The spiral staircase had only an elementary handrail. With Barney in front of them, Arthur behind, they went into the first-floor room, which in size was almost a replica of that below. Cards lay face upwards on a table covered with a dirty cloth. There were crumbs on the floor, an untidy bed in a corner. Barney stood by the door and waved a hand.
“Make yourselves at home. Not very posh, but it’s the best we can do.” He dusted a kitchen chair with his handkerchief.
Hedda and Maureen sat on the chairs pulled up at the table, Applegate on the bed.
“Got a great sense of humour Johnny has,” Barney continued. “All that stuff about a sea voyage.”
“You mean we’re not going on one?” Applegate asked.
“Sure you are. Question is, will you get to the other end of it? Dangerous things, boats. Then we get on a plane, and of course you never know what may happen in a plane.”
“Where do we get on the plane? France, Africa?”
“That would be telling.” Barney gave Applegate a glance heavy with suspicion.
“Smoke, Barney?” Hedda took a cigarette from a pack and threw it to the big man, who struck a match on his heel. “Junior’s too young to smoke. I’ll tell you something. You want to ask how many seats there are on that plane.”
Barney’s brow was furrowed. “Don’t get what you mean.”
“Count us out. There’s still a lot of you left. Johnny, for one. Then Max, or whatever you call him. Then Henry, Eileen, you and junior here. That makes six. What sort of plane is it he’s got?”
“What’s it to you?”
“From the conversation downstairs it might be a four-seater.”
“What conversation?” the boy asked. He stood by the door playing with his knife.
“They were agreeing who they should fix for Montague getting killed. They settled on you.”
Barney turned his bull head from one to the other of them. The boy stopped playing with his knife. “Henry would never shop me.”
“Henry loves you like a son. But then he loved Montague like a brother. Remember what happened to him? Henry cried into his handkerchief about you, but he said, yes.”
The boy said something. It was not clear whether it was meant to apply to Jenks or to Hedda or to life in general.
“Honestly now, do you think they’re going to let you trail along with them all the way? You know yourself you talk too much, Barney. Suppose you got talking out there? They’ll ditch you both somewhere on the route.”
Barney swallowed and said nothing. Hedda continued. “Why don’t you go down now and ask Henry what he had in mind for Arthur?”
Head thrust forward and shoulders down, Barney looked round him, bullishly bewildered. He roared with anger, shook his head, and then bewilderment found relief in action. A great hand swung up and struck Hedda across the face so hard that she was almost knocked from her chair. A cry came into Applegate’s throat, he was on his feet, he had hold of Barney’s trunk-like arms, he was trying desperately to establish some kind of grip that would move this man mountain, he was being lifted bodily and shaken, not gently.
But there was something else happening. In the moment when he was moved, as though by a suddenly released spring, into that hopeless assault on Barney, he had seen something in the passage outside the door against which Arthur leaned. What was that something? Darkness where light should be, a shadow falling on the stairway from above when, surely, there was nobody upstairs. Then, as he was thrown violently on to the bed, he was aware that something had happened in the doorway. Arthur was being pushed forward into the room and a rough, warm, countryman’s kind of voice was saying: “At it again, Barney. Pity you can’t find someone your own size, but then there aren’t many big enough, are there?”
Shalson. Barney turned round. Arthur turned too, turned and ducked and raised his knife all in one movement. Applegate could never be quite sure what happened afterwards, it was all so quick. Arthur closed with Shalson, the knife’s glint bright in his hand. Then he seemed to be spinning round, there was a sharp
crack
, and he dropped to the floor. Shalson, in the pepper and salt suit he had worn in the train, stood smiling at them. He smiled, but one hand was in his pocket, and in his manner there was nothing suggesting amusement.
On the floor Arthur did not move.
“You’ve killed ’im,” Barney Craigen said, in shocked disbelief.
“It’s called self-defence. You all saw the knife.”
“But how did you – ?” Applegate found the question hard to frame.
“If you choose the right place on a man’s neck and hit it, he falls down and doesn’t get up again. And this wasn’t even a man, just a gutter rat. Now, Barney, I know you can’t shoot, but at this distance – just feel him, will you?”
Applegate patted Barney in the right places. He had no revolver.
“Relying on your two fists and your native wit, Barney,” Shalson said. “They never were enough.”
“’Ow did you get in?” Barney’s aitches suffered under the stress of emotion.
“I climbed up to the second floor. It wasn’t very difficult. I did much harder things in the war.”
“Do you really mean he’s dead?” Hedda was staring at Arthur.
“His neck’s broken.” Applegate, too, looked down at the body on the floor, while a line from an epitaph,
Who was alive and is dead
, moved in his mind. Death can be violent yet casual, the affair of a moment merely. Arthur now would have no more need of his shabby-smart suit, the bright knife he had used as protection against the world would gather rust, the few small thoughts in his head had stopped.
Who was alive and is dead.
Applegate looked at the thing on the floor, and thought about his father and mother.
“They’re all downstairs, I suppose,” Shalson asked. “And they put these watchdogs in charge of you. Don’t shout, Barney. You’ve stayed alive a long while for a stupid man, and if you’re lucky you might live a few years longer yet. Tell me what’s been happening.”
They told him. “So you don’t even know what the stuff is,” Shalson said. “You’ll soon learn. Which of them have got guns?”
“Deverell, Jenks, Eckberger perhaps. And I suppose Bogue took yours,” he said to Hedda. She nodded.
“Four. Now, Barney, you go downstairs. When you’re two from the bottom call out that the girl is giving trouble. I’ll be right behind you.”
Barney went out of the room, clumped heavily downstairs. The rest of them moved in Shalson’s wake. They heard Barney call out hoarsely: “That girl’s giving trouble. We want a bit of help.”
A chair shifted in the room below, Bogue’s face looked up at them. Dextrously Shalson pushed Barney to one side so that he was covering both of them. Slowly, saying nothing, they moved into the downstairs room as in a kind of ritual dance. At the doorway Shalson spoke. “If you don’t want Johnny to get it, throw your guns into the middle of the room. Applegate, Hedda, come out and make sure they throw them down.”
“Be careful,” Hedda said. “He practises judo.”
“You don’t have to tell me. Johnny and I know all each other’s little tricks.”
The revolvers were thrown to the floor. Applegate had not expected that they would be, but there was something in Shalson’s manner that compelled belief in his seriousness. There were four of them, including the one Bogue had taken from Hedda. Applegate took two, and gave Hedda’s gun back to her. Shalson held the fourth loosely in his left hand.
“Get on the other side of the room, all of you. Standing up.”
Now they were all over there, the little lobby leading to the front door behind them. Bogue said composedly: “This is ridiculous, Skid. You’re letting your taste for melodrama run away with you. You’ve got the stuff, that’s right, isn’t it? All right, then, let’s talk about it.”
“First of all, I want to tell a little story, for the benefit of my friends over here, who aren’t sure what’s going on.”
“Where’s Arthur?” Jenks asked in a high voice.
“Having a rest.”
Barney Craigen said: “A good long rest. You won’t see your boy again. That bastard’s killed him.”
Jenks came at Shalson, hands outstretched like claws, screaming. Shalson stepped away and it was Applegate who hit Jenks, and felt the tall man’s nails rake his cheek. Jenks went down, but he was up again in a moment. This time Applegate tapped him gently on the head with the gun-butt. Jenks fell down and lay moaning.
“So much for love,” Shalson said. “Now the little story. Have you heard of the wartime currency forgeries put out by the Germans? They were an attempt, and in their limited way a successful one, to undermine Britain’s economic position. The forgeries were organised by the German Government, they were carried out in a special section of Oranienburg concentration camp and most of the workers employed on the forgeries were camp inmates with technical skills, who never came out to tell their stories. Secrecy was well preserved, as well as it can be where a number of people are involved.
“The distribution also was ingenious. The chief distributors were two or three respectable German bankers – respectable as the Nazis counted respectability. They opened accounts with banks in neutral countries under the pretext that they had English money which they wanted to get out of Germany. Neutral banks were sympathetic, understanding. Nobody knows how much forged money passed into circulation and was accepted by the Bank of England. Nobody knows how many million pounds the scheme cost this country before the forgeries were detected. Nobody but the Bank of England, and they will never tell. The Germans realised that the forgeries were bound to be discovered eventually, and they decided to step up the pace of Operation Bernhard, as it was called. They began to employ less respectable agents. Their point of view was a peculiar one. They were not worried so much about a return on their money. Their chief concern was simply to inflate the amount of currency in circulation.”
“Bogue was one of the agents,” Applegate said.
“Yes. You know he was discovered to be a double agent, and as such expendable. It wasn’t known at the time, but was discovered later, that Bogue was to be the chief distributor of forged notes in England. Parcels containing a million pounds in these notes had been smuggled through to him. He was to use the money principally for paying various German agents in England.”
The pieces fell into place, Applegate thought.
I shall be the richest man in the world.
And in the meantime he was uncommonly short of money, because of the cutting down of his drug supplies.
“This fact was not known to the agent named Shalson who travelled in the plane with Bogue, to make quite sure that the plan for expending him was carried through.” Shalson’s face was no longer ruddy, but almost pale, deeply thoughtful. “Bogue had checked his parachute at the last minute and changed it, as you know. He realised what was intended for him, and from the moment that the plane left the ground he set himself to corrupt Shalson. He was doing it to preserve his own life, of course, but I think there was something beyond that. He positively enjoyed corruption, Bogue. For a long time he wasn’t successful, not until he said he had all the money in the world and there was enough for both of them to share.
“Now why should that have appealed to Shalson? He was a Jew, his parents had died indirectly through Bogue, he had every reason to hate Bogue. That was partly why he had been picked for the job. Yet, when Bogue began to talk about money – not little sums of money, not a mere bribe, but money in enormous amounts, hundreds of thousands of pounds – Shalson was gripped. He listened. He knew everything bad about Bogue, yet he listened. I wonder why? Some basic sense of insecurity, awareness that when the war was over he would be a displaced person in society –”
“And Shalson was a Jew,” Eckberger said. “Keen on the money-bags.”
“I don’t forget that.” Shalson’s brown eyes looked at Eckberger. “Bogue was clever in making just that approach. He was always clever. Shalson listened to him, asked for details. Bogue told him about the million pounds that had come over. The money was useless to Bogue now, for he could never return to England. But Shalson could go back. Shalson could get the money. On Shalson’s next trip out of England he would join Bogue. They would disappear into some country where war was still a distant echo – one of the South American republics say – and they would settle there for the rest of their lives. The way Bogue put it he was trusting Shalson, because Shalson would know where the money was.”
“Skid, there’s no point in going into this.” In Bogue’s voice there was almost a note of desperation. “It’s ancient history.”
“Ancient history interests me.” It must have been an extraordinary scene, Applegate thought. The little toy moving through the air, piloted by men unaware of their doom, and shut away from their hearing a man talking, talking for his life, using his quarter-truths to convince an enemy who had no reason to trust or to forgive.
“There isn’t much more to tell. Shalson listened. There was no excuse for him. He knew all about Bogue, he knew what Bogue was, a cheat and a crook, a man without loyalty of any kind to a person or a country. More than that, a man who found loyalty of any sort ridiculous. Shalson knew all that and he still listened. There is no excuse for him.”
“And so?” That was Hedda, looking reflectively at Shalson.
“And so Shalson kept his revolver on his knee. Couldn’t make up his mind. Waited for his mind to be made up for him, I suppose you could say. When the engine caught fire, Bogue had the hatch open in a minute. ‘Come on, Skid, let’s jump,’ he said. ‘There’s a fortune down below.’ He laughed. And while the revolver was still on Shalson’s knee, while Shalson was still making up his mind, he jumped. Shalson jumped after him. Flanner and Grimes jumped too, but they weren’t as clever as Bogue. Their parachutes didn’t open.”
There was sweat on Bogue’s face. Shalson’s gentle voice went on. “They landed in open country. Bogue’s leg seemed to have been injured, he couldn’t stand without help. Shalson got him up, and made the mistake of turning his back. You should never turn your back on anybody, certainly not on Johnny Bogue. Shalson was picked up twenty-four hours later. He had severe concussion from head injuries.”