‘Still I don’t get your idea,’ said Marlowe, cutting in. ‘What’s your plan of campaign?’
Campion hesitated and looked at the judge. ‘I want you to come back to Mystery Mile with me. I choose Mystery Mile because it’s our own ground, so to speak. They’d attack us. We shouldn’t be endangering anyone else, for I’m certain Simister’s not the man to go yokel baiting. Either we get them or they get us. Any development will be pretty speedy, certainly sensational, and probably final. What do you say?’
A gleam had appeared in the old man’s eyes. This was the sort of proposition that appealed to his forthright personality.
‘I’m on,’ he said.
‘So am I,’ said Marlowe.
‘You can count on me,’ chimed in Giles.
Campion shook his head. ‘Sorry,’ he said to Marlowe, ‘but your father and I go alone or not at all. That’s the final scheme.’
‘Yes, that’s final,’ said old Lobbett. ‘See here, Marlowe, I’m in this because I can’t and won’t help it. Someone’s got to look after Isopel. It’s not only because you’re my son and a man likes to feel that there’s someone carrying on if anything happens to him, but you’ve got work to do. You’ve got Isopel and all my affairs to look after.’
The boy looked at him helplessly.
‘But I can’t let you and Campion go alone into this, dad. Why Campion?’
‘Oh, orders taken for this sort of thing daily,’ said the irrepressible young man airily. ‘You seem to forget my professional status.’
‘That’s so,’ said the judge. ‘You and Paget, Marlowe, are out of it.’
‘Rot!’ said Giles. ‘I’m coming, even if I only go back to live in the Dower House as I’ve a perfect right to. None of you know your way about Mystery Mile as I do. I’m the man you want. I’ve two arms still useful, which is more than Marlowe has. My head never was much good, anyway.’
Mr Campion looked thoughtful. ‘There’s something in that,’ he said.
‘What about your sister?’ said old Lobbett.
Giles hesitated and glanced at Marlowe. ‘I think she’ll be all right,’ he said.
Lobbett looked sharply at his son. ‘Is that so?’ he said. ‘Then you cut back to the city as soon as you’ve had a rest. What do you say about young Paget, Campion?’
‘I don’t see that we can prevent him coming,’ Campion said slowly. ‘It’s a far, far better thing, and all that, you know, Giles.’
‘I don’t like it,’ said Marlowe.
‘“Efficiency” is my watchword,’ said Mr Campion. ‘Who arrested Jack Sheppard? Who convicted Charlie Peace? Who trailed Palmer the Poisoner? Who brought Jack the Ripper triumphantly to Justice? Who stopped mixed ping-pong in the Polytechnic? Don’t heckle me, I only ask you. Who? For the next thrilling instalments see Polly’s Paper, twopence every Tuesday.’
‘That settles it,’ said Lobbett. ‘Now, Campion, what’s the next move?’
‘Sleep, Nature’s sweet restorer,’ said the young man quite seriously. ‘The learned cleric must be prevailed upon to put us up today. We’d better arrive at Mystery Mile at night. I think we’re safe here until then. Marlowe, you’d better rest, too. We’ll put you out at the nearest railway station on our way.’
‘Hell to you!’ said Marlowe. ‘I don’t think I shall ever sleep again.’
‘Amateur,’ said Mr Campion happily. ‘I shall slumber like a babe.’
There was no difficulty about accommodation in the old Vicarage. Within half an hour the adventurers were established in a bedroom whose stripped beams and plaster walls were cool and silent.
When the three awoke they found that a repast had been prepared for them which would not have dissatisfied a small medieval army going into battle.
It was nearly nine o’clock when they finished their meal. There were no reports of any strangers in the village, and Campion became thoughtful.
‘They must have watched the flat,’ he said. ‘I thought there was a man there. Quite likely they had a bit of a hangover from last night. We may not see a sign for a day or two.’
‘I wish I was in this,’ said Marlowe for the hundredth time. ‘My arm isn’t nearly as stiff as I thought it would be.’
His father turned upon him. ‘We settled that this morning, son,’ he said. ‘You pack right back to the city and take this letter with you to Isopel.’
‘You’re out of it,’ said Giles. ‘I feel primed up to hit something. God help Kettle if nothing more serious arrives.’
‘There’s a train for you, Marlowe,’ said Campion, ‘at Woodbridge at half-past ten. We shall get back to Mystery Mile about an hour later. Are you all ready?’
They nodded. The realization of the seriousness of the expedition returned to their minds, and although Campion remained as flippant as ever, the others were quiet.
Alaric Watts unbarred his gate and let the great Bentley creep noiselessly out.
They stopped only a minute to put Marlowe down at Woodbridge. Marlowe and his father, who had been sitting in the back of the car in close conversation, merely shook hands.
Giles bent towards the younger man. ‘Look after the kid,’ he said, and added awkwardly, ‘All my love to Isopel if anything happens.’
Marlowe nodded. ‘I envy you, old boy,’ he said sincerely. ‘Any message, Campion?’
‘Tell Biddy, “Smiling, the boy fell dead”,’ said Mr Campion. ‘Should I do so, of course. Tell her she can have Autolycus,’ he added more seriously. ‘Lugg, too, if she likes. The woman could hardly hope to forget me if she had those two about the house.’
On the last word he swung the car round out of the tiny station yard towards Mystery Mile.
It was at that precise moment that back in the Vicarage at Kepesake the Reverend Alaric Watts pored over an ultra-late telegram which the postmaster had only just brought over himself, ‘to oblige’.
It was addressed to Campion, Redding Knights. It had been delivered at the Hall, and Cluer had sent the postmaster over to the Vicarage.
The old vicar had hesitated before he read it, but as the postmaster volunteered the information that it was urgent, he finally slit open the flimsy envelope.
RETURNING MYSTERY MILE STOP [IT RAN]. COME TO US AT ONCE STOP. URGENT. BIDDY. YSOBEL.
Alaric Watts turned to the postmaster. ‘The post office makes funny mistakes,’ he said testily. ‘The lady spells her name I-S-O-P-E-L.’
‘That’s ’ow it come, that’s ’ow it was sent.’ The man spoke stolidly. ‘If there’s a mistake, it was made by the sender.’
Although he did not know it, the postmaster of Kepesake and Redding Knights was amazingly justified in this observation.
26 One End of the String
THE BENTLEY CREPT slowly towards Mystery Mile. As they drew nearer, the faint cold smell of the sea reached them. The night had become extraordinarily dark, but it was close and thundery, and the sense of oppression which hung over them all was intensified by the heavy atmosphere.
Crowdy Lobbett bent forward and touched Campion on the shoulder. ‘Now that Marlowe is right out of it,’ he said, ‘I shall be prepared to tell you everything I know. You understand that?’
Campion promptly pulled the car into the side and stopped. He turned round in his seat and faced the older man.
‘You’ve no notion what a good idea that is,’ he said. ‘If you don’t mind, I think here is the time to let us have it.’ He switched off the headlights and composed himself to listen.
The judge nodded in the darkness. ‘That’s how I see it,’ he said. ‘Now I’ll tell you, and you’ll see just how awkwardly I’ve been placed. I don’t know if Marlowe told you that all through my career as a judge in the States I’ve had a reputation for my handling of these Simister gangsters. We could never find out who this alleged Simister is.’
He paused. ‘That was the thing that we were always trying to find out about them – the identity of this mysterious leader. One day I got hold of something which looked like
a clue. It was after I had retired. The police had what you would call over here, I suppose, a standing committee, especially appointed to investigate this lot As an authority on these people, I was invited to join it. We had special facilities for the questioning of prisoners.
‘There was a man in the state jail named Coulson. He was doing a term for implication in a very nasty case of dope smuggling in which several policemen had been shot. He was a Simister man.
‘While in prison Coulson developed internal trouble which turned out to be cancer. He was dying in the penitentiary infirmary when I was approached by the committee to visit him, which I did. He was particularly anxious to die in his own home, wanted to spend his last days with his wife. I went into the matter and found that he was too far gone to do any more harm, so I obtained the necessary release and struck a bargain with him.’
He peered through the darkness at them. They were listening intently.
‘He swore to me that he had something which he believed was a clue to the identity of Simister himself.’
‘At last, after a lot of trouble and persuasion, I got hold of it. As soon as I saw it I thought he’d been making a fool of me. But he was so earnest that I was gradually forced to believe that the ridiculous thing in my hands was in some sort of way a line on our little problem.’
‘Fine!’ said Mr Campion. ‘But what does your little billet doux consist of?’
The judge moved in his seat. ‘A kid’s fairy-story book,’ he said.
Giles stirred.
‘In the blue suitcase?’ he said.
‘Marlowe told me he opened it,’ said the old man. ‘Yes, that’s so. I bought the whole series – there was a list of them in the back of the first book. I’ve read every word of those books, hunted for every kind of cipher, and neither I nor your great expert, MacNab, could make anything of it.’
Campion stared at him through the darkness. ‘Good Lord, was it one of those we saw?’ he said. ‘We’ll push back at once. I’d no idea you’d left your clue at Mystery Mile.’
‘It was the safest thing to do,’ the old man pointed out. ‘While it remained there among the other books it was impossible for anyone to tell which was the key copy unless one knew. If I’d been caught with that one book the inference would have been pretty obvious. That’s why I used to carry it like that with all the others. It was the safest way I could think of.’
‘All the same, I think we’ll get on,’ said Campion. ‘A bedtime story with a point. I must have a go at it. I got seven-and-six for an acrostic once.’
He started the engine and they drove off with more speed than before. The night had now reached a pitch of darkness unusual in the summer months. The sky was thick with clouds and the air was sultry in spite of the cool tang of the sea which reached them every now and again.
This, combined with their sense of approaching danger, made the drive a thrilling and unnerving experience. The whole countryside seemed to be stirring. Birds and animals slept uneasily in the heat and there were rustlings and little squeals from the roadside as they passed, and strange cries from the woods as the night birds prepared for the storm.
They reached the Stroud unchallenged. Campion glanced at Giles beside him. ‘No police on the road. What’s this – economy? or has someone been busy? I wish my Seven Whistlers were still operating. I think we’d better push on.’
Giles breathed heavily through his nose.
‘Nothing else for it, now,’ he said. ‘If this storm doesn’t break pretty soon I shall explode. It may hang like this all night. They do down here sometimes. It always makes me feel like murdering someone.’
‘That’s the idea,’ said Campion cheerfully. ‘I fancy you’re going to get your chance.’ He swung the car round the bend and they mounted the long low hill to the village.
The village was in darkness as they passed. The park, with great trees towering over the narrow drive, seemed unfamiliar, ominous, and uneasy.
‘Lights,’ said Giles suddenly. ‘Lights in the drawing-room, I think. What are they up to?’
Campion shut off his engine, and the car rolled on a few yards and stopped. He jumped out on to the grass and spoke softly.
‘I think we’d better approach with caution,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and reconnoitre outside that window. It may be nothing, of course.’
He spoke lightly enough, but it was plain that he was by no means satisfied that all was well.
For a few moments he was lost in the darkness, and there was no shadow across the shaft of light from the drawing-room window, which gilded the green boles of the elms. At length they heard his voice again quite close to them, whispering in a tone unusually agitated.
‘We’re for it,’ he murmured. ‘We’ve gone and put our little necks into it like bunnies in a snare. Look here.’
They followed him across the lawn, treading softly on the springy turf. The silence in the house was terrible, though the lights still glared out unwinkingly. They crept up to the drawing-room window and peered in.
The sight within was an extraordinary one.
The room was brightly lighted. From where they stood they could just see the Romney. The beautiful girl with her sweet, stupid smile simpered in her frame, and before the picture, sprawled out in a little Louis XVI armchair, was Mr Barber. His great head was thrown back, disclosing the thick bull throat beneath his beard.
‘Who the heck is that, anyway?’ murmured the judge. Campion explained.
‘Is he dead?’ Giles heard his own voice break as he whispered.
‘I think not,’ said Campion. ‘He’s breathing pretty heavily. He looks as if he’d been drugged.’
Judge Lobbett craned forward a little too far, and his shadow fell across the stream of light. Campion jerked him back.
‘Come round here,’ he whispered. He led them round the back of the house to the kitchen windows. There, too, the lights were burning. Once again they peered in.
Mrs Whybrow sat at the kitchen table, her head resting on the boards, her arms hanging limply at her sides.
‘Good God, they’ve got her too!’ Giles ejaculated.
‘Comfort me with chloroform,’ said Campion cryptically. ‘Wait a minute, and I’ll go and play peep-bo round the house. I’m afraid we’ve come and settled in the very middle of it. Look here, Giles, I’m going to bring out that blue suitcase if I can lift it. Meanwhile, should I not return said Our Hero, you, Giles, will not obey your natural ass instincts and attempt to clear off in the Bentley, but you will use the only other exit which is not known to everybody, and that is via the mist tunnel. George and ’Anry have had orders to have a boat there ever since the search for Mr Lobbett was abandoned. I never knew when we’d need it. In the words of the immortal Knapp, “Good night, all”.’
The judge caught his sleeve. ‘The book you want is called Sinbad the Sailor and Other Stories,’ he said.
The fatuousness of the title at such a moment was not lost on Mr Campion. ‘That sounds like me,’ he said. ‘In view of the scene in the drawing-room it really ought to have been The Sleeping Beauty.’
He disappeared noiselessly round the side of the house. Giles and old Lobbett flattened themselves against the wall and waited. The boy was breathing like a horse, and his heart was thumping so loudly that he felt he must shake the foundations of the house.
Lobbett was calmer, but he was by no means impervious to the excitement of the moment. He drew a gun out of his hip pocket and waited.
Still there was no sound from the house. The minutes went by. Giles was quivering with impatience, and the wound in his cheek had begun to throb.
All sense of time left them. It seemed hours since Campion had disappeared. At last a board creaked in the house and Giles started violently. Next moment someone dropped lightly on the ground at their feet.
The judge whipped up his revolver, but it was Campion’s whisper which greeted him out of the darkness.
‘The Sleeping Beauty good and proper inside, the Babes in t
he Wood outside,’ he murmured. ‘Rummiest job I’ve ever seen. It serves old Barber right for overzealous attention to business. He seems to have put up a bit of a struggle. There’s a chair or so overturned. I don’t understand it. There’s not a soul moving in the house.’ He lowered his voice still further. ‘I’ve got the book. Now, then, it’s your one chance. Down the mist tunnel.’
Giles did not move. ‘It’s suicide in the dark like this,’ he said. ‘You don’t know that “soft”, Campion.’
‘I’ve got a storm lantern I pinched out of the kitchen. We’ll light it when we get down there,’ said Campion. ‘It’s hopeless to go back by the car. That’s their bright idea, I fancy.’
Judge Lobbett nodded towards the window. ‘What about those people in there?’
‘I know,’ admitted Campion. ‘All the same I don’t think they’re in any real danger. Our friends are evidently not going to hurt them or they’d have done it before now. We’re in a trap and we must get out of it as best we can. It’s not safe even to try to get back to the village.’
All round them the dark garden was whispering. They had no idea where the enemy might be hidden. They could hardly hope that their coming had not been eagerly awaited. No one could have missed seeing their headlights as they came across the Stroud. Perhaps even now they were being observed, perhaps at any moment the attack would come.
Neither Giles nor Judge Lobbett had doubted for an instant the wisdom of Campion’s remark when he had pointed out that the enemy were probably guarding the way back. Mr Datchett and his followers were clearly not the only subordinates their mysterious enemy possessed.
They obeyed Campion without question.
‘Carry on, Sergeant,’ said Giles. ‘I don’t like the navigation scheme, but we’ll have a shot at it.’
‘Hang on to Uncle Albert, then,’ said Campion. ‘This isn’t going to be a pleasant country walk. The snake-in-the-grass stuff is on our programme.’
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