“We bought that one,” said Mr. Calder. “Look here – you knew Nicholson as well as anyone. Better than most. Have you got any idea why – or, more to the point, how – anyone could have been getting at him?”
“Apart from politics, you mean?”
“Apart from politics. This wasn’t the first attack, was it?”
“He’d had letters. And telephone calls. The sort of thing every public man gets.”
“General abuse? Or specific?”
“I don’t follow you.”
Mr. Calder said, patiently, “There are two ways of attacking a public man. You can pick on some large, popularly believed sort of lie. If the man’s a Jew, he’s financially crooked. If he went to the London School of Economics and wears a red tie, he’s a Communist. If he’s a bachelor, he’s homosexual. If you go on repeating the lie long and loud enough, someone will believe it in the end. The other method is to pick up some incident in their past life. It may be something quite silly, which wouldn’t matter twopence if it were you or me – but which can be magnified out of all proportion if you’re a public figure. You know what I mean?”
“Yes,” said Redmayne. “I know exactly what you mean.” He sat staring into his glass, and then said, “Well, he was a bachelor—”
The disposal of paper is a recurrent headache in government departments. Some of it can be destroyed and some of it must clearly be kept handy, but the bulk of it falls into that middle class of documents which no one can see any immediate use for, but which may conceivably be wanted some day. Having filled an abandoned motorcar factory near Staines Bridge, the Records Department had now taken over an airplane hangar at Brooklands and was fast filling that up too.
“Five cubic yards of paper a week,” said the custodian to Mr. Behrens. “And it’s getting worse. I haven’t the staff to cope with it.”
Mr. Behrens sympathised. He had found that a little sympathy went a long way with minor officials. “I’ll do the searching myself,” he said, “if you could just put me on the right track. For instance, I imagine that you index this stuff by departments. The papers I want would have come from the old MI5.”
“The worst of the lot,” said the custodian.
“I can tell you the approximate year of origin too. This would have originated at Blenheim in late 1940.”
“When would it have been filed?”
“Probably after the end of the war.”
“We got a lot of stuff from Blenheim in 1946. That’s all at Staines, though.”
Mr. Behrens went to Staines.
Late that afternoon he unearthed a bundle of yellow dockets. They were labelled: “Routine interrogation reports: Nov-Dec. 1940. A-L.” They appeared to be curiously incomplete.
He read them through, and then pressed the bell. When the official shuffled up, Mr. Behrens said to him, “Has anyone else been having a look at these particular records lately?”
The official said that he really couldn’t say. All sorts of people came down every day to see papers. All
he
had to do was to be satisfied about their credentials.
He
couldn’t keep a record of what papers they looked at.
Mr. Behrens reflected that if you paid people as little as they probably paid this particular civil servant it was idle to expect any enthusiastic or efficient service. He went back to London.
He had booked himself a room at Dons-in-London (or the “Dilly” Club), which occupies two large houses north of Lord’s Cricket Ground and has the worst food and the best wine in London. It also has a unique library of classical pornography and several complete sets of the works of Dickens, Trollope and Thackeray. Mr. Behrens always used the D-I-L when he could, since he could rely on meeting a number of his cronies there.
“I understand that Sand-Douglas is up in London,” he said to Mr. Calder. “I wanted to have a word with him, he was at Blenheim in 1940. You probably remember him. Why don’t you join us at dinner?”
“After
dinner,” said Mr. Calder firmly.
At seven o’clock, Mr. Behrens alighted from the Bakerloo tube at Marlborough Road station and started up toward the street. The evening rush was over, and the long escalator was nearly empty. Mr. Behrens sailed sedately upward, rapt in meditation. At the top he gave up his ticket and dawdled out into the street.
There were very few people about in the Finchley Road. Mr. Behrens noticed a policeman, strolling along the opposite pavement in a purposeful way which suggested that he was coming off duty and heading for home. Mr. Behrens crossed the road. When he reached the pavement, he stopped so abruptly that the man who had been crossing behind him bumped into him.
Mr. Behrens whirled round, glared at him and said, “Why are you following me?”
“What chew talking about?” said the man. He was stout, bald and unremarkable except for a twisted upper lip which seemed to give him some difficulty in enunciating.
“You’ve been following me for more than an hour,” said Mr. Behrens, “and doing it very badly.”
“You’re making an error there,” said the man. Mr. Behrens was blocking his way, and he dodged to one side to get past him.
Mr. Behrens whipped up his umbrella and thrust the metal tip, hard, into the man’s crotch. The man let out a scream,
“Now then,” said the policeman. “What’s all this?”
The man was doubled up, speechless. Mr. Behrens said, “This gentleman has been making a nuisance of himself. He accosted me, and tried to sell me some most unpleasant pictures.”
“Thass a lie,” said the man, but his eyes were flickering from side to side. “I never did anything to him. He poked me with his umbrella.”
“Did
you offer to sell anything to this gentleman?”
“Course I didn’t.”
“He’s got them in his coat pocket,” said Mr. Behrens.
“Thass a lie too.” The man clapped a hand into his pocket, and his expression changed. He drew out the postcard-sized folder. As he did so, it fell open disclosing the photographs inside it.
“Do you mind if I have a look at those?” said the constable.
“It’s a plant,” said the man. “I never—”
He handed off the constable, dodged past Mr. Behrens and started off up the pavement. Mr. Behrens, reversing his umbrella, caught him round one ankle with the handle. The man crossed his legs and fell heavily.
“You’ll have to come along to the station,” said the constable. “I take it you’ll be preferring a charge, sir.”
“I shall certainly do so,” said Mr. Behrens. “Here is my card. I think it disgraceful if one cannot pay a visit to London without being subjected to the attention of men like that.”
Harry Sand-Douglas was a very large man, with a pink face, a mop of iron-grey hair and eyes the colour of forget-me-nots. He finished his helping of marmalade pudding, pushed back his plate and lit a pipe.
“I think you did quite right,” he said. “I hope you can make the charge stick.”
“It might be difficult actually to charge him,” said Mr. Behrens. “All I really hoped to do was to get rid of him. He was annoying me.”
“They’ll hold him overnight,” said Mr. Calder. He had joined them at the port stage. “If you go round to the police station and withdraw the charge, they’ll probably let him go. Then we could put a tail on him and see who’s employing him. That really would be useful.”
“It’s an idea,” said Mr. Behrens, “I’ll telephone Elfe tonight. The interrogation originals at Staines were incomplete. Someone’s been through them. But Harry tells me that duplicates
were
kept.”
“They were microfilmed,” said Sand-Douglas. “They were too bulky to be kept in any other way. When I think of the amount of paper we filled up questioning perfectly harmless people!”
“Where is the microfilm stored?”
“I’ve an idea it’s somewhere at Oxford. I can find out. I’ll ask Happold. He was in charge of that side of it.”
“Good heavens,” said Behrens. “Is Happold still alive? He must be ninety.”
“Ninety-one,” said Sand-Douglas, “and bathes in the Cherwell every morning.”
At half-past ten Mr. Behrens said to Mr. Calder. “Why don’t you stay the night here? I’m sure they can find you a bed.”
“It’s kind of you,” said Mr. Calder, “but I told Rasselas I’d be back. He’ll be worried if I don’t turn up.”
He caught the last train from Victoria to Swanly, picked up his car which he had left there and drove back to Lamperdown under a half moon, through the quiet lanes which smelled of tar and honeysuckle. A question about Mr. Behrens’ assailant was teasing him. It was a matter of timing. The morning would probably solve it. He put it out of his mind.
Half a mile from the cottage, a grey shape loomed. Mr. Calder braked sharply, and pulled the car up before a field gate. The great dog ran up to him and stopped, head cocked.
“All right,” said Mr. Calder. “Message received and understood.”
He opened the gate, and manhandled his car in. It was a slight slope, and it was not a light car, but there was a surprising strength in Mr. Calder’s barrel chest and stocky legs. When the car had been hidden, he started to walk home.
The dog ran ahead, silent as a cloud.
Two hundred yards from the cottage, a roughly metalled track forked to the left. It led to a field, which was rented to a farmer. Rasselas went forward slowly. At a bend in the track he stopped again.
A van was parked, facing toward him. The offside door was open and there was a man standing beside it. Mr. Calder turned softly and went back the way he had come. Fifty yards down the track there was a gap in the hedge. He wriggled through it on hands and knees, and crept up the inside of the hedge until he could see the top of the van. Then, very gently, an inch at a time, he edged forward until he could see the whole van.
The man was standing beside the open door of the cab, one foot on the step. He was watching the track, and had one hand in his pocket. He looked remarkably wide-awake. Mr. Calder didn’t like it. A van suggested numbers.
Half an hour passed slowly. Then there came the clink of shod feet against stone, and three other forms loomed.
Rasselas, who was lying almost on top of Mr. Calder inside the hedge, stiffened, and his lips drew back from his long white teeth. Mr. Calder clamped a hand firmly down on his head.
Two of the newcomers were carrying something heavy between them. It looked like an ammunition box. They opened the back of the van, pushed it in and climbed in beside it. The third man got up beside the driver. Under its own momentum the van rolled quietly down the track. As it reached the road, Mr. Calder heard the engine start up.
Not being a man who believed in taking chances against professional opposition, Mr. Calder spent the remaining hours of darkness in the ditch.
At a quarter to four, as the sky was whitening and the birds were starting to talk, he walked up the track and approached his cottage with caution. Rasselas moved beside him. They avoided the doors and went in by one of the side windows, which Mr. Calder opened with a long flat knife. Then, together, they made a very careful search. They both worked by sight but Rasselas had the additional faculty of smell to help him, and it was he who unearthed both of the booby traps. One was under the gas cooker, operated by the gas switch. The other was in the cistern of the lavatory, operated by the plug. Neither was exactly original but both, as Mr. Calder noted, had been very neatly and professionally done.
He telephoned Mr. Fortescue at his home in Leatherhead and gave him the registration number of the van, and a brief account of what had happened.
Mr. Fortescue, who sounded very wide-awake although it was still short of six in the morning, said, “Someone’s got on to you very quickly, haven’t they?”
“I thought the same,” said Mr. Calder. “And another thing – they were trained men, working under discipline.”
There was a long silence. Then Mr. Fortescue said, “When you come up to town you’d better come to the bank.”
After breakfast Mr. Calder recovered his car and drove it back to the cottage. He was nearly out of petrol, but there was a can in his garage. When he pulled at the door it stuck, as it very often did. He gave it a sharp jerk. As he did so, the garage disintegrated and the door came out to meet him.
When Mr. Behrens arrived at Swiss Cottage police station, he sensed that something had happened. The station sergeant showed him straight up to the CID room where he found Detective Inspector Larrymore in conference with a red-faced detective sergeant and a youngish, black-haired superintendent from the Special Branch.
“What’s gone wrong?” said Mr. Behrens, pleasantly.
“You’ve heard?” said Larrymore.
“I’ve heard nothing,” said Mr. Behrens, “but you’ve all got faces like a wet Monday morning, and I’ve never known a station sergeant be affable before, so I guessed—”
“I’m afraid,” said the Special Branch man, “that they’ve pulled a fast one on us. I got instructions from Commander Elfe late last night that a man might be released from here in the course of the morning, and that he was to be followed. I’ve got a two car team waiting outside.”
“Then—?”
“He was released at ten o’clock last night.”
“What!”
Larrymore said, “Two men turned up, with a car. They had full Dl5 credentials. They took over the prisoner. The man in charge ought to have checked back—”
The red-faced detective sergeant went even redder, and Mr. Behrens guessed that he had been the man in charge and felt sorry for him.
“It’s easy to be wise after the event,” he said. “Exactly what credentials did they produce?”
“They had identity cards with photographs, sir. As far as I could see they were properly signed and had the official stamp on them. And a letter on official notepaper to the officer in charge here, authorising the handover. But it wasn’t only that, sir—”
The Special Branch man looked up sharply and said, “What else, then?”
“Well, sir, it’s difficult to say – but they
looked
right. When I was a recruit we did a three weeks’ course with the Security people. As a matter of fact, I thought I recognised one of them as an instructor on the course. It was some time ago, of course, and I must have been mistaken—”