McCann gave him the length of a cricket pitch and followed circumspectly.
The lady in the tobacco shop abandoned her conversation to glare after him. By his abrupt exit he had deprived her of the legitimate pleasure of telling him that she was “out” of all known brands of cigarettes.
McCann was looking into a shop window. The contents appeared to interest him intensely, judging from the length of time he had stood there, staring at them. He was waiting for Curly to come out of a newsagent’s twenty yards up on the other side.
He was in the middle of the maze of solid middle-class streets which lie in the crook of the Cromwell Road and Earls Court. Behind him the backs of the monster Kensington stores shut off the skyline. To the left showed the bulked mass of the Institutes.
When a full five minutes had run by, McCann began to feel the first faint stirrings of uneasiness. It struck him that some shops had back entrances.
The newsagent’s into which Curly had vanished stood at the end of a block of five four-storied buildings. In each case the ground floor was let as a shop; he could see signs of a greengrocer’s and a chemist’s, and the third looked like some sort of antique shop. The top stories, he fancied, were residential, though one looked as if it might be an office of some sort.
After a moment’s reflection McCann entered the chemist’s shop. This was the second one along from the newsagent’s and therefore the centre of the block.
At first inspection one comforting fact emerged. The shop had no visible back exit, and since all five buildings seemed to be of a standard pattern, there must be strong chance that Curly was still in the newsagent’s. Why was he being so long?
“A packet of cough lozenges, please,” he said to the man.
Had he gone upstairs? Was his destination, perhaps, the rooms over the shop and not the shop itself?
“Anything else I can get you, sir?”
“Half a dozen razor blades, and a small bottle of aspirin, please.”
He wished he knew more about the interior arrangement of such buildings. In this shop, for instance, there was no visible means of access to the upper storey at all. Presumably the stairs ran from the back room behind the counter; or they might connect directly with the private-looking front door on the right of the shop door.
“Anything else, sir?”
“Yes,” said McCann, suddenly making up his mind. “I want a bed-sitting-room.”
“Who doesn’t?” said the chemist, unmoved.
“I mean,” the Major ploughed on, “do you suppose that any of the upper stories here might be to let? Coming past that newsagent’s on the corner of this block I happened to notice that there were no curtains in the top floor windows. Perhaps you might know of something to let there.”
The silence that greeted this remark lasted so long that McCann looked up in sudden anticipation. The chemist was smiling at him.
“I fancy, sir,” he said, “that we have something upstairs that might interest you. Step this way.”
Out of the corner of his eye the Major saw the figures of two men coming through the shop door.
At about the same time as the events recorded at the close of the last chapter, Inspector Hazlerigg was sitting in his office.
Indeed, he seemed scarcely to have moved, or even changed his position, since his interview with Major McCann.
Standing beside the desk, examining a large-scale map of the West End, was Detective Inspector Pickup, a quiet, sandy-haired, inconspicuous North Countryman. He was, by a head and shoulders, the best detective inspector in the Yard and soon to win recognition and a Chief Inspectorship, when he broke the Harrogate child murder case and apprehended Captain Throat (whose unpleasant habit, as the public will remember, was to strangle girls between the ages of eleven and fourteen).
“Magnus” Marr, the oldest of the Murder Squad, used to say: “When I get Pickup given to me I know it’s going to be a difficult job.”
“Go over that last bit again,” said Hazlerigg.
“It amounts to no more than this, sir,” said Pickup. “Out of a dozen lines we’ve been covering in the last months, five have gone to ground in the Berkeley Square, Shepherd’s Market area. More exactly, in an area bounded by Piccadilly on the south, Park Lane on the west, Bond Street on the east, and Bruton Street-Mount Street on the north.”
He ran a stubby forefinger round the map.
“It’s a big area.”
Pickup accepted the implied rebuke calmly.
“We ought to have done better,” he agreed. “Even as it is, we’ve got nothing very definite. There was the pedlar we were following – you remember – who gave us the slip in the Curzon Cinema. The stolen car we found in Charles Street. That business with the drunk Italian girl on Hay Hill – I thought that might be promising at the time, but it came to nothing.”
Hazlerigg nodded. Pickup rarely spoke at random; he knew something more was coming.
“That man you saw the other day, sir: Major McCann. Sergeant Crabbe followed him for a bit, but you ordered him off. Crabbe mentioned the ‘Dresden Shepherdess’ in his report – that’s a Shepherd’s Market pub. But that’s not all—”
“Yes?” said Hazlerigg.
“I didn’t feel too happy about him,” said Pickup apologetically, “so I followed him myself. The next day. Several days after, in fact. It wasn’t difficult. He always went to the same place. It was a flat in a newish block, on the corner of Flaxman Street and Berkeley Square. Nine o’clock sharp he’d arrive, every morning. And left at six o’clock in the evening – or later. Of course, I couldn’t watch the house the whole time, but I didn’t see anyone go in or out of the block – no one to signify, that is. Monsieur Bren will bear me out—”
Monsieur Le Commissaire Bren (known to the French Resistance and later to the whole of fighting France as “Ulysse”) nodded silent agreement from the leather chair by the window.
“Then this afternoon,” went on Pickup, “he came out much earlier than usual. I wasn’t there, but Sergeant Crabbe was watching. The Major got into his car – it had evidently been parked handy – and after waiting for about five minutes, he started away. Crabbe says he didn’t seem to be following anyone. Flaxman Street and the Square were both empty when he started.”
“All right,” said Hazlerigg, “I can guess the rest. Sergeant Crabbe lost him.”
“I’m afraid he wasn’t expecting the car, sir. Major McCann had always arrived and left before on foot.”
“I’m not blaming you,” said Hazlerigg. “You’ve done very well. I dropped that trail and you picked it up. We’ll just remember to have a car there next time.”
“If there
is
a next time,” said Pickup. “I’ve got rather a nasty feeling about this, sir.”
“Major McCann I know,” said M. Le Commissaire unexpectedly. “He is a man of some resource and valour. Discretion, too. All may yet be well. As your General Wellington said, ‘Let us not cross our bridges before we arrive at them.’ In truth, a difficult feat to perform, even with the maximum of agility.”
About this time McCann recovered consciousness. He came to the surface slowly from under the dark waves of pain and oblivion. The clouds thinned, turning first to grey, and then to milky white, and then shredding away altogether. The sun came out about five feet above his head, swinging in great solemn circles, as at the First Creation; then slowing down, and finally stopping and turning into a dusty yellow electric light bulb. McCann moved his head, and immediately wished he had not.
With infinite care he closed his eyes, laying each lid as gently as a sleeping babe into its downy cot. After a minute he felt better and opened them again. He felt cold, despite the obvious stuffiness of the room, and he was suffering from recurrent attacks of nausea; but his head was clear.
It was not the first time in his life that he had been knocked out, and he recognised from association most of the distressing symptoms of concussion.
In a few minutes he either was going to be sick – or he wasn’t.
A few minutes passed.
He wasn’t.
McCann shivered, but in a healthy sort of way, and sat up.
The first thing he noticed was that his shoes and his coat and waistcoat had gone. Also his braces. He was lying on a camp bed, in the corner of a bare and rather uninteresting little room. An attic, in fact.
Turning his head to the left he could see the line of the roof and dormer. Turning his head still further he realised, with a certain shock, that he wasn’t alone.
A white-faced youth, of about nineteen or twenty, was sitting on a wooden chair, its back tilted against the wall, dividing his attention between McCann, a damp cigarette, and a magazine on physical culture.
McCann had seen the ferret face before, but he was unable for a moment to place it.
Then recollection came back.
He remembered his first night of leave, the drinks he had had with Glasgow and Sergeant Dalgetty, the walk home through the quiet streets and squares of Mayfair. This was the youth who had come running past him (and whom, as he recalled now with considerable pleasure, he had tripped up).
The first step, he felt, towards restoring a moral equality to the situation, was to sit up. He swung his legs cautiously towards the side of the bed.
The youth spoke.
“Stay put,” he said.
The tone which he employed was the tone of a parent armed with both the authority to command and the muscular power to enforce his commands.
Having said his say, he continued to thumb the pages of his magazine and to draw the last lungfuls of smoke from his dispirited and expiring cigarette.
For some pregnant seconds silence reigned in the attic. The house below was very quiet too. Then McCann deliberately swung his legs over and sat up on the side of his bed.
The youth moved with a speed which confirmed McCann’s first idea that he had seen the inside of the professional ring. At one moment he was sitting tilted back in his chair. The next, almost without visible intermission, he was standing three feet from McCann.
He was smiling.
His right hand slid gently, almost caressingly, to his trouser pocket, and came out again, holding a cosh. It was quite the nastiest and most efficient-looking cosh that McCann had ever seen, at least ten inches long, and made of plaited leather over some harder core. From the manner in which it hung, its head was heavily weighted.
The youth said nothing, but continued to smile.
McCann sat still.
The youth moved over to the table, without taking his eyes off the figure on the bed.
“Watch,” he said.
He picked up one of the playing cards and tossed it fluttering in the air.
The movement that followed was so quick that McCann hardly saw it.
The card lay on the floor, torn almost in two.
“Now you lie down,” said the youth, “and have a nice rest.”
McCann lay down.
He knew enough of violence to know that a man who could use the loaded stick like that was too good for any unarmed man.
If he tried to jump him, his opponent could hit him three times before he could come to grips. And three blows from that sort of weapon would finish any fight. A weighted cosh will break the bones of the forearm like a stick.
Besides, how could a man fight properly with his trousers coming down? He discovered that whoever had removed his braces had also thoughtfully cut off the top three fly-buttons as well.
Thinking of the state of his clothes brought his mind back to the events which had led to his capture. He could plainly recollect the sequence up to the moment of his entry into the chemist’s shop. After that things had become a bit hectic.
He remembered the chemist saying, “Possibly we have something upstairs to interest you,” and then – had he started to go upstairs, or not? He had seen two men coming into the shop door, and shortly afterwards someone had hit him. It might have been the chemist, but he rather fancied not. He was almost certain that the chemist had been ahead of him, showing him the way up the stairs, or pretending to do so.
Was he in the same house at all? The balance of probabilities favoured the supposition that he was.
The street in which the block of houses had stood had seemed a very quiet one. It was certainly quiet enough in his present prison. Scarcely a sound came up, either of traffic from outside, or of movement from inside the house. About half an hour must have passed when the Problem Child apparently tired of perusing his favourite periodical. He tried a few games of patience, but was probably handicapped by having destroyed the ace of spades during his recent exhibition with the black-jack.
The Major affected to be sleeping, though actually he felt surprisingly wide awake.
Presently the Problem Child got up off his chair and approached the bed. He lit a fresh cigarette and said abruptly: “What’s the name, mister?”
“Heliogabalus,” said the Major sleepily. He was calculating that if the Problem Child came one step nearer he could kick him in the stomach with both feet at once. However, the P.C. stayed exactly where he was. Possibly he had worked that one out for himself.
“You’re kidding,” he said at last. “The name’s McCann, en’t it?”
“Quite so,” said the Major. “Possibly you could indulge in a mutual confidence.”
“Come again.”
“I said, possibly you could tell me your name.”
“Smith,” said the Problem Child, after some thought.
“What, not Albert Smith!”
“That’s right.”
“Albert Smith of London?”
“How do you guess them?” said the Problem Child wearily. “My father’s name was Smith too,” he added.
As if overcome by this startling information, the Major closed his eyes and settled down to sleep once more. His gaoler, however, had other ideas. He seemed to be in a talkative mood.
“You was in the Commandos, weren’t you?” he said. The first animation he had yet shown flickered up behind his pale eyes. “Some mob, eh? You ought to hear Curly gabbing about them.”
This calculated indiscretion set the Major’s wits working. Evidently they had already connected him with Curly White – and they knew that he knew that Curly was one of the mob – and they didn’t mind him knowing that they knew.