“Suppose a country chap finds a sealed letter lying in the road. It is stamped and addressed; sometimes he opens it, and its contents mean very little to him. More often than not he just sticks it in a letter-box. Our Roumanian decoded those he received, typed out the message neatly on his little machine and sent them off as ordinary business letters. When he was caught, he was actually doing one. We got the message both in the code and the clear; it was addressed to Carados.”
“I see. And when you showed it to Johnny?”
“He said he’d be damned,” said the Chief. “He convinced me completely. He was so interested, so keen to help and so naturally angry. No innocent man could have behaved more normally. He let it get him for a bit, and kept turning up with suggestions; he gave us every facility and we went over all his papers. We turned his houses out, we talked to all his associates, and we watched his mail, and there wasn’t a thing to pin on him. Yeo was in charge of the enquiry, and you know him. He was like an old woman looking for a postal order she thought she had somewhere; he went on and on and over and over, never tired, and always remembering just one more place to look. Finally he gave it up and said he would as soon suspect himself. Meanwhile the instructions kept coming in to Carados.”
“How? Oh, I see. You kept the Roumanian’s establishment open. What about the address?”
“Ah, that was the snag. The Roumanian insisted he used Carados’s private address and nothing could shift him on that point. But when we decoded the next message to come in and sent it along there, there was hell to pay. Carados opened it and came roaring round to us with it at once. He swore it was the first he had received, and I must say he convinced me.”
Campion shrugged his shoulders. “That’s probably it,” he said. “Someone was using his name. Possibly even the enemy was deceived. Jerry is extraordinary in that way.”
“That’s what we thought,” Oates agreed placidly, “until we heard from Gonfalon.”
“Lord Gonfalon? Loopy Clarence?”
Oates sniffed. “You know that, do you? That’s the snag, of course.”
“I know Gonfalon is the prize crank of all time,” said Mr. Campion. “Eight hundred years of solid loafing are behind him, and considered purely as the result, he’s logical. After that, the word doesn’t apply.”
“We found that out, of course.” The Chief’s gloom deepened. “He has a remarkable wife, though, she’s a French woman, a burning patriot. I understand his family considered it a mésalliance, but good Lord, without her he’d be penniless, certifiable and probably dead. She lets him do what he likes up to a certain point, but when it begins to look dangerous, she lays about him. Do you know her?”
“Sweet Hortense? Only from the song,” said Campion flippantly. “No, really, any evidence connected with that pair can’t be taken seriously.”
“There again you take the conventional view.” Oates was injured rather than annoyed. “Now I’ll tell you what happened. One day, soon after we’d decided Carados wasn’t implicated, this old fellow Gonfalon walked in to see me, and he told me an absurd story about rare peonies and Siamese cats and I don’t know what else, and finally announced in so many words that just before the war he’d been in communication with the enemy government concerning the preservation of these and other treasures in event of danger. He was quite open about it; he said his wife had now discovered the whole business and had sent him up to see me to make a clean breast of it.”
“Was there any truth in it at all?”
“Oh, yes. We went into it, of course, and Holly went down there and brought back all the correspondence he could find amid the cats and the greenhouses, not to mention about five acres of mounted armour of all periods, as well as any quantity of valuable or semi-valuable junk. We read the letters, and I must say he seemed to me to have completely fooled the enemy as to his importance in the country. They certainly had the idea that he was one of our hereditary rulers, and while I don’t know what his own letters to them were like, having had one or two from him myself, I can well imagine they were impressive and mysterious to a foreigner.
“To do them justice they didn’t trust him with much, but they gave him painstaking details concerning the best way to preserve his valuables, and when war did break out he got a communication, probably via the Roumanian, instructing him to communicate with Carados if anything important occurred, and he should need advice or assistance.”
“Wasn’t that to be expected?” said Campion quickly. “I mean, once we’ve accepted the fact that someone was using Johnny’s name, then . . .”
“Yes, yes, I know.” Oates was impatient. “But you see he had a reply.”
“From Johnny?”
“Yes, we’ve got it.”
Mr. Campion stared at him briefly. “I should have thought that was the finish,” he said.
“No, it wasn’t. That was the unsatisfactory part about it. It wasn’t.” Oates considered a moment before he went on. “The whole incident was crazy and the explanation we had from Carados was just feasible, yet it left an unpleasant taste. Gonfalon is definitely sub, you see.”
“Oh, yes, definitely. Hardly human.”
“No, I wouldn’t say that; he’s a crank. What happened was that one day one of our ‘planes accidentally dropped a practice bomb in the field next door to one of Gonfalon’s largest greenhouses. The whole thing came down and he lost two or three of his rarest plants. In his excitement at what he took to be a direct attack, he wrote at once to Carados reporting the occurrence, mentioning their secret brotherhood, and saying, in effect, what about it? Carados replied in the same vein, and promised ‘to attend to it’.”
“Did you see Gonfalon’s original letter?”
The Chief’s sallow face grew a shade darker. He looked uncomfortable.
“Well, yes, I did, as a matter of fact,” he admitted. “We got it from Carados. He had had it framed for his Mess.”
Campion laughed. “That’s what I should have expected,” he said. “Did it actually mention an association with the enemy?”
“No. Gonfalon said he was trying to be cautious, and the actual phrase was ‘the august body whom we both serve’. Carados said he thought he was talking about the Royal Horticultural Society.”
“I should say that was fair.” Campion was still mildly amused. “Everybody knows of Gonfalon, you see; he’s good for a laugh before he does anything. No, I don’t think you’ll get much by barking up that tree.”
“I don’t know.” Oates remained grave. “After he got the letter and framed it and had everybody laughing at it, Carados did go to extraordinary lengths to try to prevent training aircraft flying anywhere near the Gonfalon estate. He has influence, you see, and he did make a point of it. Now that doesn’t sound quite like a joke to me.”
Campion made no comment, and the Chief went on:
“He told a wonderful story, and on the face of it we had to believe it, but he admits he’s no personal friend of Gonfalon. He knows the man is sub-normal and yet he goes out of his way like this. Why? It’s not too satisfactory, is it?”
Campion sat very still. He was thinking of Johnny and that other story which he had told less than a couple of hours before; the story of the poisoning of Theodore Bush, that, too, had been a wonderful story and one which, on the face of it, had had to be believed. He did not forget Johnny’s peculiarity, however; his passion for going out of his way to do little things to assist people he knew but slightly.
“It’s very difficult,” said Oates. “We’ve locked Gonfalon up on his estate, of course, but you don’t know what to believe quite, do you?”
Campion did not care to comment. Instead he said abruptly:
“What about this bottle of wine?”
“Oh,” said Oates, “you’re in on that too, are you? I did wonder. I saw Yeo just now; in fact I went down to Bedbridge Row with him, and he told me you said you had been followed from the Minoan. It’s funny, I saw Carados on this very subject in Eve Snow’s dressing
-room this afternoon, and he didn’t tell me you were to be one of the party.”
A question which had been bothering Mr. Campion for some time was answered, and instead of replying directly he raised his eyebrows.
“You’ve been allowing Johnny ‘to collaborate’ on the side, I take it?” he enquired. “That’s a dirty old police trick, Stanis; I’m embarrassed by you.”
“That’s why you’ll never make a policeman,” said Oates seriously. “You don’t see it as I do; you see a man, I see a menace. I wouldn’t put it past you to feel that if a man has a kink it doesn’t matter so much what he does, but I never feel like that. If Carados is the man I’m beginning to believe he must be, then from my point of view he’s an evil thing and I’ll treat him as I’d treat a typhus germ. I know we’ve just about won this war but we haven’t won the next, nor the one after it, and while men like this are free and in power we’re in danger. When it’s a case of freedom versus slavery the lad who hasn’t got his mind quite clear is against you. I don’t care what I do to catch him and crush him and the others with him.”
He broke off abruptly and laughed at himself.
“So far, I admit, he’s either been honest enough or clever enough to appear remarkably straight,” he conceded, “he came to me with this story about the wine as soon as Bush approached him, even though it brought him right back into the business again, which is suspicious in itself at this stage. Once again I was forced to believe him. He didn’t tell me that you were going to be one of the tasting party, though. Now why was that?”
“Possibly because he didn’t know,” said Mr. Campion. “Don Evers invited me and I told Johnny I was coming when I saw him at the theatre.”
“How did he take it?”
“He seemed unexpectedly pleased.”
“Over-effusive?”
“No, I don’t think so. He did seem very pleased.”
“Why?”
Campion did not reply. The full weight of the evidence against Johnny Carados was piling up upon the scales before him. The dreadful possibility was now a probability and tragedy imminent. He stole a glance at Oates, sitting grey and impartial by the empty stove, and remembering all he knew of him reflected that here was the most nearly just intelligence he had ever met. Clearly the time had come when he must be forced to make his own contribution to the facts as known to the police. Yet it was a very distasteful duty. He began abruptly.
“Theodore Bush nearly died tonight,” he said. “Someone intended to kill him. This is the story as I had it from Carados, but I warn you that in spite of all you’ve told me since I still believe it.”
Oates did not speak until the whole story of the evening had been laid before him. He had a gift for listening, never interrupting, never missing a point.
“So I left them,” said Campion finally. “Bush will recover, and I shall be astounded if he prefers a charge against Carados. The Doctor may be more difficult, but I doubt it.”
Oates rose to his feet. He looked tired. “There you are,” he said, “it’s always the same. Every lead takes us straight to him; whatever turns up has him slap in the middle of it and he always has an explanation which is so daft that you can’t believe it can be anything but the truth. However, this time he’s worked a bit too fast. That woman we found in your flat had enough chloral in her to kill her if she hadn’t been smothered first.”
“So I gathered.”
“Did you? How?” Oates pounced on him suspiciously. “That’s a piece of information we haven’t released. How did you know, did he tell you?”
“No, he didn’t. Lady Carados conveyed it. She said she changed the bottles.”
The Chief made no coherent sound, but he ran a finger round the inside of his collar.
“Something will have to be done with that woman,” he said. “She’s loose without a keeper for the first time in her life. Don’t you think so?”
Campion stood wondering about the woman who had talked so long and so terrifyingly in Theodore Bush’s mannered room, and a new and startling idea occurred to him. Here was a person who had a curious outlook on life if ever there was one; here was a person with an imperious will, who believed in astonishing privileges for certain people; here was somebody whom Johnny would shield.
“I say, Oates,” he began diffidently, but got no further. Someone was tapping discreetly on the flame-scarred scullery door.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
WHEN CAMPION PULLED open the door it was not the familiar figure in blue battle dress who stepped briskly into the room, but a slender pink-faced young man in a neat office suit.
“Mr. Campion, I presume?” he said innocently. “Mr. Oates? Oh, there you are, sir. I hope I’ve done the right thing but in the circumstances I thought I ought to find you.”
The Chief turned to Campion who was looking at the newcomer as if he did not believe in him, and made the introductions.
“This is my secretary,” he said. “How did you get here, Tovey?”
The young man stood up stiffly and made his report as if he were in Court.
“I heard from Superintendent Yeo that you, sir, had followed Mr. Campion who was presumed to be searching for his employee, Lugg. Recollecting that you had told me that the man Lugg was reputed to be strongly attached to a pet animal which he kept in Carados Square, I set out there assuming that you, sir, would by that time have attained your quarry. I found the man and with some difficulty persuaded him to direct me here. If I might suggest it, sir, your presence in your office now would be advisable.”
“He talks like a good book, doesn’t he?” said Oates to Campion. “But he’s got here, which is the answer, if you’re interested.”
Tovey grew pinker with pleasure but remained at attention when invited to proceed.
“In your absence, sir,” he began, “Chief Inspector Holly has interviewed a person by the name of Angus Sloane, who came to lay evidence concerning the alleged discovery of several items listed in the files of missing articles. In consequence of this interview Chief Inspector Holly despatched Sergeant Dacre to bring in Lieutenant Don Evers of the U.S. Army, and there is some doubt in my mind about the legality of this step. At any rate, I thought you should know of it because when the young man arrived he had someone with him, sir.”
“Someone with him? What are you talking about, Tovey? You’re so damned exact I can’t follow you. Whom did he have with him?”
Tovey swallowed. “He had a Bishop with him, sir,” he said. “When I saw that I thought I’d better find you.”
Reflecting that it was hard luck on his uncle that on his first night out for ten years he should end up at Scotland Yard, Mr. Campion cut in to the somewhat startled silence.
“Is that Angus Sloane, the Bond Street man?” he enquired.
“Yes, sir. He’s a very reputable art dealer, I believe.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Campion. “I suppose that covers it.”
“He’s the man, isn’t he?” murmured Oates. “What’s he got hold of?”
Tovey looked uncomfortable. “I think he said he knew where the Croker Venus was, sir.”
Both men were staring at him.
“And in consequence of this Inspector Holly called in Don Evers?” demanded Campion.
“Yes, sir.”
Oates took Campion’s arm. “We’ll go at once,” he said.
Tovey beamed. “The car is against the kerb, sir. This way.”
As he sat beside Oates in the back of the sedan, while the efficient young man drove them through the dark streets, Mr. Campion permitted himself a brief deviation from the matter in hand.
“Hardly a success as a fugitive, our Lugg?” he suggested. “The searching cops just cover their eyes with their hands when they see him coming, I suppose?”
The Chief stirred irritably. “He’s safer there than anywhere. There are more chains than clank, as we used to say when I was a boy. Yeo has him when he wants him, and hasn’t when he doesn’t, which is more to the point. No one wa
nts his evidence at the moment; no one wants to lose the big fish in a row over a silly society woman.”
Mr. Campion reflected that the peccadilloes of the breed had pepped up considerably while he had been away, but he did not say so, and presently the Chief spoke again.
“Would Sloane know the Croker Venus if he saw it? Know if it was genuine, I mean.”
“Oh, I think so. He makes his living giving that kind of opinion.”
“Does he?” Oates groaned. “I wish I did,” he said seriously. He was still unsmiling some ten minutes later when he was questioning Holly rather more closely than a Chief Inspector expects to be questioned as to the precise nature of the invitation which had brought Lieutenant Evers to the Yard. Holly was nettled, his eyes were arctic, but he remained smooth.
“There was never any question of arrest; he came as a favour to us, Mr. Oates,” he explained. “We put it to him and he came at once, bringing with him the friend with whom he was dining.”
“With the Bishop of Devizes,” supplemented Oates grimly. “It will sound good on an official chit from the U.S. Army authorities.”
Holly’s chill began to pervade the room. “No one could have expected him to be dining with a Bishop,” he protested, unreasonably Mr. Campion thought. “However, it’s all right, Mr. Oates. At least, I think it is. They were both very nice about it as far as they went. I said I was very sorry, of course, and up to a point the young man was co-operative, except that . . .”
“Has there been a row?”
“No, Mr. Oates, not exactly. No unpleasantness, you know, but . . .”
“Good Lord, Holly, you didn’t detain them?”
“No, Mr. Oates. I know my limitations. I did ask them if they’d wait a bit.”
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