Prelude for War (33 page)

Simon searched the
deserted premises and presently
found the stationmaster
weeding his garden.

“When does the next
train from Marlborough get in?”
he asked.

“The nex’ train, sur?
Urse been in already.”

“What’s that?”

The stationmaster pounced
on a weed.

“I said, urse been in
already.”

“I mean the train that
left Marlborough at four o’clock.”

“Urse been in.”

“But it
couldn’t!” protested the Saint. “It’s never done that trip in forty
minutes in its life!”

The stationmaster
bristled.

“Well, urse done it
today,” he stated with justifiable
pride.

“What time did it get
in?”

“I dunno.”

“But surely——
”

“No, I dunno. It was
five minutes ago be the clock, but
the clock ain’t
been keepin’ sich good time since we took
the
bird’s nest outen ur.”

“Thank you,”
said the Saint shakily.

“You’re welcome,
sur,” said the stationmaster graciously, and resumed his weeding.

The Saint ploughed back
through the station on what
seemed to be lengthening
into an endless pilgrimage. In the
station yard he
found a new arrival, in the shape of an auto
mobile
of venerable aspect against which leaned a no less
venerable
man in a peaked cap with a clay pipe stuck
through
the fringe of a moustache that almost hid his chin.
Simon
went up to him and seized him joyfully.

“Did you just pick up
a young lady here—a dark pretty
girl in a light-blue
suit?”

The man cupped a hand to
one ear.

“Pardon?”

Simon repeated his
question.

The driver sucked his pipe,
producing a liquid whistling
noise.

“Old lady goin’ on
fifty, would that be?”

“I said a young
lady—about twenty-five.”

“I ‘ad a young lady
larst week——
”

“No, today.”

“No, Thursday.”

“Today.”

The man shook his head.

“No, I ain’t seen
‘er. Where does she live?”

“I want to know where
she went to,” bawled the Saint.
“She got here
on the last train. She may have taken a cab,
or
somebody may have met her. Did you see her?”

“No, I didn’t see
‘er. Mebbe Charlie seed ‘er.”

“Who’s Charlie?”

“Yus.”

‘Who’s Charlie?”

“There ain’t no need
to shout at me,” said the driver
resentfully.
“I can ‘ear perfickly well. Charlie ‘as the other taxi around ‘ere. This
‘ll be ‘im comin’ along now.”

A noise like a threshing
machine had arisen in the dis
tance. It grew louder.
With a clatter like a dozen milk cans being shaken together in an iron box
another venerable
automobile rolled into the yard, came
to a halt with a final explosion like a pistol shot and stood there with its
nose
steaming.

“Oi,” said the
Saint’s informant. “Charlie.”

A very long man peeled
himself out of the second cab
and came over. He had two
large front teeth like a rabbit,
and one of his eyes stared
at the bridge of his nose.

“Gennelman tryin’ to
find a lady,” explained the man
with the clay pipe.

“A dark pretty girl,
about twenty-five, in a light-blue
suit,” Simon
repeated.

“Hgh,” said the
long man. “I haw her.”

“You saw her?”

“Hgh. Hungh hook her
hu Hanghuh.”

“You took her to
Anford?” said the Saint, straining for
the
interpretation.
          

“Hgh.”

“Where did you
go?”

“Hanghuh.”

“I mean, what part of
Anford?”

“Hh Hohungh
Hleeh.”

“I’m sorry,”
said the Saint, with desperate courtesy.
“I
didn’t quite catch——
”

“Hh Hohungh
Hleeh.”
     
.

“I beg your
pardon?”

“Hh Hohungh
Hleeh.”

“Oh yes. You mean——
”

“Hh Hohungh
Hleeh,” said the long man, with some
asperity.

Simon felt the sweat
coming out on the palms of his
hands.

“Can you tell me where
that is?”

“Hingh Hanghuh.”

Simon looked imploringly
at his first friend.

“You carn’t miss
it,” said the man through his curtain
of
white whisker. “Straight through the market place, an’
it’s on yer left.”

Simon clapped a hand to
his head.

“Good God,” he
said. “You mean the Golden Fleece?”

“Haingh hagh hogh I
heengh hehhigh hu?” demanded
the long man
scornfully.

The Saint smote them both
on the back together.

“You two beauties,”
he said rapturously. “Why did the
goblins
ever let you go?”

He picked up the nearest
hand, slapped money into it and
started back for the
Daimler at a run. For the first time
since the beginning
of that long feverish ordeal he felt that
there
was music in his soul again. Even the Daimler seemed to throw off its
sedateness and fly like a bird over the short
winding
road that led from Anford Station into the town.

In its way, the Golden
Fleece was such an obvious desti
nation that he had not even
considered it. And now again
he wondered what was in
Lady Valerie’s mind.

But wondering was only a
pastime when he was within
reach of knowledge. He
parked the Daimler around the
next turning beyond the
hotel, where it would not be too
obviously in view, and
walked back. At that lifeless hour
before the English
inn is permitted by law to recommence
its function for
the evening, the lobby and lounge of the
hotel
were empty. There was not even any sign of tenancy
at
the office. He moved quietly over to the desk and looked at the register. The
last signature on the page said “Valerie
Woodchester”
in a big round scrawl. In the column beside
it
had been entered a room number: 6.

Simon flitted up the
stairs. There was no one to question
him. He moved along
the upper corridor in effortless silence
until
he came to a door on which was painted the figure 6.
When
he saw it it was like Parsifal coming to the end of
his
journey. He stood for several seconds outside, not mov
ing,
not even breathing, simply listening with ears keyed
to
hypernormal receptiveness. The only sounds they could
catch were occasional
almost inaudible rustlings beyond the
door.
He took a quick catlike step forward, grasped the
handle and turned it smoothly, and went into the
room.

Lady Valerie looked up at
him from a couch on the far side of the room with her face blurring into a
blank oval
of dumbfounded amazement.

Simon locked the door and
stood with his back to it.

“Darling,” he
said reproachfully, but with the lilt of
rapture
still playing havoc with the evenness of his voice,
“what
was the matter with our hospitality?”

2

The room was one of those
quainte dormitoryes which
have always made the
English country hotel so attractive to discriminating travellers. It was
principally furnished
with a gigantic
imitation-oak wardrobe; an imitation
mahogany dressing
table with a tilting mirror; a black-
enamelled iron
bedstead with brass knobs on it; and a
marble-topped
washstand bearing a china basin with a china
jug
standing in it, a soap dish with no soap and a vase for
toothbrushes. Under the marble slab were cupboard doors
concealing unmentionable utensils, and under them stood
a large china slop pail. The pattern on the wallpaper had
apparently been designed to depict one of the wilder horti
cultural experiments of Mr Luther Burbank, in which
purple tulips grew on the central stems of bright green
cabbages, the whole crop being tied together with trailing
coils and bows of pink and blue ribbon. The dimensions
of the room were so cunningly contrived that a slender
person of normal agility could, with the exercise of reason
able care, just manage to find a path between them without
having to bark his shins or stub his toes on any particular
piece of furniture. Even so, there was no more than barely sufficient
room to contain the chintz-covered armchair in
which
Lady Valerie was sitting and behind which she had
unsuccessfully
tried to stuff away the sheaf of papers that
she
had been perusing when the Saint came in.

Simon’s satiric eye rested
on the ends of documents that
still protruded.

“If you’d told us you
wanted something to read,” he said, “we could have lent you some good
books.”

He leaned against the door, clothed in
magnificent assur
ance, as if he had been conversationally
breaking the ice
with an old friend
from whom he was sure to receive a cor
dial
welcome.

He got it. The stunned
astonishment dissolved out of her
face and a broad
schoolgirlish grin spread over her mouth.

“Well, I’m
damned!” she said. “Aren’t you marvellous?
How
on earth did you know I was here?”

He grinned in return.
After all that he had been through
to find her he
couldn’t help it.

“Haven’t you heard
about me?” he said. “I do these
tricks
for my living.”

“Of course,”
she said. “I always knew you were supposed
to
be frightfully clever, but I didn’t really believe you were
as clever as all that… . Oh well, we live and learn, and
anyhow you haven’t got it all your own way. I think I was
pretty clever myself, the way I got away from your house.
I worked it all out before I went to bed last night. Don’t you think it
was clever of me?”

“Very clever,” he
agreed. “But you see it was just the
way
I expected you to be clever.”

She stared at him.

“The way you …”

“Yes.”

“But you don’t mean
you——
”

“Naturally,” he
lied calmly. “I knew that if you got
away,
the first thing you’d do would be to get hold of those
papers,
wherever you’d left them. I wanted to know where
they
were, and I didn’t want to have to beat it out of you.
So
I just let you get away and fetch them for me.”

“I don’t believe
you!”

“Would you like me to
tell you all about it? I was behind you all the time. You picked up the ticket
at the South Ken
sington post office, and then you went on and collected the
package from the checkroom at Paddington. You
took the
first train down here, and
you were driven up from the
station
by a bloke with no roof to his mouth and one of the
oldest taxis on the road. Does that help?”

She looked as crestfallen
as a child that has had a succu
lent lollipop snatched out
of its mouth.

“I think you’re
beastly,” she said.

“I know. Pigs move
pointedly over to the other end of
the sty when I come
in. And now suppose you tell me what
those papers were
doing at Paddington.”

“That’s easy. You see
I had them with me when I was
coming down here for last
week end, because of course I
hadn’t read them, and I
was going to read them on the
train and give them back to
Johnny when I saw him. Then
I thought if they had all
these things in them that were so
rude about Algy and
General Sangore and the rest of
them, perhaps I’d better
not take them down with me,
because Algy mightn’t like
it. So I just popped them in the
cloakroom meaning to
collect them on my way back. But
then the fire happened,
and—and everything, and I came
back in Mr Luker’s car, and
what with one thing and
another I forgot all about
them until you started talking
about them at the
Berkeley. So after last night I thought
I’d
better see what they were all about.”