CHAPTER V
Prelude to Action
SATURDAY afternoon is supposed to be an easy one for administrative staffs. Harrison was such a glutton for work and a stickler for duty that I had had to winkle him out of his office and send him off to get air and exercise, and I was perfectly content to stay in because there was a long letter to write to Bernice. Only a clerk was in the adjutant’s room, and it was he who rang through and said a Major Passenden, a gunner, would like to see me. The name conveyed nothing to me at that particular moment.
“What can I do for you, Major?” I said. He was a fine-looking chap of about forty, and in mufti, which was either marvellously valeted or brand new.
“I really want permission to go to Dalebrink Hall,” he said.
“I went there and your people said I couldn’t get in without a pass.” He smiled in the most likeable way. “So I wondered if you or your adjutant would give me one.”
“I see,” I said cheerfully, and was wondering how to put the matter to him. “The trouble is, it isn’t quite so easy as that. There’re all sorts of preliminaries and it’s as much as this tunic of mine is worth if I don’t take precautions.”
“That’s all right,” he said, and smiled. “Red tape and the War House are the only two things you can’t tell me about.”
He was a quietly spoken chap, but alert enough and, I judged, a good man at his job. He had none of that God-Almighty-ness that you so often meet in gunners.
“Good,” I said, and reached for pencil and paper. “Whom do you want to see?”
“Colonel Brende. He’s an old friend of mine.”
“Business?”
He shot me a look. “Oh, just a chat. I worked immediately under him in France, you know.”
“Your Military Identity Card?”
He smiled ruefully. “No can do.”
Then, thick-head that I was, I suddenly remembered.
“Good Lord,” I said, and was fumbling at my horn-rims, which is a trick I have when I’m knocked off my perch or I have an unexpected brainwave. “You’re the Major Passenden who had that little trip from Dunkirk to Lisbon.”
He nodded. “The news was a bit gaudy—”
“I only saw a paragraph in The Times,” I said. “Some day I’d like to swop a damn good dinner for the whole story.”
“You’d lose over the transactions,” he told me modestly. “Still, it does explain things such as loss of identification cards.”
“Any proofs of identity?”
“Only these.”
He hauled out of his breast-pocket a bundle of letters which had evidently awaited his arrival in England, and there was also a War House chit about a month’s leave, and where subsequently to report.
“Good enough,” I said, and handed them back. “How’d you know, by the way, that Colonel Brende was down here?”
He shot me another look.
“Learned it at the War House when I was reporting.”
“And you now want to see him on business. We’d better say that as it may jerk things up a little. Important business, shall we say?”
“Very important,” he said laconically.
I showed him the latest regulations and instructions by which I was strictly bound, and explained that the issue of passes had to be confirmed by District H.Q.
“But why shouldn’t the mountain come to Mahomet?” I said. “May I get him on the phone for you?”
“I’d be most grateful,” he said.
I got through quickly enough, and it was Penelope who answered. I thought it would do no harm to appear friendly.
“Hallo, young lady,” I said. “Why aren’t you out getting into the fresh air?”
“I know,” she said. “Dreadful of me, isn’t it?”
“And is the Colonel in too?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but I could find out. What did you want him for particularly?”
“Just something private.”
“It isn’t private for me,” she said, with just a touch of the girlish. “I’ve very strict instructions about bringing the Colonel to the phone.”
“Have it your own way,” I told her amusedly. “Tell the Colonel there’s a Major Passenden here, wanting to speak to him on urgent business.”
“Major Passenden,” she said slowly, as if she were writing it down. I could imagine her being business-like for my special benefit. “I’ll see if he’s in, but I’m pretty sure he isn’t.”
I told Passenden what was happening.
“You had a bit of a blitz here last night,” he remarked while the wait was still on. “I saw a few useful craters near the park gates.”
“It was a bit heavy while it lasted,” I said. “I’ve been in worse, but I hate ’em all.”
“Funny they should make a dead set at the Hall?”
“Yes.” I said, and then as my fingers went instinctively to my glasses. “You knew what was going on there?”
“A friend of mine gave me some idea,” he said off-handedly. Then Penelope’s voice came again.
“That you. Major Travers? Oh, this is Penelope Craye again. I’m frightfully sorry, but the Colonel’s out. He may not be back till to-morrow.”
“Can you get in touch with him?”
“Heavens, no!” she said. “I believe it’s something frightfully hush-hush.”
I repeated it all for Passenden’s benefit, and he merely gave a resigned shrug of the shoulders.
“Awfully good of you, taking all this trouble,” he said. “What I think I’ll do is put up at a hotel in the town and try again to-morrow. You don’t happen to know a hotel you can recommend?”
I told him of one and suggested he could phone from my office. While he was doing it I took a turn outside, or the truth is rather that I had walked a yard or two outside when I fairly leapt in the air. Just round the corner of the long hut someone had started up a motor-bicycle, and it shot round within a couple of yards of me. It wasn’t the nearness that startled me so much as the roar of its engine, which was as raucous as many a car I’ve heard snorting and snarling round the Brookland track.
“Hi. you there!” I hollered, and its rider drew it to a halt some fifty yards along the tarmac. I recognized him as Craye, and he spotted me right enough and came paddling the bicycle back.
“Mr. Craye,” I said, “is it necessary for that engine of yours to make that damnable noise?”
He looked the least bit sheepish for a moment, then recovered his usual aplomb.
“Sorry, sir, but you have to do it to get speed.”
“Do it?” I said. “Do what? If you’ve been tinkering with the exhaust, see it’s put right again. It’s Government property you’ve been tinkering with.”
“Very good, sir,” he said, and still lingered. “But she doesn’t run nearly so well, sir.”
I could have exploded.
“Mr. Craye,” I said, “don’t argue with me about motor-bikes. I was driving one before you’d seen a scooter. Get that exhaust put right.”
He looked so genuinely apologetic that I weakened.
“You’re not the only one who’s tampered with an exhaust in his time,” I added.
He smiled, and rather stared at me as if unable to believe that it was I who had been so human. Then, and it took some doing, he gave me a first-class salute.
“Very good, sir. And thank you, sir.”
Off he cruised and I found myself smiling. There was something in Master Craye after all, I was telling myself, and then Passenden emerged from the office. I strolled with him as far as the gate, and we both hoped we’d be meeting again in the near future.
I had just finished my letter and was thinking about tea when the buzzer went again. This time I had a real shock.
“The Rev. Benison is here, sir, and would like to see you.”
There was a moment’s hesitation before I asked for him to be brought along. What he wanted from me, officially or unofficially, I couldn’t imagine. The best thing was to wait an
d see and have no answers ready.
“Major Travers?” he said, and his austere lips had a thin smile.
“Come in, padre,” I said. “May I send for some tea for us?”
“For me, no,” he said, and gave a slight raise of the hand. “Part of my war-time discipline is to do without tea.”
“Then tell me what I can do for you.”
Now he was at close quarters he looked more like John Knox than ever, if his frame, perhaps, was sturdier. Given a battle-axe and a clear space, he’d have made a sorry mess of quite a lot of anti-Covenanters. As his eyes met mine, I saw, again with surprise, that they were an intense blue.
“What I’ve come about is this,” he began. “When the Camp was first started, the men used to come to my church on Sunday mornings.”
“The usual church parade,” I suggested.
“Yes. And then for no reason at all they changed over to the town. I approached Major Splint about it, but he said the matter was out of his hands. I wondered if you could do anything in the matter.”
I leaned back, thinking hard. Our eyes met and it was mine that fell. Then I leaned forward.
“May I speak as a layman and entirely without prejudice?”
“Do, do.”
“Well, rightly or wrongly, I’ve been informed that the parade is held at the parish church because of certain pacifist views expressed from your own pulpit.”
His lips moved in the same thin smile.
“I thank you for your frankness. But, may I put a question and back it with a statement? What I preach is the Gospel. Can you find anywhere in the Gospels a word in favour of war?”
“I’m no theologian,” I said. “I do seem to remember something about not bringing peace, but a sword.” He was about to cut in but I went hastily on. “You’ll probably say that was metaphorical and that’s where you’ve always got the stranglehold over us laymen. So let me speak officially for a change. How could any responsible officer let his men listen to pacifist arguments when he can’t give his own arguments there and then? A soldier is a fighter, and in this war he’s got to be a pretty grim one. And,” I went on, getting it off my chest, “there were men of good sound religion in the past who fought pretty well. The Covenanters, for instance. Gort can preach a good sermon, for I’ve heard him.”
He nodded benignly.
“Major Travers, I’d be delighted—genuinely delighted—if you’d come along to our little Institute and give us a talk one night. We might stage a little debate.”
“No you don’t, padre,” I said. “I’m a soda-water bottle, not a fountain. The Regulations wouldn’t allow me to make such a fool of myself in any case, thank heaven. But to speak absolutely officially, the matter of the church parade is definitely not in my hands. It’s in the hands of the Colonel of the battalion which supplies the two Companies. My own few available men go with them for convenience.”
Now I didn’t want him using the Camp on any pretext whatever, so I didn’t ask him to see the officers concerned. What I did suggest was that he should write me a letter, which I’d pass on to the right quarter. He seemed grateful.
“Perhaps you’ll drop in some time when you’re in the City,” he said. “I shall always be very pleased to see you.”
“That’s very good of you,” I told him, and then I had to go and spoil things by saying that I had read with interest his letter to the Clarion.
“You disagreed?” he said quickly.
“Not at all,” I said. “Speaking as a layman, and civilian, I saw your side of the argument. I admit I wish you’d been more explicit about the way you proposed that Dalebrink should defend its own interests.”
Our eyes met again, and this time it was his that fell.
“I had an argument in this same room with your predecessor,” he said. “It was when we at the City were threatened by a mob and I asked if he would afford protection. He told me he had no jurisdiction. I told him he couldn’t equivocate. Either he was a man of peace or of war. Still, there it was. We took steps to look after ourselves then, and we shall do it now.”
But when I shook hands with him at the main gate, he said a curious thing in farewell.
“I’m very grateful to you, Major. Don’t believe all you hear, by the way. In my time I’ve made my own contribution to peace, and to war. My only son was killed at Messines.”
That afternoon I had changed my mind somewhat about young Craye. Now I was thinking pretty hard about Benison. Where did rumour end and truth begin? Was the man all he had appeared that afternoon, or had his visit been one of pure design? Had he some scheme on hand the success of which depended on throwing the wool over as many eyes as possible, and if so, why were my bat eyes important? I had no answers. Somewhere in me I did have a sneaking respect for the man, and in the same deep places there was something of apprehension. While he was sitting in my office, where of all places I should have been cock of the roost, I had felt that it was he who had dominated both the room and the conversation.
Perhaps it was because of that uneasy feeling in my mind that I began thinking of Passenden instead, and almost at once I began to wonder something. Before I knew where I was, I had a theory, and an extraordinary one it was.
Passenden had said at first that all he wanted with Brende was a chat. Then he had said with laconic directness, and now I came to think back, something of irony, that his business was highly important. He had been in France for months, and he had known Brende there, like the writer of the anonymous letters. Was he the writer?
The thought hit me like a sledge-hammer. In France, occupied and unoccupied, he might have come into contact with sources of information. That last letter had borne a London postmark, and he had been there at the date of posting. But what of the two earlier letters? There was always a queue a mile long for the Clipper service, I thought, and he might have sent the first two letters by a trusted friend, with instructions to post in Dalebrink. I didn’t like the argument, but there the possibility was. The letters were written by an educated person, and were quiet and direct, like Passenden himself. And if all that were true, then Passenden had come to Dalebrink as soon as he had ascertained Brende’s whereabouts, to give him by word of mouth the truth about the warnings he had hitherto been able to write only guardedly.
As I sat over my tea in the almost deserted Mess, the arguments swayed me this way and that. There was the revelation that only when Passenden knew himself about to see Brende did he give a hint as to who the writer was, and as for arguments against, well, the fact that Passenden had apparently no reason for keeping back that information in the earlier letters, or being even more explicit in the last one, was only one of the things that came to my mind. In fact I thought so much about the whole thing that my brain went woolly, and I was glad when Harrison came in.
“You’re early,” I said. “I thought I ordered you to get out and stay out?”
He grinned. “So I did, sir, till I ran into Cross. He wants a stunt for his men to-night. It doesn’t matter apparently how late they’re up to-night because there’s all Sunday to sleep it off.”
“What’d you tell him?”
“Well, I told him that unless he heard to the contrary, he could make the Park his objective. I thought it would be a good idea to get the new patrols working keenly, and if we got the chance of mentioning it to Command, they’d simply wag their tails.”
“Good,” I said. “We’ll get those medals yet. I think I’ll be that way myself after dark and have a look-see. Did he give you an idea of how many men he was using?”
“About seven or eight picked men. He can’t get any more because of the guards he’s furnishing. I told him I thought that would be ample.”
I quite agreed, and that we didn’t want the stunt to go as far as actual holding up of sentries or patrols. If any of Cross’s men could prove they had got through our lines, that was good enough.
I picked up The Times and found that some enterprising person had got ahead of me and prac
tically finished the crossword. Then as I began looking through the paper again, I remembered something, and about Passenden. Up to that moment everything in the relationships between Passenden and Colonel Brende had been vague, so to speak, and had consisted in nothing but Passenden’s own statements and my own deductions. Neither had spoken to the other, and Brende had not spoken to me. What I recalled now was something definite—that paragraph which had been cut from The Times in the pile of salvage at Dalebrink Hall.
Passenden’s story was implicitly true then, though I had never really doubted it, and someone at the Hall was interested in him and his escape, and would therefore be glad to see him personally. But who? Three copies of The Times daily, I told myself, and two of The Telegraph. Why the difference of numbers? Probably because Mrs. Brende took The Times herself. A copy of each of the other papers might be for Brende and Penelope, and a copy for the Hall Mess. From whose copy had the cutting been taken? Probably from Brende’s, though Mrs. Brende’s was not out of the question.
The whole thing may seem unimportant, and I didn’t worry my brains over it much at the time, but what was disturbing was the remembering of the tangible evidence of that cutting as opposed to nebulous theory. Perhaps I don’t make myself clear. That cutting, in so far as it made Passenden’s story true, made my theories less presentable. Why should a man so well known to the person to whom he was writing have to use anonymous letters for communications? Why didn’t he sign by initials? Why not make an allusion to something of private but mutual interest to reveal his real identity?
I suppose those thoughts made their contribution to my restlessness of that evening, but somehow I could settle down to nothing. At half-past six I had a bath and change, and was first in at dinner. Then during the meal I thought of something else. If I was going to mooch round the Hall in the dark that night, then I ought to make myself better acquainted with the lie of the land. Round that garden were all sorts of paths and hedges, with steps to rises of ground, and at least one ornamental pool of water, and I was anxious to take neither a bad toss nor a ducking. Also the more one knew, the greater the mobility, and I didn’t want to have to stand under a hedge while things happened in the dangerous distance.
The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 7