Purbright raised his eyebrows and glanced from the man to the stalagmite lift shaft. “The genie of the lamp?”
The man’s smile remained tightly screwed on, but the rest of his facial furniture shifted slightly; he obviously did not care for levity. “Or Mr Barraclough, rather,” Purbright corrected himself.
The manager nodded and rested one hand on the counter, behind which the leggy receptionist had silently reappeared.
Purbright handed him a card. “I should like,” he said, “to verify the presence in your hotel of a gentleman who may be able to help me with a few inquiries.”
“One of the staff?”
“I think it more likely that he is among your guests, sir.”
The manager’s momentary expression of anxiety faded. At that time of year customers were much more readily expendable than employees. He turned to the girl. “The register, please, Dorabel.”
“There is one minor complication,” said Purbright. “I do not precisely know the man’s name”—Barraclough shrugged and seemed about to countermand his request for the register—“but never mind, I can give you the choice of two.”
The manager’s suspicion deepened that this tall, smart-aleck policeman was making faintly menacing jokes as a prelude to extorting an offer of free drink. He ran through quickly in his mind those most recent instances of malfeasance at the Neptune which might conceivably have come to the notice of authority.
“I hope,” he said, taking an opulently bound volume from the arms of Dorabel, “that these inquiries of yours won’t cause trouble of any kind. Mistakes aren’t too easy to put right once they’re made.” That part of his brain that had been sifting the possible reasons for the inspector’s arrival struck suddenly upon a lantern lecture given the previous Wednesday night in one of the private lounges to a Flaxborough Chamber of Trade party. A slide discovered among the bottles the next morning and brought to him by a distressed chambermaid had suggested a somewhat liberal exposition of the lecture’s theme, ‘Commercial Deviations in the Near East’.
“Perhaps you’d better come along to my office,” said Barraclough. He picked up the register and led Purbright through one of the black doors, a short way along a corridor and into a relatively austere cubicle that contained a filing cabinet, an untidy, old-fashioned desk and a stack of cartons of cigarettes. He reached towards a bellpush. “You’ll have a little refreshment, inspector?”
“That’s kind of you, sir, but I don’t really feel in need of any at the moment.”
To Barraclough such apparently eccentric asceticism was confirmative of even more serious matters being afoot than he had been able so far to imagine. He meekly invited Purbright to a chair and opened the register. “Those two names?” he prompted.
“One of them is Hopjoy.”
Barraclough looked up sharply. “What’s he been up to?”
“You know Mr Hopjoy, then?”
“He’s spent quite a bit of...time here. On and off, you know.” The information was delivered cautiously.
“A good spender? Other than of time.”
“We’ve always valued his custom, certainly. In this business one has to be accommodating on the odd occasion, of course. Mr Hopjoy has excellent credentials. Naturally, I cannot divulge them, but I dare say they’d surprise you.”
Purbright recognized the nervous loyalty of a creditor. “Do you happen to know,” he asked, “Mr Hopjoy’s occupation?”
For a moment, the manager hesitated. Then discretion won. “He’s an agent for some big manufacturing firm. An excellent position, I understand.”
“Is he staying here now, sir?”
Barraclough did not refer to the register. “Not at the moment, he isn’t. We haven’t seen him for a few days. I should explain that he is not in the way of being a regular resident. Just the odd night—when he happens to be covering this district, I suppose.”
“Mr Hopjoy’s car is outside now.”
Barraclough looked only faintly surprised. “Yes? Well, I’m not absolutely certain about this but I should say it’s on loan to a friend of his. I believe they do share it to some extent.” He paused, then asked, almost hopefully, Purbright thought: “It is the car that these inquiries of yours are about?”
The inspector shrugged. “Not primarily; though cars do tend to figure in all sorts of investigations these days—they’re becoming our second skins, aren’t they? No, it’s the driver I really want to see. I presume he’s a Mr Periam.”
“Mr Periam is staying here.”
“Do you know for how long?”
“Another week, I believe.”
“I should appreciate a word with him, sir. Perhaps if you can give me the number of his room...”
Frowning, Barraclough reached for the telephone on his desk. “I’d really rather you...Dorabel, has Mr Periam in number eleven gone out yet? All right, dear; hold the line a moment...” He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “He’s in his room. You can see him in here if you like—that would be best, wouldn’t it?” Hurriedly he spoke again into the phone. “Ask Mr Periam if he’d be good enough to come down; when he does, show him into my office.”
Barraclough sat back in his chair and flicked at his sleeve. “I’m sorry if I seem a bit formal over this, inspector, but I’m assuming your business is confidential and I shouldn’t like one of my guests to be embarrassed. He might be, you know, if you barged straight up to his room. And then there’s Mrs Periam to be considered, of course.”
Purbright stared at the plump, watchful little man, who now had given his smile a wistful cast to suit the part of tactful paternalism. “Mrs Periam?”
“Oh, yes; a rather dear little thing. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to spoil her honeymoon.”
Chapter Six
In the privacy of a bedroom in an hotel a great deal less considerately appointed than was the Neptune for honey-mooning or, indeed, any other purpose, Ross and Pumphrey considered a course of inquiry that was to be separate and, for a while at least, divergent from Purbright’s.
Upon the decrepit bamboo table that divided Ross, seated in the only chair, and Pumphrey, perched on the thinly blanketed concrete slab that served as a bed, lay the file on Hopjoy’s operational reports.
Neither man had referred to the Chief Constable’s claim to be made privy to these papers. The well-meaning but gauche presumption of officers in the civil police were too familiar to be resented or even discussed.
Ross did, however, touch conversationally upon the personalities of those whom the disconcerting interruption of Line F.7 had made their temporary and tenuous associates. Mr Chubb he pronounced “an odd old bird: I kept expecting him to ring for a butler to show us out. The Purbright I’m a shade doubtful about. There’s a streak of cleverness there that doesn’t go with a provincial copper, I suppose he’s been cleared?”