Spinsters in Jeopardy

Chapter IV The Elusiveness of Mr. Garbel

i

Ricky woke up before they could get him to the car and was bewildered to find himself transported. He was hot, hungry, thirsty and uncomfortable, and he required immediate attention.

While Troy and Alleyn looked helplessly about the open platform Raoul advanced from the car, his face brilliant with understanding. He squatted on his heels beside the flushed and urgent Ricky and addressed him in very simple French which he appeared to understand and to which he readily responded. Marie, of the figurines, Raoul explained to the parents, would offer suitable hospitality and he and Ricky went off together, Ricky glancing up at him with admiration.

“It appears,” Alleyn said, “that a French nanny and those bi-weekly conversational tramps with Mademoiselle to the Round Pond have not been unproductive. Our child has the rudiments of the language.”

“Mademoiselle,” Troy rejoined, “says he’s prodigiously quick for his age. An amazing child, she thinks.” And she added hotly: “Well, all right, I don’t say so to anyone else, do I?”

“My darling, you do not and you shall never say so too often to me. But for the moment let us take our infant phenomenon for granted and look at the situation Chèvre d’Argent. Tell me as quickly as you can, what happened before i cropped up among those cups of tea on the roof-top.”

They sat together on the running-board of the car and Troy did her best. “Admirable,” he said when she had finished. “I felt in love with you in the first instance because you made such beautiful statements. Now, what do you suppose goes on in that house?”

“Something quite beastly,” she said vigorously. “I’m sure of it. Oberon’s obviously dishing out to his chums some fantastic hodgepodge of mysticism-cum-religion-cum, I’m very much afraid, eroticism. Grizel Locke attempted a sort of résumé. You never heard such a rigmarole… yoga, Nietzsche, black-magic. Voo-doo, I wouldn’t be surprised. With Lord knows what fancy touch of their own thrown in. It ought to be merely silly but it’s not, its frightening. Grizel Locke, I should say, is potty but the two young ones in any other setting would have struck me as being pleasant children. The boy’s obviously in a state about the girl, who seems to be completely in Oberon’s toils. It’s so fantastic, it isn’t true.”

“Have you ever heard of the case of Horus and the Swami Vivi Ananda?”

“No.”

“They appeared before Curtis Bennett with Edward Carson prosecuting and got swinging sentences for their pains. There’s no time to tell you about them now, but you’ve more or less described their setup and I assure you there’s nothing so very unusual about the religio-erotic racket. Oberon’s name, by the way, is Albert George Clarkson. He’s a millionaire and undoubtedly one of the drug barons. The cult of the Children of the Sun in the Outer is merely a useful sideline and a means, I suspect, of gratifying a particularly nasty personal taste. They suggested as much at the Sûreté though they don’t know exactly what goes on among the Sun’s Babies. The Sûreté is interested solely in the narcotics side of the show and the Yard’s watching it from our end.”

“And you?”

“I’m supposed to be the perishing link or something. What about the red-headed gentleman with painty hands and a carryover who was letting you out?”

“He might be serious, Rory. He’s Carbury Glande. He paints those post-surrealist things… witches’ sabbaths and mystic unions. You must remember. Rather pretty colour and good design, but a bit nasty in feeling. The thing is, he knows me and although I asked him not to, he’ll probably talk.”

“Does he know about us?”

“I can’t tell. He might.”

“Damn!”

“I shouldn’t have come, should I? If Glande knows who you are, he won’t be able to resist telling them and bang goes your job.”

“They didn’t give me Glande’s name at the Sûreté. He must be a later arrival. Never mind, we’ll gamble on his not knowing you made a mésalliance with a policeman. Now, listen, my darling, I don’t know how long I’ll be up here. It may be an hour: md it may be twenty-four. Will you settle yourself and Ricky at the Royal and forget about the Chèvre d’Argent? If there’s any goat on the premises it will probably be your devoted husband. I’ll make what hay I can while the sun shines in the Outer and I’ll turn up as soon as maybe. One thing more. Will you try, when you’ve come to your poor senses, to ring up Mr. Garbel? He may not be on the telephone, of course, but if he is…”

“Lord, yes! Mr. Garbel! Now why, for pity’s sake, did Robin Herrington run like a rabbit at the mention of P.E. Garbel? Can cousin Garbel be a drug baron? Or an addict, if it comes to that? It might account for his quaint literary style.”

“Have you, by any chance, brought his letters?”

“Only the last, for the sake of his address.”

“Hang on to it, I implore you. If he is on the telephone and answers, ask him to luncheon tomorrow and I’ll be there. If, by any chance, he turns up before then, find out if he knows any of Oberon’s chums and is prepared to talk about them. Here come Raoul and Ricky. Forget about this blasted business, my own true love, and enjoy yourself if you can.”

“What about Miss Truebody?”

“Baradi is pretty worried, he says. I’m quite certain he’s doing all that can be done for her. He’s a kingpin at his job, you know, however much he may stink to high heaven as a chap.”

“Shouldn’t I wait with her?”

“No. Any more of that and I’ll begin to think you like having your hand kissed by luscious Oriental gentlemen. Hullo, Rich, ready for your drive?”

Ricky advanced with his hands behind his back and with strides designed to match those of his companion. “Is Raoul driving us?” he asked.

“He is. You and Mummy.”

“Good. Daddy, look! Look, Mummy!”

He produced from behind his back a little goat, painted silver grey with one foot upraised and mounted on a base that roughly traced the outlines of the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent. “The old lady made it and Raoul gave it to me,” Ricky said. “It’s a silver goat and when it’s nighttime it makes itself shine. Doesn’t it, Raoul? N’est ce pas, Raoul?”

“Oui. Une chèvre d’argent qui s’illumine.”

“Daddy, isn’t Raoul kind?”

Alleyn, a little embarrassed, told Raoul how kind he was and Troy, haltingly, attempted to say that he shouldn’t.

Raoul said: “But it is nothing, Madame. If it pleases this young gallant and does not offend Madame, all is well. What are my orders. Monsieur?”

“Will you drive Madame and Ricky to their hotel? Then go to M. le Commissaire at the Préfecture and give him this letter. Tell him that I will call on him as soon as possible. Tell him also about the operation and of course reply to any questions he may ask. Then return here. There is no immediate hurry and you will have time for déjeuner. Do not report at the Château but wait here for me. If I haven’t turned up by 3:30 you may ask for me at the Château. You will remember that?”

Raoul repeated his instructions. Alleyn looked steadily at him. “Should you be told I am not there, drive to the nearest telephone, ring up the Préfecture and tell M. le Commissaire precisely what has happened. Understood?”

“Well understood. Monsieur.”

“Good. One thing more, Raoul. Do you know anyone in Roqueville called Garbel?”

“Garr-bel? No, Monsieur. It will be an English person for whom Monsieur enquires?”

“Yes. The address is 16 Rue des Violettes.”

Raoul repeated the address. “It is an apartment house, that one. It is true one finds a few English there, for the most part ladies no longer young and with small incomes who do not often engage taxis.”

“Ah well,” Alleyn said. “No matter.”

He took off his hat and kissed his wife. “Have a nice holiday,” he said, “and give my love to Mr. Garbel.”

“What were you telling Raoul?

“Wouldn’t you like to know! Goodbye, Rick. Take care of your mama, she’s a good kind creature and means well.”

Ricky grinned. He was quick, when he didn’t understand his father’s remarks, to catch their intention from the colour of his voice. “Entendu, “ he said, imitating Raoul, and climbed into the car beside him.

“I suppose I may sit here?” he said airily.

“He is a precocious little perisher and no mistake,” Alleyn muttered. “Do you suppose it’ll all peter out and he’ll be a dullard by the time he’s eight?”

“A lot of it’s purely imitative. It sounds classier than it is. Move up, Ricky, I’m coming in front, too.”

Alleyn watched the car drive down the steep lane to the main road. Then he turned back to the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent.

ii

On the way back to Roqueville Raoul talked nursery French to Ricky and Troy, pointing out the places of interest: the Alpine monastery where, in the cloisters, one might see many lively pictures executed by the persons of the district whose relations had been saved from abrupt destruction by the intervention of Our Lady of Paysdoux; villages that looked as if they had been thrown against the rocks and had stuck to them; distant prospects of little towns. On a lonely stretch of road, Troy offered him a cigarette and while he lit it he allowed Ricky to steer the scarcely moving car. Ricky’s dotage on Raoul intensified with every kilometre they travelled together and Troy’s understanding of French improved with astonishing rapidity. Altogether they enjoyed each other’s company immensely and the journey seemed a short one. They could scarcely believe that the cluster of yellow and pink buildings that presently appeared beneath them was Roqueville.

Raoul turned aside from the steeply descending road and drove down a narrow side-street past an open market where bunches of dyed immortelles hung shrilly above the stalls and the smells of tuberoses was mingled with the pungency of fruit and vegetables. All the world, Raoul said, was abroad at this hour in the market and he flung loud unembarrassed greetings to many persons of his acquaintance. Troy felt her spirits rising and Ricky dropped into the stillness that with him was a sign of extreme pleasure. He sighed deeply and laid one hand on Raoul’s knee and one, clasping his silver goat, on Troy’s.

They were in a shadowed street where the houses were washed over with faint candy-pink, lemon and powder-blue. Strings of washing hung from one iron balcony to another.

“Rue des Violettes,” Raoul said, pointing to the street-sign and presently halted. “Numéro seize.”

Troy gathered that he offered her an opportunity to call on Mr. Garbel or, if she was not so inclined, to note the whereabouts of his lodging. She could see through the open door into a dim and undistinguished interior. A number of raffish children clustered about the car. They chattered in an incomprehensible patois and stared with an air of hardihood at Ricky, who instantly became stony.

Troy thought Raoul was offering to accompany her into the house, but sensing panic in the breast of her son, she managed to say that she would go in by herself. “I can leave a note,” she thought, and said to Ricky. “I won’t be a moment. You stay with Raoul, darling.”

“O.K.,” he agreed, still fully occupied with disregarding the children. He was like a dog who, when addressed by his master, wags his tail but does not lower his hackles. Raoul shouted at the children and made a shooing noise driving them from the car. They retreated a little, skittishly twitting him. He got out and opened the door for Troy, removing his cap as if she were a minor royalty. Impressed by this evidence of prestige, most of the children fell back, though two of the hardier raised a beggar’s plaint and were silenced by Raoul.

The door of Number 16 was ajar. Troy pushed it open and crossed a dingy tessellated floor to a lift-well beside which hung a slotted board holding cards, some with printed and some with written names on them. She had begun hunting up and down the board when a voice behind her said: “Madame?”

Troy turned as if she’d been struck. The door of a sort of cubby-hole opposite the lift was held partly open by a grimy and heavily ringed hand. Beyond the hand Troy could see folds of a black satin dress, an iridescence of bead-work and three quarters of a heavy face and piled-up coiffure.

She felt as if she’d been caught doing something shady. Her nursery French deserted her.

“Pardon,” she stammered. “Je désire — je cherche — Monsieur — Garbel — le nom de Garbel.”

The woman said something incomprehensible to Troy, who replied, “Je ne parle pas français. Malheureusement,” she added on an afterthought. The woman made a resigned noise and waddled out of her cubby-hole. She was enormously fat and used a walking stick. Her eyes were like black currants sunk in uncooked dough. She prodded with her stick at the top of the board and, strangely familiar in that alien place, a spidery signature in faded ink was exhibited: “P.E. Garbel.”

“Ah, merci,” Troy cried, but the fat woman shook her head contemptuously and appeared to repeat her former remark. This time Troy caught something like… “Pas chez elle… il y a vingt-quatre heures.”

“Not at home?” shouted Troy in English. The woman shrugged heavily and began to walk away. “May I leave a note?” Troy called to her enormous back. “Puis-je vous donner un billet pour Monsieur?”

The woman stared at her as if she were mad. Troy scrambled in her bag and produced a notebook and the stub of a BB pencil. Sketches she had made of Ricky in the train fell to the floor. The woman glanced at them with some appearance of interest. Troy wrote: “Called at 11:15. Sorry to have missed you. Hope you can lunch with us at the Royal tomorrow.” She signed the note, folded it over and wrote: “M.P.E. Garbel” on the flap. She gave it to the woman (was she a concierge?) and stooped to recover her sketches, aware as she did so, of a dusty skirt, dubious petticoats and broken shoes. When she straightened up it was to find her note displayed with a grey-rimmed sunken finger-nail jabbing at the inscription. “She can’t read my writing,” Troy thought and pointed first to the card and then to the note, nodding like a mandarin and smiling constrainedly. “Garbel,” said Troy, “Gar-r-bel.” She remembered about tipping and pressed a 100 franc note into the padded hand. This had an instantaneous effect. The woman coruscated with black unlovely smiles. “Mademoiselle,” she said, gaily waving the note. “Madame,” Troy responded. “Non, non, non, non. Mademoiselle,” insisted the woman with an ingratiating leer.

Troy supposed this to be a compliment. She tried to look deprecating, made an ungraphic gesture and beat a retreat.

Ricky and Raoul were in close conversation in the car when she rejoined them. Three of the hard-boiled children were seated on the running-board while the others played leap-frog in an exhibitionist manner up and down the street.

“Darling,” Troy said as they drove away, “you speak French much better than I do.”

Ricky slewed his eyes round at her. They were a brilliant blue and his lashes, like his hair, were black. “Naturellement!” he said.

“Don’t be a prig, Ricky,” said his mother crossly. “You’re much too uppity. I think I must be bringing you up very badly.”

“Why?”

“Now then!” Troy warned him.

“Did you see Mr. Garbel, Mummy?”

“No, I left a note.”

“Is he coming to see us?”

“I hope so,” said Troy and after a moment’s thought added: “If he’s true.”

“If he writes letters to you he must be true,” Ricky pointed out. “Naturellement!”

Raoul drove them into a little square and pulled up in front of the hotel.

At that moment the concierge at 16 Rue des Violettes, after having sat for ten minutes in morose cogitation, dialled the telephone number of the Chèvre d’Argent.

iii

Alleyn and Baradi stood on either side of the bed. The maid, an elderly pinched-looking woman, had withdrawn to the window. The beads of her rosary clicked discreetly through her fingers.

Miss Truebody’s face, still without its teeth, seemed to have collapsed about her nose and forehead and to be less than human-sized. Her mouth was a round hole with puckered edges. She was snoring. Each expulsion of her breath blew the margin of the hole outwards and each intake sucked it in so that in a dreadful way her face was busy. Her eyes were incompletely closed and her almost hairless brows drawn together in a meaningless scowl.

“She will be like this for some hours,” Baradi said. He drew Miss Truebody’s wrist from under the sheet: “I expect no change. She is very ill, but I expect no change for some hours.”

“Which sounds,” Alleyn said absently, “like a rough sketch for a villanelle.”

“You are a poet?”

Alleyn waved a hand: “Shall we say, an undistinguished amateur.”

“You underrate yourself, I feel sure,” Baradi said, still holding the flaccid wrist. “You publish?”

Alleyn was suddenly tempted to say: “The odd slim vol.” but he controlled himself and made a slight modest gesture that was entirely non-committal. Dr. Baradi followed this up with his now familiar comment. “Mr. Oberon,” he said, “will be delighted,” and added: “He is already greatly moved by your personality and that of your enchanting wife.”

“For my part,” Alleyn said, “I was enormously impressed with his.”

He looked with an air of ardent expectancy into that fleshy mask and could find it in no line or fold that was either stupid or credulous. What was Baradi? Part Egyptian, part French? Wholly Egyptian? Wholly Arab? “Which is the kingpin,” Alleyn speculated, “Baradi or Oberon?” Baradi, taking out his watch, looked impassively into Alleyn’s face. Then he snapped open his watch and a minute went past, clicked out by the servant’s beads.

“Ah, well,” Baradi muttered, putting up his watch, “it is as one would expect. Nothing can be done for the time being. This woman will report any change. She is capable and, in the village, has had some experience of sickbed attendance. My man will be able to relieve her. We may have difficulty in securing a trained nurse for tonight, but we shall manage.”

He nodded at the woman, who came forward and listened passively to his instructions. They left her, nun-like and watchful, seated by the bed.

“It is eleven o’clock, the hour of meditation,” Baradi said as they walked down the passage, “so we must not disturb. There will be something to drink in my room. Will you join me? Your car has not yet returned.”

He led the way into the Chinese room where his servant waited behind a table set with Venetian goblets, dishes of olives and sandwiches and something that looked like Turkish Delight. There was also champagne in a silver ice-bucket. Alleyn was almost impervious to irregular hours but the last twenty-four had been exacting, the heat was excessive, and the reek of ether had made him feel squeamish. Lager was his normal choice but champagne would have done very nicely indeed. It was an arid concession to his job that obliged him to say with what he hoped was the right degree of pale complacency: “Will you forgive me if I have water? You see, I’ve lately become rather interested in a way of life that excludes alcohol.”

“But how remarkable. Mr. Oberon will be most interested. Mr. Oberon,” Baradi said — signing to the servant that the champagne was to be opened —“is perhaps the greatest living authority on such matters. His design for living transcends many of the ancient cults, drawing from each its purest essence. A remarkable synthesis. But while he himself achieves a perfect balance between austerity and, shall we say, selective enjoyment, he teaches that there is no merit in abstention for the sake of abstention. His disciples are encouraged to experience many pleasures, to choose them with the most exquisite discrimination: ‘arrange’ them, indeed, as a painter arranges his pictures or a composer traces out the design for a fugue. Only thus, he tells us, may the Untimate Goal be reached. Only thus may one experience Life to the Full. Believe me, Mr. Alleyn, he would smile at your rejection of this admirable vintage, thinking it as gross an error, if you will forgive me, as over-indulgence. Let me persuade you to change your mind. Besides, you have had a trying experience. You are a little nauseated, I think, by the fumes of ether. Let me, as a doctor,” he ended playfully, “insist on a glass of champagne.”

Alleyn had taken up a ruby goblet and was looking into it with admiration. “I must say,” he said, “this is all most awfully interesting: what you’ve been saying about Mr. Oberon’s teaching, I mean. You make my own fumbling ideas seem pitifully naïve.” He smiled. “I should adore some champagne from this quite lovely goblet.”

He held it out and watched the champagne mount and cream. Baradi was looking at him across the rim of his own glass. One could scarcely, Alleyn thought, imagine a more opulent picture: the corrugations of hair glistened, the eyes were lustrous, the nose over-hung a bubbling field of amber stained with ruby, one could guess at the wide expectant lips.

“To the fullness of life,” said Dr. Baradi.

“Yes, indeed,” Alleyn rejoined, and they drank.

The champagne was, in fact, admirable.

Alleyn’s head was as strong as the next man’s but he had had a light breakfast and therefore helped himself freely to the sandwiches, which were delicious. Baradi, always prepared, Alleyn supposed, to experience life to the full, gobbled up the sweetmeats, popping them one after another into his red mouth and abominably washing them down the champagne.

The atmosphere took on a spurious air of unbuttoning, which Alleyn was careful to encourage. So far, he felt tolerably certain, Baradi knew nothing about him, but was nevertheless concerned to place him accurately. The situation was a delicate one. If Alleyn could establish himself as an eager neophyte to the synthetic mysteries preached by Mr. Oberon, he would have taken a useful stop towards the performance of his job. At least he would be able to give an inside report on the domestic setup in the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent. Officers on loan to the Special Branch preserve a strict anonymity and it was unlikely that his name would be known in the drug-racket as an M I.5. investigator. It might be recognized, however, as that of a detective-officer of the C.I.D. Carbury Glande might respect Troy’s request, but if he didn’t, it was more than likely that he or one of the others would remember she had married a policeman. Allyn himself remembered the exuberances of the gossip columnists at the time of their marriage and later, when Troy had held one-man shows or when he had appeared for the police in some much-publicized case. It looked as if he should indeed make what hay he could while the sun shone on the Chèvre d’Argent.

“If Miss Truebody and I get through this party,” he thought. “ blow me down if I don’t take her out and we’ll break a bottle of fizz on our own account.”

Greatly cheered by this thought, he began to talk about poetry and esoteric writing, speaking of Rabindranath Tagore and the Indian “Tantras,” of the “Amanga Ranga” and parts of the Cabala. Baradi listened with every appearance of delight, but Alleyn felt a little as if he were prodding at a particularly resilient mattress. There seemed to be no vulnerable spot and, what was worse, his companion began to exhibit signs of controlled restlessness. It was clear that the champagne was intended for a stirrup cup and that he waited for Alleyn to take his departure. Yet, somewhere, there must be a point of penetration. And remembering with extreme distaste Dr. Baradi’s attentions to Troy, Alleyn drivelled hopefully onward, speaking of the secret rites of Eleusis and the cult of Osiris. Something less impersonal at last appeared in Baradi as he listened to these confidences. The folds of flesh running from the corners of his nostrils to those of his mouth became more apparent and he began to look like an Eastern and more fleshy version of Charles II. He went to the bureau by Vernis-Martin, unlocked it, and presently laid before Alleyn a book bound in grey silk on which a design had been painted in violet, green and repellent pink.

“A rare and early edition,” he said. “Carbury Glande designed and executed the cover. Do admire it!”

Alleyn opened the book at the page. It was a copy of The Memoirs of Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade.

“A present,” said Baradi, “from Mr. Oberon.”

It was unnecessary, Alleyn decided, to look any further for the chink in Dr. Baradi’s armour.

From this moment, when he set down his empty goblet on the table in Dr. Baradi’s room, his visit to the Chèvre d’Argent developed into a covert battle between himself and the doctor. The matter under dispute was Alleyn’s departure. He was determined to stay for as long as the semblance of ordinary manners could be preserved. Baradi obviously wanted to get rid of him, but for reasons about which Alleyn could only conjecture, avoided any suggestion of precipitancy. Alleyn felt that his safest line was to continue in the manner of a would-be disciple to the cult of the Children of the Sun. Only thus, he thought, could he avoid planting in Baradi a rising suspicion of his own motives. He must be a bore, a persistent bore, but no more than a bore. And he went gassing on, racking his memory for remnants of esoteric gossip. Baradi spoke of a telephone call. Alleyn talked of telepathic communication. Baradi said that Troy would doubtless be anxious to hear about Miss Truebody;

Alleyn asked if Miss Truebody would not be greatly helped by the banishment of anxiety from everybody’s mind. Baradi mentioned luncheon. Alleyn prattled of the lotus posture. Baradi said he must not waste any more of Alleyn’s time; Alleyn took his stand on the postulate that time, in the commonly accepted sense of the word, did not exist. A final skirmish during which an offer to enquire for Alleyn’s car was countered by Rosicrucianism and the fiery cross of the Gnostics, ended with Baradi saying that he would have another look at Miss Truebody and must then report to Mr. Oberon. He said he would be some time and begged Alleyn not to feel he must wait for his return. At this point Baradi’s servant reappeared to say a telephone call had come through for him. Baradi at once remarked that no doubt Alleyn’s car would arrive before he returned. He regretted that Mr. Oberon’s meditation class would still be in progress and must not be interrupted, and he suggested that Alleyn might care to wait for his car in the hall or in the library. Alleyn said that he would very much like to stay where he was and to examine the de Sade. With a flush of exasperation mounting on his heavy cheeks, Baradi consented, and went out, followed by his man.

They had turned to the right and gone down the passage to the hall. The rings on an embossed leather curtain in the entrance clashed as they went through.

Alleyn was already squatting at the Vernis-Martin bureau.

He had the reputation in his department of uncanny accuracy when a quick search was in question. It’s doubtful if he ever acted more swiftly than now. Baradi had left the bottom drawer of the bureau open.

It contained half a dozen books, each less notorious if more infamous than the de Sade, and all on the proscribed list at Scotland Yard. He lifted them one by one and replaced them.

The next drawer was locked but yielded to the application of a skeleton-key Alleyn had gleaned from a housebreaker of virtuosity. It contained three office ledgers and two note-books. The entries in the first ledger were written in a script that Alleyn took to be Egyptian but occasionally there appeared proper names in English characters. Enormous sums of money were shown in several currencies: piastres, francs, pounds and lire neatly flanked each other in separate columns. He turned the pages rapidly, his hearing fixed on the passage outside, his mind behind his eyes.

Between the first ledger and the second lay a thin quarto volume in violet leather, heavily embossed. The design was tortuous, but Alleyn recognized a pentagram, a triskelion, winged serpents, bulls and a broken cross. Superimposed over the whole was a double-edged sword with formalized flames rising from it in the shape of a raised hand. The covers were mounted with a hasp and lock which he had very little trouble in opening.

Between the covers was a single page of vellum, elaborately illuminated and embellished with a further number of symbolic ornaments. Baradi had been gone three minutes when Alleyn began to read the text:

Alleyn uttered a single violent expletive, relocked the covers and opened the second ledger.

It was inscribed: “Compagnie Chimique des Alpes Maritimes,” and contained names, dates and figures in what appeared to be a balance of expenditure and income. Alleyn’s attention sharpened. The company seemed to be showing astronomical profits. His fingers, nervous and delicate, leafed through the pages, moving rhythmically.

Then abruptly they were still. Near the bottom of a page, starting out of the unintelligible script and written in a small, rather elaborate handwriting, was a name — P. E. Garbel.

The curtain rings clashed in the passage. He had locked the drawer and with every appearance of avid attention was hanging over the de Sade, when Baradi returned.

iv

Baradi had brought Carbury Glande with him and Alleyn thought he knew why. Glande was introduced and after giving Alleyn a damp runaway handshake, retired into the darker part of the room fingering his beard, and eyed him with an air, half curious, half defensive. Baradi said smoothly that Alleyn had greatly admired the de Sade book-wrapper and would no doubt be delighted to meet the distinguished artist. Alleyn responded with an enthusiasm which he was careful to keep on an amateurish level. He said he wished so much he knew more about the technique of painting. This would do nicely, he thought, if Glande, knowing he was Troy’s husband, was still unaware of his job. If, on the other hand, Glande knew he was a detective, Alleyn would have said nothing to suggest that he tried to conceal his occupation. He thought it extremely unlikely that Glande had respected Troy’s request for anonymity. No. Almost certainly he had reported that their visitor was Agatha Troy, the distinguished painter of Mr. Oberon’s “Boy with a Kite.” And then? Either Glande had also told them that her husband was a C.I.D. officer, in which case they would be anxious to find out if his visit was pure coincidence; or else Glande had been able to give little or no information about Alleyn and they merely wondered if he was as ready a subject for skulduggery as he had tried to suggest. A third possibility and one that he couldn’t see at all clearly, involved the now highly debatable integrity of P. E. Garbel.

Baradi said that Alleyn’s car had not arrived, and with no hint of his former impatience suggested that they show him the library.

It was on the far side of the courtyard. On entering it he was confronted with Troy’s “Boy with a Kite.” Its vigour and cleanliness struck like a sword-thrust across the airlessness of Mr. Oberon’s library. For a second the “Boy” looked with Ricky’s eyes at Alleyn.

A sumptuous company of books lined the walls with the emphasis, as was to be expected, upon mysticism, the occult and Orientalism. Alleyn recognized a number of works that a bookseller’s catalogue would have described as rare, curious, and collector’s items. Of far greater interest to Alleyn, however, was a large framed drawing that hung in a dark corner of that dark room. It was, he saw, a representation, probably medieval, of the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent and it was part elevation and part plan. After one desirous glance he avoided it. He professed himself fascinated with the books and took them down with ejaculations of interest and delight. Baradi and Glande watched him and listened.

“You are a collector, perhaps, Mr. Allen?” Baradi conjectured.

“Only in a very humble way. I’m afraid my job doesn’t provide for the more expensive hobbies.”

There was a moment’s pause. “Indeed?” Baradi said. “One cannot, alas, choose one’s profession. I hope yours is at least congenial.”

Alleyn thought: “He’s fishing. He doesn’t know or he isn’t sure.” And he said absently, as he turned the pages of a superb Book of the Dead, “I suppose everyone becomes a little bored with his job at times. What a wonderful thing this is, this book. Tell me, Dr. Baradi, as a scientific man—”

Baradi answered his questions. Glande glowered and shuffled impatiently. Alleyn reflected that by this time it was possible that Baradi and Robin Herrington had told Oberon of the Alleyns’ enquiries for Mr. Garbel. Did this account for the change in Baradi’s attitude? Alleyn was now unable to bore Dr. Baradi.

“It would be interesting,” Carbury Glande said in his harsh voice, “to hear what Mr. Alleyn’s profession might be. I am passionately interested in the employment of other people.”

“Ah, yes,” Baradi agreed. “Do you ever play the game of guessing at the occupation of strangers and then proving yourself right or wrong by getting to know them? Come!” he cried with a great show of frankness. “Let us confess, Carbury, we are filled with unseemly curiosity about Mr. Allen. Will he allow us to play our game? Indulge us, my dear Allen. Carbury, what is your guess?”

Glande muttered: “Oh, I plump for one of the colder branches of learning. Philosophy.”

“Do you think so? A don, perhaps? And yet there is something that to me suggests that Mr. Alleyn was born under Mars. A soldier. Or, no. I take that back. A diplomat.”

“How very perceptive of you,” Alleyn exclaimed, looking at him over the Book of the Dead.

“Then I am right?”

“In part, at least. I started in the Diplomatic,” said Alleyn truthfully, “but left it at the file-and-corridor stage.”

“Really? Then perhaps, I am allowed another guess. No!” he cried after a pause. “I give up. Carbury, what do you say?”

“I? God knows! Perhaps he left the Diplomatic Service under a cloud and went big-game hunting.”

“I begin to think you are all psychic in this house,” Alleyn said delightedly. “How on earth do you do it?”

“A mighty hunter!” Baradi ejaculated, clapping his hands softly.

“Not at all mighty, I’m afraid, only pathetically persevering.”

“Wonderful,” Carbury Glande said, drawing his hand across his eyes and suppressing a yawn. “You live in South Kensington, I feel sure, in some magnificently dark apartment from the walls of which glower the glass eyes of monstrous beasts. Horns, snouts, tusks. Coarse hair. Lolling tongues made of a suitable plastic. Quite wonderful.”

“But Mr. Allen is a poet and a hunter of rare books as well as of rare beasts. Perhaps,” Baradi speculated, “it was during your travels that you became interested in the esoteric?”

Alleyn suppressed a certain weariness of spirit and renewed his raptures. You saw some rum things, he said with an air of simple credulity, in native countries. He had been told and told on good authority — He rambled on, saying that he greatly desired to learn more about the primitive beliefs of ancient races.

“Does your wife accompany you on safari?” Glande asked. “I should have thought—” He stopped short. Alleyn saw a flash of exasperation in Baradi’s eyes.

“My wife,” Alleyn said lightly, “couldn’t approve less of blood sports. She is a painter.”

“I am released,” Glande cried, “from bondage!” He pointed to the “Boy with a Kite.” “Ecce!”

“No!” Really, Alleyn thought, Baradi was a considerable actor. Delight and astonishment were admirably suggested. “Not—? Not Agatha Troy? But, my dear Mr. Alleyn, this is quite remarkable. Mr. Oberon will be enchanted.”

“I can’t wait,” Carbury Glande said, “to tell him.” He showed his teeth through his moustache. “I’m afraid you’re in for a scolding, Alleyn. Troy swore me to secrecy. I may say,” he added, “that I knew in a vague way, that she was a wedded woman but she has kept the Mighty Hunter from us.” His tongue touched his upper lip. “Understandably, perhaps,” he added.

Alleyn thought that nothing would give him more pleasure than to seize Dr. Baradi and Mr. Carbury Glande by the scruffs of their respective necks and crash their heads together.

He said apologetically. “Well, you see, we’re on holiday.”

“Quite,” said Baradi and the conversation languished.

“I think you told us,” Baradi said casually, “that you have friends in Roqueville and asked if we knew them. I’m afraid that I’ve forgotten the name.”

“Only one. Garbel.”

Baradi’s smile looked as if it had been left on his face by an oversight. The red hairs of Glande’s beard quivered very slightly as if his jaw was clenched.

“A retired chemist of sorts,” Alleyn said.

“Ah, yes! Possibly attached to the monstrous establishment which defaces our lovely olive groves. Monstrous,” Baradi added, “aesthetically speaking.”

“Quite abominable!” said Glande. His voice cracked and he wetted his lips.

“No doubt admirable from an utilitarian point-of-view. I believe they produce artificial manure in great quantities.”

“The place,” Glande said, “undoubtedly stinks,” and he laughed unevenly.

“Aesthetically?” Alleyn asked.

“Always, aesthetically,” said Baradi.

“I noticed the factory on our way up. Perhaps we’d better ask there for our friend.”

There was a dead silence.

“I can’t think what has become of that man of mine,” Alleyn said lightly.

Baradi was suddenly effusive. “But how inconsiderate we are! You, of course, are longing to rejoin your wife. And who can blame you? No woman has the right to be at once so talented and so beautiful. But your car? No doubt, a puncture or perhaps merely our Mediterranean dolce far niente. You must allow us to send you down. Robin would, I am sure, be enchanted. Or, if he is engaged in meditation, Mr. Oberon would be delighted to provide a car. How thoughtless we have been!”

This, Alleyn realized, was final. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said. “But I do apologize for being such a pestilent visitor. I’ve let my ruling passion run away with me and kept you hovering interminably. The car will arrive any moment now, I feel sure, and I particularly want to see the man. If I might just wait here among superb books I shan’t feel I’m making a nuisance of myself.”

It was a toss-up whether this would work. They wanted, he supposed, to consult together. After a fractional hesitation, Baradi said something about their arrangements for the afternoon. Perhaps, if Mr. Allen would excuse them, they should have a word with Mr. Oberon. There was the business of the nurse — Glande, less adroit, muttered unintelligibly and they went out together.

Alleyn was in front of the plan two seconds after the door had shut behind them.

It was embellished with typical medieval ornaments — a coat of arms, a stylized goat and a great deal of scroll-work. The drawing itself was in two main parts, an elevation, treated as if the entire face of the building had been removed, and a multiple plan of great intricacy. It would have taken an hour to follow out the plan in detail. With a refinement of concentration that Mr. Oberon himself might have envied, Alleyn fastened his attention upon the main outlines of the structural design. The great rooms and principal bedrooms were all, more or less, on the library level. Above this level the Château rose irregularly in a system of connected turrets to the battlements. Below it, the main stairway led down by stages through a maze of rooms that grew progressively smaller until, at a level which must have been below that of the railway, they were no bigger than prison cells and had probably served as such for hundreds of years. A vast incoherent maze that had followed, rather than overcome the contour of the mountain; an architectural compromise, Alleyn murmured, and sharpened his attention upon one room and its relation to the rest.

It was below the library and next to a room that had no outside windows. He marked its position and cast back in his mind to the silhouette of the Château as he had seen it, moonlit, in the early hours of that morning. He noticed that it had a window much longer than it was high and he remembered the shape of the window they had seen.

If it was true that Mr. Oberon and his guest were now occupied, as Baradi had represented, with some kind of esoteric keep-fit exercises on the roof-garden, it might be worth taking a risk. He thought of two or three plausible excuses, took a final look at the plan, slipped out of the library and ran lightly down a continuation of the winding stair that, in its upper reaches, led to the roof-garden.

He passed a landing, a closed door and three narrow windows. The stairs corkscrewed down to a wider landing from which a thickly carpeted passage ran off to the right. Opposite the stairway was a door and, a few steps away, another — the door he sought.

He went up to it and knocked.

There was no answer. He turned the handle delicately. The door opened inwards until there was a wide enough gap for him to look through. He found himself squinting along a wall hung with silk rugs and garnished about midway along with a big prayer wheel. At the far end there was an alcove occupied by an extremely exotic-looking divan. He opened the door fully and walked into the room.

From inside the door his view of Mr. Oberon’s room was in part blocked by the back of an enormous looking-glass screwed to the floor at an angle of about 45 degrees to the outside wall. For the moment he didn’t move beyond this barrier, but from where he stood, looked at the left-hand end of the room. It was occupied by a sort of altar hung with a stiffly embroidered cloth and garnished with a number of objects: a pentacle in silver, a triskelion in bronze and a large crystal affair resembling a sunburst. Beside the altar was a door, leading, he decided, into the windowless room he had noted on the plan.

He moved forward with the intention of walking round the looking-glass into the far part of the room.

“Bring me the prayer wheel,” said a voice beyond the glass. It fetched Alleyn up with the jolt of a punch over the heart. He looked at the door. If the glass had hidden him on his entrance it would mask his exit. He moved towards the door.

“I am at the Third Portal of the Outer and must not uncover my eyes. Do not speak. Bring me the prayer wheel. Put it before me.”

Alleyn walked forward.

There, on the other side of the looking-glass facing it and seated on the floor, was Mr. Oberon, stark naked, with the palms of his hands pressed to his eyes. Beyond him was a long window masked by a dyed silk blind, almost transparent, with the design of the sun upon it.

Alleyn took the prayer wheel from the wall. It was an elaborate affair, heavily carved, with many cylinders. He set it before Oberon.

He turned and had reached the door when somebody knocked peremptorily on it. Alleyn stepped back as it was flung open. It actually struck his shoulder. He heard someone go swiftly past and into the room.

Baradi’s voice said: “Where are you? Oh, there you are! See here, I’ve got to talk to you.”

He must be behind the glass. Alleyn slipped round the door and darted out. As he ran lightly up the stairs he heard Baradi shut the door.

There was nobody on the top landing. He walked back into the library, having been away from it for five and a half minutes.

He took out his notebook and made a very rough sketch of Mr. Oberon’s room, taking particular pains to mark the position of the prayer wheel on the wall. Then he set about memorizing as much of its detail as he had been able to take in. He was still at this employment when the latch turned in the door.

Alleyn pulled out from the nearest shelf a copy of Mr. Montague Summer’s major work on witchcraft. He was apparently absorbed in it when a woman came into the library.

He looked up from the book and knew that as far as preserving his anonymity was concerned, he was irrevocably sunk.

“If it’s not Roderick Alleyn!” said Annabella Wells.