Be Shot For Six Pence

by Michael Gilbert

  His fingers picked up a glass-backed hand blotter, which was lying north and south on the desk and turned it accurately ninety degrees so that it lay east and west.

  “And which story does Colin know?”

  “I hope,” he said seriously, “that he doesn’t know the truth.”

  “Because that would make him vulnerable?”

  He just looked at me.

  “And that’s why – wherever he’s got to – you don’t want me blundering about after him.”

  “I’ll go further than that. You’re a sensible chap. You wouldn’t have come along here if you hadn’t been sensible. So I can tell it to you right out. You mustn’t interfere. No question of discretion. You just mustn’t do it. It’s forbidden.”

  “What happens,” I said, breathing a bit harder, “if I refuse to recognise your right to give me orders?”

  “Oh, I don’t suppose it will come to that.”

  “But answer my question. What are you going to do? Imprison me in the Tower?”

  “Might do. It’s a bit crowded at the moment.”

  “All right,” I said. I climbed out of the chair. Captain Forestier got up too. He had his back to the light and I found it hard to read the expression on his face. He said: “I judge you to be an obstinate man. Don’t go rushing into this simply because you’ve been told not to. Of all the silly reasons for doing a thing I should think that would be about the silliest.”

  “I’ll bear it in mind,” I said.

  Kittypuss was waiting at her desk. The newspaper was more efficiently hidden this time.

  “Seven o’clock at the Café de Paris,” I said.

  She started to look haughty but the effort was too much for her and suddenly all her beautiful teeth shone out, like the sun from behind a Western cloud.

  “You’d be pretty surprised if I took you at your word,” she said.

  “Get a late pass from the boss,” I said, “and try.”

  Chapter III

  COLOGNE AND STEINBRUCK

  The seduction of Kittypuss (whose name proved to be Dorinda) proceeded along the most orthodox lines.

  She turned up at the Café de Paris all right. Ten minutes after the time I had mentioned, and was she surprised to see me? (She just happened to have been passing that way. A chance in a million!) So we had dinner together and she talked about her home in the country, her sisters, her dogs, and her old mother. We drank half a bottle of white wine between us.

  Two or three days later we had dinner again, and this time we got outside a whole bottle of Burgundy. She talked about summer holidays in France and winter holidays in Switzerland.

  The next night we started with sherry, knocked back a bottle of Mouton Rothschild, and went on to the Old Pluperfect, in Curzon Street, to dance. I had mentioned, casually that we might be going there, and was delighted to observe the Sergeant Major, in a rather tight dinner jacket, at a table in the corner. She talked about her ambitions, which centred at the moment on running a very select antique shop in Knightsbridge; and I gave her a fatherly kiss in the taxi on the way home.

  I’m not sure, but I think the Sergeant Major was in a taxi behind us.

  Shortly after that I invited her to my flat. Just a drink, you understand. We’ll go on somewhere afterwards. I suggested two nights ahead. She sounded a little thoughtful about this one, but in the end she came back and said bravely, all right, she’d love to. (That’s the girl. You’ll get promotion for this.)

  I said, evening dress, and that will leave us free to do what we like afterwards.

  She said, that sounded topping.

  Next morning I rang up Douglas, from a call box, and dictated a letter over the telephone to his secretary. It was a letter which I wanted sent straight away to an engineering firm in Brussels who were very closely connected with us in business. They were not exactly a subsidiary, but we honoured each other’s cheques.

  The address of the flat I had given Dorinda was 2A, Nightcrow Court, which is a big white soulless block north of the Park, on the unfashionable side of Queen’s Road. It is known, I believe, as the bailiffs’ nightmare because there are so many ways out of it. I have never owned a flat there, but my cousin Cedric has one on the ground floor. (What value he gets for the exorbitant rent he pays is doubtful. He spends his time looking for new varieties of rock plants, and as the ones he cherishes most grow near the tops of the furthest peaks of Asia Minor, Nightcrow Court sees but little of him.) The flat is furnished in execrable taste, and I have a key.

  In the afternoon I went for a quiet walk, and when I was quite certain that no one could be following me I hailed a taxi and drove to a small booking agents, near Victoria. I had made use of their services before and was well known to them. The man behind the counter looked slightly surprised at my request.

  “I didn’t know you were interested in Cathedrals, Major,” he said.

  “Passionately.”

  “It’ll be mostly old women.”

  “Next to Cathedrals I like old women best.”

  “It’s your life,” he said, “Forty bob with lunch, tea and tips. Dear at half the price.”

  I paid him in notes and returned to my Club, where I spent the evening losing money in rather a hot bridge school. That was Wednesday.

  Thursday dawned bright and fair. I rose early, put on the sort of suit that men about town wear when they are going out of town for the day, and had a hearty breakfast. After breakfast I cashed a fair sized cheque at the Club desk (I had been careful not to go near my bank since my interview with Captain Forestier).

  One final duty remained. I rang up Tony Hancock at the Alpine Club and told him that I should not be able to give my promised talk on the North Face of the Creag Meagaidh. Tony sounded peeved. “I’m terribly sorry,” I said, “but I’ve been called away.”

  “It’s a girl.”

  “It’s not a girl. It’s a far more absorbing and complicated thing than sex. In fact, I’m giving up a snip of a girl in order to do it.”

  “If you’re giving up a girl,” said Tony, “it must be absorbing. How am I going to find a lecturer at this time of day?”

  “Ask Prendergast,” I said. “He’s been trying for years to give you his talk about how he climbed Pwillheli.”

  Tony said something unkind about Prendergast and something even more unkind about me, so I rang off.

  I collected a light raincoat, although it had never looked less like rain, and stepped out. I don’t think I was followed that morning. After all, provided I behaved myself, they had something better to do than follow me round indefinitely.

  However, I didn’t take any chances. It cost me sixty minutes and five changes to reach Buckingham Palace Road, but by the time I got there I was sure that I was on my own. And there she was; drawn up at the kerb. A handsome, yellow twenty-four seater. A placard in front said “Know Your Cathedrals”. And a card in the slot said “Today’s Trip: Canterbury”. A hatchet-faced man was standing with his head out of the open top and there were twenty-three people already seated. The booking agent had been perfectly right. They were all women.

  We got to Canterbury in time for lunch. It was a lovely drive. I shared my seat with a schoolmistress and stood her a coffee when we stopped for a break at Rochester. She had visited every cathedral in England and Wales. Some of them twice.

  Before we went in to lunch I had a word with the hatchet-faced organiser, and told him that I had friends in Canterbury who might be putting me up for the night. Not to worry if I wasn’t there when the bus started. He promised not to worry. He looked like a man who didn’t worry much.

  There was a local train from Canterbury to Dover which didn’t leave until three. It was going to mean cutting it a bit fine the other end, but at least it gave me plenty of time in Canterbury to do my shopping.

  I decided that a suitcase looked more respectable than a rucksack. I’d have liked to get a second-hand one, but that proved impossible. So I compromised with a large, cheap, fibre job. I
reckoned if I banged it about a bit it wouldn’t look too glaringly new. Then I fitted myself out with some shorts and pyjamas and underclothes and shaving gear and things of that sort. I had brought my sponge bag with me in my pocket, and that, at any rate, looked authentically old and used. I was lucky enough to pick up a second-hand tweed jacket at a little shop in a street behind the market.

  I unfolded and refolded everything a few times. Most of the stuff still looked rather new, but it would have to do.

  I got out at Dover Priory Station with barely twenty minutes in hand. Luckily there was a taxi waiting and it scooted me downhill to the Marine Station. I hurried across the footbridge, and onto the platform. The tail end of the queue from the boat train was still moving. I tacked myself onto it.

  I had my boat ticket. Douglas had got it for me from an ordinary travel agency three days before. Passport stamped. Customs. Everyone in a hurry. Nobody really looked at anything. No questions. The policeman at the turnstile gave me the curious, ruminative stare which policemen always give you when they are thinking of something else.

  The gangways came up. The ship’s hooter let out a mournful blast, and I sank into a deck chair. As we swung away, stern first, from the quay, I saw that it was exactly half-past four. By eight o’clock Dorinda would be knocking at the door of my flat. She would be furiously angry, bitterly disappointed, and deeply relieved that the ultimate sacrifice was not required of her.

  The Sergeant Major might get a night’s rest, too.

  “Tea in the salon,” said the white coated waiter.

  “The sea looks smooth,” I said.

  “Of the smoothest,” said the waiter.

  I was glad of that. I am no sailor.

  Before the War you used to reach Cologne, on this route, at midnight. The new Saphir-Express will get you there in time for dinner. However, I had one important call to make, so I stepped off at Brussels, where I spent an uncomfortable night at a second-class hotel in the quarter behind the station. I was fairly certain that I had made a clean getaway but there was no sense in taking unnecessary risks.

  In the morning I called on our Brussels associates to pick up the money I had asked for, most of it in German marks, and by lunch time I was in Cologne.

  I had the afternoon to kill, so I walked about a bit before choosing an hotel. The Koenig seemed about my mark. It was a modest place, with only half a dozen bedrooms and a big downstairs bar with a tiled stove, a zinc counter with a beer engine, and a few well scrubbed tables.

  I had my evening meal there, saw a very bad film, and slept like a log.

  I had asked to be called at seven, and by half-past eight I had breakfasted and paid my bill. I told the proprietor that I was not certain whether I should be staying another night, but if he was agreeable, perhaps I might leave my luggage with him until I had made my plans.

  This was a mistake, but not one I could have foreseen.

  A minute later I was in the street, heading for the Rhine.

  It was a lovely morning. A brisk breeze was packing away the clouds and snapping the flags. The customary Trade Fair was in progress and Cologne was full of flags. Even the grim battered hulk of the cathedral had life and colour that morning.

  My watch said seven minutes to nine as I set foot on the Hohenzollern Bridge. It was built for the railway, but it carries as a sort of afterthought a sidewalk, outside the main structure, for bicyclists and pedestrians.

  I had no difficulty in finding the exact place. The bridge is hung on three suspension arches, and the middle one had seventeen uprights. By any mathematics the ninth upright must be in the middle.

  I reached it with two minutes to spare, turned my back on the bridge and leaned over the iron parapet.

  A tug was fussing up stream, pulling a line of three barges. A pleasure steamer, its top deck almost empty, swung away from the landing stage, the band playing. Half a dozen clocks together started to chime the hour of nine.

  Nothing else happened.

  Looking out of the corner of my eye I totted up the score. An elderly German and his wife were walking towards me on the footway. They looked as ordinary as bread and butter. A small boy in leather shorts was coming the other way at a trot. A pair of blue uniformed bicyclists appeared from the cathedral end and pedalled slowly towards me and past me. As they caught the gradient they put on speed a little, and disappeared.

  It was nearly five past nine. A workman on a bicycle appeared at the west end. My instructions had been quite precise. It was beyond possibility that Henry should have made a mistake. I would stay until a quarter past nine and then try again next day. The workman jumped off his bicycle, propped it against the rail and leaned beside me. He had a small brown face like a friendly monkey.

  “I take it you are Philip,” he said.

  “That’s right.” My German is adequate, but no more.

  “Who did you get the message from?”

  “Henry,” I said, cautiously.

  “All right, all right,” he said. “No time for fencing. I’m sorry I’m late. I was damn nearly arrested this morning.”

  I expect I looked alarmed.

  “Nothing to do with this business. Nothing at all. My own private life catching up with me. I’m doing this to oblige a friend. Every morning I come over on my way to work.

  It’s quite easy. When I saw that you were waiting for me, I stop.”

  “How did you know I was waiting for you?”

  “How did I know? It was obvious. But never mind that.” He glanced quickly over his shoulder, to left and right.

  “You are to go to the Schloss Obersteinbruck. That is all I know. Now goodbye, and good luck.”

  “But where is it?”

  “Above Steinbruck – as the name implies.”

  “And where is Steinbruck?”

  “Good heavens,” said the little man, “how should I know. Somewhere in Austria. You’ll find it on the map.”

  He grabbed hold of his bicycle.

  “Wait just a moment. When did you see Herr Studd-Thompson? Was he well? How long ago did he give you this message?”

  “It was – let me see – two months. Perhaps more. Yes, he seemed very well.”

  “And you have come past here every morning for the last two months?”

  “That is so. He did me a good turn, you see. A very good turn. Stolen goods, the police said. Of course it was a put up job. You understand?”

  “I understand nothing—”

  “That’s right. That’s quite right. Never understand a thing, then you can come to no harm. I must go now.”

  He hopped on to his bicycle and pedalled off. As he reached the far end a car drew out from where it had been waiting behind the buttress of the bridge. It quite blocked the footway.

  I saw the bicycle wobble, then it straightened, and the rider hopped off. I thought for a moment he was going to run for it. But the two men who had got out of the car closed up on him.

  I turned and walked fast in the other direction.

  At the west end of the bridge another car was stationed. The driver was at the wheel; beside him another man with horn-rimmed glasses and a wide mouth like a fish.

  Neither of them moved as I came up. I passed behind the car, clattered down the steps, and walked off along the promenade. My heart was beating a little faster.

  First I wanted to get off that promenade. It was too long and too straight and was commanded at both ends. Behind by the Hohenzollern Bridge which I had just left, and in front by the new Koln-Deutzer Bridge.

  On my left I had been conscious of a looming white building. It turned out, when I got up to it, to be the Rhenisches-und-Historiches Museum. I bought a ticket off a snuffy old relic of the Franco-Prussian war and dived into shelter. Actually it was rather a nice museum, full of suits of armour, and engines of war and gigantic panoramas of the Rhine and a Vincenzo Coronelli globe from the Gymnasium Tricoronatum which, at any other time, I’d happily have spent the morning with. At that moment my mind w
as too occupied with the present to give due attention to the glories of the Rhenish past.

  The rooms were almost empty. I sat myself down quietly on a seat behind a glass case of ladies’ Sunday clothes, and listened. Ahead of me was the slow tip-tap of footsteps. They belonged to a little man who had come in just before me. In the silence I could follow his pottering progress from room to room. The only other sound was from the lobby where the custodian wheezed and coughed and occasionally rattled his cash box as if to assure himself that it was still with him.

  Presently I heard the outer door open. Two more visitors. I sat tight, I was almost out of sight, but had a fair view of the room, between the sequin-covered bodices. This time it was two men, neither of whom I had seen before. They advanced steadily, wheeled to the right, and disappeared into the adjoining room. They didn’t seem to be taking a great deal of interest in the history of the Rhine, either.

  As soon as they were gone I got to my feet, blessing my rubber-soled shoes, and moved back the way I had come. The custodian seemed surprised to see me.

  “It is forbidden to circulate in an against-the-clock direction,” he said.

  “An urgent appointment,” I said firmly, vaulted the entrance turnstile, and trotted down the first steps. The custodian sat looking sourly after me. I had probably upset his calculations for the day.

  Outside a police car was parked against the kerb. The driver looked worried when he saw me. His instructions had evidently not covered this contingency. I ignored him, and ran along the embankment. After all, it was no crime to run, even in Germany.

  The driver had an inspiration and started to sound his horA stairway on the left. Just what I wanted. At the bottom an alleyway, and at the end of that another. Keep to the alleys. Cats can move in alleys. Cars can’t.

  There’s a comfortably confusing network of alleys west of the Rhine at that point and it was a full quarter of a mile before I broke out into the Ringstrasse and immediately jumped on a tram.

  I had no idea where it was going. The main point was that it was crowded, and moving. It made a swaying, jolting detour round most of the west suburbs of Cologne and finally dropped me at the Main Station.