The Tiger In the Smoke (15 page)

‘Nark it, chum, nark it!' Tiddy Doll's warning was frantic. ‘The gentleman doesn't want to hear your life's history nor your brother's. Your big mouth always was your trouble, Roly. The gentleman's got 'is own position to think of.'

The threat was an open one and Geoffrey wheeled to stare coldly at the dark glasses.

‘You've considered your own, I suppose, Doll?'

The albino regarded him steadily. They had the enormous advantage of understanding each other perfectly. The position was relatively simple. In a city like London, on an island like Britain which for all its vagaries still possesses a police force superior to most, the prisoner has the upper hand so long as he is aware of it. Geoffrey knew that unless they actually murdered him, and disposed of his body successfully, never a simple business, they must at some point permit him to go free. Since he was not a man whom a good beating would intimidate, but appeared to be a person of backing, the position must eventually resolve into a question of whether or no he lodged a complaint. Once he did complain the future of the band was not even problematic.

However, Tiddington men are notoriously not without cunning.

‘There are some gentlemen 'oo wouldn't like it to be known they was mistook for friends of persons they wasn't friendly with, and so got theirselves into muddles,' Doll essayed none too hopefully.

‘There are also gentlemen who could not care less,' said Geoffrey, ‘but,' he added carefully, ‘they are usually reasonable people who do not want to do others any harm if they are sensibly treated and their questions answered.'

Doll smiled. He was delighted by the oblique form of the intimation. He could not resist sending a glance of triumph towards the others, who remained worried and a little foxed.

Geoffrey turned back to Roly. ‘Which raid are you talking about?'

‘It didn't have no name, sir. It was secret.'

‘Four months before D-day?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘To the Normandy coast?'

‘I don't rightly know, sir. We were took over by submarine and put off in a little boat. Me and Tom managed the boat. It was wonderfully rocky. We didn't go up to the house, even Bill didn't go up to the house. Bill sat on the beach with the torch to give the signal should we need it. We was all starkers and painted black, and Bill 'ere was covered with weeds.'

Geoffrey glanced at the ragged man who had used crutches in the street and needed none indoors, and was startled to see that he was smiling and that there was a glint in his dirt-ringed eyes. He made no attempt to join in the story but was remembering it with pure pleasure. It had been an hour of utter and appalling danger which he had enjoyed to the point of ecstasy. It went through Geoffrey's mind that the Gaffer, whoever he was, had chosen his men intelligently if not orthodoxly.

‘Who were the others?'

‘There was only Duds and the Gaffer and the Major. Duds didn't go into the house. He stayed below. They knew the fellow we were after would drive himself, so there wasn't likely to be no chauffeur. The only chap who might come, they thought, would be on a motor-bike carrying messages. None of us carried a gun. Guns wasn't allowed because of the noise.'

‘Who were you after?'

Roly shook his head. ‘We never heard. Duds said it was a general, but the Gaffer told me and Tom it was a spy.'

‘I see. And he was expected to go to the house alone?'

‘Well, they reckoned there was a woman there. It were only a little house, all by itself. Sea and rocks on one side, private road on the other. They reckoned he'd put her there.'

Geoffrey nodded. The picture was extraordinarily clear. He believed the story. Some very strange things had been done along the French coast in those months of waiting before the great invasion. Five men and one officer: at such a time a small force was well worth risking on good information to remove a single dangerous man.

He came to himself abruptly. Roly's voice, which had grown softer and broader as the story continued, was still droning on.

‘The Gaffer done the job all right, both of 'em we reckoned, though 'e never said nothing about the woman. He liked the knife, Jack did. I doubt not he liked the knife.'

It was his first sign of relish. It flared up jarringly in the country tongue.

Geoffrey looked up sharply. It occurred to him that his first guess had been the right one: it had been Roly and not his brother who had hit out at Duds in the fog. The next moment the man confirmed it.

‘Duds told me the Gaffer was in stir – that's prison to you, sir – but he was lying, same as he always did. Jack was too smart for that. Even if they catched 'im they'd never hold 'im. We know better than that. Jack has collected the treasure and he's a-living on it in glory, in glory, while 'is mates are tramping the gutter. That's why we're a-looking for 'im.'

Tiddy Doll, who had been making signs for some minutes, gave up in despair.

‘Now you've said it,' he burst out, adding a stream of bad language from which an expert could have deduced his entire history, civil and military. ‘Now you've opened your mouth so wide you've swallowed yourself. Now you've given everything away.'

Geoffrey ignored him. The story was taking shape. Elginbrodde, whom he was now nearer liking than at any time in his life, certainly appeared to be out of it, poor chap, but in that case Duds' impersonation of him became even more inexplicable. He tackled Roly again.

‘Major Elginbrodde went to the house on the coast, I suppose?'

‘Of course 'e did. The Gaffer 'ad to 'ave the Major with 'im to get about so silent. It was the Major's house.'

‘Do you mean his home?'

‘Why yes, sir. He'd lived there as a kid. It was an old place, a kind of little stone castle. They would never have got up the rocks so quiet in the dark save that he knew the way. That's why 'e was chosen. That's how we come to go at all.'

‘What happened to the Major's family?'

The ex-fisherman looked blank. ‘I don't think there was but one old woman, ‘is granny. She went away and the Jerry left the place as it was. Then the spy we was after put ‘is lady there, but they never found the treasure. That was still there when we went, because the Major went to look.'

The inflection upon the operative word was not lost upon Geoffrey, but he had had some experience of the fighting man and his notions on ‘Treasure trove, its probable value'. As he glanced round the ill-assorted group in the cellar he thought he saw the whole story. Each face was solemn, engrossed, and avid. Treasure. The ancient word had worked its spell once again. It was holding them together as nothing else could ever have done, and was supporting them even while it sucked them dry.

Of them all, Doll was the most completely enthralled. His narrow lips were working. The fact that yet another pair of ears should have heard the tremendous news was agonizing to him. He was the basic material of which great fools are made, a country dolt tormented because of his deficiency, he had dreamed wildly of becoming a tyrant in a city paved with gold. He had achieved the tyranny and had certainly found the pavements. Nothing would convince him that the gold was not there also, if only he could get his hands on it. He saw plain evidence of it wherever he looked; in the great shops, on the painted women, in the hissing automobiles. Golden Treasure. Treasure meaning ‘after one has dreamed one's fill, yet
more
'.

Geoffrey caught a glimpse of all this, yet he had no idea of the depth of the illusion.

‘The sergeant described it all to you, I suppose?' he inquired good-humouredly.

His amusement was recognized and resented immediately. Nothing he could have said would have inflamed them more. The Treasure was sacred. It was the one thing they believed in in all the world. A murmur, ugly and irritable, escaped the whole group. It rumbled from these rags of humanity like a growl.

‘The Gaffer didn't say too much. He was far too fly.' Roly spoke bitterly. ‘But he knew all about it. He knew it was there, and you can bet he went back for it as soon as he knew the Major had got his packet. That's the one certain thing.'

‘And 'e's a-living on it now, with wine and motor-cars and pickles,' burst out Tiddy Doll, unaware of any incongruity. ‘You can tell that from the way ‘is friend Duds was dressed up. That was proof, that was.'

‘I thought you couldn't see 'im, Tiddy.'

‘Well, of course I see 'im. I see 'im when we was following 'im.' The albino covered the slip and changed the subject adroitly. ‘There's the Souvenirs. Don't forget the Souvenirs. We know there was treasure there once. You all 'ad a taster, didn't you?'

There was a moment of hesitation and then Roly went over to his brother and, after a muttered conversation, came back with a package wrapped in a rag.

‘Major Elginbrodde give us each a Souvenir,' he explained to Geoffrey. ‘He brought them out with 'im in 'is pockets. The rest of us 'ave 'ad to part with ours at different times, but Tom's kep' 'is. 'E 'ad to. It was too valuable to sell. No one wouldn't touch it.'

In complete silence he unfolded the parcel. He might have been about to display a holy relic. Under a rag there was a piece of coloured handkerchief, and beneath that a much-creased square of oiled silk. The final covering was a piece of lead paper off a tobacco package. Roly pressed it back, smoothing it with hands as black as his clothes. He held out the contents for Geoffrey to see.

It was an early miniature, beautifully painted on wood, a man's head surrounded by a full wig of chestnut curls. Geoffrey was no expert, but he could see that it was fine work and obviously genuine. The treatment it was receiving was doing it very little good. The plaque was cracking and the paint flaking.

‘It used to have a frame. Solid gold, that was, set with little bits of coloured glass. A fellow in the Walworth Road gave Tom seven pounds ten for it.'

‘That was before I found yer,' put in Doll furiously. ‘You was chiselled over that. Even a sovereign's worth thirty-five bob today.'

‘Bill got twelve quid for his music box.' Roly added the information hastily. ‘A little gold bird in a cage. Wind it up and it sung.'

‘You only got a fiver for your box,' cut in Doll accusingly. ‘You told me so yourself scores of times. But that was painted, wasn't it, just like this?'

This pathetic history was cut short by a curious interruption. At the far end of the room a folded newspaper suddenly appeared through the ceiling and floated down the wall. The cellar was built out some few feet under the roadway, and there was a grating there let into the pavement which was used as a letterbox by some obliging newsvendor.

‘Late Night Final,' exclaimed the man with the cymbals cheerfully as he hurried off across the bricks to retrieve it.

‘Dog racing,' said Tiddy with contempt. ‘A tanner each way on the dogs, that's ‘is idea of romance, that is. Waste o' money. Well, sir, I don't know how you're feeling about this ‘ere little mistake of ours?'

Geoffrey looked away from the miniature and Roly wrapped it up again very carefully, rubbing the fine work with his dirty but reverent hands.

‘What did you say the sergeant's name was?' Geoffrey had ignored Tiddy Doll's question but he was gathering up his possessions from the box top.

‘Jack Hackett,' said Roly. ‘At least, that was 'is Army name. I don't know what 'e was borned with. 'E was a man with many names, I reckon.'

‘You can lay he won't be Hackett now,' put in Doll contemptuously. ‘'E's a lord by this time. Perhaps you know 'im, sir? Perhaps you know 'im well and don't know 'is history. You'll hear it all right when we come up with him. What was you a-thinking of doing, sir?'

‘Doing?'

‘About our little mistake.'

‘I shall forget it.' The educated authoritative voice carried conviction. Doll accepted the statement as he would have accepted no signature, however illustrious. But the performance was not complete. Geoffrey realized they expected a warning from him and he prepared to give them one.

‘But if I hear of any similar incident if you make a silly mistake again, Doll, then, of course, I shall consider myself free to speak. Do you understand?'

‘Yes, sir.' It was a smart military answer and the man drew his heels together.

The absurdity of the situation was not really clear to either of them. No one was watching the man with the cymbals. He was sitting on a box, the late edition held close to his eyes, spelling out the Stop Press stencilled in the blank column on the back page. His startled burst of profanity shook everybody.

‘Bloke found murdered in Pump Path, W2. That's Duds. ‘E's a deader.'

‘That's a lie.' Tiddy Doll swung across the floor to him to peer at the crooked line of print at the foot of the column.

‘You done it, Tiddy.' Roly's face had become green and he had the others huddled together, shrinking from Doll. ‘You done it when you went back. ‘You said you give 'im something to go on with.'

The albino crushed the paper in his great hands. His brain worked much more quickly than theirs and he had courage.

‘Hold your mouths!' he shouted. ‘If one of us done it, we all done it, that's the law.' He turned savagely and pointed at Geoffrey. ‘'
Im as well
.'

Geoffrey was just too late. There were eight men between him and the stairs.

‘Don't be idiots!' he cried out to them. ‘Don't be fools. Pull yourselves together. If this is true, you've only got one hope. A statement to the police now, at once, it's your only chance.'

‘That be damned!' Tiddy's roar filled the building and he bent his head for the charge.

—

ACROSS THE CITY
in St Petersgate Square it had been one of the most alarming interrogations of Sergeant Picot's experience, but by eleven o'clock that evening he was prepared to admit that the Chief had known what he was doing when he let ‘the old parson' have his head. He sat silent in the leather chair in the corner of the study in the rectory, his notebook decorously hidden in the folds of his raincoat, and reflected that if only the police were permitted the licence calmly assumed by the public, life would be infinitely more simple.