Authors: Dennis Wheatley
This lulled me into a false sense of security. I began to believe that his threats had been only idle ones, and that he had resigned himself to my refusal to go to Russia with him. I was to learn differently.
I belonged to a group of scientists who met once a month for an informal dinner – for which, as a number of us came up from the country, we did not change – at the Connaught Rooms. A distinguished guest always addressed us on some subject of interest and there was a debate afterwards. Sometimes the debates were of such interest that a number of us congregated in the downstairs bar after the meeting had broken up to continue the discussion. If I joined the party in the bar, lingering there made it too late for me to catch the last train back to Farnborough; so I had formed the habit of taking up an overnight bag with me as I had found that I could always get a room at one or other of the small Bloomsbury hotels if need be. Governed, therefore, by my degree of interest in the subject discussed, and how I chanced to be feeling, I either stayed the night in town or got home soon after midnight.
It so happened that a week after my meeting with Lothar, I attended one of these dinners, and stayed on afterwards talking to some of my friends. When I went to the cloakroom to get my night-bag the attendant declared that I had already collected it. In vain I produced my ticket and vowed that I had not. The attendant protested that I had said I had mislaid my ticket, and that on my giving my name, which was on a label attached to the bag, and signing a slip, the bag had been handed to me. She also produced another attendant to confirm that I was the gentleman to whom the bag had been given.
Supposing that a professional thief had impersonated me, I registered a complaint and, as it was by then too late to catch the last train, after trying several hotels that were full I secured a room at one in which I had stayed only once before, and slept in my underclothes.
Next morning, as was my custom on such occasions, on
arriving back in Farnborough I went straight from the station to my office. At the midday break I went home for lunch. As I greeted Dinah I expected her to ask me how I had enjoyed my dinner in London. Instead, looking more radiant than I had seen her for a long time, she threw her arms round my neck and cried:
‘Darling, you ought to go to those dinners of yours more often if you always come home after them. I don’t think we’ve had such a wonderful night since our honeymoon.’
As she was holding me to her I was able to conceal my astonishment. Then, over her shoulder, I distinctly saw Lothar’s face, and it was sneering at me. Instantly the explanation of what Dinah had said became clear. Lothar had impersonated me and slept with her the previous night.
My distress and fury can be imagined; but realising the shattering effect the truth would have on her, I felt that I must prevent her from getting the least suspicion that anything was wrong. Controlling my emotions with an effort, I told her how much I loved her and what a joy she was to me. Later, I found my night-bag in a cupboard in the hall. That was concrete evidence that Dinah had not dreamt my return, and I had no doubt that Lothar had gone to some trouble to collect it, so that he might use it as a sort of sign-manual that he really had been there and taken my place as Dinah’s husband in our bed.
One would have thought such an act, causing me the sick misery that it did, would have been enough to satisfy his resentment at my refusal to fall in with his plans; but it was not.
Three weeks elapsed, during which I gradually became less troubled by thoughts of him and the criminal deception he had practised on Dinah; then one morning I received a solicitor’s letter. It informed me that I was to be cited as corespondent in an action for divorce.
Knowing myself to be guiltless, I went up to London and demanded from the solicitors an explanation of the unjustified charge that had been brought against me. They gave it to me, chapter and verse.
Soon after six o’clock in the evening of the day that I had attended the dinner, a Mr. Wilberforce had caught me in flagrante delicto with his wife in the bedroom of their flat in Bayswater. He had forced me to give him my name and address, and a woman who cleaned for them was prepared to give evidence that, not only had she let me into the flat that evening, but had also done so on two previous occasions. The fact, as I learned later, that Mrs. Wilberforce was a woman of dubious reputation, who frequented night-clubs, made no difference to the legal aspect of the matter. As I had arrived in London that evening at five o’clock and spent the best part of the next two hours watching a film that I had particularly wanted to see, I could produce no alibi.
The only possible explanation was that Lothar, having read my mind and knowing my intentions, had impersonated me with this woman before going down to Farnborough, as a means of being further revenged upon me.
Hardly able to contain myself for fury, I jumped into a taxi and drove straight to Lothar’s rooms. This time the front door was shut. My ring was answered by a blowsy woman who gave me a surly nod and said:
‘Hello Mr. Vintrex, I’d begun to think you wasn’t coming for that envelope you left with me. Hang on half-a-mo’, and I’ll go and get it for you.’
It was obvious that she took me for Lothar, so I let her continue to think so, and she slouched off down into the basement. The moment she had disappeared I tried the door of the room in which I had seen him. It opened at my touch and I walked in on the off chance that I might find something there which would give me a clue to his whereabouts.
A young man with long hair was seated there tapping away at a typewriter. I asked quickly if he happened to know the address of the previous tenant and how long it was since he had left. With a shrug, he replied, ‘No, I don’t even know his name. But I’ve been here a fornight.’
I thanked him and backed out just in time to meet the landlady as she reappeared up the basement stairs. She
handed me an envelope and with a murmur of thanks I left the house.
It had jumped to my mind that Lothar had left some paper with the woman because he thought it too dangerous to carry about with him, so he was still in this country and, with luck, it might be something which would enable me to trace him; or, rather, enable the police to do so, as, by then, I had made up my mind to put them on to him as an enemy agent.
With trembling fingers I opened the envelope. It contained only a single sheet of paper with the following words printed on it in capitals – ‘Congratulations on Dinah. She must love you a lot, and I’m sorry I won’t be in England when you have your next night out. I wonder how she will take it when you have to tell her about the Wilberforce woman?’
My feelings can be imagined as the full implications of the swinish double trick he had played me sank in. And as he had evidently left the country it was useless to go to the police.
Desperately I wondered what to do. At first I felt inclined to tell the truth, both to Dinah and to a solicitor as my defence in the divorce case now pending against me. But since Lothar could no longer be laid by the heels and brought into court as evidence of my innocence, I knew that I should never be believed. I had told Dinah about Lothar, and his being my identical twin, during our engagement, but I don’t think his name had been even mentioned between us since. If only I’d told her about my seeing him in London, or gone to the police then, I would have had some sort of case, but to state now that my twin brother had turned up out of the past and impersonated me would sound laughably thin.
One thing I could do was to subpoena the woman with whom Lothar had lodged because, obviously, I could not have been living in her house and at Farnborough at the same time; and that, in due course, I did, but it did not save the situation.
For some days I said nothing to Dinah, but I became so
ill from worry that I decided the only way to escape a nervous breakdown was to come clean with her. Of course, I did not tell her that Lothar had slept with her that night I was in London, or that he was a Russian agent, as the first would have inflicted grievous pain on her unnecessarily and the second, if it now got out – my not having reported that at the time – might have cost me my job to no good purpose. I told her only that I had seen Lothar in London and that he had used my name when caught with the Wilber - force woman.
Dinah behaved very well; but it was obvious that she did not believe my story. She took a night to think things over, then told me that our future must depend on what transpired when the case was heard. If I could prove my innocence she would most humbly beg my pardon for having doubted me. If I’d suffered a temporary aberration and it was a single slip, she would forgive me. But if it emerged that I had been having a regular affair with this woman, she would have to think again. In the meantime she meant to go back and live with her parents.
As the case could not be heard until the autumn session, I spent a miserable summer. At last it came on and in court I saw Mrs. Wilberforce for the first time. She was a Spanish type black-haired and good looking, and had plenty of sex appeal. I suppose I should have expected it, but to my horror she greeted me as an old friend, and said, with a reproachful smile:
‘I do think, Otto, you’ve behaved awfully badly in not writing or coming to see me all this time. What’s done’s done, and it couldn’t have made matters any the worse for you.’
All I could do was to make no reply and give her a stony stare.
The case did not take long, as my only witness, the lodging-house woman, let me down completely. My solicitor had told me that she had proved extremely awkward and refused to sign a statement; and now in court she declared on oath that she had never before set eyes on me.
Her reason was not far to seek. She must have been in the pay the Russians to take lodgers that they sent her, ask no questions and keep her mouth shut. Evidently she believed me to be a Soviet agent and, for her own safety, had determined to deny all knowledge of me, so that should I later be arrested she would escape being involved in the case.
The verdict, of course, went against me; but after that I thought my fortunes were changing for the better. The cross-examination of the Wilberforces’ cleaning woman had disclosed that her mistress frequently entertained men alone in the flat when her husband was absent; so the damages awarded to Wilberforce were much less than I had feared I should have to pay and, as this also revealed her as unlikely to be the kind of woman I would have had a regular affair with, I had good hopes that Dinah would return to me.
Alas, I had underestimated Lothar’s vindictiveness. With diabolical cunning he had left a hidden landmine to make more certain the wrecking of my marriage. Like so much else about us, our writing was so similar that he had never had any difficulty in forging mine, and he had made most skilful use of a letter purporting to have been written by me to Mrs. Wilberforce.
In it he referred with filthy delight to certain obscenities in which they had indulged on his previous visits to her, and said how greatly he was looking forward to another session of the same kind when he came to see her at six o’clock on the evening of my dinner in London. But instead of sending it to her he had sent it to her husband with an anonymous note to the effect that the writer had found it in a handbag that she had left behind in a night-club. It was this which had led Wilberforce to turn up at their flat unexpectedly at the hour given, as Lothar had evidently planned he should, and so catch them in bed together.
Fortunately for my reputation, as the case against me appeared such a clear one the contents of the letter had not been disclosed in court but only mentioned as the reason
for Wilberforce having surprised his wife. But the solicitors who were holding a watching brief for Dinah requested a sight of it afterwards, and their report to her proved my final undoing. She started divorce proceedings against me and early in 1951 was granted her decree nisi.
I have not seen Lothar in the flesh, or heard anything of him, since our one meeting in May 1950. But I feel certain that he is now in England, and have the impression that he is living somewhere near the East Coast. Anyway, he is endeavouring to condition my mind to a state in which I would be prepared to meet him again. Should he succeed, it is quite possible that this time I shall murder him. It is in case I should do so that I have set all this down; as it may be regarded as some justification for my act, and stand me in better stead than would the same account if extracted from me, piece by piece, under police examination after the crime had been committed.
Apart from the poignant tragedy unfolded in it, this second instalment gave Verney considerable concern. From it there could be no doubt that Lothar had completely gone over to the Russians. Therefore, if he was now in England and endeavouring to get hold of his brother, the odds were all against his wanting to do so only for personal reasons; it was much more likely that he hoped to induce him to give away information connected with his secret work and was, in fact, a Soviet agent.
That being so, no effort must be spared to secure his arrest. But with the information so far to hand, there was no more chance of finding him than a needle in a haystack. Owing to Otto’s justifiable hatred of Lothar, it seemed unlikely that he would be persuaded to agree to a meeting but, if he did, Lothar would have to disclose his whereabouts to him, and then would come a chance to pounce. Perhaps at that point Otto might be persuaded to co-operate; but, in asking him to do so, Verney saw a snag. If Lothar was overlooking him he might learn of his brother’s intention to betray him and so avoid the trap.
After some thought C.B. decided to await developments for a while, but to take the precaution of sending Forsby two extra assistants with instructions that, should Otto leave the station, they were to tail him and, if he met his twin, arrest both brothers.