Ellery Queen’s Double Dozen

Michael Gilbert The Future of the Service

© Copyright, 1962, by Michael Gilbert.

It is a long time since we have offered you a series of secret service stories. Surprisingly, the secret service story was not as common as one would think. Many of the demi-detectives of fiction, created by such authors as E. Phillips Oppenheim, William Le Queux, Sax Rohmer, and Edgar Wallace, have flirted persistently with international intrigue — but from a realistic point of view they are strictly amateurs or dabblers. Occasionally one of the master manhunters of fiction has taken a fling at counterespionage — Sherlock Holmes, for example, in “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans” and “His Last Bow”; but, as we once remarked, these are random shots in otherwise stately, if not affairs-of-stately, careers.

Now we bring you the first in Michael Gilbert’s new series of secret service short stories in the modern tradition — in the tradition of W. Somerset Maugham’s “Ashenden”... Meet Mr. Colder and his deerhound Rasselas and his old friend Mr. Behrens — they are secret agents (including the dog) of the “old school,” yet they are as contemporary as today’s spy and counterspy and spy-catcher...

“The young man of today,” said Mr. Behrens, “is physically stronger and fitter than his father. He can run a mile faster—”

“A useful accomplishment,” agreed Mr. Calder.

“He can throw a weight farther, can jump higher, and will probably live longer.”

“But not as long as the young lady of today,” said Mr. Calder. “They have a look of awful vitality.”

“Nevertheless,” said Mr. Behrens — he and Mr. Calder, being very old friends, did not so much answer as override each other, and frequently they both spoke at once — “nevertheless, he is, in one important way, inferior to the older generation. He is mentally softer—”

“Morally, too.”

“The two things go together. He has the weaknesses which go with his strength. He is tolerant — but he is flabby. He is intelligent — but he is timid. He is made out of cast iron, not steel.”

“Stop generalizing,” said Mr. Calder. “What’s worrying you?”

Mr. Calder considered the matter, at the same time softly scratching the head of his deerhound, Rasselas, who lay on the carpet beside his chair.

Mr. Behrens, who lived down in the valley, had walked up — as he did regularly on Tuesday afternoons — to take tea with Mr. Calder in his cottage on the hilltop.

“You’re not often right,” said Mr. Calder at last.

“Thank you.”

“But you could be on this occasion. I saw Fortescue yesterday.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Behrens. “He told me you had been to see him. I meant to ask you about that. What did he want?”

“There’s a woman. She has to be killed.”

Rasselas flicked his right ear at an intrusive fly; then, when this proved ineffective, he growled softly and shook his head. “Anyone I know?” said Mr. Behrens.

“I’m not sure. Her name, at the moment, is Lipper — Maria Lipper. She lives in Woking, and is known there as Mrs. Lipper, although I don’t think she has ever been married. She has worked as a typist and filing clerk at the Air Ministry since — oh, since well before the last war.”

Both Mr. Behrens and Mr. Calder spoke of the “last war” in terms of very slight derogation. It had not been their war.

“And how long has she been working for them?”

“Certainly for ten years, possibly more. Security got onto her in the end by selective coding, and that, as you know, is a very slow process.”

“And not one which a jury would understand or accept.”

“Oh, certainly not,” said Mr. Calder. “Certainly not. There could be no question here of judicial process. Maria is a season ticket holder, not a commuter.”

By this Mr. Calder meant that Maria Lipper was a secret agent who collected, piecemeal, all information which came her way, and passed it on at long intervals — of months, or even of years. No messenger came to her. When she had sufficient to interest her masters, she would take it to a collecting point and leave it. Occasional sums of money would come to her through the mail.

“It is a thousand pities,” added Mr. Calder, “that they did not get onto her a little sooner — before operation Prometheus Unbound came off the drawing board.”

“Do you think she knows about that?”

“I’m afraid so,” said Mr. Calder. “I wasn’t directly concerned. Buchanan was in charge. But it was her section that did the Prometheus typing, and when he found out that she had asked for an urgent contact, I think — I really think — he was justified in getting worried.”

“What is he going to do about it?”

“The contact has been short-circuited. I am taking his place. Two days from now Mrs. Lipper is driving down to Portsmouth for a short holiday. She plans to leave Woking very early — she likes clear roads to drive on — and she will be crossing Salisbury Plain at six o’clock. Outside Upavon she turns off the main road. The meeting place is a barn at the top of the track. She has stipulated a payment of five hundred pounds in one-pound notes. Incidentally, she has never before been paid more than fifty.”

“You must be right,” said Mr. Behrens. “I imagine that I am to cover you here. Fortunately, my aunt is taking the waters at Harrogate.”

“If you would.”

“The usual arrangements.”

“The key will be on the ledge over the woodshed door.”

“You’d better warn Rasselas to expect me. Last time he got it into his head that I was a burglar.”

The great hound looked up at the mention of his name and grinned, showing his long white incisors.

“You needn’t worry about Rasselas,” said Mr. Calder. “I’ll take him with me. He enjoys an expedition now and then. All the same, it is a sad commentary on the younger generation that a man of my age has to be sent on an assignment like this.”

“Exactly what I was saying. Where did you put the backgammon board?”

Mr. Calder left his cottage at dusk the following evening. He drove off in the direction of Gravesend, crossed the river by the ferry, and made a circle round London, recrossing the Thames at Reading. He drove his inconspicuous car easily and efficiently. Rasselas lay across the back seat, between a sleeping bag and a portmanteau. He was used to road travel, and slept most of the way.

At midnight the car rolled down the broad High Street of Marlborough and out onto the Pewsey Road. A soft golden moon made a mockery of its headlights.

A mile from Upavon, Mr. Calder pulled up at the side of the road and studied the 1/25000 range map with which he had been supplied. The track leading to the barn was clearly shown. But he had marked a different and roundabout way by which the rendezvous could be approached. This involved taking the next road to the right, following it for a quarter of a mile, then finding a field trade — it was no more than a dotted line even on his large-scale map — which would take him up a small re-entrant. The track appeared to stop just short of the circular contour which marked the top of the down. Across it, as Mr. Calder had seen when he examined the map, ran, in straggling Gothic lettering, the words Slay Down.

The entrance to the track had been shut off by a gate, and was indistinguishable from the entrance to a field. The gate was padlocked too, but Mr. Calder dealt with this by lifting it off its hinges. It was a heavy gate, but he shifted it with little apparent effort. There were surprising reserves of strength in his barrel-shaped body, thick arms, and plump hands.

After a month of fine weather the track, though rutted, was rock-hard. Mr. Calder ran up it until the banks on either side had leveled out and he guessed that he was approaching the top of the rise. There he backed his car into a thicket. For the last part of the journey he had been traveling without side lights. Now he switched off the engine, opened the car door, and sat listening.

At first the silence seemed complete. Then, as the singing of the engine died in his ears, the sounds of the night reasserted themselves. A night jar screamed; an owl hooted. The creatures of the dark, momentarily frozen by the arrival among them of this great palpitating steel-and-glass animal, started to move again. A mile across the valley, where farms stood and people lived, a dog barked.

Mr. Calder took his sleeping bag out of the back of the car and unrolled it. He took off his coat and shoes, loosened his tie, and wriggled down into the bag. Rasselas lay down too, his nose a few inches from Mr. Calder’s head.

In five minutes the man was asleep. When he woke he knew what had roused him. Rasselas had growled, very softly, a little rumbling, grumbling noise which meant that something had disturbed him. It was not the growl of imminent danger; it was a tentative alert.

Mr. Calder raised his head. During the time he had been asleep the wind had risen a little and was now blowing up dark clouds and sending them scudding across the face of the moon; the shadows on the bare down were horsemen — warriors with homed helmets — riding horses with flying manes and tails. Rasselas was following them with his eyes, head cocked. It was as if, behind the piping of the wind, the dog could hear, pitched too high for human ears, the shrill note of a trumpet.

“They’re ghosts,” said Mr. Calder calmly. “They won’t hurt us.” He lay down and was soon fast asleep again.

It was five o’clock and light was coming back into the sky when he woke. It took him five minutes to dress himself and roll up his sleeping bag. His movements seemed unhurried, but he lost no time.

From the back of the car he took out a Groener .25 bore rifle, and clipped on a telescopic sight, which he took from a leather case. A handful of nickel-capped ammunition went into his jacket pocket. Tucking the rifle under his arm, he walked cautiously toward the brow of the hill From the brow, a long thin line of trees, based on scrub, led down to the barn, whose red-brown roof could now be seen just over the slope of the hill.

Mr. Calder thought that the arrangement was excellent. “Made to measure,” was the expression he used. The scrub was thickest round the end tree of the windbreak, and here he propped up the rifle, and then walked the remaining distance to the wall of the barn. He noted that the distance was exactly thirty-three yards.

In front of the barn the path, coming up from the main road, opened out into a flat space — originally a cattle yard, but now missing one wall.

“She’ll drive in here,” thought Mr. Calder, “and she’ll turn the car, ready to get away. They always do that. After a bit she’ll get out of the ear and she’ll stand, watching for me to come up the road.”

When he got level with the barn he saw something that was not marked on the map. It was another track, which came across the down, and had been made, quite recently, by army vehicles from the Gunnery School. A litter of ammunition boxes, empty cigarette cartons, and a rusty beer can suggested that the army had taken over the barn as a staging point for their maneuvers. It was an additional fact. Something to be noted. Mr. Calder didn’t think that it affected his plans. A civilian car, coming from the road, would be most unlikely to take this track, a rough affair, seamed with the marks of Bren carriers and light tanks.

Mr. Calder returned to the end of the trees and spent some minutes piling a few large stones and a log into a small breastworks. He picked up the rifle and set the sights carefully to thirty-five yards. Then he sat down, with his back to the tree, and lit a cigarette. Rasselas lay down beside him.

Mrs. Lipper arrived at ten to six.

She drove up the track from the road, and Mr. Calder was interested to see that she behaved almost exactly as he had predicted. She drove her car into the yard, switched off the engine, and sat for a few minutes. Then she opened the car door and got out.

Mr. Calder snuggled down behind the barrier, moved his rifle forward a little, and centered the sight on Mrs. Lipper’s left breast.

It was at this moment that he heard the truck coming. It was, he thought, a fifteen-hundred-weight truck, and it was coming quite slowly along the rough track toward the barn.

Mr. Calder laid down the rifle and rose to his knees. The truck engine had stopped. From his position of vantage he could see, although Mrs. Lipper could not, a figure in battledress getting out of the truck. It was, he thought, an officer. He was carrying a light rifle, and it was clear that he was after rabbits. Indeed, as Mr. Calder watched, the young man raised his rifle, then lowered it again.

Mr. Calder was interested, even in the middle of his extreme irritation, to see that the officer had aimed at a thicket almost directly in line with the barn.

Three minutes passed in silence. Mrs. Lipper looked twice at her watch. Mr. Calder lay down again in a firing position. He had decided to wait. It was a close decision, but he was used to making close decisions, and he felt certain that this one was right.

The hidden rifle spoke; and Mr. Calder squeezed the trigger of his own. So rapid was his reaction that it sounded like a shot and an echo. In front of his eyes Mrs. Lipper folded onto the ground. She did not fall. It was quite a different movement. It was as though a puppet-master, who had previously held the strings taut, had let them drop and a puppet had tumbled to the ground, arms, legs, and head disjointed.

A moment later the hidden rifle spoke again. Mr. Calder smiled to himself. The timing, he thought, had been perfect He was quietly packing away the telescopic sight, dismantling the small redoubt he had created, and obliterating all signs of his presence. Five minutes later he was back in his car. He had left it facing outward and downhill, and all he had to do was take off the handbrake and start rolling down the track. This was the trickiest moment in the whole operation. It took three minutes to lift the gate, drive the car through, and replace the gate. During the whole of that time no one appeared on the road in either direction.

“And that,” said Mr. Calder, three days later to Mr. Fortescue, “was that.” Mr. Fortescue, a square, sagacious-looking man, was manager of the Westminister branch of the London & Home Counties Bank. No one seeing Mr. Fortescue would have mistaken him for anything but a bank manager — although, in fact, he had certain other, quite important functions.

“I was sorry, in a way, to saddle the boy with it, but I hadn’t any choice.”

“He took your shot as the echo of his?”

“Apparently. Anyway, he went on shooting.”

“You contemplated that he would find the body — either then or later.”

“Certainly.”

“And would assume that he had been responsible — accidentally, of course.”

“I think that he should receive a good deal of sympathy. He had a perfect right to shoot rabbits — the area belongs to the School of Artillery. The woman was trespassing on War Department Property. Indeed, the police will be in some difficulty concluding why she was there at all.”

“I expect they would have been,” said Mr. Fortescue, “if her body had ever been discovered.”

Mr. Calder looked at him.

“You mean,” he said at last, “that no one has been near the barn in the last four days?”

“On the contrary. One of the troops of the Seventeenth Field Regiment, to which your intrusive subaltern belongs, visited the barn only two days later. It was their gun position. The barn itself was the troop command post.”

“Either,” said Mr. Calder, “they were very unobservant soldiers, or one is driven to the conclusion that the body had been moved.”

“I was able,” said Mr. Fortescue, “through my influence with the army, to attend the firing as an additional umpire, in uniform. I had plenty of time on my hands and was able to make a thorough search of the area.”

“I see,” said Mr. Calder. “Yes. It opens up an interesting field of speculation, doesn’t it?”

“Very interesting,” said Mr. Fortescue. “In — er — one or two different directions.”

“Have you discovered the name of the officer who was out shooting?”

“He is a National Service boy — a Lieutenant Blaikie. He is in temporary command of C Troop of A Battery — it would normally be a Captain, but they are short of officers. His Colonel thinks very highly of him. He says that he is a boy of great initiative.”

“There I agree,” said Mr. Calder. “I wonder if the army could find me a suit of battledress.”

“I see you as a Major,” said Mr. Fortescue. “With a 1918 Victory Medal and a 1939 defense medal.”

“The Africa Star,” said Mr. Calder firmly.

One week later Mr. Calder, wearing a Service dress hat half a size too large for him and a battledress blouse which met with some difficulty round the waist, was walking up the path which led to the barn. It was ten o’clock, dusk had just fallen, and around the farm there was a scene of considerable activity as F Troop, B Battery of the Seventeenth Field Regiment settled down for the night.

Four guns were in position, two in front of and two behind the barn. The gun teams were digging slit trenches. Two storm lanterns hung in the barn. A sentry on the path saluted Mr. Calder, who inquired where he would find the Troop Commander.

“He’s got his bivvy up there, sir,” said the sentry.

Peering through the dusk Mr. Calder saw a truck parked on a flat space, beyond the barn, and enclosed by scattered bushes. Attached to the back of the truck, and forming an extension of it, was a sheet of canvas, pegged down as a tent.

Mr. Calder circled the site cautiously. It seemed to him to be just the right distance from the barn and to have the right amount of cover. It was the place he would have chosen himself.

He edged up to the opening of the tent and looked inside. A young subaltern was seated on his bedroll, examining a map. His webbing equipment was hanging on a hook on the back of the truck.

Mr. Calder stooped and entered. The young man frowned, drawing his thick eyebrows together; then he recognized Mr. Calder and smiled.

“You’re one of our umpires, aren’t you, sir,” he said. “Come in.”

“Thank you,” said Mr. Calder. “May I squat on the bedroll?”

“I expect you’ve been round the gun position, sir. I was a bit uncertain about the A.A. defenses myself. I’ve put the sentry slap on top of Slay Down, but he’s out of touch.”

“I must confess,” said Mr. Calder, “that I haven’t examined your dispositions. It was something — well, something rather more personal that I wanted a little chat about.”

“Yes, sir?”

“When you buried her” — Mr. Calder scraped the turf with his heel — “how deep did you put the body?”

There was silence in the tiny tent, which was lit by a single bulb from the dashboard of the truck. The two men might have been on a raft, alone, in the middle of the ocean.

The thing which occurred next did not surprise Mr. Calder. Lieutenant Blaikie’s right hand made a very slight movement outward, checked, and fell to his side again.

“Four feet, into the chalk,” he said quietly.

“How long did it take you?”

“Two hours.”

“Quick work,” said Mr. Calder. “It must have been a shock to you when a night exercise was ordered exactly on this spot, with special emphasis on the digging of slit trenches and gun-pits.”

“It would have worried me more if I hadn’t been in command of the exercise,” said Lieutenant Blaikie. “I reckoned if I pitched my own tent exactly here, no one would dig a trench or a gun-pit inside it. By the way — who are you?”

Mr. Calder was particularly pleased to notice that Lieutenant Blaikie’s voice was under firm control.

He told him who he was, and he made a proposal to him.

“He was due out of the army in a couple of months time,” said Mr. Calder to Mr. Behrens, when the latter came up for a game of backgammon. “Fortescue saw him, and thought him very promising. I was very pleased with his behavior in the tent that night. When I sprung it on him, his first reaction was to reach for the revolver in his webbing holster. It was hanging on the back of his truck. He realized that he wouldn’t be able to get it out in time, and decided to come clean. I think that showed decision and balance, don’t you?”

“Decision and balance are most important,” agreed Mr. Behrens. “Your throw.”