Wharton turned to me, and his smile had a smugness that made me wince.
“That’s what I call a first-class witness. Miss Craye not only kept her eyes open; she knew how to put two and two together. And what else did the Colonel let out, Miss Craye?”
“Well, there wasn’t much else,” she said, all a-simper with Wharton’s compliments. “He asked if I’d do a letter or two. I can show you copies if you like, but they weren’t really important, and then he said he didn’t want to be disturbed again as he would be working.”
“And the last time you saw him was?”
She frowned and her lips moved with mental calculations.
“At about half-past eight. He’d had his dinner and was working here at the desk.”
“Where’d he have his dinner?”
“Here, sir,” Ledd said briskly. “I brought it up, sir.”
“And when did you see him last?”
“When, sir? At about a quarter to nine, sir. I passed Miss Craye in the corridor when she was going to her room.”
“Her room?”
“He means my bed-sitting-room,” she explained. “It’s the length of the house away, on the other side.”
Wharton nodded his thanks, then was asking Ledd if it was usual for him to be dismissed so early.
“Well, sir, it wasn’t all that usual,” Ledd told him. “Sometimes it happened like that when the Colonel didn’t want to be disturbed. Generally though, I used to look in at about ten.”
While all that conversation was going on, I was feeling relieved that I had not had the opportunity of telling Wharton that at the time Colonel Brende had undoubtedly been in that very room, I had seen near the summer-house a someone for whom I had at first mistaken him. Then while Wharton was making a note of the times as given by both witnesses, I did manage to get near the door and try the handle. Wharton spotted me.
“Locked, is it?”
“Yes,” I said, “and there’s no key this side.”
“The Colonel kept it locked, sir, when he went to bed,” Ledd told him.
“Then wherever the Colonel is, the key is,” Wharton said, and rather obviously. “And what did you do with yourself, Corporal, when the Colonel said he didn’t want you any more?” Once more Ledd’s face flamed crimson, and I wondered what the devil could be the matter with the man.
“Went for a walk, sir.”
“Alone?”
There was a slight hesitation. “Yes, sir.”
“Ah!” said Wharton, and almost wagged a roguish finger. “Sure that it wasn’t spring and thoughts of love? In other words, you hadn’t a date?”
Ledd gave his first grin, and it was a sheepish one.
“No, sir. Nothing like that, sir.”
“And what about you, Miss Craye?”
“I didn’t leave my room,” she said. “I read a book and went to bed early. I was glad I did, because I slept through most of the raid.”
“Your bedroom connected with here?”
“Oh, yes.” The blush this time was what might be called a pretty one. “The room’s really my sitting-room. The Colonel would often give me a ring if he wanted anything.”
“And that pad beside his bed was for if he had any ideas in the night?”
“Yes,” she said, as if surprised. “How marvellous of you to have noticed it!”
“We may be getting a bit old but we’re not yet doddery,” Wharton told her unctuously. “And now about the sleeping arrangements for the whole house. I think I’d better get an idea.”
There was no difficulty whatever about that. Colonel Brende’s rooms faced west. Mrs. Brende’s two rooms faced south, and her bedroom was actually over the front door. Penelope Craye’s large room faced east, and the intervening rooms were all empty. As corridors ran completely round, communication was easy enough, and the head of the servants’ stairway came out on a landing at the centre of the north corridor. As for the rest of the inmates, Newton, Wissler and Riddle slept in the old dining-room, which had been partitioned off, and the two maids and cook in the original butler’s pantry and its annexe. Squadron-Leader Pattner slept out, for his periods of stay were very occasional.
Wharton walked round the corridors to familiarize himself with the lay-out, but expressed no desire to see inside the rooms. Then he dismissed Ledd.
“Not a word of this to a soul. You understand, Corporal?” Ledd said he did, and Wharton’s tone was so grim that he was once more nervously licking his lips.
“I hope for your sake you do,” Wharton told him menacingly. “Any leakage traced to you and God help you. Colonel Brende’s away on business. You understand that? Away on business, and you won’t even say that unless you’re asked.”
Away went Ledd. Wharton’s voice was as soft as butter again.
“I don’t think we need keep you any longer at the moment, Miss Craye. Major Travers and I will just have a quick look round, then we might have a word with the others.”
“Come on,” he said to me. “We’ll have a look at that wisteria.”
He left the front door wide open, and round we went to the west wing. When we ran our eyes over the wisteria there was no need for more. There were the marks on the branches where feet had trodden. As Wharton said, it was easier and quicker than using a ladder. All at once he was grasping a branch and pulling himself up, and before you knew it he was six foot clear of the ground.
“There you are,” he said, puffing a bit as he reached the ground again. “Just what I said up there. The fool of a man might just as well have put an advertisement in the paper. Nice commodious room. Full of secrets. Guaranteed easy to burgle.”
“Just a minute, George,” I said. “Are you looking at things from the right angle? Why all this harping on burglary?”
He glared at me. “Secret papers have gone, haven’t they?”
“I know. But why not talk about the real happening? Why not say bluntly that Colonel Brende’s been kidnapped?”
He rumbled on for a bit, then shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, perhaps for Ledd’s benefit. That’s why I harped on the burglary side.”
“Good,” I said. “Having got so far, let’s go a bit farther. Frankly, I don’t see how he could have been kidnapped. You know the disposition of the sentries and so on. Not only that, they were all keyed up to the highest pitch of alertness on account of that Home Guard stunt.”
“What stunt was that?”
I told him, though I had to admit the sentries didn’t know it was actually on that night. They had been previously warned, however, to expect a stunt any night and any place. In my judgment then, though the night was dark enough, the unconscious Colonel could never have been carried through the cordon. Two men would have had to carry him, and a quick dash through, after a sentry had moved along, would have been hardly feasible.
“I suggest you try it out,” Wharton said.
I disagreed. What might happen on one night with one set of men was no real guide to what had happened last night with quite another set. But I did suggest an alternative to the carrying of the Colonel. His captors waited till the effects of the chloroform had worn off, and then he went out on his own legs with the business end of a gun against his spine. But even then it would have been a difficult business.
“I don’t quite see that,” Wharton said. “Whoever held the gun at his back knew perfectly well that if a sentry challenged, then the Colonel—with the gun still in his back—would call out that he was Colonel Brende and everything was all right.”
“We can argue till nightfall,” I said. “We’d better build on facts. I claim the whole thing was incredibly risky, and yet the facts remain. Someone made him get out of bed and dress himself, and the somebody or somebodies took or made him take his pyjamas and slippers. That means he was being taken to somewhere for a stay, and to a place where it would be dangerous to buy pyjamas and slippers.”
“We’ve been up against the impossible before,” Wharton said with something of c
ontempt. “Dammit, you wouldn’t expect a job like this to be done by people who wouldn’t face risks and who hadn’t got brains.”
Then he was shaking his head and scowling away to himself.
“What we’ve got to get into our heads is that this is a hell of a serious business. There mayn’t be a whisper down here, but there’ll be the very devil of a commotion in town. If he was the key man of all this research, there’s likely to be an earthquake if we can’t get hold of him. And that’ll be another devil of a job if we’ve got to keep everything secret.”
Off he stumped to the front door. Ledd was there, looking round for us. Before he could speak, Wharton wanted to know if anything of the Colonel’s was missing from the bathroom. Ledd said he’d just looked, and nothing was missing. Shaving tackle and everything was still there.
“Good,” said Wharton. “Looking for me, were you?”
“A Major Passingham is on the phone, sir, asking for the Colonel.”
Wharton raised his eyebrows and gave me a look. I took the call.
“Yes?” I said.
“Hallo! Is that you, Brende?”
“No,” I said. “It’s Major Passenden, isn’t it? Well, this is Major Travers. I just happened to be at the Hall. Colonel Brende, if you still want him, has gone away again. He may be away for a few days.”
I was about to hang up when I caught his voice again.
“Did you say ‘gone away again’?”
“Yes.”
“But this is Sunday, and only yesterday afternoon I was told he wouldn’t be back till to-day.”
“I know,” I said. “Apparently he changed his mind and came back last night.”
“Oh,” he said ruefully, and, “Sorry to be such a nuisance. Very much obliged to you.”
Neither Wharton nor I saw anything important in that little talk, and there we were wrong. I was particularly to blame, for something had been clean under my nose. There was the vital clue, standing out a yard, and I missed it. And if you have missed it too, let me tell you here and now what it was. Perhaps you still won’t see it, just as I failed to see it, and its implications. It was that Ledd reported that a Major Passingham—not Passenden—was on the phone. That is what should have made me think back.
A tremendous change had come over the office where Wharton interviewed the three experts. When I had last seen them they had been more like three people having a brief, enjoyable holiday from a job of work which was even more congenial than the necessary leisure. Mind you, as Wharton and I well knew from experience, it is easy to imagine a strained atmosphere and suspicious words and actions. Emergencies and unusual happenings make for unusual reactions, and somewhere in the mind of the most law-abiding of us is a very definite uneasiness in the presence of the law. For all that, I would still insist that never had I interviewed three people who looked and acted in a more suspicious way. For one thing everything had to be prised out of them, and when they did speak, it was in frugal language more noticeable for what it obviously concealed than what it told.
Little mousey Newton was all a-dither. He had been upstairs and formed his own conclusions from what he had seen. He said so, but when Wharton asked what the conclusions were, he stammered and hesitated, and then from the mountain of thought produced a monstrous little mouse. There had been a burglary, he thought—thought, mind you!—and when asked what about Colonel Brende, he gave his opinion that the Colonel had gone after the burglars. Wharton’s jaw sagged, and he stared, but he kept his patience.
“Did you see him last night?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Newton slowly and dubiously, as if afraid of the evidence of his own eyes.
Wharton gave what I call his Colosseum smile—that of a lion who has missed his first snap at a fat Christian.
“Well, what did he say? What was he looking like? And when did you see him?”
Imagine from now on the ums and ers and the way he kept looking round at the others, and this is what was winkled out of Newton. Brende had seen the three of them the previous night just before he had his meal, and he announced, diffidently, one gathered, and out of modesty, that he had got what he was looking for.
“And what was he looking for?” Wharton asked. “You needn’t make any bones about telling me and Major Travers.”
“Well, I can’t really say. He was working on independent lines.”
“But haven’t you any idea on what lines?”
“No,” said Newton, after due thought. “It’s all highly technical.”
“It certainly is,” said Wharton grimly. I put in a helping oar.
“What was it, Newton? Problems in sound, or ballistics, or light, or what?”
“Well, a little of each. Problems in pure physics mostly.”
“Ah, well,” said Wharton resignedly. “And will you tell us when you saw him last?”
Even then Newton had to shuffle. Riddle had seen him last, or rather, hadn’t seen him.
“What happened, Mr. Riddle?” Wharton asked with a new hope.
Riddle had been looking extremely uncomfortable, but when he began his story, he had no hesitations. When you’ve seen as many people under cross-examination as I have you’ll know that what comes pat has often been rehearsed, and that when a witness is voluble, it is often out of relief at having been asked nothing about what he hopes to conceal.
Riddle said that when the bombing began the three used the presence of enemy planes to verify certain research results. One interesting thing was noticed—something highly technical, and to do with vibrations—and Newton thought Colonel Brende might like to have it at once, or confirm. Like the others, the Colonel worked much at night, and Riddle—after what had been said—expected the Colonel to be working. But the office room was locked, so he gave a cautionary tap at the bedroom door. There was no sound, so he peeped inside. The bed, he could see, had been slept in and, though he had not registered at the time what he had seen, he now knew that the drawers were open and their contents scattered. Newton volunteered the statement that Riddle had that kind of brain, and could be implicitly believed. As for the time, it was exactly one hour thirty minutes when Riddle looked in the room.
“Now we’re hearing things,” Wharton said. “What about you, Professor Wissler? What can you tell us?”
“I can say nothing,” Wissler said in his slow, precise English. “Everything happened as everybody says.”
Wharton shrugged his shoulders, and I can swear that Wissler gave a sigh of relief. Wharton must have caught it, for he whipped round on him again.
“How did you spend your evening, exactly?”
Wissler had never left the house, as Newton could verify. Wharton turned to Riddle. Riddle said pat enough that he had been out a lot of the time.
“Out where?”
“Just walking round,” he said, and he was doing his best to grin. “We don’t get much exercise here, so I often walk for an hour or two.”
“Well, when did you walk last night?”
Riddle pursed his lips and then said cheerfully enough that it was from eleven o’clock till about one. Those were his usual times when there was nothing doing. All the sentries knew him, he said, and they could confirm.
Wharton had to be content with that. Riddle had seen nothing unusual during his walk, which had been out the back way and into open country. But he had at least established one thing—that the kidnapping of Colonel Brende had taken place before a certain time. When Wharton ended the proceedings by commiserating with Newton on the loss of all Brende’s papers, and above all on the fact that Brende had gone before he could give details of the vital discovery he had made, Newton remarked surprisingly that everything would go on as before, and the loss might not be all that great.
It was not till we were outside the front door again that Wharton exploded.
“If those are your professors, give me the damn fools. What’s the matter with them? What’re they scared of?”
“Oh, it’s just the way the mind of
those fellows works,” I said placatingly. “They’re all geniuses in a way and you can’t expect them to act like a man in the street. Where are we bound for now?”
“Nowhere,” Wharton said peevishly. “I had to get outside here or bust.”
Then he was screwing up his brow as if in tremendous thought.
“Something I want to have another look at. I know!”
Back to the house we turned. Up the stairs we went and to the door of Colonel Brende’s bedroom. Wharton took the key out of his pocket. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Penelope Craye having a surreptitious look at us from round the angle of the corridor, but I said nothing to Wharton. After all, he was taking Penelope at her face value, and if there were things to find out, I was rather wishing he would find them for himself.
CHAPTER VIII
Wharton Investigates
WHAT Wharton wanted to look at were those marks on the stone window-sill. There were no finger-prints, however, but merely smudges, and so many that one could imagine how they had been made. The abductor, for instance, must have rested his elbows on the sill while he manipulated the chloroform wad, and then he had knelt there while he deposited the fishing-rod and got into the room. Some of the marks may even have been where Colonel Brende himself went out.
Wharton did some measuring, and made notes. Then his eye fell on the fireplace in the office and he went across to look at the ashes.
“It was cold weather,” I ventured. “He’d want a fire here.”
“I know,” Wharton said. “It’s always instinct to take a look at a fire in case anything’s been burnt.”
Then as we went back to the bedroom in came Penelope Craye, or rather she peeped in apologetically.
“I thought I heard you here. Is there anything I can do?”
Wharton pursed his lips.
“Well, as a matter of fact, there is. You might try to give us some idea of what’s been taken from the safe, and his desk.”
“But I told you I couldn’t,” she said, and then hesitated. “What I could show you is the list of incoming letters. I have to keep those for the postage book, you know.”
The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 10