A Gun for Sale (17 page)

‘It would be better.’

‘You’re the father of your men.’

‘That’s what old Piker said to me once. God forgive him, he meant it differently. I wish you’d drink with me, Sir Marcus. You’re an understanding man. You know how an officer feels. I was in the army once.’

‘Perhaps in a week you will be in it again.’

‘You know how a man feels. I don’t want anything to come between us, Sir Marcus. There’s one thing I’d like to tell you. It’s on my conscience. There
was
a dog under the sofa.’

‘A dog?’

‘A Pekinese called Chinky. I didn’t know as ’ow …’

‘She said it was a cat.’

‘She didn’t want you to know.’

Sir Marcus said, ‘I don’t like being deceived. I’ll see to Piker at the elections.’ He gave a small tired sigh as if there were too many things to be seen to, to be arranged, revenges to be taken, stretching into an endless vista of time, and so much time already covered – since the ghetto, the Marseilles brothel, if there had ever been a ghetto or a brothel. He whispered abruptly, ‘So you’ll telephone now to the station and tell them to shoot at sight? Say you’ll take the responsibility. I’ll look after you.’

‘I don’t see as ’ow, as how …’

The old hands moved impatiently: so much to be arranged. ‘Listen to me. I never promise anything I can’t answer for. There’s a training depot ten miles from here. I can arrange for you to have nominal charge of it, with the rank of colonel, directly war’s declared.’

‘Colonel Banks?’

‘He’ll be shifted.’

‘You mean if I telephone?’

‘No. I mean if you are successful.’

‘And the man’s dead?’

‘He’s not important. A young scoundrel. There’s no reason to hesitate. Take another glass of port.’

The Chief Constable stretched out his hand for the decanter. He thought, with less relish than he would have expected, ‘Colonel Calkin’, but he couldn’t help remembering other things. He was a sentimental man. He remembered his appointment: it had been ‘worked’, of course, no less than his appointment to the training depot would be worked, but there came vividly back to him his sense of pride at being head of one of the best police forces in the Midlands. ‘I’d better not have any more port,’ he said lamely. ‘It’s bad for my sleep and the wife …’

Sir Marcus said, ‘Well, Colonel,’ blinking his old eyes, ‘you’ll be able to count on me for anything.’

‘I’d like to do it,’ the Chief Constable said imploringly. ‘I’d like to please you, Sir Marcus. But I don’t see as how … The police couldn’t do that.’

‘It would never be known.’

‘I don’t suppose they’d take my orders. Not on a thing like that.’

Sir Marcus whispered, ‘Do you mean in your position – you haven’t any
hold
? He spoke with the astonishment of a man who had always been careful to secure his hold on the most junior of his subordinates.

‘I’d like to please you.’

‘There’s the telephone,’ Sir Marcus said. ‘At any rate, you can use your influence. I never ask a man for more than he can do.’

The Chief Constable said: ‘They are a good lot of boys. I’ve been down often to the station of an evening and had a drink or two. They’re keen. You couldn’t have keener men. They’ll get him. You needn’t be afraid, Sir Marcus.’

‘You mean dead?’

‘Alive or dead. They won’t let him escape. They are good boys.’

‘But he has got to be dead,’ Sir Marcus said. He sneezed. The intake of breath seemed to have exhausted him. He lay back again, panting gently.

‘I couldn’t ask them, Sir Marcus, not like that. Why, it’s like murder.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘Those evenings with the boys mean a lot to me. I wouldn’t even be able to go down there again after doing that. I’d rather stay what I am. They’ll give me a tribunal. As long as there’s wars there’ll be conchies.’

‘There’d be no commission of any kind for you,’ Sir Marcus said. ‘I could see to that.’ The smell of moth-balls came up from Calkin’s evening shirt to mock him. ‘I can arrange too that you shan’t be Chief Constable much longer. You and Piker.’ He gave a queer little whistle through the nose. He was too old to laugh, to use his lungs wastefully. ‘Come. Have another glass.’

‘No. I don’t think I’d better. Listen, Sir Marcus, I’ll put detectives at your office. I’ll have Davis guarded.’

‘I don’t much mind about Davis,’ Sir Marcus said. ‘Will you get my chauffeur?’

‘I’d like to do what you want, Sir Marcus. Won’t you come back and see the ladies?’

‘No, no,’ Sir Marcus whispered, ‘not with that dog there.’ He had to be helped to his feet and handed his stick; a few dry crumbs lay in his beard. He said, ‘If you change your mind tonight, you can ring me up. I shall be awake.’ A man at his age, the Chief Constable thought charitably, would obviously think differently of death; it threatened him every moment on the slippery pavement, in a piece of soap at the bottom of a bath. It must seem quite a natural thing he was asking; great age was an abnormal condition: you had to make allowances. But watching Sir Marcus helped down the drive and into his deep wide car, he couldn’t help saying over to himself, ‘Colonel Calkin. Colonel Calkin.’ After a moment he added, ‘C.B.’.

The dog was yapping in the drawing-room. They must have lured it out. It was highly bred and nervous, and if a stranger spoke to it too suddenly or sharply, it would rush around in circles, foaming at the mouth, crying out in a horribly human way, its low fur sweeping the carpet like a vacuum cleaner. I might slip down, the Chief Constable thought, and have a drink with the boys. But the idea brought no lightening of his gloom and indecision. Was it possible that Sir Marcus could rob him of even that? But he had robbed him of it already. He couldn’t face the superintendent or the inspector with this on his mind. He went into his study and sat down by the telephone. In five minutes Sir Marcus would be home. So much stolen from him already, surely there was little more he could lose by acquiescence. But he sat there doing nothing, a small plump bullying henpecked profiteer.

His wife put her head in at the door. ‘Whatever are you doing, Joseph?’ she said. ‘Come at once and talk to Mrs Piker.’

4

Sir Marcus lived with his valet who was also a trained nurse at the top of the big building in the Tanneries. It was his only home. In London he stayed at Claridge’s, in Cannes at the Carlton. His valet met him at the door of the building with his Bath chair and pushed him into the lift, then out along the passage to his study. The heat of the room had been turned up to the right degree, the tape-machine was gently ticking beside his desk. The curtains were not drawn and through the wide double-panes the night sky spread out over Nottwich striped by the searchlights from Hanlow aerodrome.

‘You can go to bed, Mollison. I shan’t be sleeping.’

Sir Marcus slept very little these days. In the little time left him to live a few hours of sleep made a distinct impression. And he didn’t really need the sleep. No physical exertion demanded it. Now with the telephone within his reach he began to read first the memorandum on his desk, then the strips of tape. He read the arrangements for the gas drill in the morning. All the clerks on the ground floor who might happen to be needed for outside work were already supplied with gas masks. The sirens were expected to go almost immediately the rush hour was over and work in the offices had begun. Members of the transport staff, lorry drivers and special messengers would wear their masks immediately they started work. It was the only way to ensure that they wouldn’t leave them behind somewhere and be caught unprotected during the hours of the practice and so waste in hospital the valuable hours of Midland Steel.

More valuable than they had ever been since November, 1918. Sir Marcus read the tape prices. Armament shares continued to rise, and with them steel. It made no difference at all that the British Government had stopped all export licences; the country itself was now absorbing more armaments than it had ever done since the peak year of Haig’s assaults on the Hindenburg Line. Sir Marcus had many friends, in many countries; he wintered with them regularly at Cannes or in Soppelsa’s yacht off Rhodes; he was the intimate friend of Mrs
Cranbeim
. It was impossible now to export arms, but it was still possible to export nickel and most of the other metals which were necessary to the arming of nations. Even when war was declared, Mrs Cranbeim had been able to say quite definitely, that evening when the yacht pitched a little and Rosen was so distressingly sick over Mrs Ziffo’s black satin, the British Government would not forbid the export of nickel to Switzerland or other neutral countries so long as the British requirements were first met. The future was very rosy indeed, for you could trust Mrs Cranbeim’s word. She spoke directly from the horse’s mouth, if you could so describe the elder statesman whose confidence she shared.

It seemed quite certain now; Sir Marcus read, in the tape messages, that the two governments chiefly concerned would not either amend or accept the terms of the ultimatum. Probably within five days, at least four countries would be at war and the consumption of munitions have risen to several million pounds a day.

And yet Sir Marcus was not quite happy. Davis had bungled things. When he had told Davis that a murderer ought not to be allowed to benefit from his crime, he had never expected all this silly business of the stolen notes. Now he must wait up all night for the telephone to ring. The old thin body made itself as comfortable as it could on the air-blown cushions: Sir Marcus was as painfully aware of his bones as a skeleton must be, wearing itself away against the leaden lining of its last suit. A clock struck midnight; he had lived one more whole day.

Chapter 5

1

RAVEN GROPED THROUGH
the dark of the small shed till he had found the sacks. He piled them up, shaking them as one shakes a pillow. He whispered anxiously: ‘You’ll be able to rest there a bit?’ Anne let his hand guide her to the corner. She said, ‘It’s freezing.’

‘Lie down and I’ll find more sacks.’ He struck a match and the tiny flame went wandering through the close cold darkness. He brought the sacks and spread them over her, dropping the match.

‘Can’t we have a little light?’ Anne asked.

‘It’s not safe. Anyway,’ he said, ‘it’s a break for me. You can’t see me in the dark. You can’t see
this
.’ He touched his lip secretly. He was listening at the door; he heard feet stumble on the tangle of metal and cinders and after a time a low voice spoke. He said, ‘I’ve got to think. They know I’m here. Perhaps you’d better go. They’ve got nothing on you. If they come there’s going to be shooting.’

‘Do you think they know I’m here?’

‘They must have followed us all the way.’

‘Then I’ll stay,’ Anne said. ‘There won’t be any shooting while I’m here. They’ll wait till morning, till you come out.’

‘That’s friendly of you,’ he said with sour incredulity, all his suspicion of friendliness coming back.

‘I’ve told you. I’m on your side.’

‘I’ve got to think of a way,’ he said.

‘You may as well rest now. You’ve all the night to think in.’

‘It
is
sort of – good in here,’ Raven said, ‘out of the way of the whole damned world of them. In the dark.’ He wouldn’t come near her, but sat down in the opposite corner with his automatic in his lap. He said suspiciously, ‘What are you thinking about?’ He was astonished and shocked by the sound of a laugh. ‘Kind of homey,’ Anne said.

‘I don’t take any stock in homes,’ Raven said. ‘I’ve been in one.’

‘Tell me about it. What’s your name?’

‘You know my name. You’ve seen it in the papers.’

‘I mean your Christian name.’

‘Christian. That’s a good joke, that one. Do you think anyone ever turns the other cheek these days?’ He tapped the barrel of the automatic resentfully on the cinder floor. ‘Not a chance.’ He could hear her breathing there in the opposite corner, out of sight, out of reach, and he was afflicted by the odd sense that he had missed something. He said, ‘I’m not
saying
you aren’t fine. I dare say you’re Christian all right.’

‘Search me,’ Anne said.

‘I took you out to that house to kill you …’

‘To kill me?’

‘What did you think it was for? I’m not a lover, am I? Girl’s dream? Handsome as the day?’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘Those men turned up. That’s all. I didn’t fall for you. I don’t fall for girls. I’m saved that. You won’t find me ever going soft on a skirt.’ He went desperately on, ‘Why didn’t you tell the police about me? Why don’t you shout to them now?’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘you’ve got a gun, haven’t you?’

‘I wouldn’t shoot.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m not all that crazy,’ he said. ‘If people go straight with me, I’ll go straight with them. Go on. Shout. I won’t do a thing.’

‘Well,’ Anne said, ‘I don’t have to ask your leave to be grateful, do I? You saved me tonight.’

‘That lot wouldn’t have killed you. They haven’t the nerve to kill. It takes a man to kill.’

‘Well, your friend Cholmondeley came pretty near it. He nearly throttled me when he guessed I was in with you.’

‘In with me?’

‘To find the man you’re after.’

‘The double-crossing bastard.’ He brooded over his pistol, but his thoughts always disturbingly came back from hate to this dark safe corner; he wasn’t used to that. He said, ‘You’ve got sense all right. I like you.’

‘Thanks for the compliment.’

‘It’s no compliment. You don’t have to tell me. I’ve got something I’d like to trust you with, but I can’t.’

‘What’s the dark secret?’

‘It’s not a secret. It’s a cat I left back in my lodgings in London when they chased me out. You’d have looked after it.’

‘You disappoint me, Mr Raven. I thought it was going to
be
a few murders at least.’ She exclaimed with sudden seriousness, ‘I’ve got it. The place where Davis works.’

‘Davis?’

‘The man you call Cholmondeley. I’m sure of it. Midland Steel. In a street near the Metropole. A big palace of a place.’

‘I’ve got to get out of here,’ Raven said, beating the automatic on the freezing ground.