Then he pulled his raincoat up around his ears and turned away abruptly, walked quickly back into the covered way, ran down to the station and out to a waiting official car.
The Chief Steward and his leading hands were moving about below decks carrying lists of cabin numbers and nominal rolls of their men. Their eyes, jealous of the good name and efficiency of their particular sections, peered and darted. They seemed keyed up, nervy. It hadn’t taken the crew long to sense something about the Company’s flagship that they didn’t quite like, something odd in the air. They didn’t know quite why, they just knew. They felt it; orders, for some reason, were everywhere being given snappily and obeyed grudgingly as though every one was on edge, a gradual process filtering down from the top. It wasn’t that she was going to be what seamen call an unhappy ship; it was just a feeling of uncertainty, of vague alarm almost, of unwillingness to leave U.K. this time. And throughout the ship, in galleys and store-rooms, engine-rooms and messes and cabins, lounges and bars and working alleyways, the older hands in particular went about with set faces, glumly, and few men smiled. Maybe it would wear off once they cleared Finisterre, they thought.
Or maybe it wouldn’t.
One of the passengers seemed ill at ease also. As the New South Wales made her majestic progress down the river, the soldierly looking man’s jerky walk carried him, like a marionnette on a piece of string, round the high promenade decks. Every now and again he glanced in through the big windows of the sumptuously furnished lounges on the veranda deck. Sometimes he stopped to lean over the teakwood rail, as though taking a last look at home. And then he was on the move again, going into the squares which formed the landings of the stairways leading down inside the great vessel, walking along cabin alleyways whose decks shone like glass with much hard polishing, glancing in at the doors of the panelled tavern bar with its red-topped stools and little friendly tables, keeping on the alert and finding his way around unfamiliar surroundings so as to acquaint himself perfectly with the lay-out. He wasn’t here to enjoy himself, and as he thought of what his charge was he felt an inward glow of quiet happiness that he of all people had been given so vital a job in connexion with something that lay so very close to his own heart.
And, in his first-class stateroom on A deck, the heavily built man called Sigurd Andersson began to unpack his gear. From between layers of silk shirts and tropic wear he took a square metal box which had heavy suckers on its base, suckers constructed from a very special heat-resistant substance made to a new formula. He looked around the cabin for a while and then climbed on to a chair and got busy with a screwdriver, opening up an inspection-plate in the ventilator shafting which ran through the compartment. He took great care not to scrape the paintwork. Removing the plate, he pushed the box in, keeping its suckers clear of the sides of the shaft, for this was to be only a temporary hiding-place; he fixed it firmly into position with adhesive tape, making sure it was secure against any movement of the ship, and then he screwed the plate back into position. He examined it critically, was satisfied that no one would ever know it had been tampered with.
After that he lit a cigar and finished his unpacking. Later he went along to the tavern bar, where he sat on one of the high stools and, full of bonhomie, asked the barkeeper to join him in a whisky-and-soda. He let it be known, casually, that if the barkeeper should hear of anyone wanting a game of poker, then he, Sigurd Andersson, was their man. And he appeared to have plenty of money.
CHAPTER TWO
Thirty-six hours later, in the very early hours of the morning, the softly insistent burr-burr of the closed line from the Admiralty broke into the peace of a flat in Eaton Square. It broke into Latymer’s sleep and he was awake on the instant. He was always very near the surface, from force of long habit; and before the third ring he had the light on and the receiver cradled against his cheek. As he’d stretched out, the silk pyjamas had fallen away from his forearm, and the skin grafts, similar to those on his face and chest, showed as irregular patches on the hair-covered flesh.
He said curtly, “Latymer. Yes?”
A voice said, “Hold the line, sir, please.” Then, slightly off, it said: “You’re through, Paris. Go ahead now.” There was a click and a plopping sound and then, as the Admiralty exchange sealed the ‘hush’ connexion, Paris came on the line.
The voice was tense, clipped. “Shaw here, sir, speaking from the Embassy. Urgent message concerning REDCAP.”
Latymer started a little, checked a sudden exclamation, but his voice was still quiet as he said, “Good morning, Shaw. Go ahead.”
He listened for just over a minute while the brief, compressed report came through from Commander Shaw in the Faubourg St Honore. Then he asked, “You’re quite certain of this?”
“Yes, sir, absolutely. And I think it’s vital.”
“Very well. That’s good enough for me.” After that Latymer was silent for another fifteen seconds, thinking fast. At the end of that time he said softly, “Listen, Shaw. Return to London and report in person. Soonest possible. Bring the women, drop them at your flat on the way and leave Thompson with them — he’ll meet you at the airport with a car. That is all.”
Latymer reached out and depressed the receiver-rest, jiggled it down and up a couple of times. Then he said, “Get me Miss Larkin’s private number. Quickly.” He was half out of bed now, tapping thick, stubby fingers impatiently on the bedside table as he waited for his confidential secretary to come on the line. “Ah — Miss Larkin… Latymer here. Get to the office as soon as you can. I’ll be there ahead of you. Before you leave, check the time of the next B.E.A. into London from Paris and then ring Scotland Yard.
Personal message to the Assistant Commissioner, ‘B’ Department. There’ll be a car meeting that plane at Heathrow, and I’d like it given a clear road through to the Admiralty. That is all.”
The telephone clicked off finally and Latymer got right out of bed, felt the thick, soft pile of the carpet on his toes, thrust his feet into lambswool slippers. The hard, steely green eyes were worried. What Shaw had told him was red-hot, and the more so when read in the context of certain other information which had come to hand the evening before. He found he was unusually on edge, anxious to get the full, face-to-face account of what Shaw had been doing.
Well — he would soon find out.
Latymer began to dress quickly.
For Shaw, it had begun in Fouquier’s in Montmartre.
Shaw had dined every night of his leave at Fouquier’s. Though he personally wasn’t all that keen on the atmosphere, Debonnair, whose leave from Eastern Petroleum had been arranged to coincide with his, liked dancing, and there was a certain amount of amusement to be had from watching the clientele in the alcoves, dimly lit by rose-shaded lights, or from watching the couples contorting their heated bodies so grotesquely as they stamped out the latest crazy movements on the tiny dance square. At least it was relaxing to him — up to a point. But Shaw could seldom relax; and in fact one of the reasons why he’d been going so regularly to Fouquier’s was that it was just the sort of international dive where a man like him might be able to pick up useful pieces of information, titbits which, even if they were not immediately valuable, might one day fall into place somewhere and complete a jigsaw as yet not even dreamed up; Shaw had a reputation in the Outfit for being remarkably conscientious even though for the most part he loathed the job and would have given much to have got out of the game for good. Nevertheless, this evening, as it happened, he wasn’t thinking at all about contacts or the Outfit; after ten clear days of Paris he’d been able to let go, to unwind, to free his mind of work and worry and responsibility, and for once he was genuinely relaxed. The worry-lines netted around his deep-set blue eyes — lines put there by the strain of danger and of a responsibility which at times became almost crushing — seemed to have been smoothed away to leave only the others, the clustered laughter-lines which appeared so engagingly when he smiled…