The Secret Vanguard (6 page)

Appleby, sensing another cue, gave a comprehending murmur.

‘Dr Borer lived to a great age – you will remember that he was born in 1798 – and during his lifetime the papers got sadly mixed up. In arranging them we have to rely on internal evidence to a deplorable extent. Now here, for example–’ And once more Tufton rummaged about.

‘I have come in,’ said Appleby, ‘about Philip Ploss.’

Tufton, about triumphantly to produce a paper, was checked by the name. ‘Ploss?’ he said, and held the paper suspended in air. ‘My dear Mr Ploss, we are glad to see you again. I had begun to fear that you were unwell.’

‘About
Ploss. My name is Appleby and I am from the Criminal Investigation Department of the Metropolitan Police. I have come in
about
Ploss. Ploss is dead.’

‘Dead?’ Tufton let the paper which he had laboriously secured slide back to its oblivion. ‘Dear, dear. The poets are all departing from us, I fear. Meredith gone, and that fat fellow Rossetti, and now this lad Ploss.
Tempus edax rerum
, Mr Appleby,
Tempus edax rerum
.’ And Tufton gently stroked his long white beard. He would have stood very well, Appleby thought, as an allegory of Time.

‘I understand, Mr Tufton, that Ploss had been working here of late?’

‘Yes – yes, indeed. On Dr Borer’s Sweetapple Papers. We gave him that desk in the corner.’ And Tufton pointed into the shadowy recesses of the room.

‘That desk?’ Appleby stared doubtfully in the direction indicated. Nothing was visible except a mass of papers breast high.

Tufton changed his glasses, peered across the room, and sighed. ‘Dr Borer,’ he said, ‘was a copious correspondent. And he would
not
use letter-books. I believe somebody has been endeavouring to segregate over there the correspondence of ’57. I believe that is it.’ He peered again at the enormous pile of papers. ‘And probably of ’58 as well. If you would care to investigate–’ And Tufton got painfully to his feet, took his pipe in one hand and the fire extinguisher in the other, and slowly crossed the room. ‘Mr Ali, Mr Dasgupta, I wonder if we might have your valuable help?’

They all searched. The corner of a desk was presently revealed. ‘Do you think,’ asked Appleby, ‘that Ploss would be likely to leave private papers here?’

Tufton considered. ‘
De mortuis
,’ he said, ‘
nil nisi bonum
. Nevertheless, I will venture to say that Ploss was not a very tidy person.’ He sighed. ‘I detest untidiness above all things… Yes, I judge it not unlikely that he would leave property of his own from visit to visit.’

They continued to search. And they found eventually a briefcase stamped P P, a sheaf of notes, a fountain pen, and a diary. ‘May I take these?’ Appleby asked. ‘I will give you a receipt.’

Tufton nodded sombrely and moved with his visitor towards the door; it seemed to have recurred to him that there was a great deal of work on hand. But on the landing he paused, as if suddenly impelled to confidence. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘that I sometimes have nightmares?’

‘Nightmares?’

‘I dream that Dr Borer is still alive. Making collections. And keeping diaries. And engaging in correspondence.’ With his pipe and the fire extinguisher Tufton made a single sweeping gesture at the mouldering leather and the cliffs of papers and the learned Hindus. ‘And that we shall never catch up.’

He stroked his beard and turned away. And, delicately, Appleby picked his way downstairs.

Sunlight on London. Just beyond the square a building was coming down. A workman, perched perilously on the end of a crane, wore a shirt on which an advertisement for a nerve tonic was inscribed. London nineteen hundred and thirty-nine. And with an effort remembering what he was about Appleby hailed a taxi and opened Philip Ploss’ diary.

The last entry was for the Thursday – the day before Ploss died:

Chez Borer again. Tufton has gathered that I write verse and asks me if I know William Morris, a wild fellow with a beard. O more than reverend, O blessed Sweetapple to lead one to this haven.

Project: A Panegyrical Essay on Funk and Despair.

An odd thing on the train. Three fellows in the carriage and all pretty well mute until one starts haranguing on – of all things – poetry. How it began I scarcely noticed; my attention was caught by the name of Ploss. Fellow was spouting what he claimed to be Ploss. Only it wasn’t! And I couldn’t resist the temptation to interrupt and explain just
why
I knew he was mistaken. Foolish of me and I could see he didn’t like it – surprised him in a really nasty look. Some of the lines stick in my head oddly: indeed to the extent of making me take steps to discover the true author. Whole incident had an odd quality I haven’t at all troubled to get down. Borer rather a warning against diaries, anyway.

Luncheon with one of the Indians. He has studied Old Gothic and written a thesis on Wordsworth’s political sonnets. Decent little chap.

Business on the train ruining my day’s communion with Sweetapple. Keeps coming to mind. It was as if the spouter had guessed that I had guessed something – which I certainly hadn’t.

Later
. A most disturbing notion has floated up. Fantastic if the road from Lark to
this
should have skirted anything like
that
. But there it is. 162543.

The taxi – like Philip Ploss’ diary – had stopped abruptly; Appleby looked out and found himself in New Scotland Yard. 162543… He paid his fare in a ruinous abstraction and went his way: a hall, a staircase, a corridor, an outer office…

‘Always the same,’ said a grumbling voice. ‘Nothing but London, London all the time. If you ask me–’ The man who had spoken, and who was going through a file of papers at a desk, stopped on seeing Appleby’s absent frown. ‘Sorry, sir. Nothing for you to bother with.’

Appleby crossed to the door of his own room. Then a long habit of patient inquiry asserted itself. He turned round. ‘What is always the same?’

‘Edinburgh and Glasgow. Let some wretched girl disappear in Tobermory or Tomatin and their one idea is that she’s come to a bad end under our noses here as we sit.’ The man at the desk flicked over a page of his file impatiently.

‘Some girl has disappeared?’

‘Yes, sir. Name of Grant – Sheila Grant. Up the Highland line.’

Appleby nodded and opened his door. ‘I don’t suppose,’ he asked idly, ‘that any poetry comes into it?’

The man at the desk looked at him round-eyed. ‘Why, yes,’ he said. ‘Something about poetry. That’s the funny thing.’

The lights which had danced so long and painfully before Sheila’s eyes were taking on a centripetal movement. Like fragments of mercury they ran together and coalesced, forming a single flare as of a great torch. A great torch held aloft in a gigantic hand. In fact the Statue of Liberty. And the Statue spoke. ‘Say,’ it said, ‘are you all right?’

A pleasant voice, and with the accent which the Statue might be supposed to have. Only the sex was surely wrong, Sheila thought. And as this difficulty presented itself to her struggling mind the light slowly faded – at once faded and translated itself into a shocking headache. But the voice continued. ‘Say,’ it said softly and cautiously, ‘are you all right?’

Sheila lay quite still in the darkness – she appeared to be on some species of narrow bed – and tried to think. Her thoughts were punctuated by the voice – by the voice repeating the same question patiently and at regular intervals, like the queer conjuration with which amateur radio transmitters flood the ether. The voice might be calling from Kamchatka or Tierra del Fuego; certainly it was very far away; a great effort would be needed to make any reply audible. ‘Yes,’ Sheila called with a strength that surprised her. ‘Fairly all right.’

‘
Sssh!
’

The voice was not remote; it was somewhere close above her head. And all about was danger. ‘I’m all right,’ she said very quietly. ‘Who are you?’

The owner of the voice made no immediate reply. Sheila had the dim impression that he was listening elsewhere. And when he did speak it was to ask another question of his own. ‘What are they trying to pull on you, anyway?’ There was a brief silence, for Sheila felt momentarily unable to collect herself for a reply. ‘They’re not trying’ – the voice was suddenly naively offhand – ‘to marry you to someone you don’t want?’

This romantic suggestion from the darkness brought Sheila fully to her senses. ‘No,’ she said. ‘They’re just–’ And then she paused. She had dropped right out of the ordinary world into one which she guessed was full of treason. ‘Tell me about yourself,’ she said firmly. ‘Who are you, and what are you doing there?’

‘I’m Dick Evans, Rhodes scholar from Princeton, studying jurisprudence,’ said the voice collectedly. ‘But principally I’m going to write a book on Caravaggio. And for the rest – well, I’m tied up in an attic with a length of rope.’

Sheila said nothing; her head felt very bad.

‘But never mind,’ said the voice of Evans. ‘I was a rabbit of a kid at a perfectly beastly school – the expensive kind.’

This seemed both irrelevant and depressing. A young man who stalked Caravaggio after a rabbity career at a perfectly beastly school was hardly the type which present exigencies required. Rather dully, Sheila said, ‘Oh.’

‘The bigger boys used to tie up the smaller ones and then burn their toes. I didn’t mind that so much.’

Sheila, who was now feeling slightly sick, said, ‘Didn’t you?’ in a particularly idiotic way.

‘But sometimes they tied them up and left them out on the roof all night. I hated that. You see, it was cold.’

‘I see.’

‘So I taught myself how to cheat them. Just a matter of systematically exercising the right muscles. And I can do it still. So you see we’ll be meeting soon with any luck.’ Evans paused. ‘Are they spies?’

‘Yes. German spies.’

‘Of course,’ said the voice of Evans, ‘this had made me pretty mad. Still, all that is nothing to me. I’m in Europe for jurisprudence a little, but chiefly for Caravaggio. It’s nothing to me at all.’ He paused again. ‘My!’ he added reflectively. ‘Won’t it be swell when I bash in their faces for this?’

This was much better. ‘I hope I’ll be there,’ said Sheila.

‘You sound a grand girl. You looked it, too. Have they left you any clothes?’

Sheila made a startled exploration. ‘All of them,’ she said.

Evans laughed softly. ‘By the end of that scrap I didn’t have more than my pants. And the Teutonic Peril hasn’t issued me anything since.’

‘A scrap? Did you–’

‘Quiet!’

Somewhere a door creaked. Sheila lay still and tried to remember what this strange situation was all about. A strange and frightening situation…only she didn’t feel frightened. Sheila’s mind halted dubiously over this odd psychological fact. Perhaps it was symptomatic of a peculiarly precarious nervous state. Perhaps it was the bracing effect of a voice from the menacing darkness concluding that she was a grand girl… Drumtoul. She had got out at Drumtoul. Or rather at what the man she now called Dousterswivel had declared was Drumtoul. That was it. He had left the compartment some stops back and must have arranged by telephone for her reception. A simple matter – or a simple matter if one had a tiptop organization at command. And now here she was, and there above her was a young man tied up with rope. And in the tiptop organization the two of them had the job of picking a hole. It was surprising, Sheila thought, that she had little tendency just to lie back and gape at the unreality and extravagance of what had befallen her. Only a few hours before –

Her thoughts were scattered by a creak almost at her ear. A flicker of light played for a moment on what appeared to be a whitewashed wall; there was a clatter as of a tin or pannikin set sharply down; the creak was repeated; the darkness was once more entire. She waited for some minutes and then got unsteadily to her feet. It was time to explore.

The bed was a mere pallet; it stood on a flagged floor round which rose walls of undressed stone, faintly damp. There was what appeared to be a fireplace but up which no gleam of light was to be seen; there was a small high window, heavily shuttered; there was a stout door and by the door a bench. Sheila was feeling over the surface of this when Evans spoke again.

‘All safe now. I guess they’re not honouring us with a resident jailer. Have you gotten anything out of that visit?’

‘A mug of what feels like milk and a hunk of what is certainly bread.’

‘You’re the lucky one. I got nothing but the flash of a lantern. There must be a German equivalent for
place aux dames
. Say, why did you get into that car?’

‘I was going to be met. And the chauffeur knew my name – I don’t know how.’

‘I do. I know it myself. It’s on your baggage. S Grant.’

‘Oh, of course. Well–’

‘What’s the S for?’

‘Sheila.’

‘That’s swell.’

‘The chauffeur took my things and I followed him to the car. There were people in it. I was a little surprised they didn’t get out. But I jumped in. And that’s all I remember.’

‘I’ll say it is.’

‘Ought I to drink this milk?’

‘Sure.’

Sheila drank. She had, she noticed, asked for and obeyed an order. And the result was a further improvement in nervous tone. ‘How did you come in on it?’ she asked.

‘I was going to take the train to Drumtoul – I’ve been hitch-hiking about. I saw you get off and the fellow collect your baggage. And I thought I’d have another look. Drumtoul wasn’t all that important.’

‘Why ever should you have another look? Did I seem deadly scared?’

‘No. Just that sometimes one likes to.’

‘Oh.’

‘Mind you, I’d
seen
you,’ said the voice of Evans anxiously. ‘I’d seen you quite clearly by the station lamp. It wasn’t like reckoning to take another look at just anybody. You do see that?’

There was a problem here for a sage. Sheila said nothing.

‘Sheila.’