Grail had heard the ringing of the telephone. He appeared at the head of the staircase. “Was that for me?”
Birdie hastened aloft. She pushed him back into his room. “If you don’t want me to lock that bloody door, you’d better stop acting like a kid sick of a party. And I mean that, brotherkins, so you can bloody well get used to the idea.”
Grail stared at her, his mouth slightly open and moving as if trying to shape elusive words. Confinement already was rendering him slightly shabby-looking. The long, aesthetic face had slipped from its cast of philosophic calm and in that moment gave the impression merely of stupidity.
“And what the hell have I done?” he complained.
Birdie ignored the question. “That was Richardson,“ she said, ’so everything will have to go off that little bit earlier than we’d planned. Not that it matters. Your kidnappers are very accommodating gentlemen. They wait for us to tell them when to ring.”
“When are you going to get on to the office again?”
“About seven.”
“We decided it should be a lot later than that.” Grail had sat down and tidied his hair—with a comb, not the nursery brush in his inner pocket—and was making an effort to recover some of his authoritative poise.
Birdie shook her head. “Richardson’s even more jumpy than I expected him to be. If we don’t produce a good juicy threat by fairly early evening, he’ll insist on the police being called in, and that’ll knacker the whole auction.”
Grail regarded her for some moments, then said: “I hope you really are as confident as you were pretending yesterday. Has something gone wrong that you’re trying to keep to yourself?”
“Nothing’s gone wrong. Why should you think that?”
“Because,” said Grail, “experience has taught me to mistrust these sudden plunges of yours into a bar-room vernacular. They usually mean that you’re up to something.”
“Clive!” She leaned down, gendy implanted a kiss in his left ear, and stepped to the door. “You aren’t used to these criminal enterprises, that’s all. You’re bound to become a bit touchy.” She grinned, added: “I forgive you, though,” and was gone.
Birdie rang the Herald a few minutes after seven o’clock. When she was put through to Richardson, she announced at once that something very serious had happened and suggested that the proprietor, Mr Oscar Murphy, be brought into consultation without delay.
Richardson put the proposal to his personal assistant, who pointed out in the most matter-of-fact manner that Mr Murphy was in Tahiti. Perhaps the conversation could be taped for transmission? Perhaps it could, said Richardson. The personal assistant turned a switch and pressed a button. “Very well, Miss Clemenceaux. Spill.”
She began to speak. There was a slight tremble in her voice and she paused after every sentence to take breath. Twice during the recital, Richardson urged her not to be frightened. She took this to be a cue for making a brave swallowing sound while she checked her notes before resuming.
There had been a phone call, she said, a little before seven. It sounded like a local line, quite clear and without connection delays. The voice was that of a man. Nothing very special about it in the way of accent or style of speech. Local, she thought, but not uneducated. Sort of middle class. But very cold, very hostile. A little bit mad, one might almost say.
“The first thing he said was: ‘My friends and I are entertaining somebody you know. If you want to know him again, you’d better do exactly as I’m about to tell you. You will get in touch at once with this somebody’s employers and inform them that unless they promise in writing not to publish somebody’s pack of lies about our town we propose to take him off their payroll for life.’
“I tried to interrupt at that point and find if the call was a spoof of some kind. For one thing, Grail’s name hadn’t been mentioned. And the language was so melodramatic. One reads about these kidnap messages, but when you hear one actually coming over the phone, it just isn’t believable.
“Anyway, whoever it was didn’t give me a chance to argue. He ploughed straight on. I quote. ’You will tell the Sunday Herald to put a piece in the paper on Sunday next saying that because of circumstances etcetera—you know how these things are put—the article that was to have appeared will not now be printed, and the Sunday Herald offers apologies to those who have been caused distress’.”
“Apologies!” The managing editor might as well have been requested to blow up his own presses.
“That is not all,” Birdie added, “I’m afraid.”
Richardson, still in shock, made no comment.
“Money was stipulated,” she said. “Quite a lot. They—whoever they are—demand fifteen thousand pounds. Only they expressed it rather unpleasantly.”
“How do you mean, unpleasantly?” It was clear that in Mr Richardson’s view, disbursement of newspaper funds could be nothing other than unpleasant.
“ ‘Fifteen hundred a finger’ was how the man on the phone put it,” Birdie explained quietly. “He said that if it wasn’t paid, they would see that Clive never typed another story.” She made a pause suggestive of shuddering. “A finger for every day’s delay, he said.”
“Good God!” said Richardson.
“There was one other thing.” Birdie put this in quickly; she had nearly forgotten a very important safeguard.
“Yes?”
“There must be no approach made to the police. If that happens, Clive will be killed at once.”
“The usual empty threat, Miss Clemenceaux.”
Oh, hell... No, perhaps the man-of-the-world act was strictly for Murphy’s consumption on tape. She lowered her voice almost to a whisper. “No, Mr Richardson. Not this time.”
A pause. “You think not?”
Ah, that was better. The old Dither-Dick. She said: “I’m certain. Don’t ask me why. I just am.”
Another pause. “Did this...this kidnapper or whatever he is...did he say anything about how the money should be paid? If we do pay, that is, and you realize it cannot be my decision.”
“He said further instructions would be given tonight.”
“By phone?”
“I assume so. Because” (a splendid idea had just flashed into her mind) “he also said something about arranging for us to hear Clive’s voice. ‘While he still has one,’ he said. I really think he must be quite horribly dangerous, this man. You must believe me, Mr Richardson.”
“I do, Birdie; I do, indeed.”
First name sympathy. Excellent. “I think I ought to clear the line now, in case they come on again. And please, please don’t let anyone tell the police. Not yet. This isn’t London. Every policeman here is known, in or out of uniform. And whoever’s got poor Clive will be on the watch.”