Mr Campion & Others

by Margery Allingham

  Lance told his story frankly. He was a friend of Marguerite’s, and she had confided to him that she was alarmed by her father’s new habit of going off by himself after a lifetime of regular and studious habits. She had discovered that he had made a habit of watching every performance given by the dancer, Charmian, and that in order to do this he followed her all round the country, sometimes to the most disreputable little halls. To satisfy Marguerite, Lance had gone to the Pantheon to see the dancer for himself and to watch the old man’s reactions to her. Since he did not feel like going alone, he asked his friend Mr Campion to accompany him.

  Captain Smith listened to the recital with a perfectly impassive face, and when it was over he turned to Campion.

  ‘Perhaps you would describe the incident as you saw it? Please don’t omit anything.’

  Campion told the story of finding the old man half unconscious in the box, and Lance corroborated it.

  ‘After the turn we looked up and could not see him in the box, so we went to investigate. We found he was hurt and did what we could,’ he repeated.

  ‘You saw no one else in or near the box?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re quite sure of that? No one at all?’

  ‘No one,’ said Campion. ‘Nor,’ he continued firmly, ‘did I see him speak to anyone at all during the whole time that I was in the hall. He was entirely alone throughout the performance. Whoever attacked him must have opened the door of the box during Charmian’s act, delivered the blow and left immediately. Nothing was touched. His pockets were not rifled. It was a personal attack. Someone meant to put him out and no one but him.’

  Captain Smith’s heavy-lidded eyes flickered and he looked at Campion steadily.

  ‘An attendant?’ he suggested.

  ‘No,’ said Campion decisively. ‘No, I don’t think so. He was sitting up there in the box throughout the entire show, you see. Anyone could have noticed him. I don’t see that it need have been an attendant. Anyone was at liberty to walk down that corridor. It might have been anyone in the entire audience.’

  ‘That’s the devil of it,’ murmured Captain Smith, and for the first time a smile appeared upon his face. ‘Well, thank you very much for putting up with this intrusion. I shan’t bother you either any more tonight, Superintendent.’

  ‘Very well, sir.’

  Oates took the dismissal respectfully and rose as the younger man took his leave.

  After he had gone the atmosphere seemed a little easier, and Campion had just persuaded Oates to take a nightcap when the manservant reappeared.

  ‘It’s that Mr Wild, sir,’ he was beginning, but broke off abruptly when he saw Oates. ‘I beg your pardon, sir. I heard the door and I thought both the gentlemen had gone.’

  ‘In a moment,’ said the Superintendent, who was thawing visibly. ‘I’ll be gone in a moment. Let him cool his heels. I’m fond of you, Campion,’ he continued as the man went out, ‘and there’s a lot I’d do for you, but some of your pals are beyond me. I just couldn’t bring myself to take a drink with Cassy Wild.’

  Campion shook his head. ‘You don’t appreciate him,’ he said regretfully. ‘You’re too conservative. You expect everyone to have the same virtues. Cassy has unusual virtues. They are quite as numerous, if not more so, than most people’s, but they’re different.’

  ‘Very likely,’ Oates observed without enthusiasm, ‘but I’d want my pockets sewed up and my shirt padlocked to my collar before I went for a walk with him. Still, I didn’t come up here to talk about Cassy. It was a pity you couldn’t give the captain what he was after. You might have made yourself really useful for once. However, if you saw no one you saw no one; that’s all there is to it.’

  Lance frowned. ‘I seem to be out of this altogether,’ he said bitterly. ‘The entire business is getting more and more bewildering. Who was that chap Smith, anyway?’

  The Superintendent coughed. ‘He’s a very important officer, sir. I don’t think we’ll discuss him, if you don’t mind. Just keep the whole matter under your hat, if you will. It was a chance in a thousand and it got missed. That’s the long and the short of it. It can’t be helped.’

  He paused and glanced at Campion with a sly smile. No one spoke, and the Superintendent’s grin widened in spite of himself.

  ‘I ought not to laugh,’ he said, ‘but I can’t help it. It’s not often Mr Smarty gets himself into something that he doesn’t understand. Right under his nose, it was, and he couldn’t see it for looking.’

  Campion did not smile. He lay back in his chair, his eyes half closed behind his spectacles.

  ‘Smith’s a newcomer in the Special Branch, isn’t he?’ he said.

  Oates choked, and his thin face grew a dusky red.

  ‘Who said anything about the Special Branch?’ he protested. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t understand you at all. It’s time I went home. It must be one in the morning.’

  Campion let him rise without demur, but spoke again before he had reached his greatcoat.

  ‘When I first heard Dr Tiffin’s name tonight it reminded me of crossword puzzles,’ he remarked. ‘I could not think of the connection until I happened to see his expression as he sat looking at that dancer. Then it came back to me. He was in Room 40 OB during the war, wasn’t he?’

  ‘What if he was?’ Oates was flurried. ‘Campion, for goodness sake stay out of this. It’s not your cup of tea. It’s not mine either. As it happened, you couldn’t help. Let it rest like that. I can’t discuss it with you. I daren’t. It’s not our show.’

  ‘Quite so. All the same I find it interesting, and if I’m right I think I might be useful.’ Lance had never heard Campion so gently obstinate. ‘Sit down and listen to me. I’ll tell you how my mind is working. I may be shinning up a gum-tree, and if I am you can tell me so, politely and in official language. Now look here, this is how I see it. Dr Tiffin happens to be a distinguished Egyptologist. His books on cuneiform and even earlier writings are famous. Also he was in Room 40 OB, the cipher decoding office, during the war. Those are two facts. Here are two more. Tonight I heard that he has suddenly started to visit every performance given by a certain dancer and during her turn this evening he was knocked out, presumably by someone who did not want him to see the whole of that dance. That gives me furiously to think.’

  ‘Don’t.’ Oates’s advice was brief but heartfelt. ‘Forget it.’ Campion sat up.

  ‘I think I would,’ he said earnestly, ‘but I saw that girl dance, and I think Lance here said the most enlightening thing about her show. When it was over he turned to me and said, “She’s like a papyrus.” She wasn’t, of course, but I saw what he meant. She was like some of that picture-writing on the mummy cases. Now do you see what I’m getting at? Suppose that long, slow procession of poses of hers was like writing, Oates? Suppose she danced some sort of limited message? It would have to be limited, of course, because it would be in a sign language, and sign languages are limited.’

  Oates was staring at him, Presently he swore softly.

  ‘You’re too bright,’ he said. ‘You’ll blind yourself one of these days.’

  Campion laughed. ‘I thought so,’ he murmured. ‘It’s fantastic, but not so fantastic that it couldn’t be true …

  “Thine uncle bears thee gifts.”’

  The final words, uttered casually, had an astonishing effect on the Superintendent. The blood receded from his face and his jaw dropped.

  ‘Where the devil did you get hold of that?’ he demanded.

  ‘Overheard it. Nothing clever about that,’ Campion admitted modestly. ‘Dr Tiffin was muttering it when we carried him home. That was the message, I suppose, or part of it. He must have been rather quicker on the uptake than his assailant expected. Quite an easy message, I should think. Most of the tombs have something of the sort among their lists of funeral offerings. The burning question, I take it, Oates, is … whose uncle?’

  The Superintendent did not reply. He seeme
d to be hovering on the verge of a confidence, and the soft knock on the door came as an unwelcome interruption. Campion sighed with exasperation.

  ‘Oh, come in,’ he shouted.

  The manservant entered with a dilapidated newspaper parcel on a silver tray.

  ‘Mr Wild has had to leave and wished me to give you this, sir,’ he said gravely. ‘I was to tell you he didn’t mind waiting, but he took exception to the company you keep. I happened to let fall that the Superintendent was here, sir.’

  ‘Blast his impudence!’ said Oates, laughing. ‘What’s he sent you? The fried fish supper you were going to share?’

  Campion took the parcel and laid it on the arm of his chair unopened.

  ‘Isn’t that the question?’ he persisted, as the door closed. ‘Whose uncle?’

  Oates shrugged his shoulders. ‘You know too much,’ he said. ‘You’ll get yourself in the Tower. It’s all right to muscle in on my job, but you get your fingers into the espionage machine and you’ll get ’em bitten off.’

  ‘Espionage?’ muttered Lance under his breath. ‘Spy hunting, by George!’

  ‘Put it out of your mind, sir.’ Oates made the admonition firmly. ‘You can see exactly what’s happened. That dancer has been under observation by our people for months. No one at all suspicious seemed to have access to her, and they could never get the link between her and an espionage system which must exist. Then it occurred to someone at Headquarters that she was transmitting instructions in this peculiar way through her dancing. Dr Tiffin tried to decode the messages and I think he had been very successful, but the thing he couldn’t tell, of course, was who else besides himself in each audience understood what she was saying, and that was the vital thing. That was what our people needed to know. Tonight there might have been a chance of finding out. No one thought the old gentleman might be attacked, although his interest in the lady must have looked highly suspicious to anybody in the know. If such a thing had been foreseen, he’d have been watched and we’d have found out something. Who ever attacked Dr Tiffin is the key man, you see. He’s probably living quietly over here under his own name like a respectable citizen.’

  ‘I still don’t quite follow,’ said Lance frankly. ‘What would they do if they found him? Arrest him?’

  ‘Arrest him?’ Oates seemed scandalised. ‘Oh, no sir, foreign agents are never arrested. They’re watched. They’re even supplied with certain fancy information if they’re mugs enough to take it. No, no, he’d have been followed. He would lead us to this “uncle” who has the gifts, or the doings, whatever it is, and then he would be watched in his turn. Like that we’d uncover the entire network, you see. As I said, it was a chance in a thousand, but now it’s gone. We’ll never know who in all that audience was the other man who knew.’

  Campion nodded gloomily. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘My hat, I wish I’d cottoned on to it a bit sooner.’ As he spoke he took up the newspaper packet and unwrapped it idly. An old brown leather wallet flopped on to his knees, and Oates laughed.

  ‘Lumme,’ he said, ‘Cassy’s brought you a bone! I’ll have to pull you in one of these days, Campion. You’ll get into trouble, mixing with scum like that. What is the explanation of that, may I ask? It looks darned fishy to me, I don’t mind telling you.’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’ Campion seemed surprised himself, and he bent down to retrieve a sheet of his own notepaper from the library desk which had fallen to the ground with the wrapping.

  ‘Cassy’s a dear chap, but he can’t write,’ he observed as he glanced at the dreadful hieroglyphics spread out before him. ‘’Strewth!’

  The final word was forced from him and he sprang up, the wallet clasped in his hand.

  ‘Oates,’ he said unsteadily, ‘read that.’

  Lance and the Superintendent read the message together. Some of the slang was beyond the artist, but the general meaning was clear.

  ‘Dear old sport,’ it ran. ‘Hoping this finds you as it leaves me, dry as a bone. I kept an eye on your punter in Box B partly because I wondered what you was up to I admit that. Well, I took sights of the finger who sloshed him. I did not interfere because I did not want to be mixt up in anything thank you, specially there, but I thought you’d like a memento of him so I took his number which I give you gratis. I have not took above ten bob from it, may I die if I lie, but the rest will give you the dope on him and where to find him. I wouldn’t do this for anyone but an old pal, Bert, as you know, but you’ve always bin one to me. Give old Oates a wish on the kisser from me. Ta ta. You know who. C. Wild.’

  Oates read the note through twice without speaking. Words seemed to have failed him. Finally he took the wallet which Campion held out to him, and his hand shook a little as he opened it and spread out its contents upon the coffee table. Some minutes later he looked up, and his expression was wondering.

  ‘His name and address on two envelopes, a prescription from his doctor, and his driving licence,’ he said. ‘Cassy’s word might not jail a man, but it’ll get this one watched. He’s in the bag. Campion, you frighten me. Something looks after you.’

  Campion took up Mr Wild’s note and put it carefully in his pocket.

  ‘Care for my secret, Superintendent?’ he inquired.

  ‘I’d like your luck,’ said Oates. ‘Well, what is it? I’ll buy it.’

  ‘Take a drink with anyone,’ said Mr Campion, ‘and pick your pals where you find ’em.’

  12

  A Matter of Form

  ‘THE TROUBLE WITH crime today,’ remarked Superintendent Stanislaus Oates seriously, ‘is that one almost gets too much of it, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ murmured his companion with solemn, not to say owlish, gravity. ‘The word you’re searching for is “common”, isn’t it?’

  The two men were sitting in the far corner of the long old-fashioned upstairs bar of the Café Bohème. Times had changed it since the grand gilt and red plush naughtiness of its youth, but it was still the centre of the town, and as Mr Albert Campion, who was looking a trifle thinner and grimmer in these days, glanced across its smoke-festooned expanse, it seemed to him to present a picture of the times – children in uniform and bankers in mourning.

  The Superintendent snorted, and his long sad face took on an even more settled expression of gloom.

  ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘Just because you’re overworked making yourself useful in some high and mighty hush-hush way, you think you can sneer at an old copper who has his hands full with more civil crime in every month than he used to see in a year. I hate this new ruthlessness. There used to be a time when I saw myself as a sort of sportsman cop. I’d bait my line, fling it out and watch …’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Campion, echoing his philosophic tone, ‘and the sight of you gallantly throwing the little ones back used to bring tears to my eyes. It’s no good, guv’nor. The sentimental, kindly old sleuth stuff doesn’t become you. It’s not convincing. Fisherman my foot! You always have looked like a leathery old tomcat sitting by a hole; about as sporting and about as gentle. I can see your whiskers twitching now. Where’s the mouse this time?’

  ‘Mouse be blowed,’ objected the Superintendent. ‘That’s a fine sleek young rat. Look at him. I wonder what he’s calling himself now?’

  Campion turned his head to follow the policeman’s eyes, which, for all his kindliness, were as cold and bleak as a North Sea rock.

  A man stood drinking alone at the round bar not a dozen feet from them. He was in early middle age, and the Superintendent’s description of him was not inapt. He was well-dressed, well-fed, and surprisingly handsome in that peculiar way which derives rather from general well-being than from any particular distinction of feature. At the moment he exuded happiness, confidence, and self-satisfaction. He drank deeply and with pleasure, and his flushed cheeks and dancing eyes smiled back at him with affection from the mirror behind the bar. In that anxious gathering, with its underlying atmosphere of brittle excitement
, his contentment was noticeable, and Superintendent Oates, for one, was irritated by it.

  ‘Someone’s lost something, I bet a shilling,’ he said unpardonably.

  The man at the bar recognised the voice, and turned round.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, revealing a deep and by no means unpleasant voice, though his accent was far too good to be true, ‘the dear old inspector.’

  ‘Superintendent,’ rebuked the policeman stolidly. ‘How are you, Smith? Or isn’t that the name now?’

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact it’s not, oddly enough.’ The stranger lounged forward with elaborate confidence and stood beaming before them. ‘Like you, I’ve got promoted. The name is Rowley. Smith is so usual, don’t you think? I mean anybody might be a Smith. Anthony Rowley is the new moniker, and I fancy it suits me.’

  ‘What are you doing? Wooing?’ put in Campion, amused in spite of himself.

  The Superintendent who had never been sung to sleep either in childhood or at any other time by the tale of the famous frog, was mystified by the allusion.

  ‘Oh, it’s love, is it?’ he said ungraciously. ‘I thought perhaps it was merely drink or an unguarded Chubb.’

  The man who had decided to call himself Anthony Rowley frowned.

  ‘Vulgar, unkind, and not even accurate,’ he said. ‘Breams, not Chubbs, were my undoing. Or I theirs, of course. It depends on how you look at it. Dear me, I am inebriated, aren’t I?’

  ‘You are.’ The Superintendent’s tone was dangerously avuncular. ‘And if you can get such indecent happiness out of a double or two in these days, you have my profound respect.’

  A fleeting glimmer of caution hovered in Mr Rowley’s bright blue eyes, but his unnatural elation killed it all too soon.

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact,’ he repeated perilously, ‘as a matter of fact, and not because you’re a policeman, but because you’re a dear old gentleman and I like you, as a matter of fact my glorious condition at this moment is caused neither by love nor alcohol, but by something very much better than either.’