The Mysterious Commission (19 page)

He got up and dressed stealthily – looking round, as he did so, for anything else that might he useful. It was a well-appointed bedroom. There was provision for making himself tea. There was a tin of biscuits. There were candles on the dressing-table. There was also the electric torch which the inability of England’s Electricity Boards to survive mild atmospheric disturbance in rural areas constrains all prudent householders to provide by every bedside. Honeybath picked it up and tested it. If anything, the beam was too bright and clear. He would have preferred that paradoxically named object, a dark lantern, with which he recalled the heroes of juvenile fiction as having been frequently equipped long ago. Still, the torch would serve. If the bogus Admiral, the fraudulent Ambassador (how
could
he for a moment have believed such rubbish?) revealed himself suddenly in its glare, that would be just too bad.

Dressed and equipped, Honeybath unlocked the bedroom door, opened it, and stepped into the corridor. His romantic side was in control, and he suddenly felt thoroughly dangerous. In his head, indeed, was the image of a lean grey cruiser silently slipping its moorings and melting into the night.

At least he was at sea. He knew almost nothing about what surrounded him. The house he had glimpsed on arrival was certainly a substantial mansion of respectable antiquity, and he had so far been in no more than a kind of independent wing or annex added at a later date. The girl calling herself Diana Mariner had said something implying that, when not actually let, the main house remained untenanted – this since her father, even when at home, was constrained to a modest manner of life. But Honeybath could now believe no word that he had been told by these people. If he managed to penetrate to the main house (where his instinct for exploration lay), there was no valid reason for believing that it would in fact prove to be deserted. The Mariners themselves might have retreated to it, for all he knew.

He switched on his torch, and crept downstairs. There was an element of irrationality in this, since the light was almost as likely to betray him as was any slight noise he might make. He had no choice in the matter, however, since it would be impossible to move at all in mere darkness. But he arrived without misadventure in a small square hall which he remembered pretty well. In one wall there was only the outer door by which he had arrived, flanked by a window on either hand. The walls on either side each showed a couple of doors. On the fourth side there was only one door, centrally placed, and it was distinguished from all the others by being covered in green baize. It might well lead to kitchens and the like, but he took a guess that it in fact represented a means of communication with the main dwelling. He pulled it cautiously open, and found that it then remained in this position of its own accord. But what his torch now further revealed was the perplexing appearance of a perfectly smooth wall. He put his free hand on this and moved it over the surface. The result was a strong impression that what confronted him was a sheet of steel.

Just what he thought of this was not clear to Honeybath, but his immediate action was to move to one of the windows. Rather in the fashion he had employed when the involuntary guest of Mr Basil Arbuthnot, he slipped behind a curtain and peered out. Or, to be more exact, he thought to peer out, and was arrested by the disconcerting circumstance that interposed between himself and the external world there was something less vulnerable than a mere pane of glass. There was a fine steel lattice as well. He was in a prison. Or if he wasn’t in a prison he was in a fortress. There seemed to he no means of telling which.

He let the torch play round the hall again. It was furnished with a restrained elegance wholly inapposite in the light of this grim discovery. On the floor lay a couple of Persian rugs which would certainly realize in a saleroom enough to stock several large cellars with the kind of claret with which he had been regaled at dinner. The few pieces of furniture had begun life in France some centuries ago. On delicate pedestals round the walls stood small bronzes which at once spoke to his trained sense of the Italy of the
cinquecento
. The place was certainly no thieves’ kitchen. Honeybath was astonished that he hadn’t become aware of its respectable opulence before. He wondered fleetingly whether one of those falling bricks hadn’t hit him on the head. He must certainly have been in a fairly witless condition earlier that night.

And this thought had an almost immediate physical effect. He had gone back to the door that wasn’t a door, and was playing the torch anew on its blank surface, when a momentary giddiness overtook him. He put out a hand to steady himself, and became aware to his horror that he had grasped one of the delicate bronzes. It moved and was almost certainly going to fall with a crash to the floor. Only it didn’t fall; it simply twisted oddly in his grasp. And at once the smooth sheet of white-painted steel moved silently sideways and vanished.

There was a dark corridor in front of him.

In fact, the place
was
a fortress – that rather than a simple fort. Stronghold within stronghold was the principle upon which it had been constructed. It was probably a much more efficient and imaginatively resourceful job than that confounded London bank.

Charles Honeybath had a momentary sense (which may be excused him) of having drastically misestimated his situation. In the environment that bad been disclosing itself to him during the past few minutes the fearsome and unfamiliar weapon in his pocket (which he had only the most general notion of how to discharge at an adversary) shrank in potential effectiveness to the dimensions of a pea-shooter. If at any moment lights snapped on and some challenge rang out it would probably be as the prelude to a burst of automatic fire of the kind that riddles one with bullets in two seconds flat. He possessed only hazy notions of organized crime. But he knew that it existed in England on a scale undreamed of a generation or even a decade ago, and that it had its High Commands as certainly as had the armed forces of the Crown. And this was the headquarters of one of them. It was to be likened to one of those comfortable chateaux from which, in the great European wars of the present century, invisible armies had been directed by generals drawing inspiration from claret even better than that commanded by Admiral Mariner. The Admiral was such a general. Mr Basil Arbuthnot was another – and on the opposing side.

Honeybath recognized as he stood that this was a highly coloured and indeed almost apocalyptic vision. But he hadn’t a doubt of its validity. The only question was what he himself could now do about it. What he did was to draw the revolver from his pocket, direct the beam of his torch straight down the corridor, and march ahead at a brisk pace. The gesture might have been called Honeybath’s Reply.

He was in another square hall. It was much larger than the one behind him, but much barer as well. The original architect, indeed, had thought a little to soften the bleakly rectangular effect by creating in each corner niches apparently designed for the reception of life-size statues of one sort or another. But the niches stood empty, and were thus somehow of curiously sinister effect. The only furnishing consisted of a couple of large but shallow cupboards ranged against two of the walls. He strode over to one of these and pulled open a door. What was revealed was a row of rifles of some sort in a rack. There was a wicked gleam to them which was wholly displeasing, and he shut the door again abruptly. He understood that he was in an armoury. He understood, too, the significance of the cupboard’s being unlocked. The house itself was an impenetrable stronghold, so that no further security was needed. Only it was a security which had been breached. By Charles Honeybath RA. And a strange possibility occurred to him. The remaining secrets of the place might well be disposed on, so to speak, an open-access principle. He had only to poke around, and all would be revealed to him.

If, of course, his investigations were suffered to proceed uninterrupted. Was the house a mere depository, and untenanted at least by night? Were the Mariners in their contiguous dwelling its only guardians? This would be a rash bet. As in a museum or picture gallery there would surely be some nocturnal patrol: a watchman, or watchmen, charged with the duty of perambulating the building and systematically checking up.

He supposed that he could retreat. He could return through that ominous steel valve, manipulate the bronze that would seal it anew, creep back to his room, and hope in the morning to break out from the damnable place, if necessary at the point of his suddenly flourished pistol. This would be his rational course. The house could not be at all that distance from other human habitation. Just get to a telephone, and it would be all up with his enemies. Or might he, here and now, find a telephone and dial that attractive 999? But then he had no notion where he was – so how could the forces of the law be rapidly brought to his aid? What about trying to burn the place down? A really hearty conflagration would probably bring along a fire brigade in no time at all.

For some seconds Honeybath stood immobile but not irresolute – like the Homeric hero hither and thither dividing the swift mind. He asked himself in what interest he had really embarked on his hare-brained expedition. The answer was that confounded portrait. He wanted the portrait – more badly than almost anything he had ever wanted before. If what he had achieved had been to penetrate into the genuine Imlac House there would be an outside chance of its being within his grasp. But there was not the slightest reason to suppose that it had found a resting-place in
this
house, or that the obscure purposes for which it had been commissioned had anything whatever to do with the so-called Mariners. It was Mr X himself in whom, for some reason, they were interested, and not the masterpiece which Charles Honeybath had achieved by setting up his canvas before him. So the Mariners and their mysterious criminal empire were a side-issue, so far as he was concerned. A single honest look at himself told him that he had no genuine passion for simply apprehending crooks. Still, he wanted to
know
. So he wasn’t turning back before taking, at least, a further look round.

Two corridors, several doors, a handsome staircase: he could take his choice. If there were people sleeping in the house it would presumably be on an upper storey. So perhaps he ought to go upstairs first, and find cautious means to satisfy himself on this point. He could creep from door to door, listening for the faint suspirations of slumbering persons and then peering into every room in turn. The result, if wholly negative, might relieve his mind and encourage him to explore this ground floor at leisure. But such a choice would surely be laborious, time-consuming, and hazardous. It would be better boldly to tackle his immediate surroundings first. Deciding thus, Honeybath advanced to the nearest door and opened it.

‘Turn off that bloody light!’

The words had come to him out of the darkness ahead in a hiss at once so apprehensive and commanding that Honeybath snapped off his torch at once. The injunction had been surprising, if only because it was precisely not a challenge. But, whatever it portended, momentary darkness was his best resource. A man with a blazing torch in his hand is a sitting target, after all.

‘There are three of them up there tonight, you flaming fool.’ The voice now came not from complete obscurity but from a region in which there could just be distinguished a dull red glow. Here, in fact, was another prowler, and one more discreetly accommodated with an aid to vision. The glow brightened a very little, as if upon the cautious manipulation of a shutter upon what might be called a very dark lantern indeed. ‘Where are the rest of you?’ the voice hissed. ‘All safe inside yet?’

‘Not yet.’ Honeybath found that he had summoned up a hoarse whisper. ‘One at a time – that’s the order. Do you think we all want to risk falling into a bloody trap at once? We’re trusting you just as far as we have to, aren’t we? What do you take us for, mate?’

To this speech, certainly the most brilliant he had ever uttered, Honeybath had been assisted by another Homeric reference. The man in the darkness was Sinon, and he himself was the first Greek to emerge from the Trojan Horse. Roughly, the situation was that. But only, perhaps, very roughly. Put it, rather, that the Mariners’ fortress was under siege; that here was a fifth-column character who had been suborned to open the gate; and that he, Honeybath, had talked himself into the role of the vanguard of the invading force. Unfortunately it was necessary to believe that there
was
an invading force, and that it was due to turn up at any time. Just how long had he got for manoeuvre before this occurred? Honeybath had barely formulated the unspoken question before it was miraculously answered.

‘The bloody synchronization’s haywire,’ the voice from the darkness said. ‘Another twenty minutes, it should be, before you bastards turn up. I’ve still got my trip-wires to set.’

‘Have you, indeed?’ As his eyes accommodated themselves to the faint light, Honeybath began to distinguish the figure and features of the false Sinon. He was between young and very young, he was weedy, and it was possible to sense that he was acutely apprehensive as well. It would probably pay off to take a bold line with the chap. ‘Then get on with it,’ he said briskly, ‘and don’t waste any more of my time. Careful about it, too. If I hear you make a sound, I’ll come and throttle you.’

‘OK, OK.’ The young man was at once sullen and alarmed. ‘No need to get nasty.’

‘Then get cracking. But one moment! Which is the room with those bloody records?’

‘The files, you mean?’ The young man seemed puzzled. ‘All that dossier stuff?’

‘You know very well what I mean. It’s part of what we’re here for, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t know what you’re here for.’ The young man was sulky. ‘But I know there will be blue murder if it goes wrong. And what you seem to be after is in the next room. But I reckon most of it will be in the safe they have in there. A six-hour job. I’d say that would be.’