Warrant for X

by Philip MacDonald

  American playwright in London overhears kidnap plot, almost gets bumped off before Colonel Anthony Gethryn’s wit and cunning solve what is overheard—almost too late.

  Exciting paper-chase with the usual Gethryn brilliance, plus mild love interest, and Scotland Yard sleuths for seasoning.

  Swell concoction.

  —The Saturday Review

  If you heard two people, that you couldn’t see, talking about a serious crime they were going to commit and then you followed them and lost touch with them without seeing their faces, or without knowing even what kind of crime they were going to commit, what would you do?

  That was the situation that faced Sheldon Garrett, American playwright in London to supervise the production of his new play. He went to the police and they were polite, but unimpressed. After all he didn’t have a single definite piece of information. But he did have the luck to meet and tell his story to Colonel Anthony Gethryn, one of the most attractive of all detectives, and thereby hangs the tale.

  Never has Anthony Gethryn tackled a more difficult case and never has Philip MacDonald written a more convincing story.

  —The New York Times Book Review

  COPYRIGHT, MCMXXXVIII, BY DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC.

  All rights reserved

  PRINTED AND BOUND IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  CHAPTER I

  THE FACT that Sheldon Garrett was an American makes it comprehensible that, although a widely travelled and widely read person, it was not until his thirty-fourth birthday that he made acquaintance with any of the work of Mr G. K. Chesterton. This birthday fell, in the year with which we are concerned, upon a September Friday and coincided happily enough with the first night of the London production of his play, Wise Man’s Holiday. It being clear by 11:45 P.M. that the play was going to be a success, the party given after the show by Brooks-Carew was a decisively alcoholic affair. It is instructive to think that had it not been, Sheldon Garrett would not have spent the most of Saturday reading the Napoleon of Notting Hill and would not, therefore, have been himself in the vicinity of Notting Hill upon Sunday afternoon. For, if Brooks-Carew’s drinks had been fewer and smaller, neither Sheldon Garrett nor Manvers, of the Telegram, would have reached that solemn stage of insobriety which led them, neither knowing the other from Adam or even Eve, to a ponderous literary discussion conducted in Brooks-Carew’s bathroom; and then Garrett, looking over the Savoy bookstall on the following night, would not have purchased a cheap edition of what is, after all, perhaps the best of all Mr Chesterton’s good work.

  He read from one o’clock upon Sunday morning until, at just before five, he had finished with the histories of Adam Wayne and Auberon. And then he slept, to wake at the awkward hour of 1 P.M. This tardiness necessitated the mendacious cancellation of a luncheon appointment and, further, left the liar with nothing to do in London upon a grey autumnal Sunday afternoon. He lunched in belated solitude and in his own sitting room. Over the meal he dipped again into Napoleon—and by half-past three was descending from a scarlet omnibus opposite the depressing fagade of Notting Hill underground station.

  He then walked—led, as it were, by Chance and Chesterton. At first unable to reconcile even the Sunday afternoon quietude of the main thoroughfare with the brave sombreness of the streets down which Adam Wayne had walked and wondered, he found himself, by a lucky turn to his left, at once in an atmosphere where indeed the railings were like spears.

  London was very grey that day and, summertime having undergone its annual destruction three days before, the blue dimness of early evening soon began to blend with the steely light which had been all that told of a sun somewhere above smooth, unending clouds.

  He had, he thought, been walking for some thirty minutes before he glanced at his watch and found, not without surprise, that it was a little more than double that time since he had alighted from the bus. He was in some sort of Ladbrookish square whose tall, grey-fronted, be-pillared houses frowned down with ugly and angular dignity upon an iron-surrounded oval of bright green grass and dusty, dark green bushes.

  The place seemed dead and Garrett felt himself on a sudden very tired and—yes!—faintly afraid. He did up the top button of his overcoat, squared his admirable shoulders and set off at a brisk pace designed to assure himself that he was moving somewhere of set purpose.

  He was unashamedly relieved when, coming to a side turning, he met another wayfarer in this dead place of glowering brick—a grimy man who carried over his shoulder a slender, laden sack.

  They met almost face to face, so that the sack bearer was forced to step aside.

  “Evening!” said Sheldon Garrett, who felt the need for speech.

  “Eh?” said the sack bearer.

  “Er,” said Sheldon Garrett and hastily produced a cigarette case. “Got a match?”

  The sack bearer searched in pockets with his right hand, balancing his sack with his left. Without a word he produced matches and proffered them.

  “Thanks!” said Garrett and lit a cigarette which he did not want. He held out the still-open case. “Have one?”

  The sack bearer shook his head. Garrett closed the case, put it back in his pocket and returned the box of matches.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  The sack bearer returned box to pocket, shifted his burden from the left shoulder to the right, took a step sideways to avoid his accoster and marched off into the gathering gloom.

  Young Garrett looked after him, feeling a violent and ridiculous urge to run in pursuit and—as he had seen in English newspaper reportings—“commit assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm.” But Mr Sheldon Garrett, traveller and man of substance and author of the successful play, Wise Man’s Holiday, merely threw away a newly lighted cigarette and strode off in the opposite direction.

  Now it was really dark. Behind curtains lights began to show in windows which hitherto had been blankly frowning eyes and every here and there, on high, the distorted rectangles of street lamps sent out feeble yellow radiance. Garrett tried to remember the course of his meanderings and came to the conclusion that if he kept bearing to his right he would once more reach the thoroughfare along whose bosom he had been borne from the Savoy and the haunts of men. He turned to his right and was in a street which was like many others along which he had walked. Halfway down it he saw a boy with a dog but he did not speak to the boy. He came to the end of the street and found forward progress barred. He turned left—and it seemed to him that he was in the same street yet again. He saw a woman with a dog. He did not speak to the woman. He walked on, unconsciously both lengthening and quickening his stride rather in the way in which a man lost in the bush will lengthen and quicken his stride before allowing his mind to tell him that he doesn’t know, after all, where he is.

  He turned to his right. And now he was clearly in a different street. It was narrower and the houses which lined it, although they, too, frowned, were shorter and dingier and behind their railings (which did not look in the least like spears) seemed to give out into the chill dank air an abstract miasma of decay. Onto a low wall dividing the pavement along which he walked from the dark shadows of the houses behind it jumped a long, gaunt cat. It stared at him with shiny yellow eyes and was gone.

  He became aware now of physical as well as spiritual discomfort. His legs ached and his feet were resenting the pounding of paving stones. The chill air stung his face but beneath his clothes his body was uncomfortably warm.

  He came to a turning upon his right and took it and found himself, by means of one of those sulky conjuring tricks which London so often performs, in a different world. Gone was the sense of decay. Now there surrounded him, like an uncomfortable cloak, that air of chilly, black-gloved rectitude which, owing to the l
ingering slaughter of the English language, must be expressed in the word “respectability.” The houses were neat. The brass of letter boxes and knockers shone bright. The very street lamps seemed to have cleaner panes to their windows. The railings, though certainly not spears again, were yet frigid guardians of a privacy which needed no guard.

  And then, though direfully discreet, came small shops, all but the last having barred doors and blank, shaded windows which offered nothing save unfriendliness.

  Garrett strode on; but at the next corner suddenly halted. For the last shop was not, strictly speaking, a shop at all. Over its door hung a lantern encased in fancifully patterned wrought iron which tried to look old. And behind the glass panes of the lantern shone a yellow light and on the panes of the lantern appeared the words, in tortured Gothic script, Ye Willow-Pattern Tea Shoppe.

  “Ah!” said Garrett aloud.

  Most untraditionally he liked tea. And he was tired and footsore and too hot for more walking and his throat was parched. He pressed the handle of the muslin-curtained door and from somewhere in dim recesses came the tinkle of a mournful bell.

  2

  Inside the place was dimly lighted and larger than he had expected. Along one wall were ranged, to face each other, high-backed settles of deal stained to look like oak. On the walls were hanging plates and dishes of cheap earthenware painted to look like willow pattern. Such light as there was came from a central hanging lamp of brass designed to look as if it were old and from a few weakly powered and faintly pink bulbs held to the walls by iron brackets which tried to look like candlesticks. Ye Willow-Pattern Tea Shoppe was, in other words, own brother to a hundred other Tea Shoppes.

  It was empty. For a moment Garrett looked about him, considering flight, but then there appeared—silently and as if by some dreary magic—the usual handmaiden. She was tall and willowy and fatigued. She was clad in the sort of long and shapeless garment which invariably goes with Tea Shoppes and had about her, as inevitably, an air of aggressive gentility. She did not speak to Garrett; she merely looked at him with a glitter of pince-nez.

  Garrett said: “Tea. Could I have some tea, please?” and presently found himself seated, to face the door, in the last and darkest of the booths made by the settles.

  He ordered China tea and, because it seemed expected of him, scones and jam. The neophyte drifted silently away to be lost in the shadows at the far end of the room. There came to Garrett’s ears the sound of a door opening and shutting and then, from somewhere presumably behind this door, a faint chinking of china. He lit a cigarette and disposed himself as comfortably as the unfriendly settle would let him. He found himself still too warm and rose and took off his overcoat and put this down with his hat upon the settle facing him.

  He had finished his cigarette when his tea came. Strangely enough it was good. He drank two cups and ate two pieces of tasteless bread and butter. He poured himself the third cup and lit another cigarette and sat back in his corner and wondered what he was thinking about and found that he did not know.

  The street door opened with a faint squeaking followed by the dim tinkling of the bell. It closed again and the bell stopped ringing and Garrett heard footsteps and the voices of women. He was sitting in the angle formed by the wall and the back of his booth and he did not move. He felt, indeed, vaguely annoyed at intrusion in the way that a man does when suddenly aroused from the pleasant state of musing heavily upon nothing. He heard another faint sound from the door in the black shadows at the far end of the shop and then, a moment later, another murmur of voices as the languid ancilla spoke with the newcomers. Then there came a sudden marching of feet and persons disposed themselves in the booth immediately next to his. He still had not moved forward, so that he did not see them nor they him; but his ears told him that there were two.

  Followed murmurs, rustles, the clearing of a throat, clatters as umbrellas were laid down and creakings as bodies were disposed upon the deal seats. The neophyte came, swimming for a moment across Garrett’s little field of vision, then departed with orders. The voice that gave the order was beyond doubt a woman’s; but it was curiously deep and had in its tone a decisive and masculine quality which interested Garrett despite himself.

  His cigarette had been finished before the new entry and now he idly debated with himself as to whether the trouble of reaching to a hip pocket for his case were worth the dubious solace of more tobacco. He decided that it was not and thereby irretrievably involved himself.

  He looked at the watch upon his wrist. Its hands stood at twenty minutes to six. He had not realized that it was so late. He must be back at the Savoy and changing by half-past six. Without otherwise moving he put a hand to his breast pocket for his notecase, remembering that he had no change. He pulled out the soft leather wallet with fingers so idle that the thing slipped from them, struck softly against his knee and slid noiselessly to the floor. He bent to retrieve it. His groping hand did not find it at first, so that he was forced to sink to one knee and continue his fumbling over a wider area.

  Curiously—because he was not particularly endeavouring to be quiet—it so happened that over the whole of this operation he made no noise at all.

  His searching fingers had just found the edge of the wallet when there came to his ear, echoing curiously by reason of his nearness to the floor, the sound of voices from the next booth. The first voice was the deep one but the second voice was its very antithesis: high pitched yet soft; youthful yet pleasantly modulated; delightful yet somehow strange in accent to Garrett’s ear. And it managed to convey, without tremolo, a suggestion of fear.

  The first voice said: “I told you so. Not a soul in the place.”

  The second voice said: “Except the waitress . . . and . . . did you look in the booth behind me?”

  The deep voice said: “Not a soul, I tell you! Don’t be——”

  The gentle voice said: “I’ll look . . . just to make sure. . . . There’s no harm . . .” It died away. Like the other voice it had not whispered and yet, like the other voice, it somehow conveyed to Garrett’s ear a suggestion of furtiveness. The wallet now in his fingers, he remained—quite why he could not have told you at the moment—utterly immobile. He even held his breath. He heard through the pounding of the blood through his ears the sounds of someone rising; then a scraping upon the boards and then, following the sound of this one seating herself again, the second or gentle voice. It said:

  “No. There isn’t anybody.” It was noticeably louder. It was, also, surer.

  The deep voice said: “What did I tell you! Never talk secrets in a private house. Never talk secrets in a public park. If you must talk secrets, talk ’em in a teashop.”

  A muffled bubble of laughter, not conveying much of mirth, came from the other throat and the gentle voice said: “You do say such things!”

  “What I say,” said the deep voice, “always means something. . . . Now then, miss, what’s your answer? Are you going to see it through? Or not?”

  The gentle voice said: “I—I—can’t make up my mind. It sort of frightens me. I—you see—I——”

  To the ears of Sheldon Garrett, conscious not only of the slightly ludicrous indignity of his position but of certain views of his own upon eavesdroppers, came the sound of the service door opening and a faint rattling which told of the bearing of a laden tray. In one swift movement, cleverly noiseless, he was up from the floor and in his seat again.

  The deep voice said in a harsh, savage half whisper which only just carried to Garrett’s ear:

  “Shut up!” And then, in a louder and commendably natural tone: “Good! Here’s our tea!”

  It came and its bearer went. Sheldon Garrett found himself relieved that not once did the languid servitor so much as glance in his direction. He sat back and played with the notecase, telling himself mendaciously that he was about to go. But he played with a deliberate absence of sound. And he did not go. Nor did he move.

  The deep voice said roughly: “Now sh
e’s gone! Take that moony look off your face and answer up. On or off?”

  “I—I—I tell you I’m . . .” stammered the gentle voice. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid. You said that before.”

  “But I . . . but I . . .”

  “You sound like a gramophone record that’s stuck. I told you last time, and I’m telling you again today, that there’s nothing to be afraid of!”

  The gentle voice said after a noticeable pause:

  “But I am afraid! Sometimes I want to do it and then I think perhaps that if I do terrible things will happen to me. Because after all it’s—it’s not right!” The words had come fast this time: only once, and that towards the end of the sentence, had there been any of the hesitation of the previous periods. But the speed had been the speed of agitation.

  There followed a silence, broken by the chinking of china as, probably, the spout of a teapot clinked against a cup edge. Garrett took opportunity to remonstrate with himself. Why should he sit here, in deliberate hiding, and listen to the confidences of two women who imagined themselves alone? Why, because he was a stranger to London and had found a part of London which was inimical as the jungle, should he have this queer sense of disaster to come? Why, even if he were weak minded enough to allow climate and surroundings so to impress him, should he imagine that what was probably the beginning of some sordid discussion, abortive in all senses of the word, was a dark and hideous sidelight upon some facet of abomination? Why, in short, did he not cough and rattle crockery and get to, his feet and stamp towards the door and pay his bill and go away from here? . . .

  Four whys, and not an answer. He sat still.

  The deep voice said—and it was harsher even than before: “So you’re frightened! Frightened of doing something which couldn’t possibly get you into any trouble! Frightened of. living in comfort for a while and then getting a lump of money which’ll keep you in a damn sight more than comfort for the rest of your life if you live to be a hundred! Frightened!” The voice suddenly altered its tone; with its next words it kept all the harshness but seemed to take on a sort of musing quality most unpleasing to the ear; a quality which was in itself a threat. It said: “Well, I’ll have to go back and tell Evans. I don’t suppose he’ll like it, with you knowing all about things. But there we are.”