Mystery Mile (25 page)

‘That's 'ow it come, that's 'ow it was sent.' The man spoke
stolidly. ‘If there's a mistake, it was made by the sender.'

Although he did not know it, the postmaster of Kepesake and Redding Knights was amazingly justified in this observation.

THE BENTLEY CREPT
slowly towards Mystery Mile. As they drew nearer, the faint cold smell of the sea reached them. The night had become extraordinarily dark, but it was close and thundery, and the sense of oppression which hung over them all was intensified by the heavy atmosphere.

Crowdy Lobbett bent forward and touched Campion on the shoulder. ‘Now that Marlowe is right out of it,' he said, ‘I shall be prepared to tell you everything I know. You understand that?'

Campion promptly pulled the car into the side and stopped. He turned round in his seat and faced the older man.

‘You've no notion what a good idea that is,' he said. ‘If you don't mind, I think here is the time to let us have it.' He switched off the headlights and composed himself to listen.

The judge nodded in the darkness. ‘That's how I see it,' he said. ‘Now I'll tell you, and you'll see just how awkwardly I've been placed. I don't know if Marlowe told you that all through my career as a judge in the States I've had a reputation for my handling of these Simister gangsters. We could never find out who this alleged Simister is.'

He paused. ‘That was the thing that we were always trying to find out about them – the identity of this mysterious leader. One day I got hold of something which looked like a clue. It was after I had retired. The police had what you would call over here, I suppose, a standing committee, especially appointed to investigate this lot As an authority on these people, I was invited to join it. We had special facilities for the questioning of prisoners.

‘There was a man in the state jail named Coulson. He was doing a term for implication in a very nasty case of dope
smuggling in which several policemen had been shot. He was a Simister man.

‘While in prison Coulson developed internal trouble which turned out to be cancer. He was dying in the penitentiary infirmary when I was approached by the committee to visit him, which I did. He was particularly anxious to die in his own home, wanted to spend his last days with his wife. I went into the matter and found that he was too far gone to do any more harm, so I obtained the necessary release and struck a bargain with him.'

He peered through the darkness at them. They were listening intently.

‘He swore to me that he had something which he believed was a clue to the identity of Simister himself.'

‘At last, after a lot of trouble and persuasion, I got hold of it. As soon as I saw it I thought he'd been making a fool of me. But he was so earnest that I was gradually forced to believe that the ridiculous thing in my hands was in some sort of way a line on our little problem.'

‘Fine!' said Mr Campion. ‘But what does your little
billet doux
consist of?'

The judge moved in his seat. ‘A kid's fairy-story book,' he said.

Giles stirred.

‘In the blue suitcase?' he said.

‘Marlowe told me he opened it,' said the old man. ‘Yes, that's so. I bought the whole series – there was a list of them in the back of the first book. I've read every word of those books, hunted for every kind of cipher, and neither I nor your great expert, MacNab, could make anything of it.'

Campion stared at him through the darkness. ‘Good Lord, was it one of those we saw?' he said. ‘We'll push back at once. I'd no idea you'd left your clue at Mystery Mile.'

‘It was the safest thing to do,' the old man pointed out. ‘While it remained there among the other books it was impossible for anyone to tell which was the key copy unless one knew. If I'd been caught with that one book the inference
would have been pretty obvious. That's why I used to carry it like that with all the others. It was the safest way I could think of.'

‘All the same, I think we'll get on,' said Campion. ‘A bedtime story with a point. I must have a go at it. I got seven-and-six for an acrostic once.'

He started the engine and they drove off with more speed than before. The night had now reached a pitch of darkness unusual in the summer months. The sky was thick with clouds and the air was sultry in spite of the cool tang of the sea which reached them every now and again.

This, combined with their sense of approaching danger, made the drive a thrilling and unnerving experience. The whole countryside seemed to be stirring. Birds and animals slept uneasily in the heat and there were rustlings and little squeals from the roadside as they passed, and strange cries from the woods as the night birds prepared for the storm.

They reached the Stroud unchallenged. Campion glanced at Giles beside him. ‘No police on the road. What's this – economy? or has someone been busy? I wish my Seven Whistlers were still operating. I think we'd better push on.'

Giles breathed heavily through his nose.

‘Nothing else for it, now,' he said. ‘If this storm doesn't break pretty soon I shall explode. It may hang like this all night. They do down here sometimes. It always makes me feel like murdering someone.'

‘That's the idea,' said Campion cheerfully. ‘I fancy you're going to get your chance.' He swung the car round the bend and they mounted the long low hill to the village.

The village was in darkness as they passed. The park, with great trees towering over the narrow drive, seemed unfamiliar, ominous, and uneasy.

‘Lights,' said Giles suddenly. ‘Lights in the drawing-room, I think. What are they up to?'

Campion shut off his engine, and the car rolled on a few yards and stopped. He jumped out on to the grass and spoke softly.

‘I think we'd better approach with caution,' he said. ‘I'll go and reconnoitre outside that window. It may be nothing, of course.'

He spoke lightly enough, but it was plain that he was by no means satisfied that all was well.

For a few moments he was lost in the darkness, and there was no shadow across the shaft of light from the drawing-room window, which gilded the green boles of the elms. At length they heard his voice again quite close to them, whispering in a tone unusually agitated.

‘We're for it,' he murmured. ‘We've gone and put our little necks into it like bunnies in a snare. Look here.'

They followed him across the lawn, treading softly on the springy turf. The silence in the house was terrible, though the lights still glared out unwinkingly. They crept up to the drawing-room window and peered in.

The sight within was an extraordinary one.

The room was brightly lighted. From where they stood they could just see the Romney. The beautiful girl with her sweet, stupid smile simpered in her frame, and before the picture, sprawled out in a little Louis XVI armchair, was Mr Barber. His great head was thrown back, disclosing the thick bull throat beneath his beard.

‘Who the heck is that, anyway?' murmured the judge. Campion explained.

‘Is he dead?' Giles heard his own voice break as he whispered.

‘I think not,' said Campion. ‘He's breathing pretty heavily. He looks as if he'd been drugged.'

Judge Lobbett craned forward a little too far, and his shadow fell across the stream of light. Campion jerked him back.

‘Come round here,' he whispered. He led them round the back of the house to the kitchen windows. There, too, the lights were burning. Once again they peered in.

Mrs Whybrow sat at the kitchen table, her head resting on the boards, her arms hanging limply at her sides.

‘Good God, they've got her too!' Giles ejaculated.

‘Comfort me with chloroform,' said Campion cryptically. ‘Wait a minute, and I'll go and play peep-bo round the house. I'm afraid we've come and settled in the very middle of it. Look here, Giles, I'm going to bring out that blue suitcase if I can lift it. Meanwhile, should I not return said Our Hero, you, Giles, will not obey your natural ass instincts and attempt to clear off in the Bentley, but you will use the only other exit which is not known to everybody, and that is
via
the mist tunnel. George and 'Anry have had orders to have a boat there ever since the search for Mr Lobbett was abandoned. I never knew when we'd need it. In the words of the immortal Knapp, “Good night, all”.'

The judge caught his sleeve. ‘The book you want is called
Sinbad the Sailor and Other Stories
,' he said.

The fatuousness of the title at such a moment was not lost on Mr Campion. ‘That sounds like me,' he said. ‘In view of the scene in the drawing-room it really ought to have been
The Sleeping Beauty
.'

He disappeared noiselessly round the side of the house. Giles and old Lobbett flattened themselves against the wall and waited. The boy was breathing like a horse, and his heart was thumping so loudly that he felt he must shake the foundations of the house.

Lobbett was calmer, but he was by no means impervious to the excitement of the moment. He drew a gun out of his hip pocket and waited.

Still there was no sound from the house. The minutes went by. Giles was quivering with impatience, and the wound in his cheek had begun to throb.

All sense of time left them. It seemed hours since Campion had disappeared. At last a board creaked in the house and Giles started violently. Next moment someone dropped lightly on the ground at their feet.

The judge whipped up his revolver, but it was Campion's whisper which greeted him out of the darkness.

‘The Sleeping Beauty good and proper inside, the Babes in the Wood outside,' he murmured. ‘Rummiest job I've ever seen. It serves old Barber right for overzealous attention to
business. He seems to have put up a bit of a struggle. There's a chair or so overturned. I don't understand it. There's not a soul moving in the house.' He lowered his voice still further. ‘I've got the book. Now, then, it's your one chance. Down the mist tunnel.'

Giles did not move. ‘It's suicide in the dark like this,' he said. ‘You don't know that “soft”, Campion.'

‘I've got a storm lantern I pinched out of the kitchen. We'll light it when we get down there,' said Campion. ‘It's hopeless to go back by the car. That's their bright idea, I fancy.'

Judge Lobbett nodded towards the window. ‘What about those people in there?'

‘I know,' admitted Campion. ‘All the same I don't think they're in any real danger. Our friends are evidently not going to hurt them or they'd have done it before now. We're in a trap and we must get out of it as best we can. It's not safe even to try to get back to the village.'

All round them the dark garden was whispering. They had no idea where the enemy might be hidden. They could hardly hope that their coming had not been eagerly awaited. No one could have missed seeing their headlights as they came across the Stroud. Perhaps even now they were being observed, perhaps at any moment the attack would come.

Neither Giles nor Judge Lobbett had doubted for an instant the wisdom of Campion's remark when he had pointed out that the enemy were probably guarding the way back. Mr Datchett and his followers were clearly not the only subordinates their mysterious enemy possessed.

They obeyed Campion without question.

‘Carry on, Sergeant,' said Giles. ‘I don't like the navigation scheme, but we'll have a shot at it.'

‘Hang on to Uncle Albert, then,' said Campion. ‘This isn't going to be a pleasant country walk. The snake-in-the-grass stuff is on our programme.'

They set off, Campion leading. Their progress was slow and nerve-racking. Every sound startled them. Every moment they expected something to leap at them out of the darkness.

Campion paused constantly to listen, but the house behind them was as silent as ever.

When they entered the maze he produced a torch and Giles took the lead. They found the gap and struggled out into the dry ditch on the farther side. The heat and breathlessness of the air had become intolerable. It felt as if a great hot compress had been placed over the little isthmus.

Giles was bathed in sweat, and even old Lobbett breathed uneasily.

Campion alone showed no outward sign of excitement. He padded along stealthily, keeping up a fair pace.

The hay was still standing, and they turned down into the deep channel of which Mr Lobbett had made use before. The ditch was quite dry and their passage was easy.

They dropped out at last into the mist tunnel.

This wide dip in the saltings, which had been at one time an old river bed, was now quite dry and covered with short wiry grass, very slippery to the feet. Now, as ever, it was half filled with a fine white ground mist, only discernible in the darkness by its dank, marshy taste and smell.

‘This place is pretty ghastly in the daytime,' muttered the judge. ‘It's like the Valley of the Shadow of Death at night.'

‘Keep it pleasant, Guv'nor, keep it pleasant,' quavered Mr Campion, unexpectedly shrill.

‘Look out.' Giles voice was quiet. ‘We're getting near now. Keep close in.'

All around them the saltmarsh sucked and chattered horribly, and still farther ahead the disturbed sea birds wailed disconcertingly at uneven intervals.

Presently Giles stopped. ‘It's not safe any farther without the lantern,' he said. ‘Your little torch isn't strong enough. I tell you, Campion, this is quick mud we're coming to. You can sink up to your waist, up to your neck, or out of sight altogether, and nothing but a couple of horses and a cart-rope can save you.'

They paused and lit the lantern.

‘Now,' said Campion, as he replaced the glass in its wire
shield and the lantern gave out its uncertain yellow light through the fine mist, ‘speed, my old sea dogs. All aboard for Paris, Dijon, Lyons, Macon, Victoria, Clapham Junction, Marseilles, and the Gates of Gold.
En voitures
.'