Vanishing Point

CHAPTER 28

At about half past two on that same afternoon Nicholas looked up from the plan he was drawing. Howard, who was Mr. Burlington’s secretary and whom he didn’t much like, had come noiselessly between him and the light. As the scale to which he was working was a very small one and demanded absolute accuracy, he was annoyed, and showed it. Super secretaries who oiled around and suddenly sprang themselves upon you could hardly expect to be popular. Howard was not only not popular, he was detested. He looked down his long sallow nose and said, “Mr. Burlington would like to see you, Cunningham,” and stood waiting with rather the air of a warder for Nicholas to get to his feet. He did not, however, accompany him any farther than the door of Mr. Burlington’s private room, where he withdrew in a disapproving manner, leaving him to go in alone.

The room was a small and pleasant one. Successive mistresses of Dalling Grange had made music or sat to their embroidery where the light came slanting in through three tall windows.

They had been hung with brocaded curtains then, now they were bare. The pale green panelling had a dusty look. Two serviceable rugs took the place of the delicate carpet which, with most of the furniture, had gone to the sale room, giving place to an office desk, book-cases, filing cabinets, and some rather utilitarian chairs.

Mr. Burlington sat at the desk-a thin man with a quick frown and a sharp tongue. He had brains, or he wouldn’t be sitting in that chair. That was about as far as Nicholas had ever felt inclined to go in his favour. He said abruptly,

“Come in and shut the door!”

As Nicholas complied he was aware that there was a second person present. He had been looking out of the window. He turned round now and came forward. It had really been quite easy not to notice him. He was of medium height and medium build. He wore pale rimmed glasses, and his general colouring might have been described as protective-thin, fine hair of a mousy shade; the most ordinary of features; the least noticeable of clothes. Mr. Burlington turned to him and said,

“This is Nicholas Cunningham. I am going to ask him to give you his own account of the interview I had with him this morning.”

Nicholas found this on the chilling side. He concluded that the indeterminate gentleman must be an Important Person. Even a Very Important Person. He felt that he had been named to him rather more as the accused is named in court than in the way of a social introduction.

Still shrouded in anonymity, the Important Person sat down. Nicholas was invited to sit down. He took a chair which had obviously been placed for him and faced the light from those long unshaded windows. Mr. Burlington said,

“Now, Cunningham-”

“I don’t quite know where you want me to begin, sir.”

Mr. Burlington frowned.

“I want you to repeat what passed between us this morning from the moment that you came into this room and shut the door behind you. What did you say, and what did you do?”

This was an odd game. He supposed it to be some kind of test of his accuracy. He said,

“You were sitting at your table writing, and I came up to it and said, ‘It’s happened again, sir’.”

“And what did you mean by that?”

“Do you want me to go back over what had happened before?”

“Certainly.”

“About a month ago I found an odd piece of paper in one of my pockets. It looked as if it had been there some time, but I don’t see how it could have been. It was crumpled and rubbed. It had been written on in pencil, but the writing was very faint, and neither the words nor the lettering were English.”

The Important Person with the extraordinarily unimportant air now spoke for the first time.

“What did you take them to be?”

“I thought they might be Russian, or one of the other Eastern European languages.”

“What made you think so?”

“The letters were different.”

“Do you know any Russian?”

“No, sir.”

“What languages do you know?”

“French-a little German-the usual amount of school Latin-”

“You couldn’t read the paper?”

“No, sir.”

“What did you do with it?”

“I thought I had better show it to Mr. Burlington.”

“What made you think that?”

“I thought it might be Russian. I didn’t like it being in my pocket. I thought he had better see it.”

With the slightest of gestures he was handed back. Mr. Burlington told him to go on.

“When it happened again, I liked it a whole lot less. I came down to breakfast this morning, and my aunt came in with another of those crumpled papers in her hand. She had been mending my jacket pocket the evening before. She said the paper must have worked down through the hole. She said it was caught between the lining and the stuff. She thought I might want it.”

The quiet voice took up its questioning again.

“Had she read it?”

“She wouldn’t read anything she thought was private.”

“She might not have thought it was private. Did she read it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t ask her?”

Some colour came up into Nicholas’s face.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t want her to think it was important.”

“That might be quite a good reason if it wasn’t a personal one. Was it?”

The last few words were not loud, but they gave him the feeling that he had been flicked in the face. Quite unexpectedly. He said, “No, sir.” He hoped he hadn’t waited too long before saying it.

“Perhaps you will expand that a little.”

“I didn’t know what was on the paper. I remembered about the other one. I thought it was another of the same kind. Mr. Burlington wouldn’t want it to be talked about.”

“You didn’t read it immediately?”

“Not until I was alone. I just pushed it into my pocket and hoped my aunt would think it was of no importance.”

“You had already made up your mind it was important?”

“I thought Mr. Burlington ought to see it.”

“When did you make up your mind to show it to him?”

“As soon as I read it.”

Without any change the quiet voice said,

“I am going to read it now.”

The paper came out of the pocket-book. The glasses focussed themselves upon it. The voice read:

“-you must see this for yourself. If you cannot get us any better material you are useless, and when anything is of no more use, it is better to scrap it.”

“When you read these words, what was your reaction?”

“I thought someone was trying to frame me.”

“And you decided to go to Mr. Burlington. A very proper course, but one you might quite easily have taken if you had wished to safeguard yourself against some outside employer who had become dissatisfied, and who was prepared to scrap you.”

Nicholas pushed back his chair and came to his feet with a jerk.

“Sir-I protest!”

The eyes behind the pale glasses rested upon him steadily.

“Yes. But then you would-wouldn’t you? And all the more if it was true.”

Nicholas Cunningham took hold of himself. Easy enough to go off the deep end. And satisfying while it lasted. But there were always the bits to be picked up afterwards, and he didn’t fancy the job. He looked across the table and said,

“I can’t prove anything. I can only tell you what’s happened. I took both those papers to Mr. Burlington as soon as I found them. I think someone is trying to frame me. If I knew who it was I shouldn’t be here. I should be dealing with him.”

Burlington looked at the other man, and back at Nicholas. He said,

“Sit down, Cunningham.”