Did the servants’ curtain stir? He couldn’t be sure; he watched it but it didn’t move.
Well the uncertainty put a little spice into it. He moved very slowly through the unfamiliar room, feeling his way with the backs of his fingertips: if the fingernail touched an object it would flinch away rather than toward and there was less likelihood of knocking anything over.
The door to the hallway was open; once he’d passed through it there was some light—it filtered along the hall from the foyer which was lit from above by the chandelier at the head of the stairs. He could see his way now and he moved rapidly to the foot of the steps. The staircase was a sweeping carpeted affair with a handsomely carved hardwood bannister. There was a bust of Churchill on a marble side table, a filigreed mirror beside the cloakroom and a portrait that probably was a likeness of the memsahib’s father or grandfather.
Going up the stairs with the chandelier in his eyes made him uneasy; he passed beneath it quickly and retreated along the upstairs corridor before he stopped to double-check his bearings. The study would be the third of the three doors on the left. He went along opening doors and looking into the rooms on both sides; that was elementary caution—better to be surprised while he was in the open corridor than to be trapped in the study. But he didn’t really expect the house to be crawling with agents waiting to nail him. They hadn’t enough evidence to lay that sort of trap. He hadn’t confided his wild-hair scheme to anyone and it wasn’t the sort of thing any of them could have anticipated.
The door to the study was locked and that pleased him because it meant there was something beyond the door that Chartermain wanted to protect.
Just as he was not an accomplished cat burglar, so he was not an expert lockpick; but he’d had rudimentary training in the art and he was not pressed for time and after several minutes with the coat-hanger wire he had the old throw-bolt lock whipped and he was ready to open the door. But first he reached up and unscrewed the bulbs in the wall fixtures. They weren’t burning but if there was a trap set up he didn’t want them to throw a switch and silhouette him in the doorway like a cardboard shooting-range dummy.
He took several very deep breaths. If he was jumped it would help to have his lungs full of air. Then he went in.
He was alone in the room. He left the door open behind him; he wanted an available exit in case of trouble and besides he didn’t want to light a lamp because that could be seen from the servants’ window and he wasn’t sure the drapes here would be opaque. The indirect illumination from the distant chandelier made the room dim but it would be enough to work by.
Something creaked. He froze until he was satisfied it had been natural settling; it was an old house.
He commenced his search, not sure what he might find, keenly hoping for one thing but not counting on it. If Chartermain wasn’t carrying his passport it would be in his office in Whitehall or it would be here. With luck it would be here.
There was a wall safe; he didn’t examine it—it would be impregnable to him, its contents largely composed of documents in binders with stern warnings from the Official Secrets Act on the jackets. He wasn’t interested in stealing state secrets. He went through the desk drawer by drawer and had his piece of good luck: it was an old wallet, very thin pliable expensive pigskin of the old-fashioned diplomatic style, containing Chartermain’s official red passport, the memsahib’s civilian black-bound one and an assortment of documents and foreign currencies.
Kendig took everything out of the wallet; he left the currency, the memsahib’s papers and the rest of the things on the desk. Then he tore his photo out of his own passport; he put that back in his pocket along with Chartermain’s VIP passport. He put the Jules Parker passport into Chartermain’s wallet and placed the wallet on top of the other things in the middle of the desk blotter.
He wrote a little note in Chartermain’s pad and propped the note against the wallet; and left the room.
The house creaked again but he went right along the corridor and retraced his path to the kitchen. He paused by the door before opening it and had a glance through the window at the coach house. The servants’ light still burned upstairs; the curtains remained as they had been before.
He opened the door silently and slipped outside, unable to eliminate the click when he pulled it shut behind him; he went down the steps and then paused and turned his head, and wondered why he had hestitated; then he had it—a trace of tobacco smoke on the air.
They jumped him from either side of the steps. One of them pinioned his arms; the other whipped around in front of him and he saw the billy club.
“Red-handed, mate,” said the one behind him with relish.
They were London police, not Chartermain’s agents. He had to do it very quickly: he said, “Cor stone the crows, you give me such a fright!”
“Give you a heart attack mate, if I had my way.”
At the head of the coach-house stair the door opened and the butler-chauffeur came hurrying down. “Good work, officers!”
In his Cockney rasp Kendig said, “’Ow’d you get onto me then?”
“Mr. Musgrove saw you in the act of breaking and entering.”
The old man bobbed his head vehemently. “Heard something, looked out my window, saw the door just closing behind the thief. Called you right the instant.”
The policeman still had his arms in a vise lock and his partner was frisking Kendig for weapons, sliding around like a contortionist to keep out of range of any kicking Kendig might have in mind to do. The man holding his arms had the exact positioning of long practice; both wrists high under the shoulderblades, twisting him forward in a half-bow; there was no way out of that hold. Then the partner locked the handcuffs on him.
“You’ve a keen eye, Mr. Musgrove. You’ll want to come down in the morning, I’m afraid, to give us a statement.”
“Glad to do my duty,” the old man said, rearing back on his dignity.
“I imagine the governor’ll give you a rise for this, old boy.”
Musgrove smiled. His wife stood at the head of the outside stair, watching with suspicion. The policeman hustled Kendig along the lane into the mews. Their car was a Morris 1100 with a globe light on the roof; he went into the back with the muscular officer who’d pinioned him. “Bloody crackers,” Kendig mumbled.
“What’s that, mate?”
“Crackers I said. Old fool ought’ve been fast asleep, this hour. Tell you I never had nothin’ but hard luck my whole life.”
“Ruddy well asked for every bit of it, didn’t you,” said the second policeman; he started the car and they rolled out of the mews.
It was a small police station, casual and Edwardian; a dozen police officers roamed in and out. His captors delivered him to a sergeant in a partitioned office. The sergeant said, “Give a squeal to in the morning to find out if he has any form, Good work, you two,”
“It was the butler did it,” the first policeman said and they all laughed at the little joke, all except Kendig who sat deep in a feigned gloom of self-pity, his senses cataloging everything and his mind racing with calculation.
The two arresting officers retrieved their handcuffs and left the room. A youth in the dark uniform passed them on his way in; he had a stenographic note pad. The sergeant said, “Very well now. Your name?”
“… Alfred Booker.” He said it as if with heavy reluctance; he kept shifting his baleful guilty stare from one patch of floor to another.
“How’s it spelled?”
He snarled. “Spell it yourself, copper.”
The sergeant’s weary eyes sought inspiration and patience from the ceiling. “Come on now Alfie.”
“Booker. Bee double-oh kay ee are.”
The young cop wrote it down; the sergeant said, “Vite stats now, Alfie.”
His whine got more resentful. “I’m forty-six, right? No permanent address.”