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« on: November 22, 2023, 08:56:21 am » |
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MACDONALD HAD been standing in the darkness for over an hour, with the crash of the sea and the whistle of the wind as a background to his thoughts, before he realised that somebody else was moving forward of him, close to the rail, in the bleak bitterness of the night. He could just make out a man’s form as a blacker blackness against the murky sky. At first he thought it might be one of the crew, but then he saw the man sit down on a bollard, with his arms braced against the rail. A thought flashed into Macdonald’s mind: “I suppose a man who is a strong swimmer might risk jumping for it once we reached the lee of the jetty: on a night like this he wouldn’t be seen and he might make it. For a powerful swimmer it wouldn’t be any more hazardous than jumping from a train, and plenty of good blokes escaped that way.”
Even as he thought of it, Macdonald hoped very much that nothing would compel him to jump overboard after a fugitive that night: no matter how near the shore, the prospect was singularly uninviting. His thoughts went to Reeves and James: he knew just what they would be trying to do if they had spotted their quarries on board: far from challenging them, the two wily detectives would be shepherding the suspects fore, towards Macdonald in the bows, not obviously, but by the method of showing that accommodation aft was being patrolled. The two C.I.D. men would urge their suspects forward in the manner of well-trained sheep dogs, with never a bark or a snap, just by patrolling aft, apparently seeing nothing, certainly saying nothing: just obtaining the required result by the menace of their presence.
And then, at long last, Macdonald believed his hunch was justifying itself: a second man had moved quietly forward, towards the unsheltered bows, whose only merit on this night was darkness and probable solitude.
Feeling silently in the shadows, Macdonald found the end of a rope locker---doubtless used as a seat by passengers on sunny summer days---and he crouched down beside it: from here he could see the blurred silhouette of the figure squatting on the bollard. The second man stood still for a moment, feet well apart, braced to swim with the roll of the vessel; then, as another rain squall blew spitefully across the deck, he moved aft towards the bulkhead and sat down on the locker within a yard of where Macdonald was crouching. Leaning close to the shelter of the deckhouse, he struck a match between his cupped hands and for a second or two his face was illuminated fantastically as he lighted a cigarette: it was Garstang’s face. Macdonald saw his sharp profile before the match blew out, and then saw it again more faintly in the red glow from his cigarette.
>>2
It was not only Macdonald who saw Garstang’s face; the man sitting on the bollard stood up, steadied himself by the rails, and then moved aft towards the bulkhead and stood against it.
“So it’s you, Garstang---going while the going’s good.”
The voice came clearly to Macdonald’s ears, so close were all three men together in the shadows and spray and driven sleet.
“I don’t know that the going’s particularly good for either of us,” retorted Garstang’s ironical voice. “There wasn’t time to argue. I realised---much too late---that there was a fifty-fifty chance of proving the truth if I got to a certain place before you did. Scotland Yard’s out after both of us, as you probably realise---but I’ve been in a tighter corner than this and managed to wriggle out. I admit that it’s a matter of which of us gets there first.”
“I don’t know what in hell you’re talking about,” rejoined the other, “but I’ve every reason to believe you knocked Greville out because he recognised you---remembered where he’d seen you before. But there’s a chance I’m wrong, and I wasn’t going to put my facts before the police till I’d proved my point. If you can prove to me that you weren’t at Paddington Station last Monday evening I’ll throw my hand in---the rest doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t matter where I was last Monday evening,” said Garstang impatiently. “The C.I.D. and M.I.5. are both barking up the wrong tree, though they’ve got the right facts if they could only correlate them.”
“Why not put them wise, then?” demanded the other voice.
“Because they wouldn’t believe me---any more than they’d believe you,” retorted Garstang. “It’s facts they want, and what they won’t realise is that I can get the facts if I’m allowed to set about it in my own way and in my own time. They know that an American named Dorward was mixed up in the origin of this story. Dorward---do you remember the name, Mr. Weldon?”
“No. I don’t,” retorted the other.
“Dorward . . . I never knew him by that name myself,” went on Garstang calmly, “but I think he was the same man who helped get some refugees out of Germany almost under the nose of the Gestapo. He had two personalities, as it were, and he was known by two names: as an American businessman, he was Charles F. Dorward: as an intelligence agent and organiser of an escape route, he was Francesco Revari---that was the name I knew him by.”
“I haven’t an idea what you’re driving at,” said Weldon impatiently.
“It’s very simple,” said Garstang. “Dorward was a metallurgist, and an engineer. He had dealings with all the radio component experts in Germany before the war. He met you there---probably in Cologne. That’s a guess on my part, but it’s the only reasonable one. It accounts for everything else.”
“You seem to be making up a story which is neither convincing nor lucid,” said Weldon.
“That’s all right,” said Garstang calmly. “You can call my bluff---if bluff it is---simply by accompanying me to Cologne. I’m going to see an old fellow named Hans Schmidt. He was personal servant to Dr. van Hansen, and he---Schmidt---made it his business to know the face of every agent briefed for foreign intelligence work by Van Hansen. Van Hansen’s dead, of course, but Schmidt’s alive. I’m probably the only Briton who knows he’s alive, and knows where to find him.”
“I’m quite willing to believe that you know a damn’ lot of things that M.I.5. would give their ears to know,” retorted Weldon, “but if you’re trying to entangle me in your ‘intelligence work,’ as you call it, you’ve made a very big mistake. I’ve never been in Germany in my life.”
“All right. Then you needn’t object to Schmidt having a look at you,” said Garstang. “You all went by numbers, didn’t you---no names mentioned? Schmidt was almost illiterate, and even numbers meant precious little to him, but he was invaluable to Van Hansen because he never forgot a face. It was my business at one time to collect such facts and transmit them: the only fact which I never passed on was the identity of Schmidt and the place he lived in after the war. I knew he was an honest old chap, and I didn’t want to see him hounded down for crimes he wasn’t responsible for.”
He broke off, and there was no sound for a moment but the sea and the wind.
Macdonald, crouching down beside the locker, knew that he could have touched either of the other men by reaching his hand out, so close were they all to one another against the bulkhead, and yet the darkness and sound of the wind and the waves came between them, separating them, so that the C.I.D. man had almost a moment of panic in the pause that followed Garstang’s last words, lest some movement of either man had escaped him. The whole situation was fantastic: the details of the story which Macdonald had worked out in his own imagination were being filled in for him. In that pause, when the voices of wind and sea seemed to envelop and isolate each man, Macdonald remembered James’s words about Garstang: “He’s as near a thought reader as a man can be.” A thought reader---yes---but also a man with a mort of bitter experience behind him.
It was Weldon’s voice which spoke next: “I give you my word I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re driving at.”
“Your word---it’s worth as much as mine to a detective,” said Garstang bitterly, “but if you want me to believe you, get off this damned ship with me: give them the slip. It shouldn’t be too hard on a night like this---and come and face old Hans Schmidt. If he says he doesn’t know you, I’ll admit I’m wrong---because there’ll be no sense in any of it.”
There was another pause, and then Garstang went on: “I’m arguing on the old motto that what one fool could do, another fool could do. I lived in Hitler’s Germany for over a year, because I built up my cover story in advance. I think you did the same thing---in England. And you stayed on, living in the character you’d assumed. Only it happened that Dorward, when he took his son from Germany to England in 1941, happened to see you in Plymouth, and recognised you there. And it was you or him, wasn’t it? You killed him there, but the blitz covered your crime. And the child escaped, up on to Roborough Down. It’s very simple, really.” Suddenly he laughed. “Don’t imagine that the C.I.D. men haven’t worked out some such sequence for themselves. That chap James sees all the possibilities, only he believes that I am the one in the woodpile. He’ll pin it on to me too, if I don’t get at the real facts----”
“And you hope to get out of it by involving me in this farrago of nonsense,” broke in Weldon.
“As I see it, you’re the only answer,” said Garstang. “I’m banking on the fact that the boy was attacked because his memory came back in a flash---he recognised you in the train. He knew he’d seen you before---sometime, somewhere---and he followed you up the platform. Perhaps he even remembered the name he heard his father call you, and spoke to you by that name. So you did the same thing you did when you were recognised before---twelve years ago. But Dick Greville didn’t die. He’s still alive, and that’s why you’re on this boat.”
“On my soul, I’ve never heard such a packet of nonsense in my life,” said the other, and the voice had lost its rancour and sounded merely amused. “I’m on this boat because I had the wits to realise you were making a bolt for it, Garstang. After you telephoned me this evening I went to Victoria on the off-chance and when I saw you on the boat train I also took a chance and followed you. I reckoned they’d cop you before you embarked---but they let you slip through. Well, you’ve challenged me: you say: ‘Come and face old Hans Schmidt,’ whoever he may be. Very well: I’ll come---but don’t think you can prove I’m anything you fancy. As you say---it’s facts a detective wants: fancy’s not going to help you.”
“If you’ll agree to come, I’ll stand by what Hans says,” cried Garstang. “I know he’s honest. If he says he doesn’t know your face, I’ll admit I was wrong. Wrong all along the line.”
“It looks to me as though we’ve both been making fools of ourselves in the detecting line,” said Weldon easily. “The only thing I hope now is that we shan’t be stopped at Dunkirk. Maybe I’m not the only chap who’s got a bee in the bonnet over this business---to say nothing of you. Lord, what a night!---but I reckon we’re nearly in port. Can you see a light there---over the larboard?”
Macdonald heard him move, saw him against the sky as he moved to the rail, then saw Garstang move to join him.
The climax came in a flash---quite literally. As Macdonald gathered himself to spring, a white swathe of light cut across the deck: it lit up the figures of the two men, as Weldon gripped Garstang round the knees and heaved him against the rail. He would have got him overboard in one powerful lift had it not been for Macdonald’s leap. As it was the three men went down on the deck together in a wild melee, free-for-all, catch-as-catch-can, while the vessel rolled and pitched, and flung them mercilessly from side to side, like cargo gone adrift in the hold. It was Reeves and James who helped to sort them out.
>>3
“That’s what you might call playing the stool-pigeon,” said Garstang resignedly when he had recovered his wind. “I was certain he’d try to heave me over. He had to. Once I’d gone he’d have felt safe, because there wasn’t any proof. Only old Hans Schmidt---and I’m the only person who could take you to Schmidt.”
The searchlight still blazed whitely across the deck: Macdonald and James stood with their backs to the beam of light, but Garstang faced it, careless of being half blinded. It was James he spoke to next:
“You didn’t trust me. You wouldn’t trust me,” he cried bitterly, “so I didn’t trust you either,” and then he turned to Macdonald. “I don’t know what you thought about me: you’re too infernally impartial. But I trusted you to be where you were needed, because I believe you’re a very intelligent chap. I knew you were on this steamer somewhere, and when I started on my provocation story I took the chance that you were too competent to allow me to be chucked overboard. And I was right.”
“As a vote of confidence, that one’s about unique in my experience,” said Macdonald. “Did you know I was just beside you, crouched down by that locker there?”
“No, I didn’t know that, but I knew you were on the boat. I saw you by the gangplank,” replied Garstang.
Macdonald chuckled. “Well, you’ve got to include the others in the testimonial. Reeves switched that searchlight on just in time for me to see that it was you who was being chucked overboard by Weldon, not vice versa, and seeing’s believing. Come along to the bar and have a toddy: we’re both colder than charity.”
Over their good French cognac and scalding coffee, Macdonald asked: “How much of all that was fact and how much fancy, Dr. Garstang?”
“None of it was fancy, though the essentials were supposition,” said Garstang. “When you’ve got unrelated facts, you’ve got to account for them somehow. You see, I based my whole reconstruction on the fact that Greville’s memory was coming back to him. That was the operative factor in all my arguments. Greville remembered that house on the outskirts of Cologne, so I argued he’d been at school there and that he’d been of English parentage. But this evening---my God! only a few hours ago, it’s incredible---James came along with his suggestion that the boy was American, and then James asked me if I remembered the name Dorward.”
“And you obliged with a few words about the nature of memory and associating factors,” put in James.
Garstang nodded. “Yes---and the associating factor may be something seemingly irrelevant---a visual image, a smell, a sound----”
“A sound,” interpolated Macdonald; “I’ve got a bit to add here. I heard you say that Dorward was associated with an Italian called Francesco Revari, or that he used that name himself. And for no earthly reason the title of a book flashed back into my mind---the Penguin which Dick Greville gave to Sally Dillon in the train.”
“That’s the incalculable way an extraneous circumstance can awaken memory,” said Garstang. “The sound of the title of that book The Franchise Affair echoed the sound of a name I’d forgotten---Francesco Revari. So I’d got different facts milling around under the surface---a small boy at school in Cologne, an American named Dorward whom I couldn’t place, and sundry facts I’d learnt in that hell of a year I’d spent in Hitler’s Germany. And then I suddenly caught sight of that Penguin I’d bought because Sally said it was a good one---and something clicked in my mind. It was after eight o’clock then: I sat and did some hard thinking---in part muddled, in part based on facts. And eventually I rang up Weldon at Poloni’s, asked him quite casually if he remembered Van Hansen, and told him I was catching the night boat to get across to Cologne. I’d never seen Weldon before today, but I knew it must be him---he was the only possibility; and I knew he’d be after me if he was the man I judged him to be.”
“Couldn’t you have told us----” began Macdonald, but Garstang flared back at him:
“No. I couldn’t. I’d asked you to let me go to Cologne, and you’d refused. I’d had enough of James in the long ago. I tell you there are some things a man never forgets. You can tell me I was crazy: perhaps I was. I left a lot of things behind me thirteen years ago, including a capacity for believing in the infallibility of police enquiries. I chose to do this thing my own way. You’ve no grounds for complaint: it’s worked, hasn’t it?---and I can get Weldon identified for you if he’s what I think him. And for the rest---be damned to all of you . . .”
He swayed in his chair and his head came forward on the table as Macdonald methodically caught the glasses out of the way.
“Suffering snakes!” cried James. “Don’t tell me he’s pulled a Goering on us.”
“He’s pulled nothing,” said Macdonald. “He was very cold and very tired and strung up to a pitch of sheer unreason: he’s probably not slept for nights----”
“And he’s as drunk as a lord on one double brandy,” said Reeves placidly. “Takes some chaps like that, especially when they’re by way of being sensitive,” he added as an aside to James.
“Oh, all right. I daresay I treated him a bit rough,” said the latter, “but it’s all worked out quite nicely as far as it goes. Though whether I’m any nearer to knowing what happened to Dorward I don’t quite see.”
“Perhaps young Greville will be able to tell you,” said Macdonald.
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