“Well, that’s that—competent but not enthusiastic. And the missing letter was in the safe, and Ware had access to it? Do you let new secretaries loose amongst these world-shaking documents of yours?”
The angry colour ran up into Mr Mannister’s face. There was quite a lightning flash from his fine eyes. His voice held thunderous vibrations.
“I am not in the habit of letting anyone loose amongst my private papers. If my correspondents were less well aware of my absolute discretion, the present situation would not have arisen, or would at any rate be far less painful in its character.”
Garrett was unabashed.
“Meaning that they take advantage of your discretion to be indiscreet themselves?”
“Confidential, Colonel Garrett—not indiscreet.”
“Awk!” said Ananias in a most sudden, loud and inquiring manner.
Garrett kicked the fire.
“We keep on going round the mulberry bush!” he said. “I’ve got a coarse, practical mind, and I want facts. When did this letter disappear?”
“Last Thursday—yes, it was Thursday, because I was speaking in Birmingham that evening.”
“Thursday—and this is Tuesday. You did nothing until this morning?”
Mannister spoke as from the platform to some remote heckler.
“I naturally exhausted every possibility that the letter might have been mislaid or misplaced. I had not the leisure to superintend such a search until yesterday.”
Garrett jingled violently.
“Let’s get back to Thursday. Ware was bringing you papers from the safe. You asked for this letter and it wasn’t there. When had you received it?”
“By the first post that morning. Recognizing its importance, I immediately locked it away in the safe.”
“How do you carry the key?”
Mr Mannister slid a hand into his trouser pocket and displayed a key-chain and a bunch of keys.
“I have for years trained myself to be scrupulously methodical and careful. This bunch never leaves me.”
“Wear it in your bath?”
“It accompanies me to the bathroom,” said Mannister in a tone of lofty rebuke.
“Oh Lordy Lord! Oh Lordy Lord! Oh Lordy Lord!” said Ananias. He flapped his wings and showed their rose-coloured lining.
“Hush, Ananias!” said Mr Smith from his trance.
Garrett gnawed a thumb-nail.
“Let’s stick to Thursday!” he snapped. “Were you alone with Ware? Where was the other chap, Deane—the one you’ve got perfect confidence in? Why wasn’t he doing this fetch-and-carry business?”
“He was indisposed,” said Mannister. “Had he been on duty, I should naturally have availed myself of his services.”
“You weren’t in the habit of sending Ware to the safe then?”
“No—no. At the same time——”
“And the very first time you do send him, an important letter goes missing?”
“At the same time,” resumed Mannister with the air of a man who is not used to interruption—“at the same time, Colonel Garrett, I wish to emphasize the fact that I am not making any accusation against Mr Ware.”
Garrett laughed his barking laugh.
“Oh, you’re not? But the letter’s gone, and he’s the only person who could have taken it.”
Mannister rose to his feet with an air of dignified offence.
“The implication is yours, Colonel Garrett. I beg to dissociate myself from it. I have made no accusation—I have merely answered your questions to the best of my ability. I fear I have allowed my affairs to trespass upon your time. I did not anticipate that a government department or its advisers—” his glance dwelt upon Mr Smith, who had also risen and was gazing into the fire—“I had not anticipated, I repeat—”
Mr Smith lifted his hand.
“One moment, Mr Mannister.”
Bernard Mannister was arrested in the middle of a sentence. He looked at Mr Benbow Smith in some astonishment.
Mr Smith went on speaking in his leisurely, cultivated voice.
“Mr Mannister, Colonel Garrettt was, I am sure, quite right when he told you that your—er—case is not one which could usefully be the—er—subject of an official investigation. There are, however, unofficial methods——” He paused. He looked over the top of Mannister’s head and waited for him to speak.
Mannister withdrew a pace. Mentally, it would seem, he had already withdrawn.
“I fear I have been troublesome.” He stepped back again and bowed. “I have no wish to accuse anyone—I am merely concerned with the safety of my correspondence, and a little perhaps with my own reputation. I thought it possible that I might have received some help, some advice, as to the possibility of recovering a document which I am forced to believe has been abstracted for the purpose of bringing me into discredit and thus interrupting, or perhaps even terminating, my public activities. I will not trespass any farther upon your time. Good-night, gentlemen.” He bowed again and moved to the door.
Mr Smith rang the bell.
In the doorway Mannister turned and surveyed the room. He made a fine and imposing figure—beyond him the attentive Miller, perfect in his duties, assiduous with coat and hat.
The door closed. The outer door closed too.
Garrett turned a ferocious grin upon his companion.
“Oh Lord! What a gasbag! What do you make of him?”
Ananias removed a chagrined eye from the door. He wanted more Mannister, and more, and more, and more. He recited mournfully:
“Boom—boom—boom!
Walk with care!”
Mr Smith took off his spectacles and held them to the light. Then, producing a white silk handkerchief, he began to polish them.
“Well?” said Garrett impatiently.
“Oh—a—er—gasbag—yes,” he said in an abstracted voice.
Garrett was frowning horribly.
“Why did he go off the deep end like that all of a sudden?” he said.
“You were being so suave,” said Mr Smith. He breathed on an obstinate lens and polished it.
“Rubbish!” said Garrett. “I’d got to ask him questions, hadn’t I? It wasn’t me. I was a lot shorter with him this morning and he didn’t turn a hair.”
Mr Smith put on his glasses and looked over the edge of them benignly.
“I don’t think he wanted to be asked too many questions about Mr Jeremy Ware,” he said.
Garrett looked alert.
“You think it was that?”
Mr Smith shook his head very slightly.
“I don’t really think at all. It—er—just occurred to me. Several things occurred to me.”
“Cough ’em up!” said Garrett. He produced a horrible pipe and began to fill it from a pouch which might have been picked up in the gutter.
Mr Smith drifted to the mantelpiece and reclined against it, one arm along the shelf, his fingers beating out a soundless rhythm upon the smooth oak.
“I don’t know,” he said dreamily—“I don’t know—but it seemed to me that there was a lack of—er—continuity somewhere.”
Garrett struck a match on the sole of a heavy boot.
“Meaning?” he said. He drew at his pipe.
“Well, I hardly know. But the Disarmament Conference—it was—er—there to start with, and then it wasn’t there any more. That was one thing. Then I—er—gather that when he saw you this morning he—er—bellowed and—er—talked about his correspondence having been tampered with. This afternoon there is a good deal of—er—dignified restraint, and there isn’t any—er—tampering. There is only a letter, and a safe, and a secretary, and as soon as the—er—limelight is—er—focused upon these three things Mr Mannister takes offence and—er—fades away.”
Garrett flung his match into the
fire and blew out a cloud of smoke.
“Limelight?” he said sharply. He broke off, sucked at his pipe, and blew another cloud. His stubby eyebrows drew together in a frown. He repeated his last word, but what had been just an exclamation took on a tone of protest. “Limelight? The man’s always playing to the gallery!”
Mr Smith spoke abstractedly. “The limelight was not—er—focused upon Mr Mannister. That was one of the things which struck me.”
“You think?”
Mr Smith shook his head. His fingers beat out the rhythm of The Congo.
“Not yet—I only wonder—”
“Of course,” said Garrett with an impatient jerk of the shoulder, “as I said to him this morning, if that letter was pinched to order, it’s past praying for—it’ll have reached its destination and been photographed. If the bloke who wrote it really let himself go to any extent, his number is up—Mannister’s too perhaps. You can’t say where that sort of thing’s going to stop.”
Mr Smith looked over the rim of his glasses.
“You forget Mr—er—Ware.”
“No, I don’t. I’m having him shadowed.”
Mr Smith waved that away.
“Mannister’s—er—number wouldn’t be up if the spectacle disclosed by the—er—limelight was that of a trusting and—er—benevolent employer robbed by a thankless secretary.”
Garrett removed his pipe and stared.
“You think it might be that way?”
“There is scriptural precedent for a scapegoat,” said Mr Smith dreamily. “A—er—calculated indiscretion, and—er—someone else to take the blame. I have known it happen. On the other hand, the whole thing may be much simpler. Mannister may merely have been yielding to an instinct for self-preservation in taking cover behind Mr Jeremy Ware. I wonder. Did you ever read the Pilgrim’s Progress?”
Garrett shook his head and drew at his pipe.
“You should—you really should. It is a gold-mine. As I was saying—or rather as I was going to say—there is a gentleman in the Pilgrim’s Progress called Mr Facing-both-ways. He appears to have left a numerous progeny.”
Garrett smoked in silence for a moment. Then he said briskly,
“We’re shadowing Ware, because if he did pinch the letter, he may have done it on the spur of the moment, or anyhow not to anyone’s order, in which case he’s got to find his market. You know how these things are done—people don’t put pen to paper if they can help it—it’s the personal interview and cash over the counter. So there’s just a chance of nabbing Master Ware before he does a deal.”
Mr Smith’s eyebrows rose slightly.
“You think Ware took the letter?”
“Why shouldn’t he have taken it? He’d the opportunity. And he’s broke. And he was with Denny. Something smashed Denny. Ware was Denny’s secretary. Mannister says somebody’s trying to smash him. Ware is Mannister’s secretary. That’s the way things look to me. I can’t see a gasbag like Mannister being as subtle as you want to make out.”
Mr Smith’s fingers had continued to beat out The Congo rhythm. He nodded slightly.
“Er—yes,” he said—“an indubitable gasbag. I am just wondering about the nature of the gas. Some kinds are—er—dangerous.”
Ananias began to bob up and down on his perch and to clap his wings. Mr. Smith drifted over to him.
“Say your piece, Ananias,” he commanded, “‘Walk with care—walk with care.’”
“Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM!” shrieked Ananias.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1931 by Patricia Wentworth
Cover design by Maurcio Díaz
978-1-5040-3315-2
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Danger Calling Page 29