Operation Pax (28 page)

‘God bless my soul! Do you mean to say, John, that such outrageous things happen in this country?’ The Provost, who had been about to set down the poker, appeared to think better of it – much as if a handy weapon might be needed at any moment.

‘It seems they do.’ Appleby made a wry face. ‘Unexplained vanishings do from time to time occur. And lately some have occurred in a way that has set us thinking.’

‘You mean that this queer and disgraceful business here somehow hitches on to a situation you have been investigating already?’

‘I think it just possibly may. And, while I’m waiting for a little more data, I propose to tell you about it – just as I used to bring you philosophical problems that were too tough for me.’

The Provost, while receiving this analogy with evident scepticism, abruptly put aside the poker and sat down. ‘Good,’ he said.

‘Well, then – here is the first problem I’d put to you. Suppose, Provost, that you are to all appearances a law-abiding Englishman – one engaged, indeed, in some wholly beneficent profession–’

The Provost grinned. ‘You always did begin, my boy, with some wild hypothesis.’

‘Don’t interrupt. Suppose that, although your way of life is entirely blameless, you yet keep a Minotaur in your back yard. This creature must have its regular tribute of youths and maidens. Not a vast number, for this is a small and abstemious Minotaur. Still, its appetite is steady, and must be satisfied. How would you do the catering?’

The Provost considered. ‘I should keep an eye open for the
filius nullius
, the
filius terrae
–’

‘While avoiding the
filius honesto genere natus
. Precisely! In other words, it would be foolish to make away with persons of established position so long as you could conveniently find waifs and strays.’

‘I see what you are getting at.’ The Provost stretched out an arm for his second glass of brown sherry, appeared to think better of it, and thrust the decanter out of reach. ‘But it doesn’t seem quite to fit last night’s proceedings. Assistant Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police are neither strays nor waifs.’

‘That was a different matter. My guess is that they were endeavouring to recover an escapee, and that they just had to take me while they were about it. Although there may well have been another reason, too.’

‘Are you going to tell me who “they” are?’

‘I wish that, with any certainty, I knew. But let me stick to a proper order. Some time ago there was a curious case of a fellow who was released from prison after serving a long term on account of a big robbery. He hadn’t a relation or acquaintance in the world, and he took to drifting about, getting a labourer’s job from time to time in one town or another. Nobody ought to have the faintest interest in either him or his movements. But – as it happened – the Bristol police had. There was stuff that had never been recovered, and they thought that eventually he might make for it. So an eye was kept on him, without his knowing it. He vanished.’

‘Smart of him, I’d say.’

‘Perhaps. But there have been one or two other cases that have come, you might say, within the same general category. Waifs and strays who turned out to be not quite absolutely
filii terrae
after all. They vanished and – what nobody would have suspected from their circumstances – were inquired about.’

The Provost frowned. ‘Interesting, no doubt. But, unless the numbers were quite considerable, I don’t see that you could build much–’

‘They grouped on the map.’

The Provost sat up abruptly. ‘And this place we keep hearing about – Milton Canonicorum–’

‘Porcorum.’

‘This ridiculously named place is well in the picture?’

‘It is. Not plumb centre. But decidedly there.’

‘And it’s dawned on you that you now have a new crop of relevant disappearances?’ The Provost had suddenly assumed an expression of sombre melancholy, suggestive of a rational being condemned to pass long hours in the society of more primitive forms of mental life.

Appleby smiled. ‘You haven’t altogether lost your old touch. And the point’s fair enough. But remember that I came up thinking simply of this young man of my sister Jane’s. And he’s a bit out of series, as you probably already see. But there’s the first fact: people have in a mild way been tending to disappear within a certain area. People like this chap Routh.’

‘A tramp?’

‘Routh is not in the least a tramp – and, I’d say, nothing like half as honest. But he is definitely a lone-wolf type. Probably he’s proud of it, so that it would emerge pretty well at a first brush with him. Well, I think he went to feed the Minotaur.’

‘And was disgorged again?’

‘And escaped from the labyrinth. I’m not sure it wasn’t with blood on his hands. And he certainly carried something that he believed valuable off with him.’

‘Not an Ariadne?’

‘Something much more portable than a young woman. He had it in the inside breast pocket of his jacket.’ Appleby had risen and was pacing the room – his eye, every now and then, straying expectantly to the telephone. ‘Well, he got away. Then they got him again, plus me. Then we were both rescued by this astonishing Kolmak of yours, about whom I must ask you presently. Then, in the early morning, and while I was still oblivious, he beat it.’

‘And is now?’

‘I only wish I knew. And I have my fears, as you can guess. The local people have a net out for him – but I don’t much like the way the half-hours are going by without news… Where in Oxford would you hide, Provost, if you felt yourself to be a fugitive both from lawlessness and the law?’

‘In Bodley.’ The Provost had no doubts about it.

‘I hadn’t thought of that. Do you think the local men–’

‘It certainly won’t be quite their first thought either.’

‘Well, we must give them a little more time. Now, consider the woman. Her name is Anna, and she has managed to smuggle both herself and her child into England. Her position was irregular, and her past was no doubt a long history of senseless persecution. Probably she was inclined a little to dramatize her predicament. She and her boy were fair food for the Minotaur.’

The Provost stirred uneasily. ‘I begin to believe in it. And I don’t like it – particularly the bit about the child.’

‘Quite so. But here we come to an odd thing. It is quite clear to me that this woman, with her little boy, was carried off and put under some sort of constraint. But not an absolute constraint. She twice managed to elude the vigilance of her captors — I think we may call it that – and communicate covertly with Kolmak. On each occasion she could have declared her whereabouts. And on each occasion she deliberately refrained. The second message spoke of danger, and of the possible need to send an urgent telephone summons for help. That second message was sent off yesterday afternoon. Kolmak is waiting beside his telephone now. And, of course, it is being checked. If his number is called, any conversation will be recorded.’

The Provost, who had been sitting with closed eyes, momentarily opened them. ‘What about a wrong number?’

‘What’s that?’ Appleby was startled.

‘Suppose this woman’s danger is suddenly precipitated. She’s in a great hurry to send out a telephone message – secretly. Quite likely, you know, to get through to the wrong number.’

Appleby frowned. ‘Then it will depend upon a time factor. The County people will be arranging to tap the telephone – or telephones – in this Milton place. But, technically, it will be a bit of a job.’

‘Just an idea.’ The Provost’s voice was so vague and apologetic that Appleby found himself grinning a most juvenile grin. He remembered very well what this meant. The old boy was really thinking.

‘My impression is this. The woman called Anna feels that she is on the verge of discovering something. She judges it so important that it is her duty to continue courting danger – danger not only for herself but for her boy. She didn’t want Kolmak, the police, rescue, and so forth. What do you make of that?’

‘Has she a profession?’

‘She’s a doctor.’

‘Would you say, John, that Minotaurs find female physicians particularly toothsome?’

‘I think I’d say that her profession made her something of a special case. Perhaps there was some idea of making her less a victim than an attendant.’

‘And correspondingly, her professional knowledge would give her a special interest in – and perhaps penetration about – the activities of the establishment.’

‘Quite so. And now to come to young Geoffrey Ourglass. He is clearly to be bound in somehow. He too vanishes – long before either of these other two – and is last seen being driven through Milton Porcorum. But at once – or almost at once – his uncle, his fiancée, his tutor, and no doubt plenty of other people too, start inquiring about him. So you see what I mean by his being out of series.’

The Provost nodded. ‘The point is hardly an obscure one. Far from being a
filius terrae
, this young man is highly prized by the world and shortly due to scoop the pool: a First in Schools, a secure and probably highly distinguished career, an admirable wife and an irreproachable brother-in-law –’ Abruptly the Provost’s eyes came open again, fixing themselves on Appleby as if he suddenly felt obliged to verify this last statement. ‘But – great heavens! – now that I come to think of it–’

The telephone at the farther end of the room gave a low purr. Appleby leapt to it. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes – I am Sir John Appleby… An accident?… I see… And what about that van?… Thank you.’ He put down the receiver and turned to the Provost. ‘Routh was still in Oxford just after ten o’clock. A constable saw him bolting down Broad Street.’

‘Saw him! Then why the dickens didn’t he go after him?’

‘Because it was only when he got down to Carfax that the word about Routh was passed to him by the next man. You must remember they’ve been on the job only a couple of hours. But seeing a fellow rather the worse for wear making off down the street, the constable took a good look at him. And a passer-by told him there had just been some sort of accident with no great harm done – this fellow having bumped into a bicycle, or something of the sort. But, so far, a hunt in that district has produced nothing more. Incidentally, the van that operated so drastically against Routh and myself last night, and that was driven away and parked by Kolmak, has vanished. The enemy must have retrieved it.’

‘Enemy seems the right word, John. I get the impression that you are confronting quite a crowd. But there was something I was going to say. It’s a story about young Ourglass that Birkbeck told me, but that didn’t strike me as relevant until this
filius terrae
business sprang up. To begin with, Ourglass, as you probably know, isn’t really so very young. He’s in the last batch of our actual war service men, and he must be a good many years older than your sister.’

Appleby nodded. ‘He’s twenty-seven.’

‘Well, the point is this. Although not a
filius terrae
in actuality he did on one occasion put up a very good show of being one. And the story is so much to his credit that I am sorry it didn’t reach my ears earlier. I don’t very effectively get to know our men before the end of their second year, and I’d have been glad to make this fellow’s acquaintance earlier. But perhaps you know about him from your sister?’

‘I know very little. Jane has been rather close about the engagement, and so far today I’ve failed to contact her.’ Appleby glanced quickly at the Provost. ‘You know, the more I’ve thought about this business in the last few hours, the grimmer the view I’ve been inclined to take about the young man’s chances of survival. The mere length of his disappearance looks pretty bad. But I’m not sure you’re not going to tell me something hopeful.’

‘I hope I am. At least young Ourglass appears to be – or to have been – a person very well able to give a good account of himself. The facts are these. He has a flair for acting of sorts. Character turns and sketches and an ability to take on the colouring of the people he’s living among. Moreover, he’s a bit of a linguist. Well, in the last couple of years of the war he was spotted doing that sort of thing – simply to amuse himself and his friends – in Italy. He could do an Italian peasant to the life. So he was parachuted either into Germany or German-occupied territory – I’m not sure which – and managed to get himself rounded up as a DP worker and clapped into an armament factory. Before the show ended, it seems, he got one or two pretty useful bits of information out. A pretty gallant job. And I’ve an idea that his subsequent delay in getting up here may have been due to some rather similar assignment. It might be part of your picture – eh?’

‘It might, indeed. And it’s odd that nothing of this came through to me. The young man must be even closer than Jane.’

‘Presumably he is. I had this from Birkbeck only after you left common room last night.’

‘And from whom did Birkbeck have it?’

‘From Bultitude.’

Appleby frowned. ‘Bultitude! You mean your fat scientist?’

‘That is a very cavalier way, my dear John, to speak of Bede’s only celebrity. Bultitude had it from somebody terribly high up in something. He likes altitudes, you know.’

‘So I gathered.’ Appleby was silent for a moment. ‘Great carcass of a man, isn’t he? How did they use him in the war – as a barrage balloon?’

‘Biological warfare.’

‘Sounds horrid.’

‘Quite unspectacular, I believe – or at least the parts of it that ever got going. Thinking up insulating materials that wouldn’t be devoured by bugs in New Guinea and Malaya… Would you care for that second glass of sherry?’

‘No thank you. Nothing more for me until luncheon in Milton Porcorum.’

The Provost nodded. ‘I wondered when you’d be going out there.’

‘I’m leaving at noon. But first I want to catch Jane, and also get more reports from the local people and the Yard… Ah, there they are.’

The telephone had purred again, and Appleby sprang to it. ‘Hullo, is that – Oh, I see… This
is
Sir John Appleby speaking…Yes, go ahead… What’s that word?…s-u-a?…I’ve got it. Go on… Thank you. Yes, send the confirmatory copy to me at the Provost’s Lodgings.’ He put down the instrument and turned to the Provost. ‘Well, I’m dashed.’