose we were under any suspicion, and indeed at that time–which was about midday–we were not. He called a Whitehall number, and spoke to a friend named Roland, asking him to make arrangements for two air passages to Vienna and for a safe-he stressed safe–lodging meanwhile. It was clear that he had the connections to travel freely, even semiofficially. How far the secret services of Western powers supplied him with funds, I do not know; but his organization of Poles and expatriates, playing for European peace and stability, must have been extremely useful.

When Cecily came back from her shopping and her children, she gave us a picnic lunch in the roof, and herself kept watch below. Lex returned to consciousness and gave little trouble. I think it was Cecily who put confidence into him. He couldn’t believe that such a woman would feed him and fuss over him if anything were intended against his life or liberty. As an experienced lawyer he must have been a fair judge of human nature. What he made of us then, I don’t know. He probably trusted us provisionally, failing anyone else to trust. We told him that his suitcase was in a safe place, and lent him a razor. We also gave him a good story to the effect that we had had to drug him, so that if he were caught he wouldn’t be able to talk until Heyne-Hassingham had an opportunity to tell him what to say.

Our plan was simple, and I imagine it would have worked. I was going to sneak Sandorski and Lex into the garage after dark–which could be done provided my house was not watched at very close range–make them lie in the bottom of the car till we were clear of the immediate neighborhood, and then drive them to a bus stop. I couldn’t drive them far, in case there was a police cordon round the district; if we were stopped and questioned, Lex, who spoke with a strong foreign accent and had no identity documents, would put the lot of us under suspicion. On a country bus, however, and then a train to London, it was certain they would pass through as any other citizens.

The children came back from school, and Cecily arranged to walk up to the village with them on an ice-cream expedition in order to get them out of the way while Sandorski and Lex descended from the roof. It was growing dark and she was just about to start, when we had another call from the inspector of police.

“We have been checking the footprints on Mr. Blossom’s land, sir,” he said after some polite preliminaries, “and we would like to get clear the people who had every right to be there. Would you mind showing me your shooting boots?”

Fortunately I had cleaned them. He took the measurements and a note of missing studs on the sole. He looked puzzled, but preserved a beautiful mask of official cordiality.

“When were you last at the northern end of the down?”

“Let me see,” I said. “Where exactly do you mean?”

“A little east of the curve of the valley. There’s a big holly bush halfway down, if you remember.”

“I know. I was there last Saturday.”

“Not later?”

“No, inspector.”

He was on to something, but I wasn’t worried. I felt quite certain that the short, springy turf wouldn’t reveal a measurable footprint, and certainly not the time when it was made.

“Mr. Taine,” he said. “Suppose I were to tell you that I had good reason to believe you were on the down sometime yesterday or last night?”

“My dear man, my wife and children have already told you that I was in bed with a touch of flu. And all yesterday I was in the office, and there are dozens of people to prove it. May I ask why you think I wasn’t, or wouldn’t it be professional?”

“I don’t see why you shouldn’t know,” he answered. “I have two sets of prints, apparently yours, in wet cow dung. Now can you help me, Mr. Twaine? We know perfectly well that your life is an open book and that you don’t run secret aircraft.”

Possibly I should have helped him. On the other hand I didn’t feel like explaining to my local inspector that I had first killed, then buried, then burnt an unknown male. That kind of thing was obviously better handled, if it ever had to come out at all, on a high level, between Sandorski and his friend Roland.

“Well, but look here–how long does wet cow dung take to dry in damp weather? Surely that is a bit beyond the county police?”

“It’s beyond me, Mr. Taine,” he laughed. “But we’ve got some assistance from Scotland Yard on this case–and better still.”

I said that I didn’t know there was anything better than Scotland Yard.

He told me. After all, he was dead certain that I was innocent; and I was a respectable neighbor, entitled, after all this trouble, to a bit of thrilling and confidential gossip.

“There’s a gentleman staying with Mr. Robert Heyne-Hassingham. Catches spies, and all that. You know. Well, Mr. Taine, if you don’t mind my taking your boots away with me, I’m sure they’ll find that those prints were made on Saturday. Maybe Scotland Yard knows more about bull than cows. Ha, ha!”

“Ha, ha!” I answered dutifully.

“And meanwhile, Mr. Taine–just as a matter of form– I’m afraid I must ask you to be at home or at the office tomorrow. And I’ll bring you a statement to sign in the morning.”

When he had gone, I got Sandorski down at once from the roof.

“Peter,” I said, “there was a policeman here. It will take him twenty minutes to get back to county headquarters, and about ten minutes after that Hiart will know it was me. Now what?”

He opened a rapid fire of questions and got the position clear.

“Hiart is trying an impossible bluff,” I insisted. “I have only to produce those documents, and you to back me up.”

“Colonel, my lad, Sandorski forged them. Sandorski told you a yarn. Sandorski got you to help him land a plane. Sandorski and you murdered the man who came in it. Can you prove that isn’t true?”

“The beacons,” I said.

“My lad, they used gloves, and we were in a hurry and didn’t.”

“Lex, then.”

“Hiart thinks Lex is dead. He’ll get a shock when he finds he isn’t. But he’ll manage to have a word with him before the police.”

“But Hiart and Pink and his chaps. We heard them and saw them,” I protested.

“Indeed you did. And they nearly caught you and me in the act of landing that plane.”

“But it’s a nightmare.”

“I’ve never put the blame on the staff,” he said, “and I’m not going to start now. I’ll keep you out of it.”

I didn’t like the idea of surrender, and I told him so.

“Too many noncombatants about,” he replied, nodding his head towards the uproarious noise that was coming from the living room. “They have no business in this sort of thing.”

“I’m going to give ‘em a better world than this even if I go to gaol for it.”

“Ten minutes of your better world is up,” he said.

“I can’t help feeling Lex is the key.”

“Produce him to the police, you think?”

“It’s bound to rattle Hiart.”

“For a moment, until he can get a word with him. Then all Lex has to say is the truth–ha?–that we did receive him, and that Hiart tried to get him away.”

Sandorski shot out a hand to me for silence. His left eye sparkled with life, showing up the artificial right in fierce contrast that I had never noticed before.

“Lex!” he said. “Quick!”

He did the rope trick into the roof, with me after him.

“Lex, if we can get you away from here, where do you go?”

He used Lex’s real name, which I needn’t repeat. That gave the man confidence.

“Where I go? Why?”

“The police are on to us. But there’s still a chance of delivering your bag. Where were you to go if the plane made a forced landing?”

“Why don’t you know?” Lex replied stolidly.

“Because my orders were to take you here. But it’s bust open, my lad. It’s hot. We’ve got to get out.”

Lex thought it over and decided to trust us.

“Flat 9, 26 Fulham Park Avenue, London.”

“Who do you ask for?”

“I think empty. I have keys.”

“Get a stiff needle and black thread from your missus,” Sandorski ordered me. “And tell her to hop it now with the children.”

“What’s the idea?”

“Bolt. Skip. Now–ha? If we can get Lex to London, we’ll beat ‘em yet.”

I left Sandorski to tidy up the roof space; he hadn’t time to hide all traces of occupation, but he hoped to indicate that only one man had been there, not two.

“Go out now with the children, my darling,” I said to Cecily, “and get them that ice cream. When you come back, we shan’t be here. But Hiart will be, and the police. They are bound to find out that someone was in the roof, but say you knew nothing about it. Say I was certainly behaving oddly, but stick to your story that I never went out last night. When you took the children to the village, I said I would follow you in a minute, and we’d have a quick one at the local. Got it?”

“But where will I be able to find you?” she cried.

“Safe as can be. In the hands of the police. But I don’t want to be caught till we’ve sunk this People’s Union for good and all.”

Our parting wasn’t as sentimental as either of us would have liked, but one gets used to that in a family. The children were exasperating. They were deep in a game and decided that they didn’t want ice cream. They wouldn’t put on their coats. A hat couldn’t be found. And all the time the precious minutes were ticking away. My last view of George was of the little scamp dragging back on Cecily’s firm hand, and howling loudly.

I turned off all the lights, and went out to reconnoiter the garden and the back.

“Careful,” Sandorski suggested.

“What the hell do you think I’m going to be?”

“Right, Colonel, my lad! But I just remembered again that Hiart thinks Lex is dead. If you were too, how convenient for him! Don’t say he will. Doesn’t like violence. But it must occur to him.”

I quietly unlocked the garage door. Lex slipped in, keeping to the shadows, and lay down in the back of the car where we covered him with a rug and his splendid overcoat. Sandorski threw in the briefcase, wrapped up in a brown paper parcel, and told him what it was. At the last moment he dashed back into the house to cut the telephone wires. I jumped out too, and locked the garage, so that, if we hadn’t been watched, it wouldn’t be immediately obvious that my car was out.

It was now six-fifteen, and exactly half an hour since the inspector had left. We couldn’t have more than a minute or two to get away. As a matter of course I turned to the right, up the valley, for I couldn’t go the other way in case I ran slap into the police car racing out from Dorchester; but I had barely changed up into top before Sandorski shouted:

“Stop! Damn!”

I thought he had forgotten something essential, and that we were done.

“Straight into the net! Rabbits! Attack, ha? Attack, even if you’ve got to run! Turn the car around and put out your lights, my lad.”

When I had obeyed, he explained that just as soon as the Yard man and Hiart compared those boots of mine with a plaster cast, they would be pretty sure that I and my companion, if I had one, would try to escape. Any available police would at once be ordered by telephone to keep an eye on the road we were following. The police car itself could stop the other end of the road.

I climbed up the bank to watch. I didn’t have long to wait. Indeed the lights of the cars were already in sight. There were two of them. They stopped outside my darkened house. I could hear the police hammering on the door Then they went round to the back, and the lights were switched on. The cars had left plenty of room on the road I tore past them, with the needle of the speedometer jumping from twenty to sixty. I was keeping my eyes on the road. Sandorski said that everyone was in the house or at the back, and that the only people to see us were the drivers of the police cars.

I reckoned that one of the drivers would run into the house, that somebody would then jump for the telephone and discover that the wires were cut, and that only then would one of the cars turn and give chase.

That gave me a start of at least one minute and probably three and I felt reasonably sure of holding it even against the brilliant driving of the police. I went along that road to my office, by car or bicycle, six days of the week, and I knew every twist and narrowing. I decided to stick to it, and not to jam myself in the lanes. A cross-country route might trick the pursuit for an hour or two, but in the end would only give them time to draw the cordon tighter round the district where we must be.

I did the seven miles to the outskirts of Dorchester in eight minutes, and please God I never have to do such a piece of driving again! Sandorski reported nothing in sight behind. At the bottom of the town was a fork, and there I turned sharp left, going back more or less parallel to the road I had come on, and separated from it by flat water meadows.

There I drove sedately like any family farmer returning home. I saw the lights of a fast car hurling along the road we had just left, and gambled that the police would also see my lights, and decide that it couldn’t be me. That was what happened. Sandorski reported that the police car had rushed straight on up the hill into Dorchester. There they were bound, as they thought, to have news of me. I must have been seen or stopped.

Now we sailed away northwards over the downs, passing little traffic and, thank heaven, no village bobby to notice our number. Not that he need bother with numbers. My car was a smart light gray, and horribly conspicuous at night.

When I thought we were likely to have passed out of the probable area of search, I turned into a lane and stopped. Far beyond us, of course, there would be check points or roving patrol cars to cut us off from London, but we were now between the lines with time to think.

I told Lex to come up and take a breather. He put out an unhappy and disgusting head.

“I vos ill,” he said.

“All for the cause!” exclaimed Sandorski. “Heil Hitler!”

“Why you say that?” asked Lex very seriously.

“Ask our friend here, my lad!” Sandorski said with an air of triumphant mystery.

“He is then alive?”

“Go and wash your face,” I said. “I can hear a stream down there to the right somewhere.”

I had grabbed a bottle of rum as last-minute baggage, and when Lex had gone we had a couple.

“One thing I didn’t have time to tell you,” the general remarked. “Mustn’t use our names before this chap.”

“I haven’t, I think. Nor you–except that you will call me ‘colonel.’ But that’s all right, as nobody else does.”

“We’ll make it,” he said.

“We’ll want a lot of luck. Do you realize I’ve got to stop for petrol somewhere?”

“And I’ve got to telephone.”

“What on earth for?”

“Didn’t I tell you?”

“You told me to get out of the house and bring a needle and thread.”

“That’s to sew up Lex’s briefcase,” he explained. “Must be in decent condition when he delivers it to Heyne-Hassingham.”

“Lord! Can you arrange that?”

“Yes, of course. And room wired for sound. If I ask for a chance to prove my innocence I’ll get it. Enough influence for that, ha? But nobody’s going to know me if I get arrested. Why should they? Might be guilty. I’m not trusted. I’m just a source of information.”

It was a wild scheme, but I could see that if we could deliver Lex to that flat at 26 Fulham Park Avenue it might succeed. It seemed to me, however, that our chance of ever reaching London was slim. In the course of the night the movements of my gray car were certain to be reported by some policeman. On the other hand, to judge by the newspapers, England was full of criminals regularly escaping with stolen cars. I suppose that they were prepared for the game, chose neutral body work, and had handy false number plates such as Hiart himself used.