by Clara Benson
‘I say,’ said Freddy, and started forward, with some idea of pulling the two of them apart, but just as he bent down St. John pushed Trevett off him and lashed out wildly with a fist, which hit Freddy hard in the eye and knocked him backwards onto the floor. He lay there, stars dancing about in front of his eyes, as Leonard Peacock, Sidney Bishop and Mr. Davis the caretaker came forward to separate the fighting men. Trevett staggered to his feet, glowered around and left the hall without another word, followed by Ruth, while Mildred and Mrs. Starkweather rushed forward to see to St. John, whose face was a bloody mess.
‘We’d better clean you up,’ said Mrs. Starkweather, once it had been established that his demise was not imminent. ‘I’ll get some water.’
She hurried off to the kitchen, leaving Mildred with St. John. He was sitting slumped on the floor, the picture of defeated misery, as far as one could see under the remains of his face.
‘You’d better go home and get some sleep, I think,’ she said. ‘Do you need a doctor?’
‘Why does nothing ever go right?’ he said glumly, ignoring her question. ‘Why do I never win at anything?’
‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘Why, I thought you were splendid just then. You’re nowhere near his size but you gave as good as you got, and very nearly beat him, too!’
‘He’d have killed me if they hadn’t dragged him off,’ said St. John. ‘I never was any good at fighting.’
‘Nonsense,’ she said stoutly. ‘He is rather a Goliath, I’ll admit, but you were David and had right on your side, so good for you.’
‘Did I have right on my side?’
‘Why, of course!’ she said. ‘You were defending the woman you loved, and there’s something very fine about that. It’s a pity she’s not worth defending, but that can’t be helped.’
‘I always believed she was too good for me,’ he said. ‘But I thought if I was patient enough then she’d come around eventually.’
‘Too good for you?’ said Mildred with a snort of disgust. ‘She’s not fit to lick your boots. She led you by the nose, and all the while she was misbehaving with someone else. I should forget her if I were you.’
‘I can never forget her,’ said St. John tragically. ‘I shall retire to the country to live a quiet life and think about her until I die.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Mildred. ‘You’ll get over her soon enough. Now, can you stand up? Come to the kitchen and we’ll see to that face of yours.’
They left the room, St. John limping slightly, leaving Freddy alone in the hall, lying with a hand across his eyes. Eventually he sat up and felt the damage gingerly, wincing.
‘You ought to have left them to it,’ said a voice, and he started and squinted up to see Theresa Schuster gazing down at him with a half-smile.
‘I didn’t know you were here,’ he said stupidly.
‘No, I came towards the end,’ she said. She knelt down beside him and touched a finger gently to his sore eye. ‘You see Ivor has his Ruth and St. John has his Mildred,’ she said. ‘Who is to look after you?’
‘It’s only a bruise,’ he said.
‘Still, I will bathe it. I have only a wet handkerchief, but it will be enough.’
He sat obediently as she dabbed the handkerchief carefully over his eye.
‘There,’ she said at last. ‘You will have a black eye, and all the women will look at you and think to themselves what a fine man you are.’
‘Oh, I see you’ve got Freddy,’ said Mrs. Starkweather, who just then came into the hall. ‘Thank you, Mrs. Schuster. That was very brave of you, Freddy, although perhaps just a little foolish, too.’
‘He has a kind heart, and did not want to see his friend killed,’ said Theresa Schuster. She stood up. ‘Keep the handkerchief,’ she said to Freddy, then turned on her heels and left as quickly as she had arrived. Freddy watched her go.
‘I wonder where she sprang from,’ said Mrs. Starkweather. ‘I didn’t see her earlier.’
Freddy did not reply, for he was thinking about his eye. It had stopped hurting, and all he could feel now was a kind of tingling sensation. That might certainly be the effect of the punch, although he was at a loss to explain the additional tingling in his hand where Theresa Schuster had brushed her fingers against it.
Freddy found it very hard to concentrate on Thursday, for he was thinking about his intention to follow Leonard Peacock that night. What was the thing Peacock had mentioned that cost money and could not be traced? Freddy was determined to find out, and was irritated when his editor, Mr. Bickerstaffe, sent him out to cover a story about a prisoner who had escaped from Wormwood Scrubs dressed as a woman. By two o’clock Freddy had informed himself of the salient facts of the case and was on his way back to the office, composing the piece in his head (not exactly difficult, for it was the sort of story which almost wrote itself), when he remembered he had one or two things to buy, and so alighted at Oxford Circus. After concluding his errands to his satisfaction, he was about to resume his journey when he was struck by a sudden thought and came to a halt. Turning back, he headed for a certain draper’s shop and went inside. He emerged a little while later, whistling, then glanced at his watch and returned to the office and spent an hour or so digging through some back issues of the Clarion. After that he stared out of the window and drummed his pencil loudly on the desk until told to lay off it by Jolliffe, who was trying to work. By four o’clock he was beginning to worry that he was too late, and that Peacock had already left on his journey to wherever he was going. What if Freddy had missed him? Peacock had arranged to meet the unidentified person from the Schusters’ box-room at Russell Square at seven o’clock, in order to receive some money, but what if they had changed their plans in the meantime and had decided to meet at an earlier hour?
In the end, Freddy gave up all pretence at working and left the Clarion’s offices at five, intending to spend the next two hours waiting at Russell Square for Peacock to turn up. It was a cold, damp evening, and he did not wish to be spotted, so he went into the Hotel Russell itself and sat in the bar, nursing a whisky and watching the passing traffic through the window. Nothing happened for some time, and he began to grow impatient, even though the appointed hour had not yet arrived. At last, at about five to seven he spotted Leonard Peacock crossing the road to Russell Square, having presumably just emerged from the Underground station. Peacock bought a newspaper and stood on the corner of the square, apparently absorbed in reading it. Freddy watched carefully. Who was going to meet him? He was almost sure it would be Anton Schuster, and he craned his neck to glance up and down the street, looking for the familiar dapper figure. The traffic had become heavier now, as everybody headed home, and the cars were moving sluggishly forward. Just then, to Freddy’s great annoyance, an omnibus came to a halt in front of the window of the hotel bar, blocking his view of the other side of the street. He was suddenly alarmed. What if Peacock were to meet his correspondent and disappear before the ’bus had moved on? Throwing some money down, he dashed out of the hotel and saw that his fears were partly correct, for Peacock had walked a little way down the street and was looking about, seemingly in search of a taxi. The other person must have already come and gone. Freddy clicked his tongue in exasperation as a cab stopped and Peacock jumped in. He cast about desperately and saw another cab approaching in the other direction. He waved frantically to stop it.
‘Follow that taxi!’ he said, pointing.
‘But it’s going the other way,’ objected the driver.
‘Then you’ll just have to turn around,’ said Freddy. ‘Do it and I’ll double your fare.’
The man needed no further urging. With a shout and several honks of his horn he described a full turn in the middle of the road and set off in the direction of Euston, leaving behind him an answering cacophony of horns as drivers expressed their indignation at this flagrant disregard for the rules of the road
.
‘I was rather hoping we wouldn’t be spotted,’ said Freddy, wincing at the racket.
‘Well you should’ve mentioned that before, shouldn’t you?’ said the taxi-driver.
The traffic was moving slowly, so they had no difficulty in keeping their quarry in sight. The first taxi passed King’s Cross, then turned up the Caledonian Road. On it continued, heading away from the centre of town and North-East up Seven Sisters Road as far as Finsbury Park, where it stopped. A hundred yards behind, Freddy’s cab did likewise.
‘Finsbury Park,’ said the driver. ‘Want me to wait?’
‘Yes, I suppose you’d better,’ said Freddy, and got out. It was dark, but he could see the figure of Peacock under the street-lamps as he disappeared through the gates into the park. Freddy followed. There was less light here, but Freddy could just glimpse Peacock heading in the direction of the lake. Freddy crept quietly after him, keeping in the shadow of the trees to his left—a good thing, too, for after fifty yards or so he suddenly became aware of the sound of footsteps walking briskly behind him. Quick as lightning he slipped further into the trees and stood, heart beating fast, as whoever it was hurried past him along the path. The sound of motor-cars could be heard faintly in the distance, but other than that all was quiet. Then Freddy heard voices close by. Taking a deep breath he peered out cautiously from behind a tree. Two men were standing a little way away on the path. If he could only get nearer, then he should be able to hear what they were saying. Silently, keeping to the grass, he tiptoed closer, using the trees as cover. A dim light shone from somewhere—perhaps the boating-lake—and in the dull blue glow he could see Peacock standing with a rough-looking man he did not know.
‘You’re sure it hasn’t been used for anything that will get us into trouble?’ Peacock was saying. ‘It’s rather important and I want to be sure. This must all seem wholly above the board.’
‘It will,’ said the other man. ‘I got it off an old mate of mine what died, and he took it off a dead German in the war. It ain’t killed anyone in this country, anyhow.’
‘Good,’ said Peacock. ‘I don’t want the police looking too deeply into our story. Now, I dare say you want paying.’
He handed over a note or two, and the other counted the money and put it in his pocket.
‘Don’t forget, there’s more where that came from if you’ll say what I tell you to afterwards,’ said Peacock. ‘Just sit tight and you’ll hear from me soon enough.’
‘Right you are,’ said the man. ‘You working on something big, then?’
‘I should say so,’ said Peacock. ‘We’ve had something of a set-back this week, and had to change our plans at the last minute, but as it happens I think this way will be much more effective. Now, not a word. We know where you are if we hear you’ve been talking out of turn.’
‘I know how to keep quiet,’ said the other. ‘You take care of your business and I’ll take care of mine.’
The two men nodded their goodbyes at one another, then the second one departed, Peacock following shortly afterwards. Freddy gave them five minutes then returned to his taxi and went home, there to think about what he had learned. Like Henry Jameson, he had assumed the conspiracy related to some sort of widespread and illegal strike action, but this was far more serious than he had imagined, for if the plotters were buying guns, then that could only mean one thing—they were planning to kill someone. But who? And why? And what did Peacock mean when he told the man in Finsbury Park that he would be called upon to say something afterwards? Say something to whom? None of it was clear, and Freddy did not like it one bit. It was a pity they had been unable to decipher the last of the coded announcements. What book were the conspirators using now to pass on their messages? The copies of the advertisements were lying on a table nearby, and he picked them up and gazed at them in frustration, as though hoping that the answer would somehow present itself to him. Had he missed something obvious? He remembered Jolliffe’s observation that the new key to the cipher must be a short book, since the page numbers given for the last three messages had been low ones. But what sort of book had so few pages? Freddy tried to look at the question from the conspirators’ point of view. After John Pettit’s house had burned down, they must have had to think of a new key which could be obtained at short notice. Freddy’s eye fell on a dog-eared copy of the Radical which had fallen down beside the sofa, and his eyebrows rose. It could not be that easy, could it? But of course it would make sense! Why, what could be more likely than that all of them would have a copy of the Radical, and that they would decide to use that publication temporarily, just until they had decided upon a new one?
He took the newspaper and flicked through it. It was last week’s edition, and contained the coded message which had arrived at the Radical’s office while Freddy was there. The sender could not possibly have known what was to be in the paper that week, so the key to the cipher must be an earlier edition—perhaps the one from the week before. Freddy rummaged around until he found the previous week’s copy, then pulled out his notebook and set to work. He saw almost immediately that his guess had been a good one, and in a very few minutes he was looking at the decoded message before him. It referred to some event in the near future, and gave urgent instructions to a number of people who were referred to only by code-names. It took no great leap of deduction to guess that the event in question was the march and rally that were going to take place that Saturday coming, but there was much that remained a mystery.
‘Who are all these people?’ he murmured to himself. ‘I only wish I knew. Silly names they’ve given everybody. Daisy and Marigold and Hollyhock. All very pretty, but not exactly helpful. And who are the Tumblers? I don’t like this at all.’
Freddy stared straight ahead and his expression became grim. It was clear now that there was a murder planned for Saturday, and it was also beginning to be clear to him who the intended victim was. He did not know exactly how the killers planned to get away with it, but he did know that if they succeeded, then the country was likely to be plunged into turmoil for some weeks. It was a daring plot, right enough, but would it come off?
He turned to the remaining two messages, but found he could not decipher those, as he did not have the relevant copies of the Radical. He would have to leave that to Henry Jameson and his men—but how fortunate that the plotters had not decided upon a new key yet, and had kept on using St. John’s newspaper. It was careless of them, but perhaps they had considered it unnecessary, given that they had remained undiscovered up to now. Whatever the case, it was vitally important to communicate this latest message to Henry, and without delay. It was now ten o’clock, and Freddy dialled Henry’s number, but without much hope. There was no answer, but he determined he should take what he had learned to the Intelligence man first thing the next day, for there was no time to lose.
Freddy suspected that tomorrow would be a busy day, and was contemplating whether or not to turn in, despite the earliness of the hour, when the door-bell rang. He answered it and to his surprise saw Theresa Schuster standing before him. She had pulled her hat down low over her head, and her fur collar up around her face, and he knew immediately that something was very wrong.
‘Please help me,’ she said, almost in a whisper. There was an appeal in her amber eyes that Freddy could not refuse.
‘What is it?’ he said. He allowed her to pass, then looked up and down the hall outside, but saw nobody. He closed the door and turned to look at her. She had removed her hat and pulled down her collar, and Freddy drew in his breath, for her face was almost unrecognizable. One eye was half-closed and red, while her lip was swollen, and there were ugly purplish marks all down one side of her face.
‘Good God! Who did this?’ he exclaimed. ‘Sit down and I’ll get you a drink. No, don’t argue.’
He conducted her gently but firmly to a seat and pressed a large glass of brandy on her, then sat down by her and
regarded her in the greatest concern as she took a sip. She was trembling, he noticed.
‘What happened?’ he said.
‘I have been a fool,’ she replied.
‘What do you mean?’
She looked down at her drink, then back up at him.
‘You are kind, I know. I will tell you all, even though it will make you think badly of me.’
‘I don’t think badly of you,’ he said.
‘But you will,’ she said. ‘I am a very wicked woman. I have betrayed my husband and paid the price for it.’
‘Did he do this to you?’
‘Oh, no, no! Of course not. Anton knows nothing of this—and besides, he would never do anything so terrible. He is the most gentle of husbands and would never raise his hand to a woman.’
‘Then who was it?’
Again she hesitated.
‘You must understand, I thought he loved me,’ she said. ‘And I thought I loved him. But it was all a lie, I realize that now. He is young and handsome, and he makes me laugh. And I—well, I am only a woman, and we women are weak. We fall for the lies men tell us, and we do bad things. But I found out that he is not all he appeared to be. He is just the same as my first husband, who tried to kill me. I swore then that I should never again love such a man, but you see I have made exactly the same mistake this time. I tried to please him but somehow I made him angry, and he punished me for it. Perhaps I deserved it, I do not know.’
‘Are you talking about Leonard Peacock?’ said Freddy.
There was a pause, then she nodded.
‘Now you have heard all,’ she said. ‘I know you must feel contempt for me, but still I demand your kindness. Please take me home. I ran away but he followed me, and he is waiting outside for me somewhere, I know it. I am so terribly frightened that he will find me and harm me even more than he already has—perhaps even kill me. Anton goes to bed early, and his heart is not strong, so I dare not telephone and ask him to come and fetch me, for the shock of it would do him no good at all. I will think of some story to tell him later, but for now will you take pity on me? Will you protect me?’