Tender to Danger

Nine

He went to bed with a feeling of satisfaction. His rest was well earned. The next day would be fruitful. In the dark he stretched out comfortably and thought, in the manner of John Quayle Meriden, of the coming discomfiture of Jordaens and Stock. He thought of it for quite a while before he fell asleep. He awoke suddenly in the night, disturbed by some troubled dream. In this half-waking state he believed he had heard a stifled shout, a cry. Kusitch again. He wished the fellow were not so restless. They had to be up early enough to catch the plane in the morning. Kusitch…

Reality returned with a rush. This was not Brussels. It was London, Lang’s flat.

He got out of bed, quietly, and stood in the dark, listening. He heard sounds, the secretive sounds of someone creeping along the landing outside the flat. He remembered he had bolted the door, so that was all right. It could not be opened any longer as it had been during the day. He was safe. He had time to raise an alarm. They couldn’t carry him off as they had carried off Kusitch.

The sounds continued, faint as the gnawing of mice. Then a stair creaked loudly. And another stair. The noctambulist had passed the landing and was creeping up the next flight, a home going tenant, thoughtful for his neighbours, anxious to disturb nobody.

That was all right. Go to bed again. Get more sleep.

But it was not all right. Fear had come up the stairs and entered the flat, bringing the thought of the girl in the lonely house at Cheriton Shawe.

He was at once desperately anxious and paralysed by the feeling that it was too late to help her. The argument that the enemy could not discover the link between John Quayle Meriden and Walden House now seemed absurd. Kretchmann and Haller were resourceful and ruthless. They had ruthless followers to help them: the shadow in Brussels, the whistler in London.

Andrew felt the prickle of sweat on his scalp.

One of them might have followed him to Cheriton Shawe while another stayed in London to search the flat. If he had been followed, then the lead would be obvious to them.

They would have gone to Walden House tonight. They would have questioned the girl, tortured her, demanding the whereabouts of the yawl. They would have refused to accept her plea of ignorance, and in their incredulity lay the danger for her. They were desperate men; would stop at nothing. Jordaens had been emphatic on that score. Deserters, gangsters, outlaws, murderers…

Were they also clairvoyants?

Andrew grasped at that question as a defence. He switched on the light and that, too, seemed to help. The thing was not to be believed. It was a night thought out of a bad dream. The Green Line coach had dropped him into solitude. The next stop was some distance on, and if anyone wanted to get off he had to wait for it. A shadow could not have come back all that way and picked up the trail. Wyminden Lane had been a desolation of glasshouses, and the one solitary pedestrian had turned off into that desolation, never to be seen again.

He had encountered no one else except the gnome who had given him a lift. Was it possible that the fellow had followed the coach from London in his car, had waited a reasonable time before overtaking him on Wyminden Lane so as not to rouse suspicion? A good way to find out the destination of a person was to offer him a lift. It was true that the gnome had asked no questions; had shown no wish to converse, but had not his need to do so been obviated by his passenger’s naive inquiry about Walden House?

Andrew flinched at the thought of it. Then he remembered how quickly the gnome had changed the station on the car radio, cutting off Till Eulenspiegel. Andrew flinched again, but checked his racing thoughts. Could it possibly be maintained that such an act was significant of anything more than a dislike of tone poems and a preference for military bands?

Absurd! The fact was plain: the car could not have trailed him from London. It could not have picked him up outside the flat. He had taken the underground to Oxford Circus, and cars cannot follow you when you travel by tube.

He felt a little better, but still uneasy. He looked at his watch: four-thirty. It would soon be daylight. He would normally have slept till seven, but he knew it was no use going back to bed. The anxiety would keep on nagging at him, urging him to some unspecified act.

There was nothing rational to do except make coffee. He put on his gown and started the percolator. He sat down with the diaries again, and read on from where he had left off. He read and sipped coffee. There was no further reference to Calabria, the yawl, or the landing stage by the mill. But every time he encountered Ruth Meriden’s name the nagging increased.

He would never forgive himself if any harm had come to her.

At the same time he assured himself that nothing could have happened. There was no question in his mind; there was merely the nervous demand for confirmation of what reason told him must be. Confirmation? He had only to find a car or a taxi to run him out to Cheriton Shawe. He might even hire a car to drive himself, for he had kept on renewing his licence, during his service abroad.

His watch told him it was too late. He had been too long over the diaries and coffee. By the time he dressed and got out to Walden House, she might be on the way to town, and then he would miss her altogether.

He bathed, dressed, breakfasted, and at nine o’clock reached the Blandish Gallery. The beautiful door of burnished bronze was locked. The hand-lettered placard in the bronze frame indicated that the exhibition was open from ten till five-thirty. The small Dufy was still in the large window. Its gaiety irritated him. It was of a world of sun and bright colour.

Andrew went away. When he returned some time before ten, the door was open. A decorative young lady was sympathetic, but not very informative. She had no idea when they would see Miss Meriden again, although there was some talk of another exhibition. His best course was to write to Miss Meriden and the Blandish Gallery would forward the letter.

“Look here,” he said firmly. “Miss Meriden is coming in this morning. She told me so last night. I have to see her. It’s most important, urgent. It’s too late to catch her at Cheriton Shawe.”

The girl was impressed. “It must be Mr. Hinckleigh,” she said. “I’ll look in his engagement book.” She came back. “Perhaps you’d better wait for Mr. Hinckleigh.”

“What time is the appointment?” he demanded.

“Ten-thirty,” she admitted reluctantly. “Would you like to take a seat?”

He declined with thanks. He walked up and down the pavement outside. There was a man on the opposite side who looked like someone he had seen in the tube from Holland Park that morning, but he was wary of that sort of idea now. Once you had been followed, it was too easy to imagine that the attention was being repeated. He had satisfied himself last night that he was no longer under observation.

The man opposite entered a tobacconist’s shop. He was inside for some time. Then he went briskly along the street and disappeared into a small arcade of shops. A tall man in a cap and an overlong grey raincoat that flapped about and slapped at his legs as he walked. Very different from that fellow in Brussels; not the remotest resemblance to old Jolly-Face of Holland Park.

Andrew checked himself for the second time in less than two minutes. It was idiotic to suppose that the whole world was interested in his movements. Even if the man had travelled by the Central Line, what was there to prove that he had not got on at Ealing Broadway?

A dark, slender person in a faultlessly cut tweed overcoat pushed at the bronze door of the gallery with a gloved hand that held a ball-top cane. Mr. Hinckleigh?

Andrew became uneasy again about Ruth Meriden. It was nearly half past ten, and, even while he looked along the street for her and watched the approach of every taxi, he was convinced that she would not come. All the fears of the night were on him again, and growing with every minute. He turned restlessly, looking up and down the street, and no longer glanced in the direction of the arcade.

Fool, he was! He should have rushed out to Cheriton Shawe when the thought first struck him. Or he should have called up Stock at Scotland Yard. There might have been time then, but now…

She was crossing the roadway, punctual to the minute.

He felt such a lift of relief, he could think of nothing to say to her. He stammered over words that were absurdly formal.

“Oh dear,” she said, “I meant it when I said I had a busy day ahead of me. Is it really very important, Dr. Maclaren?”

She was looking very chic in a tweed suit and a minute hat.

“I’m glad you’re all right,” he said.

“You sound most anxious. Why shouldn’t I be all right?”

“Well, of course… I had to come along. I hope you don’t mind. I found a lot about the yawl in the diaries.”

“Oh, that yawl! I wonder if you’re not taking it too seriously. Have you found out where it is?”

He told her what he had found out. Her interest seemed more polite than real, as if she had been merely humouring him. There was a change in her. Town, or the proximity of the Blandish Gallery! She was now very much Brussels airport in her manner.

“We can’t stand out here on the pavement all day,” she said. “Let’s go inside.” Inside there were only the two of them and the water colours of Christophe Chambord. The long room, unlighted, dwindled away from the show window into the dimness of back premises.

Andrew produced the notes he had made from the diaries, and read them over quickly, from the first report of the agent F. about the finding of the yawl in Calabria to the references to E.J. and the repair of the landing stage.

Miss Meriden thought the F. referred to an Italian lawyer named Ferrani. She was quite certain that E.J. could be none but Ernest Jansen, formerly carpenter and mechanic in the Moonlight and latterly an old man of the sea on Meriden’s back. It seemed Ernest had been the one retainer who could wheedle what he wanted out of his master. He might have been able to tell where the yawl was lying, but he had in fact taken his wife to Algiers and Ruth Meriden had no idea of how to get in touch with him. By now he was probably in Mauritius or Tristan da Cunha.

“What about the mill and this landing stage?” Andrew asked urgently.

“I really don’t know,” the girl told him. “I never heard of anything of the sort, but that doesn’t mean that there mightn’t be a whole collection of mills somewhere.”

“And all your property. Surely the lawyers must know if there’s a mill. It sounds a likely place: stream, water wheel, landing stage.”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to-”

She turned at a sound of footsteps. The dark, slender person who had arrived in the beautiful tweed overcoat came quickly from the back premises. He was immaculate in Oxford grey. Behind him the decorative young lady paused to press switches, as if to give him an adequate lighting effect, but possibly she had just remembered Mr. Chambord’s water colours.

The immaculate Mr. Hinckleigh swooped down.

“Ruth darling, why didn’t you come through to the office?” he demanded. “I had no idea you were here. How is the new conception working out?” “Not too well, Percy.” She seemed happy to see him, and that was something beyond comprehension to Andrew. “I’m having trouble with the inward planes,” she added.

“My poor darling,” said Mr. Hinckleigh perfunctorily. “I don’t have to tell you how I feel for you, but I have complete confidence. Everything will work out. The important thing now is Alec Foster. The plan has been changed. He is not coming here. We are going to see him.”

“Well, let me introduce Dr. Maclaren. This is Mr. Hinckleigh, Dr. Maclaren.”

Andrew was short in response, but Mr. Hinckleigh was shorter.

He nodded vaguely and turned back to the girl.

“Now, darling, we’ve no time to spare. I want you to glance at the letters we’ve exchanged, then we’ll dash round the corner to the hotel. Foster’s most impatient to meet you. If he can arrange his appointments, he wants to go out to Cheriton Shawe with us this afternoon. Now come along to the office, darling. We don’t want to keep the great man waiting.”

He hurried her off with an arm round her waist. Halfway down the avenue of water colours, he swung his head round and shot an “excuse me” at Andrew, but Ruth darling had not even this much grace. Andrew glowered. She had, it was true, given him a “look” before yielding to the caressing guidance of Mr. Hinckleigh. It was, in a way, an acknowledgement that he still existed; otherwise it might have been interpreted as an imperious order to wait.

Andrew waited. He had spent a sleepless night worrying about this girl; he had been up in the bright morning, trudging the street, waiting for her. And now, Percy Hinckleigh! He might have known it. When he cast his mind back to the reception room at the Brussels airport, he could almost say he had known it.

He was angry. He was sad and depressed. He was as depressed as if all the future had suddenly clouded over. There was nothing ahead, nothing but glaucoma and xerophthalmia and operations for the relief of intraocular pressure, and these things no longer interested him. He had wanted to spend the rest of his life tracking down yawls and confuting Belgian detective-inspectors, all with the ardent co-operation of red-haired girls, or, to put it bluntly, Miss Ruth Meriden. Perhaps he needed an operation himself, for the correction of cockeyed vision. Or a good healthy whack over the head to bring him to his senses. This business of murdered Yugoslavs and hidden yawls and insolvent heiresses had nothing to do with him. There was still time to walk out on it. Now. This minute. None of the others cared a brass farthing about it. Ruth Meriden, absorbed in her work, was completely indifferent. Why, then, should he care?

The decorative young lady was at his elbow, offering him a piece of paper.

“Would you like a catalogue?”

“No,” he answered sadly. “No, thank you.”

He turned and gazed out into the melancholy street over the top of the draped curtain that separated the window from the rest of the gallery. A man had halted on the pavement to peer in at the small Dufy: the tall man in the cap and the overlong grey raincoat who had recently gone into the arcade on the opposite side of the street.

Andrew started, drew back, then looked again, cautiously. The man was staring at the Dufy as if he wanted to hypnotise it. Dark eyes seemed deep-set under the peak of the cap, a thin nose projected, the lower part of the face had an effect of hard immobility as if it had been carved by a bad hand. There was an odd, animal sharp familiarity about the features, but the fellow was a type, of course. That was it: a type!

The singular deadness of the face was relieved only by the eyes. They were like currants. The man hated that little picture by Dufy. He stood in front of it for more than a minute, then he moved off in the direction of Oxford Street, a brown paper parcel tucked under one arm, the overlong raincoat flapping above his trouser cuffs.

Mentally Andrew shrugged. The fellow had done his shopping in the arcade, had taken a look at the painting, and passed on. Now there was a stout man examining the Dufy through a monocle, and he gave place to a lean youth in a blue denim boiler suit. One might as well suspect all as suspect one, and the absurdity of that was only too manifest.

Ruth Meriden touched his elbow. “I’m sorry I have to go off,” she said. “This American dealer is most important. I’ll see the lawyers and find out about the mill as soon as I can. I may be able to arrange it tomorrow. I don’t know. I’ll phone you when I get the information.”

“All right,” he said, with an attempt at indifference. “I’ve been thinking too. Perhaps we are taking it all too seriously.”

She focused a curiously sharp look on him. She hesitated about what she was going to say. Then she obviously said something else.

“Well,” she said, “we’ll see.”

Mr. Hinckleigh, coated again and with gloves and cane, was holding open the bronze door. On the pavement, the girl said: “We’re going this way, Dr. Maclaren. Are you coming with us?”

“No. I go the other way.”

He was not sure whither it led. He turned one corner and another, and perhaps two more. Corners were of no account. He was without a destination. He might have been a blind man tapping along for all he saw of the streets he traversed. His bitter preoccupation with Ruth Meriden left no chink for another thought, and it was only through her that he again approached the outside world. He had dismissed anxiety in his relief at seeing her. Now it wormed a way into his mind again, but he resisted it, bitterly now. He had been harried by groundless fears in the night. Were they any less groundless this morning? He looked about him and found he was in Oxford Street, approaching Marble Arch. He had nothing to do at Marble Arch, so he decided on the opposite direction.

Turning, he remembered the tall man in the flapping raincoat, and kept a lookout for him. As he walked on, that long grey coat became a symbol for him. It was, in absence, the groundless fear. If he encountered it again, then the fear would be real. He was confident, very confident, and it was not through the glaucoma of wishful thinking that he failed to see the coat. He went through the old tricks to prove it to himself. He invented new ones. He tried side streets and unpeopled back ways. He explored the mews and mazes of Mayfair. He dawdled over small purchases in obscure shops. No one followed him, yet he no longer found comfort in this certainty. He was too distracted about the mere existence of Miss Meriden to find comfort.

The walking had left him rather tired. He found a restaurant and lunched. When he was out in the street again, he thought of going home, but could not face an afternoon alone in the flat. Next he thought of looking up some of his neglected friends, but this idea had even less appeal for him.

He passed a cinema, hesitated, turned back and bought a ticket. There was a comedy that reminded him of the tall man’s coat. It was much too long and it flapped badly; also it was very unfunny. He waited for the second film, and that wasn’t funny either. It was about a young girl who lived with a strange family in a lonely country house full of long dark passages, winding staircases, and terrifying furniture. There were three brothers, an elderly housekeeper, and something that lived at the top of the house. One of the brothers was murdered, and then a hand came out of the darkness, seized the girl, and drew her behind a heavy curtain.

Andrew didn’t wait for any more. He could not leave Ruth Meriden alone in that isolated house; he must insist that she stay in town till there was no longer any danger. If she objected, he would go to Stock or to someone else at Scotland Yard and insist that she be given protection.

The time was nearly four when he left the cinema. Possibly she would still be entertaining the American dealer and Mr. Hinckleigh at Walden House, but, if luck favoured him, the guests would be gone by the time he reached Cheriton Shawe.

He was in time to catch the four o’clock coach. When he got down at Wyminden Lane it was nearly five. He crossed the road and rang the bell of the first house he came to. He asked if there was any garage close by where he could hire a car. There was. He telephoned from a box at the next corner, and in less than five minutes he was speeding towards Cheriton Shawe.

When they came to the gateway, he asked the driver to wait for him. He stepped over the chain and took the short cut to the house across the lawn of the statues. He rang the bell. There seemed to be nobody at home. He rang again, and, after a further delay, the maid opened the door.

“You been ringing long, sir?” she asked. “I was just making ready to go home.”

“I want to see Miss Meriden,” he announced. “Is she in her studio?”

“No, sir. She’s not here at all, sir.”

“You mean she went back to London with the guests?”

“There’s been no guests, sir. That’s been put off like. Was she expecting to see you?”

“No, not exactly. Have you heard from her?”

“She rung up the Swan, sir, and the landlord sent my brother along with the message to say that nobody was coming and the mistress wouldn’t be home.”

“What does that mean?”

“She’ll be staying in town tonight.”

“At her Chelsea flat?”

“I suppose so, sir. She always stays at her flat.”

“What time did she ring up?”

“Must have been about three, sir.”

Andrew was worried. He had a feeling that something had gone wrong, that she was in trouble. “Listen, Gert,” he said, “I came all the way from town to see her. It’s important. Can you give me the address of the Chelsea flat?”

“Well, I don’t know, sir.”

“You mean you don’t know where it is?”

“Yes. I go in to help Miss Meriden with the cleaning sometimes. I know where it is all right, but she’s a bit particular.”

He deliberated whether he would produce a pound note or not, and decided that it might be fatal. Gert gave an overwhelming impression of incorruptibility.

“It’s very important, Gert,” he urged. “You know I’m a friend. I was out here yesterday, remember?”

“I remember all right.” Gert was dubious on only one point. “Are you sure Miss Meriden would like me to give you the address?”

“I’m sure she won’t blame you. I’ll guarantee it.”

Somehow Andrew got the worried frown off his face and turned on one of his confident smiles. It always worked with patients. It worked with Gert.

“Oh, well,” she said, “you did stay to lunch, so I suppose it’s all right. The flat’s at 18 Palgrave Street, top floor. The way I usually go, I take the tube to Sloane Square.”

“Thanks. I know the street. I must hurry back to town.”

He hurried. The coach from Wyminden Lane sped through gathering dusk, and lights were on along the route. At Oxford Circus he took to the tube and got out at Sloane Square. He found the house in Palgrave Street and rang Ruth Meriden’s bell. No one came down the stairs to admit him. The house door was locked. He rang the bell again and worried whether it worked or not. It was an old house, and the bell buttons looked as if they had been there in the days when Franklin flew kites. The name plate opposite the button had been rubbed almost flat with much polishing so that you had to take an oblique view to read it in the flame of a match.

Once more he tried the bell. Then he went down the steps from the porch and out onto the roadway, and looked up. There were lights behind the blinds or curtains of all the windows except those on the top floor.

He fought down a feeling of panic. It was all right. He had come here merely to check the maid’s story, but there was really no need to doubt its accuracy. She had gone to dinner with that American dealer. Or she was spending the evening with Hinckleigh. Probably she had stayed in town to spend the evening with Hinckleigh, and that was all there was to it. Why anyone should bother about a woman who could bring herself to spend an evening with Hinckleigh…

The door of the house opened as he teetered in indecision. A white-haired old lady, dressed for an Edwardian night out, came down the steps and was turning in the direction of King’s Road when she saw him.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Have you been making all that infernal racket with the top-floor bell? Enough noise to wake the dead. What’s the matter? Are the duns working overtime?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was anxious to get hold of Miss Meriden.”

“High time somebody was.” Her sweet little laugh made him want to strangle her. “That young girl is too serious; much too serious. It’s no use your ringing that bell again. She isn’t home.”

“Do you know if it’s long since she went out, madam?” Andrew’s tone of high courtesy was marred by a slight tremor.

“About six weeks, I should say.” The old lady laughed gleefully.

“Hasn’t she been at the flat this evening?”

“She certainly has not. She wouldn’t dream of arriving without letting me know.”

“Perhaps she’ll be getting in later. I’d better leave a note.”

“That’s right. You leave a note in the box. I’ll look after it when I come home from the ballet.”

She swung off abruptly with the sprightliness of a girl in her teens.

Andrew hesitated. Here his anxiety should end, because the danger, if any, would be at Walden House, not in town. In the morning he could send the girl a telegram asking her to telephone him. Or he might call at an early hour. So long as he warned her about the danger that might threaten her at Cheriton Shawe, his duty would be done.

He turned away in bitterness, thinking of Mr. Hinckleigh. He went to a pub on King’s Road and had a drink. He was a little hungry then, but thought with loathing of a lonely dinner in an unknown cafe. He felt grubby, too, after the long day of running round to no purpose, and discontent accentuated the feeling till he believed he must look like a tramp. Impossible to think of eating before he had been home for a wash and a clean shirt.

A taxi took him across to Holland Park. There were limits beyond which economy became foolish even for a potential hospital registrar, and the limits were reached in his weariness and dejection.

He did feel a little better for the wash and the change, though, as he knotted his tie, it seemed to him that the Maclaren face had lost a lot of its buoyant air. It had a hunted look; and there was a dark puffiness under the eyes that no medical man could accept with equanimity, especially in the absence of compensating dissipation. He shook his head. A little of that dissipation would be good for him. Up to now this so-called holiday in London, this homecoming spree, had been a flop. Time he had a few drinks; time he announced himself to his friends; time he took a nice girl out to a good dinner. Who was Mr. Hinckleigh that he should have all the fun? Dr. Maclaren was not without resources. Indeed, no! Marilyn Webb, for instance. Lovely, witty, cheerful, and he’d get all the inside dope on the hospitals at the same time. But perhaps not tonight.

He went through the list of resources, and finally decided on Sophie Gaines, who was lovely, witty and cheerful, and didn’t know a hospital from a hole in the ground. The best of the lot of them. He had always liked her. If he hadn’t gone off on his Red Cross jaunt, who knows what might not have happened. A radiant girl, Sophie. She glowed.

It was singular, then, that he dialled her number without any responsive glow. As he swung his finger round the circle from the last cipher, he was more dejected than before. Only when he discovered that he had got on to a wrong number did he feel the slightest relief; but doggedly he began to dial again. As the mechanism whirred unhurriedly, the bell of the flat door rang loudly.

Eight… nine… He dialled the last two digits of Sophie’s number, wondering about the caller at the door. An impertinence, walking up the stairs to the flat without so much as pushing the bell button at the front entrance to give one notice. Jordaens, probably. The police approach.

The automatic ringing-tone was calling Miss Gaines.

He held on. The caller on the door mat might, of course, be somebody for Lang; somebody accustomed to coming informally up the stairs. Or it could be Mr. Botten. After his experiences in M.I. something-or-other, Charley probably considered it undignified to bother about house bells when front doors were open.

Another imperious summons from the flat door cut through the transmitted ringing-tone of the telephone.

Andrew slammed the telephone down on the cradle and bounded from his chair. Then, as he touched the latch, another possibility occurred to him. The enemy had come back. Kretchmann, Haller, Mr. Jolly-Face, the man in the flapping raincoat. One or more of them, and the boss himself for choice. Andrew was in the mood, ready for him, a word of welcome on his lips.

He flung open the door and then jumped as if he had been shot. A flash of light made him close his eyes, but the flash was an inward experience, unseen. He opened his eyes and blinked as if the illumination had been actual. Ruth Meriden was still there on the threshold.