Traitor's Purse (20 page)

The booking clerk put every other consideration out of his head, however.

‘Last train just going,’ he said, slamming down the ticket and the change on the brass ledge.

Campion snatched it and fled. The collector at the top of the stairs did not wait to clip his ticket.

‘Express right through. There she goes. There she goes,’ he shouted obligingly as he dragged the other man through the gates. ‘Might just do it. Run, sir.’

The train, a great dark centipede with dead eyes, was already chugging away from the platform, gathering speed at every gasping breath. Campion sprinted after it and just managed to swing himself on to the footboard of the last coach.

Ignoring the warning shouts behind him, he got the door of the final compartment open, and, as stale leather-scented air gushed out to meet him, he clambered into a first-class smoker. He had just slammed the door behind him, congratulating himself that there was no corridor, and had flung
himself
into a corner under one of the small blue reading lights with relief in his heart, when the train stopped with a jerk.

They had caught him. That was his first thought. The police had followed him and stopped the train. He was trapped, caught as surely as if hands were already on his shoulder. He wondered if they would come up the line for him. If so, perhaps he had a chance if the farther door of the compartment was not locked. It was, of course. At the other window he made the unnerving discovery that the coach was still partly at the long platform. Moreover, there was no time to do anything. Flying feet and raised voices were bearing down upon him. He struggled with the door. At least he could make a dash for it. The darkness was on his side. Nothing else seemed to be helpful, however. The catch stuck and he was a moment wrenching it.

That delay defeated him. As the heavy door swung open a hurrying figure hurled itself in on top of him and as he caught a glimpse of it his arm, which had been upraised, dropped to his side.

‘That’s all right, that’s all right. I’m quite all right. Very much obliged to you. Good night.’

The newcomer spoke over his shoulder to someone in the darkness.

‘Good night, sir. No trouble at all. Good night,’ an official voice answered deferentially and the guard’s whistle sounded down the platform.

The train started with a jerk which unsteadied both men and Campion retired to his corner. It was another belated traveller; that was all. He was making a fool of himself. There was nothing to fear yet. He was still free. He leant back in his seat and closed his eyes. His body was chilled and clammy and he could feel his heart jolting painfully in his side.

The other man had settled himself diagonally opposite and was blowing gently in the semi-darkness. He was small and elderly and seemed taken up with his own near shave.

Campion dismissed him from his mind. There was plenty
to
think about. There had been no gun-play. That meant that somebody in charge of the crook element had issued very strict orders. In England gun-play invariably entails intensive police interest. It works like a charm. One shot produces forty policemen, endless enquiries, house-to-house visits, and more fuss than a football crowd can ever make over a foul. Someone was determined to get peace and quiet for his activities. Weaver, B.’s munificent offer proved that much, of course, but it was worth noticing.

Campion dug himself farther into the soft, old-fashioned upholstery and considered his chances. The train was an express. That should mean that he was safe until he got to a London terminus. There, of course, the Metropolitan Police would probably be waiting for him if the County Inspector knew his stuff, which seemed highly probable. Well, that could wait. He’d cross that bridge when he came to it. Meanwhile, here at last was a breather, time to think if his mind would work.

With the grim determination of necessity he settled down to make it function. Very carefully he reviewed all the concrete evidence which the last thirty hours had produced. All of it was unexpected and most of it apparently entirely unrelated. Behind it all was this desperate urgency, this passionate instinct for haste. If only he knew the essentials. He was trying to fit together a jigsaw puzzle without knowing what sort of picture the pieces were expected to make. A few of them married, though. Pyne and his Surveys Limited. The professional crooks and the method of Anscombe’s murder. These three shapes made a corner, anyway.

Then there had been Miss Anscombe’s painfully vivid picture of her brother’s last few weeks of life. She had been so clear with her story of the alien, the suspected smuggling under the Nag, and the suggestion that Anscombe had made up his mind to atone in some way.

That picture should fit in somewhere, although at the moment he had no idea where.

Then there were the Masters themselves, the fleet of lorries, Anscombe’s sudden decision to draw all his money
in
cash. Then there was the cash which Campion had brought in to Lugg, the other cash which Weaver, B., had offered, the parcel of cash which Anscombe had forgotten to bring in from the car. Fifteen. Minute Fifteen. The fact that it wasn’t a date.

His head reeled and he bent forward and rested his forehead in his hands and his elbows on his knees. The train’s wheels grumbled and vibrated soothingly beneath him. It was a pause at any rate, a moment of peace and security in a breathless race through nightmare streets with police and crook alike his pursuers. He felt almost calm, almost at ease.

The other man in the compartment stirred. Campion could just see him in the blue mist which hung over the carriage like dusty limelight. As the younger man raised his head the stranger spoke, revealing a deep elderly voice, faintly suspicious as such voices often are.

‘I’ve seen your face before,’ he said accusingly. ‘Where was that? Aren’t you Albert Campion?’

XVI

CAMPION FROZE. GOOD
God! Was the whole world after him?
Of course it was
. The recollection came like a scalding shower, shocking him back to reality. Of course it was. Hadn’t he killed one policeman and assaulted another? Wasn’t the whole countryside being scoured for him? He drew back in the shadows.

‘No,’ he said huskily. ‘No. That’s not my name. I don’t think we’ve met.’

‘Oh? No? Perhaps not. Perhaps not.’ The voice sounded partially satisfied but its owner did not relax. Through the blue mist from the reading lamp Campion took careful stock of this new potential enemy. He was a neat little man, a character. His dark coat was sleek and unobtrusively expensive, but his hat was too large for him and his white hair
was
untidy beneath it. At the moment he was staring at Campion unwinkingly with unexpectedly shrewd eyes.

He had a small attaché case by his side and a walking-stick across his knees. He looked very English, very narrow and conventional.

It was quite possible that they had met, of course, in the far-off lucid days thirty-six hours ago. Campion began to feel for a name which he might give if asked point-blank. He saw the danger of that just in time, fortunately. Suppose if out of the dark presses of his mind he fished up some famous name. The only one to occur to him at that moment was Dick Turpin. He had a strong feeling there was something against it, yet it had a vaguely attractive sound.

Fortunately the question did not come but neither did the stare waver. It remained transfixing him, paralysingly steady and confident, for what seemed the best part of an hour. He moved uneasily under it, leaning back in the leathery darkness to escape it, but it did not falter. It had almost demoralized him before he realized that the man was not seeing him but was looking through him into some introspective unknown.

This discovery was a relief, but all the same it was not easy to think of anything else with those intelligent eyes glittering straight at one in the blue gloom. In the end he was forced to speak in sheer self-defence. He was so anxious to be entirely natural and he tried out many openings in his mind and finally succeeded in being gauche.

‘Worried?’ he enquired baldly, adding at once, as the glitter faded and astonishment took its place, ‘I mean, the – er – times are very disturbing, aren’t they?’

The other man sat up. He was considerably flustered by the complete lack of ceremony. Campion could have kicked himself. Poor old boy. He was just a successful provincial business man chewing over the troubles of the day. There was nothing sinister about him, nothing to be frightened of. Surely his history as well as his character was written in his face. He looked tired, overworked, weighed down by the responsibilities of his job as the head of some firm or other.
He
was probably meticulously straight in his dealings, astute, too, in a narrow way, wealthy, and yet beset by problems. In fact, the great British public itself incarnate.

‘Yes,’ he said at last, having decided to forgive the intrusion. ‘Not too easy, are they? I think we must face it that they’re dangerous, damned dangerous.’

It was odd how he managed to convey such consternation by saying so little. Campion wondered if his business had been badly hit. He saw it as something to do with wool. A fine old firm, probably generations old.

His own mind was running feverishly on the subject. He wanted the man to talk, to babble on reassuringly about ordinary things; anything, the war, the weather, sport, A.R.P., anything to keep him as he was now, a normal comprehensible fellow human-being and not a pair of fixed introspective eyes in the shadows.

‘What worries you most?’ Campion demanded, knowing the question was infantile but panic-stricken lest he should escape again.

The old man blinked at him. ‘Treachery,’ he said.

Campion wondered if he had heard the word. It was so unexpected, so melodramatic. The stranger was looking at him again, too, and the blue light shone in his eyes.

‘You find it in your business?’ Campion enquired.

‘I do.’ The admission seemed to be wrenched out of the man. ‘I do, after fifty years. Treachery on a vast scale everywhere I look. Sometimes I wonder if my own eyes are deceiving me, but no, it’s there and it’s got to be faced.’

He was silent and Campion took a liking to him. He looked such a dogged old chap, sitting there with his square hands gripping the stick across his knees.

There was a long pause and then the shrewd eyes rested on the younger man again.

‘I could have sworn you were Albert Campion,’ he said. ‘It must be because I’ve been hearing about him tonight.’

It came back. All Campion’s apprehension of the past few hours returned with interest. He held himself together with an effort and forced his mind to go slow. It was too
dangerous
to ask questions. The old boy was too sharp. Besides, he had recognized him. The old fellow was not certain, of course. That was the one saving grace. The only hope was to take his mind off the subject and to talk of something else.

Campion searched wildly for a likely opening. What would interest a wool merchant, if the wretched man
was
in wool? Sheep, perhaps? No, that was absurd. He was losing his grip on reality altogether. This was madness. Oh God, what was he going to say next?

The old man leant back in his seat and crossed his short legs.

‘We’ve always fought our wars with money,’ he remarked. ‘I wonder if it’s going to save us now?’

Money! Of course. Campion could have laughed aloud. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? Everybody was interested in money, It was a universal subject.

‘I don’t know,’ he said cautiously, choosing the safest lead. ‘It’s not to be confused with wealth, of course.’

‘No,’ said the old man briefly, ‘no, it’s not, but as it stands now, in its present position, it’s a very important factor all the same.’

He went on to talk fluently on the aspect of the struggle which evidently interested him. He appeared to be quite sound, but Campion made no attempt to follow him. He heard the voice and that was enough. He was soothed and reassured and it gave him a moment to think. Soon the train would come into the station. That was going to be a difficult moment. Detectives were almost certain to be there to meet it. They could hardly miss him, although they would be looking for a man alone and might with reasonable luck have only a telephoned description of him. If only there had been time he would have let them take him and have risked the enquiry. They could hardly hang him for murder in his present condition and almost anything would be preferable to this continuous hounding down. However, that was out of the question. He had a job to do and he must do it, at whatever cost.

Amanda came up in his mind and he thrust her out of it savagely.

‘The unspeakable peril of forced inflation,’ droned the voice on the other side of the compartment. ‘The loss of faith in the country’s essential soundness.’

Campion smiled at the man and nodded to him without hearing. How comfortingly ordinary he was. What a blessed piece of solid and familiar ground in this new world of quick-sands and blackouts. The intelligent thing to do was to stick to him, of course. It would be dangerous in a way, but at least it would ensure that he did not go trotting off to confide his suspicions to the first bobby he saw on the station.

Campion glanced at the man, to see that he had just finished speaking and now rose to his feet purposefully.

What was this? Campion grew cold. Was he going to turn out to be an elderly Chief Inspector after all? Was it a last-minute arrest? Campion seemed to remember having heard of something of the sort long ago. His face must have given him away because the old man was looking at him curiously.

‘We’re just coming in,’ he said. ‘Can’t you feel us slowing down?’

‘Of course.’ One crisis was over but another had arrived. ‘Of course,’ Campion repeated. ‘I hadn’t noticed. I was so interested.’

‘Really? That’s very gratifying.’ The old man was opening the carriage door and he was laughing a little. ‘I’m glad to hear that. Ah, thank you.’ The final remark was addressed to someone outside on the platform. ‘What’s that?’

There was a muttering which Campion could not catch and then his travelling companion glanced over his shoulder.