by Heron Carvic
“Your call to Geneva, sir.”
“Thank you.”
“M. Telmark of the Banque du Lac is on the line.”
“Thank you.” Jonathan Feldman, second in command to Lord Gatwood, the governor of the Bank of England, lifted the receiver. “Karl? Jonathan here. We finally got it organized and she’s on her way, and she’ll call on you at ten tomorrow morning as arranged. . . . No, not a soul knows a thing, except the police and the Home Office—and of course the Foreign Office . . . Yes, Lord G. had to get on to the F.O. eventually in order to bring it off. The police were being sticky . . . What? Sticky? Oh—difficult, difficult. The assistant commissioner was difficult, the commissioner was difficult, the Home Office was difficult—I suppose they don’t like loaning out their star operatives—and it wasn’t till his lordship got the F.O. to lean on them a bit that they gave in. All this fuss and palaver over that funny little old thing . . . Yes, no-body’d suspect her of being a sleuth, and she keeps it up all the time. The whole way through my interview with her she stuck to being . . . What? No, stuck . . . Oh, I see. No, it’s a verb this time and means something quite different. Anyway she played the innocent—you should’ve heard her: Forgery? Oh, dear dear dear and tut. And she was afraid she knew nothing of banking—or not in that sense, if I knew what she meant. . . .”
“. . . and I’m afraid that I know nothing of banking, Mr. Feldman. Though, naturally.” Miss Seeton corrected herself, “one has one’s own. Account, that is. But very small. And then the statements . . .” She sighed. “So difficult nowadays, when they have asterisks instead of red.” She was dubious. “Or is it black? Sometimes it’s a little hard to find just how one stands. One always thinks of asterisks in connection with footnotes. But in a bank, apparently, it means that everything is all right.” She had another moment’s qualm. “Or else it means that everything is not.”
Jonathan Feldman laughed dutifully. Obviously she got a kick out of playing it wide-eyed. “I’m sure, Miss Seeton, you’re far too prudent to overdraw, and besides”—his eyes twinkled—“in a policewoman it wouldn’t be the thing.”
“Oh, but I’m not,” she protested.
“Not overdrawn?”
“Not . . .?” For a moment Miss Seeton had lost the thread. “Oh, good gracious, no. That would be truly dreadful, and quite beyond my means. But I’m not,” she reiterated, “in the police. Or not in that sense. But merely attached, as it were, when suitable, to draw—Identi-Kits, they call them—whenever, for some reason, photographs are not. Suitable, I mean.”
Jonathan Feldman was enjoying himself. Here was a worthy opponent in a verbal fencing match. Nothing could shake the pedestal of naïveté on which she had elected to take her stand. He was unable to resist, however, letting her know on occasion that he saw through her. Even the assistant commissioner had tried to make out she was not a detective and certainly no banking expert. Did they all imagine that no one read or remembered the newspapers, with their headlines: BATTLING BROLLY BARES BANK FRAUD—CATCHES CROOKED CASHIER? He composed his expression and spoke gravely.
“Quite, Miss Seeton, I fully understand. With regard to your assignment, you are officially on holiday and, as you so rightly maintain”—his lips twitched—“you know nothing of police work or banking, and your call tomorrow morning on Karl Telmark at the Banque du Lac is purely a private visit to give him greetings from me as a mutual friend. He’ll make all further arrangements with you personally.”
“He does,” ventured Miss Seeton, “speak English?”
“Perfectly. Here”—he handed her a fat envelope—“is your passport and money for the journey in English and Swiss currency. I understand you haven’t been abroad before.”
“No,” she acknowledged, “and I’m afraid that I . . .”
“Nothing to worry about. One of our clerks, young Penrood, is taking you to the airport and will stay with you till your flight’s called, and there’ll be a car to meet you in Geneva.” He stood up. Miss Seeton rose. “Now I don’t think there’s anything else except to remind you of the delicacy of the situation and the need for complete secrecy. It only remains to wish you luck and to say”—he suppressed a chuckle and spoke with added solemnity—“that in spite of your lack of both knowledge and experience I’m sure you’ll do your duty and that we here at the Bank, indeed the country, will be in your very capable hands.”
Speechless, Miss Seeton gazed at him in distress until she saw the ill-concealed mirth. She smiled. Of course, how silly of her. Mr. Feldman was teasing. Secrecy. That would be the reason, one supposed, why they did not wish to use a foreign artist for whatever it was they wanted drawn. But all those embarrassing suggestions about financial matters and forgery, in relation to herself, had been just his banker’s way of being waggish. Miss Seeton was comforted.
Jonathan Feldman laughed in reminiscence. “Well, there it is, Karl, and it’s over to you. She’s perfect for what you want. Stemkos’ll never guess she’s having a look-see over his affairs. But don’t let her fool you with all that innocence stuff. When I was pulling her leg about it at the end she relaxed for a second and gave me a knowing smile. No flies on that one; she knows just what she’s about. . . . Right, you might give me a ring after you’ve seen her and got it all organized your end, and tell me how things go. . . . Right. Bye.”
“Corymbe of the Foreign Office here. I want to speak to the home secretary, please. . . . Harry? I’ve just had Jonathan Feldman—you know, Lord Gatwood’s dogsbody—on the line. . . . No, nothing’s gone wrong. Just to thank me and would I pass on thanks to you, so this is the pass. Though I never understood why you made such a fuss about letting her go in the first place. After all, you can see the Banque du Lac’s point of view. I don’t know how many millions Stemkos is worth—he’s probably lost count himself—but if I were a bank and my richest client started throwing forged notes about, I’d want to play it pretty close to the chest myself, and since all the forgeries so far have been English notes I should’ve thought you’d have been only too glad to have one of your people on the spot. . . . But how many times have I got to tell you they don’t want anybody else, and we can’t afford to offend the biggest private bank in Switzerland. Good Lord, even I’ve read about her, and the way the press crack up this MissEss of yours—who dreamt up that idiotic code name anyway?—you’d think the Yard depended entirely on her. . . . Yes, I know you said so, but you’re not going to persuade Geneva, or Jonathan Feldman, or Lord Gatwood himself—or me, for that matter—that anybody solves three or four cases, or whatever it was, by accident. . . . Well, have it your own way. I don’t care whether she does it by mistake or magic. They wanted her, they’ve got her, so now it’s their lookout. Better just pray she waves that wretched brolly of hers the papers are always on about and turns up trumps.”
“I want to speak to the assistant commissioner. . . . Which?” The home secretary became testy. “Sir Hubert Everleigh, of course, A.C. (Crime). . . . Hubert? The F.O.’s just been on to me with a vote of thanks from the Bank of England and the Banque du Lac, so everyone’s satisfied at last. All this upheaval about that schoolmarm of yours—it’s incredible. She’s given me more headaches than—At all events it’s settled and that’s the end of it. If I hear the word Seeton again I’ll resign. . . . No, no one knows except ourselves, the Bank and the F.O. . . . She’s where? . . . Oh, at the airport. Good, then we can all relax.”
Should he, D.C. Haley wondered, phone the Yard and ask for instructions? No, better hang on a bit and see how things shaped. Mustn’t queer the old girl’s pitch. Obviously she knew what she was doing. Comes straight in with a young man in tow—good bit of cover, that—and plumps herself down at Elio’s table cool as you please. No wonder the Oracle thought the world of her. Looking at her you couldn’t believe she was anything but what she seemed; a little old ex-schoolmarm off on a spree and rather wishing she wasn’t and had she packed everything and would the neighbors see to the cat? He’d give a lot to know what she was
really thinking behind that innocent deadpan.
How plaguing it was, thought Miss Seeton, to have a thing on the tip of one’s tongue, so to speak, to remember a tune perfectly well, yet not to be able to remember what it was. She concentrated as the gentleman sitting next to her hummed the refrain once more.
“Dee dee—da da—da da—de de—dum—dum.”
Foreign, she felt sure. Something to do with India? No, Russian . . . Of course. That was it. And by Tchaikovsky, she expected; he generally wrote the music for the Russians. She stared about her. Quite fascinating: the clatter and the clack; the busy men and women serving food and drinks; the busy men and women cleaning tables and the floor; the officers and girls in uniform, striding forward, strolling back. And, above all, everywhere, people; such varied people; mostly waiting; yet all these dissimilar people had one common bond; they carried, or they guarded, baggage. Instinctively Miss Seeton looked down at her own overnight case. Her larger case had already gone on ahead. The very efficient, no doubt kind, but also, perhaps, rather insistent Mr. Penrood from the Bank who had brought her here had arranged for it to be weighed when they had first arrived. He had insisted upon paying for something called overweight, of which he appeared to disapprove and about which she felt a trifle guilty. She should not, perhaps, have, after all, included so many drawing materials. No doubt they would have some reasonable substitute in Switzerland. And then the case—relabeled by the young lady in charge of the weighing process, who had also given her a receipt and returned the folder containing her ticket, with various printed labels concerning her luggage stapled to it, and a piece of pasteboard which Mr. Penrood had insisted she should keep in her handbag in readiness, though, when she had asked him in readiness for what? he had merely smiled and said that he would explain when the time came and the young lady had laughed—had been dumped upside down and moved slowly away on a conveyor belt. The case, of course. Looking now at the label on her overnight bag, Miss Seeton could not restrain a smile at the quaint printing done with a matchstick dipped in ink by Martha, who helped two mornings a week to keep the cottage clean. Martha had impressed upon Miss Seeton the necessity for boldness and clarity with regard to labeling, especially when foreign travel was in question. The MISS E. D. SEETON had almost succeeded in drying before Martha had smacked it with a piece of blotting paper, but the GENEVA had fared somewhat worse. The result, though undeniably bold, and clear as to who was traveling, was not quite so clear as to where.
Where? Miss Seeton collected her thoughts. She really must not, she admonished herself, allow the allurement of a new environment to distract her mind. Where was Mr. Penrood? He had promised that he would return for her in plenty of time, and would deliver her to wherever it was she had to go and hand her over to a hostess, which, although, naturally, well-intentioned, had made one feel, just for a moment, like some awkward parcel which couldn’t be trusted through the post. And it was very important that she should catch the plane. Or, she deliberated, would that be the wrong expression? Was it, perhaps, only trains and buses that one caught? Well, at all events, that she should be on the plane. And, there again—she frowned—did one say “on” or “in”? It was, she knew, correct to say “on” a boat—though, in actual fact, one was generally “in” it. Except, of course in very small boats, like punts and things. Though, if memory served, in the case of a day’s boating, it was the river that took the “on,” the punt the “in.” But having never traveled by airplane—having, in fact, never traveled abroad at all—one was afraid that one knew little of the technical terms. However, since she had been told that there would be a car to meet her at the other end and to take her to her hotel, it would be so very rude not to be there on time. And, unless there was another airplane later going in the same direction, she would miss her appointment at the bank tomorrow morning. And in so vast a place and amongst such a crowd it would, surely, be so very easy for Mr. Penrood to lose his way. Again she looked around her: a myriad faces, in all colors, in all styles of headgear; anticipatory, strained, sad, carefree, glum, laughing, chewing, indifferent, anxious faces and, at a table opposite the end of the refreshment counter, the face of a gentleman who gave her a broad wink as their glances met. Miss Seeton ignored the impertinence.
Give her best, thought Haley. Never batted an eyelid. At that he’d been a b.f. to wink. Although he’d caught sight of her once at the Yard over that child murder business, she wouldn’t know him from a dotted line. You’d got to admire her guts—busting in on a setup like this. She’d find herself in right trouble if she didn’t watch her step, or somebody didn’t watch it for her; these chummies weren’t playing for pence. Well, since she’d got Elio well under control for a bit, he’d take time off to report. Asking the man next to him to hold his place, Detective Constable Haley went to one of a row of telephone kiosks from which he could command a view of the Italian’s table.
Haley put down the receiver. This beat cockfighting. The inspector hadn’t had a clue she was here—nothing’d been said to Fraud. He stood watching Miss Seeton. She wouldn’t’ve muscled in on their biggest, hush-hushiest case in years off her own bat. How in hell had she heard of it anyway? Even the Treasury hadn’t been let in on it, which meant there was something pretty screwy somewhere. The Oracle must’ve sent her here on some ploy of his own. Did that mean Elio’d been up to something they hadn’t heard about? Couldn’t’ve; Fraud’d been watching the little squirt like a hen with one chick for weeks. And now the inspector was off to some high-powered confab in the A.C.’s office; perhaps that’d explain things. Lucky he’d rung when he did, only just caught him, and he was to report anything he considered of importance direct to the inspector in the A.C.’s office. That should go with a swing—a mere D.C. busting in on the phone when Sir Hubert was in the middle of chatting up some of the top brass. And seeing all of ’em in Fraud had been told to keep their traps shut, what was all this high-powered powwow in aid of anyway?
“Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Special Branch, Commander Conway and Inspector Borden from Fraud—sorry, sir, from C6—and Chief Superintendent Delphick from C1, sir.”
Sir Hubert Everleigh sighed. You took time and trouble learning the name, rank and occupation of every officer under you, and then a firm of business consultants was called in and headquarters was reorganized and, though their occupations and names remained the same, all your senior men were regraded and retitled. He glanced at the box that had made the announcement, thanked it and asked it to send his visitors in. He waved them to chairs as they entered.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen.” He addressed the head of the Special Branch. “I asked you to sit in on this, Mr. Fenn, because I think it’s possible, even in my opinion likely, that your department will become involved and it struck me that such an involvement would be perhaps somewhat less involved if you knew how the case stands at the moment, the latest developments and its and their implications. I have here”—he indicated two typescripts on his desk—“an informal report, perhaps I should say a series of notes, prepared by the commander and Inspector Borden which the inspector has kindly typed himself and which I suggest that you and the chief superintendent may find helpful as a reference during our discussion. I regret that you were not given this in advance, but these two copies”—he handed one to Fenn, Delphick moved forward and picked up the other—“are the only ones in existence. For reasons which should become clear by inference, I prefer that no one else has an opportunity to read the contents. Nor do I wish a copy of the report to leave this room.”
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Fenn bowed formally and took a seat. “Thank you, Assistant Commissioner.” He smoothed the papers upon his knee.
Delphick’s eyes skimmed down a list of numbered paragraphs and dates on the first page: Mme Stemkos . . . Stemkos? That’d be the shipping millionaire. Mme Stemkos with Librecksin (secretary) . . . Then Stemkos himself; Librecksin again; Madame again, and a lot of guff about deposits at the Banque du Lac, Geneva. And the ups
hot seemed to be that when some of the big clearing banks such as the Swiss Bank Corporation and the Credit Suisse sent their English notes back to the Bank of England one hell of a lot of them were forged fivers. Well, well, you’d’ve thought Stemkos would’ve had enough of them ready without printing a little snide on the side.
A paragraph had caught the attention of the Special Branch.
7. Owing to the excellence of the forgeries, particularly with regard to the quality of the paper, Interpol has not yet been informed, since the Bank of England would prefer for the time being to pursue discreet inquiries on their own account.
In Fenn’s estimation any inquiries that were not conducted under his aegis were a waste of time and to call them discreet would be laughable. He came as near to a sneer as the time, the place and the company would allow.
“These discreet inquiries? The Treasury investigators?”
Sir Hubert ignored the tone. “No, Mr. Fenn, not at this stage. I am aware,” he went on as the other began to protest, “that the normal procedure in such circumstances is to inform the Treasury and hand the matter over to their investigators, but in this case we are not yet convinced that the circumstances are normal. You see, the excellence, to be more accurate, the perfection of the paper employed can only mean in practical terms access.”
“Are you implying,” demanded Fenn, “that someone at the Bank . . .?”
“Not necessarily. In the classic phrase, we have reason to believe that someone who is at the Treasury could conceivably be involved. Consequently both the Bank of England and we would prefer, if it is possible, to keep the matter—er—under wraps for the time being.” He turned to the two men from Fraud. “Now before we go over the ground for the benefit of Mr. Fenn and Chief Superintendent Delphick, has anything fresh come to light?”