Operation Pax (20 page)

Beguiled by this odd proposition, Appleby turned a corner. Why Milton Porcorum? It was a place without significance or marked attraction, offering no unusual facilities for either a life of anonymous beneficence or a period of covert vice. From the insignificance of Milton Porcorum could there be inferred – hazardously indeed but perhaps crucially – another conclusion?
Persons whose disappearance is associated with Milton Porcorum have not been attracted into the void. They have been pushed
.

Appleby had arrived so far in this decidedly uncertain ratiocinative process when his attention was abruptly recalled to the outer world. He was making his way back to the centre of Oxford by certain quiet roads which were very familiar to him, and for some little way he had passed nobody except a single elderly man belatedly exercising a small dog on a lead. But now another figure was approaching him – or rather (what was the occasion of abrupting his train of thought) had faltered in doing so and was rapidly disappearing up a side road a little way ahead.

That falter was well known to Appleby. He had encountered it often enough during the couple of years he had spent with a helmet and a bull’s-eye lantern long ago. Instinctively he quickened his pace and turned the corner. Only a little cul-de-sac presented itself. And in this, dimly visible beneath a single lamp, a meagre and apprehensive man stood at bay.

Appleby was amused. It had never occurred to him that he might still give to a practised criminal eye the appearance of a plain-clothes officer on duty. At a guess, the man was a known burglar, with tools for breaking and entering now on his person, and in thinking to give Appleby a wide berth had taken this unlucky cast down a blind alley.

But at the same time Appleby was puzzled. If he carried his tools with him, the fellow ought not yet to be abroad. The night was still too young by far. Appleby took another look at him, and became aware of two facts. They were facts that fitted together. The man was not merely scared or nervous; he was in very great and naked terror. And he was Stuart Buffin’s rabbity fellow with the scratched face. He had been up a telephone pole and – more mysteriously – ‘in Miles’ cat’. Stuart had not been romancing. He had veritably encountered a sort of museum specimen of that grand standby of the popular cinema, the hunted man.

Rather as if to repudiate the charge of craven orthodoxy in this role, the man in front of Appleby began to scream. It was an effect that Appleby did not recall having witnessed. The man did not, it was true, scream very loudly, being temporarily afflicted, it appeared, with some hysterical constriction of the vocal cords. Nevertheless the performance was extremely displeasing, and Appleby could see no better way of ending it than by turning on his heel and marching out of the picture. This simple plan he proceeded to put into effect.

But as he walked away he found himself uneasy on two quite distinct scores. The first proceeded from a habitual sense of responsibility for public order. This wretched little man was nothing to him; nevertheless he was either in some real danger or so far gone in lunacy as to be himself dangerous to others. Perhaps therefore he should be tackled and controlled at once, however much he screamed, and whatever indignation the proceeding aroused among disturbed residents in the district.

Appleby’s second uneasiness was more obscure. He had a queer feeling that the man
was
in some way part of his direct concern. Yet he could assign himself no shadow of reason for this belief. Appleby snapped his fingers in vexation – and in the same instant was in command of the hidden connexion he sought. Kolmak! It was not once but twice that Kolmak had broken into other people’s talk earlier that evening. The second occasion had been the notable one concerning Milton Porcorum. The first had been the mention of Stuart’s rabbity fugitive as having a scratched cheek. And Appleby could now recall that both these interjections had possessed precisely the same quality.

He was on the point of emerging from the cul-de-sac. The man had stopped screaming. Appleby turned and saw that he was endeavouring to scale a wholly impossible brick wall. He watched him for some moments until he fell back panting and exhausted; then he spoke quietly down the length of the cul-de-sac.

‘I’m not your enemy. Try to think. You are unarmed and helpless. If I want you, I’ve got you.’

The man had turned and was standing immobile, his arms spread-eagled against the wall. He was one, Appleby fleetingly thought, who had unconsciously a sense of style, an actor’s instinct. It would make an effective shot.

‘There would be no sense in my standing talking like this until, perhaps, the police came along and I had to clear out. So you can see you’re in no danger with me.’

The man straightened himself, but said nothing.

‘I do, as it happens, know something about you. You’ve been up a telephone pole. And you’ve been in Miles’ cat.’

The man made a sudden dash for where, in the brickwork by which he was imprisoned, he had belatedly glimpsed a green-painted wooden door. He shook it furiously. It was locked. He turned again, and spoke at last.

‘You’re one of them.’ His voice was at once high and hoarse. ‘You’re one of them, or you couldn’t know that.’

‘Nonsense.’ Appleby got out a pipe and proceeded to fill it. ‘One of the children told about it. The one that helped you. And look here:
he
knew about the telephone pole, but your enemies didn’t. Isn’t that right? If I was one of them, I wouldn’t have tumbled to that yet.’

‘They’re clever enough.’

‘And a lot too clever to stand jawing like this. Where are you trying to get to?’

The man hesitated. ‘Into Oxford. But I lost my way. I want to get into a crowd.’

‘Come along, then – we’ll go together.’

The man didn’t move.

‘You’re in a trap there, if this
is
a trap; and you can’t make matters worse by coming out. Look, I’m crossing over to the other side of the road. You can come up here and see that there’s nobody else about. And then we can go where you think it’s healthy.’

Appleby suited his action to his words. The road was still quite empty. And presently the meagre man cautiously emerged into it. He looked about him warily but dully, and then crossed over. ‘I wouldn’t have believed that the old professor was one,’ he said. ‘But he was.’

Appleby realized that the man beside him was played out in both mind and body. Perhaps he needed food. And certainly he needed sleep. ‘If we go by Walton Street,’ he said, ‘we can get a cup of coffee still at a place quite near this end.’

The meagre man was glancing swiftly from side to side as he walked, like a creature moving through the jungle. But Appleby doubted whether he retained much power to descry, let alone to ward off, danger. The dash down the cul-de-sac had been a pitifully feeble move. The man was approaching, in fact, a state of somnambulism. His response now, although designed as truculent, was ineffective. ‘Who are you, anyway?’ he said. ‘Nobody asked you to come interfering with me.’

‘Well, we do sometimes get what we don’t ask for.’

A car went by, close to the kerb, as Appleby spoke. And the meagre man’s whole body quivered. ‘They’ve got a van out,’ he said. ‘And cars too. Smashed one great car, they did – and two of them ought to have broken their ruddy necks. But there’s none of them dead yet, worse luck. None – see?’

‘I see. None of them dead.’

‘The law should get them.’ Suddenly the meagre man’s voice sharpened. ‘What are you, anyway? That’s what I ask. Are you the police?’

‘Yes – I
am
the police.’

What might have been either a curse or a sob broke from the meagre man. He stumbled – lifting a knee queerly, as if he had made a wholly futile attempt to run.

‘Here you are. Hot coffee, and a sandwich if you want it.’ And Appleby steered his captive – if he was that – to a table in the small café he had had in mind. ‘Your head will feel clearer, you know, when you’ve had that.’

He fetched coffee from the counter, glancing about him as he did so. There was nobody in the place except a sleepy woman presiding over the stuff stewing in urns, and a man and a girl in a corner, staring at each other in heavy-eyed misery. It was not very cheerful. But Appleby doubted whether a more festive atmosphere would much have encouraged his new acquaintance.

‘Here you are. Sugar in the saucer.’

The meagre man took the coffee in two trembling hands, stirred, and drank. A couple of mouthfuls appeared to give him sufficient strength to take up matters where he had left them. ‘I never had anything to do with the police,’ he said. ‘They’ve no call to come after me.’

‘They haven’t – not so far as I know.’ Appleby put down his pipe and produced a packet of cigarettes. ‘Smoke?’

The meagre man reached forward and took a cigarette as an addict might snatch an offered drug. ‘Thanks,’ he said. It was a word the enunciation of which appeared to afford him peculiar difficulty.

Appleby faintly smiled. With this customer he was on familiar ground enough. A little twister who could put up a genteel show among the simple, and get away with a pound note on the strength of one plausible tale or another. Appleby had often seen them, and often seen them scared – of six months, or two years, or perhaps a thrashing from some dupe’s brawny husband. But he had never seen one as hard-pressed as this. Stuart’s rabbit with the scratched cheek had been out in deep water. And he didn’t like the feel of it.

‘No,’ said Appleby, ‘I don’t suppose the police have any call to come after you. But perhaps you have a call to go after them.’

The meagre man looked up quickly. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said.

‘I rather think you do. The only way out of some tough spots is through the police station. It’s a bit bleak. But it’s as safe as Buckingham Palace.’ Appleby paused. ‘Even,’ he said, ‘if they keep you for rather a long time. Safety. Quiet and safety and all found…Safety…
safety
.’

The meagre man’s head was nodding. ‘You’re a devil,’ he whispered, ‘a clever devil.’ With an effort he looked straight at Appleby, raised his cup and drained it, let it clatter back into the saucer. ‘See here,’ he said – and his voice strove again for truculence. ‘What sort of policeman are you, anyway? You don’t
sound
to me like a policeman. Too much the bloody gentleman, you are. A bloody gentleman up to something dirty – that’s you. Well, don’t come to me.’

‘Shall I get you another cup of coffee?’

The meagre man shook his head. His eyes were filling with tears of helplessness and rage. ‘Policeman, indeed!’ he pursued. ‘How’d you like to come to the mucking station and see what they say? Oxford cop, eh?’

‘Not Oxford. London.’

With the effect of some tiny mechanism starting into motion, one of the meagre man’s cheeks began to twitch. ‘You mean you’re from the CID?’

‘One of my duties is to look after the CID.’

‘Christ!’ The meagre man looked at Appleby for a moment with all the sobriety of conviction. Then – totally unexpectedly – he smiled. It was not a very pleasant smile, but neither was it malignant. It was a smile, Appleby knew, of suddenly gratified vanity. The little twister endeavoured to square his shoulders in their cheap padded jacket. Then he leant forward. ‘I’ll tell you something,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll tell you something to surprise your ruddy highness. I’ll be bigger than you one day…bigger by a long way. I’ll give your CID its orders – see? Yes, and the ruddy Government too.’

Coffee, fatigue and a little applied psychology, Appleby reflected, will sometimes do the work of large charges of alcohol. ‘Well, why not?’ he said. ‘A man can always have a bit of luck.’

‘You need more than luck. You need guts.’

‘Ah – to grab what’s there for the grabbing.’

‘What d’you mean?’ The meagre man made a spasmodic movement of his right hand towards his breast. ‘I haven’t grabbed anything. So you needn’t think it.’

‘Nobody said you had.’ Appleby rose and went over to the counter for a second cup of coffee. In his jacket pocket the fellow had something he set store by – and something he had grabbed.

‘I’ve lost my wallet.’ The man spoke quickly and defensively as Appleby returned to the little table. He tapped his chest with a hand that trembled. ‘Left it in a pub where I got some supper. Cleared me out.’

‘Bad luck.’ He had some command of his wits still, Appleby thought. He had realized the betrayal in that involuntary movement, and he had thought up this yarn to cover it. Only – what was rather odd – he had made the yarn sound as if it were true. Possibly it was true. ‘You mean,’ Appleby asked, ‘that you haven’t a penny?’

‘Not a mucking farthing. And it’s damned unfair.’ The man’s voice rose in a disagreeable but convincingly authentic whine. ‘It means I’m helpless against them, just when it all looked like coming my way.’

‘It sounds just too bad.’ Appleby applied himself to stirring his fresh cup of coffee. When he looked up it was to see his companion glancing furtively and apprehensively first out into the darkened street and then at the lovers sitting glumly over their silent quarrel in the other corner. ‘About that cat–’ Appleby said.

The meagre man’s head swung round as if at the blow of a fist. His face was ashen. ‘What do you know?’ he said hoarsely. ‘It wasn’t me! The cat got on his shoulder and he tripped. The gun went off–’ He fell back in his chair, and both his hands went to his throat as if to choke words that it would be fatal to utter.

‘There was a gun in this affair of Miles’ cat?’

‘You’re making me mix things.’ The voice was now no more than a whisper. ‘It’s not evidence. It’s against the law. The judges don’t allow it.’

‘Never mind the judges, Mr – ?’

‘Routh.’

Appleby looked at his companion curiously. He was certainly pretty well through; he had handed over his name as if drugged. It was the moment for a shot that was wholly in the dark. ‘Routh,’ he asked sharply, ‘when were you last in Milton Porcorum?’

It was a hit. The man calling himself Routh uttered a strangled cry and made a futile effort to get to his feet. ‘You
do
belong to them,’ he whispered. ‘You must. You know.’