The resulting letters I put down without gaps, and not as they had been in the code. The result was: IOUWHOREADTHESENOT. My excitement was tremendous. Reading Y for i, I found I had got, ‘You who read these not-’
I then settled down to the job in real earnest, and after half an hour’s steady work I had decoded the whole of that first page. I sat back and read through the result.
‘You who read these notes,’ it ran, ‘must decide for yourself whether or not there is sufficient evidence for the matter to be placed in the hands of the authorities. I fear, however, that I shall not live to complete my case.’ That, I remembered, was what he had told me last Monday. ‘I am being watched now and it is only a matter of time. Why did I not go to the authorities myself? I was wanted for murder. If I had gone to them and said the Calboyd Diesel Company is controlled by Germany and the murder was committed by their agents, I should have been considered mad. But day by day I shall add to these notes, and as my inquiries reveal new facts, I shall hope that, by the time this comes into your hands, there will at any rate be sufficient evidence to convince you of my sanity and of the seriousness of the position I have discovered.
‘I shall probably have explained to you how I was discredited at the Air Ministry by Calboyds. This should not be difficult to verify. When I tell you that the diesel engine on which I have been working and which has now reached the stage of final tests is a third of the weight of the ordinary diesel and develops nearly twice the power of present engines at five hundred revolutions, you will begin to appreciate its importance in war-time. I can confidently state that whichever side first obtains this engine and produces it on a large scale will have air superiority. These claims were presented to the Air Ministry last July. Calboyds told them I was a crank. They had been trying to get me to reveal the secret of the special alloy and the design. Those who control the company wanted the engine for Germany.
‘You will say this is fantastic. But I have heard that in the early summer of this year Britain is going over to diesel engines on a large scale. The Calboyds factories are being extended for this purpose and two shadow factories are being built for the company. They will be the sole producers and the engines will be of their own design. The design is superior to that used in the Heinkels and Dorniers at the present time. But it is definitely inferior to the engines that are being fitted to the latest German bomber and fighter aircraft, which have not yet taken the air. I believe that an order for ten thousand of their diesel engines will be given to Calboyds within the next few months. If that order goes through and Calboyds are allowed to start production Britain will be …’
I put the paper down. The rest would have to wait till tomorrow when David would have the prints of the remaining pages. But what I had read was enough to set me thinking. The man might be mad, but if Calboyds were really controlled by Germany- It didn’t bear thinking about. One thing I could check up on and that was whether or not Calboyds were to receive a big order for diesel aero engines. Crabshaw of the Ministry of Supply could tell me that. But it was fantastic. Schmidt was right when he had said he would have been considered mad if he had approached the authorities with a story like that. It was too incredible. Old Calboyd was an industrial figurehead. Supposing I told the story to Crisham or wrote to the Prime Minister? They’d think I was going off my head, even though I had led a perfectly blameless life. And why had Llewellin been murdered? It was stupid to frame a man by murdering another.
I gave it up and went back to bed, putting the photograph and the paper on which I had decoded it in the pocket of my jacket.
My man woke me as usual at eight. I had a shower and, after a hurried breakfast, took a taxi round to David’s studio. His secretary, Miriam Chandler, opened the door to me. David I found already at work on some stills. ‘Have you got the other prints?’ I asked. I was eager to decode the rest of the message.
He said, ‘Sorry, you’re a good deal earlier than I expected. The fact is I’ve got to take them all again. I left that negative on the desk over there. I didn’t notice it, but there was a bottle of hydrochloric just by it. I came in this morning to find it tipped on its side. Awful mess. Look at the linoleum there, and the negative of course was completely destroyed. It was that bloody cat, I expect.’ He indicated a shabby tortoisehell curled up placidly on the couch. ‘It keeps the mice down, but it’s always upsetting things in the process. I shan’t be long though. Give him a cigarette, Miriam, and stroke his fevered brow, he looks as though he’s had a bad night. Did you dream of codes and jumbled letters like I did all night?’
‘No, I solved it,’ I said triumphantly.
He swung round from the big sink. ‘You solved it? Well, grand — good for you. How did you get at it?’
I told him and he cursed me good-humouredly. ‘Why the hell didn’t you say the fellow had said that? May I have a look at it?’
I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Wait until you’ve got the other prints out and I’ve decoded the rest, then maybe I’ll tell you the whole story.’ I had an idea that his resourcefulness might be an asset if I found it necessary to make further inquiries on my own before handing over to the authorities.
He said, ‘You’re enough to drive a person crazy.’ Then he went into the big dark-room, taking The Face from the Barbican with him. I had suddenly remembered that I had promised to help him extract money from Calboyds, and I asked Miriam to produce the correspondence. When I had run through it, my mind was made up. Providence isn’t always kind enough to hand things to you on a platter. This would make a good excuse for going up to Oldham and seeing Calboyds for myself.
David suddenly emerged from the dark-room. ‘Funny,’ he said. ‘These pages seem absolutely blank now.’
I crossed the room and went into the dark-room. The blank pages of the book lay under the light, but there was no fluorescence. They were just blank. He turned to another page. It was blank. ‘Is it the same lamp?’ I asked.
‘Certainly.’
I had a sudden sense of uneasiness, the sort of feeling a man has when he has mislaid a Treasury note and knows it was just plain carelessness. I ripped the book from the stand to which it was clamped. The back of it was smeared with mud, but when I ran through the pages, looking for the passage I had marked, I could not find it. After careful searching through the chapter I knew it to be in, I eventually found the passage. But there was no pencil mark against it.
I turned to David. ‘This isn’t my book,’ I said.
‘Don’t be silly,’ he replied. ‘It’s got The Face from the Barbican at the top of every page.’
‘Yes, but it’s not my copy.’ I explained about the pencil marking and showed him the passage.
‘Are you certain?’ he asked. ‘You were awfully sleepy last night.’
‘Yes, I’m certain all right,’ I said. ‘This isn’t my copy. And that bottle of hydrochloric wasn’t tipped over by the cat. Where did you put the negatives when you went to bed?’ I asked him.
He frowned. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Where I found them this morning, I think.’
‘And what about the hydrochloric — was that just beside them?’
He shook his head. ‘Honestly, old boy, I don’t know.’ He went to the door of the dark-room. ‘Miriam,’ he said, ‘can you remember whether that bottle of hydrochloric was on the table there last night?’
‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘Depends on whether you used it after I’d gone yesterday. I tidied up as usual and left it on the shelf over there, where it belongs.’
‘And I didn’t have it out.’ He swung round on me. ‘No, I didn’t use it last night. You’re right — somebody moved that bottle from the shelf over by the window there and deliberately spilt the contents over those negatives.’