Touchstone (42 page)

“It would be better if I were to arrange for his transport,” Carstairs said. “A telegram would not reach him in time, considering that dinner Saturday would be the prime target of opportunity, with all the guests gathered together. And under those circumstances, Captain Grey would locate in moments the one who exhibits undue disquiet.”

It was true; it was all true, God damn it. But it was all so tenuous:
If
Richard Bunsen had a bomb;
if
he intended to use it at this meeting and not, say, in the House of Lords next week;
if
the driver went gambling and got picked up;
if
Bunsen didn’t already have another man to hand, and
if
he offered Stuyvesant the job of driver-cum-bodyguard. And even then,
if
he could convince Bunsen that a driver-bodyguard would be useful at the Hurleigh meeting. If, if, if.

Still, he’d known this kind of job before, cases that depended on a weird and uncontrollable momentum all their own—it was uncanny how often the sheer unlikeliness of a plan seemed to glue it together. Like one of those modern stage plays that consisted of unrelated events and segments of conversation, which came together in a kind of dreamlike logic at the end.

No, the plan to get Harris Stuyvesant into Hurleigh that weekend would almost surely come to pieces—but as Carstairs said, if it didn’t pan out, they could always cancel it. Or they could let it go ahead, then go through every object coming into Hurleigh with a nit-comb, and require full body searches of everyone. Although Carstairs might draw a line with the Prime Minister’s person.

In a way, that plan might be for the better. If they found the stuff on Bunsen, it would leave one Yank Bureau agent out in the cold, but it would mean one terrorist off the street. And if Bunsen came out of the meeting as blameless as he’d gone onto it, well, Stuyvesant would still be positioned to work his way into the man’s circle.

Too, going the search-and-watch method would keep Grey clear of the whole thing.

He nodded, his mind made up. “Leave me a message at the hotel with the word
book
in it if you’ve succeeded in removing Balham from play. And I’ll be in touch tomorrow after I see the two women. We’ll decide then how it stands.”

Carstairs rose, holding out his hand. Stuyvesant gave it a brief clasp, concealing his distaste, and picked up his hat and coat.

Aldous Carstairs listened to the American’s footsteps recede across the outer office. When the outer door had closed, he took out his note-book and wrote in it for a minute, then sat back, frowning over what he had written.

Sometimes, it was just a matter of giving a person what he was hoping to find. He had no doubt that Stuyvesant accepted what he told him, and would do as he had asked. The man had no reason not to.

Grey, however, was a different story. They were fast approaching the time when Grey’s intuition would be too dangerous. Best to remove him from the action, for a time.

Stuyvesant walked, head down, through the busy streets, and was halfway to the hotel before he thought of who awaited him there, and what that meant.

He couldn’t go straight from Aldous Carstairs to Bennett Grey with the knowledge of Carstairs’ plan still raw on his face. He veered into a tea shop and sat until the cup in front of him was stone cold, then went to find a public telephone.

The hotel operator connected him to Grey’s room, and Stuyvesant held the receiver away from his mouth and lifted a piece of stiff paper, slowly crinkling it.

“Grey? That you? Don’t know what’s up with these machines, I think they’re working on the lines down the street. Grey, you there?”
Crinkle crinkle.
“Where’s the operator, anyway? Look, I better make this short before we’re cut off entirely. Everything’s fine, it’s just that a meeting’s been called for this week-end, made some decisions urgent. Nothing really—you there?” Grey’s raised voice came clear over the earpiece, and Stuyvesant crushed the paper in his fist. “I’ve got some things to take care of here, and I don’t want to go over it on the telephone, anyway. How about I meet you at the same place we started out last night, at, say, five? What’s that?” Grey’s voice was at a shout, and Stuyvesant half-covered the mouthpiece with the fist holding the paper. “This is nuts,” he said in the direction of the receiver. “I’ll see you at five.”

He hung up on Grey’s protestations.

He spent the remainder of the morning in the library, reading about the men who would be at Hurleigh; the middle part of the day in a Turkish baths, sweating out the previous night’s poisons; and the afternoon in a strange hotel room, catching up on a few hours of sleep. Between the library and the baths he found a map store, and bought a highly detailed Ordnance Survey map of the area around Hurleigh. He asked his temporary hotel to wake him at five-fifteen, so he would arrive forty minutes late: the pub would be crowded and noisy, and Grey would be on his second or third drink.

Bennett Grey was the trickiest confederate Stuyvesant had ever had to keep happy, worse than any gin-soaked, itchy-fingered gun-for-hire. He’d be so glad when the man admitted defeat and skulked home to Cornwall.

With luck, tonight would do the trick.

Grey was waiting at the public house, and lifted his glass by way of greeting as the big American threaded his way through the noisy crowd. Stuyvesant could see from the gesture that this was at least his third. He waved back, detoured past the bar to give his order “and a refill for my friend,” and finally slipped into the chair Grey had guarded for him. He took off his hat, putting it on his lap under the edge of the table, and unbuttoned his overcoat.

“Sorry I’m late,” he told Grey. “I fell asleep, believe it or not. Your libraries are soporific places.”

Grey did not react to the half lie, Stuyvesant was interested to see. The distractions of the room battered at him, so that the two statements, which were actually true when taken separately, elided into the suggestion that Stuyvesant had fallen asleep over his books. To distract him further, Stuyvesant pulled the folded Ordnance Survey map out of his breast pocket.

“One thing I love about this country is its maps.”

“Is that of Hurleigh?”

“Yep.” Stuyvesant leaned forward to speak into Grey’s ear, not only for security, but for the added advantage that Grey could not see his face. “There’s going to be a private meeting this week-end at Hurleigh, between the principals of the Strike. Union and owners, with the Prime Minister in attendance. It might just be possible to get me in on it. That’s what Carstairs wanted to see me about.”

With another man, Stuyvesant would have immediately launched off on some distracting behavior: taking off his coat, craning around for their drinks, anything to keep from having to meet his companion’s eyes. But Grey would see the actions for what they were, so instead, Stuyvesant met his green gaze openly, and allowed him to see what he could.

He’s not psychic
—but despite the noise in the room, Grey knew something was up.

“You are trying to get rid of me,” he said to Stuyvesant.

“Of course I’m trying to get rid of you. No offense, I like you a whole lot, but I’ve got a job to do and pretty soon you’re going to be in my way.”

“But the Major…”

“You’re right, Carstairs would love me to hang on to you. Hell, if I could hog-tie you and dump you on his desk, he’d put me on the Honours List for a Sir. But while his mind’s on you, he’s not focusing on the problems with Bunsen.”

Stuyvesant waited for the tell-tale rubbing of the forehead, but it did not come. It would appear that, given a distracting enough environment, Touchstone would react to the given truth, and miss the real truth hiding behind it. Had Grey been rested, sober, and sitting in a place where a man could hear himself think, Stuyvesant wouldn’t get away with deception.

“So you’ll go?”

“Tomorrow,” Grey promised.

Stuyvesant felt a burst of relief, then told himself he couldn’t count on it until he watched the train pull out of Paddington. Not that it would matter all that much—the more he’d thought about Carstairs’ plan during the day, the more he’d suspected that the only way he’d be joining that secret Hurleigh conclave was if he held a gun to someone’s head. Stuyvesant was a veteran of so many investigative cock-ups over the years, he knew the farther a plan got from simplicity, the smaller the chance of success. An idea like this one, there were just too many opportunities for the gods of fate to step in and have a good laugh.

And anyway, he wasn’t altogether certain that he believed in Carstairs’ mythical bomb plot. It was just too neat: that chain of supply sergeant to university friend to Bunsen; Carstairs just happening to remember the description of a man in a pub from a month before. Frankly, it stank of the man’s deviousness. Although for the life of him, he couldn’t imagine what Carstairs could be working toward.

Still, the Hurleigh meeting did not replace the substitute-driver plan, which was more reasonably within his grasp. But he wasn’t sure, when the topic of the driver’s unreliability came up at lunch tomorrow, that he would do anything to remind Bunsen of his skills as a bodyguard. His aim with Bunsen was in the longer term, and if it meant Carstairs had to draw a line through this secret meeting, even if the consequences were that Britain’s General Strike went ahead, he didn’t much care.

The States had survived its Civil War, Britain had survived theirs; maybe it was time for this country to have another one.

His target was Bunsen, and he mustn’t get distracted by British politics. Sooner or later, if he wasn’t arrested here, Bunsen would return to the States, and when he did, Stuyvesant intended to have sufficient information to slap on the handcuffs the moment his polished shoes hit the docks.

Everything on this end was Carstairs’ problem.

Stuyvesant lifted his glass to Bennett Grey, and set about getting his friend absolutely roaring smashed.

Chapter Fifty-Five

W
EDNESDAY WAS A FULL DAY.

For Bennett Grey, it began before dawn when the full life of this terrible city crashed down around him. Literally crashed, with dust-bins being collected on the street below. Three sets of snores rose up from the rooms around him, including that of Harris Stuyvesant through the wall. The sheets were damp and stank of sweated drink and fear—the whole room stank of his state of mind; the heat from the ticking radiators made it worse, close and suffocating; the feather pillow seemed to creep up around his skull as if it had been made of mud. There was tension in the voices, anger in the dust-bins, distress in the heels hitting the pavement, and his mouth tasted of brass, tasted as if all his teeth had been coated with the stuff.

He fought free from the grasp of the bed-clothes and lurched to the window, fighting with the latch until he could fling it open. Even then, the stifling atmosphere inside seemed more to absorb and transmute the miasma of the city than be diluted by it, and it took a long time, standing at the window, panting and feeling the pull of the pavement thirty feet below, before he could bring his head and shoulders back inside.

A cold bath and a hard, all-over scrub with the face-cloth removed some of the feeling of disgust. Shaving was harder. Every time he picked up the straight razor, his hand began to tremble with desire, lusting just to slide the blade across his throat and be done with it. In the end, he folded it away and told himself he’d see a barber.

But he knew he wouldn’t.

He would be going home.

He couldn’t do this for one more day.

He had failed.

Bennett Grey pushed his clothing any which way into his case, forced the latch to hold, and went to bounce his fist off his neighbor’s door.

For Sarah Grey, the day began almost as early. For the past two or three weeks (and it was only going to get worse in the weeks to come) Richard Bunsen’s work had taken an increasing amount of her time. This meant that the clinics had to be fit in around the edges of Richard’s day.

She was at the office of the main clinic at six o’clock, drinking tea and working her way through the letters, queries, complaints, and proposals that had accumulated since the previous morning. Fortunately, she had dependable assistants, and the day-to-day business of Women’s Help had not suffered. In the long term, such an arrangement was impossible, but she expected that once the Strike was settled, life would return to normal.

By nine, the pile of papers had been sorted for their designated workers, and Sarah permitted herself the first cigarette of the morning.

It was, as it turned out, her only cigarette of the morning, and she only managed to smoke half of that before Richard’s problems came crashing down on her: His driver, a man she’d never been all that fond of anyway, had failed to show up at eight to take Richard to the first of six urgent meetings that day—the P.M. was to meet with the mine owners that afternoon, and Richard needed to lay the ground first. He’d waited for a quarter-hour before running for a cab, telling his secretary that Jones was waiting for him and to let Sarah and Laura know the problem. In other words, handing the problem over to Sarah.

Five minutes later, the phone rang again, with Richard’s secretary phoning back all in a flutter to say he’d heard from the driver’s wife, that Jim Balham had been arrested the night before in a raid, and not to expect him until Thursday, that he couldn’t find Laura Hurleigh, and that he just didn’t know
what
to do.

Sarah listened, said that they could no doubt find another car if they needed to, but suggested that, since Richard was in Town all that day, perhaps he could just use taxis for once. The secretary agreed, unhappily, then handed to Sarah the task of telling Richard, and while she was at it would she take him enough money to pay for his day’s gallivanting?

And of course, when she located Richard (who had finished with one appointment and gone to the next) to give him the information and the little purse full of money, he had pressed upon her several urgent tasks that only she could do, and in the end, she never managed to make it home to change into a nicer dress for her lunch with Harris Stuyvesant.

To make matters worse, when she got to the restaurant, she found that Laura had spent the morning on one of her rare shopping expeditions, and had a fresh hair-cut, polished nails, and a rested air about her, unlike the rumpled and rushed person of Sarah Grey.

Still, she had to admit later, Harris didn’t seem to have noticed the shortcomings in her appearance.

And later, too, although she couldn’t quite remember just whose idea it had been—Laura’s probably, as good ideas usually were—but somehow talk had come around to the sins of Mr. Balham, and like the sun coming through the clouds, it became obvious that Harris was the solution to all their problems. Temporarily, at any rate.

They managed to collect the car and converge with Richard’s hectic schedule, snatching him from Piccadilly where he stood trying to flag down a cab. Harris aimed the car across the busy street, cutting off a taxi and coming to a halt at Richard’s feet. He sure looked surprised, Richard did, to see his familiar car pull up in front of him.

She jumped out, and got no further than, “Mr. Stuyvesant volunteered to step in for Mr. Balham today, you may have to help him find his way but—” when Richard gave her an approving kiss on the cheek, handed her the considerably thinner money-purse, and slid into his accustomed place in the back.

She waved at Harris, and he pulled out, as smooth as any London cab driver.

So there was that, anyway.

Of course, it meant that he’d be far too busy with Richard to have dinner or lunch with her, but it was only for a few days, until they got it settled, and so it had all worked out for the best: Richard and Harris would get to know each other a little, and by the time they found another driver, things should be settling down for Sarah, as well.

Even Laura seemed happy at the solution, especially because it meant sending Richard out into the current troubles with someone who’d guarded a man before. And Sarah had to agree: It was reassuring, to think of Harris at Richard’s side.

For Harris Stuyvesant, that Wednesday morning began at 7:40, when Richard Bunsen’s would-be driver was wakened from a sound if alcohol-induced sleep by Grey’s fist on the door.

At 8:20, on his way through the hotel lobby, Stuyvesant was handed a message informing him that his books were ready for delivery: Balham was off the page.

At 8:40, Stuyvesant and Grey were eating bacon and eggs and drinking a great deal of coffee.

At 9:50, Stuyvesant carried Grey’s bulging valise down to the lobby and watched Grey check out, scarcely able to believe his luck.

At 10:45, he stood on the platform at Paddington and watched the Penzance train pull away in a swirl of smoke and whistles, carrying Bennett Grey away from the city.

At 12:31, he sat down at a beautifully laid table between two gorgeous dolls, both of whom he dared to greet with a kiss on the cheek.

At 12:33, he heard that Richard’s driver, who had been increasingly unreliable anyway, hadn’t shown up for work that morning, because he’d been arrested.

At 12:35, Laura admitted that she hated to have Richard wandering around London just now, because the day before someone had thrown a rotten tomato at him as he’d come out of his office. This on top of the letters, she added. It was the first Sarah had heard of any threat letters, and Laura’s telling her took a few minutes to explain that no, Richard didn’t take them seriously, that he hadn’t reported them, that he hadn’t wanted to make a fuss.

At 12:47, as Stuyvesant was about to open his mouth to say, If he could be of any help…Laura Hurleigh beat him to it, asking Dear Mr. Stuyvesant if he wouldn’t like to help them all out of a pinch and take over the wheel of Richard’s car, just for a few days, until they could find a replacement? Sarah clapped her hands at his agreement, then looked at her wrist-watch and said that if he was going to take over, they’d better finish lunch quickly.

At 1:15, Stuyvesant slid into the driver’s seat of Richard Bunsen’s car, precisely where he’d sat in the wee hours of Sunday morning to rifle the driver’s papers and remove the Automobile Club documents from the packet. The motor started smoothly, re-assuring him that someone had fixed the little adjustment he’d made to the wires.

At 2:07, Sarah, at his side, spotted Bunsen standing on the street looking harassed and irritated. Stuyvesant closed his eyes and shot across the unfamiliar traffic to cut off the taxi that had begun to slow in front of Bunsen. His reward, when Bunsen had shut his door, was a manly clap on the shoulder and a thanks for helping out. Bunsen told him where he needed to go and asked if Stuyvesant could find it. On being told yes, he thought so, Bunsen pulled over his swiveling desk-top and addressed himself to some papers from his brief-case.

At 7:31, Stuyvesant dropped his passenger at the club where he was dining, and went to find a telephone box. He rang both the numbers he had been given for Aldous Carstairs, and at the second was merely told that Mr. Carstairs was not available.

He hung up, frowning at the instrument. Wasn’t there some kind of a bomb investigation going on here, for Christ sake? Did he expect Stuyvesant to believe that he’d learned nothing new, all that day?

At 11:53, Stuyvesant pulled up in front of Richard Bunsen’s flat to let him out. Bunsen gathered his papers, switched off the light he’d been reading by, and leaned forward. “You’re willing to help with tomorrow, then?”

“Happy to,” Stuyvesant told him.

“I’ve very grateful. And look, why don’t you take the car tonight, if you have someplace secure you can leave it? The buses have stopped running, and you’ll never get a taxi from here. And I’ll need you back at seven, sharp.”

Stuyvesant thanked him, assured him the car would be safe, and waited until Bunsen had disappeared into the apartment house.

He gazed at the mobile office in the back seat with a look of loathing on his face: He’d much rather take a run at Bunsen’s actual office, where he might find last year’s diary and all kinds of interesting bits of paper. However, if he had to be back here at seven, shaved and in a clean shirt, that would give him less than five hours to break in and do the job. And once he’d broken in, he doubted he’d get a second chance.

Better leave the office for another night.

At 2:40 Thursday morning, Stuyvesant folded his glasses and put the folder he was reading back into Bunsen’s file drawer, locking it in disgust. He hadn’t reached an end, but in two and a half hours had found precisely nothing of any interest. And he had to pick Bunsen up at 7:00 Thursday morning, sharp.

At 3:45, Stuyvesant ordered his mind to think about something, anything but his problems with Richard Bunsen. Think about Grey, home and snug in his little white cottage on the cliffs, three hundred miles from Aldous Carstairs, three hundred miles from strike negotiations and speechifying. Think about nothing, and go to sleep.

Which wasn’t easy. He just couldn’t shake the feeling that time was getting short.

And that when it came to evidence, he was looking in all the wrong places.

At 10:03 on Wednesday morning, Aldous Carstairs received news that Grey and Stuyvesant had just entered a taxi with one suitcase, and given the command for Paddington. He cursed the man on the other end of the line, broke the connection mid-explanation, and placed a call of his own, followed immediately by two others. Sliding his cigar case into one pocket and a small hand-gun into the other, he took out his personal keys and moved over to the filing cabinets in the corner. He took out a folder, removed an envelope, checked the contents, then put the envelope in his inner pocket and the folder back in the cabinet, which he closed and locked.

He gathered his hat, coat, and gloves, telling Lakely he wasn’t sure when he would return, that if Lakely hadn’t heard from him by one o’clock he should cancel the afternoon appointments and close up at the usual time.

He moved quickly, and bribed the taxi driver to ignore the rules of the road, but he reached Paddington too late.

However, he was Aldous Carstairs. He reached out to catch the sleeve of a passing Great Western official, and asked him for the station master’s office.

Captain Bennett Grey was not entirely surprised when the train he was on slowed, forty-six minutes after leaving Paddington, and changed tracks for an unscheduled stop in Reading. He was even less surprised when the man came through to announce that there was some minor trouble on the tracks, but they would be on their way shortly.

Three trains pulled up and pulled away; the Penzance train sat motionless.

Not for long, however. Half an hour after they’d stopped, Grey’s compartment door opened and Aldous Carstairs stepped in. As if a switch had been turned, a headache flared to life in Bennett Grey’s skull, and Cornwall vanished from the map.

The other man brushed off the seat across from Grey and settled into it. His gloved hands dipped into his breast pocket, coming out with a photograph. He stretched out to place it on Grey’s knee.

Five people. Two strangers, Richard Bunsen, Laura, and Sarah.

“One of those men is currently being sought for the possession of a quantity of stolen explosive. He sold it to Richard Bunsen. I can keep your sister out of this.” Grey said nothing, and did not move. After a minute, Carstairs added, “I can do my best to keep Laura Hurleigh out of it, as well.”

Grey stood up and walked out of the compartment, half blind with pain, letting the photograph fall to the floor, leaving his valise and his coat. He knew Carstairs would have a man to retrieve things, just outside the door, and he did. He knew Carstairs would have a second man to make sure Grey didn’t make a break for it or fling himself under a train; he, too, was there.

Neither of them mattered. Not even the photograph mattered, not in itself. What mattered was the Major’s conviction that whatever he had, it was enough to get Grey to go with him, and Bennett had seen that conviction in the angle of the gloved hands as they came through the door.