Ex-Inspector Beth rose from his chair in the sitting-room and grinned as his host came in.
‘Didn’t expect to see me here, did you?’ he said. ‘And with the goods.’
‘No,’ said Campion truthfully. ‘I did not.’
‘He’s bin ’ere for an hour talking about ’imself, until you’d think ’e was still a flattie,’ observed Mr Lugg, who had wandered in from the next room, collarless and in his house coat.
‘Oh, I have, have I? Well, no one would think you were still a cat burglar,’ countered the ex-Inspector spitefully.
‘No, I’ve bettered meself,’ said Lugg, with ineffable complacency. ‘I’m a house gentleman now.’
‘What’s the report?’ cut in Mr Campion, who was not in the mood for cross-talk. ‘Anything definite?’
The visitor became business-like immediately.
‘Pretty good, Mr Campion, pretty good. As far as I can ascertain, nearly all the amounts paid into the bank-book since December last, and not handed in at the Holborn post office, were paid in by an elderly gentleman. Is that what you expected?’
‘Only “nearly all”?’ inquired Campion, with interest.
‘All those I could ascertain,’ said the ex-Inspector firmly and with reproach. ‘There are five instances in which the assistant remembered, because he or she thought it queer; two doubtfuls; and one plain rude and unhelpful.’
‘Any description of the man?’
‘Fair.’ The ex-Inspector consulted his notes. ‘Tall, thin, sixtyish, well-dressed, yellow face – that’s some person’s word alone – quiet, stranger to each office. Any good?’
‘Good enough,’ said Mr Campion.
‘Good enough for my own information. No good as evidence.’
‘I don’t see why not.’ The ex-Inspector was hurt. ‘Some of them remember him clearly. The idea of him doing it tickled ’em. You know what these youngsters are nowadays.’
‘Oh, it’s not your end. That’s fine.’ Campion spoke soothingly. ‘It’s the information received. That’s the part of the story I couldn’t pin down.’
Ex-Inspector Beth’s large face assumed a puzzled expression. He had never been a man who liked to see good work wasted, and he now mentioned the fact in passing.
‘For information received, was it?’ he continued. ‘That makes it darker still to me. I can’t see at all what you’re driving at, Mr Campion. The amounts were so small. If there was any hanky-panky you’d imagine they’d have been paid in cash.’
Campion sat down. He felt the ex-Inspector was entitled to an explanation, but had never felt less like making one in his life.
‘Beth,’ he demanded, ‘have you ever met a woman who conveyed interesting information without actually saying it?’
‘Hinting?’ inquired the ex-Inspector dubiously.
‘No, not exactly.’ Campion hesitated, looking for the word. ‘A woman who gossiped to the point,’ he said at last. ‘She knows, and you know, that she’s telling you something, and yet for reasons of discipline or dignity or discretion neither of you ever admit to the other that you are interested or she is informing. See what I mean?’
‘Exactly.’
Beth nodded sagaciously and Mr Campion, finding it easier than he had expected, went on.
‘Now suppose you want to reward such a woman. You want to encourage her and yet you don’t want to commit yourself by giving her money in her hand. You can’t trust her not to come out into the open with a direct question if you leave a pound note on her typewriter.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, suppose she sees your difficulty and one day you find her Post Office Savings Bank-book lying in your room. It may have been a mistake: it may not. What is to prevent you paying a pound or two in at an unfamiliar post office? If she likes to query it you know nothing about it. If she accepts the cash and it encourages her, well, you’re on the same footing as you were before. You’ve never come off your pedestal. You’ve never descended to a familiar word. You’ve done it and yet you haven’t done it.’
‘And if an old ex-policeman goes round asking questions?’ murmured the practical ex-Inspector Beth.
‘Ah,’ agreed Mr Campion, ‘but I don’t think you’re the sort of man who would imagine that possible. You’re a conceited beggar. You think your dignity gives you a special pass to ignore inquiring policemen and all their works. It’s your own personal dignity in relation to the woman who is your employee which counts with you. That’s the sort of man you are.’
‘Oh, am I?’ said the ex-Inspector. ‘Well, in that case, Mr Campion, you can take it from me that I might do abso-bally-lutely anything. What a tale! If you’ll pardon a professional question, how did you get on to it?’
‘She’s that sort of woman,’ said Mr Campion, and Beth was satisfied.
It was half an hour later before Campion got rid of him. Lugg was in lordly mood and in the vein for a bout with an old sparring partner, while the ex-Inspector evidently had time to waste. Eventually, however, he departed and Campion was thinking affectionately of his bed when the telephone summoned him to his feet again.
‘Hello, is that you, Campion?’ The dry precise voice sent a thrill through him. ‘John Widdowson here. I got your note.’
‘Oh yes?’ Campion heard his own voice studiously non-committal.
‘You made a most natural mistake.’ The tone was conciliatory, but by no means ingratiating. ‘You’ve discovered the manuscript in the safe is a copy, of course. I don’t think anyone knew that except myself. I congratulate you. It was made for my uncle many years ago and for reasons of extra special safety I put it in the place of the real play, so that if there should be any attempt at theft I should be doubly protected. You follow me?’
‘Perfectly.’ Campion’s inflection was unmistakable.
‘Good. Well, what I want to say is this. I feel that since you have made the discovery and it has evidently led you to a mistaken conclusion, I naturally very much want you to see the real manuscript, so that any – ah – unfortunate surmises you may have made can be contradicted. That’s quite reasonable, isn’t it?’
Mr Campion’s tired brain considered the concrete evidence he had gathered against the man at the other end of the wire and found it nil. He had no doubt that John Widdowson could have murdered his cousin, and in his heart he believed he had done so, but he realized that if the real Gallivant was still in the firm’s possession the motive he had so carefully reconstructed was gone, and if there was no motive the strongest part of the case fell to the ground.
John was still speaking.
‘I want you to see that manuscript and I want you to see it at once, so that you can concentrate on finding the truth. Mike’s life is in danger. We’ve got to move quickly before these imbeciles decide to hang him. I’m in conference with Sir Alexander now. He’s hopeful, I may tell you, but he realizes that it’s going to be a hard fight. We’re grateful for Rigget, Campion, but it’s not enough.’
There was urgency and anxiety in the voice, not unmixed with a hint of reproof, and Mr Campion found himself shaken by that rarest of the emotions, honest astonishment.
John went on.
‘I’m a little irritated, naturally. Although I do see exactly how the misapprehension arose. You are a friend of poor Mike’s, but you don’t know me. We will say no more about that. I admit that were I unable to produce the genuine manuscript my own position might very well be open to question. I see that now, although it certainly gave me a shock when you pointed it out. I want you to see the real manuscript, Campion.’
‘I should like to.’ Campion sounded annoyed, in spite of himself.
‘You must. You must see it at once. I want all your energies concentrated on Mike’s trouble. Will you give me your promise that you’ll settle this point to-night?’
Mr Campion’s weariness had given place to bewildered resignation.
‘Yes, of course. I want to see it.’
‘You’ll be able to recognize it, you thi
nk?’
‘I think so.’
‘Splendid. It’s not in a very inaccessible spot, thank God, but one of the safest I know, one where I keep things when I want them protected from the inquisitiveness of my own family. Do you know our Paul Jones premises?’
‘No,’ said Campion, who felt like a child waiting to see what would happen next.
‘They’re in the phone-book, of course.’ John was clearly trying to keep civil in the face of crass idiocy, and finding it difficult. ‘Eighty-seven, Parrot Street, Pimlico. It’s a large building. Take a cab. Any driver will know it. I can’t come with you myself, unfortunately, because I shall be closeted with Sir Alexander into the small hours. But I want you to go at once. You can’t do anything useful while you’re still on a wild-goose chase. You see that?’
Mr Campion found himself thinking, quite unpardonably, that he had never been treated as a blundering employee before and that the experience was refreshing, stimulating and probably good for the soul. Aloud he said:
‘All right. I’ll go.’
‘You’d be behaving like a young ass if you didn’t,’ said the voice, with some asperity. ‘I’ll telephone to the caretaker to admit you on your card. He won’t know where the manuscript is, of course. You’ll have to find that yourself from what I tell you now. It’s very simple. The last room on the fourth floor – that is to say, at the top of the building, is the directors’ office. The room number is forty-five. If you forget it the caretaker will show you. In the room is a carved desk – oak or ebony, I forget which – and in the left-hand top drawer you will find the key of the cupboard. Open it, and the manuscript is in a newspaper parcel on the second shelf with two or three others. My uncle always kept it like that. His contention was that no one would look for it there or recognize it if they found it, and when he gave over he passed the tip on to me. Lock up after you, of course.’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Campion meekly.
‘I shall expect you to phone me later in the evening to tell me you’re satisfied, and, perhaps’ – the cold authoritative voice betrayed a hint of condescending amusement – ‘to apologize. I’ll phone the caretaker immediately. Oh, wait a moment; Sir Alexander may want to speak to you.’
There was a considerable pause while, presumably, Cousin Alexander was fetched from another room and then the magnificent voice rumbled over the wire.
‘That you, Campion? I’m sorry, but I must have John here for some time yet. Terribly sorry, my dear fellow, but anxious times, you know – anxious times. Good night.’
Before Mr Campion could reply he had gone and John had taken his place again.
‘Go along and satisfy your mind, my boy,’ he said. ‘You’ll know where you are then. As soon as you clear the line I’ll ring Jenkinson. He’ll be waiting for you. Goodbye.’
Mr Campion hung up the receiver and walked slowly back across the room. Standing by the window, looking down into the lamplit street, he tried to sort out thought from instinct and wished he were not so incredibly tired. That afternoon he had been sure of John’s guilt. Even now, when he considered his painfully forged chain of half-facts, he could not believe that it was composed entirely of unrelated coincidences; and yet, if John were innocent, could he possibly have made any more reasonable move than the present one? On the other hand, if he were guilty, what could he hope to gain by the production of yet another faked manuscript, or even no manuscript at all?
There was one other alternative, and Campion considered it in cold blood. In the course of an adventurous career he had received many invitations which had subsequently proved to be not at all as innocent as they at first appeared, and the common or garden trap was not by any means unknown to him. And yet, in cold blood, the absurdity of such a suggestion in the present case was inclined to overwhelm every other aspect.
While he was still wavering there returned to his mind a maxim often expounded by old Sergeant McBain, late of H Division: ‘If you think it’s a frame, go and see. Frames is evidence.’
Mr Campion put on his coat and had reached the front door when another thought occurred to him, and rather shamefacedly he returned to his desk and, taking a little Webley from its drawer, slid it into his pocket.
Leaning back in a taxicab nearly fifteen minutes later he surveyed Parrott Street, Pimlico, with interest. It was a long dingy road lined with solid slabs of Georgian housing, intersected by occasional side streets or great yawning gaps where demolition and rebuilding were in progress. Office staffs had long ago displaced the comfortable families for whom the houses were built, and at eight o’clock in the evening Parrott Street was a gloomy and deserted thoroughfare.
Number Eighty-seven was a dishevelled building. Its windows were dirty and uncurtained and here and there patches of plaster had chipped away, showing the brick beneath. One of its immediate neighbours had been taken down and huge wooden joists supporting the structure along one side did not add to its distinction. Altogether it was not a likely sister for the elegant Twenty-three, Horsecollar Yard.
The explanation, of course, was the old one. Like hair-dressing and hotel-keeping, publishing is forced to be class conscious, and just as front-rank restaurateurs are sometimes known to have smaller, cheaper establishments tucked away in the back streets, where, under less dignified names, money is made and odds and ends are used up without waste, so sometimes distinguished publishing houses have humbler sisters where less rare but equally filling mental dishes are prepared and distributed.
Messrs Paul Jones, Ltd, published children’s picture-books, light love stories of the cheaper sort, translations, and a vast quantity of reprints, and were kept alive by the possession of some twenty or thirty copyrights of the great Fairgreen Fields’ earlier works, which they republished at three and six, half a crown, one and three, one shilling, ninepence, sixpence, and fourpence simultaneously, and over a period of years without ever, apparently, overlapping or saturating any of that fine ‘blood’ writer’s many markets.
The firm was owned by Messrs Barnabas, without being in any way affiliated to them socially, and was run by a separate staff.
The taximan pulled up outside the dilapidated doorway and Mr Campion got out. The dirty transom showed a faint light in the entrance hall, and as soon as he knocked the door was opened by a woman as untidy and disheartened as the house itself.
‘Me husband’s hurt his foot,’ she said before he had time to open his mouth, ‘and I said for him not to move himself now he was got comfortable. I knew you wouldn’t mind.’
She looked up at him with a confiding leer which showed gappy teeth in pale gums.
A wail from the lighted doorway at the far end of the passage indicated that she was not in attendance upon her husband alone.
‘I’m coming!’ she shouted in a voice surprisingly raucous after her husky conversation tone. ‘See to ’im, Dad, do!’
Mr Campion gave her his card, and she took it under the bulb to read.
‘That’s right,’ she said, with idiotic but ingratiating surprise. ‘Campion. That was the name Mr Widdowson said. Shall I keep this, sir? D’you know where to go? It’s room Forty-five, right at the top of the ’ouse.’
She glanced abjectly at the dusty wooden staircase and back again.
‘I can turn on the ‘all lights from ’ere,’ she added, and rubbed her hands on the back of her skirt.
Mr Campion looked down at her.
‘How long ago did your husband hurt his foot?’ he inquired unexpectedly.
‘Week last Monday. One of the van-boys let a box down on ’im – clumsy young monkey! Mr Widdowson said surely it was well by now. I didn’t ’alf tell ’im off over the phone. “Well,” I said, “’e’s not an idol, Mr Widdowson.”’
She spoke without heat or humour, and her tired face turned towards the stairs again. In the back room the baby roared.
‘I’ll come up with you if you like,’ she said.
Suddenly Campion laughed.
‘Don’t bother. Is the do
or locked?’
‘Oh no, sir. We’re always here, you see. There’s only this entrance and the one at the back which we use. Nobody could get in. You’ll go up, then?’
‘I will. I’ll see you when I come down.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ He saw her quick hopeful smile and she wiped her hands again. ‘I’ll just turn on the lights.’
The beautiful staircase, which had been a Georgian housewife’s pride and responsibility and was now a danger trap to van-boys and caretakers, was flooded with dusty light as Campion set foot upon it.
The premises at Eighty-seven were even less attractive inside than out. The two lower floors were used as a warehouse and stretched out behind over what once had been a garden in vast ramifications of the book-producer’s trade. The very air was thick with dust and the sweet, acrid smell of ink.
Campion went up slowly, his hand on the Webley. In spite of his conviction that the idea of attack was absurd, he took no risks. His senses were alert and he walked with quiet springy steps.
He was not disturbed. The rows of greasy doors on each landing were silent and no creaking board, either behind or above him, answered the tread of his own feet.
It was a long way up. He climbed steadily on, pausing only once to look down the well to the hall, small and far away below.
The fourth floor was a little cleaner than the rest of the house. One or two of the doors had been freshly painted, throwing the shabbiness of the walls into painful prominence, and there was a strip of floor-covering of sorts down the centre of the passage.
Outside room number forty-five he paused and stood for a moment, listening. The silence was everywhere. Very gently he tried the handle. It turned easily and the door swung open, revealing an apartment only faintly lit by the light from the street lamps below.
With his left hand, his gun in his pocket, he shone his torch round the room. It was unoccupied and appeared to be in normal order.
A glance at the light fixtures assured him that there was nothing untoward in that direction, and he turned over the switch.
It was a big room, comfortably furnished with that particular brand of red Turkey carpet which is to the City office what the bowler hat is to the City clerk, a bookcase, a few chairs and the desk of which John had spoken. The walls were covered with show-cards, book-jackets and galleys of advertisements.
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