Death and the Visiting Firemen

by H. R. F. Keating

  He looked at the blotter once again, wistfully.

  ‘I’ll have a new search started for that gun of Hamyadis’s,’ he said.

  A finger laid carefully on a large ink blot.

  ‘Dammit,’ he said, ‘you’re the only one who hasn’t been prepared to talk about everybody else for all they were worth, and you’re the only one whose opinion I give a fig for.’

  ‘And you know why that is, inspector,’ said Smithers. ‘It’s because I find it impossible to speculate on the human character. To speculate. You’ll forgive a schoolmaster for punning? But it makes my point. A personality is too valuable to risk gambling on. No. I have nothing more to say, and, unless I make altogether unprecedented progress, I am not likely to have anything to say in the few days you can reasonably ask us to stay here.’

  ‘I suppose I can see your point,’ Inspector Parker answered. ‘But I beg you to ask yourself if you are right. We’re not in your schoolroom world now, we are dealing with someone who has killed a fellow creature. And while you are weighing and re-weighing and making your hairbreadth adjustments that person may kill again.’

  The tightly clenched fist.

  ‘No,’ said Smithers. ‘It won’t do. Stop a moment and think about what you have just said. Wasn’t it rather impassioned for a policeman? Didn’t you go rather far in putting the whole burden of solving the case on the characters of those involved? Haven’t the police any other methods? Of course you have, and it is with them that the emergency work of stopping a killer striking twice is done. You know all this. After all, you posted the men who so unobtrusively keep an eye on us all.’

  The inspector grinned a little.

  ‘Now,’ said Smithers, ‘let me tell you something that perhaps you don’t know.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Smack. Down on the black leather of the table came the inspector’s outstretched hands as he flung himself into an attitude of passionate attention.

  ‘No,’ Smithers said, what I am going to tell you has nothing to do with this case. Or at least it may have quite a lot to do with it, but only in common with every case you handle. Because I’m going to tell you something about yourself.’

  The inspector leant back in his chair.

  ‘Go on,’ he said.

  Smithers took a moment to weigh his words.

  ‘Curiosity’, he said, ‘killed the cat.’

  Inspector Parker, Nosey Parker, looked at him.

  Motes swirled in the broad beam of sunlight coming through the window.

  ‘That’s not a threat?’ the inspector asked. With bewilderment.

  Smithers smiled.

  ‘I had an idea you would find yourself at a loss,’ he said. ‘It rather proves my point. Inspector, curiosity has become a ruling passion with you. It was that passion that animated your appeal to me just now. Animated it, and took it clean out of the domain of reason. No doubt this passion in its early stages furthered your career, but let me warn you now. If you are not very careful, it will blight it entirely.’

  Nosey Parker looked at Smithers. He blinked. As with a child a frown deepening on his forehead betrayed thought.

  At last he said:

  ‘Mr Smithers, either you are talking utter nonsense or I was right a minute ago and you are a clever and unscrupulous man issuing a direct threat to a police officer.’

  ‘I think I was simply too late,’ said Smithers.

  He got up and without another word left the dusty little room. The inspector made no move to stop him.

  The sunbeam motes danced a little faster.

  Smithers returned to the tea-table he had deserted. The meal was over. It had provided its dram of rumour. Most of the food lay untouched. Nerves prey on appetite.

  Except in one case.

  Tucked away in a deep armchair, legs drawn up, sat Peter. In his right hand a wedge of fruit cake.

  ‘Hallo,’ said Smithers. ‘I thought the few minutes I was away would scarcely be long enough for your tea.’

  ‘Nobody else seemed very interested after you went, sir,’ said Peter. ‘Super cake.’

  ‘Would you be able to drag yourself away from it to come on a little expedition with me?’ Smithers said. ‘For the same reason as before.’

  ‘Gosh, yes,’ Peter said. ‘And I could take a bit of the cake with me, couldn’t I? I’d eat it very quietly.’

  ‘That wouldn’t matter. This time it will be a bit different. We’re going up to London.’

  ‘Golly, did old Nosey let you go then? Everybody else seemed to think you were going to end up in clink.’

  ‘Did they? That scarcely surprises me. But Inspector Parker, as I think you should call him to me at least, has not, as a matter of fact, said we could go. We’re going to play truant.’

  ‘That means skipping school, doesn’t it, sir?’

  ‘Just that. Reprehensible, no doubt. But I think the time has come to look after oneself.’

  ‘Sir, what did Nos – Inspector Parker say to you just now? Did he threaten to put you inside?’

  ‘Do you think I ought to be put inside, Peter?’

  ‘If he said that, sir, he must be daft.’

  ‘The trouble is, my boy, he may be. Just a little. That’s why we’re going. Are you ready?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘All right then. There’ll be a bus stopping outside the hotel in a few minutes which will take us to the station. We should be able to pick up a fast London train almost at once. Just come with me, and when I give the word do what you’re told smartly.’

  Smithers slipped the half-hunter from his waistcoat pocket and checked it against the stable clock visible through the window of the tea-room.

  ‘You’ve time to finish that cake,’ he said.

  He sat while the boy munched solidly through. Then he strolled out into the hall of the inn. Peter followed and they stood for a while looking at a framed copy of a nineteenth-century advertisement for the house. Its glass reflected the busy scene in the street outside. Suddenly Smithers said:

  ‘Right. Off we go. Quickly now.’

  He walked straight out of the hotel at a rapid pace, the boy running beside him. A few yards away the last passengers of a short queue were heaving themselves aboard the bus.

  ‘Jump in,’ said Smithers.

  Peter leapt on to the platform of the bus, and Smithers followed as the vehicle moved off. As soon as he was in he stooped and fumbled with his shoelace. Getting up he glanced out of the rear window.

  ‘With any luck,’ he said to Peter, ‘no one will know we’ve been away. There’s another fast train back which will bring us in just before dinner if we’re quick up there.’

  ‘What are we going to do, sir?’ asked Peter.

  ‘Same rules as before,’ Smithers said. ‘You just follow me and notice everything that happens.’

  Smithers had carried with him the volume of Gibbon he had laid aside when he began tea. A paper stall at the station produced a sensational American comic for Peter. They sat reading as the train sped through the early summer evening.

  At Waterloo, Smithers put Peter quickly into the first taxi they saw. He sat well back in the seat.

  ‘Look out, Peter, and see if you can spot any policemen,’ he said.

  The boy craned his neck out of both windows as they left the station.

  ‘Not a sausage,’ he said.

  A note of disappointment.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Smithers. ‘I hope to be able to provide you with a small surprise in a few minutes’ time.’

  The taxi took them across the river, round Trafalgar Square, and up Charing Cross Road. Then it turned sharp left, and twisted about in the small streets of Soho. It stopped and the driver said:

  ‘There you are, sir.’

  He pointed to a small grimy red painted sign that hung beside a slit-like door in the same red paint. On the sign in white letters were painted the words “The Red Cockatoo”.

  Smithers paid off the taxi and looked around.
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  ‘This should be the way,’ he said.

  He led Peter a short way back along the street and then took the first turning on the same side as the Cockatoo notice board. He took the first turning he came to again and paused.

  The street they were in was almost exactly similar to the one where the taxi had put them down. Five small restaurants, two grocers’ shops, next door to each other and almost identical, and a music publisher’s and a dry cleaner’s. Otherwise dingy houses.

  Smithers walked slowly up the street. As he got to the third restaurant just opposite the dry cleaner’s he stopped short. The place was open in a half-hearted way. Smithers examined the bill of fare hung in the window for a few moments.

  ‘We aren’t going to be disappointed after all,’ he said.

  ‘Is it something to eat, sir?’ Peter said. ‘Dad says you want to watch this dago cooking.’

  ‘Do you know any dagos, Peter?’

  ‘No, sir. Dad steers clear of them. I think he’s got a special grudge against one or something.’

  ‘Well, wait until you meet some before forming any judgements. And don’t jump to conclusions even then. But you won’t have to worry on this occasion: I don’t think there’ll be much eating involved.’

  He pushed open the door.

  ‘Good evening, Schlemberger,’ he said. ‘May we join you?’ Schlemberger looked up at them from the little table near the door.

  A statue. ‘Incomprehension Becoming Incredulity.’

  And without the passage of time statue into frenzied machine.

  A soup plate jerked hard across the small restaurant. With accurate aim straight at Smithers’s face.

  He ducked, the plate caught him a glancing blow on the ear and broke into pieces on the jamb of the door behind him.

  There was only one other way out of the small room and Schlemberger, without waiting to see whether his missile had gone home, took it. Through the service door, leaving it swinging noisily backwards and forwards on its double hinge.

  Smithers followed him. Down a short flight of stairs. Into a long narrow kitchen, steamy and rich-smelling. At the far end a small door stood wide open. Dimly visible through the thick atmosphere of the kitchen some concrete area steps. Half-way along the room, standing opposite a large stove covered in pans, was a heavily built swarthy man wearing stained white overalls and a chef’s cap. In one hand he had a meat chopper and in the other a heavy double boiler. He was swearing in Italian.

  As soon as he saw Smithers he shouted:

  ‘Another. My bloody sauce Bearnaise she is spoiled.’

  He turned and advanced towards Smithers.

  With all his force Smithers hurled Vol. 4 of The Decline and Fall straight at the cook. It caught him hard between the eyes. He fell on to his back. Smithers ran on, scrambling over the man’s outstretched legs and out into the area and up the steps.

  He found himself outside the Red Cockatoo. Schlemberger was on the far side of the road shouting directions to the driver of a taxi he had just stopped.

  Smithers judged the distance and halted. There was no possibility of making the long diagonal crossing of the street before the vehicle went. He breathed a long sigh.

  And as he lifted his head he recognized the taxi driver as the one who had brought him from Waterloo.

  He ran into the roadway waving his hand wildly. The driver spotted him and brought the taxi to a stop just as it had started.

  ‘Lost something, sir?’ he called across the road.

  ‘Yes, yes, just a moment,’ Smithers shouted back.

  He dodged across. Schlemberger opened the door of the vehicle and abruptly shut it again. At the corner of the street a police constable slowly walked across.

  ‘This gentleman’s a friend of mine as it happens,’ said Smithers. ‘I won’t keep him a moment, but I was carrying a book with me when I got out of your cab, and I’m hanged if I know where it is now.’

  He got in beside Schlemberger.

  ‘I take it you were watching Hamyadis’s flat,’ he said.

  ‘I guess I was,’ Schlemberger answered. ‘But you were the last person I expected to see just then. It kind of surprised me. I’m awfully sorry about that plate.’

  The taxi driver opened the communicating glass.

  ‘There’s that nipper you were with, sir,’ he said. ‘I think he’s carrying your book. Big blue one.’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Smithers. ‘Call him over, would you? And we’ll all go off together.’

  Schlemberger sat silent while the taxi driver attracted Peter’s attention and brought him over. When he arrived, Smithers said:

  ‘Are you all right, my boy? I had to trust you to keep out of trouble, but I’ve been a little worried.’

  ‘I’m perfectly okay, sir,’ Peter said. ‘The old cookie’s still sitting there. If you ask me, he never will know what hit him. I just picked up the book and dodged through after you. It was a super throw, sir.’

  ‘Thank you, Peter,’ said Smithers. ‘Now jump in and sit quietly while Mr Schlemberger tells us something.’

  ‘I’m going to ask you to keep a confidence,’ said Schlemberger.

  ‘Certainly,’ Smithers said. ‘As long as there is no question, you understand, of keeping anything from the police.’

  ‘You’re sure you want it that way?’ Schlemberger said.

  Smithers tapped on the glass behind the taxi driver.

  ‘Drop us in Whitehall,’ he said. ‘Just about opposite New Scotland Yard will do.’

  The taxi started off.

  ‘I guess you win,’ Schlemberger said.’But you will keep this to yourselves?’

  ‘We will,’ said Smithers.

  ‘All right then. Back in the States I have the reputation for being a pretty tough negotiator. They don’t put much across Foster P. Well, someone did put something across on me, somewhere in the transatlantic cables. That someone was our old friend George Hamyadis.’

  From Peter a gasp. Smithers’s hand quick to the boy’s knee.

  ‘He didn’t put much across on me,’ Schlemberger went on. ‘But he did put his organization across as an honest outfit. All right. So I hadn’t been on British soil ten minutes when I began to smell a rat. I guess you all smelt the same one. There’s no need for me to go into details.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ said Smithers.

  ‘All right then. Somebody kills him, and I knew at once I’d put the whole Institution for the Investigation of Incendiarism in a spot. I thought I could lose the presidency. A big scandal could lose me my job. And if I don’t have a job, I’m through. I’m a bum, strictly a bum. You see me looking as if I’m doing all right; but every night I say to myself “Thin Ice” and I think of that automobile coming right down at me and the way I’d have to just drop in front of it. At first I thought there was nothing to do but sweat it out. Until I learnt about that mysterious flat. Then the hair on my scalp really did begin to start doing things. If ever there was a loud noise saying blackmail, this was it. And I began to wonder if the I.I.I, wasn’t mixed up in it somehow.’

  ‘Just to wonder?’ asked Smithers.

  ‘You’ve got to believe me on this,’ Schlemberger said. ‘As far as I knew there was nothing for the guy to get his hands on. But say one of our employees, or officers even, had done something which the guy had got a line on. Well, the police weren’t supposed to have found this flat, so I brought a little pressure to bear on that girl, Kristen. And, as soon as I had what I wanted, I came on up here for a quiet look around.’

  ‘And you didn’t even get that far?’

  Schlemberger’s gaze, fixed up to this point on Smithers with unwavering forthrightness, dropped.

  ‘I was still casing up the place when you happened along,’ he said.

  ‘Fortunately that is a point the police will be able to check,’ Smithers said. ‘And you know if’ – a pause – ‘they do find anything involving your organization I think you can rely on their discretion.’

  ‘I
kept telling myself I was a fool not to do that,’ Schlemberger said. ‘Do you know what? I guess that was why I hadn’t made a move up to the time you came. Yes, I guess it was a question of that little old unconscious substitution again.’

  The taxi halted.

  Schlemberger looked out.

  ‘This it?’he asked.

  ‘Straight through there and you’ll find somebody to see you,’ Smithers answered.

  When Schlemberger had gone from sight he glanced at his watch.

  ‘Well, Peter,’ he said, ‘it didn’t take very long, did it? I think we’ll catch our train all right.’

  The Decline and Fall had come out of the fight better than the cook had done. Smithers was able to resume his reading on the train. Peter fell asleep suddenly.

  He had just had a short conversation with Smithers on the subject of the encounter with Schlemberger.

  ‘Please,sir,’ he had begun, ‘did you think it was going to be him after all?’

  ‘Not altogether, shall we say? And what about you?’

  ‘Well, sir, he is an American, sir. And nobody can know about him the way they can know about an Englishman, can they, sir?’

  ‘A good point.’

  ‘Sir, was what he said in the taxi true?’

  ‘It was true in a way,’ Smithers said. ‘It was what you might call a fable. It told the right story but the people were a little different.’

  ‘You mean when he said that bit about some officer of the I.I.I. he meant him?’

  ‘Good boy. I think we can be sure that Hamyadis had “got a line on” him, as I think he put it. No doubt the police will try to find out how strong a line it was.’

  ‘Sir, if it was a very strong line, Mr Schlemberger could be the one, couldn’t he?’

  ‘He has certainly got a motive.’

  Peter had opened his eyes wide at this. Then shut them in sleep.

  At Winchester Smithers took no precautions to avoid being seen. He took a taxi from the station and he and Peter entered the hotel five minutes late for dinner.