The Case of the Running Mouse: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  “Hallo?” a voice said. A man’s voice, and what I might call the voice of a man of the world.

  “Mr. Worrack?” I asked.

  “Speaking.”

  I gave a Whartonian grunt and cleared my voice.

  “This is Ludovic Travers, Mr. Worrack,” I said. “I’ve just received your letter. I shall be glad to see you.” He was cutting in but I went hastily on. “I’m very much of a free-lance these days. Loss of staff, and office, and all that, but you know how things are. Would your flat suit you?”

  “Splendidly,” he said. “When can you come? At once?”

  “In an hour?” I said, and glanced at my watch. “Ten o’clock precisely, that will be.”

  “I’ll be here. And I’m much obliged to you.”

  “Not at all,” I said lamely, and then almost added something about business being business. But there was a click as he rang off, and that was that. The receiver was still in my hand when I knew the extent to which I had committed myself, and when I had replaced it, I think I was smiling rather fatuously and then feeling for my glasses, which is an old trick of mine when at a mental loss or on the edge of discovery. Another minute, and I was setting about my breakfast and deciding on a certain brown suit which was neat and far from gaudy.

  Dromore Place was a quarter of an hour’s walk, and as the morning was sunny I made the mile journey on foot. I had three minutes to spare when I reached the block of flats, and a highly select block it seemed. Flat 34 was on the second floor, and as I tapped at the door my watch showed ten o’clock to the second. Nothing like punctuality to impress a client, I told myself complacently, and then composed my face to something of austerity as the door opened.

  Worrack was a man of about forty, so my first glance at him told me. A second later I thought he was rather older than that, perhaps, because, as he turned towards me, the light from the side window showed the wrinkles round his eyes. But it was a most attractive face, and his voice was as pleasant a baritone as it had sounded over the ’phone.

  “You’re Mr. Travers?” he said, and smiled.

  “And you’re Mr. Worrack?”

  Already he had been ushering me in. Five foot ten was his height and his build rather slim. As he drew back to close the door I noticed he was slightly lame.

  “Shall we sit here?” he said, and waved a hand at the couple of easy chairs by the electric fire. I took a quick look round the room, which was large and airy, for it was a corner one and had two large windows. A door, slightly ajar, was to my right, and a closed door to the left. In the air were two faint scents. The stronger was the kind one sniffs in a club smoking-room, and underneath it was a rather tantalising smell of some attractive perfume.

  “Do let me take your hat,” he said as I was placing it on the carpet beside my chair.

  “No, no,” I said. “I’m not expecting to be here all that long, Mr. Worrack.”

  “You think not?” he said, and gave me a quick look.

  I smiled. “Well, it’s a good opening in any case. Part of the bedside manner. First reassure your client, and all that.”

  He gave me another look. If it had not been at variance with my role I think I should have asked him, with just a touch of the quizzical, what he thought of me. So it came as something of a shock when he put his question.

  “Reassure the client,” he said. “Well, it’s a good idea. And what do you think of this particular client?”

  My fingers went to my glasses as I wondered if I should treat the question seriously.

  “You think it a curious question?” he said, and either it was some trick of the light or there was something cynical in his dry smile.

  “Perhaps no,” I said. “An awkward one, yes. If I give the wrong answers you’ll think you’re employing a fool. If I give the right ones—”

  He laughed. “Then the boot will be on the other foot.” His lace straightened. “But have a shot at it. Take it that I’ve got special reasons for asking.”

  I had brought a new notebook with me, and it was lying ready on my lap. Perhaps it was because there was something so really likeable about him that I discarded somewhat the role of a staid professional man. As I made my first notes I spoke the written words aloud.

  “‘To attempting general description of client—one guinea. Name of client—P. Worrack.’ The P. stands for?”

  “Percival,” he said, and perfectly seriously. “But I’ve changed it unofficially to Peter. Rather a convincing name, Peter, don’t you think?”

  I put the pencil between the pages and closed the book. “It depends on whom you want to convince. As I think you’re married, the change was probably an idea of your wife’s.”

  “Why should you think I’m married?” His eyes had narrowed curiously, and in a moment the face had lost all its attractiveness. The lips clamped together and the cold directness of his look gave the face a hardness. Then it suddenly went and he was smiling again. “I’m really afraid you’re wrong. This isn’t a divorce case, Mr. Travers.”

  “If I had thought it was I shouldn’t have been here,” I told him. “Divorce evidence is not in my line. But where did you lose your leg? The Middle East?”

  “Good Lord!” he said. “How’d you guess that?”

  “The way you walked and the way you sat with it stretched out,” I said. “You can always tell an artificial leg. There’s something about the odd shoe and sock.”

  “As a matter of fact I lost it at Dunkirk,” he said. “Anything else you have noticed?”

  “I don’t know that there is,” I told him. “Except, perhaps, that you spend pretty late nights, and very few days in the country. Your first meal is probably a whisky and soda. And you’re vain of your appearance. Either that, or you’re concerned to make a good impression. Also, at this moment you’re decidedly nervous, and that’s something I shouldn’t always associate with you. In fact, it intrigues me. Which is why I’m anxious to know just why you thought of employing me.”

  “And suppose I’m not nervous?” He shrugged his shoulders.

  “Suppose it’s because . . . well, you were uncommonly shrewd in some of the things you said, and also . . . well, you were hardly the kind I was expecting to see.” He smiled rather lamely. “That sounds a bit rude but perhaps you know what I mean. You’re not the detective type. You’re more like a lawyer with a sense of humour.”

  “Good,” I said, and opened the notebook again. “And now what about getting down to brass tacks. Just what do you want me to do for you, Mr. Worrack?”

  He leaned back in his chair. In the intervals of talking he would nervously smooth his moustache with the back of a finger.

  “It’s a longish story,” he said, and then gave me another of those quick challenging glances. “I take it everything’s in strict confidence?”

  “Otherwise I shouldn’t be here,” I told him portentously. “You can trust me as you would your doctor or your lawyer. But, before you begin. Just why did you decide to employ me? What I mean is that your letter was either not too true to fact or else you have a good memory. My name hasn’t appeared in the Press in connection with a case for at least three years.”

  He gave me another quick look.

  “I admit it,” he said. “It was really a man at my club who mentioned your name. He didn’t want his own name mentioned.” Then he was going on just a bit too quickly. “But about what I was going to say. It concerns a Mrs. Morbent—Georgina Morbent. You’ve heard the name?”

  I shook my head. “I’m afraid I’ve been out of things recently. A special government job these last three years.”

  “Her husband was killed in the Blitz, in February of ’41.” he went on, “and he left her a packet. Over half a million, when duties were paid. I’ve known her since she was a kid, and I knew him too. Very good chap he was. Kept a horse or two in training, and Georgina’s still got a jumper or two over in Ireland. Her father was a Colonel Amber, also something of a racing man, and she has a sister, a Mrs. Grays—B
arbara Grays. Her husband was killed in France just before Dunkirk.”

  He waited till I looked up to show that I had the details down.

  “Georgie’s about twenty-eight,” he said. “A fine-looking girl, and a damn good sort. The sporting type and a simply wonderful head of red hair. What they call a man’s woman. Barbara’s about six years older. She has just about enough money to jog along with, by the way, and Georgie used to insist on making her an allowance. And where I come in is this way. We were always old friends, the three of us, and when I got my packet at Dunkirk, Georgie insisted on doing something for me. I don’t mind telling you I hadn’t any prospects except my pension. I’ve always been a pretty fast mover—as you judged—and luck hasn’t been any too good. Even so, I couldn’t let anyone—even like Georgie —make me an allowance or anything like that. What she decided was that she’d set me up in business. Perhaps we hit on the idea together; at any rate she put up the cash.” He hesitated for a moment or two while the knuckle moved backwards and forwards over the moustache. “What she invested in was a kind of night club. To be perfectly frank, what the papers call a gambling den.”

  His smile had something cynical about it as he caught the quick lift of my eyebrows.

  “I thought you’d be surprised. But this is a different show from the usual sort. As a matter of fact, it was meant to be so from the word ‘go.’ I don’t claim to be a philanthropist but I do run everything on the square. All sorts of people—officers on leave if you like—do feel the need of a gamble and I cater for it. No terrific stakes and no excessive drinking. Numbers strictly limited and the company carefully scrutinised. The atmosphere’s that of a private party, if you know what I mean.”

  “Any bribing of the police?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Not so that you’d notice it. Something occasionally in the right quarters. Not that we have anything to fear, except, of course, the letter of the law. I take it you understand what I mean?”

  “And how’s the investment prospered?”

  “We clear about two hundred a week,” he said. “Doesn’t sound much, but it’s safe. We’ve dodged all trouble except once, and then nothing came out. Just a change of quarters, that’s all. And we have an excellent clientele. The right sort of people and just enough of them.”

  He waited while I made a note or two, and from the nervous stroking of that cavalry moustache I guessed he was near the main point. I put the question to help him along.

  “And now something’s gone wrong?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Georgina’s disappeared. That’s what we think, I mean—that’s what I wanted to see you about.” This was his story. Three weeks previously, Georgina suddenly announced her intention of going over to Ireland to see the trainer in charge of her couple of jumpers, and she obtained the necessary permit. Worrack saw her off at Euston by the 1.30 p.m. train, and she seemed her usual self, though, as he now remembered, just a bit chatty and rather too bright, as if she was concealing some nervousness. With her she had only one trunk, and no maid. But the following morning Worrack received a package which had been posted in London the previous morning. It was the deeds of the club premises legally conveyed to him, certain IOU’s he had insisted on signing, and a brief letter.

  Dear Peter,

  I know you’ll think me an awful fool but these are tricky times—submarines and bombings and all sorts of unexpected things. So these are yours, with my love, just in case we shouldn’t meet again. Bless you, darling, and don’t rag me too much when I really bob up again.

  Georgie

  “It was only by luck that I didn’t put these IOU’s on the fire,” Worrack said. “You’ll think I’m a bit of a swine, taking a present like that, but you don’t know what she was like. The contents of this envelope mean about twenty thousand quid to me, and that was nothing to her. All the time I had to be holding her back. I could have had it all long ago if I’d been that kind, but I just didn’t happen to be. I insisted on a strict business basis.”

  “Just a moment,” I said. “What I’d like to do is analyse your feelings when you got the letter. Am I right in saying you were grateful in . . . well, what I’d call a warm, amused kind of way? You thought she’d got her own way in her own way?”

  “That’s it exactly,” he said. “I was damn fond of Georgina, and she was of me. You won’t mind my telling you this, but one day not so long ago she said to me, ‘You’d like to ask me to marry you, and you would do it if it weren’t for my money.’ That wasn’t quite what she said, but that’s the hang of it. Then, before I could get a word in, she said she wasn’t marrying a second time. Kids and a home and all that sort of thing weren’t in her line.” He shook his head. “And they weren’t.”

  “To get back to the letter,” I said. “You believed in that nervousness about submarines and bombing?”

  “Good God, no!” he told me bluntly. “There never was a woman less nervous. She was in London during most of the blitz and never turned a hair. And about submarines, there’s never been an attack reported in the Irish Sea. But there’s something more, and this time it’s the real mystery. It was a Wednesday when she left Euston. That same Wednesday night two people whose word I can trust said they saw her at Euston Station, just getting into a taxi, and a porter with that trunk of hers. It was just before blackout time, but they hadn’t a shadow of doubt but what it was Georgie. They knew her as well as I did, and what with that hair of hers and other things they couldn’t have made a mistake.”

  “What did you do about it?”

  “Acted like a fool,” he said. “I thought they had made a mistake. Wouldn’t you have thought the same thing? Then, a day or two went by and she hadn’t written or wired. That didn’t worry me too much, because she was very erratic about correspondence, and she wasn’t the demonstrative sort. Then a week went by and we—I mean Barbara Grays and I—got in touch with Ireland and found she’d never made the crossing. She’d written that she was coming but she just hadn’t turned up. After that we waited a bit longer, then something had to be done.”

  “You’ve applied to the police?”

  He gave a queer sort of smile. “That’s just what I didn’t want to do. You see, there’d have been all sorts of awkward questions. I didn’t mind a damn about myself but they’d have found out about the place I run and her connection with it, and I wasn’t standing for having her name in the headlines like that. Also we kept hoping something would turn up. She might have lost her memory temporarily. All sorts of things happen these days.”

  “And yet she wasn’t the kind of woman to be subject to an attack like that,” I said. “She showed so little nervousness at Euston that it was only afterwards that you remembered it.”

  “I know,” he said. “The whole thing’s beyond me. The last day or two it’s driven me nearly crazy. Not that I feel that way now—I mean, now you’re here, and we’re going to do something.”

  I shook my head. “Everything you’ve told me, tells me it’s a case for the police,” I said. “They’ve unlimited powers and resources, so to speak. They can press a button and do in half a day what’d take a private firm a month or two, even if they could do it at all. And about your private affairs,” I went on. “The police don’t act in the way you think. They’re not interested in scandal. I don’t say they won’t be pretty strict about that club of yours, and if you apply to them, I’d advise you to close it down straight away. But Mrs. Morbent’s name will be protected, you can be sure of that.”

  “I haven’t got only myself to think of,” he said. “Mrs. Grays thinks my way too, and she’s her sister. And we’re prepared to pay, as I told you. All we want you to do is to find her. If you like, we’ll say this. Get to work at once and if nothing happens in a week or so, then we’ll really apply to the police.”

  “It’s not so simple as all that,” I told him. “The trail’s cold and it’d be sheer blind blazing luck if I picked up a thing in the course of the next few days. Also, when you do apply
to the police, I don’t see how my name can be kept out of things. And, frankly, I don’t care for the police to know that I’ve taken on something that ought to be referred to them at once. The police—Scotland Yard, if you like—and myself have worked together and we have the same standards. The injury to my reputation would be too great. And I still consider that it’s to the police you should apply.”

  I put the notebook in my pocket, reached down for my hat and got reluctantly to my feet. Worrack sat on and his face had a deep dejection. Then as he looked up at me as if he only then realised I was refusing to handle the case, I all at once said something, and before I was really aware I was speaking at all.

  “Perhaps there are one or two things we might talk over,” I said and sat down again. And this is why.

  It was true I was loath to leave the case, for there were features that were definitely intriguing, and some of the reasons I had given to explain my lack of co-operation were far less genuine than I had tried to make out. But why I had sat down was this. Facing me across the room, as I rose, was a large rococo mirror in gesso and gilt, and in it, as if framed, I saw the door that had been on my right—the door that had been ajar.

  In that mirror I suddenly saw gloved fingers at the edge of the door, drawing it slightly more open. Behind that door then, a woman had been listening to our conversation. Most of that conversation had been of a fairly dangerous nature as far as Worrack was concerned, and yet, as I suddenly realised, he must have been aware that the door was ajar. Not only was that door in the line of his eye from the seat he had himself chosen, but when one is about to speak of confidential matters the least precaution one can take is to see that doors are closed. That was why it came to me with a queer instinctive intuition that the woman who had designedly listened to our conversation was that very Georgina Morbent who was supposed to have disappeared!