Dusty Death

by Clifton Robbins

  “Of course I will,” said Crill.

  Harrison paused. “I’m so sorry but there is one very final request. If anything strange of any kind whatsoever happened to you or your fellow journalists or anybody else, for that matter, at the League last Monday morning, you might let me know. Goodbye.”

  Harrison collected Henry and together they went off the boat.

  “But this is Lausanne?” said Henry.

  “Quite right,” answered Harrison.

  “But I thought we were going to Montreux?”

  “We only took tickets to Montreux,” answered Harrison. “And, besides, Mr. Dawnay wouldn’t be waiting for us with a car if we were going all the way to Montreux.”

  “Good lord, so he is,” said Henry, as he saw Dawnay in the distance standing by a motor car and waving to them.

  “That was the second telephone conversation this morning, Henry,” said Harrison as he made towards Dawnay.

  After mutual recognition, Harrison and Henry got into the car with Dawnay and were swiftly driving back towards Geneva.

  “Is everything all right?” asked Harrison.

  “Yes,” answered Dawnay. “I’ve seen nothing suspicious. The flat’s all ready for you. I’ve put the clothes out and you can look at the cupboard yourself.”

  “Thanks awfully,” said Harrison. “We haven’t much time.”

  Henry looked thoroughly bewildered but kept his own counsel, and the car eventually pulled up outside a building which Harrison recognised, from Dawnay’s description, as housing the flat which Twining had persuaded his friend to rent.

  “First floor,” said Dawnay, and they were soon in a pleasantly furnished flat, somewhat old-fashioned from the Geneva point of view, because so many admirable modern blocks of flats have been constructed there in the last few years, but undeniably comfortable.

  Harrison quickly studied the cupboard whose door Dawnay had forced the night before, and then carefully went through the clothes which had been hanging there.

  “And you say there were no papers whatever?”

  “None,” answered Dawnay.

  “Not a piece screwed up or torn off or anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Very well,” answered Harrison. “No trace at all in any other part of the flat?”

  “You had better look for yourself,” said Dawnay.

  A thorough scrutiny of the different parts of the flat brought no result and Harrison prepared to depart.

  “The shop is directly underneath here?” asked Harrison.

  “Yes,” replied Dawnay.

  As they went downstairs and reached the shop level, Harrison noticed two doors opposite to each other.

  “These doors,” said Harrison, trying the handle of each. “Locked, obviously. This one leads into the shop.”

  “Must do,” said Dawnay.

  “And what about the other?”

  “No idea,” answered Dawnay.

  “It must lead somewhere,” said Harrison. “What’s behind here?”

  “I really don’t know,” said Dawnay.

  Harrison and the other two went out into the street and looked down it.

  “A long stretch of shops without a turning,” said Harrison. “Come along and let’s find one.”

  They walked along some distance and Harrison appeared to be counting his paces. The turning found, they went up it and then saw that, in a street behind their own, the shops and flats above them practically backed on to the building in which was located the flat occupied by Dawnay.

  Harrison turned into this street and again started counting his paces, while Dawnay and Henry followed him.

  “This must be the place,” said Harrison, stopping and looking at a shuttered shop. “A bookshop and, roughly, I should say just behind the locked door on the ground floor of your flats, Dawnay.”

  “You think Twining used to come out this way?” asked Dawnay.

  “I should say so,” answered Harrison. “We shall have to make inquiries at the bookshop tomorrow. Well, that settles that, and now I think we had better be getting back to Lausanne.”

  Henry’s face fell, and he seemed on the point of objecting.

  “I’m afraid so, Henry,” said Harrison. “You don’t realise we’re in Montreux really and we couldn’t possibly get back to Geneva yet, but if we catch a suitable train back from Lausanne we may just make our friends believe we did go to Montreux. Had you a special appointment?”

  “Well—” said Henry, hesitatingly.

  “I promise you we’ll get back at the earliest possible moment,” said Harrison.

  They retraced their steps to Dawnay’s flat and then set out on the return journey to Lausanne. This was accomplished in good time, and Harrison proposed that they should settle down in a café near the station until the train from Montreux arrived. Dawnay decided that he would get back to Geneva, and was just moving off when he remembered the photograph he had promised Harrison. This he handed to him and drove away.

  Harrison sat at the café table and studied the photograph of Gilbert Twining very carefully. After a while he passed it to Henry. “What do you make of it?” he said.

  Henry also studied it carefully and then said: “A good face, sir. I should say, a fine face; if anything’s happened to him, whatever reward we might get, I think it would be our duty to try and find the people who did it.”

  “I think you’re right, Henry,” said Harrison. “Poor fellow, he had a rough time. Now, Henry, there’s just one more thing I want to test, but that will have to wait until we get back to the railway station at Geneva.”

  “Although the regulations forbid it,” said Harrison, a little while after, as they were moving in the train towards Geneva, “and I believe we can be fined quite a number of Swiss francs. I think we had both better lean out of the window as we draw into the station.”

  Henry agreed obediently, and they both craned their heads out of the window as the train began slowing down. Their fellow passengers might have been somewhat puzzled but, as likely as not, put it down to the strange habits of the English. “Do you see anybody?” said Harrison.

  “No,” answered Henry. “Yes, wait a minute. That looks like the fellow who saw us go on to the boat.”

  “The very same,” said Harrison “I had an idea he would come and meet us. An excellent watchdog, Henry. So we have been to Montreux after all.”

  Chapter XI

  Getting Warmer

  “News from London, Henry,” said Harrison when Henry made his first appearance the next morning.

  “Really, sir,” answered Henry, unimpressed.

  “You seem to have forgotten Mrs. Humbleby’s lodger, Henry.”

  “I must say, sir, I never thought of him,” said Henry. “We seem to have been so busy about Mr. Twining that I haven’t given it a thought.”

  “They identified him pretty quickly, so it seems,” answered Harrison. “He came from Leeds. Fairly young—in the early thirties. His father is a history professor. Very cut up about it. Name of Mountford. Young man’s name is Timothy. Tim Mountford.”

  “Why on earth did he want to wear a wig and call himself John Smith?”

  “Exactly, Henry,” replied Harrison. “You’ve asked the essential question. Now the answer isn’t quite clear. Young Mountford seems to have been a great student of medieval history and was showing promise when the war came. He joined up as soon as he was able and got through pretty well, but when it was over he found there was very little room for anybody whose main credential in life was an overwhelming affection for medieval history. He had a little money and so he wandered about the Continent, tutoring when he could, in fact, doing all sorts of odd scholastic jobs. Wrote to his people at irregular intervals until, two years ago—they’re not sure as to the exact date—he came back to Leeds to see them all. He seemed very happy. Said he had the chance of a good job and thought he would like to see the family before he settled down to it. He told them he would be very busy and they would n
ot hear from him for some time. He went off and they never heard from him again. They were very shocked when they recognised the police photograph.”

  “And what about the police?”

  “They think an open verdict would be the best thing. They suggest that really it is hardly worth my bothering about it now, but if I can pick up anything anywhere about him—pretty vague—they would be grateful, and all the time they will be keeping their eyes open.”

  “I suppose you can’t connect the two jobs in any way, sir?”

  “I’ve tried and I’ve tried, Henry,” said Harrison. “I have kept wandering round Jeanne de Marplay’s appearance after Mrs. Humbleby, her knowledge of it, and her following me here. But coincidences do happen. And, Henry, we haven’t really connected her with Twining yet.”

  “No sir,” said Henry, persistently. “But it would make things so much simpler. The drug traffic people are very powerful. Why shouldn’t they be after Mountford as well as Twining?”

  “Why should they?” said Harrison. “It’s all very well but we must have something to go on.”

  “There’s the drugs themselves, sir,” said Henry.

  “Good,” replied Harrison. “But is that enough? Because a man dies of an overdose of drugs, even in suspicious circumstances, in London, that’s no reason why we should connect it with a totally different affair in Geneva, is it?”

  “But that de Marplay woman, sir?”

  “Of course, she herself is a suspicious circumstance, Henry, I agree,” answered Harrison. “But she hasn’t given herself away enough for that. If I could connect the two you may be sure I should be only too pleased, but a link must be found.”

  “I’m very sorry, sir,” said Henry.

  “I’ve had another letter from London, Henry,” said Harrison “One from Miss Graham.”

  “What does she want, sir?”

  “She only wants me to give up the job.”

  “But you can’t do that, sir?”

  “Of course not, Henry, but still she wants me to. She is willing to pay all expenses up to the present and any fee I like to ask, but she would prefer me not to go on with it.”

  “What on earth’s come over her, sir?”

  “It’s for my own sake, Henry.”

  “For your sake, sir. “

  “Yes, she doesn’t think it safe for me to go on with it. I think it’s very decent of her.”

  “You’re laughing at me, sir!”

  “No, I’m not. Henry. I’m telling you the literal truth. It’s all very curious. She’s had a telephone message from someone she didn’t know, and she didn’t seem to try and find out where it came from, but the voice at the other end told her she had been very foolish to send me out here to try and find something out about Twining. She was rather taken aback, she says, because she didn’t think anyone else knew about it—so she couldn’t have talked herself—but then she felt indignant. She told them that she didn’t understand what they were talking about, and asked them to mind their own business.”

  “Good for her,” said Henry.

  “She has some spirit, certainly,” answered Harrison. “And she writes a good letter, too. But the voice, she said, was not so easily put off. It explained to her that she was responsible for my being in Geneva and that, if I continued my inquiries, my life would certainly be in danger. So therefore it was up to her to stop those inquiries being made. She said the voice sounded very convincing, in fact, too much so; and, after careful consideration, she decided that she must think of me first. If there was anything in it at all, she would blame herself for something happening to me. So she reluctantly decided that my mission was at an end.”

  “But you can’t stop now, sir?” said Henry, almost pathetically.

  “Just a minute, Henry,” added Harrison, with a smile. “This remarkable woman added a postscript that if I really intended to go on, any money I needed was still at my disposal.”

  “That’s all right,” said Henry, with obvious relief.

  “It is all right,” said Harrison. “Quite all right. You see, Henry, it’s just the thing to make me go on. Why should they take the trouble to worry Miss Graham like that? Because they don’t like me being here. They are not ready for me, Henry, that’s what it really means, and they’d give anything to get me out of Geneva. If I’m quick about it, Henry, I ought to find the thing they don’t want me to find. There are clues about they can’t get rid of, and I’m too uncomfortably near them. It’s like a game of ‘Hunt the Thimble,’ Henry; we’re warm—because they say so—but we can’t see any sign of the thimble yet.”

  “But,” said Henry.

  “Yes, Henry, but?”

  “But they seem to think your eyesight’s strong, sir.”

  “Thank you, Henry,” answered Harrison. “My eyes have got to see something movable or immovable or a bit of both and recognise, at the same time, what it means to me.”

  “And what is the programme for to-day, sir?” asked Henry.

  “Well, Henry, first we have the passport committee. Then we have a number of inquiries. We must see Dawnay. I would rather like to see Mr. Crill again. We must see the keeper of the bookshop. We must see an English clergyman. There seems quite a lot to do—”

  At that moment the telephone bell rang. Harrison dashed to answer it while Henry muttered, despairingly: “I expect it’s that woman again.”

  Harrison nodded in the affirmative as he answered the greeting from Miss de Marplay which came melodiously over the telephone. Was he doing anything for lunch; she would love him to come to her hotel if he could spare the time. There were such a lot of things she wanted to say to him; such important questions to ask. Couldn’t he really? What a pity. Well, what about to-morrow? He would. How splendid. And he might be able to give her some information? That was most intriguing. She would almost die of impatience waiting for to-morrow.

  “You’re going to lunch with her to-morrow?” asked Henry, incredulous.

  “Henry,” answered Harrison. “It will just fit in with our scheme.”

  “Our scheme?” queried Henry.

  “Well, mine, at the moment, Henry,” said Harrison. “But ours eventually, and Dawnay’s, too. He’ll have to be in this. We shall need all the help we can get. By the way, Henry, where did you get to eventually last night?”

  “A man I met at the reception—English, of course—asked me to take coffee at his flat,” answered Henry. “Some of the young ladies employed in Geneva were there, too.”

  “Henry, you’re wonderful,” said Harrison. “You certainly have a way with you. Now, in my scheme, there seems to be the need of someone to help us who is entirely unconnected with us at present. Someone who might be willing to do a little watching—a girl might be best.”

  “I think I can fix you up, sir,” answered Henry.

  “I thought you could,” said Harrison. “What’s her name?”

  “Miss Warley, sir,” replied Henry. “Mona Warley—”

  “A charming name, Henry.”

  “A charming girl, sir.”

  “The most charming of those you met last night?”

  “Yes, I think one could honestly say that, sir,” said Henry, quite solemnly. “The conversation turned to you, sir, last night. It always does turn to you and Miss Warley, in particular, seemed to be fascinated by anything I could tell her. She said she’d give her ears—”

  “Charming ears, of course, Henry?”

  “Very, sir. She said she’d give them to be able to help you in a case. I think she meant it, too. She’s no fool, sir. I’m certain of that, and I could soon get in touch with her, if you wanted her.”

  “Well, the others are using a woman,” said Harrison. “Why shouldn’t we?”

  “If you think it’s necessary—” commented Henry, as if an ending of such a sentence should be definitely left to take care of itself.

  They both made their way to the passport committee, but Henry soon left Harrison to his own devices while he went himself
in search of a certain Miss Warley. Harrison warned him not to be away too long as the secretary of the committee advanced towards him.

  “I must apologise for troubling you, Mr. Harrison,” said the secretary, “but there seems to have been a terrific outcry in the Press over the week-end about our decision to sit in private.”

  “Very curious,” said Harrison.

  “Certainly curious,” answered the secretary, “because it seems out of all proportion to our importance. I had thought we were a committee which no one would notice. But we seem to have attracted an astonishing amount of attention. It’s very annoying, you know.”

  “It must be,” said Harrison, sympathetically. “But is it my fault?”

  “Some of the French papers say so.”

  “What?” exclaimed Harrison, jumping up in surprise.

  “Yes,” answered the secretary. “Here’s a column in a Paris newspaper. It makes a general attack on the League and its methods. Says that the old diplomacy has come back. Secret meetings and decisions behind closed doors. Finally, Great Britain is at the bottom of it all, as usual. An unusually clever and unscrupulous representative, Mr. Harrison, has been sent by the British Government to Geneva, and there is no knowing what intrigues will go on in the darkness which, the paper adds, has been specially arranged at Mr. Harrison’s request.”

  “That’s a bit thick,” said Harrison.

  “I know it is,” replied the secretary. “But you understand, Mr. Harrison, it has made things rather difficult. We want to get something done about this passport business, and I can tell you—and I know these committees well by now—they’ll spend their whole time discussing whether they have private sittings or not, unless something happens. I can’t see them getting down to the business part at all.”

  “Yes, I realise that,” answered Harrison. “And I certainly don’t want to make your work more difficult. I know you have a thin time enough as it is. I’ll fix it up all right for you. You tell the chairman that I would like to make a personal statement directly the meeting begins. Everything will be all right.”