The Corners of the Globe

by Robert Goddard

  ‘Sorry. You’d know, of course. But what’s the problem? You’re a past master at losing a tail.’

  ‘I can’t afford to lose him. It’d make Tomura suspect I’m up to no good.’

  ‘He wants you to lead him to le Singe?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Not sure. Either he needs to know something le Singe knows or he needs to stop le Singe telling it to anyone else.’

  ‘How could he do that?’

  ‘Oh, by killing him, I reckon.’ Morahan took another sip of tea. ‘This could use a shot of bourbon in it, y’know.’

  With a disapproving frown, Malory fetched a bottle of Jim Beam down from the shelf behind her, walked across to where Morahan was sitting and poured some into his cup. ‘That thing you agreed to do for Sir Henry, Schools . . .’

  ‘Yuh?’

  ‘Was le Singe anything to do with it?’

  ‘I’m not sure. But it would fit with le Singe stealing something from the Japanese delegation: a nugget of intelligence that was pure gold to Henry, maybe.’

  ‘Intelligence concerning Count Tomura?’

  ‘Well, let’s ask ourselves why he’s here. The official story is Premier Hara wanted to reinforce the delegation as the conference entered its final stages. The unofficial story is he sent Tomura to take over from Saionji in all but name because he thinks the old boy’s gone soft. There were riots in Korea at the beginning of March and Hara may have feared Saionji would fail to block Korean representatives getting a hearing at the conference. But what if both stories are wrong? What if Tomura persuaded Hara to send him for reasons of his own? He’s been here a week. It’s a six-week voyage from Japan. So, he must have set off around March the tenth. Henry was already on the track of his great secret by then.’

  ‘Is that what he called it – his “great secret”?’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘But he never even hinted what it was?’

  ‘Only that he could use my help to get to the bottom of it, but was determined to try even if I turned him down.’

  ‘Which there was no chance you’d do?’

  ‘I owed the man my life, Malory. What d’you think?’

  ‘I think he asked the right guy.’

  Morahan took a swig of the reinforced tea. ‘That’s a whole lot better.’

  Malory smiled. ‘Have you ever thought you should’ve told Max about this?’

  ‘“If anything happens to me, Schools, don’t breathe a word to my family. Especially my son James.” That’s what Henry said. Those were his exact words. I reckon he must have said something similar to Ribeiro, his old friend from the Brazilian delegation. So, we’ve both kept our mouths shut. I figured it was best to let Henry’s quest – whatever it was – die with him.’

  ‘But you’re afraid it didn’t die with him, aren’t you?’

  ‘Tomura junior’s been here since January. He could’ve alerted his father to any threat Henry posed to him. And the Count could’ve decided to come here and nullify the threat in person.’

  ‘Do you think he was behind Sir Henry’s murder?’

  ‘No. That was down to Lemmer. At least . . .’ Morahan shrugged helplessly and drank some more tea. ‘Somehow, I have to find le Singe and learn what he knew before Tomura hears I’ve found him, then decide how I can use the information to spike Tomura’s guns. I can’t refuse to look for le Singe because then Tomura will try to squeeze whatever he can out of Sam Twentyman. That’ll be nothing, which won’t go well for Sam. And I have to do all this while leading Travis to believe I’m obediently trying to track le Singe down via Soutine in order to earn us a fat fee from Tomura via his son.’

  ‘I should say Travis is the least of your problems. He’s preoccupied with the Greeks at the moment. Everyone wants to know how generous a slice of the Turkish pie they’re going to end up with.’

  ‘Maybe they should ask you.’

  ‘The Greeks’ eyes are bigger than their stomachs. That’s all I’ll say. Now, what do you want to ask me? I mean, I’m happy to listen while you analyse the impossibility of your situation, but . . .’

  Morahan laughed. ‘Travis has no idea how much smarter you are than he is, Malory. You are aware of that, aren’t you?’

  Malory arched her eyebrows. ‘A good secretary flatters her boss, not herself.’

  ‘He wouldn’t be happy to hear about some of the things you do for me.’

  ‘Which is why he won’t. Another duty of a good secretary is to spare her boss’s feelings. Besides, morally speaking, Travis is a louse. Whereas you, Schools, are a man of honour.’ Her gaze was gentle and frank. There were no secrets between them, even concerning what they thought of each other.

  ‘I’m way short of that,’ said Morahan softly.

  ‘What d’you want me to do?’

  ‘Look through all the newspaper reports of le Singe’s activities. See if there’s a pattern to them. I mean a geographical pattern, one that might give me a clue about where I should look for him.’

  ‘If he has any sense, he’ll have left Paris.’

  ‘That’s the second part of the trawl. Reports of burglaries from other cities that might suggest his . . .’

  ‘Modus operandi?’

  Morahan pointed at her over the rim of his teacup. ‘You got it.’

  Malory gave him a pained smile. ‘Un soir à la bibliothèque pour moi, je pense.’

  Morahan grimaced. ‘Sorry. You read the lingo much better than I do.’

  ‘Lucky for you I haven’t got a date tonight.’

  ‘I am sorry.’ He smiled. ‘On both counts.’

  She set down her cup, walked across to where he was sitting and drank from his cup instead. ‘What will you be doing while I’m straining my eyes over columns of French newsprint, Schools?’

  ‘Visiting Soutine’s gallery.’

  ‘I thought you said he’d gone missing.’

  Morahan winked. ‘I may have to visit in his absence.’

  ‘I’ll keep an eye out for him at the library, then. He could be lurking among the book stacks.’

  ‘Have you ever met him?’

  ‘Once.’ She leant back against the desk behind her. ‘Travis mentioned him so often I got curious and took Eveline to look at his gallery one Saturday.’ Eveline was the Red Cross worker Malory shared an apartment with on the Ile St-Louis. ‘He came near to selling her a pair of what he said were Louis Quinze earrings. I talked her out of it.’

  ‘What did you make of him?’

  ‘A charming crook. He’d sell his own mother if the price was right. I should’ve thought that would apply to le Singe as well.’

  ‘Yep. Which implies Soutine reckons he’s in trouble too. The sort he can’t bargain his way out of.’

  ‘What kind of reputation does Count Tomura have?’

  ‘Not a peaceable one. He’s killed a lot of people. And had a lot more killed on his behalf, I should guess.’ Morahan sighed. ‘D’you know what his son said to me? “The way of the warrior is to seek death.” I mean, Good God Almighty.’

  Malory’s expression grew serious. ‘It’s the opening sentence of Hagakure, the handbook on the way of the bushi – Japan’s military aristocracy. They know it by heart.’

  ‘Tomura junior didn’t look as if he’d done much in the seeking-death line since hitting Paris.’

  ‘But he’ll have wanted to. How old is he?’

  ‘Not sure. Mid to late twenties?’

  ‘He probably didn’t see much action. The Japanese army had precious little to do in the war after seizing Shantung. That will have left young Tomura eager to demonstrate his manliness. And I don’t mean with cancan girls.’

  ‘His father will keep him under control.’

  Malory did not look reassured. ‘You could be getting into something very dangerous, Schools. You do realize that?’

  He spread his hands. ‘It can’t be helped.’

  ‘See what I mean?’ She shook her head and gazed at him fondl
y. ‘There speaks the man of honour.’

  ‘HIS FRIENDS CALL him Max, sir,’ said Sam hesitantly as he passed George a mug of hot, strong, generously sugared tea.

  ‘Max?’ George turned the name over in his mind. ‘Well, it’s a better nickname than I’ve ever been landed with. Max it is.’

  ‘I don’t know where he is, if that’s what you’re going to ask me. His mother anxious, is she?’

  ‘Anxiety and my sister are strangers to each other,’ George replied with a smile. ‘She’d welcome news of . . . Max . . . naturally, but she’s confident he knows what he’s doing.’

  ‘That’s more than I am, sir, to tell you the honest truth. But Max knows his own mind and that’s a fact. So, if you haven’t come over here to find him . . .’

  ‘I’m here to sort out a . . . potential embarrassment for the family. One involving my late brother-in-law, Sir Henry Maxted.’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir?’

  ‘He sold some Middle Eastern antiquities to a French Canadian called Arnavon who’s now challenging their authenticity.’

  ‘That’s awkward.’

  ‘Yes. And very possibly expensive for my sister, since the fellow’s demanding his money back, plus compensation.’

  ‘See what you mean, sir.’

  Sam knew from Max that Sir Henry had been raising money and they both knew from Baltazar Ribeiro what he had been raising it for: a comfortable future with Corinne Dombreux. What Sam did not know was whether Lady Maxted was aware of this. And he did not propose to be the one who enlightened her, via her brother.

  ‘Not sure what I can do for you, though,’ he ventured after a painful pause.

  ‘What I want to know is whether Max looked into the matter of these antiquities while he was in Paris.’

  ‘Er . . .’

  Something else was troubling Sam now. Laskaris and Soutine dealt in antiquities. And Soutine dealt in information supplied by le Singe. Sir Henry was connected to both strands of Soutine’s business. Which, Sam wondered, had come first? And how much could he afford to admit he knew?

  ‘I don’t think . . . Max looked into that matter at all, sir.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘Er . . . no.’

  ‘That’s damned unfortunate. I went to the gallery that handled the sale earlier this afternoon. Laskaris et Soutine, Passage Vendôme, off Place de la République. Did Max ever mention them?’

  ‘I don’t recall he ever did,’ Sam replied, accurately enough.

  ‘No one there. Nor has there been for the past week or so, according to neighbouring shopkeepers. Soutine’s evidently disappeared. I need to find him if my sister’s not to be sued, Sam. You see how I’m placed? I don’t believe for a moment Henry would pass off a fake as the real thing, but I don’t want his good name and hence Winifred’s dragged through the mud while we try to refute the allegations. Nor do I believe Max would want that to happen either.’

  ‘With you there, sir.’

  ‘Loyalty to a friend’s an admirable quality. So’s discretion.’ George leant closer to Sam and engaged him eye to eye, man to man. ‘If Max said anything to you about this in confidence, I perfectly understand your reluctance to let me in on it. But I think he’d want you to help his mother out of a jam of his father’s making, don’t you? If there was any way you could.’

  Sam squirmed inwardly, and to a degree outwardly. Dissimulation was not his strong suit. And what George had said he could not deny. Max would want him to do whatever was in his mother’s best interests. But what exactly was that?

  ‘I have the impression,’ George went on, ‘that there is something you could tell me, Sam. Am I right?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘It’d be strictly between you and me.’

  ‘Bugger it,’ said Sam decisively. ‘All right. Max spoke to Laskaris.’ He could not risk revealing the truth. And the lie was white enough for his conscience to bear. ‘He didn’t say what about. This antiquities business, I suppose.’

  ‘Laskaris? Not Soutine?’

  ‘No. Like you said, Soutine had gone missing. It was Laskaris. He gave Max his card. And Max left it with me. In case I needed to contact Laskaris, he said, though he never explained why I’d need to. Maybe he foresaw your problem with the buyer.’

  George nodded. ‘Maybe he did.’

  ‘I’ve got it here.’ Sam fished in the drawer of his desk, took out the card and showed it to George.

  ‘Well, well, well. Viktor Laskaris. Address. Telephone number. Everything. Very useful. Mind if I borrow this?’

  ‘I ought to hang on to it, sir.’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’ George produced a notebook and pencil and manoeuvred a pair of glasses onto his nose. ‘I’ll just . . . jot the details down.’

  ‘Are you going to talk to him, sir?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ George snapped his notebook shut. ‘As soon as possible.’

  Sam extracted two promises from George before he left. One was not to tell Laskaris who had supplied him with his address and telephone number. It was vital he did not, since Laskaris might otherwise point out that Sam too had been looking for Soutine. The second promise was to let Sam know what, if anything, he learnt from Laskaris. The man might be more forthcoming with someone of George’s class than he had been with Sam. This way, George might end up doing Sam a bigger favour than Sam had done him. And Sam was in sore need of such a favour.

  He did not expect to hear from George before the garage closed for the day. To his surprise, however, he was back within an hour and a half of leaving. Sam saw him in the repair bay, talking to Billy Hegg again. Before he could go and greet him, though, he had left once more, marching out into the mews. And Hegg was heading for Sam’s office at a worrying trot.

  ‘What’s going on, Billy?’ Sam demanded.

  ‘Your friend, Mr Clissold, wants to speak to you, Mr Twentyman. He said he’d wait for you outside.’

  ‘Why didn’t he come in here?’

  ‘Search me. He’s not as cheerful as he was, though. I’ll tell you that for nothin’. Someone’s put his nose out of joint, I’d say.’

  Sam found George striding up and down in the snow, puffing at a cigar and looking as disgruntled as Hegg had said he was.

  ‘Something wrong, sir?’

  ‘Just a little. I don’t suppose you’ve ever telephoned Laskaris, have you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor visited his home?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Thought not. The number doesn’t exist, you see. And nor does the address.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Rue de l’Assomption is a real street. But the odd numbers stop in the nineties. If it went as far as a hundred and forty-one, where Laskaris purports to live, it’d be out in the middle of the bloody Bois de Boulogne.’

  ‘Oh Gawd.’

  ‘Oh Gawd, indeed.’

  ‘I’ve been had.’

  ‘Is it the lamplight out here or have you gone a funny colour?’

  ‘He fobbed me off with the card.’

  ‘Who fobbed you off?’

  ‘Laskaris.’

  George stood directly in front of Sam and clasped him by the shoulder. ‘I thought Max gave you the card.’

  ‘Well . . . no. Not exactly. I mean, no, he didn’t. What happened was . . . Laskaris gave it to me.’

  ‘You’ve met him?’

  Sam nodded glumly. ‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Last night. At the gallery.’

  ‘What took you there? No, never mind that for the moment. Describe Laskaris to me.’

  ‘Pint-sized old bloke. White goatee beard. Blue eyes. Face a bit—’

  ‘That’s not Laskaris, you booby. That’s Soutine. It’s how Arnavon described him. To a T, damn it.’

  ‘It was Soutine?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh.’ Chance had delivered Soutine to Sam. And Sam had let him slip away. He squeezed his eyes shut and grimaced. ‘Oh, bloody hell.’

  APPL
EBY’S TRAIN WAS nearly an hour late when it steamed and jolted into Victoria station, though the delay, as the guard had defensively reminded him, had been on the French side. ‘A flake or two of snow throws them Frogs right out, sir.’

  Appleby still had two hours to spare before the sleeper express to Edinburgh left King’s Cross. But he did not propose to dally. He strode out through the ticket barrier onto the concourse, sniffing appreciatively the cold, dank, sooty air of the city that was his natural home.

  As he headed for the taxi rank at the front of the station, he was surprised – and perturbed – to see a spring-heeled young man he recognized as Davison, a runner at HQ, hurrying across from the arrivals board to intercept him.

  ‘Evening, sir,’ said Davison, touching his hat and smiling ingratiatingly.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ was Appleby’s barely genial response.

  ‘C’s orders, sir. He apologizes for the lateness of the hour – even later now, thanks to the rotten old SE and C – but he’d like a word. Straight away.’

  ‘Really?’ Appleby was in no position to point out that as far as he knew C was unaware of his departure from Paris. He could have been notified of it, of course, and deduced that Appleby was bound for London. But there were other parties who could have deduced that.

  ‘Yes, sir. Really. There’s a car waiting for us outside. Shall we step on it?’

  ‘Did you have C’s orders directly from him?’

  It was an apparently simple question. But Appleby was more familiar with how C would operate in such circumstances than Davison was, as Davison must have known. He hesitated for a telltale fraction of a second before answering. ‘Yes, sir. Direct from C.’

  ‘We’d better not keep him waiting any longer, then, had we?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Davison smiled. ‘Right this way.’

  The calculations of risk and probability had whirled to an instinctive conclusion in Appleby’s mind. He moved to Davison’s side, dropped his bag and grasped him by the shoulder. His overcoat hung open, masking the revolver in his hand. He pressed the barrel against Davison’s ribs and felt the young man start in alarm.

  ‘Run or cry out and I’ll plug you. Is that clear?’