The Paper Chase (19 page)

Bogue opened his eyes, looked at her. “Just get on with it, Del. They don’t want to hear your private grief.”

“Eddie was just coming out of prison, and Johnny wanted him to handle it. You know about Eddie?”

“My chief of staff,” Bogue murmured.

“We know about Eddie,” Applegate confirmed. The fumes of the cigar made his eyes smart.

“But Eddie was half-smart. When I told him the set-up the first thing he did was to get a false passport, stamped for Brazil. Then he got in touch with Max, to fix a deal with him, and Max told Johnny. Eddie was told to work with me, but he came down here alone. I sent Barney down after him.”

“And Barney killed him.” The little woman said nothing, but stubbed out her cigarette.

“Then Montague. Do you want to talk about Montague, or shall I?” She looked at Deverell.

Of them all, Applegate thought, Deverell behind his calm exterior showed the most sign of strain. Now he jumped to his feet and words spattered from him like confetti. “For God’s sake let’s get this over and talk about something serious. Montague was a little rat. When I saw him he suggested we should work together, said he was an agent of Henry’s.” Deverell’s voice was scornful. “Told me Eileen wasn’t to be trusted. Then he said something about you, Dad, and I –”

“All right.” Bogue took the cigar from his lips, spoke emphatically. “Don’t say any more, Geoffrey. You got into a scrape, but it’s nothing to worry about.”

“At that time you didn’t know Mr Bogue was alive,” Hedda said to Jenks.

“No. It came as a shock to me. A pleasant one, of course.”

“We decided to let Henry in to avoid any more trouble,” Eileen Delaney explained.

“That covers everything,” Hedda said briskly. Bogue opened one eye to look at her and then closed it again. “Now all we have to decide is what to do about it. As far as Charles and I are concerned, we shall be quite content if Craigen and Deverell are handed over to the police. Is everybody agreeable to that?”

There was a moment of appalled silence. Then Bogue sat up straight in his chair, put down his cigar, and laughed again. He leaned over and pinched Hedda on the thigh. “You’re a girl after my own heart, Hedda, you really are. Catch you out in a bluff and you try another bluff. The answer is no. I can safely say that nobody on my side is agreeable to the suggestion, and you know it.”

“Outrageous,” Eileen Delaney croaked. Deverell looked angrily at Hedda.

Bogue put his hands together. “At the same time, let’s admit it, you’ve made a point. We’ve got to hand over somebody. Who is it to be? I don’t think it need be two people, Eddie’s death was suicide in the book.”

Applegate took the cigar out of his mouth. His tongue seemed to be made of leather. “The police are not satisfied. They’re liable at any time to link it up with Montague.”

“I see two possibilities,” Bogue went on, as if he had not spoken. “All of us here are ruled out, for one reason or another. But –” He jerked his thumb upwards.

Eileen and Jenks were both moved to protest. Jenks’ hand went up to the pimple, his voice squeaked. “No. I won’t hear of it.”

The woman croaked. “Johnny, you’re joking.”

Bogue spread his hands in a gesture placatory, negligent, amused. “All right, I’m joking. Let’s forget it. Let’s talk about money, I’m willing.”

Hedda said: “No.”

There could be no doubt now of the amusement in Bogue’s voice. “You say no. All right, argue it out with her, Del, Henry too. Settle it how you like, I’ll still be happy.”

“Leaving out everybody in this room,” Applegate said.

“That’s right. Leaving out everybody in this room.”

Jenks and Eileen both began talking at once. Then Jenks gobbled in his throat, and she spoke:

“You’re losing your grip, Johnny. You don’t want to let this bitch dictate terms. It’s not like you. After all, we’ve got them here.”

Now Jenks came in, bustling with grievance. “I really quite agree. I’m very fond of Charles, but –”

“We were going to be partners,” Applegate said. “Remember that.”

“But here they are, after all.”

“And here they might as well stay,” Bogue added. “Is that your meaning, Henry?”

“Well.” Jenks wriggled uncertainly. “I mean to say, after all, it’s not up to them to dictate terms to us. We negotiate, if I may say so, from strength.”

“You always were a fool, Henry,” Bogue said, with weary contempt. “Tell him, somebody. You, Hedda.”

“You might be able to get things out of us, but you can’t afford to have any more trouble down here. Is that right?”

Bogue sighed and stretched luxuriously. There were damp patches under his armpits. “Of course. We have them, sure. They have us. In a different way, but they’ve got us just the same.”

“But I don’t see…” Jenks was pulling at his long blue chin. He looked petulant.

“You never did see, Henry. You were born without sight, and you’ll die blind. We let Barney and your boyfriend get information out of them by their little tricks.”

“I wasn’t suggesting –”

“Stop your cant, that’s what it comes down to. Maybe they get it easily, maybe they have to kill one of them. But even if it’s easy, what happens afterwards?”

“We could shut them up until we’re out of the country.” Jenks’ voice faltered. He looked down at the ground.

“And then they get out, and they know enough about what goes on to stop the whole thing. What it comes down to is this, we’ve got to get rid of them or they’ve got to come in. Now, my conscience isn’t clear enough to stand a weight like getting rid of them. I don’t know about you. Don’t worry, Maureen, I’m only talking about something that isn’t going to happen.”

Applegate saw that Hedda was holding Maureen’s hand. Jenks muttered something.

“Barney and your boy are different. They don’t know B from a bull’s foot. Barney’s handy with a knuckleduster, and I don’t doubt the boy’s good with a knife, but what have they got up top? You could spread their grey matter thin and still get it on a sixpence.”

“Arthur’s a good boy,” Jenks said indignantly. “Just because he never finished his education there’s no need for you to be mean about him.”

“ – his education,” Bogue said pleasantly. “You’re getting on my wick, Henry. What do you say, Del?”

“I couldn’t let you turn Barney over. He’s not very bright, but he’d never do that to you or to me.”

“All right, all right.” Bogue spoke to Hedda. “There’s your answer then, my dear. You can’t have either of them. We must leave the police to make their own conjectures.”

“Come on, Maureen.” Hedda and Maureen stood up. Applegate put down the butt of his cigar and stood up too.

“Johnny, you’re not going to let them go,” Jenks squeaked alarmedly. “Johnny.”

Bogue was tilted back in his chair, eyes closed. “It’s no use, Henry. What Hedda wants is reasonable enough but you say she can’t have it. Let them go.”

Deverell, very pale, had moved between Hedda and the door. “Let them go, Geoffrey.” Eyes closed, plump face lifted so that double chin was eradicated, Bogue gave an impression of indifferent sweet reasonableness. In this reasonableness there must be a trick, for the man was made up of nothing but tricks. Yet, looking at the relaxed figure stretched in the armchair, short legs comfortably folded, it was hard to believe in a trick.

Eileen Delaney took another cigarette and tapped it on her thumbnail. Her beady eyes looked at Jenks.

Deverell stood aside. Hedda reached the door, grasped the handle. In his chair Jenks, long and thin, wriggled like a worm under torture. The words he spoke were hardly audible. “…what you like.”

Bogue did not speak or move. It was Eileen who rasped: “What did you say?”

“I said do what you like.” Jenks pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose.

Still without opening his eyes, Bogue said gently: “It’s not what I like, it’s what
you
like. We throw Arthur to the lions, do we?”

“Do what you like, do what you like.” Now Jenks’ voice was almost a shriek. Unmistakable tears ran down his narrow cheeks. His phrases came confusedly. “I should have known better…mixed up with again…always destroyed my happiness…hateful sadistic beast.”

Bogue sat up, pulled down his creased waistcoat, smiled brightly and boyishly. “Once a Henry always a Henry. All right. Take your hand off the door handle, Hedda, and sit down again. It’s Arthur.”

“But can we be sure he’ll do it?”

“Where Henry is concerned money comes first, everything else is a bad second. Now, Arthur shouldn’t present too many difficulties. Get him picked up on an assault charge, flashing that Boy Scout knife of his. Did Arthur know Montague, Henry?” Jenks nodded miserably. “Good. Plant some letters from Montague on him strongly suggesting that their relationship was what you might call compromising. Have you got any letters from Montague that begin just straight, without ‘Dearest Henry’ on top?”

“Frank wasn’t like that.” Jenks’ voice was miserable.

“That’s not important. Have you got anything that might do?”

“I expect so, yes.”

“Then that will save the trouble of tracing and copying. Not that the police will ask too many questions when Arthur is delivered into their laps and we’ve disappeared. Not if I know the police. And I do know the police.” Bogue’s smile was positively impish. “Now, if everybody’s happy, let’s get back to what we were talking about. We’ve wasted enough time on Arthur.”

Applegate looked at his watch. The time was twenty minutes past nine.

The lights were too bright, the room was too full of smoke, his eyes were smarting and blinking with it.

“Can we have the window open a little?” he asked. Deverell moved behind a curtain, and a window screamed slightly. There was no perceptible thinning of the atmosphere. A chair scraped above them, feet clattered, Barney’s great body appeared.

“Heard a noise,” he said. “You want me?”

Eileen answered: “No, Barney.”

“Can we come down now? The kid and I are getting browned off up there.”

“Aren’t you playing nap?”

“Nap!” the big man was scornful. “He don’t play nap. All he does is read kid magazines, Westerns. How long you going to be?”

“Not long.” She spoke soothingly, as if to a child. “You just lie down and have a rest.”

Barney clattered upstairs again. Bogue was talking about percentages and expenses. Applegate deliberately abstracted half his mind from what was being said and tried to work out exactly what it was that could be worth half a million pounds. It must, he thought, be the proceeds of some great robbery, and Eckberger was for some reason excellently placed to act as fence. A jewel robbery, a bank robbery? Impossible to know. He must confine what he said to remarks about stolen goods, without particularising.

He was suddenly aware that he had missed something. “What was that?”

“It’s a terrible thing to get old. You can’t hold an audience any more.” Bogue’s well-shaped mouth was smiling, but the eyes were hard.

“I’m sorry. It’s hot in here. May I take off my jacket?”

“We’ve got a gentleman here at last,” Eileen cackled. “I like you, Charlie. Take it off, you won’t shock me.”

Applegate folded his jacket carefully and hung it over the back of his chair. “I’m listening now.”

The look Bogue gave him had about it something puzzled. “I was telling you the way in which the money was split. Henry gets five per cent and thinks himself lucky he was let in on it. Del gets ten per cent for old times’ sake and pays Barney out of it. You and Hedda get five per cent, out of which you can set up Maureen in her own Anarchist community if you want to. The rest belongs to Max and to me.”

“Eighty per cent.” Applegate whistled. “You don’t do badly out of it, I must say.”

“It was our idea, it’s our risk, we pay the expenses. What can you do without us? Nothing.”

Hedda said coldly: “It’s just as true that you can do nothing without us. I think we should split equally, the three of us, after reckoning out Jenks’ and Miss Delaney’s shares.”

“I don’t like this,” Bogue said. He looked from one to the other of them with a stare so coldly impersonal that Applegate felt a shiver down his back, the kind of shiver he did not associate with fear, but with the cold touch of a barber’s clippers on his neck.

Eileen was frowning. “They’re asking too much.”

“I don’t mean that,” Bogue said slowly. “I mean they shouldn’t be asking at all.”

“My God, Johnny, they want to get the most they can out of it, which of us doesn’t?”

“Not these two. You remember what you said about Applegate, he’s a gentleman. He shouldn’t be dickering about so many per cent. And he’s not bothering. He’s not really listening to what I’m saying, even. Or the girl either. Shut that window, Henry. And Geoffrey, you’d better stand by the door.”

Hedda said: “If this is a trick to get us to take five per cent, it won’t work.”

Bogue glared at her. “Something tells me I’m not the one who’s playing tricks round here. Now, Applegate, where’s the stuff?”

The icy clippers stretched farther down Applegate’s back. With outward calm he said: “Where you can’t get at it.”

“After we’ve melted it down, what do you think Max is going to do with it?”

“Why, sell it, of course.”

“In what form? How can we use the gold after it’s been melted down?”

“That’s something for you and Max to decide.” He knew as he said this that it was disastrously wrong. They were all on their feet. Jenks had taken out his small revolver with the mother-of-pearl handle, Deverell at the door was holding a larger revolver that gleamed blue in the light, Eileen Delaney was shrieking something unintelligible at Hedda. Maureen cowered in a corner of the room, with her hands to her mouth.

In all this movement only Bogue was still. His plump fingers moved on the chair arm. He said quietly: “What makes you think we’re dealing with gold, Charles? You haven’t a notion of what we are dealing with, have you?”

Applegate was speechless. Hedda said: “Because we try a little bluff…”

“Don’t tell me this was any kind of bluff, Hedda. You’re speaking to an expert. You don’t know anything, either of you, nothing important. You’ve never seen the stuff.”

“We haven’t had a chance to look at it,” Applegate began.

Bogue cut him short. “Be quiet. You’ve caused us, as well as yourselves, enough trouble already.”

“Come over here, Charles. I want you.” There was a note of appeal in Hedda’s voice. He got up and moved slowly over to the sofa, his body pierced by inimical glances. Hedda pulled him down to her and pressed her body against his in what seemed a desperate kiss. Jenks sucked in his breath, and Eileen whistled coarsely.

Hedda broke from the kiss and nibbled sharply at his ear. Was the situation, then, so desperate, was this a farewell bite? Words were murmured, as it seemed miraculously, into his ear: “Gun in my hip pocket. Distract attention.” Was it conceivable that those words had been spoken by the Hedda who now gripped his hand convulsively?

“It’s a funny time to choose for canoodling, but there’s no accounting for tastes,” Eileen Delaney said.

“That – er – arrangement about Arthur is no longer good. I want you to understand that, Johnny.” It was Jenks. “I made it only under extreme pressure.”

“Shut up,” Bogue said without heat. He looked at the three of them, a little fat man intent and gloomy where a few minutes ago he had been so gay. He spoke slowly, weightily, as he must often have spoken in the House of Commons. “Perhaps I am wrong and one of you really does know something. If that is so, I appeal to you, here and now, to say so. It will be in your own interests, even more than in mine.”

Silence. Hedda’s grip on Applegate’s hand tightened. Bogue sighed. “I was afraid of it. I’m sorry, but we can’t let you go.”

“Shall I tell Barney and Arthur to come down?” Jenks asked, with a little anticipatory wriggle.

How does one create a diversion, Applegate wondered? At that moment two were created for him. At Jenks’ words Maureen Gardner screamed, and screamed again, with the full power of her lungs. And at the door there was a discreet tapping – three taps, then one, then three and one again.

“Stop it, you little devil,” Jenks cried. He ran across and put his hand over Maureen’s mouth, yelped with surprise and anger as she bit it. Eileen Delaney came across to help him. Deverell had turned to the front door. This, if ever, was the moment. Applegate ignored the struggling three on his right, ignored Bogue who stood placidly by his chair, and flung himself across the room in a flying tackle on Deverell.

The boy’s back was to him, and there was no difficulty in bringing him down, but then they were on the floor together, and Deverell was as slippery as a cat. Their bodies strained together in a parody of the way in which he had clasped Hedda on the sofa. Two feet away, no more, Deverell’s revolver gleamed bluely on the floor. Applegate, while shifting his hold on Deverell in an attempt to get some kind of scissors lock on him, was afforded a view of several pairs of legs. Striped trouser legs and thin stick-like affairs in expensive stockings, were mixed with puppy-fattish immature legs, stocking-less. Down you go, striped trousers seemed to be saying, bent forward at knee joints. Applegate grasped firmly a head of hair, edged body towards the blue thing unattainable, no more than two or three hands’ distance away. Beyond that little forest of legs, toppling now as if blown over by wind, others could be glimpsed occasionally, black pipe stems and shapeless brown trousers. What could Hedda be doing with her gun? The black pipe stems disappeared, air blew on his face, agonising pain came to his groin. His grip on Deverell’s hair was, it seemed automatically, released.

Bogue’s voice said: “All right. Joke over.” The current of air on his face was cut off. He moved, and the pain in his groin increased so that he gasped. A pair of brown suède shoes with well-creased trousers above them was beside him, a new entrant on the scene. One of the shoes moved in his direction and he felt a prod, hardly a kick yet not gentle. He sat up, feeling slightly sick.

The room was as crowded as one in a Marx Brothers film. Maureen Gardner wept face down into the sofa, her skirt up to reveal an expanse of fat thigh. Jenks stood by her side looking smug. Eileen Delaney was looking with a glass at a scratch on her cheek. Craigen and Arthur, a pair of Marxian gangsters, gazed at the scene in astonishment from the staircase. Deverell was combing his hair. Mallory-Eckberger, wearing a suit of more conservative style than the black and white check, but still adorned with the pearl stickpin and cuff links, looked down on him from what seemed to be an immense distance. And Hedda, self-designed as the authoress of salvation? Hers, surely, was the most Marxian spot in the whole tableau. Hedda lay face down on the floor, looking gloomily at him. Bogue, with an irresistibly mock-modest air, stood with one foot on her buttocks, like a tiger-killer beside his prize. In spite of the pain he felt, Applegate began to laugh. He recognised, in this ability of Bogue’s to turn almost anything to comedy, one facet of his charm.

“Hallo, Max,” Bogue said now, with a chuckle. “The old man’s out of condition, but still able to practise judo on little girls.”

“Some kind of party?” Eckberger looked round, frowning.

“It’s over. They’re going upstairs.”

Maureen Gardner raised a dirty tear-stained face. “Father,” she said unemotionally.

“My dear Maureen, I’m not your–”

“Not you. Him.” She pointed at Eckberger. “You’re Roger Gardner. I’d know your profile anywhere.”

“Thank you,” Eckberger said. The profile, Applegate saw now, was a kind of wreck of the one Maureen had shown him in the photograph.

Bogue laughed. “A case of mistaken identity. When did you last see your father, Maureen?”

“I’m not mistaken. I
know.
”

“What’s the use, Johnny, she does know. I knew it was stupid to come back here.” Eckberger stood looking at Maureen, then walked over and patted her head.

“You never wrote to me, I didn’t know whether you were alive or dead.”

“There were difficulties.” Eckberger continued to pat her head.

“I used to think that one day you’d send for me, if you were alive. You never did. Now you’ve come, will you take me away with you?”

“To Brazil?”

“Wherever you live.”

“Perhaps. I’ll have to talk to Johnny about it. And I’ll have to get used to the idea of a daughter.” Eckberger smiled down at her, a smile of such vulpine falsity that Applegate almost shuddered to see it. “Will you go upstairs now. I’ve got to talk to Johnny.”

“Shall I see you again soon?”

“I promise that,” Eckberger said, with another smile of the same kind.

“First floor. Barney and Arthur, you look after them,” Bogue said briskly. Applegate and Hedda scrambled to their feet. “We shall have to decide what to do with you. About that I’ve got my own ideas. But I have colleagues, and they’ll have to be consulted.”

“What ideas?”

“You’re looking run down. A sea voyage would be good for your health. Hedda could learn the elements of judo. Maureen could be reunited with her loving father. We shall see.”