‘Last week they sent enough fish to Blair Atholl to have fed Birmingham. This week some crazy loon has suggested getting all the tea in the country and blending it together so that all individual flavours will be lost. Another lunatic instructed one of the biggest ham-curers in England that he was to stop making pork-pies because they were luxuries, whereas in actual fact ham-curers make their pork-pies from all the bits of pig which they can’t possibly use for any other purpose. Luxuries, indeed! And what if they were? It’s just such little tit-bits that keep the spirit of the people going. Besides, the British Army has always fought upon its stomach and the British Army today consists of every one of Britain’s people.’
‘It certainly seems absurd to bring in rationing already, when we didn’t have to until the third year of the last war, especially as we’re now placed in so much stronger a situation,’ Gregory agreed.
‘Another thing,’ Sir Pellinore boomed across the table. ‘Some fathead has issued an order that we’re all to cut down our fuel and light by twenty-five per cent. Have you ever heard such nonsense? The enormous economy effected by the black-out makes it completely unnecessary for any private household to cut down at all, and if they’re afraid of a shortage why in God’s name don’t they give some of our thousands of unemployed miners a chance to do a job of work? Nothing is more depressing than a cold house in winter, and one that’s only half-lit. Not only are these restrictions bad for people, but they are also throwing thousands out of work and reducing the profits of countless commercial undertakings. Where’s Simon going to get his taxes from, I’d like to know, if his colleagues send half the country broke?’
‘I gather from this evening’s paper that the Ministry of Information is in a bit of a muddle, too,’ Gregory murmured.
‘Muddle!’ exclaimed the irate Baronet. ‘It’s like Bedlam from what I hear. They’ve got nine hundred and ninety-nine people in it and only forty-three of them are professional journalists. What d’you think of that?’
‘It sounds to me like packing an army of civilians off to the front with only forty per cent, of professional soldiers among them,’ replied Gregory.
‘That’s exactly what it is, my boy, except that in this case the civilians are giving the orders. Goodness knows who have been given all these jobs, but it’s quite obvious that most of them are utterly incompetent to handle such work. It needs ace-high professional journalists, the best that Britain’s got to present the news in a manner which their experience tells them is most suitable for the papers to print. And people with imagination, too; big advertising men who know how to sell a story or an idea, and best-selling authors the magnitude of whose sales proves their capability to interest the public. Such people are born, not made, and they’re being wasted—stalled out by a lot of little nobodies who couldn’t learn to write a saleable story if they took correspondence courses for twenty years.’
‘Yes, and what a story there is to tell in the might of the British Empire if it was handled by the right people—authors who have world-wide sales and whose names on the top of articles would mean something in neutral countries. But what’s the cause of all this muddle?’
‘The whole thing’s the result of our having left the preparation of these wartime Ministers to the senior Civil Servants. How can you expect a man who’s spent thirty years of his life dealing with roads to know anything about butter; or a chap who’s been adding columns of figures in the Treasury all his days to write a thrilling account of a brilliant air action? Having got their jobs these people are sticking to them, and without a proper knowledge of necessary qualifications they’ve taken on all sorts of Toms, Dicks and Harrys who’re eager to serve. They daren’t sack these people now, because that would mean loss of face. In consequence, the thousands of offers of service which are arriving from the big industrialists and leaders of public opinion who could really do the jobs competently and restore public confidence in the Ministries, are being thrown in the wastepaper baskets without even the courtesy of an acknowledgment.’
‘God, what a scandal!’ Gregory exclaimed. ‘It beats me why Civil Servants who bungle to the detriment of the nation shouldn’t be publicly tried, and, if found guilty, dismissed from their posts with ignominy. After all, sailors, soldiers and airmen are court-martialled and disgraced if they fail in their duty or cause grievous loss of valuable war material through their own stupidity.’
‘By Jove, you’re right!’ Sir Pellinore banged the table with his weighty fist. ‘Unless they get suitable people into some of the Ministries soon the Government’s going to lose the confidence of the country, and if they don’t ease up on these absurd restrictions the effect on the morale of the nation is going to be utterly appalling. We’re hoping to get the Germans down owing to the miserable lives they have to lead with rationed food, shortage of heat and light and the innumerable restraints placed on their individual liberty. Britain’s trump card is that she has no need to inflict such a wretched existence on her people just because we’re at war, but if we’re not damned careful those unimaginative bureaucrats will make things as bad in Britain as they are in Nazi Germany.’
‘How are things going on the other side?’ asked Gregory.
‘As well as—possibly better than—could be expected, but it’s unreasonable to imagine that the French stand any great chance of penetrating further for some considerable time to come, now that they’re actually up against the Siegfried Line. You know that as well as I do. It looks now as though we’ve got to wait for Hitler’s next move.’
‘D’you think he’ll get it?’
‘Some of it, but it’s certain that Stalin will retain the Polish Ukraine. After all; what’s Russia had to fear these last few years? Not an attack from Britain or France, but one from Germany. Everyone knows that Hitler’s been itching to get his claws on the Russian cornlands and oil wells but the attack on Poland gave Stalin just the chance he wanted to pinch half the country and advance his frontiers. Having locked his southeastern door so effectively he’d be mad to open it again. Still I’ve no doubt that the Nazis will propose some form of peace with the idea of throwing the guilt for any major war between the Great Powers on us, should we refuse to make a settlement.’
‘Which we shall do, of course.’
‘Exactly. They will then be faced with the alternatives of sitting down until we starve them into surrender—which would obviously suit us best—or using all their resources for some new, major move while they’re still at the height of their power.’
‘Such as a drive through Holland and Belgium on the one hand and through Switzerland on the other in an attempt to encircle the French,’ supplemented Gregory.
‘You have it. Or possibly a drive down through Hungary to Rumania.’
‘Mussolini wouldn’t like that, nor would Jugoslavia; and I gather that Russia has already said that she won’t allow Germany to penetrate to the Black Sea.’
‘That is so. And the first principle of war is to destroy your enemy’s main forces. No drive eastward can put France or Britain out of the war, which would have to occur before the Nazis could hope to win it; so the logical conclusion is that they’ll probably attempt to drive through Flanders and Switzerland accompanied by intensive air attacks on this country.’
‘Holland, Belgium and Switzerland all have pretty useful armies and they’ve had ample time to prepare themselves against an attack, so I shouldn’t think the Germans would have it all their own way if they were to try that.’
‘He marked a belt of territory two hundred miles wide inside the Russian frontiers, which he was prepared to regard as a sort of no-man’s land. Everything in it, including bridges, roads and railways was to be destroyed as far as possible so that the enemy should exhaust himself while advancing through such difficult country and be an easy prey when he should suddenly come up against the main weight of the Red Army. He then scrapped nearly all the old munitions-plant in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Kharkov and the other principal cities in European
Russia and built new ones in a Forbidden Territory that lies behind the Urals, thereby securing himself against the destruction of his vital bases by enemy aerial attack.
‘Up there on the borders of Asia he also established huge aerodromes holding literally thousands of planes, and as an enemy advanced into Russia these squadrons would be used to bomb their long lines of communication. From the nearest enemy frontier to Voroshilov’s vast war-base behind the Urals is seventeen hundred miles. To go there and return means a journey of three thousand four hundred miles, and few modern bombers have such a range as yet. An enemy could invade Russia, therefore, but never defeat her, and any attempt to invade her territory would merely re-enact all over again the story of Napoleon’s march to Moscow.
‘On the other hand, Voroshilov’s brilliant plan for the defence of Russia cuts the other way. If Russia turns aggressor her armies must move further and further from their bases. His great bases behind the Urals will therefore be useless to him, while the Russian railway system has still not improved sufficiently to make it easy to supply armies fighting upon such distant fronts from factories that are so far away. That’s why I don’t believe that the Russians will be fools enough to alter their whole strategy and come in up to the neck with Hitler in an attempt to overrun Europe.’
The admirable dinner had run its course. The magnum stood empty on the sideboard in its silver filigree bottle-stand. Above the fine damask and cut glass of the table swirled blue smoke from the cigars which Sir Pellinore and Gregory had lit just before they had pushed back their chairs and returned upstairs to the library.
‘Now,’ said Sir Pellinore, closing the door behind them, ‘let’s hear this idea of yours. It’s some Mad Hatter’s scheme I’ll bet a pony. But at all events I’m prepared to listen.’
‘I think I’d have chucked my hand in,’ Gregory said quietly, ‘if it hadn’t been for that German girl I told you about; the one whose car I pinched.’
‘Ha! You young devil! I send you out to do a job of work and all you think of is to have a necking-party with the first girl you meet. What’s she got to do with it?’
‘A great deal. She had no idea what I was up to, of course but like everyone who has kept their sanity she was all for an early peace. When I told her that my job was one which might have brought that about she begged me to see if I couldn’t think up some new scheme by which I might succeed where I’d failed before, and I was rash enough to promise that I would.’
‘If I know you, you’d promise a woman anything if you thought you could get what you wanted out of her.’
‘You misjudge me,’ Gregory protested mildly, ‘and are speaking entirely for yourself. Everyone knows what a devil you were for the women in your younger days.’
‘Not so much of the “younger days”, young man, I’m hale and hearty yet.’
‘I bet you are, you old ruffian! And I wouldn’t trust you near any woman I was interested in, for fear you might cut me out.’
‘Cut you out, eh? Well, if this young woman’s all you say she is, why, damn it! I might have a shot at it when she comes over after the war, especially if you don’t do your stuff better than you did outside Cologne.’
‘I don’t think I did so badly, considering that she was proposing to have me shot only an hour earlier.’
‘Nonsense! Getting kisses out of a woman is like getting olives out of a bottle; the first may be devilish difficult but the rest come easy. You’re not half the man I thought you, to content yourself with one.’
‘Unfortunately I lack your suberb assurance and you may recall that the situation was not exactly the most perfect one for love-making. If I’d stayed much longer in that car I might have been deprived of the pleasure of taking a dinner off you tonight—or of taking any other dinner off anyone, for that matter. “He who fights and runs away may live to fight another day” remember, and that old saying exactly describes the position at the time. In her car last Wednesday week I fought and ran, as it were, and here I am, still alive and preparing to fight again.’
‘“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” might also apply,’ boomed Sir Pellinore, ‘but let’s get back to business. You got all soulful about this delightful young thing—incidentally about the most stupid thing you could do, since I’ve never met a woman yet who didn’t get bored with a man who got soulful about her—and you decided to be a hero for her sake. Is that the situation?’
‘Certainly not. I gave up being soulful about girls when I put away my Latin Grammar. But what she said did make me think: and I had plenty of time to spare for thinking when I was sitting about in the concentration-camp at Nijmegen, Rheinhardt is out of it; so is Erika von Epp. But Tom Archer is still a possibility and he’s right here in London.’
Sir Pellinore again brushed up his moustache. ‘My dear feller, I’ve told you a dozen times that Archer refuses to talk.’
‘Then we must make him.’
‘I don’t see why you should imagine that you can succeed where the people in M.I.5. have failed.’
‘I do. Even in war-time the activities of M.I.5 are restrained to some extent. They may do a lot of funny things that nobody hears about, but this is still technically a free country and Archer is a public figure with an organisation behind him which could kick up a pretty dust if the authorities went too far outside the law. I, on the other hand, am a free agent, I don’t care two kicks about the law and I’m prepared to do any dirty business on the chance of getting what I want.’
‘You’ll have to take the consequences if you’re found out.’
‘Naturally. I’m quite prepared for that, but nothing they can do to me here in England is going to be half as bad as what the Germans would have done to me if they’d caught me snooping about along the Rhine.’
‘All right, then; if you’re prepared to land yourself in jug, have a cut at Archer—and good luck to you!’
‘Thanks. I’m afraid, though, that I shall require your assistance.’
‘Sorry, my dear boy, but I can’t give it to you. There’d be too much of a fuss if I were caught applying lighted matches to the soles of Mr. Archer’s feet, and I imagine you’re contemplating something of that kind.’
‘Possibly; but I don’t need your active help for anything like that. All I want from you is to get the right people to fake a photograph for me, because it’s the sort of job I can’t do myself or get any ordinary photographer to tackle.’
‘In that case I don’t doubt that the matter can be arranged. Tell me a little more of the scheme you have in mind.’
‘It’s like this. Before you put me on this job, Rudd was just as keen as I to get back into harness. When I told him that I’d been given a one-man job and couldn’t possibly take him with me he was bitterly disappointed, so more to keep him happy than with any thought of practical results I put him on to finding out all he could about Archer while I was away. I’m thunderingly glad I did, now, because I think the good lad has got us something which will enable me to twist Mr. Archer’s tail.
‘Rudd was able to tell me a bit about what he’d been up to while we were changing clothes in the train last night, but you may remember that in the instructions I managed to smuggle out to you via that chap in the British Passport Control I particularly mentioned that when Rudd was given his orders about what to do when he arrived in Holland he was also to be told to write down every detail he could think of about his investigations and leave his notes in the top drawer of my desk. Directly I got home this evening I skimmed through them and they confirmed an impression I’d formed during our brief talk in the train—that he’d got us something pretty good.’
‘Let’s hear it, then.’
‘Certainly,’ said Gregory, producing a fashion-plate from his pocket. ‘D’you think we might broach another bottle of that old Kümmel? I’m sure it would be a great aid to perfecting my little plan while we’re talking the matter over.’
‘Drat the boy!’ exclaimed Sir Pellinore. ‘If I have you abou
t the house often I soon won’t have any decent liquor left to drink. Still, it was damn’ clever of you to think of using the name of Mentzendorff for my imaginary valet in your inquiry that set the ball roiling. God! I laughed till I damn’ near cried; and for that I suppose you deserve to be honoured. What’s more, I could do with a spot myself.’
He got up and pressed the bell.
17
Blackmail
Ten days later Gregory received a small packet by special messenger. Having duly signed for it he examined its contents; then sat back and roared with laughter. Sir Pellinore’s people had needed time in which to secure various components of the photograph he required and had then the extremely tricky job of blending them into one picture, but there was not a thing about the finished article to suggest that it was a fake and Gregory felt that such a masterpiece of photomontage had been well worth waiting for.
Picking up his telephone he rang Tom Archer’s house in Kennington, but learned that Mr. Archer was out and was not expected home until about six o’clock that evening. At half-past six Gregory rang the number again and got on to him at once.
‘My name is Baird,’ he said; ‘Joe Baird; but I’m afraid that won’t convey much to you, Mr. Archer. I’m very anxious to have a chat with you, though, about a matter that interests us both.’
A deep, rumbling voice came back over the telephone. ‘I’m afraid I’m a very busy man, Mr. Baird. I couldn’t spare the time to see you at present unless you care to state what your business is and it’s very important.’
‘I’d rather not discuss it on the telephone,’ said Gregory.
‘In that case you’d better write,’ said the voice, with an abruptness which suggested that the speaker was about to replace the receiver.
The Scarlet Impostor Page 21