The Hansa Protocol (4 page)

‘Tomorrow, miss—’

Miss Whittaker sprang to her feet. She shook her head in evident exasperation, but Box was startled to see the tears standing in her eyes.

‘
Tomorrow
?
And yet you entertained Vanessa and me, and put up with my begging for favours when all the time – tomorrow?’

‘Yes, miss. Mr Howard Paul’s going to do it, at the Royal Free Hospital. Pa went in there today. This morning. So, I’ve been a bit anxious, as you can understand. But don’t you worry about it, Miss Whittaker. I’ll go now, and have a word straight away with our gambling friend, Mr Gordon. Whatever’s going on there with this Arthur Fenlake and Major Lankester, I’ll make sure I know all about it.’

Arnold Box got to his feet. How beautiful she was! And she’d been sorry for Pa!

As he approached the door, Louise Whittaker suddenly put her arms round his neck and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

‘You great silly boy,’ she said.

Arnold Box blushed, and blundered out of the room.

Discretion, as Arnold Box well knew, was the hallmark of Mr Gordon’s establishment in Eagle Street, Holborn. It looked sober enough from
the outside, a genteel four-storey residence clad in immaculate stucco, one of a row of town houses built in the 1860s. Behind the respectable façade, though, all was luxury. Mr Gordon’s gaming-house boasted crimson flock wallpaper, crystal chandeliers, and sumptuous Persian carpets. A suite of rooms on the first floor contained the gilded gaming salon, and an elegantly appointed supper-room for the use of the clients. There was an excellent cellar, and the kitchen, too, was above reproach.

Mr Gordon, a supple, olive-skinned man with curly black hair and expensive garments, was rumoured to hail originally from Italy. Some of his associates addressed him as Mr Giordano, which always brought a slight frown of annoyance to the olive brow. Mr Gordon liked to think of himself as one of the Bulldog Breed. He operated strictly within the law, so he said, and it was very difficult to prove otherwise.

‘It is my practice, always, Inspector Box,’ said Mr Gordon, ‘to assist the police.’

‘I know it is, Mr Gordon.’

Inspector Box looked round the gilded and ornate room.

‘Have you taken the precaution of insuring these premises, Mr Gordon?’ he asked.

‘Indeed I have, Inspector. These crystals, these antiques – priceless! But tell me, Mr Box, have you come about something specific? Or do you wish to recommend an insurer?’

‘I’ve come to ask you what you can tell me about a young man called Lieutenant Fenlake, an Artillery officer. I’m told that he frequents this place of yours.’

Mr Gordon paused for a moment, evidently to gather his wits.

‘I have a high-class clientele of ladies and gentlemen here, Mr Box. Among them was Lieutenant Fenlake. He made a few desultory visits at first – about six months ago, it would be – but then he came more and more frequently. I could see he was fatally attracted to the gaming tables—’

‘Would I be right, Mr Gordon,’ Box interrupted, ‘in thinking that Lieutenant Fenlake was lured into this place by a fellow officer? Someone who, perhaps, wished to corrupt him by letting him amass impossible debts? This is all in confidence, of course. I’m referring to a man called Major Lankester.’

Box saw immediately from the bewildered expression on Gordon’s
face that he was completely wrong in his assumption. Mr Gordon was suddenly in the mood to tell all.

‘What you have said, Inspector, could not be further from the truth! Mr Fenlake and Major Lankester are officers in the same unit – the 107th Field Battery of the Royal Artillery. Major Lankester has been a member of this club for many years. He is a seasoned gambler, who plays for high stakes, and who usually gets up from the table richer than when he sat down. At least—’ Mr Gordon stopped abruptly. Evidently he wished to change the subject.

‘Young Fenlake, though – well, he was not so fortunate in his choice of recreation. There came a time when he incurred a debt to me that he was unable to repay. I began to insist that he fulfilled his obligation. These are debts of honour, you understand. I told him that I would be obliged to inform his commanding officer if he did not pay me.’

Box watched Mr Gordon as he moistened his drying lips. He’s
beginning
to skate on thin ice, now, he thought. There were unpleasant ways of making a man pay his ‘debts of honour’.

‘The upshot of the business was that Major Lankester came here, bringing the unfortunate Fenlake with him. Major Lankester informed me that he would pay young Fenlake’s debt himself from his own future winnings, which I considered a very handsome thing for him to do. Then, in my presence, he said: “Fenlake, you must cease immediately your visits to this house. You are too young to be embroiled with villains like Gordon here, and your work is too valuable to be jeopardized by such foolishness”.’

‘So Lieutenant Fenlake never came here again?’

‘He didn’t, Inspector. Major Lankester was as good as his word, and very quickly paid off Mr Fenlake’s debt. I don’t know why, but his doing so impressed me very deeply.’

Inspector Box rose to his feet and glanced once more around the ornate room.

‘You know, Mr Gordon,’ he said, ‘all this finery, these crystal
chandeliers
and sham antiques – they look very tawdry and sordid in the light of day. I expect they appear better in candlelight. Watch out for naked lights! Good afternoon.’

As Box stepped out into Eagle Street, he felt a chill north wind blowing. It seemed like an ominous signal of bitter squalls ahead. He turned up the collar of his coat, and made his way towards Farringdon Street.

Mr Howard Paul, visiting surgeon to the Royal Free Hospital, removed his frock coat and turned back his shirt cuffs. One of the three theatre nurses handed him his rubber apron, and when he had lifted it gingerly over his head in such as way as not to disturb his well-brushed but sparse hair, she tied the linen tapes behind him at the waist.

He nodded briefly to the three young doctors who were present, and glanced swiftly around the room to see that all was in order. Sister, as always, stood guard over the tray of instruments as though she feared that somebody would steal them. Dr Avebury, the anaesthetist, was ready with his bottle. A young male nurse attendant was adjusting the carbolic spray apparatus on its little round table near the door. Mr Howard Paul addressed the elderly, white-haired man lying on the operating-table.

‘How are you, Mr Box?’

‘I’m very well, thank you, sir.’

Mr Howard Paul could hear the tremor of fear in the man’s voice, which a recent injection of morphine and atropine had done little to mitigate. He was securely strapped to the table, and the tourniquets were in place, though not yet screwed tight. The waiting was as much an ordeal as the operation itself. He wouldn’t keep him waiting too long.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Howard Paul, ‘this patient is Mr Toby Box, a retired police sergeant, aged 73. He was referred to me in October last by Dr Hooper, of Bryanston Street, and has very sensibly agreed to the amputation of his infected leg. He has been severely
crippled
for many years as the result of a criminal attack, and both Dr Hooper and myself fear gangrenous complications, and resultant necrosis.’

He gave a slight signal to the theatre sister, and at the same time the doctors and nurses moved close to the table. An attendant turned up the twin glass-shaded gas lamps positioned over the patient to their brightest glow. Howard Paul heard Toby Box draw in his breath sharply.

‘Now, Mr Box,’ said Howard Paul, ‘a nurse is going to place some cotton wool, and a pad of gauze over your nose and mouth – that’s right, there you are! There’s nothing to fear, and you will feel no pain. None at all. Just breathe as normally as possible. That’s right.’

Dr Avebury, the anaesthetist, moved close up behind the patient, and began to pour ether on to the thick pad of gauze. The patient flinched, and a nurse placed the fingertips of one hand briefly on his forehead. It would take from ten minutes to a quarter of an hour to render the patient unconscious. It was essential to allow the vapours to be
thoroughly
diluted with air, otherwise the patient could go into fatal convulsions.

‘Miss Maynard,’ said Howard Paul in a low voice to one of the young doctors, ‘what would you say was the chief danger attending this operation?’

‘The chief danger, sir, is haemorrhage from the severed arteries.’

‘Good.’ He noted that the female student doctor’s voice was calm and sufficiently detached. The anaesthetist continued his measured pouring of ether on to the gauze. The patient was nearly unconscious. Another two or three minutes would do it.

‘Mr Hobbes,’ said Howard Paul to a smart young man in a light grey suit, ‘what must we fear when the cutting is over and done with?’

‘Sir, there is the immediate fear of shock, then secondary
haemorrhage
, and the onset of sepsis.’

‘Very good. Are we ready, Dr Avebury?’

‘We are, sir.’

‘Good. Then let’s get on with it.’

The attendant screwed the tourniquets tight. The sister placed a scalpel into Howard Paul’s outstretched hand. The young attendant stationed at the door turned on the carbolic spray.

Arnold Box stood at the narrow side window of a room on the fourth floor of the hospital building in Gray’s Inn Road, looking out on to an array of roofs and tall, gently smoking chimney stacks. The small room was some kind of office, with a closed roll-top desk and a few chairs arranged against the walls. There was a cloying smell of something peculiar to hospitals – carbolic? Chloroform?

Who was this? He turned from the window as he heard footsteps on the stairs. Two figures passed the open door, two ladies talking quietly to each other, and with a calm authority that showed them to be doctors. This hospital specialized in training women in medicine. The two ladies pushed open the doors to the ward on the right of the landing, and disappeared from Box’s line of view.

His mind seemed to be filled with images of violence and
vulnerability
. He saw again the old German scholar on the platform at St Swithin’s Hall, valiantly arguing what seemed a very flimsy case with the yellow-haired young man in the audience. Then he saw the face of the German pork-butcher, twisted with passion and hatred, an ordinary tradesman with the potential for killing as part of his nature. And Stefan Oliver, shot in the back and flung contemptuously into the river, only to be thrown about on a trestle table by Dr Kelly, as though he was a carcass in an abattoir ….

Here they were! Mr Howard Paul was a tall, handsome man with a healthy farmer’s face and kindly grey eyes. He paused for a few moments on the landing, talking in low tones to two other gentlemen. Then he came into the small office, and shut the door. He sat in an upright chair near the roll-top desk.

‘Well, Mr Box,’ he said, ‘I think that all’s going to be well. The surgery was a little tricky here and there, because whoever extracted the bullet all those years ago made rather a mess of the procedure – but we did well.’

The door opened, and a nurse slipped into the room. She deposited a small glass of amber liquid on the desk beside Howard Paul, and quietly withdrew.

‘There’ll be a protracted period of convalescence,’ Howard Paul continued, ‘because I’ve taken the leg off above the knee, and it will be a very long time before we can consider fitting a prosthetic – a false leg, you know. But believe me, Mr Box, removing that leg will have prolonged your father’s life.’

Mr Howard Paul picked up the small glass, and began to sip its contents. Box realized that it was brandy.

‘I’m keeping him here at the Royal Free for several weeks, so that I can keep an eye on him. I’m here virtually every day, you see. The great danger now, Mr Box, is sepsis. Alien infection, you know. He’s in the recovery-room at the moment, but in an hour’s time he’ll be moved to the surgical ward.’

Mr Howard Paul drained his glass, and took a notebook from his pocket. He scribbled something on a sheet of paper, tore it out, and handed it to Box.

‘There are fixed visiting times here, Mr Box, but because of the shifting nature of your duties, I’ve written a special pass that will get you
in here at any reasonable time of day – or night.’

‘That’s very kind of you, sir.’

‘Not at all. It’s only right and proper, considering the work you do. You can come and have a little look at your father now, Mr Box, while he’s still in the recovery-room. After that … well, he’d be better left alone with us here for the next forty-eight hours.’

Toby Box lay quite still, his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling with encouraging regularity. The scanty white hair that fringed his bald head lay neatly around the pillow, as though the attendant nurse, a young woman in starched white apron and cap, had arranged it like that. Maybe she had. His face was as white as marble.

Arnold Box looked at his father for a while without speaking. He could smell the ghastly hospital scents more strongly in the small room – ether? Chloroform? – and behind them, the reek of congealing blood.

‘Pa,’ said Arnold Box aloud, ‘you’re not going to die on me, are you?’

The eyelids flickered for a moment, and the eyes partly opened. They looked in Arnold Box’s direction, but did not focus.

‘Not yet awhile, boy,’ Box’s father whispered.

Mr Howard Paul smiled, nodded to the attendant nurse, and deftly guided Inspector Box out of the room.

The man from Quaritch’s bookshop stepped over the threshold of Dr Otto Seligmann’s warm and welcoming house in Lavender Walk, a quiet enclave of ancient dwellings not far from the Chelsea Physic Garden. The butler closed the door, shutting out the bitter, searching wind of the January night.

The visitor found himself in a long, oak-panelled hall, with a
staircase
rising to the right. Small gaslights winked and blinked in their round glass shades, and a fiercely cheerful coal fire burned in the hall grate. There was a strong smell of brass-polish and beeswax.

‘Mr Colin McColl? Dr Seligmann will be here presently to take you out across the garden to the Belvedere. He’s engaged with his secretary at the moment, but he’ll be here in a trice. It’s a raw night, if I may say so, sir!’

The butler’s voice was cheerful and welcoming, and suited his
patriarchal
appearance. He had a round, pleasant face, adorned with a very fine set of old-fashioned white whiskers.

As the butler finished speaking, a petite, slender girl, seemingly in her twenties, appeared at the top of the stairs. She wore a very becoming evening dress of dark-green velvet. Her arms were bare, and she wore no jewellery. Her blonde hair was arranged loosely as a frame for her small face.

‘Who is it, Lodge?’ Her voice was musical enough, but held an edge of imperiousness.

‘It’s the gentleman from Quaritch’s bookshop in Piccadilly, Miss Ottilie.’

‘Ah, that, yes. It was for that reason, no doubt, that we dined at six
o’clock today, and must starve for the rest of the evening. It’s of no moment to me. Old books, and musty papers. Scholars and their
playthings
!’

The girl’s eyes met McColl’s for what seemed an uncomfortably long moment. He returned her gaze steadily, with the suspicion of a smile playing around his lips. She dropped her eyes, turned abruptly on the stairs, and was lost from sight. The butler turned an anxious face to the visitor. Really, it was a bit of a strain working for these excitable German folk!

A door to the right of the hall opened, and a tall, striking, elderly man emerged from a book-lined room.

‘Mr McColl,’ said Lodge, ‘here is Dr Seligmann now.’

Colin McColl had spent a long time researching the life and opinions of this man. In earlier years he had attracted attention as a scholar in the field of English and Germanic philology. Then he had been drawn into the diplomatic service of the Kingdom of Brandenburg-Prussia. Now, in 1893, he was seen as a theoretician of European governance, and one of the luminaries of the German Empire. To some, he was a great patriot. To others, he was something else.

McColl watched Dr Otto Seligmann as he swept back a shock of white hair with both hands. For a man nearing seventy, he had reason to be proud of his abundant locks, which just touched the shoulders of his sober evening dress coat.

‘Mr McColl! We’ve not met before, so let me bid you welcome. How kind of you to call at this late hour! Thank you, Lodge. That will be all.’

Otto Seligmann adjusted his gold pince-nez, and looked at his visitor. He saw a fresh-looking, clean-shaven young man of thirty or so, who was standing close to the hall fire, and clutching a stout leather
briefcase
to his chest.

‘So you are the gentleman from Quaritch’s. You said in your note that Mr Bernard Quaritch would value my opinion of some pages of a recently unearthed Anglo-Saxon manuscript. I must say that I was
flattered
that your distinguished employer should still think of me as an expert in such matters. Are you personally acquainted with my work in that field?’

‘Indeed, yes, Doctor. Who has not heard of Seligmann’s Law of Unaccented Syllables? And, of course, your
Specimens
of
Anglo-Saxon
Verse
is still consulted and honoured.’

The young man spoke with an eager forcefulness tinged with what seemed to be nervousness. It was an odd combination. Seligmann was attracted by the man’s pronounced but educated Scots accent. He himself spoke perfect English, but still retained traces of his Prussian intonation.

‘You flatter me, Mr McColl, and make me forget that I have spent the greater part of my life embroiled in politics – politics! That was not through choice, but in response to the call of duty – duty to Germany, my native land, but duty also to all the peoples of Europe. But come, Mr McColl, you don’t want to hear all this! Bring your briefcase with you out to the Belvedere, where I keep my academic library.’

Seligmann took the young man’s arm, guided him through a
stone-flagged
passage, and threw open the rear door of the house. The bitter cold of the January night immediately enveloped them both. They emerged into a wild, narrow garden, surrounded by high walls, where some ruinous brick sheds shared the cramped space with a few blighted oaks. The sky was clear, with one or two brilliant stars shining, though heavy black cloud was spreading rapidly from the north.

‘If only it would snow! This cold is unendurable!’

They were words uttered in a way that did not invite any kind of response. McColl silently agreed with them. It was wretchedly cold, even for January.

In one corner of the garden, a great stone hemispherical building loomed up in the pallid light shed from the various windows of the old Tudor house. The two buildings seemed to be jockeying for position in the narrow confines of the garden. The stone structure was a kind of two-storeyed classical temple, crowned with a leaden dome. Its grey walls were mellowed and blotched with lichen.

‘The Belvedere, Mr McColl – that’s what they call it. It’s my special retreat, where I can busy myself with my books and papers without too much fear of interruption! At one time, I suppose, the Belvedere stood in some secluded grove of a nobleman’s park, but that must have been in the Chelsea of long ago! Come inside, out of this infernal cold.’

Dr Seligmann observed his visitor’s reaction to the interior of his retreat with kindly amusement. He had warmed to the young man as soon as he had seen him standing in the old panelled hall of the main house. A fine, strong young fellow, with the litheness of an athlete. He could
sense the physical force of Colin McColl, an innate power that he seemed to hold in deliberate restraint beneath a smart and rather prim exterior.

Like all visitors, McColl had expressed surprise at the luxurious comfort of the Belvedere. He had glanced appreciatively at the cheerful fire blazing in the stone fireplace built into part of the curved wall. He had placed the fingers of one gloved hand lightly for a moment on the heavy iron door.

‘This old house of mine, Mr McColl,’ said Seligmann, ‘dates back to the time of Sir Thomas More, who is reputed to have written part of his
Utopia
here. I read it, once: it seemed only right to do so, as I was living in that great humanist’s house!’

Seligmann watched his visitor’s keen blue eyes ranging around the interior of the building, where tier upon tier of shelves, all seemingly filled with leather-bound books, rose up as far as the ornamental plaster ceiling. The young man appeared fascinated by the books, and was only half-listening to what he was saying about More. Was this eager young man more interested in the books than in their elderly owner?

Dr Seligmann sat down at a massive desk placed centrally to the chamber beneath a many-branched gas chandelier, which lit up the book-lined chamber as though it were day. Colin McColl unfastened the straps of his heavy briefcase and carefully removed an envelope, which he handed to Seligmann.

‘As you’ll see, sir, these ancient pages seem to be part of a meditation on mutability, and we’re inclined to think it dates from about
AD
940, which would make it contemporary with the Exeter Book, and perhaps written by the same scribe.’

Dr Seligmann examined the pages carefully for a minute or two, and then slid them back into their envelope.

‘Yes, yes; you could well be right. They’re certainly genuine. But Anglo-Saxon texts are dubious things, Mr McColl, as you know, and I’ll need to verify the morphology and syntax of these passages before I can date them with any certainty. I take it that I can keep these pages for a while?’

‘Indeed, yes, sir. Let me pack them away again in the briefcase. I’ll leave it here with you.’

Without waiting to be asked, the Scotsman picked up the envelope, and returned it to the briefcase, threading its leather thongs securely
into their buckles. Then he stood up, and looked around the Belvedere once again with a kind of naïve interest that Seligmann found amusing. He watched as McColl put the briefcase down on top of a large crate covered in sacking, and fastened with iron hoops, which stood in the space beneath an iron staircase, curving upward to an unused upper chamber.

Seligmann recalled an old Anglo-Saxon saying:
Wyrd
bith ful
araed.
You could translate that, roughly, as
Fate
plays
strange
tricks.
That crate, like this young man’s visit, was another unexpected reminder of his early career as a specialist in Germanic philology. It had arrived that very afternoon from Chaplin’s, the carriers at Victoria, and it contained a gift of books from his old university of Bonn. They had written to him some weeks earlier, advising him that the gift was on its way. He and Schneider would open it tomorrow.

‘I was musing, McColl, on the old aphorism,
Wyrd bith ful araed.
’

‘“Fate does odd things to a man”? Well, sir, that’s very true. And this is your academic library? A curious and very interesting place, isn’t it? All those tiers and tiers of leather-bound books ….’

‘Yes, Mr McColl, the Belvedere’s a curious and interesting place. But come, I have another visitor arriving any minute, so I must turn you out into the cold! Come back in a day or two, and I will have a written report ready for you. You can make an appointment with my secretary.’

When Seligmann opened the door of the Belvedere, both men winced at the penetrating cold still clinging to the grass and blighted trees of the dank garden.

‘It continues bitterly cold, Mr McColl. Still, it’s only the third of January. It’s bound to change soon, and then we shall have snow. Lots of snow!’

He bade the young man good evening, and returned to the snug warmth of the Belvedere, where he resumed his seat behind the desk.

Had he been successful in hiding his anxious foreboding from his visitor? For some months now, he had experienced what he could best describe as an evaporation of trust in those around him. London, and Chelsea in particular, had been his sanctuary for nearly twenty years, but perhaps he had always misjudged his opponents. There was a new sense of menace gathering round him, which the arrival of his young and pretty niece from Germany six months earlier had done nothing to dissipate.

There had been an estrangement between the two branches of the family, and he had last seen Ottilie when she was a little girl of ten, lively enough, he recalled, but ailing from some kind of affliction of the lungs. She had grown to be a very striking, lively and energetic girl, with a mind of her own, and a determination to get her own way in all things.

Dr Seligmann looked apprehensively round the Belvedere. Was it still safe? He had taken to spending the bulk of his days and some of his nights in the old building, but nothing, he knew, could ever be safe. There was an unused floor above the study, and at times he imagined that he heard noises there. Only his fancy, of course, but even now, he felt that the building had subtly shifted its identity, and was hiding some undefined anomaly. The stout iron door, installed for some long-forgotten reason in the past century, could withstand any physical attack, but all doors yielded to treachery.

So engrossed was he in his thoughts that he started in surprise when the door of the Belvedere opened to admit Schneider, his private
secretary
. As always, he was correctly dressed in a tightly buttoned frock coat and pinstripe trousers. He held himself stiffly, but gave his employer a sharp bow. What a proud Saxon he looks! thought Seligmann. But when he spoke, his voice held an unconditional deference.

‘Lieutenant Fenlake has arrived, Herr Doktor,’ he said.

Dr Seligmann looked at the young man who had followed his
secretary
into the Belvedere. Lieutenant Fenlake wore civilian clothing, topped by a heavy serge overcoat against the bitter January weather. Seligmann judged him to be about thirty years of age, or perhaps younger, a slim, well-made young man. He might have been mistaken for a young toff, but his stance was that of a professional soldier.

‘Thank you, Schneider. You may leave us now. I shall not need you for the rest of the evening.’

As soon as the secretary had closed the door, Lieutenant Fenlake spoke.

‘Dr Otto Seligmann? I am Lieutenant Arthur Fenlake. I have the honour of waiting for your instructions.’

The young man produced a square of card from his pocket, and held it up for Seligmann to read. The German scholar peered at the close, rather spiky handwriting, which he recognized as that of Sir Charles Napier. He nodded in satisfaction, and Fenlake returned the card to his pocket.

‘Lieutenant Fenlake,’ said Seligmann, ‘at half-past six yesterday evening, one of your fellow couriers, a man called Stefan Oliver, came here to the Belvedere secretly, gaining entrance to the premises through the rear garden gate. I gave him a decoy package, which I assume he has delivered by now to Sir Charles Napier—’

‘I beg your pardon, sir, for interrupting. Stefan Oliver’s attempt to deliver that decoy package was unsuccessful. For that reason, Sir Charles instructed me to come openly to the house, with no attempt at subterfuge. I sent a note to that effect early this morning, which I assume was seen by your secretary.’

‘It was. And has Sir Charles given you any specific instructions for this evening?’

‘He has, sir. I am instructed to receive from you the sealed
memorandum
that you have written to Baron von Dessau in Berlin. The packet will consist of a linen envelope, marked on the outside with a Foreign Office cipher known to me, and closed along the flap with three red wax seals. I am instructed to leave immediately if the package is not made up exactly as I have described.’