The Numbered Account

by Ann Bridge

  June clutched at this—which was letting her out rather liberally.

  ‘Well yes, I did know it was wrong, in a way; but the little they told me, I thought of it as a bit of a fiddle—rather a lark, really, just to show up at that bank and say Mr. B. was my guardian and Wright my fiancé. As if I’d marry him! And then to have my lovely outfit. But I am sorry now—I wish I’d never done it. You don’t think’— again there was a return of that curious anxiety—‘that it’s doing any real harm, do you?’

  Julia wondered what this odd little being meant by ‘real’ harm, when another girl’s fortune had been stolen.

  ‘I hope it won’t,’ she said soberly. ‘But we must get Miss Armitage’s papers back, you know.’

  ‘Oh yes, I see that. And you’ll forgive me?—please do. I’d no idea it was a friend of yours that the money belonged to.’

  Julia could have laughed at this further example of modern morality.

  ‘Yes, of course I forgive you. Now do look after that foot, and if you move anywhere else be sure to let me know—I expect to be at the Silberhorn for another ten days at least.’ She looked again at her watch—twenty to one; she didn’t want ‘Mr. B.’ to catch her in June’s room.

  ‘Oh, I will,’ June said earnestly. ‘You’ve been so sweet. I’m ever so sorry I was nasty just now—all along you’ve helped me, whatever your reasons.’

  ‘That’s all right. Goodbye, dear.’

  June held out her arms—awkwardly, over the tray—and gave her a long kiss. ‘You will forget what I said?’ she muttered.

  ‘Yes. And you’ll trust me?’

  ‘Oh, I will. Who else have I to trust to, out here?’

  ‘Trust in God,’ said Julia, and went out.

  Chapter 10

  Interlaken—the Golden Bear and the Gemsbock

  When Julia left June’s room she found herself in that little dark narrow corridor, now feebly lit by a single electric bulb, left on presumably by the maid who had brought up the tray; in its faint glow two glassy eyes shone out at her—startled, she went over to look. A stuffed marmot, rather moth-eaten, occupied the blind end of the passage, standing on a plaster rock; Julia laughed softly to herself—how Swiss!—and then gave a tiny sigh, recalling that happy morning on the Schynige Platte, only three days ago, and how Antrobus showed her and Mrs. Hathaway live marmots on the way up. Turning from the animal, she examined the corridor. It had only four doors, June’s and three others. Were Wright’s and Borovali’s rooms up here too, she wondered? Softly, carefully, she tried the second door on June’s side; it was locked. Feeling that she might be taking a foolish risk, but unable to resist the temptation, she went silently back towards the marmot, with its silly seal’s face, and tried the last door on the left, opposite June’s. To her surprise it opened, and she stepped into a small room exactly like the one she had just left, even to the pegs on the wall in one corner; on these, carefully suspended from a coat-and-trouser hanger, hung a wind-cheater and a pair of pale corduroy slacks. Julia recognised them at once; she was in Wright’s room.

  Her heart began to beat rather fast. She moved cautiously over to the window, which gave onto a timberyard shaded by an immense walnut-tree; beyond, over a vista of shingled roofs rose the steep wooded ridge of the Harder-Kulm, its pine-toothed crest cutting the sky like a green saw. She looked round the sparsely-furnished apartment and now noticed that there was a door communicating with the next room, which stood ajar; she tiptoed over and looked in. In the ewer on the wash-stand just opposite was a huge bunch of Waldmeister; she pushed the door a little farther open—standing at the chest of drawers under the window and methodically going through its contents stood Antrobus.

  For a moment Julia paused, undecided whether to advance or retreat; then the fact that he was rummaging through what were almost certainly Mr. Borovali’s clothes suddenly gave her, she thought, the answer to the question that had been tormenting her for days, and the relief was so great that she gave a little gasping laugh. The man looked round.

  ‘Well, well, if it isn’t Fatima!’ This time the name didn’t come like a blow at all; his voice was almost caressing as he turned to her. Still utterly taken aback, Julia came in and sank down on what was presumably Mr. Borovali’s bed; the only chair was covered with underclothes from the chest of drawers.

  ‘How on earth did you know they were here?’ she asked.

  ‘I didn’t, till you showed me. I saw you and that pretty little creature, Miss Armitage’s stand-in, driving along in a Fiaker, and followed you. At Cambridge I used to be a tolerable half-miler, but one doesn’t need a great turn of speed to keep up with an Interlaken horse-cab,’ he said, grinning, as he came and perched beside her on the bed.

  ‘I think we’d better clear off,’ Julia said, suddenly nervous.

  ‘No, we’ve got lots of time. They took packed lunches with them—I asked the old Frau downstairs.’ He was perfectly at ease. As for Julia, a dozen questions were battling for priority in her head—a rather foolish one came out.

  ‘Why on earth do you suppose they leave their doors unlocked?’

  ‘They didn’t. But I happen to be rather good at opening doors.’ He pulled a bunch of curious-looking metal instruments from his pocket. ‘A burglar, you see, rather than a detective,’ he said gaily.

  Julia was rather irritated by his nonchalance.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s about time you came clean?’ she asked crisply. ‘What you said just now about that poor little creature being a ‘stand-in’ sounds as if we were on the same side; but I have to be sure. Can you give me any proof that you are? Colin doesn’t know you.’

  ‘My dear girl, do relax,’ Antrobus said gently, putting his hand on hers. ‘No, your delightful cousin doesn’t know me, and I didn’t know him when we met up at Beatenberg. But he and I are on the same job.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you know him?’ Julia asked suspiciously.

  ‘Oh, the two branches—the same initials, but different numbers, you know. We tackle things on rather separate lines.’

  ‘None of that is proof,’ she objected.

  ‘You are perfectly right—it isn’t; and you are also quite right to make sure. I see that you are every bit as good as Torrens says.’

  Hugh Torrens’s name upset Julia afresh; that was still a sore subject.

  ‘How does Major Torrens come into this?’ she asked, trying to sound indifferent. ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Of course. He’s rather big brass, whereas your cousin is very junior. Look, do stop worrying, Julia, and let me explain. Will you?’ He asked this in a very beguiling voice.

  ‘I wish to goodness you would —I think we’ve been fencing about quite long enough,’ she said.

  ‘Very well. Let’s begin with the birth of the Dragon, like the man who wrote the Life of St. George.’ Julia laughed. ‘I did rather wonder,’ Antrobus pursued, ‘what you were up to when we kept on meeting in all the relevant places—Victoria, and Geneva, and so forth. And when you seemed in such close touch with that girl up at Beatenberg, kissing her in the bus and so on, I became definitely suspicious. So naturally I rang up London to make enquiries, and was put on to Torrens; and he told me all about the really splendid job you’d done in getting Dr. Horvath out of Portugal. It was you who arranged the hide-out for him with that duke who breeds sheep up in the North, wasn’t it? At Gralleira, or some such name.’

  This really was proof, and Julia did at last relax, with infinite relief. But her next question surprised him.

  ‘Do they know your name in Berne?’

  ‘Who? The outfit your cousin works with? Of course. Why?’

  ‘I do wish Colin wasn’t such a clot!’ Julia said. ‘I’ve kept on asking him to check on you there, and he never has. If only he had, I should have known where I was.’

  ‘Well do you know where you are now?’ he asked, very kindly.

  ‘Oh vis-à-vis you, yes at last, thank goodness!’ But the form of the question revived her anxiety on
June’s account —anything might happen if Borovali caught them in his room. ‘Look, have you finished your detection in that chest of drawers?’ she asked— ‘because if so I do think we ought to go. Merligen is no distance away—they might come back quite soon.’

  ‘Why should you think they have gone to Merligen?’ the man asked, staring at her.

  ‘Oh, just a hunch—and a little private detection on my part.’

  ‘Goodness, was it you who triggered off the Merligen thing?’ He shouted with laughter. ‘Do tell me all.’

  ‘I simply won’t, here.’ She got up off Mr. Borovali’s bed; so did he, and she watched with interest the meticulous care with which he rearranged all that worthy’s effects in the drawers he had been examining, polishing the knobs and edges with a silk handkerchief as he closed them. He leaned out of the window and studied the timber-yard below—‘Easy of access isn’t the word,’ he muttered—‘Even a ladder.’ Finally he gathered up the dripping bunch of Sweet Woodruff from the ewer on the wash-stand, and mopped the stalks on the bath-towel. ‘That will tell him nothing—he’ll just think it’s his own feet!’ he said, grinning. ‘All right—where are you going now?’

  ‘I rather thought I’d like to wait and see Mr. B. and Mr. W. come back,’ Julia said. ‘But how do you re-lock this door? And don’t talk in the passage, or the child will hear. Wait till we get down.’

  Again with deep interest she watched him polish the door-handles, and re-lock the door of Wright’s room with one of his skeleton keys. Half-way down the stairs—‘Where do you propose to conduct this piece of detection?’ he asked over her shoulder.

  ‘There’s another little pub just across the Platz, and I thought of having a beer or something in the garden there. It has a nice spindly hedge one could see through— I noticed it.’

  ‘All right—I want a beer, anyhow.’

  In the hall downstairs Antrobus exchanged some friendly remarks with the woman in the grey-flowered apron, ending with the words ‘Auf wiederluoge!’

  ‘Is that the Berner-Deutsch for Auf wiedersehen?’ Julia asked, as they went out into the hot sunny little Platz.

  ‘Yes. “Luoge” and “Look” are obviously the same root —“Till we look again.” Their phrase for “Look here” is like it: “Luoge-Du” — “Look thou!” Amusing, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, charming.’

  The other hotel, the Gemsbock, had a small and rather stuffy garden enclosed in the privet hedge already observed by Julia; over its door a wooden chamois, rather dingy, confronted the gilt bear opposite. Julia went and sat down at a table on the extreme left of the entrance, exactly opposite the door of the Bear, and peered through the straggling hedge.

  ‘Perfect,’ she said in a satisfied tone. ‘We can see everything, but from outside you can’t see a thing—I looked as we came across.’

  ‘How thorough you are!’ Antrobus said laughing, as he sat down opposite her, and laid his bunch of flowers on the table. ‘Now, please tell me why you want to watch these individuals’ return?’

  ‘Well really, I should have thought you could guess that! To see if they’ve been able to drop the papers in Merligen, of course.’

  He gave her a long amused stare.

  ‘You evidently know more about Merligen than I have yet been told. However, we can go into that later. But how do you expect to know, simply from looking at them, whether these unpleasing creatures have left the papers there or not?’

  At this point a pretty waitress in a short-sleeved cotton frock and a lace-trimmed apron came up and asked what they wished.

  ‘Bier,’ Julia said.

  ‘Hell oder dunkel?’

  ‘Hell,’ Julia replied. In German ‘Hell’ merely means light beer; Antrobus also ordered ‘Hell’, and the pretty maid tripped away.

  ‘Well, go on—how will you know, from seeing them?’ Antrobus asked.

  ‘They carried off the papers from the Banque Républicaine in Geneva in a black brief-case, stuffed out fat. If they come back with a thin brief-case, or none, I shall deduce that they unloaded the goods at Merligen; if they bring it back as fat as ever I shall hope that they’ve been stymied there, and still have what we’re after with them.’

  ‘How do you know about the black brief-case? Oh, the little girl, I suppose. You kissed her in the bus to some purpose—no wonder, of course.’

  ‘Don’t!’ Julia said sharply. Her relations with June were beginning to trouble her, they were so equivocal.

  ‘So sorry. But what put you on to Merligen in the first place?’

  ‘Well really, I don’t know what the British Government think they pay you for!’ Julia said. ‘You say you’re functioning out here, and I presume you draw a tolerable salary, since you run a Porsche on it, and yet you never seem to put two and two together. Do you really not know that “Corsette-Air” have their Swiss Agency in Merligen? I told you and Nethersole how I met the little man who runs it in the train, just to make a story—and somehow I got the impression that you did know something about them.’

  ‘Can you tell me why you got that impression?’ he asked, rather seriously.

  ‘Oh, you looked so dead-pan,’ the girl said. ‘People like you and Hugh never seem to realise that that blank expression can be quite as much of a give-away as registering emotion of some sort. Nethersole laughed; you didn’t —and that in itself made me begin to wonder. I hadn’t given two thoughts to the little man before that.’

  Antrobus regarded her across the little table. ‘You are slightly alarming,’ he said—‘especially because your appearance gives so little indication of these gifts. Well, go on—my blank expression at the Palais des Nations focused your suspicions on “Corsette-Air”. So then?’

  ‘When B. and Co. left the Fluss, Colin asked me to try to find out where they’d gone, so I went to Merligen to call on Monsieur Kaufmann at his villa.’

  ‘And what did you find?’

  Julia told him what she had found, and how she had reported to the local police. ‘I was afraid they’d simply take me for a harmless loony; I was absolutely delighted when the Pastor de Ritter rang up and said the police had been to him to check. But Colin was merely furious! Can you tell me one thing?—are they watching that chemist in Berne? Because I do think—’ she broke off with a sudden exclamation. ‘Hullo! Here they are!’

  Peering through the hedge she and Antrobus saw two figures crossing the little Platz towards the Golden Bear—one with a greying beard, the other the young, sinisterly handsome creature whom Antrobus had seen up at Beatenberg; he carried a black brief-case positively distended by its contents. Both men looked hot and out of temper.

  ‘Hooray!’ Julia said under her breath. ‘They’ve not been able to unload them.’

  ‘No, it looks as though you’d stopped that earth. But I’d better find out.’ He made to rise, as the two men entered the other hotel.

  ‘Oh wait a moment, for goodness’ sake! There’s something we must settle.’

  ‘What?’ he asked rather impatiently.

  ‘We shall have to arrange something about June.’

  ‘June? Oh, is that the little creature? Why do we have to settle anything about her? She’s an accessory to a major fraud, and as such liable to quite a long sentence.’

  ‘Oh, accessory my elbow! She’s a nice, harmless child whom these horrible crooks have roped in—well, bribed in—for their own ends, and they’d be absolutely merciless to her if she got in their way, or was a hindrance. They’ve been pretty merciless already’—she recounted their visit to the clinic and the state of June’s foot.

  ‘Oh, that’s where you took her?’

  ‘Yes, and then to Schuhs to gobble—and after we did some shopping. But look—when you pounce, as I suppose you will in a few hours, can’t you do something about her? That ankle of hers needs regular attention—it’s her livelihood. And those toads would just pitch her into the Aar as soon as look at you.’

  ‘What a nice person you are,’ he said. ‘But my
dear, I’m not the one to do the actual pouncing—that’s up to your cousin and his show.’

  ‘Oh!’ Julia was taken aback. ‘Why?’

  ‘I told you. I deal with the local people; Colin’s lot work with Interpol and the Special Police, who handle international crime. We work in, of course, and that’s why I really must go and telephone now.’

  ‘Who to?’

  ‘Well first to Merligen, to find out if B. and K.’—Julia grinned at the familiar phrase—‘succeeded in getting into the Villa Victoria or not. Then I shall report to Berne accordingly, telling them the new address, of course.’

  ‘And then will Colin and Co. pounce?’

  ‘I expect so.’ He got up, and then sat down again. ‘Really, I think I’d better explain the whole set-up, as you seem to be playing these uncontrollable lone hands— and I’m sure no one can stop you! They’d be foolish to try, really, because “the Fatima touch” does seem to produce results.’

  ‘What is the set-up, then?’

  ‘Two-fold. That’s what makes it rather complicated. Large sums of money and securities have been extracted by an elaborate fraud, from a Swiss bank, and naturally the Swiss authorities wish to recover that, lay the thieves by the heels, and save the bank’s good name. But we’— to her surprise he paused, and looked at her consideringly.

  ‘Well, “we” what?’ July asked impatiently.

  ‘You do know what your cousin is after?’ he asked. ‘I don’t want to be the one to tell you.’

  ‘Oh really!’ Julia exploded. ‘No, I know nothing! Except that Colin wrote that some vital papers were in the bank along with the cash; and the Pastor spoke of “the oil question”; and June has described seeing “blue papers with white drawings on them” put into that brief-case we saw just now. So I deduce blue-prints for a hidden pipeline, or an atomic-powered submarine oil-tanker, or something. But does it matter?’