Passenden only shook his head again. Then the conversation came to one of those queer full-stops, and Passenden said he would be going. If he recalled anything he would let us know. I assured him that I’d clear him with the local police.
“And now you’re bound for Scotland?” Wharton asked.
“I shall try to see Mrs. Brende first,” he said. “I’ll get her to meet me in the town. Probably to-morrow morning I shall start for Scotland.” He gave a quick look. “I suppose there’ll be nothing in the papers about this?”
Wharton’s look was one of horror. Not a word would be let out to a soul, and heaven help any of the few who let out what they knew.
“Mrs. Brende knows?” Passenden asked.
“Yes,” Wharton said. “But you’re not to let on that you know. She knows the need for secrecy, and she’s a woman of discretion.”
No sooner had he gone than Wharton was asking if he might use my phone. I left him at it and went to see Harrison. He had various papers for me to sign, and then I had to swear him to secrecy and say that something had gone wrong with the guards the previous night, which was all I could let out. He must have thought me somewhat offhand, but he said readily enough that he’d have assembled for me at eighteen hours that night every man who had been on guard at the Hall. I assured him it was a private affair and nothing for him to worry about. Then we discussed the report to Command on Cross’s show, and I went back to the office. Wharton was still phoning, so I strolled round the Camp. It was another quarter of an hour before Wharton had finished. No sooner had he hung up than a call was coming for me. It was Benison. Could I see him that afternoon at any time to suit myself. I said would three o’clock do, and we agreed on that.
“What on earth does he want?” I said to Wharton.
“Ask him about that picket of his on the road last night,” Wharton said.
“I will,” I said. “And what did you think of Passenden?”
“Fine looking soldier.”
“Dammit, George, can’t you ever come straight to a point?” I said irritably. “What did you think of his evidence?”
“What’s the good of my answering?” countered George. “When I hinted he might have given you that crack on the skull, you pooh-poohed the idea. Now it turns out he was at the right spot at the right time.”
“Leaving that,” I said, “what did you think of him?”
“Well, there was a discrepancy in his evidence. He told you he had urgent business with Brende, and just now he said he hadn’t. Also he was more occupied with what he was thinking himself than what we were telling him. That chap knows something. I’d even go so far as to say he knows a lot.”
“Funny,” I said, “but I thought the same thing.”
“He’s one of those strong, silent men,” George went on. “If he hadn’t been what he is, I’d have said he was thumbing his nose at us, as much as to say, ‘I know a hell of a lot, but I’m not going to tell you, and you can’t make me.’”
“But can we make him—I mean, if what you think is true?”
“Within a very few hours there’ll be a man on his tail,” Wharton said. “That’s as far as we can go at present.”
I nodded. “Let’s hope Passenden doesn’t spot him. But about the whole affair, George. Got any ideas? If you have, you’re far ahead of me.”
George was getting to his feet and saying that he would have to get home and do some real telephoning. He appeared to remember my question as an afterthought.
“Ideas, did you say? Don’t know that I have. A couple of questions I’d like an answer to, though.”
I knew I was expected to ask what they were, so I did.
“Well, you tell me this,” he said. “Why should the drawers of the desk be prised open when Colonel Brende—unconscious, mind you—had the keys in his pocket?”
I could only say it beat me.
“And why should the safe be shut? I know it wasn’t locked, but it was shut, and the picture put in front of it. If a person searching the rooms is in all that hurry that he throws everything about, why the sudden craze for neatness over the safe?”
“Don’t know,” I said. “Unless—”
George cut in hurriedly as he made for the door.
“Don’t tell me. I know what your theories are. Not worth a damn. All the same, if you find a real answer, let me know. And let me know what happens with Benison this afternoon.”
Off he went. I heaved a sigh, then pulled out my pipe. Then the telephone went again. This time the police wanted me. Only enquiries about Passenden, so I soon satisfied them.
“Anything new about those Buxton parachutists?” I asked.
“We haven’t heard any more,” I was told. “We don’t think they’ve been caught yet. This is fine country to hide away in for days.”
“It certainly is,” I said.
“Also we’ve been busy. What do you think the latest is, sir?”
“Lord knows!” I said.
“Only a burglary at the Institute—Mr. Benison’s Institute. Someone broke in last night and he’s raising Cain.”
CHAPTER IX
Slow Going
AFTER an early lunch that Sunday I had a short nap, and when I woke, that head of mine was feeling better. A tepid bath and a change into civilian clothes helped still more, and I made up my mind that I would walk to the City to see Benison. As it was not yet time to start off, I rang Cross and managed to get hold of him.
He gave me the information which I wanted. His men had entered the park at two points only: three men and himself through the hedge not far from the back entrance, and the others over the wall at a spot plumb opposite. These men were to make a feint, and generally create a diversion so that the four could penetrate at the rear of the servants’ quarters. It was soon after midnight when the attempt had been made, with the disastrous results for them that you know. As for his men seeing or hearing anything unusual, Cross said he was sure they hadn’t, since every man had made a report and the exercise and lessons to be learned from it had been thoroughly discussed that very morning, which was parade day for the Home Guard.
“Now a very ticklish question,” I said, “and I’m sorry I can’t give reasons for asking it. Are you dead plumb sure of the bona fides of every one of the men who were with you?”
He wasn’t any too pleased, as I’d anticipated.
“Didn’t we go into that last night? I’d trust any one of them with anything and anywhere.”
“Good,” I said. “You see, if I make a report on the stunt to Command, Command may ask me if I was sure of men who had been allowed inside a prohibited area.”
“I get you,” he said. “But they’re good fellows, every one of them. Tell Command to ask me, and I’ll tell them.”
Well, that was that. Cross hadn’t any fifth columnist who’d used the stunt to facilitate the kidnapping, though one still couldn’t be dead sure. After all, it’s the primary duty of a Hun agent to get himself accepted as British to the marrow, and Cross might have been deceived. But what did rather depress me was the knowledge that Cross’s men had been grouped and not strung out. You get the idea. They didn’t form a cordon through which the kidnapper and Brende had to pass, and therefore they could be discounted as deterring agents. In fact, they might even have facilitated the kidnapping. That feint of theirs must have certainly succeeded to some extent in attracting the attention of sentries and patrols.
No church bell was ringing as I neared the City, but it seemed that Sunday-school was in session, for children were entering the church gate as I walked up to the vicarage door. Benison was waiting for me, and who should be with him but Sir Hereward Dove. I didn’t like that old man. Physically his paunchiness repelled me, and there was a crumbiness about him as if a short inspection of his waistcoat would reveal the history of his recent meals. He had also the habit of making sucking noises with his teeth, as if those meals still lingered on his palate.
Benison was making himself most agreeable,
with apologies for bringing me over and enquiries as to how I was settling down. Then at last we got to the matter in hand, which was the burglary. It appeared that the vicarage had been broken into as well as the Institute.
“Fortunately nothing was taken,” Dove put in. He had a heavy, guttural voice and spoke slowly. “And I may say, for an excellent reason. There was nothing to take.”
“Nothing?” I said.
“Sir Hereward means there was nothing here which they were looking for,” explained Benison. “What they thought they’d find was subversive literature, or evidence to make our little movement into some traitorous organization.”
“What leads you to think that?” I asked politely.
“Doesn’t it follow?” Dove said. “The two burglaries had the same object. Neither the Institute nor here, if my good friend Benison will pardon me, contains anything to attract a burglar.”
“And where do I come in?” I asked with a Whartonian attempt at humour.
“Of course, of course,” Dove said. “Show him that message, Benison.”
The message was a typewritten one, delivered through the post and reaching Benison on the Saturday morning.
DEAR SIR,
I have information that another attempt is going to be made by a small body of roughs to set fire to your Institute, and to spread placards and posters about. To throw dust in your eyes, the gang is coming not from the town way but the other way from the direction of the Hall. I cannot tell you how I got this information, but it is O.K., and I advise you to put a spoke in their wheel by collaring them before they do any mischief. Though you don’t know me, I owe a good deal to you, and I am glad to repay you in this way. Good luck to you and your cause.
A FRIEND.
“So that was why you had that picket out last night,” I said.
“Yes,” said Benison, and looked more grim than confused. “We talked the matter over”—he and Dove, he apparently meant—“and we took the advice in the letter. And pretty fools we were to fall into the trap. While our men were out there, the burglaries were being committed.”
“I don’t know,” I couldn’t help saying. “It’s a very plausible letter. It has just the right amount of flattery in it, and it reads genuine. But may I ask just where I’m personally concerned?”
“The local police have refused to give extra police protection,” Dove said. “They’ve always been hostile and they say they’re insufficiently staffed as it is. So if we put in an application to the Military Authorities, should we have your backing?”
I ducked for the long grass at once. Dove’s huge fishy eyes were on me, and Benison’s look was one of wary anticipation, and I had the sudden and certain feeling that the two were laying some snare for my trusting feet.
“But didn’t I understand that you’ve nothing of value to protect?” I said.
“The Institute’s valuable property,” Benison said. “If it were burnt down—and this letter shows we’ve clever and determined men to deal with—then it couldn’t be rebuilt in wartime.”
I might have said a whole lot. I could have pointed out, for instance, the cool impudence of asking for military to protect peacemongers and mischief-makers, and allow them to continue their activities in security. What I did say was something different.
“Sorry. I’m afraid I’m not with you. I couldn’t do anything in any case till the authorities have asked for my views. Then I should say that I haven’t the men available, and, frankly, I should hint at surprise that the military were about to be used to guard non-military objects.”
“Somehow I thought you’d say that,” Benison said. The suspicion of a smile went over his lean face, and I thought to myself that if he shoo’d the bees out of his cassock, he could be a very likeable man. “But one other thing. I suppose you get all sorts of men in your Camp?”
My eyes narrowed, and I saw what he was driving at.
“I’m afraid I can’t discuss that,” I said. “But we do have all sorts. If men are called up by ages, we not only get the law-abiding. We must get a few burglars.”
Dove was looking at me in no approving way. There was the dangerous man of the two, I thought, and there was the money that had set Benison on his feet and bought his car. All the same I couldn’t see old Dove climbing wisteria in the dead of night, even with a seven-course dinner at the top.
“Why’d you ask me that?” I went on. “Do you think the burglary was committed by my men?”
“Not at all,” Benison said hastily. “It was just an idea that occurred to us. We’ve had no burglaries here before.”
I had the idea that that was all, and got to my feet.
“One thing I would like to ask you,” I said, “and it’s if that picket of yours saw or heard anything unusual last night.”
Then I had to explain guardedly what I mean by “unusual.” Benison said he would enquire and let me know. I said goodbye to Sir Hereward, but before he could hoist himself out of his chair, Benison and I were out of the room.
“Sir Hereward’s not so active as he was,” I said.
“His principles are active enough,” Benison said. “That man, Major Travers, is of the stock from which martyrs were made.”
I nodded politely.
“If it comes to that,” I said, “quite a lot of people nowadays are ready to die for convictions.”
He shook his head over me rather than at me, as if I were a brand hard to pluck from the burning. I saw him still shaking his head as he turned back to the vicarage door, and I was soon doing a bit of thinking too. Was everything what it had appeared? What was the trap those two had been laying for me? Whatever it was, I had the feeling that in having any dealings whatever with them, I was running grave risks. In the future I determined to have nothing to do with either of them except over the phone, and then I’d take an immediate note of what was said.
As for any connection between that pair and the kidnapping of Colonel Brende, the more I thought, the less I could see. Benison might have threatened in an angry moment, and egged on by old Dove, to take what action seemed to him necessary to stop the work at the Hall, but I never went so far as to imagine he would be concerned in a major act of treason. It was the old story of refusing to believe in the fantastic even in fantastic times, though I did admit that both burglaries and the anonymous letter might be Benison’s own fabrications, and therefore that picket of his had been there for quite a different purpose from the one which the anonymous letter made seem so obvious.
I had walked on through the City in the direction of the Hall, and I all at once made up my mind to have another look for myself at the grass verge by the side gate of the park. If Brende had been unconscious, he could hardly have been carried through a scarcely visible gap in a thorn hedge, or hoisted over the wall; and if that side door had been used, then the car by which his abductors had taken him away had been waiting there for him.
As I came round the bend by the gate, somebody tried to get out of sight. It was Wharton, and he was too late. He pretended that he didn’t know it was I, and showed great pleasure at my appearance.
“Don’t walk there!” he said, and grasped my arm. I looked down to see he had been making a plaster cast of some tyre marks, and the plaster was setting.
“Better go through here,” he said, and, to my surprise, put a key in the door and opened it.
No sooner were we through, and peering under the hanging boughs to make sure we were unobserved from the house, than a car was seen leaving by the drive.
“A taxi,” Wharton said. “Would that be Mrs. Brende going off to see Passenden?”
“That’ll be it,” I said. “There is a pass issued to a local firm of car proprietors.”
Then he asked me what had happened at the vicarage and I told him in detail.
“All seems open and above-board to me,” he said. “I think I know those two gentlemen by this time.”
Then he was shooting a queer look at me.
“What’s up?” I s
aid. “Thought of something?”
“Yes,” he said. “That Major Passenden’s a liar, and I can prove it. Of the two Brendes, it was Mrs. Brende he knew best, isn’t that so? Right then. When he found Colonel Brende was away from the Hall, why didn’t he ask to see Mrs. Brende? He told us this morning he only wanted a chat. Why didn’t he want that chat yesterday? Because he had important business with the Colonel, and he didn’t want Mrs. B. to know.”
“Hold hard,” I said. “I think I know why he wanted to speak with the Colonel sort of secretly. He’d got wind of the fact that the two were going their own ways. As a friend of the family, he was distressed, and he wanted to be tactful.”
“You and your theories,” Wharton said with the profoundest contempt. “If that’s true, why couldn’t he be as frank with us as we were with him? I tell you the man’s a liar. I can smell him from here.”
Another grunt or two and he was going forward. Before I could even wonder where, he was stopping and drawing something carefully out of the ground. It was another cast, this time of a heel of a woman’s shoe.
“None too good,” he said, having a close look at it. “Women’s heels are all the same nowadays. I doubt if I’ll ever be able to pin this on anybody.”
“You’ve only two choices in the house,” I said. “Mrs. Brende and Penelope Craye.”
He glared. “What about that Annie? And there’s a cook and another maid.”
I had to agree, and, having Penelope in my mind, decided to confess something.
“George, I’ve been deceiving you about Penelope Craye.”
He peered at me. “Deceiving me, or your wife?”
“Nothing like that,” I said, and told him most of what I knew about Penelope in the past. It was also my opinion that she had wriggled herself into the Hall by means of influence, dating from the days of the old Dilly-Dally Government gang who’d hoped complacently to win the war off their own private bat, and without folding up their sleeves.
“Now I’ll tell you something,” Wharton said. “The old man isn’t napping all the time, though you appear to think so. That wad of papers in her room wasn’t a wad. It was a note-book! Why was she burning a note-book?”
The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 12