The Dark Frontier (8 page)

As the train entered the outskirts of Bâle, Groom issued his first instructions.

There was a wait of several hours before the train to which their through-coach was to be coupled would leave for Bucharest. He, Groom, would go to the office of the Bâle agents of Messrs. Cator & Bliss Limited in the Badenstrasse and there have a letter prepared setting forth in detail the Company’s offer to Professor Barstow. This he would sign and hand to the Professor until such time as the document could be superseded by a stamped agreement. Carruthers expressed his thanks dutifully.

The Professor would buy such things as he thought necessary—clothes, toilet requisites
and
a camera—and meet Groom on the train. Meanwhile, if he required any money, here were five thousand francs which he could regard as being on account of further honoraria.

Carruthers hesitated to take the money but, realizing that his own effectiveness might well be curtailed if he found himself short of funds, accepted it gracefully.

They parted company in the station yard, Groom disappearing into a taxi, Carruthers setting out to explore the city for an open store.

He found it no easy task. Except for an occasional café, Bâle was dark and silent. He soon hailed a passing taxi and consulted the driver. He was, he learnt, in the German quarter of the city. There were, however, stores open in the other quarters. Telling the driver to take him to the nearest outfitters, he sat back and watched sombre neo-Gothic façades change gradually into painted stucco.

Ten minutes later he set out with a brand-new suitcase
full of his purchases to get a camera. The salesman was helpful and produced a remarkable little instrument that was not only capable of taking high-definition photographs in very poor artificial light but had the added advantage of being small enough to be carried in an inside pocket. He bought a supply of film for it and left well satisfied. He next thought of his automatic. Apart from the seven rounds in the magazine, he had no ammunition. He tried to buy some more, but there were, as he had anticipated, “formalities” to be gone through.

He had just over an hour left before the train went and made his way to a café. Seating himself at a table set back from the pavement, he ordered
vermouth-cassis
and glanced through a Swiss newspaper that had been left on the table.

A tradesman in Dijon had murdered his wife and her lover with a hatchet. The hotel proprietors of Geneva had condemned as “unethical” a suggestion that the League of Nations might be removed to Vienna. There had been a mountaineering fatality near Grindelwald. Then a small paragraph with a London dateline caught his eye:

“
Verzeihung, mein Herr
.”

Carruthers looked up. An elderly German was endeavouring to squeeze himself through the narrow space between the tables. With a murmured apology Carruthers stood up to allow
him to pass. As he did so, he happened to glance across the road.

A taxi had drawn up to discharge a passenger and was just moving off. A man walked away. As he moved out of the darkness into the light of a street lamp, Carruthers recognised him. It was Groom.

What was he doing in this part of the city? Hastily leaving some money on the table, Carruthers dropped the newspaper, caught up his suitcase and left the café. He could see Groom’s paunchy figure walking briskly along the far side of the road.

Waiting until about seventy-five yards separated them, he started to follow, keeping to his own side. Suddenly Groom turned out of sight down a narrow side street. Carruthers raced for the corner. He reached it in time to see Groom disappearing into a passage on the right of the side street. Moving quickly and as quietly as possible over the sloping cobbles, Carruthers reached the passage and peered down it cautiously. Groom was nowhere to be seen.

The place was dark and evil-smelling. A single old-fashioned lamp on a bracket at the corner of the passage served to light both the street and the passage. The latter, which was formed by the side walls of two dingy buildings, continued for about six yards before debouching into an alley which appeared to be a cul-de-sac. In a moment he had gained the sheltering blackness of the alley. Along one side of its length ran what he judged to be a warehouse; on the other were three ramshackle houses, one of which Groom had obviously entered. They were, however, all shuttered and apparently deserted.

He glanced at his watch by the faint light of the lamp. He need not leave for the station for some time yet. Groom, too, had to catch the train. If Groom left soon he might have time enough to discover what brought a director of Messrs. Cator & Bliss to this sleazy alleyway.

He looked round for a hiding-place. The warehouse provided
it. Two heavy double doors, obviously disused since the encroachment of the surrounding buildings had cut them off from the roadway, were set in large stone arches. Carruthers stepped in the shadow of the nearest of the arches and waited.

For a quarter of an hour he heard nothing but the footsteps of an occasional passerby on the cobbles of the side street. Then he heard the faint murmur of voices and a light gleamed for an instant behind the shutters of a window set high in the end house. Leaving his suitcase where it was, he glided quickly into the next arch. Whoever came out would have to pass close by him. Holding himself flat against the stonework, he listened intently.

The voices stopped. There came a sound of faint tapping. Straining his ears, he identified it as the sound of feet on bare boards. Someone was coming downstairs. He distinguished two sets of footsteps. They grew louder and then ceased. There was a pause as the feet crossed a stone passage, then the front door opened and two men came out into the alley and started to walk away.

As they came towards Carruthers he drew back. One of them was Groom, he had seen that much, the other was a slighter man. They were almost level with him and were talking in low tones. As they passed him, a gleam of light from the lamp at the end of the passage lighted for a second the face of Groom’s companion. It was the Ixanian representative.

He caught a snatch of their conversation. They were talking French. Groom was speaking.

“You understand. The remainder will be credited to you at the Swiss Bank in Paris as soon as our technical adviser has approved the information.”

The other mumbled what sounded like a grudging agreement as they passed out of earshot.

Nothing surprising after all. A bribe offered and a down payment accepted. Evidently Groom had already been making
use of his “knowledge of Ixanian officialdom.” Yes, the Countess Schverzinski was indeed badly served.

Suddenly he stiffened and flattened himself against the wall. The door of the house that Groom and his companion had just left was slowly opening again. Then a man stepped out and closed it softly behind him. Although his face was in the shadow it was obvious that he was frightened, for he kept darting rapid glances to either side of him. Then, quickly and furtively, he followed the other two out of the alley. Carruthers caught a glimpse of a puffy, rabbit-like face as he went by. Once out of the alley, however, he turned in the opposite direction to that of Groom. Carruthers heard the footsteps die away, then collected his suitcase and found a taxi.

Groom was already in the train when Carruthers rejoined it. He handed Carruthers the promised contract letter with the air of a benevolent prince bestowing an honour. The foreign representative of Cator & Bliss was looking pleased.

T
he next thirty-eight hours passed without incident. From the windows of Groom’s compartment, Carruthers watched the mountains of Switzerland and Austria pass in slow review. Then for some hours, they ran across wind-driven plains. On the second night, he again saw the lights of houses gleaming high up as they climbed into the mountain country of Transylvania. They stopped at stations of which he had never heard, but there were some familiar names—Budapest, Cluj, Sinaia, Ploesti. The places differed, however, only in name and in the language in which the advertisements were displayed. He experienced the boredom to which even the most hardened travellers are subject.

Occasionally he saw the Countess Schverzinski and the Ixanian envoy, whose name he had learnt from the sleeping-car attendant was Rovzidski, in the restaurant car. With the American acquaintance he exchanged remote nods. He endeavoured to pass the time with a Tauchnitz edition of
Butler’s
Erewhon
purchased hastily from a station bookstall; but his thoughts kept wandering from Butler’s stimulating conceptions to the more momentous business on which he was bent.

If Groom’s plans went smoothly, it would not be long before Kassen’s secret was in his possession. The time was near when he, Carruthers, would have to show his hand and deal with two groups of enemies. Neither group was to be despised. On one hand there would be Groom backed by the unknown, but no doubt extensive, resources of his international organisation. On the other, there was the Countess Schverzinski, an even more formidable enemy if Groom’s estimate of her were true.

Mere possession of the Kassen secret was not enough. He must prevent its use in Ixania as well. That was an essential part of his task. What happened to it afterwards was another matter. If the peace of the world demanded that it should be destroyed, then destroyed it should be. But meanwhile there was this problem of preventing manufacture. Destroy some essential piece of laboratory equipment? It could be made again. Sabotage in any shape or form would merely serve to delay manufacture, not to prevent it absolutely. Kill Kassen? It was unlikely that the contingency of his death had not been anticipated and provided for.

They arrived in Bucharest early in the evening. Rain was lashing down when the train drew in. They had just over an hour to wait before the branch line train for Zovgorod left. They spent it in a small café near the station, where Groom related with some gusto a lurid account of a previous experience in the city.

The train for Zovgorod proved to be composed mainly of empty cattle trucks with two very dirty coaches and a mail van hitched to the rear. They were not due in Zovgorod until 7
A.M
. the following morning and Carruthers did not look forward
to the two-hundred-and-fifty-mile journey ahead. Groom tempered fastidious disgust with philosophic resignation and, to Carruthers’ amusement, produced an atomiser and sprayed the upholstery with eau de cologne. It was, he declared, a powerful germicide.

Carruthers’ first thought was to see if the Countess and Rovzidski, the Ixanian envoy, were on the train. They were, he found, in separate compartments in the next coach. He was mildly surprised to notice also that his American acquaintance was in the same coach.

There were, besides, two men whom he could not quite sum up to his satisfaction. They were roughly dressed, yet they had about them an indefinable air of authority. The elder of the two, a man about forty, had two deep scars on his forehead just above the right eye. His companion, who looked about twenty-five, wore a truculent expression and had the more usual type of duelling scars on his cheek. Both wore moustaches of an unmistakably military character. Neither of them, Carruthers noticed, carried any baggage. A few peasants with their families seemed to be the only other passengers on the train.

It was forty minutes late in starting. When finally it did get under way, however, the train rattled along at a fair pace. Lounging comfortably along the seat, cigar in mouth, Groom surveyed Carruthers with a benign smile.

“Well, Professor,” he said heartily, “I’m sorry to have to subject you to all this discomfort, but I can tell you this much: our little business will take a good deal less time than I thought at first. In two or three days, if all goes well, we shall be on our way back with all the information we need in our pockets.”

Carruthers looked as surprised as he could. Groom chuckled.

“You’ve heard of Sir Basil Zaharoff?” he went on.

Carruthers nodded.

“A competitor of mine,” said Groom, “for whom I have the
greatest respect and admiration. The biggest mistake he ever made was to let the newspapers get hold of him. ‘The Mystery Man of Europe’ they called him. Mysteries always mean one thing to the public—that there’s something to be found out. What the newspaper man doesn’t suspect, the public doesn’t grieve over. Publicity may be the lifeblood of ordinary commerce, but it’s poison to our industry. I flatter myself that there’s not a reporter in the world who knows anything about me or my business.”

Carruthers wondered how such a colossal conceit had managed to escape the attentions of even the most obtuse reporter.

“I mentioned Zaharoff,” Groom continued, “because he once told me that in these days there was no such thing as a secret weapon—that it was an impossibility. It’s true of course; why, you can usually find out all the details of every so-called secret weapon a few weeks after it has been made. The engineering and other technical journals publish them quite openly.”

“But in this case …”

“Exactly. In this case, we’re ahead of everyone else. That means that we shall be in a position to grant other firms licenses to manufacture. I believe I mentioned your position as far as licenses are concerned.”

“But if it’s so easy to discover the process, won’t other nations ignore Cator & Bliss and manufacture on their own account?”

Groom looked shocked.

“Really, Professor, for an idealist your views on business ethics are extraordinarily cynical. Why, during the 1914 war, an English arms firm made an enormous number of a special type of fuse for the use of the British armies. After the war, the owners of the patent, a well-known German firm, claimed a large sum of money from the English firm by way of royalties. The matter was settled amicably as a matter of course. Out
of court, naturally, but settled it was. And rightly so,” he concluded austerely.