Coroner's Pidgin (21 page)

“That and the rest.”

“The rest?”

Oates leant back in his chair. “In the January of 'forty,” he said, “a railway truck containing the more important items in Lord Croker's collection, including five Vandykes—one of them the
Head of a Soldier
—Vermeer's
Anna
as the Virgin,
and that thing,
The Maltsters
—whose is that?”

“Franz Hals.”

“Is it? Yes. Well, that and one or two more, was dismantled at a siding; the guard was murdered. In March the same year three private cars carrying the National Museum's collection of Cellinis were held up in Wales and robbed. Three men lost their lives that time. In March also—there was a great deal of treasure evacuation going on at that time, you may remember—a small motor van with a police motor-cycle escort disappeared with all the personnel concerned. When it left London it carried the Stephen tapestries—lovely things, I've seen the photographs—eight hundred years old. We recovered two bodies. Do you want me to go on?”

“Is there much more?”

“Forty-one separate instances,” said the old man calmly. “Some of the stuff I can't bring myself to name. I can't think of it without going cold. Where do you imagine the White Sun of India is now?”

Campion stared at him. “But that's in the . . .” he began, and was silent. “I don't believe it,” he said presently.

“I feel like that about a great many things which have happened these last five years,” remarked Oates dryly. “You've only got to look about you to write off incredulity as old-fashioned, and the sooner you realize it the less likely you are to lose your reason.”

“Yes, I know,” said Campion, “but are you trying to tell me that at the beginning of the war, during the evacuation of the treasures from the big cities, there was systematic enemy-inspired—”

“Looting,” put in Oates, briefly. “Pre-victory looting, that's what it was. Well organized, damned thorough, and impudently previous. Just like Jerry. He just wanted to make quite certain that the best things were somewhere where he couldn't possibly hit them before he arrived and were waiting for him when he did. So he made arrangements.”

Campion remained staring at his old friend in uneasy
amazement. “I take your word for it,” he said with unconvincing slowness, “but how did he get away with it? What were your people doing?”

“At the beginning of the war the police were fairly occupied,” said Oates reminiscently. “You may remember it.”

Glancing backward, Mr. Campion did, and he apologized.

“You didn't spot what was happening at first, either,” he ventured.

“No. And when we did, we didn't believe it. Our reaction was just like yours is now. I hate to admit it, but we had seven of these treasure hold-ups before we saw the obvious. Even then the owners, the State Departments concerned, the Museum Boards and Art Curators didn't believe us. Look at that chap Bush. He waited until the raids were actually on before he moved his stuff, and then pitched it all into a lorry with a couple of old faithfuls in charge and bunged it out into the Blitz. We were fools, God knows, but we didn't compare with some people.”

“Dear me,” said Mr. Campion. “All the same, though, I don't see how you managed to miss them every time.”

“We didn't, of course we didn't.” Oates was indignant. “Out of the whole forty-one, we frustrated twenty-three. We saved the Cassiobury Apollo, for one thing, and we got back a whole crockery shop of exquisite Chinese pottery (Ming, is it?) which the William and Mary Museum was trotting up to Scotland in a furniture van. Of course we did something, we were bad, but not criminally so.”

“Did you get any of the men concerned?”

“Oh Lord, yes. At one period we pulled them in in shoals. They always worked very full-handed; no expense spared, good equipment and all the rest of it, and they were all professional crooks. That's what foxed us in the beginning. They never used the same men twice, and each bunch thought their own particular job was unique. It was brilliantly organized, you had to take your hat off to them for that.”

“You never got the higher-ups?”

Oates looked down at his pipe and prodded it again. “I haven't got him yet,” he said. “Not quite.”

THERE WAS A
long silence while Campion fitted these new and staggering data into the story as he knew it. Gradually the full significance of the facts became clear to him, and a dozen questions with one horrifying possibility shot into his mind.

“It wasn't a matter of making them squeal,” Oates said suddenly. “Most of them talked, and not one had any idea he was working for the enemy. Some of them were almost funny on that subject. Do you remember a dreadful little man called Knapp—Thos Knapp, he called himself—we caught him when we frustrated the Cassiobury business; he was appalled at the suggestion he was working for Jerry, he thought it was a respectable job, he said; and he honestly did think he was working for Kuyper, the big shot in the silver racket. He went down for eighteen months and is now out in Italy pulling his weight, I believe. He's a crook, but not a traitor.”

“Was Kuyper in it?”

“No. He cleared out just before the war, he's in South America—resting. No, these chaps used his name on this occasion, that was all. The man who did the actual organizing was that fellow Whitey Smith.”

Campion grimaced. “He was smooth,” he said. “Where is he now?”

“In the bag. We got him to talk in the end only to find that he didn't know much. He was merely employed to organize the underworld and he certainly did his stuff. His immediate boss was a queer little cuss called King. He'd never been on our books before and had had a solicitor's office in London for some years before the war. Until this business there was nothing very much against him, but he had some rum contacts and in '37 he was in serious need of money. Some time at the end of that year he got plenty.
He won't speak; he's much more frightened of someone else than he is of our gentlemanly police force. And, of course, he knows all the tricks. We've got him inside, but only on a three years' sentence; he prefers to serve that rather than open his mouth.”

“Is this as far as you've got?”

Oates looked at the younger man steadily. Campion remembered that cold appraisal of old and it had always made him feel slightly uncomfortable. “No, there's a bit more,” said the Chief at last, “and that's where we come up against something interesting. How long have you known Carados?”

“Johnny?” Mr. Campion felt cold. All through the latter part of the Chief's revelation he had been trying to avoid this horrifying suspicion. “Oh, no,” he said, “no. That's out of the question. Think of his record.”

“Exactly. That's how we all feel. That's how the R.A.F. feels; that's how the Home Office feels. Think of his record, think of his background, think of the man he is.”

The Chief sighed, and stirred himself.

“That's why we're muffling ourselves up in kid gloves and doing our best to disbelieve our own eyes. It's a damnable business.”

Campion remained obstinately blank. “You don't think,” he began at last, “you don't think the size of the thing might have—well, have magnified the probable size of the—er—perpetrator, so that your people have naturally tended to, to—”

“Go a bit nutty,” said Oates dryly. “No, I don't. Nor do I think that the fact that the crimes have been inspired by Fascists has deluded the poor, silly Police Force into thinking they must be the work of the upper classes. No, I wish you were wrong. I don't like the idea any more than you do. Or than he does, poor blighter. I don't believe he's sure, you know.”

Mr. Campion felt his eyes flicker. “Who, Johnny?”

“I wish you wouldn't keep calling him ‘Johnny'; his name's ‘Carados'.”

“I'm sorry; he was called Johnny at school.”

Oates smothered an exclamation of an unpolice chief-like nature. “There you are. ‘At school.' Half the influential people in the country seem to have been at school with him.”

“I wasn't. I only played cricket against him once or twice.”

“It's the same thing. You've known of him for a lifetime, therefore he can't be a crook. I hear it on all sides, everybody says it. I admit I like him myself and I say that the fellow doesn't know if he's guilty or if he isn't.”

Mr. Campion sat thinking of Johnny Carados, and the last conversation he had had with him. Some of the remarks which had then sounded so fantastic were now being echoed by Oates, who was of all things not fantastical.

“Dual personality and what not?” he ventured dubiously.

Oates shrugged his shoulders. “I'm only an old copper, raised to my present eminence by a flash of intelligence in the head of some higher official,” he said, “but in my opinion much of this mental disease we hear about is mainly moral. I know that man well, and I don't think he's mad. I also think he's a good chap, fundamentally; he's brave, he's original and he's used to thinking nothing's too big for him.”

“Well then . . . ?”

“Well then.” Oates was not to be interrupted. “Consider the circumstances. It was a very funny time just before the war. Here's a chap who's devoted his life and his money to the care and fostering of beautiful things. Isn't there something about Art knowing no frontiers?”

“No. That's Science.”

“Same thing. Anyway, there he was, all ready for some clever chap from the other side to work on.”

“Yes, I know, but I can't see him dealing with the underworld.”

“He wouldn't have to, King would see to that. He wouldn't even handle the cash; he'd just lend his name and make the original contacts.”

“You think he might not have realized how it was going to be run?”

“I think he might not have cared,” said Oates grimly. “Don't you read your newspapers? There's a lot of cultured people who believe a life or two is well spent protecting the right kind of picture or pot. He doesn't mind risking his own life, we know that. Very few people do, funnily enough. They only differ about the things they die for. Suppose he doesn't think he's ever been working for Germany; suppose he's certain he's simply been working for Art; suppose he settles his conscience this way?”

“Then he's mad.”

“Is he? I don't think the best Counsel in the world could prove it in Court.”

Campion turned this new possibility over in his mind. Everything but his reason revolted against it.

“I don't like it,” he said. “I don't want to believe it possible.”

“That's everybody's reaction,” said Oates. “I told you, yet all the evidence leads straight to him.”

“Circumstantial evidence?”

“Naturally, or we'd have had to arrest him.” The Chief put both hands on his knees to rub them thoughtfully. “I'm not trying to make a case against the chap,” he complained, “I'm trying not to. We all are. It's these damnable instructions; they still come to him from time to time.”

“From the other side?”

“Yes.” The Chief took the pipe out of his mouth and began to use it to point his story. “We hadn't a ghost of a line on anybody until just about ten months ago, when one of the neutral governments put in a query to my office about a naturalized Roumanian living in Streatham. I suppose you know how the friendly neutrals do these things? They don't lay information, they just ask a shy little question, and that's all there is to it. When the opportunity occurs, we return the compliment.”

Mr. Campion had known it, but wasted no time in saying so.

“We nabbed the bloke just at the right moment,” said Oates. “Caught him with a house full of incriminating stuff. He was untidy, that was the thing which damned him. He
was the only agent I've ever known who wasn't meticulous. He left papers in his collar drawer, even under the bed; I suppose he thought he was safe. He'd been over here thirty-five years, and had a house and a little block-making business in the City, and he'd changed his name to something good and Scots and all his dear old pals of the eight-fifteen swore he was as loyal as a Trafalgar Square lion. But he hadn't a hope, of course. He died in the Tower, very bravely, really. He had some deep emotional dream about castles and counts and kings and mountains and what not, but all in Roumania, unfortunately.”

The Chief paused and shook his head. “What a world,” he said. “Well, among this chap's activities was the usual one of forwarding letters. He used to get them via some six or seven accommodation addresses near where he worked. They get into the country in various ways. A refugee smuggles in what looks like a straight love-letter from a chance acquaintance, and nearly always he acts in complete innocence. He posts it in the ordinary way. Some of the others I honestly believe are dropped.

“Suppose a country chap finds a sealed letter lying in the road. It is stamped and addressed; sometimes he opens it, and its contents mean very little to him. More often than not he just sticks it in a letter-box. Our Roumanian decoded those he received, typed out the message neatly on his little machine and sent them off as ordinary business letters. When he was caught, he was actually doing one. We got the message both in the code and the clear; it was addressed to Carados.”

“I see. And when you showed it to Johnny?”

“He said he'd be damned,” said the Chief. “He convinced me completely. He was so interested, so keen to help and so naturally angry. No innocent man could have behaved more normally. He let it get him for a bit, and kept turning up with suggestions; he gave us every facility and we went over all his papers. We turned his houses out, we talked to all his associates, and we watched his mail, and there wasn't a thing to pin on him. Yeo was in charge of the enquiry, and you know him. He was like an old woman
looking for a postal order she thought she had somewhere; he went on and on and over and over, never tired, and always remembering just one more place to look. Finally he gave it up and said he would as soon suspect himself. Meanwhile the instructions kept coming in to Carados.”