“Liar,” said Reck.
When the speech was over Hambledon sat up and said, “To think there was a time when I could have hit that howling dervish on the head with a brick and dropped him into the Isar, and nobody would have bothered.”
“Alas for wasted opportunities,” said Reck.
“I always think of him,” said Fräulein Rademeyer, “as the funny little man who talked so much and had such dreadful manners.”
“He is just the same today,” said Hambledon, “except that he is no longer funny.”
“I suppose this means war,” said Reck.
“War within a week unless a miracle happens,” said Hambledon.
“And if a miracle does happen, my dear?” asked the old lady.
“It might be postponed for a year, not more.”
But Chamberlain flew to Berchtesgaden on the fourteenth, and the miracle began to appear. The British and French governments put pressure on the Czechs to come to terms, and as they did, so Hitler raised his terms. Another flight, to Godesburg this time, with Hitler demanding the cession of the Sudetenland to Germany. “The last problem which must be solved, and which will be solved, confronts us,” he said in another speech at Berlin, and added, “This is the last territorial claim which I have to make in Europe.”
“My dear, can one believe him?” said Fräulein Rademeyer doubtfully.
“No,” said Hambledon promptly. “Does it sound as if anyone did? They are calling up the Army; they have mobilized the Fleet.”
“There is a notice outside the Underground Station about where we are to go to receive our gas masks,” she said, “and I hear they are sending thousands of children away from London.”
“They are digging trenches in the parks,” said Reck.
“I never ought to have left Germany,” said Hambledon gloomily. “I might have been able to do something if I’d stayed; I’m helpless here.”
“Goebbels would have had you assassinated,” said Reck. “He tried hard enough.”
“I ought to have bumped off Goebbels, but I didn’t even try. I have no excuse; I knew this was coming.”
“My dear, that would have been murder,” said Ludmilla Rademeyer.
“Nothing of the sort. Killing vermin isn’t murder; it’s an imperative duty, and I failed in it,” said Hambledon savagely.
Fräulein Rademeyer glanced at Reck, who merely raised his eyebrows and said nothing. There was no arguing with Hambledon in this mood.
On September 29th Chamberlain flew to Munich, where in company with Daladier and Mussolini, for the time being on the side of peace, Hitler was prevailed upon to sign an agreement on the Sudeten problem.
“ ‘Peace for our time,’ ” said Hambledon, quoting the Prime Minister. “I don’t believe he said it; he must know better. He said, ‘Peace for a time.’ That’s what he said. I give it a year.”
“I hope you’re right,” said Reck. “It might be a lot less.”
14. Mrs. Ferne’s Guest
Marden took his friend’s advice and lay low at the flat, growing a moustache, practising card tricks, and being bored stiff. The fact that as the moustache grew it became more and more evidently ginger made it funnier but not more exciting.
“I can’t think why it’s this colour,” he said, inspecting it in a mirror. “My hair’s brown; why doesn’t it match?”
“I’ve never seen a moustache which looked so obviously false,” said the amused Warnford. “You’ll have people pulling it to see if it comes off.”
“Even that would be a pleasant change from staying indoors for weeks on end. How long is this going to take to pass the unshaven stage?”
“Oh, not long. Only another fortnight or so,” said Warnford unkindly. But the next fortnight was filled with the Sudeten crisis, and anxiety replaced boredom as the historic days dragged by.
“I shall go back in the Army, of course,” said Warnford.
“I expect they’ll recall me to the colours,” said Ashling. “If so be as they don’t, I’ll recall meself.”
“I suppose they’ll have me?” said Marden. “I’m turned forty.”
“You’ve no need to tell ’em so, sir. There’s many a man in the Army whose birth sustificate’s got the wrong year on it.”
But Munich came and postponed the war, and Marden’s moustache grew from shadow to substance.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Something ought to be done about Mrs. Ferne. Blackbeard has apparently gone abroad from Dover and stayed there; the Johnson brothers have got fifteen years for drug trading. I don’t think I’d better go to the Spotted Cow just now, even for the pleasure of talking to Gunn, and Mrs. Ferne is our only chance. We know she’s in with ’em, whoever else isn’t.”
“Carried,” said Warnford cheerfully. “What shall we do about it?”
“I think I’ll go and spend a few days at her hotel. It will be a change too. If I wear glasses and brush my hair straight back I shouldn’t be too readily recognizable, even if the police are still snooping round her. Isn’t there some stuff you can brush into your hair to make it white? What do they powder footmen with?”
“Isn’t it just flour? I don’t know. A theatrical make-up shop would be the place. I’ll go down to Wardour Street tomorrow morning if you really want something. You can’t have white hair with a ginger moustache, can you?”
“I can powder the moustache too; it’ll tone it down a bit. I don’t want white hair all over—merely that suspicion of silver at the temples which always looks so respectable; I can’t think why. It’s nearly as good as a bank reference and much easier to produce.”
So Mr. Marchmont arrived at the hotel in Princes Square one evening in time for dinner. The dining room was set out with many small tables, some to accommodate two people and some four; Mr. Marchmont shared one of the smaller ones with an elderly colonel since the place seemed rather full. The colonel was very inclined to be friendly.
“Sit down, sir, sit down. No, that place doesn’t belong to anybody; I shall be glad to have a stable companion at feeding time.”
The next table remained unoccupied for some time until a lady came in late, an elderly woman, softly stout, unfashionably dressed in trailing draperies. She greeted the colonel in passing, and he rose to his feet to answer, calling her Mrs. Ferne.
“Charming woman,” he told Marden sotto voce, “charming. Only got one weakness, cats. Got about half a dozen of the beasts here. One’s a hulking great parti-coloured brute, tortoise-shell tabby or something. Came into my bedroom the other morning and started prowling round. I soon booted it out. Can’t stand cats. When I was at Ahmedabad in ’08 my bearer kept cats, and they were all over the place. Cats in the bathroom, cats under the verandah, cats everywhere. I soon thinned ’em out. I could shoot in those days.”
“I wonder the management allows it,” said Marden. “Hotels don’t generally like pets, especially London hotels.”
“Oh, she’s privileged. She’s lived here I don’t know how long. She’s got a pull with the management—owns some of the shares, I shouldn’t wonder. She’s given up bringing the cats down to meals; people objected to losing their Dover sole off their plates if they took their eyes off it for a second. But she’s got a pull all right. Feller came here one evening with a bull terrier. Nice well-behaved beast. I like bull terriers. But Mrs. F. came downstairs with her half-dozen beauties trailing after her, and he forgot his manners. Never laughed so much in all my life. Cats everywhere: cats up the curtains, cats behind the pictures with their heads sticking over the top, believe it or not, even a cat on the top of that grandfather clock in the lounge, and the dog leaping from one chair to another after ’em. Laugh! I was helpless. But the feller had to go. Left next morning after breakfast. Oh, she’s got a pull.”
“She must have,” said Marden, “though I don’t mind cats myself. I rather like them.”
“You can have ’em, for me,” said the colonel.
Mrs. Ferne found the new visitor quite
delightful, especially after he had helped her to bandage a long slit in Persephone’s hind leg. Persephone had had a night out and had apparently fallen into low company.
“So foolish, is it not, Mr. Marchmont, the way most men seem to think it’s manly to dislike cats? I blame Kipling very much for encouraging the idea in small children—in the Just So Stories, you know. ‘The Cat That Walked by Himself’—of course you’ve read it. Why shouldn’t cats walk by themselves if they want to?”
“Why not?” said Marden. “In fact, it’s just as well. Be a bit awkward if they expected us to romp over the roof-tops with ’em in the moonlight, what?”
He got on very well with Mrs. Ferne, who kindly asked him to have tea with her in her sitting room. It was a pleasant sunny room on the first floor with the bedroom beyond it and a small iron balcony overlooking the dusty laurels and smeary grass of the hotel garden. He found her an amusing woman who had travelled extensively and observed what she saw; if she tried to pump him occasionally about his past, his connections, and his interests, that was only to be expected of a hotel acquaintance, and she did it unobtrusively and with dignity. Had it not been for Ashling’s account of the curious interview with Smith, the Johnson servant, when Mrs. Ferne not only paid out money on demand but apparently treated the man on terms of equality, Marden would almost have taken her for the ordinary hotel type of retired globe-trotter, only distinguished by her cats—almost. For there was something about her, as Ashling had said, which was not quite right. The stout figure, the trailing draperies, the stick she used in walking, all suggested the inertia of advancing years, but something in her carriage contradicted that and suggested dynamic energy instead, as a cat’s lazy stretching suggests the tigerish leap in reserve. “A dangerous woman,” said Marden to himself, and became even more friendly than before.
She told him one day that she was expecting a guest to dinner that evening. “Such a dear fellow, and I have known him ever since he was in the nursery. His mother was a school friend of mine, poor Emmie! She died, you know—why do I say ‘you know’? Of course you don’t—about three years ago. He is very polite to an old woman; he always comes to see me when he is in Town.”
Marden had intended to go out that evening, but he changed his mind. When Mrs. Ferne trailed graciously across the dining room to her table she was followed by a tall man whom Marden did not see very well at first because he passed behind his chair. After the stranger had sat down Marden looked casually at him and was glad he himself had had the forethought to arrive early to dinner. One is so much less conspicuous as one of a crowd of seated diners than when one walks alone across a room. The visitor had a black beard, and Marden remembered distinctly the crisp stiffness of it against his knuckles when he hit it at Frog Farm. The man was Blackbeard.
Marden looked away quickly and reminded himself firmly how much spectacles, greying hair, and a moustache had changed his appearance. A man is apt to remember another man with whom he has fought. When the stranger’s eyes did meet his, however, they did so without a sign of recognition in them, and Marden breathed more freely.
Snatches of conversation floated across from Mrs. Ferne’s table. She was telling him at one time about a letter she had had from somebody called Vera, and Anna was quite a big girl now, nearly sixteen, and getting more like her father every day. At another time he was telling her about a visit to some mutual friends. “George practically runs the place now, you know; the poor old man’s getting a bit doddery. Well, he’s turned eighty, isn’t he?” It all sounded so kindly and natural, Marden blinked for a moment and looked again. It was Blackbeard all right.
The old colonel at his table leaned across and said in a low tone, “Mrs. Ferne’s boy friend’s here again.”
“Oh?” said Marden. “Does he often come, then?”
“No, not often. Seen him two or three times. Can’t stand the fellow. One of those stand-off mind-your-own-business-damn-you wallahs.” From which Marden concluded that the colonel had displayed a too kindly interest in the visitor and been snubbed. “I tell you what,” went on the colonel. “I don’t believe the fellow’s English.”
“Oh, really,” said Marden, surprised by an acuteness he did not expect. “What makes you think that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. One senses these things when one’s knocked about the world a lot, you know. Fellow’s name’s Richards—that’s English enough—but I bet his mother was a foreigner. I know he was educated abroad, anyway.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Not exactly. Asked him what school he was at, and the fellow bit my head off. Well, if you’ve been to a decent English school, why not say so, what?”
“Perhaps he was chucked out,” suggested Marden uncharitably. “I was at Tonbridge myself,” he added with a laugh.
“There you are. You were at Tonbridge and you say so at once. I was at Haileybury. Besides, one can tell. This fellow, pah! Can’t stand him.”
The hotel guests repaired to the lounge for coffee, and Marden found a seat within earshot of Mrs. Ferne. Unfortunately the other half of his little settee was immediately occupied by a lady who seized the opportunity to tell him all about the prophecies embodied in the design of the Pyramids and the layout of their passages and rooms. She was adept at the practice of dodging interruption; possibly she had come to expect it, and her voice flowed on and on, drowning the conversation of Mrs. Ferne and Mr.—what was it?—Richards. As the only words he caught were “Persephone” and “smoke-grey,” he did not seem to have missed much. Not, of course, that they would have said anything significant in such surroundings, but he did not want to miss anything they said, good, bad, or trivial.
“As no doubt you know,” said his tormentor, “the main passage in the Great Pyramid is at first level, then rises gradually, and finally quite sharply. This is where the British races, in which I include, of course, not only the Dominions but the United States of America as well, have their destinies clearly marked out for them so plainly that a child could understand. The length of the level portion——”
Mrs. Ferne rose to her feet, saying, “Come and see her for yourself; I shall be glad of your opinion,” and led the way upstairs, followed closely by the affectionately deferential Mr. Richards. Now, if only Marden were sitting on Mrs. Ferne’s little iron balcony all in the dark instead of on this ridiculous sofa being talked to by this absurd woman, he might do some good. As it was——
“You remember the inverse parallel I mentioned just now,” she said.
“What? Oh, ah, yes, of course.”
“The seventy-five cubits.”
“Yes, yes.”
“There is a considerable divergence of opinion upon the exact significance of this seventy-five cubits——”
“I heard a very interesting explanation of that the other day,” said Marden, feeling that something had got to be done about this. “You know the width of the Ark was fifty cubits?”
“Yes, but——”
“And seventy-five cubits is half as much again?”
“Yes, but——”
“That is a ratio of three to two, is it not?” he went on firmly. “You must admit that.”
“No one would deny it, but——”
“Which proves that if the peace of the world is to be maintained the size of the British Navy must exceed all the other navies of the world in the ratio of three to two.”
She stared at him.
“There is only one obvious conclusion to be drawn from this very striking coincidence,” continued Marden impressively. “Do you know what it is?”
“Er—no——”
“Join the Navy League.”
He rose to his feet with an air of subdued triumph and stalked solemnly up the stairs before the lady had time to think of an answer.
At the head of the stairs a passage ran straight ahead for a short distance and was then crossed by another running right and left with doors on both sides of the corridor. Mrs. Ferne’s room was the thi
rd door along the turning to the left. Marden turned left and was annoyed to find an electrician upon a flight of steps near the third door, doing something to one of the passage lights. Very tiresome. However rightly absorbed in his duties an electrician may be, the spectacle of a gentleman listening intently at the keyhole of someone else’s door must strike him as odd. People seldom listen at their own. Marden pulled a handful of letters out of his pocket and dropped several of them. It took him some time to pick them up because he was clumsy and dropped two of them again. There was no sound of talking inside Mrs. Ferne’s door; he had an idea there might not be. If they had anything very private to say they would be safer in the bedroom beyond. He straightened up, opened the door quietly, and walked straight in, with an excuse ready if there had been anyone there. The sitting room was empty, with the light on, and the murmur of voices came from the bedroom beyond.
Marden left the door ajar behind him, walked across the room, and listened intently at the bedroom door.
He heard Blackbeard’s voice, which was easy to recognize, and then the voice of another man, which surprised him. “How many more have they got in there?” he thought. “Committee meeting, or what?”
Then he distinctly heard Blackbeard’s voice again, and he was describing somebody.
“About five foot eight inches tall. Slim build, rather broad shoulders. Brown hair parted on left, turning grey at temples. Short face, deep cleft in chin, thin nose, brown eyes, thin eyebrows, brown complexion, reddish moustache, left ear protrudes more than the right——”
“My golly,” said Marden to himself, “he’s describing me!”
“Eyes set rather deep, strong hands, signet ring left little finger. Dressed in dinner jacket, boiled shirt, overcoat probably—what colour’s his overcoat?”
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