by Sax Rohmer
“What! Were you attached to the R.A.F.?”
“Yes—I thought you knew; a sort of lend-lease arrangement. For that matter, I suppose I still am; and although I endeavor daily to improve my rotten painting, I confess that this long spell of inactivity is very boring.”
Prescott glanced at the dark, aquiline face, now faintly touched with melancholy.
“Care for a job?” he asked abruptly.
Baruk's eyes lighted up from within.
“Rather! Got one for me?”
“Let's go into the Bull. Better if we're not seen together.”
MISS ANSTRUTHER, her simple lunch dispatched, sat in the cottage porch drinking a cup of coffee and enjoying one of the three cigarettes which she allowed herself per them. A spell of Riviera sunshine blessed the West Country, and daring buds peeped out among the thorns of a rambler rose which bowered her.
Suddenly she looked up.
A man had rested a bicycle against the gate and was coming along the paved path toward her. He was a dark man, undeniably good looking in a vaguely sinister way, and he wore breeches and riding boots and some unfamiliar sort of leather jerkin. He had a swinging stride which Miss Anstruther always associated with the cavalry. At the step of the porch he halted, smiled and bowed.
“Do I address Miss Anstruther?”
His accent was of a kind to which she was accustomed, but his voice possessed an exotic musical quality. Her fine gray eyes (they had been called hard) regarded him without fear or favor. Nevertheless, something which he saw there prompted his next words.
“I may add that I am not a German parachutist!”
Miss Anstruther studied him for a long moment, and then, smiling slightly in return, indicated a seat on the other side of the porch.
“But you are a soldier,” she said in her cool, clear voice.
He presented a card which he held ready in his hand. “How did you know?”
“I was born and bred among them.” She read the card, holding it a long way off. “But I don't remember having met a Camel Corps officer before. What can I do for you, Major? Let me get you a cup of coffee.”
“Thank you all the same, Miss Anstruther, but I lunched only recently.”
As something of a connoisseur of coffee, he had abandoned its use since he had left Egypt. He sat for a while regarding her, and then he asked an odd question.
“If I had really proved to be a German, what would you have done?”
Miss Anstruther stared straight before her; she did not appear to be looking at anything.
“I don't know. There are those who have heard me say that if ever one fell into my hands I would shoot him. I come of a long-memoried race, and I have an old service revolver tucked away. You see, Major, my sister (we used to keep house together) went out to Poland, before the fall of Warsaw, with an ambulance unit. She was a qualified nurse. I have never heard of her since—and I am selfish enough to miss her dreadfully.”
Bimbashi Baruk nodded, but his glance told her that he understood. She fell silent, flicking ash from her cigarette.
“Of course,” he said, “you would want to be quite sure of your man—sure, I mean, that he was actually an enemy.”
“Yes.” A smile flickered over her face, disturbing its firm lines. “That would be important, especially as we have been warned that they may be dressed as civilians.” She glanced swiftly at Baruk.
“But what is it you want to know?”
Now, Bimbashi Baruk possessed a sort of extra sense; less an intuition than an occasional, and most untamable, gift of lucidity. He could read at times in a person's eyes exactly, minutely, what that person was thinking. And as he had stepped up to the porch and bowed to Miss Anstruther, he had received such a mental message, which said: “I suspect you to be a German. If you are, I shall do my best to kill you.”
Upon this he had based a theory to explain those discrepancies in Miss Anstruther's story of the loss of her car, which he had undertaken to clear up. His reply was dictated by this line of reasoning.
“I want to know how you would satisfy yourself of such a man's identity before you—disposed of him.”
Miss Anstruther extinguished the cigarette stub in a broken flowerpot which served as ash tray. She set down her empty coffee cup. Then she nodded her head several times.
“Yes”—her eyes watched him frankly—“I have landed myself in a hell of a mess!”
He proffered his open cigarette case.
“Trust me to get you out of it. These are very ordinary gaspers.”
“Thanks, Major—no. I'm rationed. But don'tyou want to smoke?”
“Mind an old pipe?”
“Not in the least. You smoke, and I'll talk.”
And so, while Bimbashi Baruk found his tobacco pouch, Miss Anstruther talked. Pomfret, the aged daily man (no doubt by permission of Walt Disney) made a brief but successful appearance with a wheelbarrow.
“You have worked out, of course, that my story doesn't hang together too well. I suppose you are acting for Military Intelligence. The police told me the man was English and I knew he was a soldier. I was taken by the inspector to 'view the body,' and it is perfectly true that I haven't the slightest idea who the poor fellow is, or was. But I think you will agree, if you can recall his close-cut blond hair, that he might have been a German?”
The bimbashi, open tobacco pouch on knee, seemed to consider the point; his heavy eyelids drooped.
“Yes,” he admitted, “as a physical type, possibly. But his voice, his manner?”
“His voice and his manner? You must remember, Major, that I had nothing but his appearance to go upon.”
Bimbashi Baruk questioned her with swiftly raised eyes.
“You mean—you never heard him speak?”
“How could he speak? He was dead.”
Bimbashi Baruk ceased to load his pipe. Discerning blue eyes challenged unwavering gray.
“I don't understand,” he said quietly. “Perhaps I had better let you tell the story in your own way.”
“Oh!”
Miss Anstruther's exclamation was little more than a whisper. Baruk's strange endowment was a double-edged weapon. She stared at him almost confusedly. She knew, in that instant, that he believed her to have fired the fatal shot.
“What is it? You are with a friend. You have nothing to be afraid of.”
“But I have.” She spoke quite coolly. “I have to be afraid of disappointing you. That you would doubt my word is something that does not arise. But, you see, the man was already dead and already seated in front of my car when I found him!”
“My dear Miss Anstruther! Whatever prompted you—”
“Let me explain. I dislike admitting it, but quite frankly, I lost my head. I returned to the car, which, as I told the police, was standing outside the garage. I was carrying two baskets of eggs. A man was lying across the driver's seat, with his face turned upward. He was dead. He had been shot. In the first place, I dropped the eggs. This seemed to restore me. Then I took a good look at the man. I came to the conclusion that he was a German who had been wounded, that he had struggled as far as the car, hoping to drive away in it, but had died in the attempt.”
Bimbashi Baruk went on filling his pipe. He was smiling again—smiling at his own dangerous facility in jumping to conclusions.
“What I thought at the time to be common sense prompted me. Everyone would say I had shot the man—for I have a revolver in the house, as I told you. I was not afraid of the legal consequences, but I was dreadfully afraid of the ghastly publicity. I knew from experience that my car, which had a fixed bias to the offside, if given its head from the hilltop, would unfailingly take the hurdles at the corner. I risked it. No one could possibly have seen me jump out. Upon my word of honor, Major, it was not until I had phoned to the police that I realized I should be called upon to repeat, on oath, what I had told them!”
BIMBASHI BARUK pedaled slowly along through the fresh-scented afternoon. The inquiry promis
ed to be more than slightly involved. He had learned from Miss Anstruther all that might be learned. Her veracity he never doubted. He understood the complex motives which had prompted her slip. They parted fast friends. He told Prescott later, “She is like a date palm. Her sweetness is difficult to reach.” But the clue which he had obtained was indeed a slender one.
For some time she had persisted in her statement that not a soul had approached the cottage between the time that she took the car from the garage and the moment when she returned with the eggs. Pomfret had not then arrived. But the bimbashi had persevered patiently.
The postman?
There had been no letters.
The milkman?
Pomfret brought the milk from Hooper's Farm every morning— But ah, yes! Someonehad approached the cottage, but had not actually passed by.
“Thank heavens!” Bimbashi Baruk had exclaimed. “Medical evidence inclines to the idea that the man was dead for some hours before he went under water, and the notion of a dead man strolling about is so unwholesome.”
It appeared that there was one Jonas Sowerby, a dairy farmer—Miss Anstruther had formerly been a customer—who delivered milk in the neighborhood. His farm was on the other side of Opley. Although he no longer called at the cottage, he passed close by on his way down to Moreton Harbor. He usually branched off at the fork just below the crown of the hill; and on Wednesday morning Miss Anstruther wasalmost sure she had heard the sound of his truck as he turned the corner. She herself was in the packing shed at the time.
In what way Mr. Sowerby could be concerned in such a crime did not seem too clear; but Bimbashi Baruk had no other clue.Someone must have placed the body in the car, and Miss Anstruther lived half a mile from any neighbor. By elimination—a simple process in this case—the only suspect who remained was the milkman.
Although he passed the Bull on his journey, Bimbashi Baruk did not notice the inn; he was pedaling softly and thinking hard. He even forgot to feel thirsty, so that he found himself staring into Mr. Sowerby's premises before he realized that he was come to the outskirts of Opley.
In a hollow on the left of the road he saw a neatly ordered yard in which were a number of churns and frames of milk bottles. There was a small, old Ford truck, the same, no doubt, which was used for delivery purposes. It stood immediately beneath him as he leaned on a low wall looking down. Yes, according to directions given to him by Miss Anstruther, this was the place.
He could see no one about, and in view of the delicate nature of his business he was debating how best to proceed when a man came out of a dairy building and stared up at him. He was an unpleasant-looking man with a broken nose and the particular kind of red whiskers which Bimbashi Baruk found offensive.
“Good afternoon,” called Baruk. “Am I addressing Mr. Sowerby?”
“You are.”
“Do you mind if I come down for a moment?”
“What for?”
“I may have to arrest you.”
And as he made this alarming remark, his tactics were rewarded. Mr. Sowerby's truculent expression changed—and he shot one furtive glance in the direction of the old Ford!
“You see,” the bimbashi continued, leaving his bicycle propped against the wall and walking down a steep path to join the dairyman, “I know all about it, and I'm afraid you are in a damned tight corner.”
Sowerby awaited him; his attitude was guarded.
“Say what you've got to say”—he spoke challengingly—“and have done with it.”
“That is quite easy. No doubt you argued that no one saw you put the body in Miss Anstruther's car the other morning?”
There was no reply; only a slight change of color.
“You thought you were safe. But you were wrong. Now”—the dark eyes held a command—“I am giving you a chance—your last. What have you to say?”
“Just this.” Sowerby swallowed and clenched his fists. “It's that old hen Polly Anstruther what's at me again! Always at me, she is. Nearly lost me my license, she did, sayin' I watered the milk. Then told them inspectors I mixed margarine with the butter. Don't think I don't know who done it!”
Words long stemmed flowed in a passionate torrent.
“Now she's a-tryin' to pin murder on me! So it's my turn at last. I never wanted to be mixed up in it, but I always knowed that old hen would do for some German one o' these days. What I didn't know was as she'd try to pin it onme!”
Bimbashi Baruk hesitated. He had learned much, having known nothing; but if he would get to the root of this mystery he must avoid spoiling good work done already. His favorite proverb was:
“Speech often stumbles where Silence walks serene,”
“Go ahead,” he said sternly. “I am listening.”
“There's no more to it. I just dumped him back where he come from. I don't want no dead Germans found onmy farm! Let them as done it take the blame, I say.”
“Why were you so sure?”
“How wouldn't I be? Who else but Polly Anstruther would kill a German parachuter and then throw him down into my van? I'm askin' you a simple question: Who else would? Not nobody aboutthese parts. Not nobody as I could put a name to, anyways.”
“At what time do you say you found the body?”
“Close on dusk it were, Tuesday evenin'. There's a bit of a mist, and it lies heavy in the valley here. Couldn't see not no further than across the yard. I was up at the house havin' my supper when I heard it—”
“Heardwhat?”
“All them bottles smashin'!” He pointed to a small mound of broken glass under a lean-to. “Three dozen went, they did. I come runnin' out with my torch, and there's the frames a-layin' in the yard and all the bottles busted, and there's this dead parachuter a-layin' in my van! Shot, he was. Dropped him over the wall, she had. I heard her drivin' off.”
“Where was his handbag?”
“Handbag? He didn't have no handbag. Not a thing on him, there weren't.”
“What did you do?”
“Hid him till I thought it out, like. Nobody knowed, only me and that wicked old hen. Then I says to myself, 'I'll take him and dump him back where he come from—on my mornin' round, I will-' So I done it. Covered him up in the van under a bit of tarpaulin, meanin' to leave him in her garden when nobody was lookin'. But I see that rattle-jack of hers a-standin' in the road, and I changed my mind and shoved him inside.”
“And you say you heard a car being driven away on Tuesday night?”
“Plain as plain I heard the old hen a-drivin' away as I run down with my torch. But the mist hid her, it did. Cunnin' she is—cunnin' and wicked.”
That spell of still, sunny weather which had brought skies from the Cote d'Azur to the West Country served Bimbashi Baruk now. For fully an hour, patiently, methodically, he examined every foot of path, every inch of wall above the yard where the Ford truck stood. Sowerby, from below, watched him moodily. At one point, where a piece of rusty metal protruded from the ancient masonry, he found, and delicately detached, a fragment of something. Sowerby could not see what it was. He made careful measurements of imprints on a patch of soft soil.
So long and so quietly did he work that thrushes and blackbirds, encouraged by his harmless ways, went about their unending quest almost at his feet; and a red squirrel, survivor of a dying race, paused on a branch to consider him.
Finally he remounted his bicycle. “Not a word to anyone, Sowerby,” he said. “You understand? Not to anyone.”
To the landlady of the Bull he put an odd question. “Is there a good furrier in Moreton Harbor, Mrs. Eldon?”
“A furrier, sir? Bless me, I don't think so. There's Miss Lister. She sells furs. 'Arlene,' her shop is called, in the High Street. I don't know anybody else.”
However, while he was having his tea she came back.
“I've been thinking, sir. You asked about a furrier. There's a gentleman staying at the Royal, a Mr. Lewis, and the headwaiter, who comes in here, told me he was in the fur business.”<
br />
“I am much obliged, Mrs. Eldon.”
Twenty minutes later, he sought Mr. Lewis. He found him audibly asleep in a cane rocking-chair. Mr. Lewis' attitude, which was not conciliatory, implied that he regarded the bimbashi as an irritating lunatic. But he consented to glance at a silky gray fragment which Barak took out of a wallet.
“Bit of chinchilla,” he pronounced, handing it back. “Want it made into a tie-pin?”
“Chinchilla? A very expensive fur?”
“Oh, no! Makes a nice cape for rough wear.”
“What would it cost?”
“More thanyou ever had, if I'm any judge. Nine hundred to a couple of thousand or so.”
“Is there such a cape anywhere in the hotel?”
“There isnot. Thinking of pinching one?”
But Bimbashi Baruk, pedaling back to the Bull, was saying to himself, “If I can find the wearer of the chinchilla cape I shall have found the woman with a heart in her hands.”
Wing Commander Prescott was waiting for him.
“There isn't a thing among poor Jimmy Hallory's papers to suggest a line of inquiry,” he said. “Just got a report in from London. But we have one grain of hope. There was a train from Anchester which he could have caught, and by changing at Kessborough—and a wait of two hours —he would have been able to get back to town by about eight in the evening. A man answering to his description, and carrying an attache case, was actually seen on the train.”
“Kessborough?” murmured the bimbashi.
“It's on the main line between here and Anchester. Frightful detour, of course, if he went that way. But he may have done—and Kessborough is only fifteen miles from Moreton Harbor.”
“I am going to Kessborough.”
“Biggish place. What are you going to look for?”
“A chinchilla cape.”
BIMBASHI BARUK haunted the highways and byways of Kessborough until dusk fell. Then, having glanced at the register, he engaged a room at the Grand, changed into a dark suit and went down to that awesome whispering gallery of an English hotel, the lounge. He had it to himself. Kessborough was less “biggish” than anticipated, and he had visited every important shop in the town, always asking the same question: “Has Mrs. Wybrow been in?”