The Cummings Report

by Christopher Hodder-Williams

  “Take care of yourself,you great big idiot ...” It helped, to think about Jill. But what sort of a prize idiot, I wondered, did she think I had been this time?

  I swerved to avoid a huge truck being driven on the wrong side of the road. I swore at the driver before I realized that it was I who was the offender. I swung back to the right-hand side quickly, before anything else offered a head-on target. Even a minor shock like this started me shaking; and shaking could lead to those violent shiverings which I knew so well, the sure-fire curtain-raiser to a spasm.

  Steady,boy!Steady ... !

  With an effort that brought the sweat to my brow I managed to get a hold of myself. My hands were gripping the wheel like iron clamps. I relaxed them, and remembering some advice that the doctor had given me I let my mind flow, so that the released thoughts poured over my nervous system like cool water. I wondered if Jill felt in any way about me as I did about her. I wondered whether I would ever write songs again. I wondered whether she liked kidneys and bacon for breakfast. I wondered ...

  “Turn left here,Mr.Cummings”

  *

  I’m sorry about this, because it sounds as if I was quite unbelievably stupid — which of course I was. When I left my rooms in the Village I was quite sure I would be followed, and went to fantastic lengths to evade my shadower, almost throwing myself straight into the arms of the law in doing so. Actually, as I was soon to be informed, I hadn’t been followed at all. Then.

  All Peter Ghent — or Loring, or whatever he chose to call himself — had had to arrange was to keep a check on Robdale, for by doing so he could discover quite easily what my movements were.

  All of which I realized, far too late, when this calm voice from the back seat said:

  “Turn left here, Mr. Cummings.”

  How startled can you get? I won’t attempt to describe my feelings. I only know that for a split second I wanted to roar with laughter, which must have been nerves, or something. But I suddenly felt so ludicrous. At this stage I don’t think I would have been surprised if Mr. Bulganin had also been in the back, with an invitation to visit the Salt Mines in Siberia, some time when I happened to be passing that way.

  However, this light-hearted (and light-headed) reaction was short-lived. I realized that my conduct over the last few days had been exactly as they anticipated. There was nothing that I knew — or David knew — which hadn’t been deliberately held right in front of our insensitive noses.

  The impact of the situation was heightened, somehow, by the simple traffic direction that my pursuer (if you can call someone in the back of the car you are driving a ‘pursuer’) issued. If he had said “hands up;this is your lot,mate” or whatever the American equivalent of this is, I should have taken the whole thing in my stride. But “turn left, Mr. Cummings” simply broke all the rules and was hard to accept.

  The gun in my back, however, was as hard as maybe, and was a very good argument for following his instructions to the letter.

  We turned left, and the 9 millimetre pain in my back was temporarily relieved as my companion climbed over, in a pally sort of way, on to the seat beside me.

  It was, as I suspected, Peter Loring himself.

  “As you do not like caustic comments,” he said, “I will spare you any further melodrama of the Fenton brand.”

  “Thanks for that, anyway,” I said. “Tell me, how did I do? I mean, have I so far fulfilled the function you wished me to?”

  “So far, yes,” he said. “But you haven’t really started yet. We just wanted you to get seen around a bit, get yourself well and truly marked down in the papers and so on as a real spy. And I hand it to you, you’ve had the Technicolor treatment — television commentators, front page of nearly all the papers on consecutive days, radios blaring out your sins ... it’s been a real ball, Mr. Cummings! The only thing we were scared of was the F.B.I. picking you up; they’re not scheduled to do that yet.”

  “How did you know I wouldn’t go to them with my version?”

  “We had to gamble on that. That’s why we gave you such an obviously cooked-up story. You were bound to check some item or other, and, of course, you did. You went to Lord Robdale (thanks for that, partner; he may be very useful) and had him check some detail — which was it?”

  “Whether you were a friend of Gary Brand.” I didn’t see any point in concealing it.

  “Gary Brand!” he exclaimed contemptuously. “That two-bit playboy. I wouldn’t be seen dead with him.” The jealousy both in his expression and in his voice suggested that he would not only be delighted to be seen dead with the well-lined Mr. Brand, but alive also. He jerked himself back to the matter in hand. “So you checked that. And you also checked the yacht — that was clever of you; if you hadn’t found out we would have had to go to the trouble of persuading you to come out here, instead of driving in a hired car with Lord Robdale footing the bill. I must say that does appeal to my sense of humour!”

  “Life is full of laughs.”

  “And the biggest laugh of all is going to be on you, My British Buddy!” he said, giving an entirely new twist to Irving Berlin’s lyric.

  “Tell-me-tell-me!” I said, “I just can’t wait to know.”

  But inside, I was afraid. I knew they must have had a good reason for taking me across the Atlantic and going to all the trouble of framing me for treason.

  “Just keep driving along,” he said, “and I’ll tell you.

  “The people I work for,” he began, “are ruthless. They do not believe in the importance of the individual. So when an individual ceases to be important —phhht!”

  “I’m with you so far,” I said.

  “Yes, Mr. Cummings, you’re with us — because you haven’t ceased to be important. Yet. When you do, that’s the time to worry. Well now, Hugh Palate, who was a clever bastard when it came to electronics, but a babe in arms when involved in politics —he ceased to be important. So he took a holiday on the Alaska Highway ... a very foolish place to go, don’t you think, Mr. Cummings?”

  “Most unwise,” I conceded. “All that snow.”

  “Quite. So we had to find someone else. And human nature being what it is — especially when it comes to brilliant scientists, who can never see beyond their cathode-ray tubes — we knew that sooner or later he too might become dangerous. In fact, he showed signs of it while you were chasing all over London having yourself a wonderful time playing spies. Well, now you’ve graduated, Mr. Cummings. You’re a real one. You’re working for us. Everybody knows that. And you’re going to prove it by knocking off a traitor who decided, at a most inconvenient moment, to stop being a traitor and to be a good boy. He’s on his way to Washington with the idea of shooting the works. And we really can’t have that, can we?”

  I was shaken. This was something I hadn’t thought of. All those hours I had lain awake in a downtown apartment trying to figure out a reason for all this, the thought of a murder frame hadn’t occurred to me. But it was like so many other things — obvious when somebody told you. I was number one suspect for any sort of dirty work that might be in the wind. I was mentally sick to an extent that no one would now be prepared to assess. And I was a desperate man, wanted by the police ...

  “Just how,” I demanded, “do you plan to force me to murder someone?”

  “Don’t be so naive!” said Loring. “You’re notrealty going to have to do the actual job — we’ll do all that for you. All you’ve got to do is to take the rap. Let me explain:

  “Your victim — whose name, by the way, is Victor Buche — boarded a train in Chicago this afternoon at 3.10. It is due at Lima at about 7.40 (that’s a few minutes from now) and Pittsburgh at fourteen minutes after midnight. Turn left at these lights ... Good. Now keep going straight ahead.”

  “But — we’re heading straight back towards ...” I broke off. It was dawning on me. A little slow, but dawning.

  “Towards where, Mr. Cummings?”

  “Idlewild!” The grim game ofTwenty Questions wa
s nearing its end. “To pick up a plane, no doubt, for Pittsburgh. Very neat. Someone disposes of him on the train, and I am found with the body, with the gun still smoking in my hand. Mr. Loring, you’ve been at those comics again.”

  “You’ve got the general idea. It’s not quite so corny as that, but the effect is the same. And, my friend, by the time you have got yourself well and truly mixed up with the F.B.I. over that little party, I shall be on my way in the launch back to the flying-boat, with both the Americanand the British sections of PERISCOPE, all complete and shipshape.”

  “But what about the tests?” I demanded.

  “All completed yesterday,” he said, with my least favourite smile. “I may look like a playboy, like your precious Gary Brand, but, as I think my good friend Stutyen has already told you, I am a fully qualified electronics engineer — not quite in Victor Buche’s class, perhaps, but quite capable of testing completed equipment.”

  “Well, you can’t keep a gun in my back all the way to Pittsburgh on a commercial airliner,” I said. “So there’s nothing to stop me reporting myself to the police at the airport.”

  “Who’s going to believe you?” he pointed out, reasonably enough. “If they even bother to check your story — considering what they’ve got on you — it will be far too late to do any good.”

  “They could stop the train.”

  “Onyoursay so? Not a chance! And if they did, what then? Well, they’d find Buche all right. But even Buche doesn’t know where I’ll be by then, and my good friend Abe Shapello is there, right on that train. He’ll know what to do if anything goes wrong. And the police won’t even consider holding me at the airport, while they check —if they check, just because a wanted man — a traitor — tries to stall them off with some crazy story about flying-boats and secret weapons and all that malarky. No, you know darn well you only have one chance, and a pretty slim one at that. In fact, I should say it’s non-existent. But you’ll play this my way, Cummings, because there’s always the forlorn hope that you might be able to turn the tables at the last moment. And you are an incorrigible optimist, my friend!

  “But don’t let me raise your hopes too high; I don’t want you to get any big ideas. Consider, if you do what we require of you there is a chance that you might eventually be cleared of guilt. After all, a great many facts will come to light — when it’s too late for anyone to do anything about them. Possibly your innocence might eventually be proved. I can’t say.

  “But if you try anything, Cummings — and I’m not talking comic-strip language now — if you try anything on that train that isn’t in the script, you’ll die. Because you won’t be of any further use to us, and like others have before you, you will become dangerous.

  “But I think you’ll behave just as we planned when you get on that train. And do you know why? Because we have looked into the case history of your illness. Now, you are supposed to have had an injection — several days ago it was due, wasn’t it? I thought so! And what is the one thing most likely to bring on one of your rather distressing attacks? Steady, you’ll have us both wrapped round a telephone pole if you’re not careful. But I see you get my point. Well, you’re not going to get your injection, and you are about to be exposed to a very trying experience in a train. And I’ll lay sixty-four dollars to a dime that when the police find you, you won’t be in any state to talk yourself out of a very ugly situation. In fact, it will look for all the world as if you disposed of poor Professor Buche during one of your attacks. According to Sir George Horrocks (oh yes, we have had a good look at his ample notes on your case) evenhe doesn’t know quite what would happen under the circumstances we are about to arrange. So you see ...”

  “For God’s sake!” It was my voice, but it had nothing to do with me. The road. Where was the road? Just a blur.

  The brakes. That was it; I must apply the brakes. Somehow I stopped the car.

  I was covered in sweat, and shivering all over uncontrollably. I had to force myself to concentrate enough in order to say what I needed to say.

  “Sodium amytol,” I gasped. “Can’t find it.”

  Loring’s voice had grown grotesquely loud. “You’ll have to do without it, Cummings,” he was saying. “It might spoil the fun later.”

  “For Christ’s sake,I’ll go mad.I’ve got to have it.Do you hear?”

  He was relentless. “Calm yourself,” he said. “It wouldn’t do to arrive at the airport in that condition. You’ll give yourself away immediately.”

  “I don’t care!” I screamed. Yes, I was screaming. “I don’t care. Anything ...anything rather than this ...”

  He climbed out of his side of the car and walked round to the door by the driving seat. “Move over,” he said sharply. “Move over or I’ll shoot you dead now.”

  Perhaps the instinct of self-preservation is indomitable.

  For a moment I sat there shaking, with the whole scene going round and round like some undreamed-of new horror in the line of funfair rotors. I had reached the hairline beyond which lay my breaking point.

  I thought I was going to black out.

  “Move over!” he repeated. “If you give in now you’re a dead man!”

  I have never pretended to be brave. The sort of courage that makes men do daring and dangerous things is not in me. But, in that instant, I can remember feeling two things: first, I wanted to live; and second, I wanted to defeat these monstrously inhuman creatures who would stop at nothing to get what they wanted.

  And as I began to recover, and the scene came into focus again, I realized even then what my salvation might be. Loring had handed me on a platter the one thing I could never have acquired myself. For if, when it was a choice between life and death, I could control my condition now,I could do it again ...

  “Move over!” he said a third time. “And I’ll drive. But I’ll keep the gun in my hand ...”

  He needn’t have worried. I was going to go through with it now.

  CHAPTER 18

  To be a maintenance engineer in Brian Mockridge’s department was not an occupation wholly conducive to sleep, thought Sam, as he staggered over to the telephone in his pyjamas.

  As usual, he began the conversation with a fruitless attempt to persuade his boss that all technical problems could be solved without his help. But he knew it was no use. It never was ...

  Sam swore softly to himself. “What, atthishour?” he grumbled down the telephone. “Aren’t I allowed to getany sleep?”

  “Sorry, old boy,” boomed the instrument. “An oscilloscope has packed up on me, and I need it urgently.”

  “Try kicking it, Mr. Mockridge. Sometimes that does the trick.”

  “No good,” said Brian. “I’ve nearly hacked it to pieces, but it still won’t behave. The trace has gone right off the screen. Look, I’m sorry, old man. But this is priority one. Can you get round right away?”

  “All right, all right,” said Sam miserably. “Any time, any day. Twenty-four-hour service, that’s me. I’ll be there.”

  “Good boy.” Brian hung up, and sauntered along to Miles’ office.

  “Your call come through?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Miles gloomily. “I thought I was on to something — one of Cy’s bright ideas. Cummings had some stuff hidden in his piano, so we phoned up the piano tuner to ask whether he had seen anything.”

  “Well?”

  “He didn’t.”

  “Isn’t that the answer you wanted?”

  Prescott-Healey got up wearily from the desk. “It was,” he said, “except the piano tuner happens to be blind. He wouldn’t have known even if it had been there, unless he’d ripped the piano to bits, piece by piece.”

  “Oh Lord!” exclaimed Brian, rubbing some of the sweat from his forehead with those enormous, mutton-chop hands of his. “This isn’t quite our day.”

  “Night.”

  “Whatever it is. My twin-trace oscillograph has finally given up the ghost, so I can’t go on till it’s repaired.”
r />   “Good. Now you can go home to bed.”

  “My dear boy. I thought you were in a hurry for this stuff!”

  “I am.” Miles picked up the phone. “I wonder if there’s anyone in the canteen,” he said. “I haven’t eaten since — oh, heaven knows! Hallo ... well that’s something, anyway.” He covered up the receiver with his hand. “If you’re not going home, you’d better eat, Brian. They’ve probably got bacon and eggs and coffee, or something.”

  “I’m always willing to eat,” said Brian. “My life story.”

  “Send up some eggs and bacon or anything else you’ve got, will you?” said Miles into the instrument. “No, two people. And coffee. About four gallons. Room 70. Thanks a lot.”

  No sooner had he hung up than the phone bell went again.

  “Yes? Mr. Mockridge is here. Okay, send him up.” Miles replaced the receiver again. “Gentleman by the name of Sam,” he said. “On his way to your office. He has a pass.”

  “Good. Maybe he can kick harder than me. I’d better go and wait for him. Henry’s fast asleep on the floor.”

  “Sensible Henry,” said Miles.

  *

  Sam ripped the chassis of the oscilloscope from its metal casing. “Lousy bitch of a thing!” he exclaimed. “Slung together like a rabbit hutch. Why don’t you get some decent equipment, Mr. Mockridge?”

  Four chins broke into a sympathetic smile. “It will look better in the morning, Sam,” he said. “And now, do you mind if I carry on with my war? It may be a bit noisy.”

  “By all means,” said Sam, jabbing at an unwilling bolt

  rather viciously with a screwdriver. “I love to have music while I work.”

  For the umpteenth time, Brian played through the original intercept of that broadcast. But this time he ran it through the machine at four times the correct speed. It sounded like a thousand hens, all battling at the same feeding trough. But it didn’t reveal anything further to Brian. That is, nothing further except that it reminded him even more of something he had heard before. But what?