Spinsters in Jeopardy

Chapter VII Sound of Ricky

i

Alleyn was used to anonymous calls on the telephone. There was a quality of voice that he had learned to recognize as common to them all. Though this new voice spoke in French it held the familiar tang of artifice. He nodded to Dupont, who at once darted out of the room.

The voice said: “M. Allen?”

“C’est Allen qui parle.”

“Bien. Écoutez. A sept heures demain soir, présentez-vous à pied et tout seul, vis-à-vis du pavillon de chasse en ruines, il y a sept kilomètres vers le midi du village St. Céleste-des-Alpes. Apportez avec vous cent mille francs en billets de cent. N’avertissez-pas la police, ou le petit apprendra bien les consequences. Compris?”

Alleyn repeated it in stumbling French, as slowly as possible and with as many mistakes as he dared to introduce. He wanted to give Dupont time. The voice grew impatient in correction. Alleyn, however, repeated his instructions for the third time and began to expostulate in English. “Plus rien à dire,” said the voice and rang off.

Alleyn turned to Troy. “Did you understand?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I think so.”

“Well, it’s all right, my dearest. It’s as we thought. Tomorrow evening outside a village called St. Cèleste-des-Alpes with a hundred quid in my hand. The village, no doubt, will be somewhere above St. Céleste.”

“You didn’t recognize the voice?”

“It wasn’t Baradi or Oberon. It wasn’t young Herrington. I wouldn’t swear it wasn’t Carbury Glande, who was croaking with hangover this morning and might have recovered by now. And I would by no means swear that it wasn’t Baradi’s servant, whom I’ve only heard utter about six phrases in Egyptian but who certainly understands French. There was a bit of an accent and I didn’t think it sounded local.”

Dupont tapped and entered. “Any luck?” Alleyn said.

“Of a kind. I rang the centrale and was answered by an imbecile but the call has been traced. And to where do you suppose?”

“Number 16, Rue des Violettes?”

“Precisely!”

“Fair enough,” Alleyn said. “It must be their town office.”

“I also rang the Préfecture. No reports have come in from the patrols. What was the exact telephone message, if you please?”

Alleyn told him in French, wrapping up the threats to Ricky in words that were outside Troy’s vocabulary.

“The same formula,” Dupont said, “as in the reported version of the former affair. My dear Mr. Chief and Madame, it seems that we should now pursue our hunch.”

“To the chemical works?”

“Certainly.”

“Thank God!” Troy ejaculated.

“All the same,” Alleyn said, “it’s tricky. As soon as we get there the gaff is blown. The Château, having been informed that the telephone message went through, will wait for us to go to St. Céleste. When we turn up at the factory, the factory will ring the Château. Tricky! How far away is St. Céleste?”

“About seventy kilometres.”

“Is it possible to start off on the eastern route and come around to the factory by a detour? Behind Roqueville?”

M. Dupont frowned. “There are some mountain lanes,” he said. “Little more than passages for goats and cattle but of a width that is possible.”

“Possible for Raoul who is, I have noticed, a good driver.”

“He will tell us, at least. He is beneath.”

“Good.” Alleyn turned to his wife. “See here, darling. Will you go down and ask Raoul to fill up his tank—faire plein d’essence will be all right-and ask him to come back as soon as he’s done it. Will you then ask for the manager and tell him we’re going to St. Celeste, but would like to leave our heavy luggage here and keep our rooms. Perhaps you should offer to pay a week in advance. Here’s some money. I’ll bring down a couple of suitcases and join you in the hall. All right?”

“All right. Voulez-vous,” Troy said anxiously, “faire plein d’essence et revenez ici. O.K.?”

“O.K.”

When she had gone Alleyn said, “Dupont, I wanted a word with you. You can see what a hellish business this is for me, can’t you? I know damn well how important it is not to let our investigation go off like a damp squib. I realize, nobody better, that a premature inquiry at the factory might prejudice a very big coup. I’m here on a job and my job is with the police of your country and my own. In a way it’s the most critical assignment I’ve ever had.”

“And for me, also.”

“But the boy’s my boy and his mother’s my wife. It looked perfectly safe to bring them here and they gave me admirable cover, but as things have turned out, I shouldn’t have brought them. But for the unfortunate Miss Truebody, of course, it would have been all right.”

“And she, too, provided admirable cover. An unquestioned entrée.”

“Not for long, however. What I’m trying to say is this: I’ve fogged out a scheme of approach. I realize that in suggesting it I’m influenced by an almost overwhelming anxiety about Ricky. I’ll be glad if you tell me at once if you think it impracticable and, from the police angle, unwise.”

Dupont said: “M. l’Inspecteur, I understand the difficulty and respect, very much, your delicacy. I shall be honoured to advise.”

“Thank you. Here goes, then. It’s essential that we arouse no suspicion of our professional interest in the factory. It’s highly probable that the key men up there have already been informed from the Château of my real identity. There’s a chance, I suppose, that Annabella Wells has kept her promise, but it’s a poor chance. After all, if these people don’t know who I am why should they kidnap Ricky? All right. We make a show of leaving this hotel and taking the eastern route for St. Céleste. That will satisfy anybody who may be watching us at this end. We take to the hills and double back to the factory. By this time, you, with a suitable complement of officers, are on your way there. I go in and ask for Ricky. I am excitable and agitated. They say he’s not there. I insist that I’ve unimpeachable evidence that he is there. I demand to see the manager. I produce Raoul, who says he took his girl for a drive and saw a car with Ricky in it turn in at the factory gates. They stick to their guns. I make a hell of a row. I tell them I’ve applied to you. You arrive with a carload of men. You take the manager aside and tell him I am a V.I.P. on holiday.”

“Comment? V.I.P?”

“A very important person. You see it’s extremely awkward. That you think the boy’s been kidnapped and that it’s just possible one of their workmen has been bribed to hide him. You’ll say I’ll make things very hot for you at the Sûreté if you don’t put on a show of searching for Ricky. You produce a mandai de perquisition. You are terribly apologetic and very bored with me, but you say that unfortunately you have no alternative. As a matter of form you must search the factory. Now, what does the manager do?”

Dupont’s sharp eyebrows were raised to the limit. Beneath them his round eyes stared with glazed impartiality at nothing in particular. His arms were folded. Alleyn waited.

“In effect,” Dupont said at last, “he sends his secretary to investigate. The secretary returns with Ricketts and there are a great many apologies. The manager assures me that there will be an exhaustive enquiry and appropriate dismissals.”

“What do you say to this?”

“Ah,” said Dupont, suddenly lowering his eyebrows and unfolding his arms. “That is more difficult.”

“Do I perhaps intervene? Having clasped my son to my bosom and taken him out with his mother to the car, thus giving the manager an opportunity to attempt bribery at a high level, do I not return and take it as matter of course that you consider this an admirable opportunity to pursue your search for the kidnappers?”

Dupont’s smile irradiated his face. “It is possible,” he said. “It is conceivable.”

“Finally, my dear Dupont, can we act along these lines or any other that suggest themselves without arousing the smallest suspicion that we are interested in anything but the recovery of the child?”

“The word of operation is indeed ‘act.’ From your performance on the telephone, Mr. Chief, I can have no misgivings about your own performance. And for myself”— here Dupont tapped his chest, touched his moustache and gave Alleyn an indescribably roguish glance —“I believe I shall do well enough.”

They stood up. Alleyn put his police bag inside a large suitcase. After looking at the chaos within Troy’s partly unpacked luggage, he decided on two cases. He also collected their overcoats and Ricky’s.

“Shall we about it?” he asked.

“En avant, alors!” said Dupont.

ii

Mr. Oberon looked down at the figure on the bed. “Quite peaceful,” he said. “Isn’t it strange?”

“The teeth,” Baradi pointed out, “make a great difference.”

“There is a certain amount of discolouration.”

“Hypostatic staining. The climate.”

“Then there is every reason,” Mr Oberon observed with satisfaction, “for an immediate funeral.”

“Certainly.”

“If they have in fact gone off to St. Céleste they cannot return until the day after tomorrow.”

“If, on the other hand, this new man at the Préfecture is intelligent, which Allen says is not the case, they may pick up some information.”

“Let us—” Mr. Oberon suggested as he absentmindedly rearranged the sprigged locknit nightgown which was pinned down by crossed hands to the rigid bosom —“let us suppose the worst. They recover the child,” he raised his hand. “Yes, yes, it is unlikely, but suppose it happens. They call to enquire. They ask to see her.”

The two men were silent for a time. “Very well,” Baradi said. “So they see her. She will not be a pretty sight, but they see her.”

Mr. Oberon was suddenly inspired. “There must be flowers,” he ejaculated. “Masses and masses of flowers. A nest. A coverlet all of flowers, smelling like incense. Tuberoses,” he cried softly clapping his hands together. “They will be entirely appropriate. I shall order them. Tuberoses! And orchids.”

iii

The eastern route followed the seaboard for three miles out of Roqueville and then turned slightly inland. At this point a country road branched off it to the left. Raoul took the road which mounted into the hills by a series of hairpin bends. They climbed out of soft coastal air and entered a region of mountain freshness. A light breeze passed like a hand through the olive groves and sent spirals of ruddy dust across the road. The seaboard with its fringe of meretricious architecture had dwindled into an incident, while the sea and sky and warm earth widely enlarged themselves.

The road, turning about the contour of the hills, was littered with rock and scarred by wheel tracks. Sometimes it became a ledge traversing the face of sheer cliffs, and in normal times Troy, who disliked heights, would have feared these passages. Now she dreaded them merely because they had to be taken slowly.

“How long,” she asked, “will it be, do you suppose?”

“Roqueville’s down there a little ahead of us. We’ll pass above it in a few minutes. I gather we now cast back into the mountains for about the same distance as we’ve travelled already and then work round to a junction with the main road to the factory. Sorry about these corners, darling,” Alleyn said as they edged round a bend that looked like a take-off into space. “Are you minding it very much?”

“Only because it’s slow. Raoul’s a good driver, isn’t he?”

“Very good indeed. Could you bear it if I told you about this job? I think perhaps I ought to, but it’ll be a bit dreary.”

“Yes,” Troy said. “I’d like that. The drearier the better because I’ll have to concentrate.”

“Well, you know it’s to do with the illicit drug trade, but I don’t suppose you know much about the trade itself. By and large it’s probably the worst thing apart from war that’s happened to human beings in modern times. Before the 1914 war the nation most troubled by the opium racket had begun to do something about it. There was a Shanghai conference and a Hague Convention. Both were cautious tentative shows. None of the nations came to them with a clean record and all the delegates were embarrassed by murky backgrounds in which production, manufacture and distribution involved the revenue both of states and highly placed individuals. Dost thou attend me?”

“Sir,” said Troy, “most heedfully.”

They exchanged the complacent glance of persons who recognize each other’s quotations.

“At the Hague Convention they did get round to making one or two conservative decisions but before they were ratified the war came along and the whole thing lapsed. After the peace the traffic was stepped up most murderously. It’s really impossible to exaggerate the scandal of those years. At the top end were nations getting a fat revenue out of the sale of opium and its derivatives. An investigator said at one stage that half Europe was being poisoned to bolster up the domestic policy of Bulgaria. The goings-on were fantastic. Charges d’affaires smuggled heroin in their diplomatic baggage. Drug barons built works all over Europe. Diacetylmorphine, which is heroin to you, was brewed on the Champs Élysées. Highly qualified chemists were offered princely salaries to work in drug factories and a great number of them fell for it. Many of the smartest and most fashionable people in European society lived on the trade: murderers, if the word has any meaning. At the other end of the stick were the street pedlars, at the foot of Nurse Cavell’s statue among other places, and the addicts. The addicts were killing themselves in studies, studios, dressing-rooms, brothels, boudoirs and garrets; young intellectuals and young misfits were ruining themselves by the score. Girls were kept going by their souteneurs with shots of the stuff. And so on. Thou attendest not.”

“Oh, good sir, I do.”

“I pray thee, mark me. At the Peace Conference this revolting baby was handed over to the League of Nations, who appointed an Advisory Committee who began the first determined assault on the thing. The international police came in, various bodies were set up and a bit of real progress was made. Only a bit.

Factories pulled down in Turkey were rebuilt in Bulgaria. Big centralized industries were busted only to reappear like crops of small ulcers in other places. But something was attempted and a certain amount was achieved by 1939.”

“Oh, dear! History at it again?”

“More or less. The difference lies in the fact that this time the preliminary work had been done and the machinery for investigation partly set up. But the Second World War did its stuff and everything lapsed. U.N.O. doesn’t start from scratch in the way that the League did. But it faces the old situation and it’s still up against the Big Boys. The police still catch the sprats at the customs counter and miss the mackerels in high places. The factories have again moved: from Bulgaria into post-war Italy and from post-war Italy, it appears, into the Paysdoux of Southern France. And the Big Boys have moved with them. Particularly Dr. Baradi and Mr. Oberon.”

“Are they really big?”

“Not among the tops, perhaps. There we climb into very rarefied altitudes and by as hazardous a road as this one. But Oberon and Baradi are certainly in the mackerel class. Oberon, I regret to tell you, is a British subject at the moment although he began in the Middle East where he ran a quack religion of a dubious sort and got six months for his pains. He came to us by way of Portugal and Egypt. In Portugal he practiced the same game during the war and made his first connection with the dope trade. In Egypt he was stepped up in the racket and made the acquaintance of his chum Baradi. By that time he’d acquired large sums of money. Two fortunes fell into his lap from rich disciples in Lisbon — middle-aged women, who became Daughters of the Sun or something, remade their wills and died shortly afterwards.”

“Oh, Lord!”

“You may well say so. Baradi’s a different story. Baradi was a really brilliant medical student who trained in Paris and has become one of the leading surgeons of his time. He had some sort of entrée to court circles in Cairo and, thanks to his skill and charms, any number of useful connections in France. You may not think him very delicious but it appears that a great many women do. He got in with the Boys in Paris and Egypt and is known to be a trafficker in a big way. It’s his money and Oberon’s that’s behind the Chemical Company of the Maritime Alps. That’s as much as the combined efforts of the international police, the Sûreté and the Yard have gleaned about Baradi and Oberon, and it’s on that information I’m meant to act.”

“And is Ricky a spanner in the works?”

“He may be a spanner in their works, my pretty. He gives us an excuse for getting into the factory. They may have played into our hands when they took Ricky into the factory.”

“If they took him there,” Troy said under her breath.

“If they drove beyond the turn-off to the factory the patrols would have got them. Of course he may be maddening the monks in the monastery further up.”

“Mightn’t the car have pushed on and come round by this appalling route?”

“The patrols on the eastern route will get it if it did and there are no fresh tyre tracks.”

“It’s so strange,” Troy said, “to hear you doing your stuff.”

Raoul humoured the car down a steep incline and past a pink-washed hovel overhanging the cliff. A peasant stood in the doorway. At Alleyn’s suggestion Raoul called to him.

“Hé friend! Any other driver come this way today?”

“Pas un de si bête!”

“That was: ‘no such fool,’ wasn’t it?” Troy asked.

“It was.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

They bumped and sidled on for some time without further conversation. Raoul sang. The sky was a deeper blue and the Mediterranean, now almost purple, made unexpected gestures between the tops of hills. Troy and Alleyn each thought privately how much, in spite of the road, they would have enjoyed themselves if Ricky had been with them.

Presently Raoul, speaking slowly out of politeness to Troy, pointed to a valley they were about to enter.

“The Monastery Road. M’sieur — Madame. We descend.”

They did so, precipitately. The roofs of the Monastery of Our Lady of Paysdoux appeared, tranquil and modest, folded in a confluence of olive groves. As they came into the lower valley they looked down on an open place where a few cars were parked and where visitors to the cloisters moved in and out of long shadows. The car dived down behind the monastery, turned and ran out into the head of a good sealed road. “The factory,” Raoul said, “is round the next bend. Beyond, Monsieur can see the main road and away to the right is the headland with the tunnel that comes out by the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent.”

“Is there a place lower down and out of sight of the factory where we can watch the main road on the Roqueville side?”

“Yes, Monsieur. As one approaches the bend.”

“Let us stop there for a moment.”

“Good, Monsieur.”

Raoul’s point of observation turned out to be a pleasant one overlooking the sea and commanding a full view of the main road as it came through the hills from Roqueville. He ran the car to the outer margin of their road and stopped. Alleyn looked at his watch. “A quarter past four. The works shut down at five. I hope Dupont’s punctual. We’ll have a. final check. Raoul first, darling, if you don’t mind. See how much you can follow and keep your eye on the main road for the police car. Alors, Raoul.”

Raoul turned to listen. He had taken off his chauffeur’s cap, and his head, seen in profile against the Homeric blue of the Mediterranean, took on classic air. Its colour was a modulation of the tawny earth. Grape-like curls clustered behind his small ears, his mouth was fresh, reflected light bloomed on his cheekbones and his eyes held a look of untroubled acceptance. It was a beautiful head, and Troy thought: “When we’re out of this nightmare I shall want to paint it.”

Alleyn was saying: “…so you will remain at first in the car. After a time I may fetch or send for you. If I do you will come into the office and tell a fairy story. It will be to this effect…”

Raoul listened impassively, his eyes on the distant road. When Alleyn had done, Raoul made a squaring movement with his shoulders, blew out his cheeks into a mock-truculent grimace and intimated that he was ready for anything.

“Now, darling,” Alleyn said, “do you think you can come in with me and keep all thought of our inside information out of your mind? You know only this: Ricky has been kidnapped and Raoul has seen him being driven into the factory. I’m going to have a shot at the general manager, who is called Callard. We don’t know much about him. He’s a Parisian who worked in the States for a firm that was probably implicated in the racket and he speaks English. Any of the others we may run into may also speak English. We’ll assume, whatever we find, that they understand it. So don’t say anything to me that they shouldn’t hear. On the other hand, you can with advantage keep up an agitated chorus. I shall speak bad French. We don’t know what may develop so we’ll have to keep our heads and ride the skids as we meet them. How do you feel about it?”

“Should I be a brave little woman biting on the bullet or should I go in, boots and all, and rave?”

“Rave if you feel like it, my treasure. They’ll probably expect it.”

“I daresay a Spartan mother would seem more British in their eyes or is that a contradiction in terms? Oh, Rory!” Troy said in a low voice. “It’s so grotesque. Here we are half-crazy with anxiety and we have to put on a sort of anxiety act. It’s — it’s a cruel thing, isn’t it?”

“It’ll be all right,” Alleyn said. “It is cruel but it’ll be all right. I promise. You’ll be as right as a bank whatever you do. Hallo, there’s Dupont.”

A car had appeared on the main road from Roqueville.

“M. le Commissaire,” said Raoul, and flicked his headlamps on and off. The police car, tiny in the distance, winked briefly in response.

“We’re off,” said Alleyn.

iv

The entrance hall of the factory was impressive. The décor was carried out in obscured glass, chromium and plastic and was beautifully lit. In the centre was a sculptured figure, modern in treatment, suggestive of some beneficent though pinheaded being, who drew strength from the earth itself. Two flights of curved stairs led airily to remote galleries. There was an imposing office on the left. Double doors at the centre back and a series of single doors in the right wall all bore legends in chromium letters. The front wall was plate glass and commanded a fine view of the valley and the sea.

Beyond a curved counter in the outer office a girl sat over a ledger. When she saw Alleyn and Troy she rose and stationed herself behind a chromium notice on the counter: Renseignements.

“Monsieur?” asked the girl. “Madame?”

Alleyn, without checking his stride, said: “Don’t disarrange yourself, Mademoiselle,” and made for the central doors.

The girl raised her voice: “One moment, Monsieur, whom does Monsieur wish to see?”

“M. Callard, le Contrôleur.”

The girl pushed a bell on her desk. Before Alleyn could reach the double doors they opened and a commissionaire came through. Alleyn turned to the desk.

“Monsieur has an appointment?” asked the girl.

“No,” Alleyn said, “but it is a matter of extreme urgency. I must see M. Callard, Mademoiselle.”

The girl was afraid that M. Callard saw nobody without an appointment. Troy observed that her husband was making his usual impression on the girl, who touched her hair, settled her shoulders and gave him a look.

Troy said in a high voice: “Darling, what’s she saying? Has she seen him?”

The girl just glanced at Troy and then opened her eyes at Alleyn. “Perhaps I can be of assistance to Monsieur?” she suggested,

Alleyn leaned over the counter and haltingly asked her if by any chance she had seen a little boy in brown shorts and a yellow shirt. The question seemed to astonish her. She made an incredulous sound and repeated it to the commissionaire, who merely hitched up his shoulders. They had not seen any little boys, she said. Little boys were not permitted on the premises.

Alleyn stumbled about with his French and asked the girl if she spoke English. She said that unfortunately she did not.

“Mademoiselle,” Alleyn said to Troy, “doesn’t speak English. I think she says M. Callard won’t see us. And she says she doesn’t know anything about Ricky.”

Troy said: “But we know he’s here. We must see the manager, Tell her we must.”

This time the girl didn’t so much as glance at Troy. With a petunia-tipped finger and thumb she removed a particle of mascara from her lashes and discreetly rearranged her figure for Alleyn to admire. She said it was too bad that she couldn’t do anything for him. She thought he had better understand this and said that at any other time she might do a lot. She reacted with a facial expression which corresponded, Troy thought, with the “haughty little moue” so much admired by Edwardian novelists.

He said: “Mademoiselle, will you have the kindness of an angel? Will you take a little message to M. Callard?” She hesitated and he added in English: “And do you know that there is a large and I believe poisonous spider on your neck?”

She flashed a smile at him. “Monsieur makes a grivoiserie at my expense. He says naughty things in English, I believe, ‘to pull a carrot at me.’ ”

“Doesn’t speak English,” Alleyn said to Troy without moving his eyes from the girl. He took out his pocket-book, wrote a brief message and slid it across the counter with a five hundred franc note underneath. He playfully lifted the girl’s hand and closed it over both.

“Well, I must say!” said Troy, and she thought how strange it was that she could be civilized and amused and perhaps a little annoyed at this incident.

With an air that contrived to suggest that Alleyn as well as being a shameless flirt was also a gentleman, the girl moved back from the counter, glanced through the plate-glass windows of the main office where a number of typists and two clerks looked on with undisguised curiosity, seemed to change her mind, and came out by way of a gate at the top of the counter and walked with short steps to the double doors. The commissionaire opened them for her. They looked impassively at each other. She passed through and he followed her.

Alleyn said: “She’s taking my note to the boss. It ought to surprise him. By all the rules he should have been rung up and told we’re on the road to St. Céleste.”

“Will he see us?”

“I don’t see how he can refuse.”

While they waited, Troy looked at the spidery stairs, the blind doors and the distant galleries. “If he should appear!” she thought. “If there could be another flash of yellow and brown.” She began to imagine how it would be when they found Ricky. Would his face be white with smudges under the eyes? Would he cry in the stifled inarticulate fashion that always gripped her heart in a stricture? Would he shout and run to her? Or, by a merciful chance, would he behave like the other boy and want to stay with his terrible new friends? She thought: “It’s unlucky to anticipate. He may not be here at all. It may be a false scent. If we don’t find him before tonight I think I shall crack up.”

She knew Alleyn’s mind followed hers as closely as one mind can follow another, and she knew that as far as one human being can find solace in another she found solace in him, but she suffered, nevertheless, a great loneliness of spirit. She turned to him and saw compassion and anger in his eyes.

“If anything could make me want more to get these gentlemen,” he said, “it would be this. We’ll get them, Troy.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I expect you will.”

“Ricky’s here. I know it in my bones. I promise you.”

The girl came back through the double doors. She was very formal.

“Monsieur Callard will see Monsieur and Madame,” she said. The commissionaire waited on the far side, holding one door open. As Alleyn stood aside for Troy to go through, the girl moved nearer to him. Her back was turned to the commissionaire. Her eyes made a sign of assent.

He murmured: “And I may understand — what, Mademoiselle?”

“What Monsieur pleases,” she said, and minced back to the desk.

Alleyn caught Troy up and took her arm in his hand. The commissionaire was several paces ahead. “Either that girl’s given me the tip that Ricky’s here,” Alleyn muttered, “or she’s the smartest job off the skids in the Maritime Alps.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing. Just gave the go-ahead signal.”

“Good Lord! Or did it mean Ricky?”

“It’d better mean Ricky,” Alleyn said grimly.

They were in an inner hall, heavily carpeted and furnished with modern wall-tables and chairs. They passed two doors and were led to a third in the end wall. The commissionaire opened it and went in. They heard a murmur of voices. He returned and asked them to enter.

A woman with blue hair and magnificent poise rose from a typewriter. “Bonjour, Monsieur et Madame,” she said. “Entrez, s’il vous plait.” She opened another door. “Monsieur et Madame Alleyn,” she announced.

“Come right in!” invited a voice in hearty American. “C’m on! Come right in.”

v

M. Callard was a fat man with black eyebrows and bluish chops. He was not a particularly evil-looking man: rather one would have said that there was something meretricious about him. His mouth looked as if it had been disciplined by meaningless smiles and his eyes seemed to assume rather than possess an air of concentration. He was handsomely dressed and smelt of expensive cigars. His English was fluent and falsely Americanized with occasional phrases and inflections that made it clear he wasn’t speaking his native tongue.

“Well, well, well,” he said, pulling himself up from his chair and extending his hand. The other held Alleyn’s note. “Very pleased to meet you, Mr. — I just can’t quite get the signature.”

“Alleyn.”

“Mr. Alleyn.”

“This is my wife.”

“Mrs. Alleyn,” said M. Callard, bowing. “Now, let’s sit down, shall we, and get acquainted. What’s all this I hear about Junior?”

Alleyn said: “I wouldn’t have bothered you if we hadn’t by chance heard that our small boy who went missing early this afternoon, had, Heaven knows how, turned up at your works. In your office they didn’t seem to know anything about him and our French doesn’t go very far. It’s a great help that your English is so good. Isn’t it, darling?” he said to Troy.

“Indeed, yes. M. Callard, I can’t tell you how anxious we are. He just disappeared from our hotel. He’s only six and it’s so dreadful—”

To her horror Troy heard her voice tremble. She was silent.

“Now, that’s just too bad,” M. Callard said. “And what makes you think he’s turned up in this part of the world?”

“By an extraordinary chance,” Alleyn said, “the man we’ve engaged to drive us took his car up this road earlier this afternoon and he saw Ricky in another car with a man and woman.. They turned in at the entrance to your works. We don’t pretend to understand all this, but you can imagine how relieved we are to know he’s all right.”

M. Callard sat with a half smile on his mouth, looking at Alleyn’s left ear. “Well,” he said, “I don’t pretend to understand it either. Nobody’s told me anything. But we’ll soon find out.”

He bore down with a pale thumb on his desk bell. The blue-haired secretary came in and he spoke to her in French.

“It appears,” he said, “that Monsieur and Madame have been given information by their chauffeur that their little boy who has disappeared was seen in an auto somewhere on our premises. Please make full enquiries, Mademoiselle, in all departments.”

“At once, Monsieur le Directeur,” said the secretary and went out.

M. Callard offered Troy a cigarette and Alleyn a cigar, both of which were refused. He seemed mysteriously to expand. “Maybe,” he said, “you folks are. not aware there’s a gang of kidnappers at work along this territory. Child-kidnappers.”

Alleyn at once broke into a not too coherent and angry dissertation on child-kidnappers and the inefficiency of the police. M. Callard listened with an air of indulgence. He had taken a cigar and he rolled it continuously between his thumb and fingers, which were flattish and backed with an unusual amount of hair. This movement was curiously disturbing. But he listened with perfect courtesy to Alleyn and every now and then made sympathetic noises. There was, however, a certain quality in his stillness which Alleyn recognized. M. Callard was listening to him with only part of his attention. With far closer concentration he listened for something outside the room: and for this, Alleyn thought, he listened so far in vain.

The secretary came back alone.

She told M. Callard that in no department of the works nor among the gardens outside had anyone seen a small boy. Troy only understood the tenor of this speech. Alleyn, who had perfectly understood the whole of it, asked to have it translated. M. Callard obliged, the secretary withdrew, and the temper of the interview hardened. Alleyn got up and moved to the desk. His hand rested on the top of a sound system apparatus. Troy found herself looking at the row of switches and the loudspeaker and at the good hand above them.

Alleyn said he was not satisfied with the secretary’s report. M. Callard said he was sorry but evidently there had been some mistake. Troy, taking her cue from him, let something of her anxiety and anger escape. M. Callard received her outburst with odious compassion and said it was quite understandable that she was not just 100 per cent reasonable. He rose, but before his thumb could reach the bell-push Alleyn said that he must ask him to listen to the account given by their chauffeur.

“I’m sure that when you hear the man you will understand why we are so insistent,” Alleyn said. And before Callard could do anything to stop him he went out leaving Troy to hold, as it were, the gate open for his return.

Callard made a fat, wholly Latin gesture, and flopped back into his chair. “My dear lady,” he said, “this good man of yours is just a little difficult. Certainly I’ll listen to your chauffeur who is, no doubt, one of the local peasants. I know how they are around here. They say what they figure you want them to say and they don’t worry about facts: it’s not conscious lying, it’s just that they come that way. They’re just naturally obliging. Now, your husband’s French isn’t so hot and my guess is, he’s got this guy a little bit wrong. We’ll soon find out if I’m correct. Pardon me if I make a call. This is a busy time with us and right now I’m snowed under.”

Having done his best to make Troy thoroughly uncomfortable he put through a call on his telephone, speaking such rapid French that she scarcely understood a word of what he said. He had just hung up the receiver when something clicked. This sound was followed by a sense of movement and space beyond the office. M. Callard glanced at the switchboard on his desk and said: “Ah?” A disembodied voice spoke in mid-air.

“Monsieur le Directeur? Le service de transport avise qu’il est incapable d’expédier la marchandise.”

“Qu’est ce qu’il se passe?”

“Rue barrée!”

“Bien. Prenez garde. Remettez la marchandise à sa place. ”

“Bien. Monsieur,” said the voice. The box clicked and the outside world was shut off.

“My, oh my,” sighed M. Callard, “the troubles I have!” He opened a ledger on his desk and ran his flattened forefinger down the page.

Troy thought distractedly that perhaps he was right about Raoul and then, catching herself up, remembered that Raoul had in fact never seen the car drive in at the factory gates with Ricky and a man and woman in it, that they were bluffing and that perhaps all Alleyn’s and Dupont’s theories were awry.

Perhaps this inhuman building had never contained her little son. Perhaps it was idle to torture herself by thinking of him: near at hand yet hopelessly withheld.

M. Callard looked at a platinum mounted wristwatch and then at Troy, and sighed again. “He’s trying to shame me out of his office,” she thought and she said boldly: “Please don’t let me interrupt your work.” He glanced at her with a smile from which he seemed to make no effort to exclude the venom.

“My work requires the closest concentration, Madame,” said M. Callard.

“Sickening for you,” said Troy.

Alleyn came back with Raoul at his heels. Through the door Troy caught a glimpse of the blue-haired secretary, half-risen from her desk, expostulation frozen on her face. Raoul shut the door.

“This is Milano, M. Callard,” Alleyn said. “He will tell you what he saw. If I have misunderstood him you will be able to correct me. He doesn’t speak English.”

Raoul stood before the desk and looked about him with the same air of interest and ease that had irritated Dr. Baradi. His gaze fell for a moment on the sound system apparatus and then moved to M. Callard’s face.

“Well, my friend,” said M. Callard in rapid French. “What’s the tarradiddle Monsieur thinks you’ve told him?”

“I think Monsieur understood what I told him,” Raoul said cheerfully and even more rapidly. “I spoke slowly and what I said, with all respect, was no tarradiddle. With Monsieur’s permission I will repeat it. Early this afternoon, I do not know the exact time, I drove my young lady along the road to the factory. I parked my car and we climbed a little way up the hillside opposite the gates. From here we observed a car come up from the main road. In it were a man and a woman and the small son of Madame and Monsieur who is called Riki. This little Monsieur Riki was removed from the car and taken into the factory. That is all, Monsieur le Directeur.”

M. Callard’s eyelids were half-closed. His cigar rolled to and fro between his fingers and thumb.

“So. You see a little boy and a man and a woman. Let me tell you that early this afternoon a friend of my works-superintendent visited the factory with his wife and boy and that undoubtedly it was this boy whom you saw.”

“With respect, what is the make of the car of the friend of Monsieur’s works-superintendent?”

“I do not concern myself with the cars of my employees’ acquaintances.”

“Or with the age and appearance of their children, Monsieur?”

“Precisely.”

“This was a light blue Citroën, 1946, Monsieur, and the boy was Riki, the son of Monsieur and Madame, a young gentleman whom I know well. He was not two hundred yards away and was speaking his bizarre French, the French of an English child. His face was as unmistakable,” said Raoul, looking full into M. Callard’s face, “as Monsieur’s own. It was Riki.”

M. Callard turned to Alleyn: “How much of all that did you get?” he asked.

Alleyn said: “Not a great deal. When he talks to us he talks slowly. But I’m sure—”

“Pardon me,” M. Callard said, and turned smilingly to Raoul.

“My friend,” he said, “You are undoubtedly a conscientious man. But I assure you that you are making a mistake. Mistakes can cost a lot of money. On the other hand, they sometimes yield a profit. As much, for the sake of argument, as five thousand francs. Do you follow me?”

“No, Monsieur.”

“Are you sure? Perhaps—” suggested M. Callard thrusting his unoccupied hand casually into his breast pocket —“when we are alone I may have an opportunity to make my meaning plainer and more acceptable.”

“I regret. I shall still be unable to follow it,” Raoul said.

M. Callard drew a large handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbed his lips with it. “Sacré nigaud,” he said pleasantly and shot a venomous glance at Raoul before turning to Troy and Alleyn.

“My dear good people,” he said expansively, “I’m afraid this boy has kidded you along quite a bit. He admits that he did not get a good look at the child. He was up on the hillside with a dame and his attention was — well, now,” said M. Callard smirking at Troy, “shall we say, kind of semi-detached. It’s what I thought. He’s told you what he figures you’d like to be told and if you ask him again he’ll roll out the same tale all over.”

“I’m afraid I don’t believe that,” said Alleyn.

“I’m afraid you don’t have an alternative,” said M. Callard. He turned on Raoul. “Fichez-moi le camp,” he said toughly,

“What’s that?” Alleyn demanded.

“I’ve told him to get out.”

“Vous permettez, Madame, Monsieur?” Raoul asked and placed himself between the two men with his back to M. Callard.

“What?” Alleyn said. He winked at Raoul. Raoul responded with an ineffable grimace. “What? Oh, all right. All right. Oui. Allez.”

With a bow to Troy and another that was rather less respectful than a nod to M. Callard, Raoul went out. Alleyn walked up to the desk and took up his former position.

“I’m not satisfied,” he said.

“That’s too bad.”

“I must ask you to let me search this building.”

“You!” said M. Callard and laughed. “Pardon my mirth but I guess there’d be two of you gone missing if you tried that one. This is quite a building, Mr. — ” he glanced again at Alleyn’s note —“Mr. Alleyn.”

“If it’s as big as all that your secretary’s enquiries were too brief to be effective. I don’t believe any enquiries have been made.”

“Look!” M. Callard said, and smacked the top of his desk with a flat palm. “This sound system operates throughout these works. I can speak to every department or all departments together. We don’t have to go round on a hiking trip when we make general enquiries. Now!”

“Thank you,” Alleyn said and his hand darted over the switchboard. There was a click. “Ricky!” he shouted, and Troy cried out: “Ricky! Are you there? Ricky!”

And as if they had conjured it from the outer reaches of space a small voice said excitedly: “They’ve come! Mummy!”

A protesting outcry was cut off as M. Callard struck at Alleyn’s hand with a heavy paper knife. At the same moment M. Dupont walked into the room.