“But even though Lady Margaret was old,” Sarah continued, “I always wished I could have that sparkle in my life that she had.”
“So did I,” said Allison with a tender smile as she recalled her many struggles over that very thing, and her eventual reunion on a deeper level with her great-grandmother. “But she would say there was no reason why we couldn’t have what she did. It was simply a matter of making a choice about one’s priorities and attitudes.”
“It hardly seems that simple.”
“It was her choice to let the Spirit of Christ fill her with a new outlook on life that made her who she was,” replied Allison. “And that same thing happened to me nine years ago. I gave my life to God too, and for a time, things were different. I had new values and perspectives, and it really did change my attitude toward everything. Unfortunately, I allowed too many external pressures to rob that original dedication from me. I guess it happened so slowly I didn’t notice. Then as things started going sour between Logan and me, I began looking in other directions for help. It took Logan’s leaving to shake me up enough to begin looking in the right direction again. I’m trying to bring the Lord back into my life, but I don’t know what He is planning to do with my marriage—I haven’t seen or heard from Logan in five months.”
“Dear, you must be miserable!”
“I’d be lying if I tried to say I wasn’t. But God is giving me strength to face it, a little bit at a time. I wish I could describe it better so you could understand.”
“I would like to hear more,” replied Sarah.
“You would?”
“Who wouldn’t want the kind of contentment Lady Margaret had? But let’s talk more on the way.”
“On the way where?”
“I want to surprise you.”
“But the nurse is expecting me back.”
“Give her a call and tell her you’ll be a little late,” said Sarah firmly. “You don’t want to miss this.”
“I feel as if I’m being kidnapped,” laughed Allison.
“I didn’t think I’d have to kidnap you to get you to my designer.”
“What’s this all about, Sarah?”
“I know a new dress won’t solve your problems, Allison. And maybe it’s silly to worry about what you look like. But sometimes a woman needs something new, just to feel good about herself. What do you say—it couldn’t hurt, could it?” She winked and smiled.
“I could never afford—”
“Ta, ta, dear girl! This one is on my Arabian sheik!”
The next couple of hours proved a heaven-sent boon for Allison. The new dress proved the least of her delight. Rather, it was the transformation of her friendship with Sarah brought on by the newfound honesty that had flowed between them.
Late in the afternoon they left the elegant offices where Allison had been fitted for her new outfit, diligently searching the street for a taxi—not a frequent sight in those days of petrol rationing. They had walked halfway down the block when Allison stopped suddenly, her gaze focused intently on a newspaper stand across the street.
“Allison, what is it?” asked Sarah.
“That man over there—I’ve seen him before.”
“Oh . . . ?” The revelation hardly seemed startling to Sarah.
“I saw him once with Logan.”
Allison hadn’t given the incident a single thought since before the blitz. It had taken place long before she had returned to Stonewycke, but now it all came back to her clearly. She and Logan were to meet for lunch at a west-end restaurant. She’d arrived a few minutes early and was speaking to the maitre d’ about a table, when she spotted Logan already seated at the far end of the room. With him was a man whose austere, pock-marked face was not easy to forget. Even had the face been of more ordinary features, she could hardly have erased from her mind the reaction on the countenances of both men when they saw her approach. The stranger cut off his speech immediately and made his departure with only a curt tip of his hat for Allison’s benefit. When she questioned Logan about him, his response was evasive and vague. She knew that the meeting must have something to do with his mysterious job, but Logan would say nothing, and there the matter dropped. She had hardly thought of it again until the same man should suddenly appear out of the past, bringing it all vividly back to her.
Without thinking, she stepped suddenly out into the street toward the newsstand, causing several passing autos to slam on their brakes. Hardly taking a notice, she hurried on across.
“Sir!” she called out as she approached.
The man made no response.
“I say, there at the newsstand!” she called again, reaching the other side of the street and hurrying up to where he stood.
He glanced up, a cloud of uncertainty passing over his face for an instant. As it did, Allison could see the split-second hesitation as he debated within himself what he should do. At last it appeared as if it was more compulsion than decision that forced his eyes to acknowledge her.
“Sir,” she said when their eyes met, “may I please speak with you?”
But in the next instant, another cloud passed over his countenance, this time one of sudden recognition. The magazine he had been browsing fell from his hands, he turned on his heel, and quickly rushed away.
“Please—I must talk to you!” cried Allison after him.
She had taken little notice of the gathering afternoon crowd till that moment. But now suddenly it seemed as though the sidewalk was swarming with people—all bent on preventing her from catching up with the elusive stranger. Weaving her way in and out, she managed to keep him in sight for about half a block. Then suddenly he was gone.
27
Billy’s Assistance
“Ye’re talkin’ craziness, Miz Macintyre—if I might be so blunt,” said Billy Cochran.
“But you might be able to find out who he was.”
“An’ just how do y’ propose I’d be doin’ that?”
“Logan used to tell me some of the things you and he’d done together,” said Allison, “when he was in a good mood and wanted to make me laugh. The way he tells it, you could do anything!”
“Pshaw!” said Billy, but not without a flicker of pride in his eye at the compliment from an old friend.
“But I just can’t let it go, Billy—even if it’s just one chance in a hundred. Aren’t long shots in the nature of your business?” she added demurely.
Billy smiled. Here was Logan’s wife trying to con him!
The incident at the newsstand had been plaguing Allison for a whole day; now she could stand it no longer. Until that afternoon with Sarah she had resigned herself to simply biding her time until Logan saw fit to contact her. But now suddenly she realized she might be able to take steps to contact him! Billy had once cautioned her against the futility of trying to get a lead on Logan’s well-cooled trail. But now everything was changed. This would be no aimless poking about—there was now something concrete to go on. She had seen a man who knew Logan, and probably knew what work he was involved in. If she could only talk to him!
Billy, however, had been none too optimistic, and had done his best to convince her against it when the next day she ventured into his list shop.
“Even allowin’ fer the possibility—” said the grizzled old man.
“Then you admit, it is possible!”
“I admit to nothin’, young lady. I’m just saying that a quick glimpse of a face in a crowd, disappearin’ as fast as it showed itself, is ’ardly much evidence to lay a bet on, even for a ’undred-to-one nag.”
“He knows where Logan is,” pleaded Allison. “I’m sure of it. I could see it in his eyes.”
“Even if it were possible to locate Logan through an old acquaintance, this ’ere bloke hain’t likely the man to help you. You don’t know ’is name, where he lives—nothin’! And you said yerself, he didn’t appear none too friendly.”
“But you could do it, Billy! I know you could, even without all that information. The
police do it all the time, and Logan always says you were two or three steps ahead of the law.”
“I’m not so sure ye’re graspin’ his meanin’,” said Billy with a chuckle.
“However he meant it,” insisted Allison, “you’re the man for the job. You care about Logan. That’s more than the police would do.”
“Maybe ’tis them wot ought t’ help you.”
“You know I can’t go to them.”
Before Billy could answer her, the phone rang and took his attention for a few moments.
“First call I’ve ’ad all day,” he said, hanging up. “With the race tracks closed on account of the war, I don’t get much action—’cept a cricket or rugby match now and then.” He paused, jotted down something in a notebook, then turned back to the problem at hand. “I suppose ye’re right; the police hain’t the ones t’ help you, for more reasons than one.”
“But you can help me, Billy.”
He raised his eyebrows as if the idea were too outlandish to consider.
“Miz Macintyre . . . I’m thinkin’ that maybe the strain of the last few weeks has been too ’ard on you. You hain’t thinkin’ straight.”
“You know more about this city’s underworld than anyone—at least anyone I know.”
“You hain’t still thinkin’ Logan’s gone back t’ the old life?”
“No. I believe you when you say he’s not. But he still might be in some kind of trouble, and that’s the logical place to start. Besides, the man I saw Logan with, and saw again at the newsstand today, did not look like he came from Chelsea.”
Billy rubbed the stubbly beard on his chin for a moment. In his mind Lady Allison MacNeil Macintyre was as sweet and gentle—and innocent—as any lady he had ever known. Yet more than once Logan had hinted at the presence of a wide stubborn streak that could surface in her. And now Billy could see it more than clearly in her determined blue eyes. She was not about to be moved, now that her mind was set. But perhaps with his experience he might be able to interject some practicality into her wild scheme.
All at once he recalled a similar time when it was Logan who had approached him with a crazy idea of a sting to swindle Chase Morgan. Now it was his wife taking up where he left off. Maybe she wasn’t as innocent as he made her out to be. Both them young folks gots a stiff-necked streak in them, he said to himself. ’Tis hardly no wonder they’re havin’ problems. Logan had not listened to Billy’s voice of reason ten years ago, though he had submitted enough to Billy’s instruction to keep him clear of disaster.
Billy glanced up at Allison. Yes, he could tell she was going to go ahead with her hunt for her husband with or without his help. Perhaps he owed it to Logan to try to keep her out of trouble, too.
Billy removed his spectacles, which he wore constantly now, and wiped the lenses off on his sleeve. Methodically he rubbed the grime on them around in a circle, then placed them again on his nose and peered once more at his friend’s wife, as if somehow his little delay might have changed things. It had not. Her eyes were just as determined as ever.
“Ye’re askin’ for trouble, missy,” he finally replied, but there was an air of defeat clearly in his tone. “If this feller is as crooked as you think, he hain’t goin’ t’ take kindly t’ bein’ dogged about London. An’ even if you do find ’im, you’ll probably end up regrettin’ it in the end. But wot’ll be more likely is you’ll find ’im an’ then he won’t know any more about Logan’s whereabouts as I do.”
“You’ll help me, though, won’t you, Billy?”
“I’m an old fool is wot I am,” he replied. But how could he refuse her pleading eyes? And he would never be able to face Logan again if he left her to her own resources, and something was to happen to her.
———
They began back at the newsstand. The vendor, however, was no more communicative with Billy than he had been with Allison when she had questioned him the day before. But at least they could surmise that if the stranger frequented the newsstand, then he must have reason to be often in this part of the city. If they were lucky, either his work or residence might be close by. They spent the better part of the next two days methodically visiting shops, hotels, and taverns in the nearby precincts hoping something would turn up.
By the end of the second day, Allison’s voice was hoarse with repeating the man’s description, and poor Billy’s old arthritic limbs ached as they seldom did these days. At four o’clock they came to the door of a tobacconist shop. Billy declared that this would be his last stop for the day, and Allison gave him no argument. She was footsore, tired, and discouraged, and wanted nothing more just then but to go home, soak her feet, and play with her little girl, whom she feared she had been neglecting of late.
The pungent odor of rich blends of tobacco filled the air inside the shop, and for the hundredth time Allison forced out a description of the man she had almost begun to think was only a figment of her imagination.
“Tall, ye say?” said the stocky, balding proprietor.
“Yes,” replied Allison hopefully, “and rather thin, too—bony, actually.”
“Spoke with a German accent, did he?”
Allison paused. Had she ever heard them speak? No—but she recalled several phone calls Logan had received from a man whose accent was unmistakable.
“It’s possible,” she replied.
“Well, I reported him.”
“Reported him?”
“I didn’t like the looks of him, so I turned him in to the War Office,” said the tobacconist. “They said as how they couldn’t pick up every bloke who didn’t look right on account of the tens of thousands of innocent refugees who came here before the war fleeing from that madman Hitler. They needed more to go on to arrest a bloke than a man’s looks, they said. Well, I say round ’em all up, and then there’ll be no doubts!”
“So, you have the man’s name?” said Allison, too impatient to listen to the man’s biased political ramblings.
“I do that; he had his own particular blend he ordered. He’d call me up and say, ‘Prepare me so-and-so’s a blend, I’ll pick it up this afternoon.’ No one’s willin’ to wait around these days and have a nice bit of conversation. Everything’s done on the phone—no waiting.”
“What was the man’s name?” asked Allison, whose throat had suddenly gone very dry.
“I can remember without even looking in my ledger, on account of having reported him, you know. Smith was the name, a Mr. Hedley Smith.”
Allison cast a woeful look at Billy. The new-found information hardly increased the chances of locating a man with a phony name.
Now it was Billy’s turn to step forward.
“And ’ave you gots an address in your records, by any chance?” he asked.
“’Course I do! What kind of businessman do you think I am?” the tobacconist replied, flipping through the pages of his ledger, while Billy craned his head to try to see for himself. “Like I said, no one wants to wait. Some blokes even call and tell me to deliver the stuff. ‘Send a pound of Mr. Smith’s Carolina blend over to such-and-such a place.’”
“An’ where did you send our Mr. Smith’s when he called?”
The man hesitated, suddenly growing wary. “Say, I don’t know as I should be giving out that information.”
“Look ’ere,” said Billy, pulling himself up to every inch of his diminutive stature, “this young woman and I are from Immigration an’ we ’ave reason t’ believe yer first suspicions about this man could be correct.”
“You don’t look much like Immigration officials.”
“’Course we don’t!” exclaimed Billy at the silly notion. “You don’t expect us t’ be walkin’ around tippin’ off the blokes we’s after with fine duds an’ a nice gov’mental accent, now do ye?”
“Let me see your identification.”
Without a second’s hesitation, the old confidence man pulled out his worn leather wallet and flashed it quickly before the stubborn shopkeeper’s eyes. Skittles’
old list-shop license, which Billy carried around with him for luck, looked official enough for most similar purposes if not scrutinized too closely.
The man behind the counter appeared satisfied, and wrote the address on a slip of paper.
All Allison’s fatigue was gone when they exited the shop. “How far is it?” she asked excitedly. “Shall I call a taxi?”
“I thought we was done for the day!”
“Oh, Billy, we can’t quit now! I wouldn’t be able to rest knowing we are this close.”
“Just funnin’ you, Miz Macintyre,” said Billy with a crooked but warm smile. “But the address may prove just as phony as the Smith. But let’s take the tube t’ Charing Cross. Cheaper and just as quick, an’ puts us close t’ where we wants t’ go.”
Bunker Street, it turned out, looked none too respectable, presenting a string of seedy hotels and seedier-looking pubs, broken here and there with grimy shops and dirty tenement buildings. They followed the street numbers until they came to the one the tobacconist had written down. They stopped, then glanced puzzled at one another. The chipped, worn number was painted on the bricks above the door of The Blue Crow Pub. Had the shopkeeper made a mistake, or was the address as false as the man’s name?
“You best wait out ’ere, mum, whilst I goes in an’ ’ave a look about,” said Billy protectively.
Allison scanned the area; across the street a couple of men as rundown and seedy as the neighborhood were leering at her.
“I’ll go in with you,” she replied.
The Blue Crow was practically vacant. The few men present could not have been of the sturdiest caliber, and the room reeked of stale odors. Allison willingly hung back while Billy approached a man whose stained and dingy apron gave indication that he was the one in charge. They exchanged a few quiet words; then Billy thanked him and led Allison back out into the fresh air.
“No luck?” asked Allison.
“I gots me a feelin’ the bloke knows the man, but he sure hain’t goin’ t’ talk t’ us about it. I’ve a bad feeling about that place.”
They had started on their way once more, but Allison grabbed Billy’s arm. “We can’t leave it at that,” she implored.
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