Ring of Terror (18 page)

‘Same sort of tank?’

‘The same size, but the other way round, if you follow me.’

‘Flat at the top, and V-shaped at the bottom?’

‘Right. Except that in this one the bottom was sloping to the left and it had a pipe which went up the side, and led into the other hut. All clear so far?’

‘Clear as a bell. And when we put the report into shape you can draw pictures of those tanks.’

Though no great hand at writing Joe drew admirable sketches. He said, ‘One thing I forgot to mention, both those tanks had a second pipe, leading out at the bottom. These went into a cistern full of what looked like ordinary plain cold water. I mean, it wasn’t steaming or anything.’

‘OK. Now back to the left-hand hut.’

‘I couldn’t see as well into that one as the right-hand one. But there was a third tank. Not like the others, but round, with an inlet pipe at the top and a forked pipe at the bottom.’

‘By the way, that stuff the man was emptying out of the bucket. Could you see what it was?’

‘No. Oily stuff of some sort. Now, what else was there?’

He concentrated hard whilst Luke waited with his pencil poised.

‘Yes. Two things. Might not be important. I told you the first tank was joined to the second by a pipe. Well this one was much thicker than the outlet pipes which ran down to the water tanks. It seemed to have some sort of cover round it.’

‘You mean it was lagged.’

‘If that’s the word. And one thing more. In the space between the huts I could see two long troughs, one on each side. They were full of earth. I wouldn’t have taken much notice of them, except that all the time I was watching, a man was spading the earth out of the right-hand trough and emptying it, through a sieve, into a bucket. When it was full he tipped it into the left-hand trough and started again.’

‘What sort of earth?’

‘Just earth. I mean, it wasn’t sand, or gravel, or clay. Just ordinary earth. The only odd thing I noticed was the colour. It was a sort of pink colour.’

Luke wrote down ‘pink earth’, but Joe had shot his bolt. He had no more to tell him. He looked at his scribbled notes and hoped that someone would be able to make something out of them. Activity inside the palisade had ceased.

‘Maybe it’s lunchtime,’ said Joe hopefully. ‘Nothing much more we can do here, is there?’

‘There is one thing I’d like to do. Whilst you were away I’ve been keeping an eye on those two cottages, back there, alongside the creek. They’re marked on the map as Gallions Cottages. I didn’t see anyone going in or out and no smoke from the chimneys. I fancy they must be empty.’

‘Like me.’

‘We could go back that way and take a look at them.’

The closer they got to the cottages the less habitable did they seem. One of them fronted the creek. A path, just visible in the undergrowth, ran down from it to the water, where there was something which might once upon a time have been a landing-stage. This cottage was totally derelict. Most of the slates were gone from the roof and the roof timbers showed, gaunt and blackened, above gaping holes in the walls.

The cottage behind it was in slightly better repair. They walked round it, trying to peer through the windows, but were baffled by the accumulation of filth on the panes. The only inhabitant was a thin black cat which disappeared with a snarl into the wilderness which had once been a garden.

‘Poacher,’ said Joe. ‘If I’d had my gun with me, I’d have shot him.’

This seemed to Luke to be Satan rebuking sin, but he was too busy trying to find a way into the cottage to take up the challenge. The fact that the doors and windows were tightly shut increased his desire to see what was inside.

‘Nothing else for it,’ said Joe.

He picked up a half-brick, knocked the glass out of one of the windows, wrapped a handkerchief round his hand to protect it and felt round inside for the catch.

‘Bound to be rusted solid,’ he said. But it opened surprisingly easily. They climbed through into the kitchen.

‘Hold it,’ said Joe. ‘I thought I heard—’ He went across to the sink and turned on the tap. The water ran out, rusty at first, but flowing freely. ‘Water turned on. That’s a bit odd, ennit?’

‘Very,’ said Luke. Like Joe he was speaking softly.

‘You think we might find a couple of dead bodies upstairs? Like it might be the last owners of the cottage, died quietly in their beds a year or two ago and no one bothered to look them up. Wooden’ surprise me.’

‘Then suppose we go and look for them,’ said Luke.

They explored the place cautiously, but found no dead bodies except moths and bluebottles. The two living-rooms downstairs and the two bedrooms upstairs were empty of furniture, fluttering with cobwebs and thick with dust.

‘Someone’s been here,’ said Luke, back downstairs. ‘And not long ago.’ The prints were clear. Nailed boots or heavy shoes.

‘Might be some farm boy,’ said Joe. ‘Broke in, same as we did, to see what he could nick.’

‘Could be,’ said Luke.

They followed the footprints which led to the back door, which was bolted top and bottom but not locked. Like the window catches the bolts worked easily. Joe opened them and left the door ajar.

‘Keep our line of escape open,’ he said. ‘I’ve a bad feeling about this place. When we open a cupboard, a Thing is going to jump out at us. When it does, I can tell you, I shall scarper.’

‘Instead of talking nonsense,’ said Luke, ‘let’s follow the prints the other way and see where they lead to.’

‘You go first,’ said Joe.

The prints took them upstairs, along the passage, passing the two derelict bedrooms, up to a door at the end.

‘There it is,’ said Joe. ‘That’s the cupboard I was telling you about.’

‘Might be interesting to find out,’ said Luke, and opened the door.’

Joe shouted ‘Boo’ in a loud voice, and then, more soberly, ‘Well. Knock me down!’

It was a bathroom. And the surprising thing about it was that it was clean, as was everything in it. There was a basin, with a chair in front of it and one mirror over it and a second one on the wall beside it. When the tap was turned the water ran cold and clear, without any trace of rust.

Luke said, ‘Someone must have used this more recently than the tap in the kitchen. And just look at that!’

There was a small fireplace at the end of the room. A fire of dry sticks had been laid in it and a big kettle hung over it.

‘Hot and cold water laid on,’ said Joe. ‘We might be in the Ritz.’

A search of the room produced only a cake of soap, indented with the letters SLSC.

‘With the compliments of the South London Soap Company,’ said Luke.

Joe said, ‘What’s it all mean? What’s the point of it?’ He was staring in disbelief round the room.

‘I’ve no more idea than you have,’ said Luke. ‘But if we put it in our report maybe someone will tell us.’

‘Better take the soap,’ said Joe. ‘Otherwise they’ll think we dreamt the whole thing.’

A difficult point of law having arisen, Mr Justice Darling announced that he would hear arguments from counsel on both sides in private after lunch. He added, with his schoolboy smile, ‘I therefore propose to award everyone else a half holiday.’

Accordingly when Luke and Joe arrived at the Poplar Station with their report they found Wensley not only there, but free to listen to them. Hubert Daines was with him and read the report over his shoulder.

Wensley paid them the compliment of reading it right through twice. Then he said, ‘First things first. I take it, from the way they accepted Treschau, that the workers in the factory were Russians, or at least were on his side. You agree? Good. In that case there is one simple explanation. The
émigrés
are always on the look-out for cash. The alternative is starvation, so they’re prepared to make every effort to get their hands on it. Sometimes by robbery and violence. Might this be, for once, an honest effort to earn it?’

‘Except for the curious meat delivery,’ said Daines. ‘That doesn’t seem to me to make any sense at all. And what about that pink earth. Can you fit that in?’

Joe said, ‘When I was a kid I remember another boy telling me that he’d been told that soap-makers sometimes put dirt into the soap so that the woman who was doing the washing would see a lot of dirt in the water and think what a good soap it was.’

Daines said, with a smile, ‘I was told the same thing at school. And when I was a schoolboy I believed it. Not now. Modern analysts would soon uncover the trick.’

‘All right. Forget the earth,’ said Wensley. ‘Now perhaps you’ll explain just exactly what they wanted the meat for. Were the workers threatening to strike if they didn’t get a decent midday meal?’

‘I haven’t the remotest idea,’ said Daines. ‘But that’s because I know nothing about soap-making. If I could borrow this report, I could show it to someone who’s an expert in the matter and might get you an answer.’

‘Had you anyone in mind?’

‘The obvious man would be the chief government analyst. He might be able to solve the problem. The trouble is it normally takes a month to get anything out of him at all.’

‘Would it hurry him up if you told him that his report would go to the Home Secretary and that he might have to deliver it in person?’

‘I’d almost guarantee it,’ said Daines, with a smile.

‘Very well. Now I’d like you to tell these young men what you were halfway through telling me when they arrived.’

Daines said, ‘Yesterday the Foreign Office got a report from their man in Moscow. The gist of it was that Stolypin, formerly Minister of the Interior, has been promoted. He’s now First Minister under the Tsar. A position of great power – and considerable danger. You might say that he’s in charge of the execution shed and his own head’s on the block. He has expressly undertaken to promote a campaign of terror in London. In fact he stated that the men in charge of the operation were already in position. It would be such an open and provocative campaign that our government would be forced to do what many of its members want to do anyway, and send back to Russia all recently arrived
émigrés.’

‘Regardless of their criminal records?’ said Wensley.

‘Yes. It would be a matter of sending back all those who had arrived here within – well, whatever was held to be the appropriate number of years. Exceptions might be made in exceptional cases, but apart from that it would be a total clearance.’

‘I’ve no doubt you see what this means,’ said Wensley.

Since this was addressed to Luke, he tried to look as though he did.

‘What it means is that from now on we’ve got to keep the closest watch on the men who we think have been put in charge of this campaign of terror.’

‘Treschau and Silistreau.’

‘Yes. They’re somewhere there.’ With a sweep of his arm he indicated the crowded streets and tenements of Stepney and Whitechapel. ‘Somewhere there, like scabby rats in their holes, ready to come out and spread the plague. We’ve seen nothing of Silistreau the poet since we lost him after his return from Norfolk. Treschau the chemist seems to emerge only to undertake his mysterious trip across the marshes. Very well. Don’t puzzle your heads about factories and bathrooms. We shall learn the truth about them sooner or later. If Treschau appears again, he
must
be followed back home. I’m not suggesting it will be easy. One of you will have to watch the factory and the other concentrate on the points where, if he comes back by boat, he might disembark. If I had a single detective who was working less than eighteen hours a day I’d lend him to you.’

After this unusually long speech a short silence ensued. It was broken by Luke.

He said, ‘I wondered if it might be possible to tackle this from the other end.’

‘Explain.’

‘Well, sir. You remember Treschau’s last hide-out, in the widow Triboff’s house. Clearly it wasn’t just a place he was lodging at. It looked more like a permanent headquarters. We took away the papers the old woman was trying to burn. But we left a lot behind us. Books and pamphlets and filing cases in the shelves and maybe other papers in the cupboards under the shelves or in the desk. If we made a more methodical search now, might we unearth some indication of where Treschau’s bolted to?’

Wensley thought about it. Then he said, ‘All right. It might be worth trying. But don’t spend too long on it. I want you at your look-out posts.’

‘We could do it more quickly if we had some authority for making the search. The widow’s an obstinate old creature and she’s likely to obstruct us all she can.’

Daines said, ‘I could get you an official certificate of search under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. And if it would help in any way I’d be glad to come with you.’

‘I hoped you’d say that,’ said Luke. ‘Some of those pamphlets looked heavy going.’

It took a little time to get the necessary authority, but by four o’clock on the following afternoon, Luke and Daines were on the Triboff doorstep, armed with an impressive piece of paper, light blue in colour, with the Royal Arms in dark blue at the head of it. Joe had wanted to come with them, but Luke, bearing Wensley’s instructions in mind, had vetoed the idea. He said, ‘This is a side issue. We’re not to take our minds off the real job.’ He suggested that Joe should examine the various points at which a dinghy, coming up from Barking Creek, might discharge its passenger. Joe had departed, grumbling.

The Triboff house stood at the end of a row of down-at-heel buildings and a little apart from them. It had a front door opening directly on to the street and a back door leading out to a courtyard and a patch of earth that could hardly be called a garden. Its comparative isolation meant that it could not be directly overlooked by any of its neighbours.

Continued knocking on the front door served only to attract the attention of two or three passers-by. They did not stop, but hurried on, as though to dissociate themselves from the house and its occupant.

‘Dozing in front of the kitchen fire,’ said Luke. ‘Let’s try the back.’

The back door was tight shut and hammering on it produced as little result as the assault on the front. Daines consulted the paper he had brought and read out, ‘If the occupant will not afford entrance to the searchers they are empowered to enter the house by force, doing as little damage as possible.’