Dictator's Way (33 page)

“So that's how the lady came here?” observed Ulyett.

“But not for that would I have killed, even though they said that perhaps if I refused, I also, I might find a knife waiting for me one night. But not for that would I have done what they wished. So they tried to hire an Englishman, a boxer, a hired chucker-out at Mr. Judson's parties. 

But he would not either, he is what you call a crook but not a murderer. They feared then he would betray them so they sent a letter to accuse him of another crime to frighten him into keeping quiet.”

“Silly fool idea,” observed Ulyett.

“I do not think they are very intelligent,” Troy a said slowly. “Such as they never are, for they think it is only stupidity if you are honest, they cannot believe there are some who will not lie, even when it is clever to lie. But when this man, this boxer, refused, they came to me again, though not now to kill, for to that I still said no. They gave me orders. I was to go to The Manor and wait there in the garden for Mr. Macklin who would give me important papers. Mr. Macklin was the agent between the Embassy people and the Etrurian Secret Service agents in England. His flat was the general headquarters. They did not wish the connection between Secret Service and Embassy to be known. I have often been given papers either to pass on to the Embassy from Macklin – I suppose now Major Cathay read them all and kept Mr. Albert informed – or else from the Embassy, instructions I suppose, for Mr. Macklin. Sometimes I would hand them over in place of a bill or with the bill, or sometimes I would put them inside the wine list I took round myself. That day in The Manor garden I knew the paper I was to expect was very important. It had to do with the great rising of which there is this news to-night. I never got it. I waited but I saw no one.

Afterwards I went away. It was the afternoon Mr. Macklin died. I knew nothing about it at the time. I knew everyone suspected everyone else. I knew there was danger. Not that day more than any other, though. Mr. Macklin told me there was a girl he thought knew more than she ought to – a friend of Peter Albert's, a Miss Farrar. He thought she came to Mr. Judson's parties to watch him, and he tried to get friendly with her to find out. That made Mr. Waveny angry, he thought it was a flirtation and he said he would thrash Mr. Macklin. I thought at first it was he who had killed him – Macklin, I mean. Afterwards I thought perhaps it was the girl or Mr. Albert. I was told Mr. Macklin's connection with the Etrurian Secret Service was known, and a flat had been taken in the same building as his so as to watch him and his agents who came there. I suppose now it was Major Cathay who gave Mr. Albert and his friends all their information and that it was because of what he had told them that Mr. Albert went to The Manor to get back this important paper from Macklin. After Macklin was killed, then it was realized more than ever that Peter Albert was dangerous and had to be removed. But they always failed, for Peter Albert, when he was attacked, he knew how to defend himself.”

“And all this,” broke in Ulyett angrily, “going on under our noses.”

He was quite red with indignation and Bobby said soothingly:

“You see, sir, both sides were doing their best to keep it quiet – after all, if no one will tell a detective anything, how is he to know anything?”

Ulyett received this pearl of wisdom with a grunt, and Troya continued:

“It was because they thought I had opportunities that again they came to me. They even spoke of poison – poison in the food or the wine we served. I told them that a restaurant does not so betray its guests.”

He paused then. It was odd with what an energy of conviction he uttered this last sentence. Clearly it expressed the deepest conviction of his soul, a loyalty from which nothing would be able to make him swerve, as others might cling to family, to country or to religion.

“They understood that,” he went on in a moment or two, “but they tried again, only this time it was different. They showed me a police order sending people to a concentration camp – the one of which all in Etruria know, the one to which those are sent who are meant to die, but not too quickly. Well, the first name on that list, it was my father's. The second name, it was my mother's. One does not permit one's father and one's mother, when they are old, to be sent to a concentration camp, above all, not that concentration camp. For that, then, I agreed to do as they said. But I said to them, his blood, that will be for you to answer at the end of days. They only laughed. What is just a little more blood to add to all the rest? I went therefore this evening as it was planned. I had with me a hat and a stick of Mr. Waveny's. They had got into his flat with false keys to obtain them. That was to make him suspected, and for the same reason they got him out of the way by a sham message, so that for this evening he should have no alibi. They did not care about him, all they wanted was to make a confusion, and if possible prevent it from being known that Etrurian politics were concerned. Also they arranged an alibi for me. Major Cathay was to swear to it. Now, of course, he will not. That is all, and if you hang me, it must be so, but at least my father and my mother will not go to a concentration camp.”

Though Troya was duly tried, and even convicted and sentenced, for in England all things must be done in accordance with custom and tradition, everyone concerned knew perfectly well that there was not the least intention of ever carrying out the sentence, knew indeed that in a very short time Troya would probably be a free man again.

For he was able to give a very great deal of very useful information about the proceedings of the Etrurian Secret Service, though that had now become of small importance, since all the refugees had gone home and most of the others were only too glad to be allowed to attend to their own affairs without bothering any more about political ideologies they had never clearly understood. After all, what else does man require here below but leave to work for himself and for his family, to eat and to drink at his need, and for a little to be merry before the time comes for him to depart hence, and what had political ideologies to do with that? So the Etrurian Secret Service vanished, like a bit of putrid meat thrown into the dustbin, leaving only a bad smell behind. But there remained the Secret Services of certain other of the totalitarian states working at full pressure, sending reports home of the secret dispositions of this national or the other, how one was actually a subscriber to the
Daily Herald
and another to the Left Book Club, and how yet another was suspected of having written a letter to the
News Chronicle
and how a fourth had been seen coming away from a Communist meeting! Of all these activities too, and not only of those in England, Troya had much to tell. Certain High Commissioners of certain Dominions were also given interesting facts; and a recently established office in Washington, D.C., United States of America, expressed a desire to be allowed to question Troya in person. So first it was publicly announced that the death sentence on the convicted man in the case known as the Second Manor Murder had been commuted to life imprisonment, and then, not at all publicly, the Prison Commissioners were asked to send Troya to New York, and not to be too exigent about his return.

Olive, too, had to undergo a good deal of questioning, but as Troya pleaded guilty, so that the whole trial was over in about five minutes, she was not called upon to give evidence. At first she had been reluctant to speak, fearing to implicate others. But once she understood that the People's Party Government was firmly established in Etruria, that it was in the hour of triumph Peter had died, that there was no intention, in spite of the solemn trial and sentence on Troya, of carrying out that sentence, she was quite willing to tell what she knew. Some of the details she was able to give confirmed various of Troya's statements.

“I was afraid all the time of what would happen,” she told Bobby. “I knew Peter suspected Macklin was a spy. That was why he took a flat in the same building to watch him and his visitors, for Macklin was a kind of general centres I went to The Manor that day to try to stop anything from happening – I was afraid of what the English police might find out. I wanted to tell Peter he mustn't do any more than get the paper from Macklin, the list of names he had got together. Peter did promise, but afterwards he said Macklin knew too much, remembered too much, it had been necessary – what he had done.”

Before however she told what she knew – and it was of some value – she again insisted that Troya must not be punished.

“I know Peter would never have wanted – that,” she said, “not – hanged. Peter always said he would kill when it was necessary and afterwards sleep as soundly as ever, because there are things that count more than life, things by the side of which life counts no more than the burning of a match. What else is Christianity, why else did Christ die? But those things are rare things and terrible, very few and rare the things that count for more than life. But they exist.”

To satisfy her, for experience of a totalitarian government had bred in her a distrust of official statements and promises experience of a British Government during these last few years had somehow or another not entirely dispersed, Bobby was allowed, for he and she were now officially engaged, to take her to a London terminus and see Troya and an American companion comfortably taking their seats in the boat-train.

So, having seen the little restaurant keeper starting off to the New World they themselves turned away to face together the new life waiting for them.

E.R. Punshon was born in London in 1872.

At the age of fourteen he started life in an office. His employers soon informed him that he would never make a really satisfactory clerk, and he, agreeing, spent the next few years wandering about Canada and the United States, endeavouring without great success to earn a living in any occupation that offered. Returning home by way of working a passage on a cattle boat, he began to write. He contributed to many magazines and periodicals, wrote plays, and published nearly fifty novels, among which his detective stories proved the most popular and enduring.

He died in 1956.

Information Received

Death Among The Sunbathers

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Mystery Villa

Death of A Beauty Queen

Death Comes to Cambers

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Mystery of Mr. Jessop

The Dusky Hour

In his London townhouse, city magnate Sir Christopher Clarke is found lying murdered. At the other end of the house his safe hangs open and rifled, and earlier in the day he had visited his solicitors in order to make a drastic change in his will. Later it is discovered that there has been fraud connected with the dead man, and this is but one of the many complications with which Superintendent Mitchell is faced. Fortunately he has the assistance of young Constable Owen, a talented young Oxford graduate who, finding all other careers closed to him by the ‘economic blizzard' of the early thirties, has joined the London Police force.

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is the first of E.R. Punshon's acclaimed Bobby Owen mysteries, first published in 1933 and the start of a series which eventually spanned thirty-five novels.

Since that formidable personage, Sir Christopher Clarke, square built, square jawed, iron of fist and will, with fierce little eyes that gleamed from under bushy brows as though they sought whom they might devour next, was by far the most important and influential client of Messrs Marsden, Carsley, and Marsden, Lincoln's Inn, the well-known and long-established firm of solicitors, it is perhaps no matter for surprise that a certain nervousness, or even more than that, was apparent in the manner of the senior partner of the firm as he rose to greet him.

But Sir Christopher was well used to seeing people nervous and uncomfortable in his presence. Was he not the strong, successful man, the man who knew what he wanted and saw that he got it; were not respect, deference, consideration, even fear, his rightful due? And if it was now even more than fear that peeped from the dark, sharp eyes of Basil Marsden, Sir Christopher took that more as a compliment than anything else. After all, is it not natural to fear the strong, and was he not strong with the strength of a quarter of a million in cash and a credit as high as that of any man in the City of London? Why, but for the recent slump he would have been a millionaire by now, and even the slump had affected him as little as any man.

So if he noticed the terror that seemed to show in the dark, sharp eyes, if he noticed a certain trembling in the white, well-cared-for hands that moved about the papers on the lawyer's desk, he took no notice. He said:

‘About the Belfort Trust?'

‘I have the papers here,' answered Mr Marsden. ‘The accounts show a total of a little over £20,000. A large sum,' he smiled, ‘and as in these days of smash and grab raids, one never knows, I asked Carsley to go himself to the Safe Deposit to fetch it, and take two of the clerks with him, just so as to be on the safe side. It's nearly all in bearer bonds, you remember. Better safe than sorry is a good motto. I think Carsley was almost disappointed nothing happened.'

‘Carsley is a partner now, isn't he?' Sir Christopher asked.

A little surprised at the question, Mr Marsden nodded.

‘Now he's passed his examinations,' he said, a trifle maliciously. ‘He didn't find it too easy, I'm afraid.'

Sir Christopher made no comment but the tone in which this was said had not escaped his notice. It was perhaps not unnatural that Basil Marsden, who had had sole control of the firm for a good many years, was not altogether pleased at having to admit as a partner on equal terms young Peter Carsley, the son of the original Carsley. But as partner he had had to be admitted, or else bought out at a price it would not have been convenient to pay. So installed in a partner's room young Peter Carsley sat, though as yet very insecurely in the saddle and with hardly more knowledge of the business than any junior clerk – and indeed as a very junior clerk Marsden seemed more than half inclined to treat him.