Traitor's Purse

by Margery Allingham

  He was leaning against the mantelpiece now, lecturing academically from what he clearly felt to be an infinite height of intellectual superiority.

  ‘Poor Campion here, who probably believes he’s done his duty,’ he continued, ‘in reality he has betrayed his country and probably civilization by his interference. I had the whole little ingenuity completely in hand. It wasn’t out of control. I knew Feiberg quite well. I met him in Frankfurt years ago. Quite an interesting mind. Extraordinarily meticulous over detail. I knew he was a Nazi agent when he turned up here, and in fact I think I probably suggested to him that the storerooms in the Nag would be an excellent place for his counterfeit. I may have mentioned too that the Masters were taking their money from the Rheinish vineyards in wine instead of cash and pointed out that such a shipment would give him a perfect opportunity to get his stuff into the country without query. I certainly put him on to Anscombe. I knew that man would be reasonable if properly approached. There’s nothing to get excited about in that. I allowed it to happen because I knew it was perfectly safe. Last August I knew we had nothing to fear, because no foreign power on earth could have got the plan into operation once we were at war. I knew it was coming and Feiberg did not. He did not believe we should fight so soon. I saw that the money arrived and when war came I arranged for Feiberg to be interned. That left me with a weapon in my own hand if I needed it. I did not use it until I really was convinced that there was no other way. Then I saw that something had to be done, to be done quickly, and my plan was the only solution. So I found the man Pyne, whose chose his own assistants, and through him I arranged to engineer the greatest crash in history, so that in picking up the pieces I could restore a decent order at last. You’re following me, of course?’

  They were. The whole room was hanging on his words with sick fascination. The old solicitor was in tears. He was an honest man with a wide reputation. He sat down abruptly in a corner and wiped his face again and again.

  ‘God bless my soul,’ he was ejaculating in a soft regular monotone. ‘God bless my soul. Good Lord. God bless my soul.’

  Oates leant forward in his chair. He looked a very sick man and was out strictly against doctor’s orders.

  ‘You had the envelopes addressed at the Institute by voluntary labour?’ he said. ‘That enormous undertaking was organized by a woman, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Mrs Ericson?’ A flicker of kindly regret passed over Aubrey’s face. ‘Yes, she did all that for me and did it very well. She hadn’t the faintest idea why I needed them, of course. She’s one of those intense people who are simply very gratified in having a job to do at all. She made a religion of being discreet in the matter, as I knew she would. Pyne and his fellows, on the other hand, were arranging a private pool to clean up a packet on the crashing markets. That shows the different temperament. The mere fact that they did not think I knew, and they imagined they were being disloyal to me, satisfied the criminal streak which I recognized in them at once and made it safe for me to use them. They’re both examples of what I mean by choosing the right people for the right job. It’s a gift and an art. My whole scheme of government is based, virtually speaking, on just that main essential.’

  Sir Henry passed a stubby hand through his hair. His lips were grey. He looked very tired.

  ‘You have not explained the part you were to play in this new government of yours,’ he said.

  Aubrey turned on him. He seemed taller and leaner than ever, but there was a fire in his pale eyes.

  ‘I should have to have exactly the same power in the country as I have here at the Bridge Institute, of course,’ he Said. ‘That surely is obvious. When there is so much of passionate importance to be done quickly and ruthlessly then the man in charge must assume full responsibility.’

  As his voice ceased there was such a breathless, such an electric silence in the room, that the undertones of the pronouncement hung in the air. To Campion it was the most ghastly moment of them all. The man was brilliant, able, and in his own limited sphere doubtless extremely useful, yet as he stood there, smiling faintly at them, his, mistaken belief in his own superiority cut him off from reality as completely as if he were living in a coloured glass jar.

  He was utterly unaware of the enormity of his sin. He believed implicitly that he alone was capable of directing the Empire and had been fully prepared to destroy the whole structure of its economic life in order to get into command.

  The men who had trusted and admired him remained looking at him and the same thought was in all their eyes: ‘This is not even the stuff dictators are made of, but this is the kind of madness which is often not found out until it is too late.’

  Campion pulled himself away from the wall and edged his way out. He had had so much emotional strain in the last three days that this final and objective example was too much for him. He felt physically ill. The house was alive with police. In the drawing-room across the hall a woman was crying wearily, her sobs sounding above the steady rumble of the interrogating officer. He guessed she was Mrs Ericson.

  He pushed on through the plain-clothes men, the influential friends, the M.I.5 personnel, and the Home Office experts and went out of the front door. It was another clear bright night with visibility nearly as good as day. The constable on duty on the door saluted him with such spontaneous deference that he knew he was already a nine-days’ wonder in the west-country police force. He strode on across the grass, drawing the clean night air deep into his lungs and enjoying the moist wind on his skin.

  Presently Amanda joined him. She materialized at his side as he passed under the shadow of the house and they walked on for some time without speaking. Campion had been thinking of her steadily for some hours. Ever since the answer to Hutch’s unspoken question had come to him so decisively in the Masters’ storerooms, her reaction to the affair had haunted him. The present situation was irretrievable as well as being so miserably awkward that, had she been anybody else in the world, the only possible thing to have done would have been to hurry back to one’s job immediately and concentrate on other things with one’s eyes, ears, and heart shut. Since she was Amanda, however, and not just an ordinary woman with whom one happened to be in love, that was not possible. She did not seem anxious to talk herself, but there was no constraint in her manner. She had taken his arm, as usual, and seemed content to wander and speculate much as he was doing.

  They walked on for so long that his thought had time to settle and crystallize and become almost impersonal.

  ‘I tell you one thing,’ he said suddenly. ‘Even if he hadn’t turned out to be this particular kind of lunatic you would never have married him.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed frankly. ‘No, I wouldn’t.’

  He looked down at her and caught her grinning to herself. It was an unexpected reaction and he wondered if the light was playing tricks.

  ‘Are you laughing?’ he demanded.

  ‘Only at me,’ said Amanda with typical if devastating honesty. ‘Go on.’

  He looked ahead of them at the great silhouettes which the trees made against the moonlit sky. There was something on Campion’s mind and he intended to say it, not because it might comfort her – if she was human and female it would probably infuriate her – but because she was Amanda and her education was important. She ought to know it and it might help some day.

  ‘In spite of his brilliance and his staggering conceit, which throws his whole vision out of focus, that chap is a type,’ he began abruptly. ‘Did you ever notice that woman Mrs Ericson?’

  He thought he heard Amanda catch her breath. Then she chuckled. There was no other word for that murmur of mingled amusement and relief.

  ‘Of course I did,’ she said. ‘I’m terrifically relieved you saw it too. I mean if you’re trying to explain that Lee has a habit of making extravagant passes at people conveying that he’s hopelessly in love with them, so that they’ll respond and he’ll have the flattering experience of declining their affections with sweet sympathet
ic understanding, I know about it. I don’t think he works it out like that, of course, but it just keeps happening to him and one side of his mind finds it a delightful surprise to him every time while the other side attends to the machinery for making it come off. I was the complete mug. I was awfully surprised.’

  How like her. Not ‘I was wounded.’ Not ‘I was furious.’ Not ‘I was wretchedly degraded.’ Just ‘I was awfully surprised.’

  ‘When did all this happen?’ he enquired.

  ‘Just before I brought old Miss Anscombe to see you at that pub. I was going to tell you, because I was rather full of it, and – oh, you know how one is – rather sore and embarrassed. But it didn’t seem to be quite the time for intimate revelations. You were a bit peculiar yourself, if you remember.’

  Peculiar! He did remember. He remembered her face, too, hurt and bewildered as the idiotic couplet hung unfinished between them. Another thought occurred to him and he turned to her in consternation.

  ‘You had to come back here. I sent you back.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ she said, ‘but it had to be done. Besides, it rubbed the whole thing in until I really did understand it. He enjoyed it so. I did get the whole thing clear and I was here when they phoned from Coachingford Police Station, so it was worth while.’

  Campion put an arm round her and held the small circle of her shoulder-bone. For the first time in his life he felt completely adult. His hesitancy, his qualms, his intellectual doubts seemed suddenly the stuff of childhood.

  ‘Let’s get married early tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’ve only got thirty-six hours’ leave. A message came through tonight. I ought to have this conk on my head looked at too. It’s time we got married.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Amanda, who never bothered with illusions. ‘It’s time we got married.’

  They went back to the house to get hold of Oates, who could probably fix any licensing difficulty. Just before they reached the door Amanda turned to Campion.

  ‘I’m sorry I boxed your ears,’ she said, ‘but you flicked me on the raw. You weren’t quite like yourself, either, you know.’

  ‘My good girl, I was nuts,’ he began and hesitated. It was no good. He just did not want to tell her the full extent of his recent disability. The dreadful revelation of his helplessness and his need for her was still a vividly remembered pain.

  Amanda waited a moment and finally laughed.

  ‘Get it right this time, then,’ she commanded. ‘“Begone!” she stormed. “Across the raging tide!”’

  Campion grinned as the delightful cockney rhyme returned to him. He pulled her towards him.

  ‘“Dear Jove! Why did I go?”’ he quoted accurately, and kissed her as he finished with triumphant satisfaction the ecstatic Victorian anti-climax, so apt and so absurd, ‘“I should have stiyed!”’

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  Published by Vintage 2006

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  © Margery Allingham 1941

  Margery Allingham has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

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