Warrant for X

by Philip MacDonald

The liftman looked after him, a flicker of puzzled interest momentarily lighting his bored young face. “Looks queer,” he thought, and once more leaned and yawned and waited for his shift to end.

  The stairs were iron and sharply spiralled. The sheer, tubular walls were unrelieved grey-white, harshly lit by shadeless electric bulbs. The iron was slippery and rang hollow as Van Renseler’s feet descended.

  He plodded down . . . around and down . . . around and down . . . around and down. . . . The shaft seemed endless. He looked up and saw nothing but the circular sheathlike wall and the awful regularity of the twisting iron. He looked down, still plodding, and saw the same pattern inverted.

  Sick fear caught him by the stomach in a sharp, new wave. Jagged irrationalities flashed through his mind. Suppose “they” didn’t keep the date! . . . Suppose this iron and this sheath were endless! . . . Suppose his mind had gone and this iron-lined shell had no existence and instead of saving his child he were useless to her!

  He began to run. His feet made a great clattering. His breath came hard. Beads of icy sweat started out upon his white face. . . .

  The stairs ended. There was a door. He went through it. He drew in a great breath and jerked back his left cuff and looked at his watch. It showed twenty-nine and a half minutes past the hour.

  He was in a cross passage, blue-and-white tiled. The roar of a passing train shook the earth. He turned and went towards the sound and came out upon an empty, gaily-postered platform. Panic seized him as he realized that he did not know whether . . . Ah! he had seen a lighted sign which bore, among others, the word “Eastbound.”

  It was the other platform then. He turned sharply and went back down the cross passage, passing a uniformed porter as he did so.

  He came out upon the westbound platform. There was no train nor anyone awaiting a train. And no official.

  Again he looked at his watch. Half a minute past the time now. He walked with slow, heavy steps along the platform. He must wait; must wait; wait; wait. . . .

  He had reached the extreme end of the long, echoing platform when, from the last of the cross passages, just behind him, came brisk footsteps.

  He turned. His heart beat with terrific force. He saw a man coming towards him.

  2

  Anthony’s black Voisin screamed down the Embankment, its horn sounding almost continuously. It slid in and out of the variegated traffic like a snake through undergrowth. It achieved, even in this crowded, tram-strewn thoroughfare, an average speed beyond belief. Unscathed, it reached the Westminster Bridge corner, swung right and, writhing tortuous way between cars, drays, cabs and omnibuses, reached St James’s Park.

  As it turned by Birdcage Walk a motorcyclist policeman leaned from his sidecar and gripped at the arm of his colleague astride the saddle. The Voisin, its horn playing an insistent, raucous fanfare, receded at terrific speed. . . .

  The policeman in the saddle shook his head. He had seen the unobtrusive sign (not to be mentioned here or elsewhere) which tells guardians of the law that here is no speedster but a colleague upon vital business.

  The clock upon the Voisin’s dashboard read nine thirty-two.

  3

  Two dark blue limousines of sedate appearance made their way, at a speed far from sedate, down an astonished Knightsbridge. Their horns, like the Voisin’s, blared without cessation. And no policeman looked more than once at them without knowing them—as no civilian could—for what they were.

  In the back seat of the first were Pike and Garrett and two others—quiet and burly men who spoke not at all.

  Garrett twisted in his seat. He said:

  “Wonder if Gethryn’s behind us?”

  Pike smiled thinly. He shook his head. “Not behind us, sir!”

  Garrett said: “D’you think your people have done that phoning yet?”

  Pike lifted his square shoulders, very slightly. “If they’re not through yet, sir, they will be at any minute.”

  The clock on the dashboard stood at nine thirty-three.

  4

  A through train—eight out of ten go through Cromwell Road between eight-thirty and eleven at night—came roaring out of its sheathlike tunnel, rocketed past the long platform and hurled itself into the black mouth of the interrupted tube.

  Van Renseler stood, trying not to look, at the man who had seemed to be about to speak to him until a porter in uniform had come onto the platform and, by means of a portable ladder, had mounted to the direction board and begun to tinker with it.

  That had been, it seemed to Van Renseler, an endless time ago: actually it was three minutes, for the clock now said nine thirty-four.

  The porter came down from his ladder, folded it up, lifted it and walked off through the centre cross passage, his footsteps echoing shrill and metallic in this empty man-made warren.

  Van Renseler, his heart pounding until to draw breath was conscious effort, watched the other man.

  It was, primarily, an ordinary man. Of medium height and build; of indeterminate clothing; of briskly inconspicuous gait. .

  The hollow reverberations of the porter’s footsteps grew gradually less. Van Renseler, unable to move, stared dumbly at the sauntering back of the other man.

  The echoing footsteps died away.

  The man turned—not sharply, not hurried; just the ordinary turn of a platform loiterer.

  But now he was walking directly towards Van Renseler.

  He came on and on. Van Renseler ceased to breathe. Now the man was close. Now he halted, less than a full pace away.

  His face was, at first sight, as commonplace as the rest of him. Neither round nor oval, sanguine nor pale, it was a face which a man might look at every day for a moment and never remember. But Van Renseler looked for longer than a moment. Moreover, this face and its owner were to him of paramount importance. And he saw that between cheeks of indeterminate shape and brows of indeterminate hue were eyes the like of which he had never seen.

  For they were without colour, iris and pupil blending into one another through indeterminate shades of drabness, and the whites not white but merely a grey lightening of the utterly indeterminate shade of the cores.

  The man spoke. He said:

  “Have you a safety match?”

  Van Renseler tried to speak but did not succeed. He proffered the black dispatch case.

  The man took it. He shifted a little as he did so. He now stood with his back to the wall of the platform and facing the rails. Van Renseler had waited at the extreme end of the platform, close to the tunnel mouth. Shifting in sympathy with the other’s movement, he now had his back to the edge of the platform just where it merged into the horseshoe wall of the tunnel. He was some three feet from this edge.

  The man snapped open the lock of the dispatch case, which he took by its handle in his left hand. He looked full at Van Renseler with his colourless eyes. He said, in a voice which was neither deep nor high pitched, round nor thin:

  “I’ve got a message for you.”

  He put his right hand into the inner pocket of the inconspicuous overcoat. Van Renseler’s tongue came out in a vain effort to moisten dry lips. The man was groping in the pocket. He said, after a glance down the empty length of the platform:

  “Here it is!”

  His right hand came out of his pocket. It came very fast. In it was something dully black, like a long pantomime sausage. . . .

  Van Renseler jerked his head aside—but it caught him a heavy blow on the temple, glancing down to his shoulder.

  A flare like that of a Verey light soared inside Van Renseler’s head. . . . He was falling. . . .

  As he began to crumple his assailant thrust out the hand with the sandbag in it and caught him in the chest.

  There was nicely judged power in the thrust; enough power to jerk Van Renseler’s buckling legs into three staggering backward paces.

  The fourth pace carried his senseless body beyond the edge of the platform. He fell like a limp sack. His body was in the darkness
of the tunnel mouth—and directly athwart the passive, deadly, shining riband of the live rail. . . .

  Before the body had completed the bare four feet of its fall to certain cindered destruction by thousands of volts of electricity the man with the bag had turned and was walking—with brisk, unhurried, commonplace gait—towards the first of the cross passages. . . .

  And the clock over the direction board showed a few seconds before nine thirty-five.

  5

  “Yes sir!” said the inspector in charge at Drayton Street police station. “Yes sir, I understand, sir. Right away, sir . . . five minutes at most.”

  He set back the receiver of the telephone and began to give curt, concise orders. Over his head the clock upon the wall showed nine thirty-five. He said finally:

  “Got that, Sergeant?”

  The sergeant stood rigid at attention. Out of a wooden face came sharp, metallic phrases. “Yes sir. Ten men. Surround Cromwell Road station, covering all hexits. Let no one enter or leave station till officers arrive from the Yard. Then take their orders.”

  The inspector nodded. “Get at it. Quick!”

  6

  “Yes, I will,” said the little man in charge of the Cromwell Road tube station. “Yes, at once!”

  His eyes were bright with excitement: here were happenings indeed.

  He stood up and locked his desk: he was a neat little man. He started towards his office door, glancing at his watch as he went.

  The time was nine thirty-six.

  Some two seconds before he opened his office door a man carrying a black dispatch case crossed the vestibule from the direction of the stairs. An ordinary-seeming man, with a brisk yet unhurried walk. He went out into Cromwell Road and turned to his left.

  7

  The underground station faces Cromwell Road, but its eastern side is in a dismal Kensingtonian backwater called Illingham Street. At nine thirty-seven the black Voisin penetrated the gloom of Illingham Street like an angry bullet. . . .

  Exactly at this moment the little stationmaster, accompanied by two uniformed porters, hurried onto the westbound platform.

  The stationmaster looked up and down the platform.

  “No one here,” he said. “I——”

  One of the porters drew in his breath with a sharp hiss. He was staring at the gleaming lines near the tunnel mouth at the far end. He shouted indistinguishably and began to run.

  “What in the . . .” began the stationmaster; then himself saw and ran too.

  At this moment, up above upon the surface of the earth, two blue limousines drew to a stop opposite the front of the station. Quiet men came from them and walked into the vestibule between the glowing windows of the shops. Pike was among them, and Garrett. To meet them, cutting through from the side entrance past the lifts, came the long form of Anthony Gethryn.

  Across the wide straightness of Cromwell Road policemen in uniform—eleven of them, all at the double—came towards the station.

  Pike saw them and glanced at his watch. “Not bad,” he said, and turned to meet the sweating sergeant.

  Anthony, who had merely nodded to Garrett, turned away again and went back towards the lifts. The movement gave Garrett a clear view of the roadway, and he saw, receding across it, a figure which had apparently come from one of the shops upon the same side of the street as the station, some twenty yards from the entrance.

  It was a man’s figure, of medium size and inconspicuous clothing. It walked with brisk yet unhurried gait. And it carried a black bag in its right hand.

  There was, in this figure, nothing at all out of the ordinary. Its movements were anything but furtive; it had not come directly from the station; in movement, stature, pace and appointment it had probably ten thousand counterparts in London.

  Yet Garrett could not take his eyes from it. Perhaps it was the fact that the figure carried a bag; perhaps it was something far less simply explicable, but in the twentieth part of a second he made up his mind that he must know more of this man who was so calmly walking away. With a sudden feeling of breathless weakness in his stomach he turned to speak to Pike.

  But Pike was not near, nor was anyone. They had all moved across towards the ticket office and lifts. . . .

  8

  Standing at the extreme edge of the platform, near the tunnel mouth, the stationmaster looked down and shook his head. His small face was pinched and white under the yellow radiance of the lights.

  “Bad business!” he said, and made a ticking sound with his tongue. “Bad business! Must’ve died instantaneous.”

  The elder of the two porters was scratching his head and looking down in bewilderment at the sprawled body upon the gleaming rails. He was not perturbed like the stationmaster; he was not fixed in bovine curiosity like his mate; he was all bewilderment.

  The stationmaster jerked himself into bustling semblance of activity. “Come on, now!” he said busily. “Got to get him moved before the next train.”

  “Ah!” said the bovine porter.

  But the other porter still stared. He said:

  “ ’E ain’t dead!” He pointed with black-edged finger. “W’en they gets burned they goes all twisted like. An’ there’s a stink. An’ . . . look! You c’n see ’im breave!”

  “But—but the current,” stammered the little stationmaster.

  The bovine porter came to life. “ ’E is breathin’!” he said firmly. “Cummon!”

  9

  A dark blue taxi, very new, very discreet and extremely shiny, sped westwards along Cromwell Road. One of a new fleet, it was a most superior taxi. It was smooth running, excellently sprung and admirably driven. It had—unusual for a London cab—shining bumpers at front and back. It also had, between the rear bumper and the body, a luggage grid.

  Within it carried one passenger: a composed and ordinary-seeming man who held upon his knees a black bag.

  The taxi slowed; then turned off Cromwell Road to the right. The turn completed, it was about to accelerate when there swerved in front of it a small boy upon a bicycle. Any onlooker would have given odds upon the boy’s death—yet he was passed unscathed. The driver, as already has been said, was a good one. He braked, swerved, skidded, accelerated—and very nearly shook Garrett from his prone precarious perch between rear bumper and grid.

  He felt himself going. His legs swung sideways and one foot actually scraped along the road surface. With a terrific effort he clenched his grip upon the bars of the grid. The muscles of his back and arms seemed to be tearing loose. And then, the swerve over, the taxi righted itself and he was once more safe. . . .

  He put his head down upon his arm and wiped away the sweat which streamed from his forehead. He prayed—as he had been praying since that fantastic moment when, seeing the taxi begin to draw away with his uncertain quarry, he had run blindly after it and swung upon his perch like an oversized gamin—that somebody would see him. Surely, surely, they must soon—in this best-policed city in the world—pass a constable who would catch sight of him and stop the taxi. Surely, if they persisted in escaping the eyes of the law, another motorist would see him in his headlight beam and overtake the taxi and tell the driver. Surely, stopping at an intersection of streets, some curious loiterer would shout to the driver concerning his extra passenger. Surely something must happen to stop this cab before the end of its journey. Even a smash, he reflected, would be better than nothing. Once stopped by some outside agency, and he would at least—although under suspicion himself—be able to delay matters for long enough. . . .

  But the cab went on unchecked, through these dark and frowning and always deserted Kensingtonian streets. Not a policeman met Garrett’s eye . . . not an observant busybody of a passer-by . . . no overtaking car. . . .

  10

  The lift gate opened with a rattling clang. The station-master was kneeling by the body of Van Renseler. He was looking down into the still face and shaking his head. He was talking to himself.

  “No current,” he was saying
. “Can’t understand it at all.”

  Brisk men came and tapped him on the shoulder and moved him aside. And uniformed policemen bent and raised the unconscious man. In the back of the lift the two porters, swelling with a delicious sense of importance, began unanimously to talk to a burly person in the plainest of clothes.

  The stationmaster, blinking, got to his feet and stepped out of the lift. Now the inert body of the man who should have been dead was being placed upon a stretcher held by more policemen. Over this bent a tall man in clothes of easy elegance.

  The stationmaster was drawn irresistibly towards the stretcher. He said timidly:

  “Is he—I can’t understand how—he was lying right across the live rail. . . . He——”

  The tall man straightened and turned. He said brusquely:

  “He’s all right. Crack on the head. And the current was cut off from Lot’s Road.”

  The stationmaster’s eyes were wide and wondering. “But I don’t . . .” His little bleat died in his throat as it became plain to him that he was unnoticed.

  The tall man had turned to another. “Where’s Mr Garrett?” he was saying.

  11

  The blue taxi, having threaded tortuous way through gloomy frowning streets of shocking similarity, turned into another which, although no better lit, was wider and longer and flanked by more portentous buildings.

  There were lights in many windows of the tall brick houses, but they were yellow, dismal lights which served not at all to relieve the dank atmosphere of disuse and decay. They were allies, it seemed, of the dirty-paned and infrequent street lamps.

  The taxi stopped.

  Garrett, who had been wondering what he would do when this thing happened, now made up his mind. He lay motionless. Thus he could not see anything save the roadway. But he heard the door of the cab open . . . feet alighting . . . a curt murmur of voices . . . the chinking of coins passed from hand to hand . . . and then brisk feet crossing the pavement and the whining of a rusty iron gate.