The Smiler With the Knife

by Nicholas Blake

  “Really? Writing letters to the Times, or what?”

  Alice was white about the nostrils, but she controlled her voice. “What would you say if I told you that in less than a year’s time we’d have swept away the democrats in Britain and set up a real leader, a real leadership?”

  “I’d say you were dreaming. A pleasant dream, though.”

  “Would you come in? Our inner council believes you’d be invaluable.”

  “You bet I’d come in, if I thought you had any chance of success. I don’t go on expeditions that are forlorn hopes, you know. Who is this leader, anyway?”

  “I shouldn’t be allowed to tell you, even if I knew. Only half a dozen people in the movement know his name.”

  “That’s buying a pig in a poke, isn’t it? How can you tell whether he’s any good?”

  “He’s planned the whole thing—that’s how we can tell. The organisation is simply amazing: only a great man could have done it.”

  Can this be true? Georgia asked herself. A movement with an anonymous genius behind it? Maybe Alice was stalling her off: it was not likely, after all, that a stranger would be entrusted with such vital information at the start. Yet she could have sworn the girl was telling the truth, or at least believed it to be true that the identity of the future dictator was only known to the leaders of the movement. And if this was true, it fitted in with everything Sir John had told her about the conspiracy. It minimised the greatest danger to which such conspiracies are open—the danger of the informer. Yet, in another way, it made it more vulnerable: for, if only one could find out who this arch-traitor was, one would kill with a single stone both the genius and the figure-head of the organisation.

  Georgia was careful to maintain her attitude of scepticism, but allowed herself to seem gradually more impressed by Alice Mayfield’s enthusiasm. It soon became evident from her account that the movement was, as Sir John had suspected, divided into a multiplicity of water-tight cells, so that a leakage would do the minimum of damage. Britain was divided up into six districts, each with its own organiser; each district, in turn, was composed of a large number of self-contained groups—the sub-districts, whose members for the most part had no knowledge of the membership or specific tasks of any other group. Alice Mayfield’s job, Georgia imagined, was to keep contact between the Berkshire group and some of the “inner council” in London. It was for this purpose, no doubt, that she had been present in Señor Alvarez’ club.

  “You say the inner council think I could be some use. Did they ask you to approach me, or was it your own idea? I should have thought they’d be rather suspicious of me—after all, I did marry into the police, so to speak.”

  “Good lord, I wouldn’t have approached you unless I’d been told to. Our movement doesn’t encourage its members to be indiscreet. You’ve been thoroughly investigated already.”

  It was not till the whole affair was over that Georgia learnt how thorough this investigation had been. And the cream of the joke was that it had been initiated by Sir John Strangeways himself. A month after her first visit to the Thameford County Club, he had taken aside one of his own men—a detective-inspector of the political branch whom he had good reason for believing a member of the secret organisation himself, told him confidentially that some rather strange reports about Mrs. Nigel Strangeways had reached his ears lately, said she had refused to see him or explain herself, and asked the inspector to look into these rumours as tactfully as possible. The inspector, immediately reporting this to his local organiser of the E.B., was ordered to carry on with the investigation, just as Sir John had ordered, and convey any information he might obtain to the E.B. This achieved Sir John’s object, which was to disassociate Georgia from himself, and at the same time got the E.B. interested in her. Her flat was searched. The letters from Nigel, proving that the break between them was final, were discovered. And, before long, the pro-Fascist tendencies she had so sedulously been showing came to the ears of the E.B. too.

  Her first conversation with Alice Mayfield did the rest. Here was a celebrated, influential woman, evidently at a loose end, discontented with her present existence, disillusioned with the democratic régime: she was just the type that the E.B. could use. But the leaders of the movement, though they had all the confidence of men who are backed by unlimited money and allured by the prospect of almost unlimited power, did not take people on trust. They were very thorough, and this thoroughness was to bring Georgia to the very edge of disaster.

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE EPISODE OF THE PROOF COPY

  THAT SUMMER BROUGHT a long heat-wave. On the fast wickets Peter Braithwaite flourished, runs flowing from his bat as inexhaustibly as the oil from the widow’s cruse. At Ascot and Hurlingham, the balls and garden-parties and functions of the season, Alison Grove went gaily about her business. In thousands of offices, factories, slum-streets the workers sweltered, looking forward to their brief August holiday. Behind and within all these normal scenes, like red and white corpuscles battling invisibly in the blood, the secret warfare between Sir John Strangeways’ agents and the conspirators continued. It was a warfare without rules or mercy on either side. Even those who were engaged, apart from the general staffs, knew nothing of the battle but their own sector. In one sense, indeed, the battle had scarcely begun: at present there was only the manœuvring for position, the skirmishing between outposts. Yet her isolation made Georgia feel like a combatant holding one yard of a line that stretched right across Britain, who had nothing but rumours to tell her how her comrades were faring.

  Reading the papers, she gleaned vague hints of the E.B. offensive. An atmosphere of uneasiness was gradually, skilfully being created in the country. The Stock Exchange was restive, securities fluctuating for no apparent reason, like the disquieted air before a storm. Certain reactionary newspapers, without committing themselves too far, began adopting a new tone of scepticism about parliamentary government. Certain prominent men, in after-dinner speeches, in clubs, at school speech-days or the laying of foundation-stones, pleaded for closer collaboration with the totalitarian powers. The seeds of doubt and discord were being sown, like the tares in the parable, while England slept. There were other things, too—mysterious disappearances, unexplained suicides—the casualties of this subterranean warfare. Reading between the lines, Georgia could see the skill with which the E.B. was leading up to an atmosphere of crisis, was seeking to demolish little by little the Englishman’s confidence in democratic institutions.

  She herself, as a member of one of the London groups of the organisation, was given the task of winning adherents to the movement from among her acquaintance—a task which exacted all her strength of mind, for it led in most cases to polite estrangement or positive hostility. But, knowing that the E.B. were testing her thus, she went through it unflinchingly. She had been told to give implicit obedience to any one who showed her an E.B. badge—a disk such as she had found in the locket; these were held only by the six district organisers, the inner council: but no one had yet done so, and she began to despair of penetrating further into the movement.

  The necessity of wearing this detestable mask in public, the fearful strain of working for one side and at the same time appearing to work loyally for the other, began to tell on her nerves. She was glad therefore when she received an invitation to visit the Mayfields again—glad as an exhausted fighter might be when sent to a quieter part of the line. At least, one might have supposed it would be quieter. . . .

  There was a new light in Alice Mayfield’s eye, a suppressed excitement in her bearing, that were soon explained when she told Georgia that Lord Chilton Canteloe was to be one of the house-party. Georgia was excited, too. She was beginning to get ideas about this rich playboy and it would be interesting to verify them.

  “Chillie,” however, was not arriving till next day, and all thought of him was put out of Georgia’s head by an incident that occurred as soon as they reached Mayfields’ house. “Better come and pay your respects
to Daddy,” Alice said. “I wonder where he’s got to?” They found him at last in his study, a room where he looked as little at home as would one of his own horses. His flat-topped hat lay on the desk beside him; there was a pencil in his hand, and he seemed so absorbed in a paper-covered book he was reading that he did not at first hear them come in.

  “Hello, Daddy. I’ve——”

  “What the devil? What d’yer mean by bursting in like—— Oh, beg pardon, Mrs. Strangeways. Didn’t see yer. How de do? Devilish hot to-day.”

  The old man had risen to his feet, slipping the book with remarkable dexterity under a sheaf of papers. It was while he pumped her hand vigorously up and down that Georgia remembered Alison saying, last time she had been here, “Daddy read a book! I should laugh. The book of form’s the only one he ever opens.” And this book—the glimpse she’d had of it—didn’t look in the least like that invaluable work of reference. It was surely an ordinary proof-copy? Which made it odder still. For, if Mr. Mayfield never read a book, one might reasonably suppose it improbable that he had written one.

  Georgia made no comment upon it at the moment; but later, when Alice was helping her to unpack, she remarked lightly:

  “I didn’t know your father was an author.”

  “An author? But of course he isn’t! What makes you think——?”

  “I thought he was going over a proof-copy just now.”

  There was a moment’s pause before the girl replied, “Oh, that. No. Some publisher sent it to him. Asked him for his opinion of it. I suppose they want it for an advertisement. They send him books now and then like that—ones that are up his street, racing reminiscences and so on. He hardly ever looks at them, though, as far as I know. I suppose this one must have been written by a friend of his.”

  It sounded plausible enough on the surface. Georgia was well acquainted with some publishers’ habit of sending out books to well-known people before publication, soliciting their opinion and angling thus for a little free publicity. They usually sent finished copies, not bound proofs, it was true; but not invariably. On the other hand, why should old Mr. Mayfield have whisked the book out of sight when they entered? He surely would not carry his robust contempt for literature to the point of such acute shame at being caught out in company with a book?

  While she dressed for dinner, this curious little incident nagged at Georgia’s mind. That she didn’t tumble to its explanation sooner was due to her having never thought of George Mayfield in connection with the conspiracy. Alice and her brothers, yes. But their father, with his beloved horses, his quaint eccentricities, his one-track mind, seemed infinitely remote from the ambitions and subterfuges of the E.B. Yet it was odd about that proof-copy. It was not in character. And for anything out of character Georgia had an unerring eye. She was in the act of laying a trace of rouge along her cheek-bones when it dawned upon her that here perhaps was the clue she had been seeking. What an admirable method of communication between the chief conspirators these proof-copies would be!

  They might well expect their correspondence to be opened by John Strangeways’ men. At least, it would be dangerous to send their most vital communications through the post, even in code: there was no code that could not be broken down nowadays. But who would think of intercepting a book, sent out by a reputable publisher with a request that the recipient should express his opinion on it? And, in a book of 100,000 words, there were enough combinations to baffle the most experienced cryptographer, even supposing the police tumbled to the trick. The publisher himself might well be above suspicion. It only needed a member of the E.B. in his office to get hold of a copy and send it out, indicating the vital words or letters in some pre-arranged manner.

  Scarcely had the idea blazed up in Georgia’s mind when reaction set in. What a fool I am! It’s no good, she argued. However large and diverse a publisher’s list, he would never at one given time have ready for publication enough books on different subjects to enable this method to be used. Besides, if I wasn’t so jumpy that I suspect everyone and everything, I’d surely admit that the leaders of the E.B. have no need yet for such elaborate tricks: there’s nothing, after all, to stop them meeting each other.

  No, the whole idea was fantastic. Yet Georgia was impelled by a desire to prove it so, as a child waking from nightmare is driven to investigate the wardrobe he has dreamed full of unspeakable things—just to make sure. She determined somehow or other to get a good look at Mr. Mayfield’s proof-copy.

  The next day, just before lunch-time, Lord Chilton Canteloe arrived. All that morning a restlessness, a sense of expectancy had hung over the house-party: Georgia felt its atmosphere both flat and keyed-up, like the electric air before a tropical hurricane: the guests moved about aimlessly, talked with spasmodic animation, then fell unaccountably silent, as though little wafted winds—precursors of a storm—were eddying through the house. Alice Mayfield was distrait, breaking off in the middle of a conversation to stare in front of her with unseeing eyes. Her father’s voice could be heard outside as he cursed a stable-boy for some trivial misdemeanour. Lady Rissington, that famous beauty, whom Alison Grove had nicknamed “The Ever-Open Door,” preened herself nervously at every available mirror. How absurd, thought Georgia, that one man should be able to create this extraordinary atmospheric disturbance, even though he is a millionaire and God’s gift to yearning womankind.

  And then, while they were all drinking cocktails in the L-shaped drawing-room whose windows looked out onto the downs that folded their long shadows about them like wings and slept in the noonday sunshine, Chilton Canteloe appeared. He was in his middle forties, but looked younger than his age: he had the hyacinth-curling hair, the straight nose, the small, firm mouth of a Greek statue: his beauty of feature, Georgia had to admit, was superlative and of the kind that never seems to age: there was no trace of insolence or dissipation in the deep-set, audacious eyes that roved with interest among the company. “Hello, Chillie!” they all greeted him, and there was a stir and settling-down in the room as though some volcanic disturbance had taken place, cleared the air, altered every relationship there. Alice Mayfield was bringing him over to her. Georgia noticed with surprise and a vague sense of comfort that his gait lacked the incomparable grace of his head and shoulders: he walked a little clumsily, leaning forward, his arms swinging stiffly in front of him, rather like a bear; and this flaw in his physical perfection made him, paradoxically, more real for her, more homely and likeable. There was something both shy and challenging in the look he gave her as they shook hands. “Well, what do you think about me?” it seemed to ask. She felt the full force of his personality directed for a moment upon her, isolating them from all the others in the room.

  “This is nice,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you.”

  There was not a hint of patronising or of conventional falseness about it. His smile, boyish yet confident, created a kind of complicity between them, as though they were old friends meeting in a room full of strangers.

  “Yes,” said Georgia coolly, on an impulse, “we both like taking risks. We have that much in common, anyway.”

  She was aware of a small, stifled movement at her side. Alice Mayfield was not used to seeing her idol treated so familiarly. Or perhaps she felt a twinge of jealousy, perceiving in the words of those two the first flick and jar of rapiers, steel on steel, between two opponents who at the first touch recognise each other’s quality.

  “Taking risks?” said Chilton. “I thought you’d retired from active service. Are you planning another expedition?”

  “Well, no. It’s so exciting in England just now, isn’t it? I feel we’re on the edge of great events, somehow. The stay-at-homes will see the fun this time.”

  Gazing frankly into his face, she could find no trace of discomposure. Well, why should there be? There was no recognisable trace of the features of the woman in the locket, either. If she had hoped to force the issue, she had certainly failed.


  Chilton laughed. “You sound as if you were going to start up a revolution or something. Yes, I think you’d make a good Joan of Arc.”

  “Well, if I do, you’ll have to finance it. Voices aren’t enough nowadays. But seriously, with all this international tension, something’s bound to break before long, don’t you think? What’s the feeling in Germany now? I haven’t been there for a couple of years.”

  “They’re scared. Like us. Only they shout a good deal louder to hide it. But what do you mean by saying that the stay-at-homes would see the fun this time?”

  Silently Georgia pointed through the window. A flight of bombers was crawling low across the sky.

  “That’s not my idea of fun,” said Chilton Canteloe. But he said it perfunctorily; and Georgia, seeing the absorbed gleam in his eyes as they followed the bombers’ course, felt an irrational conviction that he would indeed take a savage, childish delight in the blast, the mushroom smoke, the houses crumbling to rubble—the mere spectacle of destruction.

  “I’d love it,” Alice Mayfield said. “I know it sounds awful, but think of the sense of power, up there, fighting like gods in the air. I mean, bombing’s pretty foul, but——”

  “Alice is a bloodthirsty child,” Chilton said. “A romantic with a taste for blood is a real terror. She ought to become a hospital nurse—that’s the best cure.”

  Alice blushed, glanced angrily at Georgia as though she, not Chilton, had uttered those flippant, wounding words. Georgia was a little shocked at them too. Chilton who evidently was a man of breeding and sensibility, could not have failed to realise how they would hurt the girl. That he could treat her with such teasing contempt argued some streak of cruelty, or at least of irresponsibility, in his nature. Well, he was a millionaire: men did not accumulate all that money without hurting a lot of people, one way or another.