Campion thought he knew the man. He was a realist, a believer of facts. A gambler, perhaps, but only in form, and that meant that once he discovered his visitor’s mental condition he would never take a chance. Campion saw himself pushed into hospital again and not one word of anything he had to say believed or even considered until the doctors pronounced him lucid. The urgency of the situation would not make any difference to Sir Henry. Campion’s disability would simply go down on the debit side.
He was interrupted by the arrival of the secretary, who came in with a word of apology and murmured to Sir Henry for some time in a deferential flow.
‘Really?’ The old man was surprised. ‘Where is he? In the house?’
‘In the study, Sir Henry.’
‘Oh, I see. Yes, well, I shall have to give him a minute or two. You might warn him I’m overworked, vital information or not. I’ll come down.’
As the secretary went out he turned to Campion.
‘I’m afraid I must see this fellow,’ he said. ‘He’s a curious product, part genius, part crank, and one of the most influential men in the country in his own peculiar way. One moment he’s doing untold service and the next he’s trying to advance a hare-brained scheme for running the country. The trouble is one never knows which tack he’s on until one’s seen him. He’s breathing mystery and disaster, Cuthbertson says. Don’t go. I haven’t finished with you yet. I shan’t be more than five minutes.’
He went out. The gentle latch did not quite slip home and the door swung open an inch or two behind him, so that Campion heard his voice as he entered the room across the hall.
‘Hullo, Aubrey. What’s this “awful warning", my dear boy?’
Aubrey. Campion’s hand closed over the door knob. Aubrey. Miss Anscombe. His own attack on Hutch. There was a complete line there. Aubrey had been going to see Miss Anscombe. She must have given him an account of her interview with himself and Amanda. Aubrey would be far too superior to go to the police direct. It would be so like him to attempt to stop the mischief at the head and to warn his distinguished Governor that a lunatic was at large.
There was nothing for it but flight again. It was the only way and this time he’d got to get away with it.
He stepped out into the hall and went straight from the house the way he had come. The maids eyed him as he passed them silently, but he nodded to them and walked by with the same odd singleness of purpose which had been his salvation before.
He came quietly out of a side gate, glanced sharply at the detective on the opposite side of the road, and, keeping well in so that he should not be seen from the windows of the house he had left, strode on down the side of the Square.
He was shaking with suppressed excitement. All the facts he had tumbled on in the last thirty-six hours were blazingly vivid in his mind. Minute Fifteen, representing the greatest war loan ever launched, was about to be presented at a time of trembling national emergency personally and privately to every taxpayer by post. That was the pivot. That was fact number one. All round it, gyrating like swing-boats round a tower, were the others. He went over them in his mind. The cases of wine in the Masters’ store-rooms. The story of a foreign contraband before the war. The murder of Anscombe just before he ‘made expiation’, obviously done by professional thugs probably employed by Pyne. The fleet of lorries under the Nag. The small army of well-paid crooks gathered together under Pyne’s Surveys Limited. The activities in the Institute. There was something there he could not remember. What was it? Something he had seen with his own eyes and forgotten. The attempt of the Enemy to buy him off when they thought him a crook like themselves, and their subsequent decision to kill or capture him when they discovered who he was.
It was all there in his hand. He held it without knowing what it was. In his blindness he had discovered his objective. In his miserable ignorance he could not identify it.
He must get back to Bridge. That was the all-important factor. It must be now nearly eleven. He had, he suspected, until the provincial post went at about six in the evening, but he had to get back to Bridge and to do that he had to get across the City to the terminus.
Still he had a chance. For the first time he felt he had a chance.
He found a taxi and made the station in twenty minutes. Luck was with him and he discovered a Coachingford train actually waiting on the platform. He entered it in a state as near jubilation as he ever remembered. Amanda was the only dark spot on his horizon and he refused to think of her.
All through the journey he made his plans. It was going to be a near thing and abominably risky, and to get into the Nag by daylight would take some doing when every man’s hand was against him. All the same, it had to be done and he had great faith in himself.
When at last the train carried him into the station at Coachingford he was already in his mind hurrying up the Nag’s Pykle looking for the narrow passage by the side of the shop which should have sold love philtres. He was so engrossed with his project that he did not see the two plain-clothes men standing behind the ticket collector and did not realize their intention until their hands fell on his shoulders and he heard the strangely familiar form of arrest.
XVIII
CAMPION SAT IN a cell at the Waterhouse Street Police Station at Coachingford and prayed. He was a damned fool. He knew that. If only he had at least gone quietly and had given himself a chance. If only he hadn’t lost his head in the station booking-office as they were taking him through. He saw himself now behaving like a lunatic, raving, expostulating, saying all the wrong things, citing all the wrong names.
That final attempt to make a dash for it just outside the present building! That had been a mistake, probably the worst of the lot. He was battered and dishevelled now and in the last condition in the world to inspire confidence in anyone, even to the extent of getting a message through to Lugg or Yeo.
They were leaving him here to cool his heels while they made out the charge. At any moment now they would come for him and take him out of this cold, disinfected tomb and march him into a big smelly charge-room, warm with breath and sweat. That was going to be his only chance. God knew what the charges against him were. As far as he knew, they might contain practically everything on the calendar. However, that aspect was trifling. Moreover, it belonged to another world. What was important was the time. Somehow or other he’d got to get out and get down to Bridge immediately.
An obvious idea which had occurred to him coming down in the train was torturing him. Very likely he had not got until the evening. More than likely the lorries had to spread their loads all over the country and were even now setting out on their journeys. England was such a little place. It would take so short a time to fan the poison out all over her lovely petite body.
He had given up worrying about the mystery. The actual facts of the Enemy’s attack were still entirely beyond him. Even the identity of the Enemy himself had escaped him. All he knew were those things which were set out under his nose; the lorries, the date of the launching of the Minute Fifteen loan, the work at the Institute, and the wine cases in the Nag.
He must get out. Oh God, dear God, he must get out!
He was sweating when they came for him. The larger plain-clothes man, the one whose eye he had closed, was not present. The other one, the ratty specimen with the little moustache, gave him a wide berth and left the work to the old turnkey and the enormous young constable who would not normally have accompanied them.
Campion went quietly, meekly. He was so restrained that he felt they must notice that he was shaking and see that his hands were clenched to keep them down. They were all very gentle and so nervy that he guessed that they suspected him of mania. Very likely. God, what a situation! He would be in a strait-jacket with ice on his head when the blow fell, when the Enemy succeeded, when the knife slipped into her little green heart.
He was deferential to the Charge Sergeant. The man was a fool. He saw his great square head with the unnaturally grey face on one side of i
t nodding over the top of the high desk and was panic-stricken. He could hear the asinine jokes and heavy admonitions before they left the big mouth under the waterfall moustache. Yes, here they came. Here was the Charge Book. Here was the pronouncement.
‘Wait,’ he said, and was hurt to find that even his own voice was going against him. It sounded strangled and hysterical. ‘Get into touch with Lady Amanda Fitton at the Principal’s House at the Bridge Institute.’
He saw they were surprised by something. It had not been the name, but the address had touched them. He seized the pause and hurried on.
‘Also get hold of Yeo, of Scotland Yard. Find him. Tell him I’m here.’
That made them laugh. Their great grins merged into one huge idiot face, like a mask of comedy on the ceiling of a theatre.
‘All in good time, my lad,’ said the Charge Sergeant. ‘You shall have the Queen to see you if you don’t hurry it. Meanwhile if you could wait a minute I’ll just charge you, if you don’t mind. We don’t want to do anything against the book, do we?’
The clock with the face as big as a tea-tray leered over the Sergeant’s shoulder. One o’clock. There was no time for anything. He must get to the Nag at once, within the half hour. The big hand moved while he looked at it.
‘Send for Hutch,’ he implored in panic.
Hutch was at least intelligent. Angry and suspicious he probably was, but at least his mind worked. Perhaps he could be got to see the hideous urgency of the occasion.
‘Here, that’ll do, that’ll do.’ The Charge Sergeant was scandalized. ‘Superintendent Hutch has quite enough to do without bothering himself about you. If he wants to see you he’ll come in his own time. Now then, Albert Campion. You are charged in that you did feloniously utter counterfeit banknotes to the value of one pound at the railway station booking office at …’
Campion ceased to hear. He went deaf and blind. A great avalanche of fury at their incompetence descended over him, sweeping away every shred of his control. Good God, they couldn’t even charge him with something he’d done! They were going to hold him in this gimcrack police station on some drivelling mistaken or invented charge while the minutes rushed by. The door was open behind him and he did the fatal thing.
As he sprang for the rectangle of light the plain-clothes man seized him. Campion slung him off, pitching him half across the room. The turnkey shouted and the young constable raised a great fist, while a slow silly smile of surprised delight spread over his face. Campion took the blow just under the ear. The force of it lifted him off his feet and sent him sprawling across the boards towards the forms built in all round the room. The rounded edge of polished wood met his left temple with a crack which echoed round the building. He fell into complete darkness and lay still.
*
Albert Campion came to himself in the cell. He gathered where he was at once and sat up on the hard couch, smiling ruefully. A clock striking two somewhere in the town surprised him and he raised his eyebrows. To the best of his knowledge it must have been round about six in the evening when he had encountered the toughs down at the quayside. It was now daylight, so that if he had been out for round about twenty hours he must have taken a pretty severe blow. How extraordinarily like these country police to bring him into a cell and leave him to die while they found out who he was! So far they must have been singularly unsuccessful, the damned fools, and, while he was on that subject, where was Oates?
For the first time he felt a twinge of anxiety. Oates had certainly been with him. He remembered his own amused exasperation when the shambling figure, really astonishingly unfamiliar in the dirty flannels and threadbare greatcoat, had appeared at his elbow as he stepped out of Lugg’s paper shop. Poor old Oates! He had been badly rattled. The thing was getting him down, as well it might of course, but it had been shocking to see him losing his grip and to hear his voice go husky as he admitted: ‘I wrote you last night, but I couldn’t stick it. I simply couldn’t sit up there and wait. I just walked out to see you. For God’s sake, Campion, have you got a line?’
Well, he had, and he’d said so and they’d gone on together. The fight had been pretty sensational. Campion felt his head cautiously. Yes, there it was. A very nasty spongy little spot, by jiminy. There must have been five or six in the gang, all pro’s and all using coshes, which had been fortunate. Had it been razors he might well have awakened to hear a harp quintet instead of the mouth-organ which some misguided amateur was playing in the street outside.
All the same, it had not been exactly a walk among the apple-blossoms. The money had drawn the gangsters, as he had hoped it would, and he had recognized them. He went over them in his mind. The Lily had been there, and the elder Weaver, and Williams, and the Glasshouse Johns, all C.R.O. boys as he suspected.
Who were the others? He could not remember at the moment.
He didn’t feel too intelligent. He felt exhausted and somehow – yes, that was it, chastened. How off! He might have had some deep emotional experience rather than a bang on the head. He longed for a newspaper. He hadn’t seen the news from the Front for seventeen hours. Anything might have happened. There was this business, too. The whole thing might have suddenly broken and what had been left of the ordered world be in chaos while he was sitting here.
He laughed at himself softly. He was getting jittery, like poor old Oates. It was having so much at stake, of course. Still, there was plenty of time. There would be no move until Minute Fifteen was about to be launched and that was several days away.
The clock struck the quarter and he admired its chimes. Some of these old towns had lovely chimes. Lovely corners, too. Bridge was a remarkably lovely place if only one could forget the calendars, the picture postcards, the ornamental biscuit-tins which made it hackneyed. Seen for the first time, Bridge must be staggering. Amanda was at Bridge and in a month they’d be married. A dear kid, Amanda. So young. Too young for him? Sometimes he was very much afraid so. His fine thin mouth twisted regretfully. One got so beastly self-sufficient as one grew older and there was the girl to think of. He’d hate to imprison her, to suppress her in any way.
A definite twinge, physical and yet bringing with it a sense of shame, stabbed his heart over. At the same time he saw Amanda in his mind’s eye as clearly as if she stood before him. She was looking at him with a sort of stricken astonishment and reciting the first line of that silly old tag they had found together in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1860. ‘Begone! she stormed, across the raging tide.’
The hallucination was so vivid, the pain in his side so acute, and the sense of self-disgust so strong that it brought him to his feet. He was ill. This blow on the head had affected him seriously. Good lord! Nothing like that must happen now. Things were a damned sight too serious. Of course they were, because no one knew. He and Oates were the only pair on earth who knew the full strength – and it was stupendous when you saw it in the round. It was criminally dangerous; he’d argued that from the beginning. Besides, where was Oates?
He went over to the judas-window in the cell door and peered through it into the empty passage outside. Not a soul, of course. He sighed and, putting his fingers to his mouth, gave a very reliable imitation of a police whistle. Five minutes’ intensive effort produced the desired result.
The turnkey, puce in the face with fury, put his head in at the farther door.
‘Shop,’ said Campion pleasantly. ‘Can I see the manager?’
‘You’ll be lucky if you see fresh air again, my lad. We’ve had to send Detective-Sergeant Doran to hospital.’
(Hospital? Why should the word send a thrill of terror through him? He was ill, dangerously ill. He’d have to go and see old Todd of Wimpole Street, when he got back. Where had the old man evacuated himself to?)
‘I’m sorry for Doran,’ he said aloud. ‘I can’t say I recognize the name. Still, I sympathize with your domestic worries. And in the meantime, do you think you could make an effort to do a little business? This isn’t the Central Coac
hingford Station, is it?’
The turnkey came farther into the passage, looking like a mystified bullpup.
‘You’ve changed your tune, ain’t you?’ he demanded.
‘I’m no longer unconscious, if that’s what you mean,’ said Campion with gentle dignity. ‘And while we’re on that subject, as a Metropolitan man I don’t like to criticize your County arrangements, but, just to soothe my curiosity do tell me, when you bring in a concussion case do you usually leave it for the best part of a day and a night without medical attention?’
The turnkey gaped at him, his small eyes bewildered.
‘You’re crackers and you’re impudent,’ he said. ‘That’s what you are. You won’t get anywhere by putting it on either. Shouting for a doctor now, are you? You’ll be lucky if you see a magistrate the way you’re going on.’
Campion, whose face was pressed against the narrow slit in the door, frowned reprovingly.
‘Just clear your mind,’ he said. ‘Save a little time by using the brain with which I see a kind Government has issued you. Which of the five Coachingford Police Stations is this one?’
‘Waterhouse Street. You know that as well as I do, or ought to, after the way you tore the road up coming here.’
‘Really? It’s that sort of concussion, is it? Bits of bone sticking in the grey matter. My hat, you don’t look after your professional guests, do you? Have you left me here since last night biting buttons off the furniture?’
‘Being difficult won’t pay,’ said the turnkey and turned away in disgust.
‘Let us hope Superintendent Rose will accept your diagnosis,’ Campion murmured, reflecting that it was better to mention the regular police Superintendent rather than the C.I.D. man. What was his name? Hutch, was it?
‘Superintendent Rose?’ The name appeared to have certain magic properties. The turnkey was hesitating but at the last moment some new consideration appeared to make up his mind for him. ‘Superintendent Rose doesn’t bother himself with snide-panners who beat up plain-clothes men. Besides, you’ve only been in an hour and a half. What d’you think this is – a quick-lunch counter?’ he said and went out, locking the door behind him.
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