The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  “Why are you so anxious to get hold of Passenden?” I wanted to know.

  “Why?” he glared. “Because he’s in all this right up to the neck, that’s why.”

  “But how?”

  Then he was shuffling again.

  “Isn’t that what I want to find out? Besides—”

  Then his face went into contortions of agony and he was almost literally tearing his hair. There was another dive for the telephone. When he got what he wanted, I was pretty sure he was talking to the detective-sergeant.

  “Any more messages? ... I see. . . . You’re sure! . . . At the hotel yesterday, at tea-time. . . . No, no, no. . . .Yes, I’ll meet you there. . . . Yes, in a quarter of an hour.”

  Once more he was giving me that look of reproach.

  “For God’s sake don’t keep looking at me as if I’d sold the pass,” I said. “I’ve apologized and explained, and if it comes to that, there’re the devil of a lot of things I might look reproachful about myself.”

  “Oh?” he said, but that look went from his face all the same. His voice took on a honeyed smoothness. “You gathered what I was talking about? Mrs. B. had tea with Passenden yesterday afternoon. That’s upset a little scheme I’d come back here for.”

  The telephone went and he grabbed the receiver.

  “Ah, yes. . . . He is, is he? I had an idea from something I just heard. . . . Really? . . . Yes? . . . Yes? . . . Trains for Scotland. You surprise me. . . . Good. . . . Well, thanks very much. Good-bye.”

  “He’s at the same hotel,” he told me, “and he’s talking of leaving to-morrow morning. Been working out trains to Scotland.”

  “You’re going to let him go?”

  His eyes puckered in thought, and he was giving that Colosseum smile.

  “I might as well. Let him have all the rope he wants. I’ll know where he is this time. Soon as I want him, my hand will be on his shoulder, like this.”

  He had got up to go, but as he was squinting at the set of his bowler in the office mirror, he remembered he was being too precipitate.

  “Anything been happening with you?” Then he gave a little complacent laugh that rather got my goat. “But of course not, or you’d have let me know.”

  Well, I told him about Ledd for a beginning. He looked at me rather perkily throughout, and when I’d finished he gave a little chuckle. Then I told him all about Craye. He looked pretty serious during that story, but at the end he merely shrugged his shoulders. He’d never really considered Craye seriously as a suspect, he said.

  “I won’t call you a liar, George,” I said, “but you’ve got some devilish queer ideas of what constitutes the truth. Also, you’re decidedly ungrateful. I’ve eliminated three suspects for you—say what you like—and all you do in return is to keep your own information to yourself.”

  “You’re too touchy,” he assured me in his best Chadband manner, “And who keeps back information? Listen to this. I’ve eliminated a suspect too—that fellow Wissler.”

  “How?”

  “Doesn’t matter how,” he said. “There’re always ways and means. Know what he’s always been scared about? Well, he was in Prague when the Nazis marched in, and he hung on there as you know. Then he foolishly tried to compromise with the devil, and actually got himself accepted for membership of the Party. Then he found he was expected to act as stool-pigeon, and he bolted. Ever since then he’s been scared stiff. He never owned up over here that he’d been a Nazi in name. He says it would have queered his pitch with the authorities. Ever since then he’s been scared stiff. Every official who turns up he thinks is someone who’s found out and has come to lug him off to an internment camp, or worse.”

  I grunted.

  “And what about the principal suspect?” I asked guilefully. “You haven’t eliminated Newton?”

  George was moving off to the door at once.

  “All in good time, all in good time,” he said. “Rome wasn’t built in a day, was it? He’ll be talking soon, or my name’s Robinson.”

  I warned you that after Wharton’s return things began to happen. And they did happen. The following morning, soon after breakfast, he was ringing me up, and his voice had a tremendous impatience.

  “Is that Major Travers? Am I through to Major Travers?”

  “Speaking, George,” I said with a bit of a grin.

  “Ah!” he went on. “News for you. Brende’s been found!”

  “Good Lord!” I said, fingers at my glasses.

  “I’m just going there. If you’d like to come, be outside your gate in ten minutes’ time.”

  “Yes, but where is he?”

  “A good way off and in pretty bad shape,” he said curtly, and slammed his receiver back.

  It took me less than no time to arrange things with Harrison, then I grabbed my British warm for it was a cold morning even if the sky was clear. George was on time and he had borrowed a car with one of his own men driving. He and I sat at the back, but it was not till we were through the town that we did much talking. My questions were not much use, for he knew little more than what he had told me.

  He had been rung up, he said, by the police from a little place called Cumberforth. A man had been found in an exhausted condition by a shepherd among the crags, and they had recognized him from that confidential circular issued to all police. The sick man was now in the local cottage hospital.

  “Once he can talk we’ll be all right,” George said. “Don’t you think so?”

  I wondered why he should ask so obvious a question.

  “Naturally there’ll be a lot of new information,” I said. “The question is whether or not you’ll be able to use it. I don’t like these hush-hush cases where your hands are tied. You mustn’t question this person and you mustn’t do something else because it might let out secrets. It’s fighting with your hands tied.”

  “Don’t I know it?” he said, and changed the subject surprisingly to Mrs. Brende. She ought to be relieved, he said, to know the Colonel was safe. What with his disappearance and Penelope Craye’s mysterious death, she must have been badly alarmed.

  I don’t know why, but I suddenly had the idea that I wouldn’t like George to know that I had done so foolish a thing as to furnish Mrs. Brende with a gun. It wasn’t that I was afraid of that automatic ever being traced back to me, for I had bought it once on a holiday in France and had then forgotten it till the outbreak of war, when I had taken it with me not knowing that I should get a service issue. What I didn’t like was the thought that I had been concealing from George something which he might consider as really vital.

  “Mrs. Brende’s a woman of very strong character,” I said. “She isn’t likely to lose either her nerve or her head. But one thing’s just struck me. Everything to do with Colonel Brende may still have to be kept as secret as the grave, but that can’t apply to Penelope Crave’s death. Murder is murder, and the murderer’s got to be brought to book.”

  “I don’t know,” he said mildly. George was in one of his mild, argumentative moods that morning, which made me suspect that he was on good terms with himself. “I’ll lay a fiver the Big Bugs consider it all part of the hush-hush. No announcement will ever be made beyond that one about her sudden death.”

  That twenty-mile journey was through some of the wildest and loveliest country I have seen for some time, and the narrow lane through which George had directed the driver wound an always ascending way among the ragged hills. In the distance George pointed to a church spire and said that was Sowdale. It was lost almost as soon as we saw it, and about ten minutes later, after a particularly steep rise, we suddenly came to the head of a dale. Its church stood clear about a mile away, and the houses hugged the sheltered slope. That was the tiny town of Cumberforth.

  Our car left the lane and turned into a wider road. In five minutes we were drawing up in front of the police-station, and just as we did so, a motor-cyclist drew in behind us. It was the detective-sergeant. George told him to stand by, and into the st
ation we went. George produced his credentials and introduced me to the local inspector, and then was asking for details of the morning’s news. George, by the way, had already told the inspector over the phone that any local newspaper must be warned not to print a word about the exhausted man.

  Well, this is the complete story as the inspector told it to us in the privacy of his room. Just after dawn that morning a shepherd thought he heard a cry. Then he caught sight of a man on all-fours, making a slow way across some rocky ground, and he ran across at the best speed he could muster. By the time he got to the man, the man had collapsed. The shepherd at once got in touch with the Cumberforth police. The man had been brought in and then a search was made, the shepherd helping, to discover from where the man had come in case there should be anyone else in his company. They had then discovered a cave in which the unfortunate man had been kept.

  I should say, by the way, that the inspector was guessing a lot about Brende. All the circular had told him was that Brende had lost his memory, but he was a shrewd man and more than capable of putting two and two together. Sometimes he would cock a sparrow-like eye at Wharton, as if asking for confirmation of a bit of guesswork, but Wharton let him run on and gave no hint or sign.

  At the moment Brende was in the local cottage hospital, the inspector confirmed. He had seen him there only a few minutes before our arrival, and had the latest report. The doctor was sure that the man had lost his memory, but though he had obviously been through a very bad time indeed, he was in mental rather than physical danger.

  “What clothes was he wearing—if any?” Wharton asked.

  “The same ones as published,” the inspector said. “That was one way we identified him. He smelt a bit, by the way, as if he hadn’t had a wash for days.”

  “Right,” said Wharton. “You get a report typed in triplicate, and we’ll look in at the hospital. Make it as quick as you can.” Then he was at last giving one of his peering looks. “Keep that report to the actual facts. Those it’s going to are rather like me—they don’t like people who know more than they ought.”

  The hospital was in the level bottom of the dale, about a couple of hundred yards away. The inspector had nevertheless been warned to let the doctor on duty know that we were coming, and he was looking out from the door as we walked along the short drive. He was one of three local practitioners who did duty at that small hospital which served quite a large rural district. A pleasant, elderly man, and well up to modern methods was how he appeared to me.

  Wharton had a confidential talk with him before he asked for information. He had various methods of imposing secrecy and hinting at the consequences of loose talk, and the one he now worked was so effective that he had the doctor in something of a dither. Nothing should be made public, he assured us. A trustworthy resident nurse was already in charge of the patient, and certainly he would exclude all mention of that patient from the hospital records.

  “I shall inform higher authority that you can be implicitly relied on,” Wharton said imposingly. “And now to business. Tell me all about the patient.”

  The doctor said he had obviously been kept in close confinement for some days, and for most of the time he had been drugged. The pricks from the injections were plainly visible, and his condition tallied with them.

  “Pupils of the eyes dilated or otherwise?”

  “Of course not,” the doctor said. “As soon as the effects of the drug wore off and he recovered consciousness, the dilation would automatically go. I put it that way to you.”

  “That’s right,” Wharton said heartily. “Medical jargon’s as bad as any other. I understand, by the way, that his memory’s gone.

  The doctor said that was undoubtedly so, and he could give no opinion on when it would return. Recovery might be hastened by visual and other contacts with familiar scenes and people.

  “Ah!” said Wharton. “Now we’re coming to it. What I want to do is to have him removed to Dalebrink. To his own house, in fact, where I’ll make every arrangement for medical supervision and treatment.” His voice lowered and he was nodding mysteriously. “If he should start to babble indiscreet things, for instance, the fat would be in the fire. Also I shall have to have some trustworthy man of mine at his bedside. You know the procedure, and you remember what I told you about the special importance of secrecy. So what about it? When can he be moved?”

  The doctor did some quick but heavy thinking. Then he would go no further than saying it all depended. If care was used and everything went well, then he might possibly be moved the following afternoon.

  “That’s good enough for me,” Wharton said. “I’ll let his wife know and I’ll make all arrangements. Meanwhile I have a man of mine here and you might let him stay handy, in case the patient does any talking. Now what about us seeing him?”

  The doctor left us for a minute or two, and when he came back he said the patient was sleeping. It was a rambling, single-storied building, and a few yards took us to the room. The doctor whispered to the nurse, who withdrew, and Wharton and I approached the bed. If I hadn’t known from other evidence that the man was really Brende, I could never have recognized him.

  The growth of beard, of course, made the great difference, but there was more to it than that. I think I told you that he was of the lean, restlessly active type, and almost as thin as myself. Now the beard accentuated the leanness and made an effect of almost emaciation, while the comparative pallor of the face and the dark pouches under the eyes so added to that effect as to make it something frightening. I felt a sudden fury. The thing for the ones who had kept Brende in that cave was not the justice of the law, but a few rounds clean in the belly, where it would hurt most and linger longest.

  Wharton whispered to the doctor, who carefully drew down the sheet and revealed a bit of Brende’s left arm. The pricks of the syringe were clearly visible. Wharton nodded, had a last look at the sleeping man, then was motioning to the doctor to lead the way out again.

  “Now then,” he said officially, when we were back in the reception hall again. “You’ve seen what powers I have and what I can override and not override. What I want you to do is to get an immediate sample of his blood. Pack it, or whatever you call it, how you like, and have it ready within an hour. Seal it and write your name across the seal. I’ll collect it and one of my men will rush it up to London.”

  The doctor had been nodding in an agreement that had much of doubt.

  “I can do that,” he said. “But pardon me if I ask something. If you’re after the drug that was used, I think it will be a waste of time. The amount of blood in the human body is so enormous compared with the amount of drug used, that the drug will have been dissipated in the blood stream.”

  Wharton’s smile was courteous and even deferential.

  “I agree—with one little reservation. Modern methods of crime detection aren’t always made public. Believe it or not, a blood sample will reveal the drug, provided it’s been used within forty-eight hours or so. That’s why I’m rushing the sample up to town.”

  Well, that was that, and off we went back to the police-station.

  “Were you telling the doctor the tale, George,” I said, “or can they really discover what drugged Brende?”

  “I was serious,” he said. “The method’s been out for only a few months, but I’m told it’s infallible.”

  “Right,” I said. “Then what use is it to you to know what drugged him? Suppose at this very minute you know it was morphia, how does that help your case?”

  George shrugged his shoulders.

  “Sometimes I wonder what happens to those brains of yours,” he told me sadly. “If we know the drug we might manage to trace it, couldn’t we? Suppose there was morphia kept at the Hall, and it’s now missing, wouldn’t that narrow things down?”

  I made no reply, because we were entering the police-station, not because there was no reply to make. It struck me, for instance, that the Hall, or any other private house, would be extrem
ely unlikely to keep in its medicine cabinet a drug that was capable of being used as a stupefying agent. Still, I supposed, one never knew.

  Wharton did a lot of telephoning, and I took a stroll outside. When at last I saw him at the station door he was making urgent signals of recall. The inspector was finding a guide, he said, and we were making a quick visit to the cave. He had made arrangements, he said, for the doctor to hand over the blood sample to the sergeant, who would take it to town by motor-bicycle. Wharton’s other man, who had driven us to Cumberforth, was already on duty at the hospital.

  The guide Wharton had mentioned turned out to be a driver too, and this time we took the local inspector’s car. There was only a mile of drive, and then about a quarter of a mile on foot, and Wharton said that was lucky for he wanted to get back to Dalebrink at once. As for the mile of drive, we went back to the narrow lane by which we had come, and it soon became ruttier than ever where the spring rains had gullied it.

  Suddenly Wharton was asking the driver to stop, and then he was getting out and going back to examine the track, and, as I judged, for tyre marks.

  “This road used at all?” he asked the driver when he got in again.

  The driver said it was used on market day at Cumberforth, but not much on other days, for outlying farms were too busy these days for gadding about, and there was the petrol rationing. At night he doubted if it was ever used. By the time he had told us that much he was bringing the car to a halt again and saying that we had better get out.

  The lane now overlooked a rocky gully, but there was no roadside hedge and it was easy enough to make our way down. What we did then was to circle more gullies, and take twisted paths through scrub and undergrowth, and all the time I noticed that Wharton’s eyes were on the ground. Mine were too, but it was safety of going that concerned me, and not foot-prints.

  The guide stopped and pointed dramatically. There was where the shepherd had been, and that was where he had found the exhausted man. Wharton lugged out his note-book and took details about the shepherd, then on we went. When we did finally halt it was dramatically once more. We were making our way along a round bit of land under a kind of cliff, from the face of which grew stunted trees and shrubs. Then the guide all at once stopped, and Wharton almost collided with him. A straggling bush was drawn on one side, and he was announcing that there was the entrance to the cave.