‘Why should they go to all that trouble to frame him? Why didn’t they just kill him?’
‘That’s what I couldn’t understand,’ I replied. ‘It was that and the melodramatic manner in which he concluded the interview that made me wonder whether he wasn’t a little unbalanced.’ And I told him word for word what Schmidt had said as he stood up with the firelight blazing in his eyes.
‘Cones of runnel,’ David murmured, and sucked noisily at his pipe. ‘Those are funny key-words for a code. Perhaps it has a further significance.’ He heaved himself off the bed and stood up facing me. ‘The whole thing is damned funny,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t believe a word of it, I’d say he was definitely nuts, if I didn’t know that I’d been burgled last night and the book had been replaced by another and the negatives destroyed. Can I have a look at the page we have got decoded?’
I put my hand in the pocket of my jacket. I think I knew what to expect a fraction of a second before my fingers encountered the smooth leather of my wallet. There was nothing else in the pocket. I looked up at David. ‘We’ve both been burgled,’ I said.
‘Sure you put it in that pocket? It’s not in your rooms anywhere?’
I shook my head. It was no good. I remembered slipping it into the pocket the night before and I had not looked at it since.
‘Well, what do we do now — call in the police?’ he asked.
His tone held a note of sarcasm, and I pictured myself telling the whole thing to Crisham. ‘I don’t think we can very well do that,’ I said. ‘Not yet at any rate.’ And I gave him a brief résumé of the page I had decoded. When I had finished, I said, ‘Schmidt was right. Just before he went he said he thought I wouldn’t find it a case for the police — at first.’
David filled his pipe and lit it. He was frowning slightly. ‘What’s this girl Freya like?’ He put the question in an abstracted manner. He was thinking of something else.
‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘Why do you want to know?’
He swung round on me. ‘Well, isn’t she the clue to the whole thing? Where do you suppose she is?’ he asked.
The thought had already occurred to me.
‘I’ve got a hunch that the cones of runnel is not only the clue to the code, but the clue to the hide-out where that diesel engine is. Somebody’s got to get to Freya Schmidt before these lads, whoever they are, discover those key-words.’ He went over to the phone, which stood on the table by his bedside. ‘Get me Central 0012, will you, Miriam?’ He turned to me. ‘If we fail here, we’ll have to go round to that professor laddie you mentioned.’
‘Greenbaum?’
‘Yes.’ The phone rang, and he picked up the receiver again. ‘Is that you Micky? David Shiel here. Can you let me have a picture of Freya Schmidt? Yes, that’s right — the daughter. Oh! They haven’t traced her? You think so? Well, maybe you’re right. No, a pal of mine on the Record just rang me up to see if I could get one for him. Cheerio, old boy.’ He put the receiver back. ‘No luck,’ he said. ‘The agencies haven’t been able to get hold of any photo of her and the police don’t seem able to trace her. They think Schmidt may have killed her too. Nice minds these boys have! I suppose Schmidt really is dead? I mean, supposing you wanted someone to take some notice of an invention of yours, wouldn’t this be a good way to do it?’
‘And what about Llewellin?’ I said. ‘It’s no good, David. I’ve been over the whole business from beginning to end and there’s only one conclusion, and that’s the one that Schmidt hinted at. Schmidt may or may not be dead. At the moment it’s immaterial. Somehow we’ve got to find that girl.’
‘You may be right. But I still don’t understand that murder. It doesn’t make sense. Perhaps you’re leaping to conclusions?’
‘This sort of game is my job,’ I said a trifle stiffly.
‘What — lucid deduction?’ He looked at me quizzically. Then he burst out laughing. ‘Lucid deduction, my foot! Your job is to make any twelve of your fellow citizens believe anything you want them to believe.’
‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘but this business is serious. From the start there were only two ways of looking at it. Either Schmidt was speaking the truth or else he was mad. After what has happened during the night, I am quite certain he isn’t mad. Do you type?’ He nodded. ‘Good! Then perhaps we could have the typewriter in here. The first thing is to get out a statement, which I can leave at my bank.’
‘You’re going to take it up yourself, are you?’ He hesitated. Then he added, ‘If all Schmidt says is true, this is something pretty big.’
‘That’s why the first essential is to make a statement of what we know.’
‘Yes, but wouldn’t it be better to call in the police?’
I shook my head. ‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘Police investigations can yield nothing in the case of a firm like Calboyds. If we knew what Schmidt had set down in those other four pages, there might be enough evidence to prove something. As it is, I shall have to go ahead on my own.’
‘But, good God!’ he said, ‘you’ll be a marked man from the word Go.’
‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘But don’t forget that, if I disappear, the police will have to take notice of my statement.’
David nodded and fetched the typewriter from the studio. ‘We’ll have a carbon copy,’ I said, as he settled down in front of it.
It took me over an hour to complete that statement. When it was finished, I signed the carbon and placed it in a foolscap envelope, addressing it to Inspector Crisham. In a covering letter to my bank manager, I told him that it was to be handed to Inspector Crisham in person if at any time more than a week passed without his hearing from me. I emphasised that Crisham was to read it through in his office, and I gave him a detailed description of the Yard man. I was taking no chances. When I had signed this letter and placed it, with the statement, in a larger envelope, I asked David whether he had a back entrance.
‘Not that I know of,’ he replied.
‘A fire-escape, then?’
‘No, the roof was considered sufficient.’
‘Of course, the roof. You know the people next door, don’t you — the people that were burgled? Will their roof door be unlocked?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. But they’re on the top floor. If I knock on their skylight, I expect they’ll come and open it.’
‘Do you know them well enough to ask them to take this to my bank and keep quiet about it?’
‘Well, I don’t know them very well, but Harrison seems quite a good sort. I expect he’d do it. You think we’re being watched?’
‘I’m working on that assumption. And whilst you’re doing that, I’m going to make certain, and at the same time ring Crisham.’ I handed him the envelope. ‘And don’t use this phone again to make any inquiries,’ I said as he went to the door. ‘There’s just a chance it may have been tapped.’
He laughed. ‘Good God!’ he said. ‘You don’t underrate them.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve played this game before. Crooks are one thing, but foreign agents are another, particularly if they’re German. Don’t forget, I was in the Intelligence in the last war.’
‘You are old, Father William.’
I nodded. I was well aware of the fact. I was not as fast as I used to be at squash. But I was fit enough and I still held down a golf handicap of two. ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But age has the compensation of experience. Keep off that phone.’
‘Very good, sir.’ He grinned and went out through the door.
I took up the typescript of the statement and placed it in another envelope addressed to Crisham. This I put in my pocket. Then I got my hat and coat and went to the lift. There was no doubt that we were being watched. As I came out into Shaftesbury Avenue I noticed the quickened pace of a sandwich-board man.
I paused for the traffic at Piccadilly Circus and I saw that the man was still on my trail. But after crossing the Circus I lost him. Nevertheless, as I went down Lower Regent Street, I was conscious of being followed. By cutting down Jermyn Street and pausing to look in the window of Simpson’s, I was able to identify my follower as a ragged-looking individual wandering along the gutter in search of cigarette ends. I should have taken no notice of him, but as he passed me he looked up and met my eyes. A feeling of awareness passed between us. it was almost embarrassing. He seemed to feel it too, for he mumbled, ‘Spare a copper, sir.’ I fished in my pocket and went over to him with two pennies. I put them clumsily into his outstretched hand so that one of them fell on to the pavement. He stooped to pick it up, and I noticed that, though his face was dark with dirt, the back of his neck below the collar was quite clean. I noticed, too, a slight scar on the back of his right hand. It was very small, just a thin line of drawn flesh across the knuckles. But I remembered a hand thrust out into the torchlight as it grabbed at a book.