The last time I had been on leave, which was at the Christmas, George had been out of town, and they told me at the Yard that he had been for some time engaged on special hush-hush work. Since I am one of those unofficial so-called experts whom the Yard frequently employs, though in my own case the former ownership of an uncle as Chief Commissioner made my employment perilously near simony, no bones were made about telling me just what the hush-hush work was. As I very well knew, from Dunkirk time till the utter collapse of France, an enormous number of refugees had managed to reach this country. Among them were undoubtedly enemy agents, and so Superintendent George Wharton had become a kind of scrutineer-in-chief, and was working with both the Special Branch and Military Intelligence, not to mention the Home Office. But wherever he was working, the right man was for once in the right place, for George is one of the few men I’ve ever come across whose French is definitely as good as his English, moreover he has up his sleeves tricks that would have made Bill Bye and the Heathen Chinee look like amateur conjurers at a children’s party.
But I had no luck at the Yard that evening. There was no one there whom I knew particularly well, though I learned that the General—at the Yard they know him as the old General, and the adjective, I may tell you, is one of affection—was still on special duty. Then someone turned up whom I knew, or who knew me, a little better, and he told me that George was at the moment in Derbyshire. When I asked for his address, he pretended there was no late information, and he looked sorry for mentioning Derbyshire at all. Then I actually wormed out of him that George’s temporary headquarters were at a place called Dalebrink, about which I’d faintly heard. No sooner had he told me that than he was qualifying it by insisting that George wasn’t really there; it was merely a species of operational centre.
As if to make up for the paucity of information, he told me quite a lot about Dalebrink. According to him it appeared to be divided like all Gaul into three parts: a small area where there were two mightily important factories, the town itself with its residential portion which made it a caravanserai for Lancashire, and a Garden City part by itself which was a cranks’ home.
“Ah ha!” I said. “So the General’s doing Buchan stuff, is he?”
“Buchan stuff?” he said blandly.
“That’s right. Thirty-nine Steps, Mr. Standfast, and so on.”
He smiled at my childish chatter, but there was something in his eye which told me I had not been so far out. Still, I did no more winkling out of information, and after I’d stood him a drink at a nearby hostelry, I made a slow way back to the hotel. Bernice actually turned up a quarter of an hour before time.
She was as sorry as I was that I had not been able to get hold of George, and during the meal we fell naturally to talking about him, for George is one of those people about whom one simply must talk as soon as their names are mentioned. George has it, and that little something the others haven’t got, and though I am not modern enough to know the nature of its ingredients—he doubtless has considerable quantities of oomph. But the best thing about him is that he is fully aware of his own gifts and qualities. Bernice loves him and describes him consistently as a darling. As for my own opinions, the fact that he never ceases to be a source of delight does not alter the other fact that I have for him a tremendous respect and affection, even if I have concealed both under the remark that if ever anything happens to him I shall insist on having him stuffed.
Since George is going to be the major part of the queer things which I hope to relate, perhaps you would like to meet him well beforehand. George is a subject ripe for the brush or pencil of Belcher, in fact he bears some resemblance to the gent whom Belcher has immortalized with the cornet. But George is a walking paradox. His vast weeping-willow moustache gives him a henpecked look, and when he puts on his antiquated spectacles, he assumes at the same time an old-world, disarming simplicity. He believes himself that the Yard robbed the stage of a great character actor, and showmanship is the sap of his very vitals. Women, as he has boasted in his expansive moments, are as putty in his fingers, and he can smell a liar quicker than the devil can catch the whiff of holy water. His snorts, his grunts, his little hypocrisies, and even his sudden and terrifying assumptions of dignity and wrath, are merely the rich colourings of a ripe and fruity personality. George can dance, and who more deftly, with them that dance, and as for weeping with them that weep, he could make a crocodile blush for its puerile efforts. Both his memory and patience are prodigious, and while he has made enemies enough in his time, I have never known him lose a friend.
As I neared the War House the following morning, I felt the approach of the usual depression and with it an apprehension. Many other men have told me they always feel precisely the same way. And in case you may ask why this holding-up of a story because of what may sound like a private vendetta, let me hasten to say there is no private vendetta, and that some little knowledge of, say, the whimsicalities of the War Office may be most important in its bearing on the queer story I hope to relate.
Not all departments of the W.O. are daubed with the same brush. There are some to whom I am always ready to present arms, since they know just what they want, say so in the fewest possible words, and go the right way to work to get it. As to others, some pretty damning accusations have been made in the House. I doubt if it can be denied that an enormous number of us have come to regard the W.O. with feelings compounded of maddening rage, sardonic despair, and a helplessness utterly without hope. Sum it up by saying that if I make a slip of utter unimportance compared with the muddle, contradiction, waste and ineptitude of which the W.O. is freely and frequently capable, the same W.O. will rear in wrath and threaten to treat the wretched delinquent as if he had virtually lost the war.
Still, to get back. It was not my fault if I felt depressed. After all, I was about to interview someone who, for all I knew, would be the usual specialist in putting round pegs in square holes, and who had the authority to send me forthwith to Fiji or the Outer Hebrides. Argument would be out of the question. If there was a gap in the department’s private jigsaw, in I would go, fit or not.
At the War House I signed the usual chit stating my business and with whom. A careful eye was run over me, and when it was apparent—regretfully, let’s hope—that I was unlikely to assassinate any of the more decrepit colonels, I was handed over to an orderly and taken upstairs. In the corridors were wandering from department to department aloof young officers who in the Great War could have been found at the business end of a feeding-bottle, and everywhere was decorum amid a slightly mouldy smell as of new distemper. I was kept under observation till ten minutes past eleven when I entered Room 365.
Colonel Billow was an agreeable surprise, because in under five minutes I was out of that room again. He was elderly but very, very brisk, and if I had wanted to say anything beyond a “Very good, sir,” I’d have had no chance. He said I was on loan, as it were, from my old department, and was to take on the job of Commandant at a brand new kind of camp, known merely as Camp 55. The personnel were mixed and the duties were merely those of guarding various points. Camp 55 was near Dalebrink in Derbyshire, which was its address.
When he said that, my eyes popped. Instead of a “Very good, sir,” I so far forgot myself as to say, or begin to say, “Did you say Dalebrink, sir!” Before the first words were out, he was waving an impatient hand for silence, for he had picked up the local receiver and was about to speak.
“Is Major Splint there? Send him in, will you?”
The receiver was replaced and I was asked if I needed a railway warrant. I said I had one I could fill in, and then the Major Splint was shown in. He was told that I was Major Travers who was taking over from him, and would we have a talk about things as arranged. That appeared to be all. We saluted and out we went.
I liked the look of Splint, and I liked him still better when he said at once, “Let’s get out of this goddam Zoo and find a drink.”
“I don’t think I’d car
e to drink,” I said, “with a bloke who speaks so disrespectfully.”
He shot me a look, then grinned. Inside five minutes we were having some really excellent coffee and he was telling me all about Camp 55. Not that it was necessary, as he said, because down there I should find the very prince of adjutants who could make me conversant with things as we went along. What we talked therefore might be classed as generalities and scandal.
The Camp was a hutted one, he said. Some of the troops were permanent, but two Companies stayed for about three months and were then replaced. All did guards and at the same time carried on training, for which there were facilities, including two excellent ranges. What had to be guarded were two highly important factories, two vital tunnels, a bridge or two and a certain hush-hush establishment.
As for the lie of the land, I should soon pick it up, he said. No map was required, for most things were along a line running north-west to south-east. Start north-west and there were the two factories, both well camouflaged. Proceed south-east along the line for a mile and there was the town of Dalebrink—what might be called the old town with its shops and the residential area of the hoi polloi. Another half-mile and one came to the Garden City, small and well spread out, and occupying the slopes of some attractive hills. Another half-mile and there was Dalebrink Park, as it was known—a private estate on which was situated the hush-hush affair that had to be guarded.
“And where’s our Camp?” I asked.
“Half-way between the Garden City and the Park and just off the main road to the north,” he said. “There’s transport, by the way, to take your men, and there’s a special car for your own use.”
“It sounds a cushy job,” was my opinion.
“It is,” Splint said. “It’s a comfortable Camp, and the country’s lovely. In the summer it’ll be paradise. Still, you know what that part of Derbyshire’s like without my telling you.”
“And what’s my own actual work?”
“Just being chief executive. I used to pay surprise visits to the guards at all sorts of hours. Harrison, the adjutant, is kept pretty much to his office, so I used to take that load off his back.” Then he smiled. “Honestly, I think it’s a job you’ll like. Or won’t you?”
“I’m wondering,” I told him. “Aren’t there any snags at all?”
“Frankly,” he said, “I can’t think of any. Mind you, it isn’t a job where you’ll win any medals. Also you may expect to get more heavily raided than we’ve been up to now.”
“No flies in the ointment at all then?”
“Just one little one,” he said, and smiled. “There’s one young officer who’ll probably annoy you considerably–a chap called Craye. He’s a kind of lounge lizard in uniform, and with any God’s amount of sheer cheek. You may have to jump on him with both feet. He’s only just turned up or I should have had him well in hand for you.”
“I’ll remember Craye,” I said. “But what’s the famous Garden City like?”
“Gawd, what a place!” he said. “It’s a regular last ditch for all the cranks in England.”
“What sort of cranks?”
“All sorts. I don’t mind the arts and crafts gang and the long-haired poets and authors and so on. What I don’t like are the Neggers.” He caught my questioning look and explained. “We call them the Neggers from their initials—N.E.G., which is the New Era Group.”
“A pacifist show?”
He frowned. “It’s more tricky than that. The Neggers are planning a New Order and they’re a wily lot. It’s a pretty good camouflage to pretend to be planning the future while you’re doing underground work in the present. There’s some very bad blood between the City and the town. People want to know why the whole collection of Neggers aren’t under lock and key. You hear no end of talk about influence.”
“What about the hush-hush place?”
“That’s a different proposition,” he said. “I believe there’s research being carried on in connection with the fighting of night bombers. There’s a small gang of experts living in the Hall. Harrison will give you a special hush-hush document about it. I paid the usual courtesy call when the show started, but I haven’t been inside the place since. I don’t think one’s made any too welcome.”
“I suppose,” I said with a vast assumption of indifference, “you never ran across a man called Wharton down there?”
“Wharton?” he said. “What’s he like?”
“A civilian. Biggish chap with an overhanging moustache.”
He shook his head and I left it at that. In fact, the only other thing that happened of consequence was that he gave me the telephone number of Camp 55 and assured me there was an excellent train leaving at fourteen-thirty hours. I took him along to my hotel to collect my baggage, and before lunch I got hold of Harrison and arranged to be met at Dalebrink station.
Splint was on short leave before going out East, so he disappeared after lunch and I rang Bernice to give her the news, the address and the telephone number.
“Derbyshire!” she said. “My dear, what a dreadful distance away!”
“Inverness would have been farther,” I said cheerfully, and before I could come in with other consolations, she was all agog with something she had suddenly remembered.
“Dalebrink, darling. Don’t you remember? That charming Mrs. Brende.”
“Mrs. Brende?”
“You must remember. She was at our wedding. You know. Her husband was in India. He was a gunner or something. A dear old soul about sixty.”
“Oh, yes,” I said diplomatically, and still unable to recall the lady. Fancy a man remembering people with whom he’s barely shaken hands on his wedding day.
“You must look her up,” Bernice was going on. “It will be lovely for you, darling, having a home from home.”
“You mean, she lives at Dalebrink?”
“Darling,” she told me in a rather hurt voice, “haven’t I been telling you so all the time?”
It was a good train as Splint had said, and on that comfortable journey two things happened. Strictly speaking, one was a happening and the other was an idea.
With regard to the idea, it came at the tail end of a line of thought. As I lay back in the corner seat of the empty compartment, I began naturally to wonder about the new appointment. It is all very well for us old-timers to ape the fire-eater and to pray to be sent where the shells fall thickest, but there is something singularly attractive about a job where the Hun is not, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land. While conscience therefore told me that though I was Category B Permanent, I ought to be a fighting man, something that I was pleased to regard as common sense assured me that I was about to do a job that someone had to do, and that they also serve who only stand and wait. The same insidious voice said it was humbug for me to regard myself as a real soldier. That tooth-brush moustache I flaunted in the world’s face was a pathetic camouflage for my bat eyes and horn rims, and six foot three of gauntness, let alone the grey hair that has long spread abroad from its once distinguished siting round my temples. Then an apt quotation came to my mind, from old George Peele:
His helmet now shall make a hive for bees.
And as I thought of that, I thought of George Wharton, and I suddenly knew why I was being sent to Dalebrink!
Perhaps you don’t get it, as our American friends say. Well, I have a flibbertigibbet sort of brain. I suppose, like everyone else, I have a small repertoire of things that I really know well, but for the rest I fear I have dabbled in an incredible number of things and gathered a junk-house of information which finds application principally in the more abstruse cross-words. George Wharton gets exasperated by it because it serves to prompt me with an immediate theory to satisfy any problem. The fact that I am right only once in say, every four shots, does not discourage the furtive inner voice that prompts the said theories. George, as I said, becomes annoyed, sarcastic, and even epigrammatic about it all, but that hasn’t deterred him from profiting in the past fro
m my more successful efforts.
When I thought of that quotation then, my thoughts went like this. George Peele—George Wharton—bees—bees in the bonnet—theories—coincidence: and there it was. It could not be coincidence, I said, that I was going to Dalebrink to do a job that Harrison could do far better than I and where the few talents I have would be wholly unused, and where at the moment was mysteriously lurking George Wharton with whom I had always worked in the old days at the Yard. George, I said, must have approached the Powers-that-be and have asked for me to be sent to Dalebrink. In that case something mightily strange was going on down there. The warrior’s helmet, in fact, would not be a hive for bees. The warrior, for all he knew, might find himself in false whiskers, with a truncheon concealed under his armpit.
As for the thing that happened, it seemed less than unimportant at the time. I had bought The Times to do the cross-word, and when I had finished it my eye caught an advertisement. It was for something I rather wanted, so I began cutting it out neatly with my penknife. Then I wondered, since I still wanted the paper, if I was spoiling something on the other side, so I had a precautionary look, and I then saw a paragraph which I had missed at my first discursive reading. Mind you, I saw no importance in that paragraph. It had a certain interest in the adventurous train of thought to which it naturally led up, but it did not stay docketed in my mind. There was no reason why it should. I even forgot straightaway the name of the officer it mentioned.
The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 2