Neither Five Nor Three (Helen Macinnes) (31 page)

“Sure. But no one has wanted to listen.” He laughed. “That’s what they call the veteran’s readjustment problem.” Then he began to talk about Brittany and the resistance movement there. “When D-Day came,” he ended, “and the Bretons found that Normandy had been chosen, they couldn’t believe it. They were all prepared for a landing in Brittany, you see. Every bridge, right down to the smallest foot bridge, had been mapped, and a unit was waiting to attack it and hand it over to the Allies. Every crossroad, every junction was marked. The demolition squads were alerted, the men were well trained, they had collected stocks of weapons. And then the news came through—not Brittany but Normandy. Normandy, where the comfortable farmers had no complete scheme ready to put into operation. The Bretons—well, I saw men break down and weep. That’s the kind of people they—”

He heard footsteps in the corridor. He rose and went to the door. “This way,” he called.

Rona turned to see a small, thin, white-haired man enter the room. He looked at her with alert brown eyes. He didn’t seem surprised by anything. As Paul introduced him, he gave a reassuring smile and a firm handshake. Some of her nervousness and hesitation subsided.

Paul was saying, “Why not tell us how you first met Charles? And what he said to you? We’ll begin from there.” He smiled reassuringly.

Rona nodded. She began the brief story.

* * *

Roger Brownlee listened, as quietly as he had entered the room. Then he read Charles’ letter to Rona. And then this evening’s newspaper report which Paul laid before him. Finally, he looked at the envelope lying on the desk.

“I’d like you to open it,” Rona said. And somehow she hadn’t any more doubts. She rose, smiling to Paul. “I think I’ll go back to my office and clear up my desk,” she said to him. “This matter is all out of my hands, now, isn’t it? And to tell you the truth, I’m glad.” She glanced over at Brownlee’s serious face. He had slit open the envelope and he was glancing through its contents quickly. He was frowning, his lips pursed.

He looked up suddenly. “This matter is out of all our hands, I think. It’s clearly something for the Federal Government to consider.”

“As serious as that?” Rona stared at Paul.

Brownlee held up three sheets of paper, closely written. “This is a detailed report. It’s extremely serious, Miss Metford.”

And no questions to be asked about it, Rona realised from his face. And although she was still curious, she was relieved too: this left her completely in the clear. She could forget about the sealed envelope.

“Will you tell what you know about this man Charles?” Roger Brownlee asked.

“Would that be important?”

“Yes. It would explain his letter, just as his letter is made clear by the report he enclosed. You will be a witness on his behalf, you see. His handwriting will be another witness, and so will the postmark on the envelope addressed to you. This man couldn’t have been drunk on Sunday as everyone supposed. He wasn’t in any state of alcoholism that would justify his being sent to any institution. Actually, he begins his report by saying that he found drunkenness was a very useful act to put on—it let him be taken for a harmless idiot. All the evidence we have here supports that.”

“Poor Charles,” Rona said slowly, pityingly.

“He may have the last word, after all,” Paul reminded her.

“Is this ’phone switched on to a direct outside line at night?” Brownlee wanted to know. When Paul nodded, he began dialling. “We’ll have to cancel this evening’s plans. And I think Miss Metford had better go along with us.”

He didn’t say where, but Rona made her guess. If her statement could be of real help, she’d give it. It was, she thought, like seeing a street accident. If it was only a matter of insurance or a smashed fender, most passers-by melted away to avoid any trouble. Who wanted to get into a police-court case? But if someone was hurt, people would stop to help pull him free of the car. They didn’t think of avoiding the nuisance of being a witness in court, then. “I’ll wait for you in my office,” she said.

She walked slowly down the corridor, her head bent, her face troubled. She was still thinking of Charles.

She met Mrs. Hershey bustling toward the washroom. “It’s always the nights I’ve promised to baby-sit that I find I’ve got to stay late,” Mrs. Hershey said breathlessly, smiling quickly, rushing on, her grey curls bobbing with excitement.

“How’s your grandson?” Rona remembered to ask.

“Fine, just fine,” Mrs. Hershey called back. “Three years old next month.” My, she doesn’t look like a girl that’s getting married in June, Mrs. Hershey thought “Oh, congratulations! I nearly forgot!” She smiled and hurried into the washroom.

Congratulations... One solitary typewriter, pecking away half-heartedly in a remote room, echoed the word mockingly. Congratulations...

* * *

Roger Brownlee finished telephoning, and swung round in the chair to face Paul. “All sewed up,” he said, with considerable satisfaction. “I got the man I wanted. Nothing like going as near the top as possible. He was getting ready for a dinner-party. But we needn’t keep him long. All we have to do is to tell what we know about Charles and turn over his letter and statement.”

“Where do we see your man?”

“At his house, to save time. Eight o’clock. He will have rounded up a stenographer and a couple of his agents, by then.”

“Charles’ report had better be good,” Haydn said, thinking of the men whose evening plans were now being altered. It was hard to believe that Charles could furnish anything important. He couldn’t even stand on a piano stool without falling into the piano. He couldn’t even jump out of a window without crippling an old man. He bungled everything he did.

“Have a look for yourself,” Brownlee suggested, pointing to the sheets of paper on the desk. “You’ll be interested. Friend Orpen’s name leads all the rest.” And then as Haydn still hesitated, he added, “You’ll have to look at this material, Paul. You’ve got to be able to confirm it when we hand it over this evening.”

Paul nodded. He sat down at the desk and began reading.

Charles had arranged his statement in numbered paragraphs, neatly and tightly written. There were signs of speed in the way he had used short phrases, punctuated with dashes, instead of sentences. But his words were vivid and exact, and when he talked about himself—as if to explain his motives and establish his honesty—much could be read between the lines. The information enclosed was certainly startling, probably valuable. But Haydn found, as he finished reading the three closely written pages, that it wasn’t only the facts that interested him. Strangely enough, it was Charles himself who held his attention.

Paul handed the statement over to Brownlee. Then he leaned back in his chair, seemingly looking out of the window. But the yellow light of the setting sun on the brick and concrete walls formed only a vague image in his mind, a background to the vivid picture of Charles’ terror, his indecision and weakness and amazing courage.

It was obvious from what Charles had written that he was still trying to protect Thelma as far as he could. She always had been a woman who took up one fad after another. Since the death of his father fifteen years ago, Charles had become accustomed to being exposed to Thelma’s whims. He had become accustomed to seeing their apartment filled with peculiar acquaintances, to having no real friends of his own.

Six years ago, Thelma suddenly discovered politics and social significance. Charles, then nineteen years old, waited for that fad to pass, too. Instead, Thelma’s interest deepened. The people who came now to her apartment were most admiring and respectful. She felt, for the first time in her life, that she was not only accepted but even sought after. Charles tried to convince her that the new friends—all Communists and fellow-travellers—were only finding her useful for her money and for her large apartment in a respectable building. Thelma didn’t listen. Instead, she became a Party member and an intimate friend of Nicholas Orpen. It was then that Charles began to drink heavily, to leave New York on unexpected trips, to spend weeks and months with strangers in parts of the country where he was unknown.

And then, about three years ago, Charles returned unexpectedly from one of those trips to find a new butler—Martin—in complete charge of the apartment. He became aware that something of grave importance was going on in his home, something organised by Nicholas Orpen. Now, Charles didn’t start drinking again. He stayed sober, pretended he was too drunk to notice much of anything, and kept both eyes and ears wide open. He didn’t consider he was spying; the numerous visitors to his home were invaders. His motive was simply to gather enough evidence to prove to Thelma that she was underwriting graver trouble than she realised.

Charles had to go slowly, carefully. It took him almost two years to gather the information he wanted. And then, its implications suddenly terrified him. Although Thelma had no important part in the main business carried on in her apartment, she couldn’t be so easily extricated as he had once hoped. For the last six months, Charles was plunged in doubt and hesitation. He had even started going away on his lonely trips again. He knew what to do, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Recently, Thelma began to turn against him. She was listening to Orpen more and more. There had been open hints and threats: he was a useless alcoholic; he would have to be sent away to be cured. On Sunday, after a week of brooding, Charles made his first revolt.

He had made it, Paul Haydn thought, perhaps to goad Thelma into taking action. If she sacrificed him to Orpen, then all his feeling of loyalty to her would be cancelled out. He would be free, then.

“Well,” said Brownlee, looking up from the curious document that Charles had left as his last will and testament, “it all makes a nasty picture. But there’s enough here to give some very good leads. A few months of careful investigation, and Comrade Orpen will have his cell all nicely swept out. But why did this fellow take so damned long to pass on his information?”

“Thelma.”

“But the longer he waited, the more deeply his mother was entangled. Didn’t he see that?” Brownlee looked down at the sheets of paper in front of him. He said, “Some people seem to think that patriotism is only something to be taken out and dusted off when a war is on. Don’t they realise they’ve got certain clear obligations even in peacetime?”

“Charles did produce some patriotic impulses in the end.”

“If he had produced them earlier, he would be alive tonight. And his mother is in one hellish fix now. For his death will have to be investigated, too. She’s caught in a double current.”

They were both silent.

Roger Brownlee began putting the sheets back into their envelope. At last he said, “Well, I’m grateful to Charles for having enough guts to write this out. Orpen’s the leader of this cell, that’s clear. Martin was planted by him as a butler in the apartment three years ago. Both of them were always present at the small secret meetings in the servants’ quarters. You will notice an odd thing—the meetings were always on certain nights. Does that mean Orpen could depend on a certain elevator operator being on duty at that time? Yes, there’s quite a lot of investigation to be done on this branch.”

Then Brownlee fell silent, too, thinking of the foreign visitors whose occasional visits to the secret meetings had been carefully recorded by Charles. There had even been strange visitors from abroad who had actually stayed for a few days in the apartment on the pretence of being old friends of Martin’s. They remained concealed all day, and only went out at night. Martin took them their food, and the other servants were given a holiday (paid, so that they asked no questions). Charles had shown remarkable intelligence in noting down the dates of their visits, in listening for their party names, and in trying to establish their nationalities. He was right in attaching so much importance to the foreign visitors.

“Yes,” Brownlee said, “Charles was no fool in some ways.”

“He had plenty of courage, too,” said Haydn. “He must have taken some terrifying chances. Did he really listen from that box-room next door to the room where the meetings were held?”

“That can be proved. If a hole is found bored in the wall of the box-room, and hidden behind an old wardrobe trunk, then Charles is telling the truth. But why didn’t he get in touch with the FBI? My God, think of all the material they could have gathered by this time.”

“He did as well as he could,” Haydn said. “His upbringing wasn’t exactly the kind to make him a decisive character. Thelma had a big hold over him. He admits it. It must have cost him something to admit it so frankly.”

Brownlee nodded. “If I seem harsh, it’s because I hate to see a wasted education, a wasted life. Heavens knows there are plenty of men who have had far less than Charles ever had, in money or in opportunity, and they make a better showing than he did. He was just another hair-splitter. I suppose you could say that hell is paved with vacillations.” Brownlee thought over that, and then smiled. “If Hamlet had been a ploughman’s son, do you think he would have spent so much time hesitating?”

“Well, a ploughman’s son starts with one advantage—he doesn’t call a spade an agricultural implement.”

Brownlee’s smile widened. He rose, looking at his watch, and said, “Another five minutes. We are better waiting here than in the street. We haven’t far to go. Only over to East Fifty-seventh Street.” He lit a cigarette and walked across to the window.

“You know,” Paul Haydn said, still thinking of Charles, “it is strange that anyone so emotionally disorganised could be so careful in his planning.”

“You’re thinking of the way Charles hired a detective to follow Martin? Yes, that was astute. The detective agency can confirm that Martin made regular visits, with a briefcase, to the consulate. Charles’ statement that the briefcase was filled with dollar bills on Martin’s return, and then—after a secret meeting—was empty again, is damning.”

“It took some courage to go into Martin’s room,” Haydn said slowly, “even if he knew that Martin was spending the night with Thelma.”