They Never Looked Inside (20 page)

The crowd was thicker than ever, and the band was getting into its stride. Mrs. Purcell appeared to be entertaining a noisy all-female party at the far end of the room, and none of the staff was visible – probably all in the buffet or bar, thought McCann.

He walked boldly to the end of the vestibule, pushed through the heavy curtains, and started upstairs.

The first thing which struck him was the complete silence.

At the turn in the stairs the noise behind him ceased as if it had been cut off with a knife.

The corridor in which he found himself was discreetly carpeted and McCann moved quietly along it, listening to the bumping of his own heart.

“Don’t be a fool,” he said to himself. “They can’t eat you. Remember, you’re looking for the lavatory. And if anyone comes along, you’re slightly drunk.”

The doors were all numbered, odd on the right, even on the left, and a quick look into one of them convinced him that they were private dining-rooms. Judging from the complete silence, they were none of them in use.

It was clearly no use wasting time on this floor. McCann made his way up a further flight of stairs and again paused to listen.

The corridor was a duplicate of the one he had left, and yet, somehow, different. It had a more lived-in air, and as he stepped into it McCann thought he heard a voice speaking from one of the rooms at the far end.

He again stopped to listen, but the silence was now complete.

Feeling a desperate distaste for the business, he opened the first door on the left, slipped inside, and feeling behind him, turned the key in the lock. It was a woman’s bedroom, and was empty and in darkness. Probably Mrs. Purcell’s room. He thought he recognised the saturated floral scent which that ageing primrose had carried with her. There was clearly nothing for him here, and he was on the point of departure when a rather curious thing happened. The Atomic’s neon sign, which was of the “one-on and two-off” variety, sprang into life outside, and the back-glow, illuminating the room, shone steadily on the dressing-table in the window. From its heavy leather photograph frame a face looked out at McCann.

The sign flicked off, and the room was in darkness once more.

He had a pencil torch in his pocket, and, getting it out, he shone the beam on the photograph. It was a head and shoulders study of a young man in the uniform of the last war. The face was familiar, but he couldn’t place it. It seemed, for some reason, important that he should do so.

So intent was he that the footsteps outside took him entirely by surprise. He stood, frozen, without even the power to turn off the torch.

The footsteps had stopped and someone was fumbling the door handle.

The person outside was clearly surprised to find the door locked. There was an indeterminate sound, which might have been made by a man or a woman – and then the footsteps moved off down the passage to the left.

A door opened and shut quietly.

The noise seemed to release McCann from the spell; he turned off his torch, slipped it into his pocket and tiptoed to the door. Outside everything was still again.

As McCann turned the key and eased his bulk out into the passage, he was thinking furiously.

The most plausible explanation was that the person he had heard had been a servant, coming, perhaps, to do something in Mrs. Purcell’s room (did people still turn down other people’s beds?). It couldn’t have been Mrs. Purcell herself. She would have known that she had left her door unlocked, and would have reacted in a very different way.

McCann hesitated for a moment and then went on down the passage.

From the sound of the closing door he judged that the owner of the footsteps had gone into a room on the left – that is to say, on the same side as Mrs. Purcell’s room. It would be wiser to confine any further exploration to the doors on the right hand side. Wiser, thought McCann, the whole business is stark raving lunacy. It only needs someone to come out of any one of these doors and I’m euchred.

There were two further doors on the right hand side. The first of these was unlocked and a glance inside showed McCann that the room, a large one, was completely empty, devoid of either furniture or carpet – a fact sufficiently surprising to warrant comment in London in that year of grace.

He shut the door and moved along to the next.

His hand was actually touching the handle when he heard, from inside the room, a loud click, then a voice, reassuringly matter-of-fact, said: “Yes, who is it?”—a pause—” Oh, send him up as soon as he arrives.” Someone was evidently speaking on the telephone.

At this moment McCann heard the door behind him opening.

It was a bad moment, and it made it no better when silence once more supervened.

Someone had obviously come out and was standing watching him. This, he supposed, was the moment when he ought to give a drunken hiccough and inquire if “This—hic—was the way to the gentlemen’s lavatory.” He found it surprisingly difficult to start acting in such cold blood at a moment’s notice.

McCann turned his head and saw Ronnie looking at him.

He had no clear idea of what move to expect next, and what did happen surprised him considerably. Ronnie came quietly forward, caught him by the arm, and drew him down the passage. He was obviously desperately anxious not to make any noise. At the head of the stairs he paused to listen for a moment, then nodded to McCann to go ahead. On the half-landing they stopped.

For the first time McCann turned and looked the youth squarely in the face. He was shaken at what he saw – there is something curiously unnerving about plain terror.

“For God’s sake,” said Ronnie, “get out of here. Get out of here at once.” His voice was a whispered parody of its usually high-pitched pipe. “I don’t know where you came from or how you got here, but for God’s sake clear out quickly.”

Above them a door slammed.

“Now, quick.” Ronnie almost pushed him down the stairs. “Don’t stop to talk to anybody. I’ll settle your bill. Collect your hat and coat and get going.”

Outside the wind was blowing half a gale and the rain was scudding in the gusts.

Somewhere a clock struck three. McCann turned up his coat collar and strode along, wondering savagely if all detection left such a filthy taste.

What a glorious evening!

He had crept upstairs, like some bold bad boy at boarding school, had looked into the matron’s bedroom, had sniffed timidly at the door of the headmaster’s study, and then, to complete the analogy, had been caught by one of the junior staff, and sent back to bed with his tail between his legs.

(Yet he
had
seen something important. Where had he met the original of that photograph? Try to think.)

And that on top of an evening spent drinking and flirting and dancing in that appalling atmosphere.

A slat of wind almost knocked the breath out of his body as he turned the corner by the Leopard.

To his surprise there was a light in the sitting room window.

Outside the door stood a War Office shooting-brake with its side-lights on and its army driver asleep at the wheel.

Upstairs McCann was surprised to find Miss Carter yawning desperately, entertaining M. Bren and Colonel Hunt.

“Here’s some friends of yours, Angus,” she said. “Now don’t think me rude, but I’m going to bed. Good night everybody. There’s some more beer in the sideboard.” Colonel Hunt sprang to his feet and held open the door.

M. Bren bowed punctiliously and McCann opened a bottle of beer.

“We go to France,” said M. Bren without preamble. “You had better hurry,
mon vieux
.”

“Good God,” said McCann, “I thought I was going to bed. What odd times you chaps choose to do things. Why the secrecy?”

“There is no question of secrecy,” said Colonel Hunt precisely. “We have been waiting for a suitable storm.”

“Well, you’ve got one now all right,” said McCann as a ferocious gust came near to fetching the signboard of the Leopard off its hinges.

“Exactly,” said the Colonel. “All trans-Channel traffic was suspended this afternoon. The Met. people say that it probably won’t be resumed for three or four days.”

“Well, that’s fine,” said McCann, settling comfortably in his chair and pouring himself a glass of light ale, “that means we can’t go.”

“
Au contraire
,” said M. Bren.

“It’s like this,” said the Colonel. “An interruption of cross-Channel traffic holds up the leave circuit. Trainloads of troops reach the terminal camps at Ostend and Dieppe, but none of them can get any farther. You see what this means?”

“It means a hell of a crush,” said McCann, who had had some experience of army staging camps.

“It means,” said the Colonel patiently, “that your soldier smuggler, who normally only stays in the camp for a few hours, will now be immobilised for three or four days
with the stuff on him
.”

“Yes,” said McCann, “I do see it really. I’m sorry to be so dense but I’ve had a trying evening. When do we leave?”

“The train quits Paddington for Plymouth at four o’clock,” said M. Bren.

“You’ve got half an hour to change and pack. Have you got battle-dress here? Good. It’s going to be a rough crossing. M. Bren has all instructions for you. One other thing. You’ll be dealing with a camp commandant at Dieppe who is a Major. You’d better become a temporary Lieutenant- Colonel. I’ll fix the paper work. Have you still got your crowns up on your battle-dress? Good.” The Colonel felt in his capacious side pocket. “Here are the pips to put up with them. Sign for them here, please.”

McCann signed the illegible tissue paper which seems to accompany all Service transactions from the issue of a bootlace to the handing over of a battleship, and was on the point of leaving the room when a thought struck him.

“Something happened tonight,” he said, “which I think ought to be reported to Inspector Hazlerigg.”

“Telephone,” suggested the Colonel.

“No-o—” Really there hardly seemed anything definite enough to telephone about. “I think I’ll put the whole thing in a written report. There’s no great urgency about it.”

“Write it in the train,” said Colonel Hunt. “Give it to the R.T.O. at Plymouth. Mark it S.M. with this code number. It’ll reach London by special messenger tomorrow evening.”

Sunday afternoon was already far gone. McCann stood beside the youthful commander on the bridge of the destroyer
Gadfly
and watched Dieppe cliff and fort climb out of the tumbling waste of grey sea.

The destroyer was behaving like a demented kitten and M. Bren, who had spent a good deal of time on the train cursing the parsimony of the British Government for failing to provide them with air transport, was now communing with his soul in some dark recess below decks.

“Do you think you’ll be able to berth?” shouted McCann.

“Oh, yes, I expect so,” said the Commander. “It’s wonderful what a lot of punishment these potato-mashers will take without actually breaking up.”

His opinion was justified and it was little more than an hour later that they attained the comparative security of the inner basin, behind the old railway bridge. M. Bren was revived with a patent mixture, the ingredients of which were known only to the Commander, and which was referred to respectfully by the rest of the ward-room as “Operation Crossroads”.

On the quay a staff car was waiting for them – further evidence of Colonel Hunt’s far-reaching hand – and in less than no time they were sitting down to tea with Major

Middleton, M.C., a massive Yorkshireman, Commandant of the Dieppe base camp, its surrounds and appurtenances.

“I heard from the War House that you were coming,” he said. “Have another cup of tea. No? I don’t blame you. Filthy stuff – it’s the result of having French orderlies. I never yet met a Frenchman who understood the importance of Warming the Pot. Now, if you’d put me in the picture—”

It was obvious from the first that he meant to co-operate, and McCann heaved an inward sigh of relief. Part of the plan which he had mapped out with M. Bren was of an exceedingly ticklish nature, and he was going to need all the help he could get.

“There are two things we want to try and do,” he said. “One is to find out who is receiving the stuff this end, the other is to catch some chap bringing the stuff back again into England.”

“What stuff?” inquired Major Middleton reasonably.

“I wish to heaven we knew,” said McCann. “That’s one of the things we’ve got to find out.”

“Let us approach ourselves to it logically,” said M. Bren. “For the sake of clarity we will call the stolen goods which leave England ‘exports’. In a similar manner we may call the final result of the foreign transaction ‘imports’.”

“The ‘exports’, I take it, are picked up in England by soldiers returning from leave, carried across by them, and handed over to the organisation on this side. Immediately, do you think, Monsieur, or
en route
for Italy, or after they have got back to their units, perhaps?”

“Immediately, I should think,” said McCann. “They wouldn’t want them to hang on to the stuff a moment longer than is necessary.”

“I am of accord,” said M. Bren. “There is, I suspect, a receiving agent in Dieppe itself.”

“Yes, but look here,” said Major Middleton. “That’s not too easy. The chaps may stay here an hour or they may stay a couple of days. It’s all according to the tide and the trains.”

“Perhaps,” said McCann, “if you would explain shortly how the system here works—”

“Certainly. When a boat arrives all leave personnel are disembarked and brought here in trucks.”

“Always?”

“Yes – they have to come here for checking and documentation. Then if there’s a train ready, they may be driven straight down to the station again and sent off. On the other hand, if there isn’t a train, or if there are a lot of people waiting, with priority, then they may have to stop here – not more than a day, usually.”

“You see how awkward that makes it,” said McCann to M. Bren. “The chap carrying the ‘exports’ may be hustled straight from the boat to the camp and the camp to the train. He wouldn’t have a smell of a chance of contacting an agent in the town.”