“And he hasn’t seen Benison since?”
“Come, sir, come,” Newton said with a quick dignity. “I’ll not be questioned like that. Professor Wissler was free to go out, or to use the telephone, as I was. I’ll enquire into no man’s private actions unless I see very good cause.”
“I’m sorry. You’re quite right,” Hush said, and that appeared to be all that was wanted from Newton, whose face was rather red as he went out.
The next to be called was Penelope Craye. When she came in she interchanged little smiles with Gunner and Hush, who seemed to be old friends. She was wearing that same demure grey, and anyone who hadn’t known her would have seen the perfect secretary; quiet, competent, but still very much a woman. As for that last, I’d often been aware of her good looks, but I don’t think I’d ever so realized what a handsome and attractive person Penelope Craye could appear. But when she went over the events of the Saturday night as far as concerned herself and Brende, I knew her little speech had been well rehearsed.
“You are still definitely of the opinion that he had discovered something big?” asked Air, speaking for almost the first time.
“Oh, yes,” she said unhesitatingly. “I’m sure by his manner it was something very important indeed.”
“Did he flourish his note-book at you?” smiled Hush.
“Note-book?” She looked rather blank.
Hush explained, and she said she hadn’t seen the note-book— at least not lately. She knew it, of course, but the Colonel had never shown it to her or discussed it.
“You’re a relation by marriage of the Colonel?” Home said to her.
“Oh, but very, very distant,” she protested, though somewhat archly.
“Still, shall we say there were private relationships and business ones? I mean that the Colonel might have chatted to you in private about things which he wouldn’t mention in his office.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “The Colonel never did that. I’m afraid he was rather a martinet.” A shake of the head had accompanied that statement, and then was at once adding a rider. “Very nice to work with, of course. But perhaps I oughtn’t to have said all that.”
“But certainly,” Home told her. “That’s the very sort of thing we do want to know. And you yourself didn’t go out at all on the Saturday night, I believe?”
I didn’t see just what he was driving at, but when she had gone, the point was clear.
“That’s the central point of this extraordinary business, gentlemen,” Home told the conference. “The fact that Colonel Brende should disappear just when he’d made some vital discovery or other. Everything was so apposite. I can’t help feeling that there’s the solution of the whole thing—and more.”
That was something which had occurred both to Wharton and myself. Indeed, it was a fact that stood out yards.
“When I say ‘ more ‘,” Home was going on, “I mean that if espionage or worse is going on, the people concerned have been responsible for things in the past, and, unless they’re caught, will be responsible for more in the future. But about Miss Craye. She never left this building on Saturday after she’d heard from Colonel Brende that he’d made his discovery.” He cast a wary look round, but not at Wharton. The old General’s eyes were demurely on the papers before him. “I rather gather that Miss Craye hasn’t always been famous for discretion. I say that not unkindly. Though she never left here, there was still the telephone.”
He went on to elaborate the theory. Newton and his two assistants had said nothing to a soul, if only because there had been no one with whom to speak but themselves, and they were not the kind of people who would telephone to friends that Colonel Brende had made an important discovery. Mrs. Brende knew nothing, and there remained only the staff, particularly the Service staff, who might have overheard something.
Pattner spoke for the first time.
“Might I ask, sir, why you think anybody would telephone?”
Home shrugged his shoulders. “Human nature is human nature. The public have been led to believe that the night-bomber problem is near a solution. The fact that Colonel Brende thought he’d solved it would be an event of terrific importance, not only to those who’ve been bombed and are certain to be so again, but to the whole conduct of the war. Even Dalebrink’s been bombed. I maintain that it would be asking a lot of self-restraint to keep Colonel Brende’s news to one’s self.” He shrugged his shoulders again. “That’s all very obvious. We want to know who passed out the news that evening. That will bring us to who received the news, and decided on immediate action against Colonel Brende.”
Then he was looking at me.
“Major Travers must be asked to supply Superintendent Wharton with all the documents of the men under his command who’ve been loaned for work here.” Then he happened to glance at his watch, and he smiled somewhat ruefully. “I’m afraid it’s almost two o’clock. Perhaps we should adjourn for lunch. I don’t think we need keep Major Travers.”
So that was the end of me as far as concerned that conference, and Wharton lent me his car to get back to Camp. As to my own impressions, I will say only this. I thought the members were shrewd, and highly competent people in their various lines, but I made an exception of Gunner. My old prejudice against the War House, you may say, but I honestly think you are wrong. After all, Gunner did compliment me on the disposal and handling of the guard, and in himself he seemed likeable enough. What I did think was that he was not up to the job in hand. That he should have been sent down earlier to report on the progress of the work at the Hall, when he was admittedly no physicist at all and no great shakes as a mathematician, seemed to me yet another example of the mishandling of which the W.O. can be capable. Hush was the man who should have been sent down, even if the W.O. had to borrow him.
The only other thing I would say is that Penelope’s evidence was given with an adroitness of which I should never have believed her capable. To me it had the air of being a pack of lies from beginning to end, and yet if I had been challenged, I could not have mentioned a single lie. That she was a pretty good actress, I knew, but not up to the standard of that morning. I wondered too what the gentlemen of the conference would think if they ever saw Penelope with back arched and claws out, and listened to her command of language that would have made a commercial traveller blench.
After my belated meal, Harrison and I got to work on the records of those men of ours at the Hall, and we also called in the Company officers and colour sergeants concerned. The reasons I gave were the tightening up of hush-hush precautions at the Hall, and when the job was over we were all in agreement that every man would stand every possible scrutiny. By the time copies of documents were ready for Wharton, with the report, it was sixteen-thirty hours. I had had enough of being shut up in offices, and as Harrison did not want to leave Camp, I thought I’d run down to the town. Craye had left a chit to say he’d fixed the carburettor and the car was now O.K.
There was quite a good library in the Camp, at least as far as concerned the troops, but the books were somewhat grubby from much handling, and far from being up to date. Bernice had our subscription to the library in town, so I thought I’d join a branch in Dalebrink. But first I was going to that special tea-shop to stand myself a meal. As a matter of fact I didn’t get as far, and this is why.
As I got out of the car and cast the usual look round, I saw Penelope Grave’s little car just across the road, trying to cut in between a bus and a horse van. It was going so slowly that I clearly saw Pattner, and at once I remembered something. Then her car had to dodge behind the bus to avoid an oncoming vehicle, and it crawled as far as the turn. I shamelessly followed on foot on my own side of the road, and I was level with the turn when she shot her car into it. Past the garage it went, and it was about a couple of hundred yards along the side road that she drew it to a halt. She and Pattner got out, and went through a gate and out of my sight. From what Wharton had told me, I knew they were paying a visit to her flat.
&n
bsp; All sorts of things ran through my mind. In a highly guarded way Pattner had stood up for Penelope by asking Home why she should telephone the news about Brende’s discovery to any friends. Penelope had had that flat for only a week, and I wondered why she had not hit on the idea before. Pattner’s name had also a foreign air, and then my fingers went to my glasses. But not because I had made a discovery; it was rather because I knew I was making a fool of myself. Why shouldn’t Pattner, or any other man, be on friendly terms with so attractive a woman as Penelope? As to thinking a man with Pattner’s record guilty of double-dealing or worse, that was sheer idiocy. And yet, I couldn’t help thinking that Pattner might be the guileless piece of plasticine in Penelope’s tricky hands.
Then happily I became aware that I was disgracing His Majesty’s uniform by standing in the middle of the pavement, polishing my glasses and blinking like an idiot. But as I was almost at the library I decided to walk on the few yards and have tea later. There were few people in the shop, and the library part upstairs was deserted except for one woman client. She appeared to be waiting for the assistant to find her a book, and suddenly I knew who she was.
“What are you doing here, Annie?” I smiled at her.
“Collecting books for the mistress,” she told me. “I always come in on Mondays by the bus.”
“A nice little trip for you.” I said, and then the assistant came out of the inner sanctum with a couple of books.
“Two for you,” she said to Annie. “And will you tell Mrs. Brende that her list is getting rather low.”
I’ve already told you I’m a curiosity-ridden busybody, so you won’t be surprised that I looked at Annie’s books. One, to my surprise, was a detective novel. Annie must have seen my lift of the eyebrows.
“The mistress likes those, sir,” she said. “Mr. Howard”—it was young Howard Craye to whom she was referring—“lent her one and she told me she would never read it. Then she did, and she’s been reading them ever since.”
“Good,” I said. “Even bishops read them, they tell me. And tell Mrs. Brende you saw me, will you?”
No sooner had she moved off than the girl was asking me if I was Major Travers. Then she was giving me a message. I had told Harrison where I was going, and he had got hold of the shop. Wharton, it appeared, wanted to see me, and would be at the Camp. Since he would probably be there by then, I apologized and bolted.
Wharton was at the Camp, but his business was not so urgent that I couldn’t have had a cup of tea. Still, we had tea of sorts in my office, and I never saw two cups disappear so quickly as those that went down Wharton’s throat. The conference had not closed down till after four o’clock, he told me. Home was staying on for the night, and he was to have a further conference with him later that evening.
Meanwhile what was being done was this. Every police-station in the country was being given confidential news of the disappearance of Colonel Brende, with a photograph and a description both of the man and the clothes he was wearing. There was also being circulated a description of the tyre of which Wharton had taken the plaster cast, for that particular section, which had run across a handy molehill, showed certain recognizable peculiarities. But Wharton said frankly that he expected no results. A very minute fraction of cars could be examined with any care, and as for Colonel Brende, he was doubtless where the eye of the law would never run over him.
“Do you think he’ll ever be seen again?” I asked George.
“Don’t know,” he said, and looked pretty serious. “Personally I very much doubt it. What might be discovered, and soon, is his body.”
He also told me that he might be seeing very little of me for a day or two, as what with receiving and collating the reports of his men and having to be at the end of a telephone, he might be kept to the house. If anything important happened he would keep me informed, he said, and meanwhile he would take with him the report on those men of mine at the Hall. Nothing new had arisen out of the conference, and I had nothing to tell or suggest. I did think of mentioning Penelope and Pattner at the flat, but since George had told me he was having her watched, I knew the information would reach him in due course.
Well, the next day went by, and the next. I saw nothing of George and heard nothing, though I did learn in a roundabout way that he had conducted a night experiment at the window of Colonel Brende’s bedroom. Later I learned that it was one I’d thought of trying for myself—to discover whether the man with the fishing-rod could see the bed in the dark, and therefore hold the chloroformed wad in the right place.
It was not in fact till the Thursday night that I saw Wharton again, and before then things had happened to myself.
CHAPTER XI
Many Mysteries
MY job at Dalebrink was not to assist George Wharton, even if it may have seemed that I was spending a considerable time in his company. But practically all that arose out of my duties as Commandant of Camp for which I was being paid. Mind you, I would not in the least have minded being on loan for a week or two, even instead of leave, for nothing so intrigues me and gnaws away at me as a mystery unsolved. When I had to spend the best part of three days without hearing from Wharton, I was worrying my wits over the affair whenever I had any leisure, and I was hunting for ways of tackling that case from the various angles that would keep occurring to me from time to time.
There was only one thing which I actually did do, and that seems too unimportant to mention. I had been thinking of the three experts at the Hall—the three who had been so carefree when I had first seen them, and so nervy and apprehensive after the disappearance of Brende. For Newton’s worries I thought I could account, as I had already told Wharton. Wissler was different, unless he was worrying about having to leave the Hall and work that must have been congenial. He might also have been scared about his dealings with Benison coming to Wharton’s notice. But what had Riddle to be scared about? My first impressions of him had been that he was resiliency itself. That red head of his was an oriflamme of optimism, and his grin a perpetual tonic. Could it be, I thought, that Master Riddle had a yellow streak? If work at the Hall were closed down, might not Riddle, who had been specially released for that research work, be reclaimed by the Army? And since the last place to put him was the firing-line, wouldn’t that be where he would be sent? Did Riddle apprehend all that, and was he dreading the recall?
Then I remembered another individual at the Hall who had gone all apprehensive and nervy too—Lance-Corporal Ledd. There was another example of high spirits and cheerfulness suddenly giving place to their opposites, though Ledd might also be genuinely worried about Colonel Brende, and still more about having to return to duty at the Camp. But thinking of Riddle and Ledd made me recall something they had had in common: each had left the Hall on the Saturday night, and for what had been stated was merely a walk.
Now I had the means of checking up on that, if only to a certain extent. At every guard hut at each prohibited area under our charge a record book was kept, giving the names of all owners of passes who entered and left, with times, and also the times of the visits of all inspecting officers including, of course, the orderly officer. I take no credit for that admirable system which had been instituted by Harrison and my predecessor. Everything also that had happened at a post, including the above, was incorporated in the daily guard report. I did not therefore have to institute special enquiry to discover what had happened on Saturday night; all I had to do was consult the files of guard reports. What I read was this:
Booked out—
Ledd 21.0 hours.
Front Gate.
Riddle 23.0 hours.
Rear Gate.
Booked in
Ledd 00.15 hours.
Front Gate.
Riddle 00.45 hours.
Rear Gate.
Ledd had told Wharton he was not seeing his girl. What had he found to do then for three hours and more? Had he friends at the City? There were no buses at that hour to take him to the town, and Ledd hardly
struck me as the sort of person who’d wander about alone on a dark night. Then who were his friends at the City? And, more to the point, had he told those friends about Colonel Brende’s discovery, which he had overheard when Brende had spoken of it to Penelope? In any case, there was something that might be referred to Wharton, if he had not already thought of it himself.
As for Riddle, his tale seemed true. He had gone out and returned at the times he had given, and that rear gate led to open country. That guard report also showed that Penelope had not left the Hall that night, and that led me to look her up for previous nights. What I ascertained was interesting. Until the time of the taking of that flat, she had rarely been absent from the Hall at night. During the week she had been in possession of the flat, she had been out for the whole of three nights, and had returned at about eight-thirty in the morning. I confess I attached no particular importance to all that. After all, the flat was a new toy, and there would probably be work to do—curtains, decorating, and so on—that would keep her too late to return to the Hall.
And so to the happenings of that Thursday—the day I was to see Wharton again. The first was an urgent chit sent from local headquarters. It was really a circular sent to all units, and it reached us, therefore, as no special orders referring to us alone. Special look-out was to be kept, it said, for three Germans who had baled out of that plane at about twenty-three-thirty hours on the Saturday night, and had not yet been apprehended. Before I had read that chit a second time, I was having the most fantastic theory. There had been no mention of the crashing of the plane from which the airmen had baled out. Why then should they not have been dropped for a special purpose? The crew of the plane had surely numbered four. If three baled out, then the pilot carried on and returned the plane to its base. And if three picked agents had been dropped, why not for the purpose of contacting home agents? Why not for the express purpose of sabotage or other action against the Hall?
The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 14