Appleby Talking (21 page)

“But not, surely, about the shoes?”

“Yes, about the shoes. He put down his paper and apologised for them – just as if the compartment was…was my drawing-room and he felt that he had come into it too casually dressed.”

“He made a kind of joke of it?”

“That was what he seemed to intend. But he was very nervous. He was smoking those yellow cigarettes – aren’t they called Russian? – and he kept stubbing out one and lighting another. He asked me if the shoes made him look like an absent-minded professor.”

“And what did you say to that?” Derry guessed that it was doing the girl good to talk about her queer encounter. And it sounded merely eccentric rather than sinister. Presently she ought to be able to see it as that.

“I said it didn’t. I said it didn’t, somehow, look a thing of which absent-mindedness would be the explanation. I said it
ought
to; that it was the sort of thing one might make an absent-minded person do in a story; but that when one actually
saw
it, that just didn’t seem to fit.”

Derry Fisher smiled. “You gave him quite good value for his money. It was what might be called a considered reply.”

“Perhaps. But he didn’t like it.” To Derry’s surprise the girl’s agitation was growing again. “I suppose I was tactless to do more than murmur vaguely. He stubbed out another cigarette, and I felt a queer tension suddenly established between us. It was a horrid sensation. And what he said next didn’t at all ease it. He said I was quite right, and that he wasn’t at all absent-minded. He was colour-blind.”

Derry was puzzled. “That’s certainly a bit odd. But I don’t see–”

“I happened to know that it was almost certainly nonsense.”

This time the girl sounded slightly impatient; and Derry decided, quite without resentment, that she was cleverer than he was. “I’m not absolutely certain that colour-blindness of that sort doesn’t exist. But I know that anything other than the ordinary red-green kind is excessively rare. So this was a very tall story. And, of course, I had another reason for disbelieving him. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Derry stared. “I’m afraid I don’t at all know.”

“If this man
is
unable to distinguish between black and brown, he couldn’t possibly have received such a shock the moment his glance fell on his shoes. Don’t you see?”

“Yes – of course.” Derry felt rather foolish. “And what happened then?”

“This time I didn’t say anything. I felt, for some reason, really frightened. And I was even more frightened when I detected him cautiously trying the handle of the door.”

“The door to the corridor?”

“No. The door on the other side.”

Derry Fisher, although not brilliant, had a quick instinct for the moment at when action was desirable. “Look here,” he said, “it’s about time I had a look.” And with a reassuring glance at his companion, he rose and stepped into the corridor.

They were moving at speed, and had been doing so steadily since some time before the beginning of his encounter with the frightened girl. He walked up the train in the direction she had indicated, glancing into each compartment as he passed. In one there was a group of young airmen, mostly asleep; in another a solitary lady of severe appearance seemed to be correcting examination papers; in a third an elderly clergyman and his wife were placidly chatting. Derry came to the last compartment and saw at a glance that it was empty.

Conscious of being both disappointed and relieved, he stepped inside. The girl’s green suitcase was on the rack. On the opposite seat lay an unfolded copy of
The Times
. There were two or three yellow cigarette-butts on the floor. The window was up.

Derry felt obscurely prompted to make as little physical impact upon the compartment as might be. He picked up the suitcase and went out, shutting the corridor door behind him. The girl was sitting where he had left her, and he set the suitcase down beside her. “He’s gone,” he said.

“Gone! You don’t think–”

“It’s very unlikely that anything nasty has happened.” Derry was reassuring. “The window is closed, and he couldn’t have chucked himself out without opening the door. In that case, it would be open still. Nobody clinging to the side of the train could get it shut again, even if he wanted to. Your tiresome friend has just made off to another carriage. It’s the end of him – but quite harmlessly.”

“He could only have gone in the other direction, or we’d have seen him.”

“That’s perfectly true. But he naturally would go off in the opposite direction to yourself. And the greater length of the train lies that way. It’s more crowded, too, at that end. He realises that he’s made an ass of himself, and he’s decided to submerge himself in the crush.”

The girl nodded. “I suppose you’re right. But I haven’t really told you why I bolted.” She hesitated. “It’s too fantastic – too silly. I didn’t think he had any notion of killing himself. I rather thought he was meaning to kill
me
.” The girl laughed – and it was her unsteady laugh again. “Isn’t it a disgusting piece of hysteria? It must mean that my unconscious mind just won’t bear looking into.”

“Rubbish.” Derry felt it incumbent upon him to speak with some sternness. “This chap is a thoroughly queer fish. It was perfectly reasonable to feel that he might be quite irresponsible. You say he actually began fiddling with the door-handle?”

“Yes. And I really thought that he was thinking out what you might call two…two co-ordinated movements. Getting the door open and pitching me through it. And when I did get up and leave, I felt that it was a terrific crisis for him. I sensed that he was all coiled up to hurl himself at me – and that he decided in the last fraction of a second that it wouldn’t do.” The girl stood up. “But this is all too idiotic. And at least I already see it as that – thank goodness.” She smiled rather wanly at Derry. “I shall go along and try the effect of a cup of coffee.”

“May I come too?”

“I’d rather you didn’t. But you’ve already been terribly kind. You’ve helped me to pull myself together. It’s just that I feel I can finish the job better alone.”

Left in solitude, Derry Fisher reflected that he had learnt very little about the girl herself – nothing at all, indeed, except the disturbing episode in which she had found herself involved. Might he, when she returned, ask her for her name – or at least attempt a more general conversation? The probability was that he would never see her again; and this was a fact which he found himself facing with lively dissatisfaction. Her appearance in his compartment had been after a fashion to make the imagination expect some further succession of strange events, some romantic sequel.

But when the girl did return, her own manner was notably prosaic. Coffee and reflection seemed further to have persuaded her that she had already dramatised an insignificant circumstance too much. She remained grateful and talked politely. But Derry guessed that she felt awkward, and that at Waterloo she would be glad to say goodbye, both to him and to the whole incident. So he forbore to make any suggestion for the bettering of their acquaintance. Only when the train reached the terminus he insisted on accompanying her through the barrier and to the taxi-rank. The man who had scared her – the man with the black and brown shoes – must be somewhere in the crush; and if, as seemed likely, he was crazy, there was a possibility that he might bother her again. But they caught no sight of him.

The girl gave an address in Kensington and stepped into her cab. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

Derry took his dismissal with a smile – regretful, but with the feeling that he was doing the right thing. “Goodbye,” he said. “At least, you’re safe and sound.”

Her eyes widened, and then laughed at him. “Yes, indeed. He can’t despatch me now.”

The cab moved off. Derry, stepping forward to wave regardless of the traffic, was nearly bowled over by one of the next cabs out; inside it, he glimpsed a man’s amused face as he skipped nimbly to safety. He had been in danger, he saw, of making an ass of himself over that girl. He hurried off to catch a bus.

Shortly after lunch Derry went in to see his uncle – at present his employer, and soon, he hoped, to be his partner. Derry sat on one corner of his uncle’s desk – a privilege which made him feel slightly less juvenile and on the mat – and gave an account of himself. He described his few days at Sheercliff and his labours there on behalf of the firm.

His uncle listened with his customary mingling of scepticism and benevolent regard; and then proceeded to ask his customary series of mild but formidably searching questions. Eventually he moved to less austere ground. Had Derry got in any tennis? Had he found the usual agreeable persons to go dancing with? On these topics, too, Derry offered what were by now prescriptive replies, whereupon his uncle buried his nose in a file and gave a wave which Derry knew was to waft him from the room.

All this was traditional. But as he reached the door his uncle looked up again. “By the way, my dear boy, I see you left Sheercliff just before the sensation there.”

“The sensation, Uncle?” Only vaguely interested, Derry saw his relative reach for a lunch-time newspaper.

“An unidentified body found on the rocks in mysterious circumstances – that sort of thing.”

“Oh.” Derry was not much impressed.

“And there was something rather unaccountable. Now, where did I see it?” Derry’s uncle let his eye travel over the paper now spread out before him. “Yes – here it is. The body was fully dressed. But it was wearing one black shoe and one brown… My dear boy – are you ill? Too many late nights, if you ask me.”

At nine o’clock that morning – it was his usual hour – Superintendent Lort had come on duty at Sheercliff police-station and found Captain Meritt waiting for him. The circumstance gave Lort very little pleasure. He was an elderly man, soon to retire; and he had felt from the first that Meritt belonged to a world that had passed beyond him. Meritt was an ex-army officer, and so to be treated with decent respect. His job was that of bodyguard – there could be no other name for it – to a certain Sir Stephen Borlase, who had been staying for some weeks at the Metropole Hotel. It was not apparent to Lort why Borlase should require other protection than that provided by the regular police. Meritt, it appeared, was paid by the great industrial concern whose principal research chemist Borlase was. But it was an important Ministry that had yanked Meritt out of one of the regular Security Services and seconded him to the job. Borlase’s research, it seemed, was very much a work of national importance. And so there was this irregular arrangement. This
most
irregular arrangement, Lort said to himself now – and greeted his visitor with a discouraging glare.

“Borlase has vanished.” Meritt blurted out the words and sat down uninvited. He looked like a man whose whole career is in the melting-pot. Probably it was.

“Vanished, sir? Since when?”

“Well, since last night – or rather very early this morning. I saw him then. But now he’s gone. His bed hasn’t been slept in.”

“Do I understand, Captain Meritt, that it is part of your – um – employment to visit Sir Stephen Borlase’s bedroom before nine a.m., and at once to communicate with the police if he isn’t found there?”

“Of course not, man. The point is that he hasn’t
slept
there. And that needs inquiring into at once.”

“But surely, sir, such an inquiry is precisely what you are – er – paid for?”

“Certainly. But I naturally expect the help of the police.” Meritt was plainly angry. “Borlase is a damned important man. He is working now on the devil knows what.”

“That probably describes it very well.” And Lort smiled grimly. “But are we to raise an alarm because this gentleman fails to sleep in his hotel? I know nothing of his habits. But the fact that he has been provided with a somewhat peculiar – um – companion in yourself, suggests to me that he may not be without a few quiet eccentricities.”

“He’s a brilliant and rather unstable man.”

“I see. But this is not information that has been given us here in our humdrum course of duty. Do I understand it to be thought possible that Sir Stephen may bolt?”

Meritt visibly hesitated. “That’s not for me to say. I am instructed merely to be on guard on his behalf. And
you
, Superintendent, if I am not mistaken, have been instructed to give me any help you can.”

“I have been instructed, sir, to recognise your function and to co-operate. Very well. What, in more detail, is the position? And what do you propose should be done?”

“Part of the position, Superintendent, I think you already know. Sir Stephen is here as a convalescent, but in point of fact he can’t be kept from working all the time. Apparently his stuff is so theoretical and generally rarified that he can do it all in his head, so all he needs to have about him is a file or two and a few notebooks. He has been pottering about the beach and the cliffs during the day, as his doctors have no doubt told him to do. And then, as often as not, he has been working late into the night. It has made my job the deuce of a bore.”

“No doubt, sir.” Lort was unsympathetic. “And last night?”

“He sat up until nearly one o’clock. I have a room from which I can see his windows; and it has become my habit not to go to bed myself until he seems safely tucked up. You can judge from that how this job has come to worry me. Well, out went his lights in the end, and I was just about to undress when I heard him open the outer door of his suite. He went downstairs. It seemed to me I’d better follow; and when I reached the hall, there he was giving a nod to the night porter and walking out of the hotel. He hadn’t changed for dinner, and in his tweeds he might have been a visitor leaving the place for good. He was merely bent, however, on a nocturnal stroll.”

“It was a pleasant night, no doubt.” Lort offered this comment impassively.

“Quite so. Sir Stephen’s proceeding was no more than mildly eccentric. But if I’d let him wander off like that in the small hours, and if anything
had
happened, it would have been just too bad for both of us. So I took that stroll too – some fifty yards in the rear. He went straight through the town and took the short cliff path out to Merlin Head. It’s an extremely impressive spot in full moonlight, with the sheer drop to the sea looking particularly awe-inspiring, I imagine. Of course there was nobody about. And as there is only the one narrow path to the Head, I didn’t follow him to the end of it. He doesn’t like being dogged around.”