The Mind Readers (27 page)

It was a certain type of recital, part boast, part a need to share the terrible act, and part a genuine interest in the recapitulation of the technical details which Mr Campion had heard before in a dustier land on a noisier occasion. He had not enjoyed it then.

‘The owner of the car must have found him in the early morning and switched him into a truck with a curtained back,' the thin man said quickly. ‘That's where he was found. In a pile-up on the motorway outside Saltbridge.'

‘That's right,' Arnold agreed. ‘I got that bit from Lord Ludor's secretary but she left out the kind of vehicle and of course I didn't ask her, knowing already, as I thought. You can see how dodgy this sort of thing is in this closed set-up and peace time! I don't often make mistakes.' His eyes rested on the man in the front seat. ‘It's too bad when I do.' His laugh was almost friendly but he made no attempt to disguise the position. ‘I'm talking so long because I want a little something from you,' he said.

‘Really?' Once again Mr Campion was surprised by him. To save his life he could not resist a flippancy. ‘Will you take a cheque?'

‘You're a lad! No, I don't mean anything like that and you may be difficult about it, but when I was listening to you I thought to myself: “He knows where that Auntie's pet is. Or thinks he does”. You know where the boy is, don't you?'

‘I assure you you're wrong. Why do you want to know?'

‘Be your age! I need to keep Ludor sweet, don't I?'

At first the suggestion seemed a non-sequitor but a fresh possibility occurred to Mr Campion, who was aware of becoming dangerously stiff, cramped and twisted as he was, looking over the back of the driving seat. Until that moment he had assumed that Thos Knapp had cut off the conversation with Dearest as soon as he suspected that someone else was listening. However, in view of the considerable amount of it which he later admitted to have overheard, it now seemed that the sequence of events might well have been rather different.

Thos, he knew, was hardly a man to put up with real nonsense from his staff such as an unknown tap on his own private wire; in other words there was a double-cross in the story. In which case Arnold's five hundred cigarettes had been shared by the Chairman of Advance Wires, who would certainly reserve the means to cut the barman out at any time when his own business required privacy. As soon as the idea entered Mr Campion's mind he remembered the violent crackle he had noticed on the line when Dearest had protested that he was ‘running on'. If Thos had taken action as soon as he heard this phrase which, with his long experience, might well be known to him, Arnold would not be aware that the devices had been recovered.

Mr Campion did not rush the fence. His instinct was to keep the man talking as long as he could in the hope of his concentration wavering.

‘I thought Lord Ludor assumed that Mr Mayo was the inventor of the devices and . . . er . . . Auntie's pet was with him?' he ventured.

‘I think you know better than that, Mr Campion.' The expression on the shiny face was reproachful and there was no smile in the flat eyes. In many ways it was a terrible countenance but a remarkably sane one. ‘Mayo knew he was on to something. It was written all over him.'

‘The amplifiers will be sent down here. Security will hand them over.'

‘When they get them.'

‘They have them now.' Mr Campion had the uncomfortable impression that he was waving a scarf in front of the poised head. ‘The Special Branch have picked up the End of the World Man.'

‘Who?' His frank astonishment took them both off watch for a second. Mr Campion recovered first and cursed himself. Of course, it was more than possible the barman would not know that contact.

‘I've never heard him called that.' Arnold was very inquisitive and there was a flicker of disquiet about him.

‘It was a disguise he adopted sometimes.' Campion was too experienced to make any corrections. In this sort of interview one went straight on or not at all. ‘He was the secretary of a Judgment Day Society. He put on one of the monk's robes their employees tout about in, and he was handing the things over to a well-known agent together with one of the Society's pamphlets when they caught him.
I'm talking about the man with the white cat
.'

He felt he was prodding the brute with a stick now and braced himself, but to his astonishment Arnold relaxed and laughed.

‘God! How like them,' he said, with professional amusement. ‘Can you beat it? Disguise! Fancy dress! You can't cure them of it you know. It's built in. Before the Revolution someone did some first-class translations of a writer called E. Phillips Oppenheim and that's their view of England. Have you ever read Conrad? You should. There's a book of his that's their other Bible on the British. Sooner or later they'll catch up with the modern stuff! Then there'll be some birds in it! Too late for you and me.' He noticed the shadow pass over the pale face before him and shrugged. ‘I don't say you are a two-facer, like me,' he said frankly. ‘All I meant was that whatever they get up to, so will the British—in their own good time! The British even caught up with
me
in the end, only they didn't know it. You must admit it's a laugh!'

Now that all the cards were on the table and the conversation could have but one end, Mr Campion was almost relieved.

‘You put a touching faith in the teashop-keeper's reticence,' he remarked, stretching a cramped leg recklessly.

‘Me? Trust the old queer with the cat? Don't be wet! He doesn't know me. I've seen him and I've heard a bit about him but he's never seen me.' He was amused by Mr Campion's reaction and took pity on his ignorance. ‘I used the milk bottle routine. It's neat if you don't know it. I can't tell you if it was their idea or his, or if the perishing cat put it up to him!' He was laying himself out to entertain, as he did for any customer in the bar. ‘Cribb Street and Dortmunda Street run back to back behind Wigmore,' he continued. ‘And between them there's a narrow alley which separates the two lines of backyards. High brick walls with doors in them on both sides; you know the kind of place? It's only wide enough for the dustman, the coppers having a drag, and the milk. My old queer from the teashop used to plonk a crate of empty milk bottles out in the alley whenever he was told to; never at any set time. As soon as he'd gone back in and closed his yard door, acting on orders I'd slide out of the backyard of a house in Dortmunda Street where a couple of old dears I go to see have the top flat and use of a yard. If there was no one around I'd put a half-pint bottle down among the others. It looked as if it was full because the inside of the glass was painted cream and it had a metal cap. As soon as I'd gone by, the old teashop queer would step out for it as if he'd forgotten and put it out with the empties by mistake.'

‘Not bad,' said Campion with professional condescension. ‘Except that presumably you have to carry a half-pint milk bottle about with you, which seems unchic.'

‘I care for that!' ‘The barman sounded sincere. ‘Actually two bottles were kept in the old girls' shed. All above board—they'd merely been used for paint and allowed to dry; all I had to supply was the metal caps. I didn't have to do any more myself. I just obeyed orders and used the equipment provided. That's their method. The other night, after I'd parked Mayo, I only had to ‘phone my Number One and report I'd picked up something on the list of wanted items.'

‘Did you know what the things were?'

‘No, but I knew they'd belonged to the children. There's been urgent enquiries about a device of some sort those kids were thought to have got hold of, for months now. From what I heard Mrs Ferris trying to tell her husband, Mayo had snaffled them from the old parson at the Rectory so I felt pretty safe in going after them myself. I knew he must have them on him. I took a chance, see? I was telling you: as soon as I reported I'd got something, I was told to leave the milk in the usual place, right away. Sure enough, by the time I got there, the crate of empties was already outside with a painted half-pint bottle amongst them waiting for me. I shoved what I had inside it and before I'd reached my van I heard the queer's door open behind me. I did my shopping and I was home here in under the two hours. There was no traffic—I had a straight run.'

‘This teashop-man was in St Peter's Gate Square that night, or his cat was,' Mr Campion murmured.

Arnold blinked. ‘D'you know, I thought that,' he said. ‘I saw something and wondered.'

‘What was he doing? Watching for the children? There was an unsuccessful attempt to pick them up earlier in the day.'

‘At Liverpool Street? So that was it. I had orders to prevent Mrs Ferris getting transport from here in the morning to catch a train to London. I thought it might be difficult to stop her, but Mayo appeared to be backing me up. Actually that was one of the little items which made me spot that he was with the old Odsbods—I call my best customers that—and making for the airport when the time came. Everything began to fit in, see?'

‘Would the teashop-keeper come out to St Peter's Gate Square and hang around after the children himself?'

‘If there had been a failure and one of his contacts had fallen down on the job of picking them up? Possibly. No way of telling.' He was disinterested. ‘In that service anybody can get orders to do anything; I thought perhaps he was just fetching the cat home. He runs a chronic barney with some other barmy old chap who tries to entice it away to annoy him and they go chasing all over the shop after it. It's a real old “queen's quadrille” by all accounts. I hear this from the old girls in Cribb Street. A neighbourhood like that is as gossipy as a village and he was one of the sights. Now he's gone and let himself be taken! That'll annoy the Odsbods. They've used his “post office” for years. He was there when I came in.'

‘Your employers, the . . . er . . . Odsbods got the flat for your lady friends?'

‘Have a heart! One of those old dears went to school with my Mum. She's the tailoress. The other is the milliner. They're nice old ducks, very correct and patriotic. They don't know anything about all this, naturally. I was given the chance of getting the lease for them and they pay the expenses and a bit over because they're so grateful. It's gone on for several years now. It began when I left Lord Ludor's private service and came down here. That's about when it started. It doesn't bring in a fortune, you know, but it's just worth having.'

‘How old were you when you went to Lord Ludor?'

It was an unexpected question and Arnold sat quiet, as if he did not want to remember. For the first time in the entire interview he betrayed a normal human reaction instead of the cold, close to the ground, self-seeking which appeared to demand only shallow applause for small boasts and could sell its own country or any other for something ‘not a fortune but just worth having'.

‘
An eater of dust
'. The superstitious thought shook Mr Campion deep inside himself. He nearly shuddered. The effort to control it produced a memory of something Amanda had told him just before he came out. It seemed relevant. But, before he could speak Arnold, who had been watching him, wriggled in his seat and laughed. With his great pink hands, wide mouth and waxen skin he was really disgusting.

‘You're something right out of the past, aren't you?' he gasped. ‘I like it. You give me a real giggle. You're my senior officer and yet you give me a look which is so naïve that you take my breath away. You don't understand me, do you? And yet I'm dead sensible. I'll put it in baby talk. I'm an employee, aren't I? So I please my bosses and I make a living. I aim to please. All the time.'

‘Every separate boss?'

‘Well, of course. That's the art of it. That's why the pay is enough. It's all chickenfeed, but it mounts up. Listen. If your trade is secrets and you're a good tradesman you can work for the lot if you're nippy and so have a reasonable turnover. That's the crux of it. Don't tell me it's never occurred to you!
Of course
I had to get cracking as soon as I realised Mayo was making for the airport. That was a risk but it's one you've always got to be prepared to take: physical action when necessary is an essential. I didn't want him turning up at the Viennese H.Q., or wherever, with the items I'd been forwarding the dope about for over a year, did I? Especially if he was going to tell them I'd been signed on by British Security before I could report it myself.'

‘Would you have reported it?' Mr Campion sounded surprised.

‘Of course I would and so would you if you were in my place. Keep the Odsbods informed and you're taken care of.'

‘Don't and presumably the same applies?'

‘That's rather good. I shall use that. My Number One could just about follow that. It's true too. You'd never save yourself. One day you'd forget and step in a cab, or accept a lift, or pause in the wrong doorway and that would be that. I've been at the right end of one of those capers in my time and I learned my lesson then.' His smile became depreciating. ‘I don't want to hurt your feelings but your set-up . . . ours, I beg your pardon . . . is childish by comparison. Well, it's just another Government department, isn't it? Fancy taking me on to pacify Ludor! Oh, I know I'm eighteenth grade or whatever and I must work my way up but I shall. You'll see—or you would have done. I shall get there. Which reminds me, what about this kid? Has your lady got him or hasn't she? It sounded to me as if you thought she had. Come along, be a good man.'

‘Why do you think it would keep Lord Ludor “sweet” to have him? Godley's have the invention already, or will at any moment now.'

‘That's nothing to do with me.' Arnold was hissing at his obtuseness. ‘Clear your mind! So there's been a slip-up. So the Odsbods lose the jackpot. So they get livid.
But not with me
. I'm all right, I did my bit. Old Fancywork and his white cat carry that can. The same with Ludor. All told—the canteen job as well—he's worth more to me than anybody. He gets the invention but he loses his man. I don't appear. Quite likely he gets savage with me because I didn't have second sight and step in and save his prize boffin. I counter them by coming forward with the older kid who can lead him to the men behind it all. Sam's too young. They haven't trusted Sam.'