The Island of Peril (Department Z)

by John Creasey

  ‘You’re not going out now,’ she protested, as he replaced the receiver and threw down the pyjama jacket. She sat up, a charming vision in creamy laces.

  ‘Sorry, my dear,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I tried to get out of it, but——’

  ‘I think it’s disgusting. This is the first night you’ve been finished early for a month, and now——’

  Little dragged a shirt over his head, thus momentarily escaping her harangue.

  ‘I never did like Loftus——’ she was saying as his head reappeared.

  ‘Nonsense!’ Little held up one reproving hand. ‘Best fellow in the world, Loftus—wouldn’t send for me if I wasn’t needed. Er——Keiller’s telephone number, my dear. Get it for me, will you?’

  Mrs. Little stared.

  ‘You’ll never get Sir Ian out, to-night!’

  ‘I think I will,’ said Little, and chuckled as the bedroom door banged behind her, a moment later.

  —————–

  ‘Och, now, Jeannie,’ Sir Ian Keiller soothed. ‘I’ll not be long, I tell you.’

  His wife was a large, angular woman whom no one could call beautiful. Not that there was much of beauty, either, about the rangy frame and bony, thin-lipped face of the distinguished nerve specialist himself.

  ‘I’ll be back before you know it,’ he offered, as in stony silence, she watched him dress.

  He did so far more expeditiously than Doc Little: everything about him was orderly and economical, and he was ready within five minutes.

  From the doorway, he looked back at her:

  ‘You’ll be keeping my place warm, Jeannie? The cold weather’s suddenly on us, I’m thinking.’

  Jean Keiller shrugged. ‘I’ll never marry a doctor again,’ she announced gruffly. But she smiled as he laughed and closed the door.

  Doc Little had barely arrived, when he emerged. As they drove to the Brook Street flat together, he explained the situation more fully than had been possible on the telephone.

  ‘It’s just your job, Keiller,’ he added. ‘I knew you’d be annoyed if I didn’t call you for it.’

  ‘Och, yes,’ said Keiller. ‘I’d not have missed it. But it’s a queer business, right enough.’

  —————–

  ‘The human mind,’ said William Loftus, with the air of a man about to pronounce weighty judgement, ‘accustoms itself to anything, in time. Even to the sight of me sitting like a stuffed dummy and doing precisely nothing.’

  ‘Except talk,’ Oundle suggested, gently.

  ‘One must talk,’ said Loftus. He looked from the bony face of Sir Ian Keiller to the pink and fleshy one of Dr. Augustus Little, and then at Gordon Craigie. The sense of unreality he had felt since first awakening—and recollection—still lingered. ‘As far as you can say,’ he went on, ‘the effect will wear off sooner or later?’

  Keiller’s voice was dry.

  ‘Yes, Mr. Loftus. You’ll be all right—there’s not a thing the matter with your legs, that I can find. From what you tell me, I’d say the drug that put you to sleep has a delayed action on the nerves controlling the lower spinal column. And if one effect wears off, there’s every reason to expect the other will. And now, if there’s nothing you’re needing, I’ll be off. Little will keep an eye on you—but you’ve nothing to fear.’ His smile suggested that his real interest in Loftus was as a biological specimen, but that he appreciated the need for the human touch. ‘I’ll wish you a good night, gentlemen.’

  Loftus smiled as the door closed behind him.

  ‘So that’s the great Sir Ian, is it?’ he said. ‘He doesn’t give too much for his money.’ Reaching for cigarettes, he lit one pensively. ‘Well, Gordon. We’re in the middle of something that’s going to make us think.’

  ‘Think!’ Oundle echoed, protestingly.

  ‘First, just how are you feeling?’ Craigie asked.

  Loftus pursed his lips.

  ‘Well . . . I feel as if I’ve been busted to pieces and I’m just picking them up,’ he said. ‘Restoring order out of chaos, as it were. Damn it—I was as lively as I’ve ever been at the Dernier Cri, and I don’t remember any symptoms but an acute weariness. My eyes were like lead, I couldn’t think—and then, blotto. How long was I out?’ He did not wait for an answer. ‘Several hours, at all events. I wake up as fresh as the proverbial daisy, but——’ he rubbed a large hand along his bared thigh; he had been stripped for the examination and was now wearing only a pyjama jacket: ‘these won’t work. It must be a nasty feeling, to be told you’ll never walk again,’ he added inconsequentially. ‘The thing is, Gordon: Keiller found nothing in the way of extraordinary symptoms. Or so he says. The effects fit in with any blow on the head, for instance—temporary paralysis caused by concussion. Did I hear him say it happens a hundred times a year?’

  ‘You did,’ said Oundle.

  ‘He’s a quiet beggar.’ The doctor eased his vast frame in his chair. ‘But he’s sound; the soundest man we’ve got. Had he been worried for you, he would have stayed all night and all tomorrow, if need be.’

  ‘Well, that’s encouraging, anyway.’ Loftus grinned, then looked thoughtful again. ‘But to get back—I’m not so interested in the effect, as the cause. And that came from the little man, and the woman who was with him.’

  ‘Who died in her sleep,’ Oundle supplied, soberly.

  Quiet descended on the room again. Suddenly, for all of them, the word ‘sleep’ had been snatched from the realms of the pleasantly familiar; had developed frightening connotations.

  Superintendent Miller had been able to report nothing more, in person, than he had done on the telephone. A pathologist attached to the Home Office was examining the body of the dead woman—and his diagnosis had not yet been completed. At Craigie’s request, he was not turning it into a full post mortem until the next day. In that peculiar state of mind in which—along with the others—he found himself, it was easy for Craigie to contemplate the dead woman coming to life.

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Loftus, breaking the silence. ‘Working on the assumption that I shall be in full possession of my senses before long, let’s get busy.’ He turned to Craigie:

  ‘You’ve had Wally’s report?’

  ‘Yes, but I’d like yours.’

  Loftus obliged, leaving out no detail that could be considered important, and describing his feelings with discomfiting realism. And finally:

  ‘That’s all,’ he said. ‘What’s your angle?’

  Craigie smiled.

  ‘There is one,’ he admitted, ‘but before I go into that, there’s another point. Wally took a phial of white tablets from the little man, and they’re being examined. He says the prisoner was trying to swallow them. The woman may have succeeded in getting a tablet or two into her mouth, and that could explain what happened to her. However——’

  Craigie hesitated, then quickly plunged into an account of the visit of Armand de Boncour. In that atmosphere and at half-past three in the morning, it was not difficult to hold them spell-bound and he succeeded. The weird aptness of the letter from the chemist Labiche could not be minimised.

  ‘And so,’ Craigie summed up, ‘we know a little of what’s happening, but nothing like enough. And——’

  ‘If we can keep awake,’ said Loftus dryly, ‘we might learn some more. The main essentials are there, though. There’s a gas—presumably—which can put us to sleep.’

  ‘You drank champagne at the Dernier Cri,’ Oundle pointed out.

  ‘Yes. . . . But I doubt that was the means of administering the blasted stuff. We could have the cellar at the pub examined, though.’

  ‘It’s being done,’ said Craigie.

  ‘Sorry!’ Loftus grinned. ‘I’d forgotten we weren’t all asleep. Y’know, Gordon,’ he went on dreamily, ‘most of England, night shifts and A.R.P. excepted, is asleep now. Frightening, isn’t it? An island, a place surrounded by water, this England. There’s one thing,’ he added abruptly, ‘we can’t blame the Government for this lot. Are
you telling Hershall?’

  ‘I’ll leave it till morning,’ said Craigie, rising to go. ‘He gets little enough rest as it is.’

  With that thoughtful comment on the new Prime Minister of Britain, Craigie left the flat. Little waddled off in his wake soon afterwards, and Loftus smiled wryly as Oundle disguised a yawn.

  ‘Little though I like saying it,’ he said, ‘I think you ought to take a nap, Ned. We might get another angle by morning—and I might be able to walk. But I’d give a lot,’ added Craigie’s leading agent, ‘to know whether anyone else in this country has suffered from this stuff.’

  In which, he knew, he was not alone.

  ——————

  In a small country village, as safe as any place in England and yet continually disturbed at night by the warning of enemy aircraft overhead, lived a gentleman who called himself Richards. He had been resident in England for eleven years, although for some months in every year it had been his habit to go abroad. His passport, however, had never been visa-stamped by Nazi Germany, and there were none in the village of Hayling, in Sussex, who knew that he was also at times addressed as Baron Karl von Richoffen. Still less did the squire—Hayling was sufficiently old-world to have a squire and be proud of it—the rector, or any other leading member of the parish, suspect that Mr. Charles Richards had been among the first of the junker class to subscribe to Nazi policy—believing, as did many, that it was the only chance for the Prussian military might to raise its head again.

  He had a pleasant house on the outskirts of the village which he called Fourways: there were, in fact, four minor roads within sight of its windows. It had been built for him ten years before and the garden had matured very nicely.

  At half-past nine on that bright September morning after Loftus’s visit to the Dernier Cri, Mr. Richards, grey-haired and benevolent of aspect—his appearance was one of his greatest assets: he both looked and spoke like an English gentleman—emerged from the French windows of his drawing-room. For a few moments, he surveyed with genuine pleasure the half-acre of vividly-coloured blooms and flowering shrubs and broad, green lawns refreshed by the shower that had swept the countryside in the past hour. Then at closer quarters, he began to examine his roses with the care of the true enthusiast.

  The shrill ring of the telephone broke his reverie.

  He moved quickly, but a manservant had already reached the instrument. Short and noticeably hunch-backed, the man looked up as he entered, and proffered the receiver:

  ‘It’s him,’ he said, and Richards nodded understanding as he took it.

  ‘Ah, my friend,’ he greeted the caller. ‘And what news have you for me, this morning?’

  The voice at the other end was mellow, yet held a hint of uncertainty, as if the speaker was trying hard but unsuccessfully to sound self-possessed.

  ‘Tenby hasn’t come back,’ it said. ‘Nor has his sister.’

  ‘Tenby is missing?’ said Richards, very softly.

  ‘Yes, you heard me.’ The retort came harshly, but the voice mellowed again: ‘I hardly think it a matter for alarm, my friend, but he left your place yesterday afternoon. He did have full instructions?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And he knew the client he was to visit?’

  ‘Loftus, yes.’

  ‘There has been some activity in that quarter,’ said the voice. ‘I have no definite information yet, but if Tenby doesn’t show up soon I shall begin to feel worried. He knows nothing that could be—er—awkward, does he?’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ said Richards.

  ‘How many samples did he have with him?’

  ‘A very small quantity, believe me.’

  ‘Good,’ the voice approved. ‘We can’t afford to be reckless with them. I’ll advise you as soon as I can, old man—in fact, I’ll send Paula down to see you.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr. Richards. ‘Yes, do that.’

  He rang off, stared at the instrument for a moment, then clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and sauntered back to his roses. He would have struck no one as a man who was very worried indeed, and when a two-seater sports car drew up at the wicket-gate side entrance to the garden, he smiled a welcome.

  ‘Ah, Roy! It’s good to see you.’

  ‘Nice to see you looking so well, sir.’ Roy Parnell’s deep voice held only a trace of American accent. He was tall and clean-cut and very fair, and his smiling grey eyes were very direct. ‘Paula’s not at home, is she?’

  ‘No, but I’m expecting her later in the day.’

  ‘Oh, good!’ Parnell spoke with boyish enthusiasm. ‘I’ll look in again this afternoon.’

  Richards smiled.

  ‘You’re lucky to be able to, my boy. Petrol is like gold these days—at least I find it so.’

  ‘Oh, I manage,’ said Parnell. ‘Luckily I have to dodge about quite a bit. See you later, then.’

  He smiled, sketched a salute, and returned to the two-seater. The benevolent Mr. Richards watched him out of sight, frowned, then returned for a little to the contemplation of his roses.

  Later, he spent some hours in a room beneath the house. This underground room was a show-place in the village. It was the first A.R.P. shelter to be erected by any private individual in Hayling, and was furnished with a comfortable bed, two easy chairs, and all the amenities for a very comfortable sojourn. Although it could be approached from the hall, there were three exits into the grounds: nothing was going to catch Richards unawares. The shelter had been laughed at, tolerantly—until the first bombing raids, when it was discovered that villages were no more secure than towns. Richards’s shelter was then envied, but although he talked vaguely of offering succour to his neighbours in time of need, he had encouraged the building of shelters in other houses and had never invited companionship when raids were severe enough to drive him below.

  He kept a small desk there, and a filing-cabinet—duplicates of those in an upstairs study. Also, in two heavy safes, his collection of stamps. Philatelists from all over the world visited Mr. Charles Richards, alias Baron Karl von Richoffen, and the local police superintendent, an enthusiastic amateur, had spent many happy hours comparing notes—or more accurately, listening to the collector’s quiet, well-modulated voice describing not only stamps but the journeys he had made to increase his collection.

  It was half-past three when a cream-coloured sports car drew up outside Fourways. The fact that powerful and often luxurious cars stopped at the house was taken as an indication that Richards had many wealthy friends. The fact that they continued to arrive—although with less regularity—after the severer rationing of petrol, merely indicated that his friends did not find the war particularly difficult.

  The woman at the wheel removed the ignition key before leaving the car and walking along the short drive, which told curious watchers from the village—which was in good sight of Fourways—that she did not intend to stay long that day. Few of them knew that her surname was Duveen, although most had heard Richards call her Paula. There was a rumour that she was a child by his unsuccessful marriage, and that she lived with her mother in London. None knew where the rumour had started.

  She was good to look at.

  That did not mean that she was beautiful in the accepted sense, although the purist would perhaps have claimed that she was nearer beauty than most of the pretties who adorned the stage and screen. There was a touch of the Garbo about her: she was tall and big-boned, dressed simply but expensively, and wore her hair loosely curled. Her hands and feet were large, but shapely, and she walked with a singular grace.

  The hump-backed servant opened the door.

  ‘Good afternoon, Miss Paula.’

  ‘Hello, Grey. Is he in?’

  ‘Yes, my dear—waiting, as always.’ Richards spoke in a voice which carried to the open windows of the neighbouring house. When the door was closed, the woman followed him through the hall and down the stairs to the underground shelter.

  It was cool, and Paul
a Duveen removed her broad-brimmed hat and sank gratefully into an easy-chair. Her white linen suit and high-necked jumper were severely cut; but for her, they were perfect.

  ‘Well?’ demanded Richards sharply.

  The door was closed and even Grey, who was trusted—as far as a representative of Adolf Hitler trusted anyone—could hear nothing.

  Paula said evenly:

  ‘Tenby’s a prisoner. Hilda’s dead—she managed to kill herself. I don’t know if he tried.’

  Richards drew in a sharp breath. All impression of benevolence disappeared. His face was gaunt; his shoulders hunched.

  ‘So . . . Loftus was too much for them.’

  ‘Not altogether. Loftus was being watched, I’m told—that’s where Tenby fell down. Pah, what does it matter? A man who could fall down on a job like that! I always told you he was useless—this has proved it. It’s lucky he knew very little.’

  Richards nodded, but his eyes showed anger.

  ‘Yes, you have always thought that—and I have always told you that he is one of my most reliable men. It is always the same,’ he went on, coldly, ‘when I am not allowed to work as I wish, things go wrong. Had I been given a week, I could have rid us of the danger from Loftus. Now, he is alert. Always, always it is the same—they do not think I know how to work.’

  Paula said:

  ‘They would not like to hear you say that, Karl.’

  ‘I have told you often not to call me Karl! And there is no one to tell them what I say.’ His lips clamped together so tightly and so viciously that the woman drew back in her chair, startled. ‘You would not be so unwise, Paula—or would you?’

  She said stiffly:

  ‘Don’t be a fool! You know I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Good—I like to know that I can rely on you, my dear Paula. We have so many difficulties that disloyalty is one we must discard immediately. Now—Parnell is calling this afternoon. It is time you were able to show some results with that man.’