i 16b0d473103b6aa5 (17 page)

Winter tried to reply that there was indeed a very-serious mistake, but that anyone who imagined

they could get away with that sort of thing with him would find they would—he found himself

drowning in a tangle of subjunctives and tore himself free. “I won’t have it,” he said indignantly.

“I don’t like that sort of thing.
Je ne l’aime pas
.”

“Is it,” said the manager, upon whom a false dawn unkindly broke, “is it that monsieur

desires to part with his wife?”

“Heavens above, no!” stormed the baited Winter, in English. “She’s a stranger, I tell you.

Elle est étrange
,
tres étrange
.”

The manager, making another desperate attempt to keep abreast of a situation which

became momentarily further beyond him, asked was it that the poor madame ...he tapped his

forehead and suggested a doctor. Winter, who was nearly a cot case himself by this time, shook

despairing fists in the air. “Listen,” he said. “I have a perfectly good wife at home, but—”

“
Mais oui
,
monsieur
,” said the manager, sure he had got it right this time. “That is of the

most undoubted. But monsieur is on holiday, and life is like that, is it not?”

“No, it isn’t,” howled Winter. “I tell you—”

At that moment the door opened violently, a well-developed young woman bounced into

the room and set about the unfortunate manager in floods of French so rapid as to leave Winter

gasping. He looked at her again—

“Here,” he said, grabbing the manager by the arm, “that’s the woman.”

She flung out her arm with a gesture worthy of Duse. “That-that is the man!”

“Hussy!”

“
Scélérat
!”

“Minx!”

“
Ravisseur
!”

“Madame,” said the manager, pushing his way between. “Monsieur! All is now clear—”

“He came to rob! He opened my case—”

“You have the wrong room,” said the manager firmly to Winter. “You were on the wrong

floor—”

“Gobbless my soul,” said the deflated Winter. “I told the boy the third floor.”

“I am second floor,” said the lady.

“The little mistake,” said the manager airily. “She comes, does she not?
Deuxieme
,

troisieme
, what would you?”

“Madame,” said Winter, horribly abashed, “I am—I cannot tell you—I beg—”

“I beg monsieur,” said she with a dazzling smile, “not to distress himself. One

understands, one pardons, is it not?”

“Very dull indeed,” said Winter to his wife. “Place half shut up, very few people there.”

“But quiet and comfortable, I hope. You caught the boat all right next day, though.”

“Yes, I got across all right but, believe it or not, I had more trouble over the luggage at

Dover. I had some of the firm’s stuff to declare, of course, so after the customs people had

examined everything I sent the porter along to the train with the boxes and my suit-case whilst I

paid the charges. When I went on the platform myself I couldn’t find the porter or any of the

luggage!”

“My dear, what an extraordinary thing. Didn’t you complain?”

“Complain! I’ll say I complained. I sent for the station-master, the assistant station-

master and the foreman porter; the train was held up while every compartment and van were

searched. Not a sign of them. Not any of them. I was ever so angry, Agnes.”

“You had every right to be, Henry. What happened then?”

“Well, eventually they had to let the train go when it was obvious the stuff wasn’t on

board; I walked about at my wits’ end what to do, and chanced to go outside. I mean, to the

station entrance, where the cars drive up, and there, just outside the door, was all my luggage

neatly piled up. All by itself, Agnes, nobody looking after it.”

“And the porter?”

“Never saw him again, they couldn’t find him or something. Disgraceful! Scandalous!

However, all the cases were there, so there wasn’t much harm done, I looked inside each one and

they hadn’t been tampered with so far as I could see. Oh, Agnes, that suit-case of mine is getting

shabby, the lining is split.”

“Oh, is it? Well, you’ve had it some time and I dare say we can get it mended. What

happened then, did you have to wait for the next train?”

“No, as luck would have it there was a gentleman outside the station with a wonderful

car, a sports Bentley he said it was, he’d missed the train himself and was going to drive up to

town so he offered me a lift, and I accepted. He was ever so nice, I told him all about what had

happened and he was ever so sympathetic. He even went out of his way to drop the firm’s boxes

at the office.”

“How very kind, Henry, how fortunate, too! So much nicer than waiting hours for the

next train. What was he like, Henry?”

“‘What was he like’! Oh, you women! Very tall, with a lazy manner and a tired way of

talking as though it was almost too much trouble to speak, don’t you know, but a real toff and no

mistake. I should think he’d been in the Army, still is, probably. We got on fine,” said Henry

with a self-conscious laugh. “He simply insisted on my having what he called a spot of dinner

with him before I came home. Went to a place called the Auberge de France in Piccadilly, I’d

never heard of it before. Not much to look at outside, give me the Strand Corner House for that

any day, but my hat, the cooking! And the service! Waiters everywhere.”

“What did you have, Henry?”

“Well, we started with ...” and so on.

Denton took leave of Winter at one of the Piccadilly Tube entrances and himself repaired

to the Foreign Office.

“Well, did you pacify him?”

“Oh, Lord, yes, quite easy, no trouble at all. Decent old fruit really. What’s in the kitty

this time, anything exciting?”

“Don’t know yet, it’ll be up any minute now. Wonder where they packed it.”

“Oh, at Aachen, at the examination for currency. He told me all his troubles. They aren’t

so subtle as we are, though, they just inveigled him into a back room and locked him up while

they got on with it. I imagine he raised—here’s your plate of cabbage.”

They tore open the envelope which the messenger brought in, the contents informed them

that Germany would march into the demilitarized Rhineland in March, in four months’ time, and

at the same moment denounce the Locarno Treaty.

“Well, I don’t blame “em,” said Denton. “How’d we like being forbidden to have a single

soldier within thirty miles of the South Coast?”

Niehl, Chief of Police and Hambledon’s immediate superior, had been too close a friend

of Roehm to emerge unscathed from the Purge. He was not executed but removed from office,

and made a Provincial Governor far enough from Berlin to keep him out of sight as well as out

of mind. When Klaus Lehmann congratulated him on his appointment, the new Governor made a

wry face, shrugged his shoulders, and remarked that he had long wished to retire from the whirl

of city life to grow vines, and now was his chance.

“How happy you must be,” said Lehmann enthusiastically.

“If I were an American,” said Niehl, who was a film fan, “I should say ‘Oh, yeah?’”

“How I envy you your command of English. I wish I had been more attentive at school.”

“It is a gift, my dear Lehmann, the power to assimilate foreign languages is a definite

gift.”

“How very true,” said Lehmann without a smile. So Niehl left, and Klaus Lehmann

became Chief of Police in his stead. It was he, therefore, who was sent for to the Wilhelmstrasse

when the plans and specification of the magnetic mine disappeared.

“Not only,” said the stout figure behind the enormous desk, “have these plans got to be

found at once, but the man who took them, and anyone else to whom he may have talked about

it, must be silenced. I suggest a sepulchral silence, Lehmann.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You see, the point is this. Even the plans, important as they are, are overshadowed by

the importance of keeping secret even the idea that such a thing exists. A clever man could be

found in any civilized country, no doubt, who could design a magnetic mine if it were suggested

to him. Nobody must suggest it, Lehmann.”

“I see the point.”

“Ninety-nine men out of every hundred, if they learn something really important, must

tell somebody. For this reason, when you have found him you must also find his associates and

ask yourself to whom a man would disclose such a secret. To his friends?”

“As he would almost certainly have to admit also that he was plotting against the Party,”

said Lehmann, “he would choose his friends very carefully, I think.”

“You are right. His wife, then?”

“I am myself a bachelor, but I thought that men usually discussed with their wives

matters concerning housekeeping, cookery and children.”

“Not necessarily in the earlier days of married life. He talks of such things later on, but

perhaps you are right again. His sweetheart then?”

“As I have said, my experience is limited,” said Lehmann modestly, “yet I can imagine

an innumerable list of matters to discuss with a personable young woman before one reached the

subject of magnetic mines.”

“You are a dry old stick, Lehmann,” said the big man good-naturedly. “I’d love to see

you going all romantic over some expensive blonde.”

“I shall never dare to ask for my salary to be increased after that suggestion.”

“For fear I come to see if she’s worth it, hey? But we are positively flippant. I leave this

matter—this very important matter, Lehmann—in your hands with the utmost confidence. I am

sure you will deal with it effectively.”

“I endeavour to give satisfaction, sir,” said Lehmann, and took his leave, devoutly

trusting that his huge companion had never heard of Jeeves.

The field of inquiry was limited. The papers had disappeared between 12 noon on

Wednesday, August the 25th, 1937, when they were marked in as having been returned by

Goering, and 10.30 a.m. on Friday, August the 27th, when the same clerk who had receipted

them two days earlier was told to send them over to the Admiralty. In the meantime they had

been deposited in a locked drawer of the writing-table used by the Civil Service Head of the War

Office section concerned. Immediately the loss was discovered, a strong breeze blew up through

the Department and troubled the waters.

Herr Julius Weissmann, head of the Filing Section, said that if the folder had been

returned to files, as was proper in the case of so important a paper, the loss would not have been

incurred. Never in all his thirty-one years’ experience had he seen such a gross and unpardonable

infringement of procedure. Even the most recently joined messenger-boy would know better, but

some there were who thought themselves so great as to be above rules.

Herr Marcus Schwegmann, in whose bureau drawer the papers had been left, became

completely unstrung under Klaus Lehmann’s unpleasantly pointed questions and stated that (
a
)

he had locked the paper up safely; (
b
) he could not remember ever having seen it; (
c
) the office

charwoman had taken it; (
d
) Weissmann had taken it, thrown the blame on him, Schwegmann,

and sold the papers to the British; (
e
) Goering had never returned it; (
f
) he, Schwegmann, was

not at the office that week at all; (
g
) it was a plot to ruin him, and (
h
) he wished he were dead. He

was at once compulsorily retired.

All six of the clerks in his section denied ever having touched, seen or even heard of the

papers, and as they weren’t supposed to anyway, this seemed quite likely to be true. After

Lehmann had had their homes searched for incriminating evidence and found only proofs of

interest in girls in three cases, music in two, and esoteric Buddhism in the last, he crossed them

off the list.

The charwoman went for him like a tigress. She said she had six rooms to clean out, dust

and rearrange every night and only two hours to do it in; if the police thought a poor

hardworking woman had time to do all that and go snooping round into what didn’t concern her

at the same time, it was a pity they didn’t give up accusing persons as innocent as the babe

unborn and do an honest day’s work occasionally instead, that is, if any of them had ever known

what an honest day’s work was, which she took leave to doubt judging by their faces, most of

them looked as though they had something nasty in their pasts such as she would not demean

herself to describe, and had only joined the police to be on the right side and have no questions

asked which would be awkward to answer. She paused for breath, and Klaus, finding he had

involuntarily bowed his head to the storm, straightened up again to say that there was no

question of throwing aspersions upon her moral—

The charwoman said there had better not be, since there was a law to protect poor honest

widows from insult, defamation of character and probably assault, and if anyone, even a

policeman, laid so much as the tip of one finger—

“Be quiet!” shouted Klaus. “Stop it! Hold your tongue. Nobody wants to assault you.

Nobody would want to, anyway, you—you awful woman. Answer my question. Did you, on the