Authors: Nevil Shute
“Frankly,” he said, “I think this is the end of the affair.”
I thought about it for a minute. “It may be,” I said at last, “but I don’t see how you come to that conclusion all the same. You’ve not discovered anything about the directing intelligence behind it all.”
He smiled a little. “That depends on how you look at it,” he said. “Do you doubt that the directing intelligence was Russian in its origin?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Well then,” he replied, “there isn’t any question of the origin, essentially. What you mean is that we haven’t found the intermediate agents. I hope that we shall do so in due course. But the important thing is the discovery. For the time we have stopped the importation of the arms, simply because their secrecy has broken down. That gives us breathing space.”
“Till after the election,” I put in, a little cynically.
He shuffled with the papers on his desk. “I have no concern with that aspect of the matter, as you know.”
I went away, and tried to concentrate upon my work for the next few days. Stenning and Joan had gone back to their place in town, tired, I suppose, of the treatment I had given them. And I went on living in my house alone, working all day and drinking rather heavily all night, dining alone in a black tie, and sitting after dinner in the library till I could feel that I could face my bed.
And after two or three days I came to the conclusion that I was not satisfied. The police might give this up, but I went over to Plymouth one fine afternoon, driving the Bentley faster than I might have done if I had had a little less to drink at lunch. I went to the accountant who handles my audit, and I said to him:
“See here. Isn’t there some intelligence bureau that you people use? I mean, if you want to find out about anyone? For finding out their credit in hire-purchase matters, and that sort of thing?”
He nodded. “Certainly. I can get you a confidential report on anyone, if you like. It’ll cost you one-and-sixpence in the ordinary way.”
It seemed cheap to me. “That boy called Marston who was drowned the other day,” I said, and I gave his address in Colchester. “I want to know about his women friends.”
He wrinkled his brows. “That’s a little out of the ordinary line,” he objected. “The agency will handle it all right, but it may cost you a bit more. You want their names, social position and that sort of thing?”
I nodded. “That’s exactly it. I want a list of all the women he knew well, who would have gone about with him alone. Their addresses, and what you can find out about each of them.”
He mused a little. “It’ll probably be one-and-sixpence each,” he said. “Generally takes about two days. I’ll telephone you when it comes to hand.”
And three days later I had the report. There were only two of them, apparently: a waitress in a Cambridge restaurant, and his cousin, Adela Jennings, lately down from Girton. It did not seem to me that the waitress was the one I wanted, and so I concentrated upon Adela.
She lived at Esher, in her parents’ house. I thought about it for a day, wondering if I should meet all Scotland Yard upon the doorstep of that house, and then I took the car and went to London.
I stayed at my club. Nobody I knew was there, and I was disinclined to go and look for anyone. And so I dined very well, alone, and sat alone in the top smoking-room with my cigar and with a magazine all evening, save once, when a waiter brought me whisky and I stopped him by my chair, and he told me about the Test matches, and we talked for a little time. Then he went away, and I sat on with the decanter by the fire, alone. At about three o’clock I went to bed.
Next morning I drove down to the house at Esher in the Bentley. It was a fair-sized place that stood in its own grounds; I drove up to the front door in my car, and rang the bell, and asked to see Miss Adela. They showed me into a morning-room and presently she came to me, an earnest-looking girl in a dark dress with a touch of black in it.
And when I saw her I knew that I had not gone wrong.
I rose to meet her as she came. “Good afternoon, Miss Jennings,” I said grimly. “I’ve come up from Dartmouth to meet you. I want answers to one or two questions, about your cousin and yourself.”
She stared at me, flaming, indignant at my tone. I was standing by the window in bright light, and suddenly she faltered, and the colour died out of her face. And then she whispered: “Oh.…”
I stood there eyeing her. “You seem to know my face.”
She pulled herself together, and said quietly: “I don’t. Who are you, and what are you doing here?”
I smiled, a little cruelly perhaps. “I’m a sojourner,” I said, “as all my fathers were.”
There was a long, restless pause after that. At last she said: “Have you come from the police?”
I stared her in the eyes. “I’ve come to get answers to my questions,” I said harshly. “True answers, and none of your damn trickery. If you want to know, I’ve come to inquire into a murder.”
She pulled herself together. “I don’t know what you mean.”
I smiled. “Then I’ll explain. You’ve caused the death of five men and a girl, you and your precious friends. I know that much. If you go playing with me any more I shall disclose the whole affair, your part in it as well. You know what that means. Prison for you, and for a damn long spell.”
She sank down on a chair beside the table. “We had considered this,” she said, and as she spoke the tears fell slowly from her eyes. “We knew that if the thing went wrong there would be trouble. It seemed worth it, then. And it has gone most desperately wrong.…”
I laughed. “Then I hope it still seems worth it,” I remarked. I turned serious. “You’d better answer my questions. If you don’t, I shall tell all I know. I shall disclose your cousin Peter as the murderous scoundrel that he really was. I shall disclose your part in it.” She had nothing apparently to say to that. “If you tell the truth I’ll go away and leave things as they are,
maybe, and you can square your conscience in whatever way you choose to kid yourself.”
I paused. “I’m doing this because I think you saved my life, that night upon the beach. But for that fact I’d blast you up and down the country, in and out of gaol, until I had you dead. I’ll give you this one chance.”
She laid her head down on her arms. “You don’t understand,” she sobbed. “You don’t understand at all.”
“I’m dealing with a pack of murderers,” I said. “I understand that part of it all right.”
“You don’t understand,” she sobbed again. And then she said: “It was all for the election.”
I have had many experiences in the life that I have lived, and sometimes I have been afraid. But I do not think that I have ever before experienced the feeling of sheer horror that came over me when she said that. She had said something utterly incredible. In that one swift moment there came to me all the manæuvrings of the hustings and the polling booths, the sordid trickery that forms a background to political affairs. I cannot describe in words the feelings that came over me as I stood there and listened to her sobbing at the table, the tense horror of this first hint that all that had been sacrificed and lost was staked upon some move in party politics.
I strode across and knocked her head up from the table. “Just listen here, young woman,” I said angrily. “Now tell me what you mean.”
She sobbed: “It’s true, and now you’ve got it, and I wish that I was dead.”
I said: “What’s this about the election? By God, you’d better speak the truth!”
I held her head up from the table, and I held her tear-streaked eyes with mine. “The guns had to be hidden at Trepwll before the election. And then they were going to be discovered just before the polling day. It was the only way to save the country from the Socialists.”
I let her head drop back upon the table, and she lay there sobbing unrestrainedly. I walked over to the window and
stood there for a little time, staring out into the sunlit garden and the rhododendrons. Little by little in my mind the monstrous story fell into its place. Long ago the Zinovieff letter lost an election to the Labour Party; the incredible fact appeared to be that this affair had been conceived as such another. Guns had been brought into the country by some politician of the opposing group, and planted in a disaffected area. I could well see that if these arms had been discovered a few days before the poll and evidence supplied that they had come from Russia, the country would swing solid to Conservative.
One thing was evident; this girl had got to tell me all she knew. I crossed the room to her, and laid my hand upon her shoulder. “Come along,” I said, perhaps a little more gently than I had done up till then. “This thing has gone awry. You tell me this thing is just a fake, a movement in some game of party politics. Six people have been killed in playing it, and now it’s got to stop. More may be killed before it runs its course. Sit up, and tell me how it came about.”
And with a little encouragement she dried her eyes, and told me everything. She had hardly said two sentences before I stopped her with a question.
“Who is the directing influence behind this thing? Who organised it, and paid for it?”
She hesitated.
“Come on, now,” I said harshly. “Out with it. If not, I put it with the police.”
The tears fell from her eyes again. “It was Professor Ormsby,” she replied.
I pulled an envelope and pencil from my pocket to make notes. “Christian names, and address?”
“Charles Hemming Ormsby. He’s a Professor of Political Economy. A Fellow of Nicholas—Cambridge.”
I thought about this for a minute. “Who invented the name for the carpet-sweepers—the Greek scholar? Was that him?”
She nodded tearfully. And then, little by little, out it came, until at last I had the whole affair.
I had been shocked by the revelation of the nature of the gun-running. I do not know that I was less shocked at the high ideals that lay behind it all, and at the spirit in which it had been carried out. For the root of it lay in a real patriotism and a love of England, distorted but sincere. And here I may say at once that I found no villainy about the thing. Merely an overwhelming vanity, that could not brook another view of what was beneficial for this country that we live in now.
So far as I could understand, Professor Ormsby, the boy Marston, and this girl, his cousin, were the chief participants in the affair. It had no connexion with official Conservatism at all; it could have none, of course. It was a secret enterprise, conceived by Ormsby and carried out by young Marston in his bawley, whose object was to place a Conservative Government in power in England for the next five years. The whole affair had been most cleverly conceived. The guns had come, in fact, from Russian sources, and Russians had co-operated in the smuggling whole-heartedly. I did not hear the details of that part of it—all that had been manœuvred by Professor Ormsby, but the essence of it was that Communism had been invoked in this affair to bring about its own defeat.
In Marston Professor Ormsby had found a resolute young man, secretive and well suited to carry out the detail of his part. The girl had been introduced by Marston at a later date to help him in some business connected with the bawley; I could well imagine that it was a job that called for company of some description. I found strong evidence to lead me to believe that the man they knew as Palmer was Professor Ormsby himself; I do not think that there was anybody else in the affair at all.
If ever people played about with fire it was that little crowd.
Every trip they made they carried Russians to and from the country; almost immediately their smuggling became a means of introducing agents into England who could not get through the immigration barriers. They had been powerless to prevent this traffic, and contented themselves with the knowledge that
it would not last for long. From the first their lives were carried in their hands. They served their country secretly, as criminals, and the reward that they were earning was a heavy burden to be carried to their graves. They were out to fool the country for the country’s benefit, and no country takes that sort of trick too well.
The girl knew nothing of events for two or three days prior to the end, but from her knowledge she could reconstruct them well. It was impossible that Marston should have taken part in the murders at my house; he would have been down with the bawley at the entrance to the harbour mouth. I am inclined to doubt, in fact, if he had ever known that violence had been done; there was no occasion for the gunmen to have told him, and every reason why it should be kept from him if they desired to make a get-away. He was the only sailor among them, it is to be presumed.
At last it was all done. I had been there two hours, and for the last hour she had been talking collectedly, giving her evidence in a straightforward way. I had three envelopes of notes; I glanced them over and got to my feet. “That’s all?” I inquired. “If there is anything else whatsoever you’d better tell me now.”
She said that there was nothing more to tell. She asked, a little nervously, what I was going to do.
I stared at her. “God knows.” And then I laughed quietly: “Getting a little bit afraid of your own skin, now, I suppose. Well, you needn’t. If what you say is true, you’re out of it. No worse can happen to you than publicity.”
She faltered. “Will it get into the newspapers?”
“God knows,” I said again. Her question sickened me; for the moment I had been back again in Dartmouth with a braver girl than this. I turned upon her viciously. “There were three of you,” I said. “Between you you murdered two men and a harmless girl. That’s what you’ve done, and you’ll remember it.”
There was a little pause. “One of you three is dead, and I shall see the other soon. And you’ll be left alone to live your
time out through the years, with all your memories.” I took my hat from the table. “I must wish you joy of it.”
I drove back up to town and garaged the car, and went back to my club to write. I settled down there in the reading-room, and because I was tired and feeling not so well the stream of tumblers came and went beside my elbow, for the bell was at my side. I wrote on steadily, page after page, and never paused till it was time to drain my glass and go and change for dinner, and then the writing was but half done. And I remember, as I crossed the landing to the stairs, I passed behind two men and heard one say: