The Scarlet Impostor

by Dennis Wheatley

  ‘Oh, no, you won’t,’ replied Gregory quite unperturbed, ‘You’d never dare to bring the case to court and you know it. We’d impound your passbooks and show the sums you’ve paid to and for Pearl, and no jury would give you a verdict. In addition I’d see that copies of this photograph were sent to all the Comrades and I’d have a special copy mounted for Captain the Honourable Oliphant Travers which would certainly put paid to Pearl’s affair.’

  The burly figure behind the desk seemed to wilt and the age-lines suddenly showed more clearly in the big, determined face, Gregory felt an utter swine, but he had to break Archer’s will at any price and he knew now that he had succeeded.

  ‘God blast you!’ muttered Archer as he slumped down again into his chair. ‘I’ve known some dirty business in my time but this beats all. And you an Englishman!’

  ‘I thought you were telling me just now that no race was better than another?’ Gregory could not resist the gentle jibe.

  ‘I was. But I didn’t say that some weren’t more developed than others. At all events we like to think that English people have reached a stage when they have more sense of what’s just and decent than the rest. Our Government sneers at Hitler for making war on women and children, doesn’t it? The blasted hypocrites! What’s this but making war on an innocent man and a poor young girl?’

  ‘Don’t be too hard on the Government,’ said Gregory. ‘I’m afraid you must blame me for this. No Government official has any idea of what I’m up to.’

  ‘I see,’ said Archer thoughtfully. ‘Then all that stuff about using the Emergency Powers Act was just a bit of bluff.’

  ‘More or less; but that doesn’t affect the present situation. I’ve got the negative of this photograph in a safe place, and I’ve plenty of dope about your interest in Pearl Wyburn which will quite definitely be construed as showing that she’s your mistress. Either you talk, or much as I hate to have to do it I take steps to ensure the matter being made public.’

  Archer sighed, and drew a hand across his face. ‘All right. What d’you want to know?’

  ‘I want the names and addresses of the people with whom you’ve been in communication in Germany. I want particulars of any methods by which you’re able to evade the censorship and communicate with them still, although we are at war. I want all the information you can give me about the anti-Nazi conspiracy. And before you start I may as well give you a warning; it’s no good giving me a lot of dope I can’t check up on. I’m too old a bird to accept as gospel any yarn that you choose to spin me now that I’ve got you in a corner. I want to see your correspondence files so that I can verify for myself most of what you tell me.’

  ‘I can tell you quite a lot; but it’s going to make things a bit difficult if you won’t take my word for what I say. I don’t keep dangerous correspondence like that here, in the house.’

  ‘Well, where do you keep it?’

  ‘I’m not going to tell you. It’s with all the other confidential papers of the Party and you can’t expect me to let anybody who’s outside the Party know where we keep them. You know well enough that we’re not tame Socialists who’d buy top-hats to go to Buckingham Palace in if they were asked there; we’d rather burn the place. We’re not hot-air Communists either; we’re even to the Left of the I.L.P. and if we lived in any other country we’d be called Anarchists. There’s enough so-called treason in those files to make the lousy bourgeoisie take permanently to their beds and to keep the judges in permanent session for six months if the police got hold of them. You’re plumb crazy to suggest that I should entrust the safety of all my friends to a police spy like you by telling you where our secret documents are kept.’

  ‘Then you must go and get the letters I want to see.’

  ‘Don’t be silly; they’re among hundreds of others, all confidential stuff. If there were only one or two of them I could get hold of them when nobody was looking and bring them away for you to look at, but there’re so many of them that it’d take me a good couple of hours to get them all out. The people who look after the files would never allow me to take a whole bundle of papers away like that, either; big man in the Party as I am.’

  ‘Rotten game, politics, isn’t it?’ said Gregory. ‘Especially when it means handling a lot of subversive literature. Naturally, you and your friends live in perpetual fear that you’ll double-cross one another.’

  Archer shrugged. ‘That’s beside the point; the fact remains that once the letters have gone into the files there’s no getting them out again.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to take me to the place where the files are kept.’

  ‘That’s a pretty idea,’ sneered Archer. ‘Who do I say you are; Trotsky or the King of Siam?’

  ‘You will say that I am a German Comrade. I speak German very well, so you needn’t be afraid I’ll let you down on that score. We’ll spin a yarn that I’ve just arrived here via Holland with the very perturbing news that I believe some of those letters you’ve received to be forgeries and that it’s only by seeing them personally that I can ascertain whether this is a fact. You must explain that it’s of the first importance that you should know one way or the other, because If they really are forgeries you’re all being led up the garden-path, and that the only thing to do was to bring me down to see the letters in question so that you could find out.’

  Archer considered for a moment. ‘Yes, I suppose we could fix it that way, but I don’t like it, all the same. We’re talking turkey now, Mr. whoever-you-are, and between ourselves I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes if the people down there find out that you’re not what you pretend to be. To start with, the address at which the secret files of the Party are kept is one of the most jealously guarded secrets in the country; Scotland Yard would give anyone a packet for it. The Party has got to protect its interests and its personnel. Honestly; I wouldn’t advise you to go there.’

  ‘I don’t think you need be afraid that they’ll find me out, and if there is a risk I’m quite prepared to take it. The point is that I’ve got to see those documents, and the sooner the better.’

  ‘All right,’ said Archer standing up. ‘You can’t, say you haven’t been warned. I’ll go and get on the telephone to see if there’s anyone there now who can let us in. The place may be shut, as it’s ten o’clock at night, but I think there’s a chap sleeping on the premises.’

  He left the room and was away about five minutes. Gregory could hear him muttering down a telephone in the hall, but eventually he came back and nodded his massive head.

  ‘It’s O.K. We can go down there right away, It’ll take us about twenty minutes in a taxi.’

  ‘Good,’ replied Gregory, standing up. ‘I’ve got one waiting. Let’s go, shall we?’

  Outside, Gregory got straight into the cab and did not make any attempt to overhear the address which Archer gave the man but took the opportunity to slip the golden swastika back into the secret pocket in the end of his tie while unobserved. The moon was still up but the streets were not as light as they had been on Gregory’s arrival, since heavier clouds had rolled up against which it was no longer possible to distinguish the balloons.

  The cab ran eastward for a little way then north towards the river. Gregory recognised the big road-junction at the Elephant and Castle, after which they entered the New Kent Road, crossed the Old Kent Road and beyond it ran east-wards again, through some twisting streets in the direction of Bermondsey.

  The district was not a particularly salubrious one, but Gregory had hardly expected that the secret H.Q. at which the Marxists kept their highly dangerous plans for fomenting strikes and even revolution would be in the neighbourhood of Whitehall. It was much darker down here owing to the narrowness of the streets, and on the way he gave Archer an outline of what he proposed to do.

  ‘Since a third person will be present,’ he said, ‘we’ll spin the yarn I suggested about my being a German and I’ll spend an hour or two going through the files with you pretending to identify most of the
letters as genuine but picking out one or two as forgeries just to save face. As I examine them I can read their contents so I’ll get a pretty good idea of what’s going on; enough, at all events, to enable me to check up on whatever you may tell me later when we fully discuss the whole position on our own. After we’ve done that I shan’t trouble you again and I’ll destroy that very unpleasant negative which shows you in such a compromising situation with little Pearl.’

  Archer seemed satisfied with this, and when the cab eventually pulled up at a cross-roads he said: ‘It isn’t far now and we’re going to walk from here.’

  Gregory quite understood that the Marxist leader was unwilling that their destination should be known even by the taximan, who might have recognised him from his photographs in the Press, so he got out and paid the man off.

  Side by side they started to walk in silence down a gloomy street. Gregory thought that Archer would now take considerable pains to mislead him by dodging about for a quarter of an hour or so in the maze of squalid courts and alleys which surrounded them, but the Marxist did nothing of the sort, seeming not to care whether Gregory found the place again or not. They took the first to the right and the first to the left; then Archer pointed to a small public-house that loomed up out of the shadows of what appeared to be a dark cul-de-sac, and muttered:

  ‘That’s the place.’

  As they approached Gregory peered into the murk of the side-turning. Not a light showed in any direction, but the faint moonlight made the clouds slightly lighter than the dead-black of the houses, over whose roofs Gregory saw some tall, slanting streaks of the same dead-blackness which he suddenly realised were the masts of ships. What he had taken for a cul-de-sac was evidently an alley-way leading down to the Bermondsey docks.

  It was just past closing-time, so no sounds of talk or laughter issued from the bars of the public-house. Archer passed by the main entrance on the corner and walking twenty yards down the alley halted there, feeling about on the wall until he had located a side-door. Finding its bell he gave two short rings followed by a single very long one.

  For a few moments they waited in the darkness; then the door was opened and a man’s voice said: ‘Hullo! That you?’

  ‘Yes,’ came Archer’s deep bass. ‘It’s me, and I’ve brought the Comrade I was telling you about over the ’phone.’

  ‘Right-oh; come in,’ replied the man, holding the door open for them to enter but shutting and bolting it behind them after they had passed inside. Gregory found himself in a narrow, dimly-lit hall; he noticed with interest that there was a steel shutter above the door, which could be dropped in the event of a police raid, and that a large, electric alarm was affixed to a near-by wall-bracket.

  Turning from the door the man who had let them in led the way up a flight of uncarpeted stairs. He was a small man with stooping shoulders and a shortage of breath which suggested middle-age. Gregory did not get a good chance to look at him until they reached the first floor and entered an office where bright lights were burning behind heavily-curtained windows.

  Round the walls were ranged row upon row of steel filing cabinets. Gregory had had a faint suspicion that as Archer had taken no particular pains to conceal the locality of the place he might have been trying to trick him, but this was certainly the Party H.Q.; there could be no doubt of that.

  ‘This is Comrade Chivers,’ said Archer, introducing the little man.

  ‘Kröner,’ said Gregory in a gutteral voice as he announced himself in the German fashion and bowed from the waist before extending his hand. ‘Comrade Chivers, to meet you I am very pleased.’

  ‘I couldn’t say so over the telephone, Chivers,’ Archer went on, ‘but Comrade Kröner here has just come from Germany with some very alarming news. He seems to think that some of the stuff we’ve had from the Comrades there are forgeries, so I thought the best thing to do was to bring him down at once so that we could find out.’

  Chivers, a grizzly-haired little man with pince-nez clipped to his long noise, seemed considerably perturbed at this announcement, and for some minutes he discussed with Archer the possible effects that forged letters containing misleading information might have upon their activities.

  Gregory took in every word that they said. It was none of his business to concern himself with the affairs of the Marxists but he felt that he could not know too much about the men with whom he was dealing, as such knowledge might prove extremely useful later on, when he attempted to get into touch with their foreign colleagues. The trouble was, however, that nothing they said conveyed very much to him; they seemed to be talking to some extent at cross-purposes. No names were mentioned and there was nothing that he could get hold of.

  Suddenly it struck him that they were making conversation solely for his benefit; that Chivers and Archer were talking only to delay his getting at the files. His senses suddenly alert, he glanced at them and saw at once that they were talking at random, unsuccessfully trying to disguise a nervous expectancy. They were waiting for something to happen.

  Instantly his suspicions were aroused, to be intensified a moment later as he caught the sound of a footfall on the stairs. Suddenly he realised that by insisting on coming down to this secret filing-office he had given Archer a perfect opportunity to lead him into a trap. Archer had been on the telephone for quite a time before they left Walshingham Terrace. During those minutes he might have given detailed instructions to Chivers and other people in the house for the arrangement of an extremely unpleasant reception for their unwelcome visitor.

  Gregory cursed himself for not having brought a gun, for that would have given him immediate mastery of the situation. If he had known that he was coming to such a place he would certainly have done so, for Sir Pellinore had years previously secured for him a permit to carry fire-arms in Britain which had never been revoked. But in London such a precaution had seemed entirely unnecessary, particularly as he had originally intended only to visit Archer’s house in respectable Kennington.

  The footfalls came again. At that instant Gregory caught Archer’s eyes fixed upon him with a curious expression and something in the Marxist’s glance told him with absolute certainty that his instinct had been right. Without hesitation he acted.

  Swinging his left fist in a vicious hook he took Chivers, who was nearest to him, under the jaw. Lifting his right foot sharply he aimed a savage kick at Archer’s knee. When Gregory went into battle against superior odds he never used half-measures. He knew that it was only by being completely unscrupulous that he had come out of so many tight corners alive.

  As he moved he caught the sound of the footsteps on the stairs once more; closer now. They were heavy, and he could tell that more than one person was descending from the top of the house. If they were the guardians of the place and Archer and Chivers had been waiting for them he was in for an exceedingly bad time unless he could out the two Marxists and escape from the house before the others arrived.

  Since Archer had been watching Gregory he was not taken by surprise. Dodging the kick he snatched up a heavy ledger and, with a loud shout, hurled it at Gregory’s head.

  Gregory side-stepped, but as he did so he heard the footfalls quicken as the men on the stairs broke into a run in response to Archer’s yell.

  ‘You rat!’ snarled Gregory, leaping at the burly Marxist.

  ‘Rat yourself!’ bellowed Archer as they went down together in a heap.

  With a crash the door was burst open, and out of the corner of his eye Gregory saw two big men who looked like expugilists come plunging into the room.

  Wriggling free of Archer he jumped to his feet, seized a chair and with its legs thrust out before him charged straight at the nearest thug. One of the chair-legs caught the big fellow right in the middle of his ugly mouth. With a howl of pain he fell backwards against the open door, but his companion grabbed another of the chair-legs and with one wrench jerked the chair from Gregory’s grasp.

  By now Archer was on his feet again and came
lumbering heavily forward. Gregory stopped him with a punch like the kick of a mule that took him right over his heart. He grabbed the desk behind him and stood swaying there, half-dazed by the shock of the blow. The second thug had dodged round to Gregorys’ side and now sent a terrific right-hander to his head. Agile as a cat, he jumped backwards just in time to escape the full force of the blow, but the big man’s fist grazed his head when he was off his balance and sent him spinning to the floor.

  Gregory protected his face with his outstretched arm and the moment he had measured his length he rolled over and over of his own volition until he was brought up sharp by the line of files at the far end of the room. Wriggling to his knees he snatched up a large bottle of ink from a near-by desk and hurled it with all his force at the tough who had struck him.

  ‘Look out, Summers!’ gasped Archer, but his warning came too late. The bottle caught the man full in the chest. It did not break as it hit him but its cork had come out and the ink spurted all over his suit; a second later the bottle smashed to smithereens on the floor.

  The force of the flying bottle brought Summers up short. With dismay on his face and blasphemies on his lips he stood for an instant staring down at the rivulets of ink running over his ruined clothes.

  Chivers had staggered to his feet again; but so had Gregory. He dived at the little man and grabbing him by one wrist and his coat-collar swung him round.

  Shouting: ‘Come on, Ben!’ to his companion with the bleeding mouth, Summers again came wading in.

  Before the wretched Chivers knew what was happening Gregory had nearly broken his wrist with a violent wrench which pitched him forward under Summers’ knees. The two of them fell in a tangled heap, and as the infuriated Ben came dashing in, his bullet-head well down and blood still dripping from his chin, Gregory dealt him a left upper-cut that made him reel, side-stepped adroitly, and jumping over Summers’ kicking feet dashed for the door.

  A wave of elation filled him as he leaped past his three attackers and raced across the room. If only he could gain the stairs before the two thugs had recovered he would have just time to wrench back the bolts of the street-door and plunge headlong into the darkness. Once he was out in the street he could yell for help, and it was hardly likely that Archer’s men would risk police intervention by giving chase.