“Hallo!” I said to myself. “Now we’re getting down to things. Here’s where I’m expected to give the show away.”
I said I didn’t see how Wharton or anybody else could help thinking it a queer business. Kidnappings were virtually unknown in this country.
“And that other business, of Miss Craye,” he said, as if it had just occurred to him. “Wasn’t there something fishy about that?”
“Why do you think so?”
“Mrs. Brende gave me that impression. I know her well enough to read between the lines.” His eyes switched from his cigarette and he was giving me a quizzical sort of smile. “I suppose you know the facts?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You can’t expect me to talk of confidential matters. I might on certain conditions, of course.”
“Such as?”
“Well, if we both talked frankly and laid our cards face upwards on the table.”
“Aren’t we doing that?”
“Now, now, now,” I said. “I’m too old a bird to be caught like that. You give me your word that anything that’s said here and now goes no further.”
“Why not?” he said. “You begin.”
“Right-ho,” said I. “I’ll begin with a question. Why did you lead us to believe you were in Scotland when you were actually in the neighbourhood of where Brende was found?”
He smiled amusedly. “Just change of plans. Weather a bit cold for Scotland, you know. Also the north of the county was one of my old stamping grounds.”
“A mere coincidence that Brende was found there?”
“My dear fellow, how could it be anything else?” Then he was looking down at his cigarette again and shaking his head, though still with something of amusement. “I expect I rather worried your friend Wharton?”
“What you’ve got to think about is the other side of the question,” I told him grimly. “You watch for the time when Wharton begins to worry you.”
“I’m a suspect?”
“Haven’t you behaved like one?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. But do you hint that I’m suspected of kidnapping, or murder, or both?”
“I’m not in Wharton’s counsels,” I said. “You’ll know when he tells you that you’re not to stir without keeping him informed of your movements.”
“He’s done that already.”
“The devil he has!” I said, taken considerably aback. “Well, there we are then,” I added lamely. “I don’t see there’s much more to add.”
He was getting to his feet.
“Well, I must be pushing along. I’m sorry I can’t confess that I’m worried about being a suspect, because I’m not.”
“You mean that if you’d been involved, Wharton could never prove it?”
He shrugged his shoulders again. “Take it that way if you like.” That amused look came into his eyes again as he put the question. “Honestly, do you think I look like a kidnapper or a murderer?”
“I shouldn’t make that your trump card with George Wharton,” I told him earnestly.
He nodded, face a bit more sober.
“I like you, Travers. I’m perfectly frank when I say that. I think you’re a good sort and I know Mrs. Brende thinks so too. She had every reason. We’re talking in strict confidence, isn’t that so?”
“Yes,” I said. “Even if neither of us may be telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
“Maybe. But you’ve forgotten something. It’s my turn to make disclosures. You’d like to know more than Wharton will ever know about these happenings?”
“Yes,” I said calmly, “if it’s good for my health.”
He looked me straight in the eye, and I’d never thought those brown eyes of his could be so chill.
“Your word of honour that you’ll never speak a word of this, or hint it?”
I hesitated, wondering to what I was about to commit myself. Then my damnable curiosity got the better of me.
“Certainly I’ll give it, if you think it necessary.”
“I do think it necessary,” he said. “And this is why. By the way, don’t bother to see me out. I know my way pretty well. But what I was about to say was this. I was responsible for the kidnapping of Colonel Brende.”
“Good Lord!” I said, fingers already at my glasses. “You can’t be serious.”
“I never was more so,” he assured me.
My eyes were suddenly narrowing.
“And that other business—the murder of Penelope Craye. Did you do that too?”
“Well—yes,” he said slowly. “You can take it that I was responsible for that too.”
He had been moving towards the door, and all at once he was looking back. His look was gravely courteous and his manner unperturbed as ever.
“Good-bye, and thank you again. And don’t forget I trust your word.”
The door closed behind him, and there I stood polishing my glasses and blinking away like the frightened idiot that I felt.
CHAPTER XVII
Wharton is Ready
THAT evening I felt like a deflated tyre. Every interest had gone out of the case, just as it would have gone out of a detective novel, if I had read the last two chapters first. Then as I lay in bed that night, and on the borderland of sleep, my old inquisitiveness began to move back into its accustomed quarters from which Passenden’s statements had shifted it, and I was puzzling my none too active wits over many things, and finding no very satisfactory answers.
Above all I wondered just why Passenden should have seen fit even under strict secrecy, to make those astounding and damning disclosures. Though I must own that I had always liked the man, I could not but regard his protestations of liking for me a very much in the nature of calculated flattery. We are much better informed about our virtues than our vices, and, mildly please though I momentarily was, and true as Passenden’s statement appeared to ring, I knew of no favours received or of sufficient judgment on Passenden’s part to make such an appraisal.
It was not till I woke next morning that I hit on some solution Passenden’s call on me was something in the nature of a criminal return to the scene of the crime. He had, in other words, to tell to somebody or bust. But that led to something far more serious. Had I actually been talking to a kidnapper and murderer? Was he sane and was he serious? Had those experiences of his a last taken toll and had he cracked under them? Frankly I did not know. At the time I would have sworn he was both sane and most damnably serious, but now, out of the presence and hearing of the man, I was not so sure.
But it seemed to me there were two ways in which to test him. Why had he done what he did, and how had he done it? Then I was bang up against it. Unless he was blindly on Mrs. Brende side and wished to end a possible affair between Brende and Penelope Craye, I saw no reason at all, for it wasn’t sane on my part to think of such a man as an enemy agent out to stop at all costs that work at the Hall.
As to how he could have done it, I was more than ever beaten. Even if he had arrived in Dalebrink a day or so earlier than he had pretended to me, he could not possibly have had complete knowledge of the night disposition of my men, and such knowledge was the essential to slipping through the cordon. But according to him he had done it twice, and that passed the bounds of reason. Then, too late, I knew I could have asked a question which would have proved a good deal. “Do you know anything about cracking anyone on the skull, and if so, how and where did you do it?” A frank answer to that would have proved a good deal, as I said, but now it was too late and I could have kicked myself for not having thought of it.
As for my future attitude to Wharton, I thought that would not be difficult, for I could still simulate interest. What would be hard would be to see the dear old General heading the wrong way, with me unable to tell him so and head him back. But I admit that that part of the business did begin to worry me, and after lunch I rang his City address. His landlady, when she was sure of my identity, said she
thought he was in London, but he would be back late that night. As I replaced the receiver I was thinking not of Wharton but of the City itself. Now that old Dove had gone, one had ceased to think of the City at all. All the local fury, gossip and scandal had gone into the thin air, and doubtless war-time suspicion and the urge to talk were being directed against other Fifth Columnists compared with whom the Neggers would be pitiful creatures deserving even of a certain sympathy.
Later that afternoon I rang the Hall, with a view to sympathetic enquiries about Brende. Who should answer my call but Mrs. Brende. From her voice I could never have imagined that anything had happened.
“How are you?” I said.
“Keeping very well,” she told me. “I don’t like the weather to-day. I hate a drizzle.”
“So do I,” I said, “especially when it’s cold. And the Colonel—is he with you?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “You must come and see him. He may not know you.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’d love to come. And I hope I’ll find him much better.”
One word in that brief talk intrigued me much—may. If Colonel Brende might recognize me, then he was recovering his memory, and that opened possibilities.
So I went to the Hall almost at once. Ledd admitted me, and I expected him to ring for Annie to take me to Mrs. Brende. What he said was that Mrs. Brende had told him to take me straight up to the Colonel’s room. I expected to find her there, but she was not.
The bedroom was on the far side of the house and appeared to me to have been specially furnished and prepared. Some of its contents had come from Penelope’s room, and that seemed to me to be rather strange. A uniformed nurse was sitting knitting by the window when Ledd showed me in, and she came over at once.
“How is he?” I whispered.
“About the same,” she whispered back.
“I can see him?”
She nodded and smiled. “Do you wish me to go?”
I shook my head and moved over to the bed. Brende had been shaved, and I must say he already looked his old self. What was different, and strangely repellent, was his eyes. As I stood by the bed they ran idly over me, as if something had come between him and the light. Then his head turned on the pillow again and his eyes closed. I gave a shake or two of the head, and then there seemed nothing else to do but go. The nurse followed me out to the corridor.
“What’s the report on him?” I asked.
“He’s all right in himself,” she said. “They feared pneumonia at first, but we’re not worrying now. To-morrow, if he shows any desire, he may be allowed to get up.”
“Has he recognized anybody at all?”
She smiled. “He recognized Ledd for a minute or two and then forgot him again. But nobody else. Nor Professor Newton, nor Mr. Riddle, nor even Mrs. Brende.”
“They’ve sat with him alone?”
She seemed surprised at the question.
“Oh, yes. That’s much the best way.”
“And what’re the prospects of recovery?”
“Very hopeful,” she said. “It may be a long time or it may be at any time. These cases are very erratic.”
I smiled a good-bye and made my way downstairs. There seemed no reason why I should thrust myself on Mrs. Brende, so I went straight to my car. Then I had a sudden idea. Was it Brende who had been the traitor? Brende and Penelope Craye together? Had Passenden abducted the one and disposed artistically of the other because he considered it a national duty?
My thoughts went further. Was Passenden an agent of the Government? Was all that France, Spain and Lisbon business a fake? Had he been sent to Dalebrink months before to check up on what was going on, and had that disposal of Brende and Penelope been considered the best way? I shook my head, but not in doubt. It was war-time, I thought, and desperate expedients are needed to meet desperate situations.
But I could do no clear thinking that afternoon. That dull, unseeing look in Brende’s eyes was beginning to haunt me, and to put me further in the grip of a tremendous depression was the clouded sky and the drizzle that made me flick on the screen-wiper. Ichabod was the word, I thought. Everything had changed at the Hall from the day when I had first seen it. Then it had been a vital, friendly place, and now it was somehow moribund, and something to avoid. And there seemed too an infinity of things to regret. So gloomy indeed were my thoughts that I could almost have wished for the sight of Penelope Craye, or to have been back at that night when I sat by the summer-house and someone—Passenden almost certainly—had given me the crack on the skull.
That night went by, and the following morning, and I hear nothing from Wharton. Then just after lunch he rang me. H voice was so mild that I thought he was droning away at script.
“Are you busy these days?”
“Why? What’s on?”
“Like to be at the Hall at five o’clock sharp this afternoon?”
“What’s in the wind?” I asked, guessing from the placidity of his tone that something mighty serious was about to happen.
“I’m hoping for a show-down,” he said.
“Really?” I gaped a bit, then told him that Passenden was in town.
“Oh, no, he isn’t,” he said. “He’ll be with us at five.”
“Anyone else?”
“Newton—perhaps.”
“For heaven’s sake cough it all up, George,” I told him patiently. “You’re not paying instalments on the piano. Who have you got new?”
“One or two oddments. I saw a Big Bug or two in town and we talked things over.”
I remembered something.
“That drug test. How did it turn out?”
“None too good,” he said. “Negatively, as a matter of fact.”
“Too late in getting it to the analyst?”
“Maybe. Also there’re drugs we don’t know too much about.” He gave a little cough. “See you at five o’clock then?”
“I’ll be there,” I told him, and before I’d time to add, “if it’s the last thing I do,” he had rung off.
I can’t recall when I was in such a state of general excitement and dither. How to pass the time till five o’clock was my problem, so I concentrated on the crossword, frowning away as if had a missing fiver in the accounts. But it was no use, so I drifted along to the office and sent for Craye, about whom I’d had a long talk with Harrison.
“Well, Mr. Craye,” I said, “I’ve decided that you may carry on as if nothing had happened. I don’t promise the matter won’t be reopened, and reopened fully, but that may largely depend on yourself.”
“Thank you, sir,” he said. “You shan’t regret it, sir.”
There seemed to be something else on his mind, so I told him to get it off.
“Well, the sergeant, sir. I oughtn’t to let him down.”
“He returns to his Unit to-morrow,” I said. “The least you say about sergeants the better for you. And about everything.”
“Yes, sir.”
But he was still fidgeting.
“Well, what else is there?” I asked him.
“My aunt, sir. I was wondering if it would be trespassing too much on your generosity if I asked if you could do anything for me.”
“Be a man and do it for yourself,” I said. “When you can come to me and tell me that, then we’ll see.”
But, of course, I didn’t see, at least what I’d so airily promised. What I did see was that it would be pretty presumptuous on my part if I butted into the private relationships of aunt and nephew. Then something occurred to me. There are occasions when mild blackmail—or pressure, shall we call it?—is both useful and salutary. There might come a time when Mrs. Brende—who had been in close touch with Passenden—might wonder if I knew too much for her future peace of mind. In that case I might exercise a little diplomacy, always provided young Craye was really on the straight and narrow lane of reform.
Well, the time came at last and into my car I got. I was early, but I preferred to dawdle on the way rather than be
any longer inactive. Ledd opened the front door to me and he was looking lugubrious. It would be a pity, I thought, if that grin of his was lost to the world.
“A nasty day for a walk, Ledd,” I said, and his face coloured as he spotted at once at what I was hinting. Then I indulged in a Whartonian look over the top of my horn-rims, and a faint smile came to his face. Perhaps I was not so fearsome after all.
“No, sir,” he said, and then pulled himself together. “This way, sir. Mr. Wharton’s expecting you.”
This time he took me to Brende’s old room, and there Wharton was, and Passenden and Newton already occupying chairs. Newton smiled most tentatively. Passenden nodded, and his smile was definitely cynical. Wharton’s manner was that of an undertaker’s head man.
“Here you are, Major Travers. Take a seat there, will you? Make yourself at home. Smoke by all means, gentlemen. Just a small matter which shouldn’t keep us long.”
A table, folded flat, had been rigged up, and Wharton took a seat at it. Then he put on his antiquated spectacles, and fussed with some papers he took from his wallet, and I knew he wanted to let us think it was all very preposterous and red tape, and the fault wasn’t his. Then he coughed gently and took a look at us.
“Well, gentlemen, I said I shouldn’t be keeping you long, and that really depends on yourselves. Not on Major Travers, exactly, but on you other gentlemen. All you have to do is to talk.”
“What about?” Passenden asked. “Just anything?”
“Yes,” said Wharton unruffledly. “Just anything, provided it’s to do with what’s been happening here recently.”
Passenden looked up from filling his pipe. He shrugged his shoulders, looked at Newton with a raising of eyebrows, then was stoking his pipe again. Newton looked most uncomfortable.
“You, Major Passenden,” Wharton said. “Perhaps you’d like to begin. I assure you, and everybody, that what’s said here this afternoon will never be made public. All you two gentlemen have to do is to tell the truth and then forget all about it.”
“Personally I’m in the dark,” Passenden said. “I haven’t the foggiest notion what I’m supposed to talk about.”
The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 22