Nobody but the girl, Chang and I knew anything about Garthorne’s part, so he was out, with liberty to spend most of his time at the girl’s house.
I had no proof that I could tie on Chang, couldn’t get any. Regardless of his patriotism, I’d have given my right eye to put the old boy away, That would have been something to write home about. But there hadn’t been a chance of nailing him, so I had had to be content with making a bargain whereby he turned everything over to me except himself and his friends.
I don’t know what happened to Hsiu Hsiu, the squealing slave-girl. She deserved to come through all right. I might have gone back to Chang’s to ask about her, but I stayed away. Chang had learned that the medal in the photo was a trick one. I had a note from him:
Greetings and Great hove to the Unveiler of Secrets:
One whose patriotic fervor and inherent stupidity combined to blind him, so that he broke a valuable tool, trusts that the fortunes of worldly traffic will not again ever place his feeble wits in opposition to the irresistible will and dazzling intellect of the Emperor of Untanglers.
You can take that any way you like. But I know the man who wrote it, and I don’t mind admitting that I’ve stopped eating in Chinese restaurants, and that if I never have to visit Chinatown again it’ll be soon enough.
A Bird in the Tree
by Eric Ambler
You will find in John Heywood’s PROVERBES, Part I, Chapter XI, that “Better one byrde in hand than ten in the woody.” And Plutarch expressed the same thought in OF GARRULITY as “He is a fool who lets slip a bird in the hand for a bird in the bush.” In DON QUIXOTE Miguel de Cervantes trimmed the proverb to “A bird in hand is worth two in the bush.”
We do not know if Eric Ambler’s Dr. Jan Czissar — late Prague Police, at your service! — is familiar with the works of Heywood, Plutarch, or Cervantes, but we would not be surprised if he is — Dr. Czissar has an aura of being familiar with even the most unfamiliar things. In any event, Dr. Czissar’s knowledge (or lack of knowledge) of the classics would have seemed totally irrelevant the afternoon he busybodied himself into the Mortons Hind case. It was all quite straightforward in Assistant Commissioner Mercer’s opinion — a clear case of Scotland Yard pinning the guilt on the only possible culprit — a clear case, that is, until that clever Czech refugee-detective proved that a bird in the tree is worth two clues in a ballistic expert’s testimony...
Copyright 1942, by Eric Ambler
It was generally felt by his subordinates at Scotland Yard that the best time to see Assistant Commissioner Mercer was while he was drinking his afternoon tea. It was at tea time, therefore, that Detective-Inspector Denton took care to present a verbal report on the Mortons Hind case.
The village of Mortons Hind, Denton reported, was five miles from the market town of Penborough. Near the corner of the Penborough and Leicester roads, and about half a mile from the village, stood Mortons Grange, now the home of Mr. Maurice Wretford, a retired Londoner, and his wife.
At half-past three in the afternoon of November 10th, Mr. Wretford’s chauffeur, Alfred Gregory (40), had left the Grange to drive his employer’s car to a Penborough garage which was to repair a damaged fender. He had taken his bicycle with him in the back of the car so that he could ride home. He had never returned to the Grange. At half-past five that evening, a motorist driving along a deserted stretch of road about a mile from the Grange had seen the bicycle lying in a ditch and stopped. A few yards away, also in the ditch and dead, had been Gregory. He had a bullet in his head. The gun which fired it had not been found.
According to the garage manager, Gregory had left him soon after four o’clock. A waitress in a Penborough teashop, where Gregory was known, had stated that he had left the teashop just before five o’clock. This had fitted in with the opinion expressed by the police surgeon, who had examined the body at about six o’clock, that Gregory had died less than an hour previously. Obviously, Gregory had started for home immediately after he had left the teashop, and had been shot shortly before he had been found by the motorist.
The bullet, which was of .22 calibre, had entered the left temple, leaving a small circular wound halfway between the ear and the eye.
The news of the shooting had spread quickly round the village, and late that night a gamekeeper, Harry Rudder (52), had reported to the police that that same afternoon he had seen a 19-year-old youth, Thomas Wilder, shooting at birds with a rifle not far from the spot where Gregory’s body had been found. Wilder was the son of a local farmer, and the following day the police had visited his home. He had admitted that he had been firing the rifle the previous day, but denied that he had been near the Penborough road. His rifle had been examined and found to be of .22 calibre.
It had not been until later that day that the post-mortem findings given above had been made known to the police. The fatal bullet had been handed to them at the same time. To their disgust, it had been badly distorted by its impact against the bones of the head. Any identification of rifling marks had been rendered impossible. The bullet might have been fired from any .22-calibre weapon.
Gregory had had no living relatives. His employer, Mr. Wretford, had given woebegone evidence of identification. The ballistics expert, Sergeant Blundell, had later given evidence. The bullet had been fired some distance from the deceased and at a level slightly below that of his head. The witness had agreed that a shot, fired from a rifle held to the shoulder of a man six feet in height (Wilder’s height was six feet) standing in the meadow to the left of the road, at a bird in the tree on the opposite side of the road, could hit a passing cyclist in the head. After that statement, young Wilder’s protestations that he had not fired across the road had left the jurymen unmoved. They had returned a verdict of “accidental death caused by the criminal negligence of Thomas Wilder.”
Young Wilder had then been immediately arrested.
Mercer stirred his second cup of tea rather irritably. “Yes, yes. All quite straightforward, isn’t it? It’s Blundell’s show now. Send in your report in the usual way, Denton. I can’t see why you didn’t do so in the first place. There’s nothing to be discussed about the affair.”
Denton drew a deep breath. Then: “I don’t think Wilder’s guilty, sir,” he said.
Mercer’s frown deepened. “You don’t? Why?”
Denton squirmed on his chair. “Well, sir, it isn’t really my idea at all. It was that Czech refugee who was in the Prague police, that Dr. Czissar.”
“Whom did you say?” asked Mercer ominously.
Denton recognized the tone of voice and went on hurriedly. “Dr. Czissar, sir. He was at the inquest. He spoke to me afterwards, and seeing that he was a friend of Sir Herbert at the Home Office, I thought I’d better humor him. He sort of buttonholed me and I couldn’t really get away. He...”
But Mercer was scarcely listening. He was seeing a vision — a vision of a plump, pale man with thick glasses and cowlike brown eyes, of a man wearing a long gray raincoat and soft hat too large for him, and carrying an unfurled umbrella; of this same man sitting on the chair now occupied by Denton and politely telling him, Mercer, how to do his job. Twice it had happened. Twice had Dr. Czissar sat there and proved that he was right and that Scotland Yard was wrong. And now...