Mr. Zero (6 page)

“Sit down,” said Mr. Lushington.

Algy began to wonder if he was going to get the sack. Only if Monty was going to sack him, would he ask him to sit down? He said,

“Yes, sir?”

Mr. Lushington leaned back. The movement was an impatient one.

“What sort of memory have you got, Algy?”

Dismay invaded Algy's mind. What had he forgotten? He said modestly,

“Oh, I don't know—pretty fair as a rule. I hope I haven't been forgetting anything, sir.”

Mr. Lushington frowned.

“That remains to be seen. I want you to cast your mind back to last Saturday.”

Algy's mind went back to a very pleasant evening spent with Miss Gay Hardwicke. He had no difficulty in recalling the agreeable details, but it did not seem at all likely that they would interest Monty. He said,

“Saturday, sir?”

“Last Saturday I went away for the week-end. I went down to Wellings to stay with the Wessex-Gardners, and just before I started a special messenger turned up with a memorandum which I had asked for from the Intelligence. Now take over and tell me exactly what happened. Who saw the messenger?”

“Mr. Carstairs saw him, sir.”

“I want you to go over the whole thing—I want every detail.”

“Mr. Carstairs and I were in here. Mr. Carstairs had just come down from seeing you. Parkinson came in and said there was a messenger, and Carstairs—Mr. Carstairs—went to the door and took the letter. He was going up with it, but the telephone bell rang, and it was someone for him, so he told me to take the letter.”

Mr. Lushington drummed with his fingers.

“One moment, one moment. Were you and Carstairs alone? Where was Brewster?”

“Oh, he was somewhere around.”

“Can't you be accurate? What on earth do you mean by somewhere around?”

“Well, he was in the offing, don't you know, sir? Nose to the grindstone and all that sort of thing.”

“You mean he was in this room?”

“Oh, yes—definitely.”

“But he didn't handle the letter?”

“Oh, no, sir.”

“Did you see Carstairs take the letter from the messenger?”

Algy considered for a moment.

“Well, I heard him say, ‘Mr. Lushington is upstairs. I will take it up to him.' And I heard the man say, ‘Thank you, sir.' And then Mr. Carstairs came back into the room with the envelope in his hand, and the telephone bell rang, and he told me to take it up to you, and I did.”

“No one else touched it?”

“No one.”

“And you came straight up with it? It wasn't out of your hand at all?”

“Oh, no, sir.”

Montagu Lushington said,

“Very well then—go on.”

Algy restrained an expression of surprise.

“But you know all the rest, sir. You were in your dressing-room, and I put the envelope down on the table.”

Mr. Lushington nodded.

“Go on. I have my own recollection of what happened, but I want yours—every detail, please.”

“You were packing your suit-case, sir. It was on the bed, and so was your despatch-box. They were both open. You put a pair of socks into the suit-case, and then you took up the envelope and said, ‘What's this?' And I said, ‘Just come round by messenger from the Intelligence. Mr. Carstairs told me to bring it up.' And you said, ‘Yes, yes—I asked them to let me have it,' and you picked it up, and put it in on the top of your despatch-box, and locked the case, and put the keys back in your pocket. And you said that was all, and I cleared out.”

“You saw me put the envelope in the despatch-case and lock it away?”

“Yes, sir.”

There was a silence. Montagu Lushington looked long and shrewdly at his young cousin. In the end he said,

“Did you notice how the letter was addressed?”

What in the name of fortune did this mean? Algy tried to keep surprise out of his voice as he said,

“No—I didn't look at it, I'm afraid. Carstairs—Mr. Carstairs—gave it to me. He said it was the sabotage memorandum you had asked for from the Intelligence, and told me to take it up to you. I never thought of looking at it.”

Mr. Lushington said, “I see. You didn't notice the envelope at all? Now what I want you to tell me is this. You put the envelope down on the table, and I picked it up and put it away in my despatch-case. Think before you speak, please. Did you see me look at it or read the address?”

“I don't think I did.”

“You don't think—that's not good enough. Can't you be more exact than that?”

“I'm afraid I can't, sir. I wasn't taking very much notice. You see, I'd given you the envelope, so I wasn't thinking about it any more.” He paused, and then went on again. “I think you just picked it up and put it into your despatch-box. I don't think you looked at it.”

Mr. Lushington pushed back his chair.

“I expect you are wondering what this is all about.”

“It's not my business to wonder, is it, sir?”

Mr. Lushington frowned.

“It may be. I am going to talk to you in confidence, Algy. You are a member of my family as well as a member of my staff, and I wish to make it quite clear that what I am saying is not to go any farther. To begin with, the papers which you brought me have disappeared. I went down to the Wessex-Gardners, as you know, and I did not open my despatch-case until round about midnight, when I went up to my room for the night. When I did open it, there was a plain manila envelope right on top of the other papers. It bore no address, and there was a sheet of blank foolscap inside. That is why I asked whether you had noticed the address on the envelope you brought me.”

“But, sir—”

“Wait! My keys had never been out of my possession. I had a bath before dinner, and they were on the dressing-table with my watch and note-case, but the bathroom had a communicating door, and I am pretty sure that it was ajar. Besides—and here is the point—how could anyone at the Wessex-Gardners' have known that I should have this memorandum in my possession? The party was quite a small one—myself and my wife, the Colesboroughs, and the Bingham Wessex-Gardners. Bingham, as you probably know, married my wife's sister Constance. It was therefore something in the nature of a family party, but I also wished to take the opportunities it would afford of some quite informal conversations with Beaufort Wessex-Gardner and Francis Colesborough. They are both undertaking very large government contracts. This question of sabotage would affect them.”

Algy hesitated, and risked a question.

“Was the memorandum very important?”

Mr. Lushington drummed on the arm of his chair.

“Oh, the skies won't fall. There have been, as you know, a certain number of acts of sabotage. There have been allusions in the Press, and there have been questions in the House. There has been some uneasiness, and a general tightening up of precautionary measures. Then the Foreign Office Intelligence came along with the theory of an organization directed from abroad and with very wide ramifications.” He paused. Algy was aware of scrutiny.

Mr. Lushington went on speaking.

“Colonel Garratt is convinced that such an organization exists. He believes that it has plans for sabotage on a large scale. If this country were faced with a sudden emergency, these plans would be brought into operation. He has compiled a list of suspected agents, and was very anxious that I should sanction a general round up. I wished to think the matter over, and asked to be furnished with a memorandum and a list of the suspected persons before the week-end. The envelope delivered to Carstairs contained this information. It came from Colonel Garratt through our own people, and I am not excluding the possibility of a leakage, but it is sufficiently obvious that there would have been no need to steal the papers if the information had already been obtained from either of the departments concerned. When I say that the messenger is above suspicion, I have regard not only to his character and length of service, but to the fact that it is incredible that he would have risked substituting a blank envelope for the one addressed to me, when all that he had to do was to allow the enclosures to be copied or photographed. He could not possibly have anticipated that neither Carstairs, nor you, nor I myself would not immediately examine the envelope and detect the fraud. Now, Algy, I am coming to the point. The papers were stolen a week ago. I am advised that a raid would not be likely to produce sufficient evidence to justify itself. Whoever had an interest in acquiring the papers has therefore probably achieved his end. He has found out which of his agents are under suspicion. He has been able to warn them, and he will probably now replace them by others. We shall have to begin all over again. As I said before, the skies won't fall, but what matters to me is the suggestion that the papers were stolen here in my own house.”

Algy felt exactly as if someone had poured about half a pint of cold water down the back of his neck, because—well, after all—hang it all—what was Monty saying?

He said aloud, “Yes, sir?” and was rather proud of the fact that the words came out in quite an ordinary tone.

“It has been suggested to me—” this was Monty on the high horse of offence—“it has been suggested that it would have been far more credible that an attempt to steal the papers should be made here, where the fact that I was expecting them was known, and their nature if not known was at least guessed at, rather than at Wellings, where no one could reasonably be supposed to have any information on the subject.”

Algy had been thinking. His thoughts made a clear and very unpleasant pattern. He wanted to get up, to shout out the fury and anger which filled him. But he did not do either of these things. He sat quite still, and he said quietly,

“That puts it on me.”

“That is why I am talking to you like this,” said Montagu Lushington. “When you say that this puts it on you, you are perhaps exaggerating. Four people handled the envelope in this house—”

“Four?”

Mr. Lushington inclined his head.

“The messenger—Carstairs—you, Algy—and I. The messenger really is above suspicion. Our own people swear to him. There remain Carstairs, whom I am prepared to swear to, and you, Algy, and myself. If I could remember reading the address upon the envelope I should be able to clear you, and in doing so I should prove, no doubt to some people's satisfaction, that I had abstracted the papers myself.”

Algy looked across the table. His pleasant face had taken on the most unwontedly stern expression. He looked as he would not look, except under stress, for a dozen years at least. He said, still in that quiet voice,

“It does come back to me, you see. Do I have to say that I didn't do it, sir?”

He got the shrewd look again. Montagu Lushington said,

“Not to me, Algy.”

VIII

Algy Somers was dining out. He was dining with the Giles Westgates. Giles was his very good friend, and Linda was a cousin—one of the many cousins who bloomed, sprouted, and climbed on a highly prolific family tree. Linda and Giles knew everyone, went everywhere, and did everything. They probably knew all about the papers that had gone missing at the Wessex-Gardners'—the “all” not to be read to include criminal knowledge, but merely an expert collection of every scrap of fact and gossip on the subject. This being so, Algy had serious thoughts of getting the man at his rooms to ring up and say that he was dead. No lesser excuse would be any good, and Barker would do it awfully well—“Mr. Somers' compliments, and he is very sorry indeed to inconvenience your table, madam, but he is unavoidably prevented from joining you tonight owing to his sudden decease.” The dark melancholy of Barker's voice was made for messages like this, and wasted, lamentably wasted, on orders for groceries and fish.

Algy turned on his bath, and reflected that this was one of the most unpleasant days he had ever spent. The fog outside was nothing to the fog within. In this fog of suspicion, which didn't amount to accusation and would never amount to accusation, he had endured the long humiliating hours of a long humiliating day. He brought himself to realize that the future now promised an indefinite number of similar days. The Home Secretary had asked for an important memorandum on sabotage, and it had gone missing. Algy Somers was the person who had had by far the best opportunity of taking it. This was a quite insane, quite incontrovertible proposition. And there they were. And there he was. There was no evidence of course. Nobody would quite accuse him, nobody would quite believe him. There would be a whisper that would pursue him wherever he went and whatever he did. It would be prefaced by a vague “They say,” or a hearty “Of course, I don't believe it, but—” and it would slide by insidious degrees from damaging into damning him. And only twenty-four hours ago he had been trying hard to remember that a young man with the ball at his foot had better put off thinking about marriage for another half dozen years or so. Well, there was no ball at his foot now, and nothing to offer Gay Hardwicke or any other girl. Monty would stand by him—Monty had behaved uncommon well—but the fact that he was a relation put them both in an awkward position. It would have been much easier, for instance, for Monty to stand up for Brewster.

Algy got into his bath, and considered with bitterness that Brewster had all the luck. Why couldn't it have been Brewster who had been told off to take that damnable envelope up to Monty? A bit hard on Brewster perhaps, but on the other hand imagination really boggled at the idea of anyone suspecting Brewster. He tried to picture him under suspicion and failed. Brewster was the perfect assistant secretary, the industrious apprentice, the human encyclopedia. No good bothering about Brewster. This was the affair Algy Somers. What was Algy Somers going to do about it? See his good name and his prospects die a slow death from poison? Well then, what about it? The answer came to him vigorous and clear—“I've damn well got to find out who took those papers.”