Calamity in Kent, A British Library Crime Classic (24 page)

“Put your hands high into the air, Mr. London!” said a pleasant voice.

I obeyed. There was nothing else that I could do. A hand reached into my blazer pocket and removed my pistol. I was caught like a rat in a trap.

Chapter XXVII

In Which I Talk to a Murderer

“Keep those hands right above your head still, if you don't mind, Mr. London,” said the voice. I still did what I was told. Indeed, I had no real alternative. I was helpless in the control of this man, and I felt annoyed that I had so allowed myself to be caught. Yet I did not really see what other precautions I could possibly have taken.

He prodded me in the back. “Just move this way, please, Mr. London.” There was a sort of ironic politeness about the man's voice which at once annoyed me and amused me. He led the way—or rather indicated the way in which he wanted me to go. This was towards a chair at the other side of the room.

“Sit down,” he said when I reached it.

Again I obeyed. He produced a cord from somewhere and tied me down in such a way that I could not move. I was really in a most ignominious position, but there was literally nothing that I could do to improve matters. In a trice I was fastened so that I could scarcely move a muscle. My feet were fastened to the legs of the chair, and my hands, twisted behind my back, tied to the chair-back.

“That, I think, is eminently satisfactory,” he said in a suave manner. “Now all that we have to do is to arrange the lighting in a way which will be what we want.”

He crossed the room, and I watched him. I could see nothing of his features, since he kept his back to me. And he tilted the desk-lamp so that it shone directly into my eyes, while he remained so deeply in the shadow that I could really see nothing of him—not enough to get anything approaching a detailed idea of what he looked like, anyhow.

He was obviously a man of something over the average height, and when he walked across the room I noticed that he had a long stride and a firm step which I thought was clearly what I had heard when I was listening inside the room further back the corridor. This was certainly the man who had passed by. He clearly knew me, and I wondered if he had been observing me the whole time that I had been investigating things. Almost as if in answer to my thoughts, he spoke.

“You thought that you were so very clever, Mr. London,” he said, and now there was something like a sneer in his voice. “You thought that you could do something to defeat us, didn't you? Well, you see, we are a little brighter in the intellect than you thought. No stranger comes to the Smithy without being duly noted and pigeon-holed, and you were so obviously in search of something that your arrival was reported to me without a moment's delay.”

This didn't seem to require any answer from me; so I said nothing.

My companion laughed. It was a humourless laugh, not at all pleasant to hear. I did not know what would be my fate in his hands, but I was sure that it would not be anything enviable to undergo. Still, I managed to keep my pecker up. I thought that I should find some way out. And there was one thing that I had to do—keep from them, if it were at all possible, the way in which I had come here. For that was the secret which would enable them to kill me and make a quick getaway before the police arrived. Whereas, if I could stall and play for time, it was possible that Shelley might get a bit anxious and arrange a raid in time to save me from whatever fate this man might be hatching for me. All that went through my mind in a much shorter time than it takes you to read it.

“Who do you think you are?” I asked, making an effort at bluster. You must remember from this point onwards I was mainly concerned with spinning out time, and I thought that to make him a bit annoyed with me might be the best way of playing for time, since he was probably as conceited as most criminals and would therefore be concerned to justify himself in my eyes, even though he was already planning to kill me as soon as the interview was finished.

“I should think the more crucial question is who do you think I am?” he returned. He was not a scrap annoyed, which riled me a little. Nothing, in fact, is more annoying than the man who resolutely refuses to be upset by any sort of insult which one may hurl at him.

“Is that important?” I asked.

“We will return to that question in a few minutes, if you do not mind, Mr. London,” he said. “I have some more important matters which you can help me to deal with. I should therefore be very much obliged if you would just answer a few queries which I am going to put to you.”

There was something very odd about this. The man was talking as if this was an ordinary business conversation. The fact that I was tied to a chair and half-blinded by the light that was shining directly in my eyes seemed to have no influence at all on the way he was speaking.

“Ask away,” I said, “though, of course, I can't guarantee that I shall answer all your questions.”

A kind of silky malice crept into his voice as he replied to that. “Somehow I think that you will, Mr. London,” he said. “You see, we have methods of making people talk, methods that have rarely failed. But I hope that there will be no need to use the more drastic methods against your good self. In fact, I am sure that there will not—you have too much good hard common sense to be under the necessity of driving us to any inordinate lengths in these matters.”

I didn't altogether like this. During the war I had heard a few things about the more unpleasant refinements of the Gestapo torture camps. I had no doubt that it was something of that sort at which he was hinting. I hoped that somehow I should be able to stall him off until Shelley arrived—but I knew that to do that would mean wasting a considerable amount of time.

“I hope that we can get together on these things, too,” I said. “But I can't really tell about that until you start asking your questions, can I?”

“Well, my first question is this: who told you about this place, and suggested that it might be worth your while, as a newspaper crime investigator, to come out here?”

“No one,” I answered.

“No one? What do you mean?”

“Well, if you must know, it was a fellow-guest of the boarding-house in Broadgate where I am living,” I said. “But he did not for a moment suggest that it would be of any interest or value to me as a crime investigator.”

“What did he say? And what was his name?” These queries were rapped out like shots from a gun.

“His name is Sam Weldon,” I replied, making up a name on the spur of the moment. I knew that they would take time to check up on such points, and I was also aware that if I played my cards correctly, by the time they had found I was not telling them the truth, Shelley would be dealing with them, and therefore I should have no need to do anything about it.

“And what did he tell you?” snapped my opponent.

“I was saying to him that I was at a bit of a loose end this evening, that I was getting a little tired of the Broadgate pubs, and that I thought I'd like to drink somewhere else for a change. He told me that this was a pleasant little pub, where the bitter was first-rate, and that he thought…”

The other man interrupted suddenly: “Are you trying to tell me that you merely came to the Smithy for an evening's amusement, just to have a few drinks in a new pub which you had not visited before?”

“That is exactly what I am trying to tell you,” I agreed.

“And you knew nothing about this place apart from that?” he demanded with a kind of savage intensity.

“Nothing at all.”

“It was never suggested to you by anyone that the place might have some features of interest to you in your other capacity as a crime reporter?”

“Never.”

He rose to his feet. Yes, I reflected, I was quite right. He was a tall man—six feet two or three, I reckoned. I still couldn't make out any details of his features.

“I'm sorry, Mr. London,” he announced in tones that were almost comically reluctant. “But it won't wash.”

“Won't wash?” I said.

“No; I frankly don't believe you.”

“I don't know how I am to convince you that I'm telling the truth,” I said in what I hoped was a satisfactory imitation of a man thoroughly aggrieved and disgruntled by the way in which he is being treated.

“Nor do I,” he snapped, sitting down again.

“Yet I had no idea that there was anything odd going on here at the Smithy,” I said, “and even now I'm not at all sure what it is. The fact that you've got me tied up like this convinces me that there is something here in some way connected with the crime that I am engaged in investigating on behalf of my paper. But what the connexion is I don't know. You have completely mystified me—and that is something that happens very rarely in my life.”

“I don't expect that it will happen again in your life, Mr. London,” he said smoothly, and this time there was no doubt about the innuendo.

“That's something to be thankful for, anyhow,” I remarked, pretending not to see what he was getting at.

He suddenly faced me with another question, obviously intended to take me completely by surprise. “Are you sure that you were not put on to this place by your old friend…what is his name?…Inspector Shelley,” he said.

“Inspector Shelley is merely a man with whom I have been inevitably in contact over my work for
The Daily Wire
,” I tried to explain. “He has been very good to me, helping me with some information which has provided me with useful background material for my stories in the paper.”

“Indeed?” This time the sneer was not disguised. There wasn't even an attempt to disguise it.

For almost the first time since I had come into that room I felt a spasm of fear. Did this man know too much? Had he some inside source of information? It was not pleasant to think that he might merely be laughing at me, thinking that I was a silly blundering fool, who had pushed my head into a hornets' nest without even noticing that the hornets could sting? Or did he really not know as much as he pretended? Was he really only bluffing after all? It was impossible, of course, for me to say which was the correct analysis of the position into which, with Shelley's aid, I had got myself. But I felt, as I say, a definite twinge of fear when I thought that it was possible that I had put myself within the power of a man who knew all about me, had, perhaps observed my work in Broadgate with a smile on his face, knowing that before long I should fall into his hands, to be dealt with at his leisure, and as he thought fit. But, I told myself, it was no good giving way to any sort of despair. I had to face the situation as best I could. If my opponent was bluffing—well, I could bluff also, and maybe I should be able to bluff my way out of this situation, as I had, in the past, bluffed myself out of others that had seemed, if not as awkward, every whit as difficult as this.

“Anyhow, sir,” I said, as politely as I could, “what do you propose to do with me? You can't keep me a prisoner here. I should be missed before long. In fact, I might easily be missed by now, since I have not arrived back at dinner.”

“I'm not as easily taken in as that, Mr. London,” he said, with a chuckle in his voice. “I am aware that, like so many journalists, you are a trifle erratic, shall I say, over the matter of mealtimes. I am quite sure that if you did not turn up for a few hours at your boarding-house the good Mrs. Cecil would be in no way perturbed.”

Here again there was the suggestion that he had a deep knowledge of my general background. The name of Mrs. Cecil came from his tongue so readily that it at once suggested to me that he had kept me well under observation for some time. The mere fact that he knew her name, in fact, shook me somewhat.

“But the fact remains, that I shall soon be missed,” I said. “People knew that I was coming here for a few hours.”

“People?” He at once took up every point, I noticed.

“My friend Weldon,” I said hastily, trying to cover up what had undoubtedly been a verbal slip. “And I have no doubt that he will have mentioned it to others. We are a group of friends in the boarding-house, you know.” I thought that I sounded rather like a radio comedian in saying this, but it was the best way, on the spur of the moment in thinking a way out of the difficulty into which my careless talk had landed me.

The man laughed out loud. “My dear Mr. London,” he said. “You must realise that we are not quite as simple as all that.”

“No?”

“No. You were no doubt seen to enter the saloon bar here, but we shall have plenty of witnesses prepared to swear that you stayed for an hour only, that you were then slightly the worse for drink, and that when you left you were seen to stagger down the road towards the bus-stop. Once that is satisfactorily established there should be very little difficulty in proving that you stumbled, when half-drunk, beneath the wheels of a passing lorry, or into the bed of one of the nearby streams that you have no doubt observed passing underneath the road at fairly frequent intervals.”

This was said in a perfectly friendly fashion. The man might have been discussing the prospects of the cricket season instead of describing a way in which I might be brought to an unpleasantly sticky end.

I must confess that it took me aback a bit. I tried, however, not to show this, and kept my voice as steady as I could when I replied to him.

“Then what do you propose?” I asked.

“I propose to leave you to yourself—shall we say for about half an hour?”

“And then?” I asked.

“And then I shall return and ask you if you have come around to a more sensible view of things. In other words, my dear Mr. London, I shall want to know if you have decided to tell me the truth about what brought you here.”

“And if I can tell you no more than I have told you up to now?”

“Then I shall be compelled to apply to you those rather more drastic methods at which I hinted earlier.”

He melted into the dark distance. I was alone.