Sweet Danger

by Margery Allingham

  ‘It strikes me as being very mysterious that Peaky Doyle had vanished from the heath this morning and has not yet been heard of in the village,’ said Eager-Wright. ‘It looks as though either his friend came back for him or else there are more people about the place than we know of. Someone must have looked after him.’

  Before anyone could offer any suggestions on this subject Aunt Hatt’s clear vibrant voice sounded from the floor below.

  ‘Mr Campion! You have a visitor. Can I send him up?’

  Before Campion could reply Mr Lugg’s sepulchral tones floated up to them.

  ‘That’s right, ma’am,’ they heard him say affably, and add in the more familiar tones he kept for Mr Campion’s intimate friends: ‘Step up this way, sir, if you please. Look where you’re goin’. Every other step’s a mockery. ’Is ’Ighness is givin’ audience in the boiler room this mornin’.’

  Footsteps sounded on the stairs and presently a head appeared through the trap.

  ‘Farquharson!’ said Guffy, starting forward. ‘Well, this is delightful. Mind that hole in the floor, old boy. Let me introduce you. Miss Amanda Fitton: Amanda, this is Farquharson, an old friend of ours, a charming fellow.’

  ‘Quite the little society matron, isn’t he?’ remarked Campion, grinning. ‘What news?’

  The new-comer took a copy of The Times from under his arm and handed it to the speaker.

  ‘This morning’s paper,’ he said. ‘Personal column. Fourth paragraph down. I know one doesn’t get the papers till the evening in these country places, so I brought it along. I thought I ought to be on the scene of action, anyway.’

  Campion took the paper and glanced at the paragraph. Then he began to read the message aloud:

  ‘“If A.C., late of Bottle Street, Piccadilly, will call at Xenophon House, W.C.2, on Wednesday at 4.30, the documents we have prepared for him will be ready for him to sign. X.R. & Co.”’

  ‘Extraordinary way of doing business,’ said Guffy. ‘You’ll put it off, I suppose? Unless – by jove! it’s a sort of code. Good Lord, how amazing!’

  ‘Hardly a code,’ ventured Mr Campion gently. ‘That “documents ready to sign” bit had a certain forthrightness, I thought.’

  ‘Well, it can’t be a trap,’ said Farquharson cheerfully. ‘The great insurance offices may be viewed with suspicion in some quarters, but I never heard of them taking in unwary visitors and knocking them on the head.’

  Eager-Wright was looking at Campion with interest.

  ‘Whom will you see?’ he demanded.

  Mr Campion’s pale eyes were thoughtful behind his spectacles.

  ‘Well, really, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But as a matter of fact, I’ve rather got the feeling that I’m in for a half hour with the boss.’

  ‘Who is the boss of Xenophon?’ said Farquharson, and then as an incredulous expression crept into his eyes he turned to the other man. ‘That’s Savanake himself, isn’t it?’ he said.

  Mr Campion nodded. ‘If I’ve got to see him at half past four I’d better hurry, hadn’t I?’ he said.

  CHAPTER X

  Big Business

  ‘MR CAMPION,’ SAID the pale young man with the toothache, ‘Mr Campion. About the papers.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said the beautiful but efficient young woman at the enquiry desk, eyeing him coldly.

  ‘Campion,’ said the young man again. ‘A hot, fiery plant under the jurisdiction of Mars. And I’ve come about the papers. Large, flat, white things. You must have heard of them. I’m sorry I can’t speak more clearly, but I’ve got toothache. I’ll sit down here, shall I, while you ring up about me?’

  He smiled at her as well as he could round the enormous pad of handkerchief which he held against his cheek and wandered away from the desk to seat himself on what appeared to be a coronation chair at one side of the tessellated marble hall. Apart from the toothache, Mr Campion’s appearance was in keeping with his surroundings. His dark suit proclaimed business, his neatly-rolled silk umbrella good business, and the latest thing in bowlers business in the superlative.

  He sat there for a long time, the one sober spot in the welter of magnificence which greeted the visitor to Xenophon House. He was gazing idly at the baroque Italian candelabra in the painted dome above his head and reflecting how much more jolly it would have been if the posturing Loves and gilded amoretti had been replaced by lifelike models of the Board of Directors, when a subdued feminine voice in his ear startled him to attention. It was the young woman from the enquiry desk.

  ‘Did you say “Campion”, if you please?’

  ‘That’s right. About the papers.’

  ‘Will you come this way, sir?’

  The change in her manner was very noticeable, and Mr Campion followed her through the hall, a person of importance.

  A giant lift which Mr Campion innocently supposed to be of solid gold deposited them on a mezzanine floor, where the scheme of decoration had leapt on a century or so and hundreds of impressive persons scurried among furniture of chromium steel and glass.

  Mr Campion forgot his tooth long enough to admire this picture of ruthless efficiency and found himself handed over to a soft-voiced, grey-haired man who moved very close when he spoke, as though his business were of some very personal and slightly undignified nature.

  ‘Mr Campion?’ he murmured. ‘Quite.’ And then with a gasp, as though he felt his lungs would not contain enough breath for him to finish the sentence: ‘About the papers? Yes? Will you come this way?’

  They entered the lift once more and Campion, ever anxious to be affable, smiled wryly round his handkerchief.

  ‘Two little birds in a gilded cage,’ he murmured foolishly.

  The man started and glanced at him with such cold shrewd eyes that the fatuous smile faded from the half of Mr Campion’s face that was visible, and it relapsed into its usual state of placid inanity.

  The other became more deferential than ever.

  ‘Thank you, thank you,’ he murmured. ‘Very kind of you, sir.’ And taking a pencil and paper from his pocket, he jotted down a few hieroglyphics.

  Somewhat startled, Campion looked over his shoulder.

  ‘Goldbaum and Cazeners advance two points,’ he read.

  He was still pondering over this incident when he was ushered out of the lift into a corridor inspired by the neo-Byzantine or latter-day Picture Palace school of thought.

  ‘Perhaps you would be so good as to wait in here, sir.’

  Mr Campion’s feet sank into a depthless carpet. His eyes became accustomed gradually to sacred gloom. The door shut noiselessly behind him and he sat down in yet another variety of state chair and found himself looking round a room which had all the marble and mahogany solidity of a reading room at one of the better clubs. Immense oil paintings of the company’s liners surrounded the walls. A fireplace as big as a church organ and very like it in design filled the far end of the room, and he gazed over a mahogany table which reminded him of a skating rink and nursed his face.

  He had just accustomed himself to living in Gargantua when a sudden draught assailed the back of his neck and the next moment a little sandy man who had quite obviously only brains to recommend him paused at his elbow.

  ‘Er – Mr Campion,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Pleased to meet you. You’ve come about the papers, I presume. What’s the matter with your face? There’s nothing so nasty as a nasty tooth. That’s right, keep it warm. Does it hurt you much?’

  Mr Campion shook his head.

  ‘Oh, well, that’s all right,’ said the other. ‘Glad to have you up.’

  Mr Campion smiled shyly and sought for some really suitable return for this greeting. ‘Nice little place you’ve got here,’ he said at last, conscious that he had found the mot juste.

  The other shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly but with a certain pride. He shot Mr Campion a sudden penetrating glance.

  ‘You saw the ad.?’ he enquired.

  ‘In The Times,’ s
aid Mr Campion.

  The newcomer still hesitated, and Mr Campion felt in his breast pocket.

  ‘I brought this along,’ he said, ‘in case you wanted to see it.’

  He placed an ordinary British passport on the table. The little sandy man’s face lighted up.

  ‘Now that’s what I call intelligent,’ he said. ‘I see you and me’ll get along. My name’s Parrott – er – two t’s, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ murmured Mr Campion gravely.

  Mr Parrott turned over the pages of the passport, glanced at the photograph and then at Campion. He seemed satisfied, for he returned the document.

  ‘Well, you’d better come along,’ he said. ‘The private lift’s in here.’

  Once again Mr Campion set out on his travels. They skirted the table, Mr Campion trotting obediently behind his guide, and, after traversing quite a considerable distance, came at last to a small door in the panelling which gave this time on to a Tudor lift; the sort of lift, as indeed Mr Parrott pointed out, in which Queen Elizabeth might have ascended had the idea of such a thing occurred to her.

  ‘You are now going,’ said Mr Parrott impressively, ‘into The Suite itself. This is the ante-room.’

  Mr Campion, still clutching his handkerchief to his swollen cheek, but contriving at the same time to look dutifully impressed, stepped into a cool cedar-scented atmosphere and found himself almost ankle-deep in velvet pile. This great walnut-panelled apartment hung with green was peopled with immaculate young persons of either sex who moved silently, rustled papers softly, coughed discreetly.

  A willowy young man detached himself from his fellows and came towards them. The well-known lineaments of a famous family were easily discernible in his face, and his voice had the soft, attractive quality of old-time diplomacy.

  Mr Parrott, who appeared to know that he was out of place in these surroundings, murmured a confidential ‘This is Mr Clinton-Setter, one of The Secretaries.’ And then in a still lower tone to the younger man: ‘Mr Campion. About the papers.’

  Mr Clinton-Setter smiled, coughed, waited until Mr Parrott had departed, and spoke again in a lowered voice to Campion.

  ‘Mr Savanake will see you immediately. Would you like to – er – leave your hat and umbrella?’

  Denuded of his hat and umbrella, Mr Campion felt he might now be permitted to see the exhibit without further fuss. But it was not to be.

  Mr Clinton-Setter conducted him through immense double doorways into yet another apartment where an incredibly important-looking person champed and fidgeted with the broad ribbon of his eyeglass.

  Mr Campion followed his escort, his head bent devoutly, his handkerchief still clasped to his jaw. They entered a small corridor and Mr Clinton-Setter put up his hand warningly.

  ‘This is The Room,’ he whispered, and tapped discreetly. Then, throwing open the door, he stood aside and announced firmly: ‘Mr Campion. About the papers.’

  The young man with the toothache stepped into the room with the conviction that what you see on the pictures is sometimes true.

  He had been prepared for a palatial office, but not for this. Here was a shot from one of the more fanciful German films. The clean lines of glass walls were interrupted by mysterious machines. A gigantic desk which sprouted bulbs, switches, telephones with televisor attachments, and which must have contained, Mr Campion imagined, enough equipment to befuddle any ordinary office, was set facing the door with a steel arm-chair behind it.

  The young man looked about him, searching for the owner of all this efficiency. He had just decided that the room was empty when someone stirred behind him and he turned to see another desk set in an alcove behind the door, and at it, looking very businesslike, a completely unexpected small, plump elderly lady. This person had a lumpy forehead, shrewd eyes, and the faint air of indefatigability of a Labour cabinet minister. She smiled at Campion reassuringly.

  ‘You’re two minutes early,’ she said, revealing a comfortable, homely voice with an unexpected North Country accent. ‘But it doesn’t matter. Mr Savanake will see you in the private room. That’s a great privilege for you. He doesn’t often see people there. Try to keep that handkerchief down from your face,’ she went on. ‘If he sees people looking ill he’s sorry for them and that disturbs him. It makes him waste his mind on unimportant things. That’s right. Now go straight in when I open the door. Sit down at the chair in front of the desk and remember there’s nothing to be afraid of.’

  She pressed a button on her desk and, after receiving an answering light, presumably worked from the inner shrine, she smiled at Campion again.

  ‘There you are,’ she said, and released a lever in the floor with her stout black shoe.

  A section of the plate-glass wall slid aside, like the door of a tube train, and Mr Campion passed within.

  CHAPTER XI

  The Grand Manner

  THE INGENUOUS MIND of the pale young man in horn-rimmed spectacles expected solid gold and nothing else, with a small plutocrat, possibly, enthroned within. But the room into which he stepped was even more surprising.

  It was small and stuffy, with green distempered walls, and worn brown linoleum on the floor. It appeared never to have been dusted. Old-fashioned spike files lay in piles in the corners. There was a small gas ring with a kettle on it in the fender and a Charles Dana Gibson girl pinned up over the mantelpiece.

  The visitor’s chair, worn and inkstained, stood before a varnished desk so littered with papers, cigarette ends and odd bottles that there was no clear space upon it at all.

  But Mr Campion noticed these things only slowly. At first his entire attention was taken up by the man who sat hunched behind the welter of papers, the demi-god who controlled the destinies of the fantastic palace beneath him and its slaves.

  Brett Savanake was a man of startling appearance. To begin with, he was what in more romantic times would have been called a giant. He was still comparatively young, being nearer fifty than sixty, and his grey-black hair was cut close to his enormous head. He had a round pale face and intense grey eyes. He looked at Mr Campion without speaking or smiling, and waited until the young man had seated himself before his heavy white lids so much as flickered. Then he grunted.

  This minor explosion shook his entire frame, and might well have startled a more impressionable visitor. But Mr Campion remained blank, unassuming, and apparently engrossed in his toothache.

  ‘D’you read The Times yourself, or did someone show you that advertisement?’ said the personage fiercely.

  ‘A friend showed it to me,’ said Mr Campion truthfully.

  ‘Did you tell him you were going to answer it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Campion.

  ‘That was indiscreet. I don’t know if you’re the man I want.’

  With a sigh, Mr Campion rose from his chair and moved towards the door.

  ‘In that case I will repeat my journey through the wonder house,’ he said over his shoulder.

  ‘Sit down. Don’t be a fool. I’ve got no time for fools.’

  Savanake rose to his feet and held out, rather surprisingly, a packet of Players. Mr Campion appeared mollified, but he shook his head.

  ‘I – I can’t with this tooth,’ he said. ‘Thanks awfully all the same.’

  As he sat down again he noticed that the other had undergone a complete change of mood. His bullying vanished and he seemed to have decided to become hearty.

  ‘Well, my boy,’ he said, ‘so you’ve come about the papers. Rather good that, eh? It sounded interesting. Didn’t give anything away. Now, I’ve been hearing a good deal about you, one way and another, and I’ve sent for you because I think I can put something in your way that may interest you.’

  Mr Campion peered round the corner of his handkerchief.

  ‘Very nice of you, as long as it isn’t a spoke in my wheel,’ he murmured idiotically.

  The personage favoured him with a long and penetrating stare. Then he leant back in his chair and sighe
d.

  ‘Well, Campion, let’s get down to business,’ he said.

  He was now neither hearty nor aggressive, but himself, an intelligent personality, a tremendous personal force.

  Mr Campion remained quiet and rather foolish-looking.

  With another prodigious sigh the huge man lunged forward, and planted one immense arm among the papers.

  ‘You don’t speak Spanish, do you?’ he enquired.

  ‘Not often,’ said Mr Campion cautiously. ‘And then only to people who don’t understand English.’

  ‘Oh, you do? Well, that makes things much easier. The fact is, Campion, I’ve got a job for you.’

  If Mr Campion was surprised at this announcement he did not show it, but remained sitting up looking pleasantly interested.

  ‘It’s a difficult job, a ticklish job, but from what I’ve heard of you you’re the man for it. Ever been to South America?’

  Mr Campion nodded. ‘Once.’

  ‘You have? Well, this is splendid!’ A gleam of enthusiasm shone for a moment in the grey eyes. ‘That settles it. You are the man we want. It’s difficult, dangerous, but the reward is enormous. The latest revolution in Peru has proved very unfortunate for our interests. What we want is someone with brains and resource, someone without ties, to engineer a counter-revolution. Wait a minute – wait a minute. Don’t say anything yet.’ He stretched out a large hand warningly. ‘It’s not so impossible as it sounds. The machinery is all there. It simply needs the right man to take it over. Think of it, my dear boy. You could make yourself president, if you liked.’

  The Hereditary Paladin of Averna was still hesitating when the other man went on:

  ‘We’ll keep you there as long as you do your best to protect our interests. This firm is a world power; do you realize that? This is no ordinary chance, as you can see for yourself. You’ll never forgive yourself if you miss it. You’re the man I want. I don’t know if you’re interested in money, but there might be as much as twenty-five thousand pounds and all expenses in it if you succeed. You can make what you like on the side, too. It’s not an unattractive offer, is it?’