Sweet Danger (15 page)

Mr Campion, still clutching his handkerchief to his swollen cheek, but contriving at the same time to look dutifully impressed, stepped into a cool cedar-scented atmosphere and found himself almost ankle-deep in velvet pile. This great walnut-panelled apartment hung with green was peopled with immaculate young persons of either sex who moved silently, rustled papers softly, coughed discreetly.

A willowy young man detached himself from his fellows and came towards them. The well-known lineaments of a famous family were easily discernible in his face, and his voice had the soft, attractive quality of old-time diplomacy.

Mr Parrott, who appeared to know that he was out of
place in these surroundings, murmured a confidential ‘This is Mr Clinton-Setter, one of The Secretaries.' And then in a still lower tone to the younger man: ‘Mr Campion. About the papers.'

Mr Clinton-Setter smiled, coughed, waited until Mr Parrott had departed, and spoke again in a lowered voice to Campion.

‘Mr Savanake will see you immediately. Would you like to – er – leave your hat and umbrella?'

Denuded of his hat and umbrella, Mr Campion felt he might now be permitted to see the exhibit without further fuss. But it was not to be.

Mr Clinton-Setter conducted him through immense double doorways into yet another apartment where an incredibly important-looking person champed and fidgeted with the broad ribbon of his eyeglass.

Mr Campion followed his escort, his head bent devoutly, his handkerchief still clasped to his jaw. They entered a small corridor and Mr Clinton-Setter put up his hand warningly.

‘This is The Room,' he whispered, and tapped discreetly. Then, throwing open the door, he stood aside and announced firmly: ‘Mr Campion. About the papers.'

The young man with the toothache stepped into the room with the conviction that what you see on the pictures is sometimes true.

He had been prepared for a palatial office, but not for this. Here was a shot from one of the more fanciful German films. The clean lines of glass walls were interrupted by mysterious machines. A gigantic desk which sprouted bulbs, switches, telephones with televisor attachments, and which must have contained, Mr Campion imagined, enough equipment to befuddle any ordinary office, was set facing the door with a steel arm-chair behind it.

The young man looked about him, searching for the owner of all this efficiency. He had just decided that the
room was empty when someone stirred behind him and he turned to see another desk set in an alcove behind the door, and at it, looking very businesslike, a completely unexpected small, plump elderly lady. This person had a lumpy forehead, shrewd eyes, and the faint air of indefatigability of a Labour cabinet minister. She smiled at Campion reassuringly.

‘You're two minutes early,' she said, revealing a comfortable, homely voice with an unexpected North Country accent. ‘But it doesn't matter. Mr Savanake will see you in the private room. That's a great privilege for you. He doesn't often see people there. Try to keep that handkerchief down from your face,' she went on. ‘If he sees people looking ill he's sorry for them and that disturbs him. It makes him waste his mind on unimportant things. That's right. Now go straight in when I open the door. Sit down at the chair in front of the desk and remember there's nothing to be afraid of.'

She pressed a button on her desk and, after receiving an answering light, presumably worked from the inner shrine, she smiled at Campion again.

‘There you are,' she said, and released a lever in the floor with her stout black shoe.

A section of the plate-glass wall slid aside, like the door of a tube train, and Mr Campion passed within.

THE INGENUOUS MIND
of the pale young man in horn-rimmed spectacles expected solid gold and nothing else, with a small plutocrat, possibly, enthroned within. But the room into which he stepped was even more surprising.

It was small and stuffy, with green distempered walls, and worn brown linoleum on the floor. It appeared never to have been dusted. Old-fashioned spike files lay in piles in the corners. There was a small gas ring with a kettle on it in the fender and a Charles Dana Gibson girl pinned up over the mantelpiece.

The visitor's chair, worn and inkstained, stood before a varnished desk so littered with papers, cigarette ends and odd bottles that there was no clear space upon it at all.

But Mr Campion noticed these things only slowly. At first his entire attention was taken up by the man who sat hunched behind the welter of papers, the demi-god who controlled the destinies of the fantastic palace beneath him and its slaves.

Brett Savanake was a man of startling appearance. To begin with, he was what in more romantic times would have been called a giant. He was still comparatively young, being nearer fifty than sixty, and his grey-black hair was cut close to his enormous head. He had a round pale face and intense grey eyes. He looked at Mr Campion without speaking or smiling, and waited until the young man had seated himself before his heavy white lids so much as flickered. Then he grunted.

This minor explosion shook his entire frame, and might well have startled a more impressionable visitor. But Mr Campion remained blank, unassuming, and apparently engrossed in his toothache.

‘D'you read
The Times
yourself, or did someone show you that advertisement?' said the personage fiercely.

‘A friend showed it to me,' said Mr Campion truthfully.

‘Did you tell him you were going to answer it?'

‘Yes,' said Mr Campion.

‘That was indiscreet. I don't know if you're the man I want.'

With a sigh, Mr Campion rose from his chair and moved towards the door.

‘In that case I will repeat my journey through the wonder house,' he said over his shoulder.

‘Sit down. Don't be a fool. I've got no time for fools.'

Savanake rose to his feet and held out, rather surprisingly, a packet of Players. Mr Campion appeared mollified, but he shook his head.

‘I – I can't with this tooth,' he said. ‘Thanks awfully all the same.'

As he sat down again he noticed that the other had undergone a complete change of mood. His bullying vanished and he seemed to have decided to become hearty.

‘Well, my boy,' he said, ‘so you've come about the papers. Rather good that, eh? It sounded interesting. Didn't give anything away. Now, I've been hearing a good deal about you, one way and another, and I've sent for you because I think I can put something in your way that may interest you.'

Mr Campion peered round the corner of his handkerchief.

‘Very nice of you, as long as it isn't a spoke in my wheel,' he murmured idiotically.

The personage favoured him with a long and penetrating stare. Then he leant back in his chair and sighed.

‘Well, Campion, let's get down to business,' he said.

He was now neither hearty nor aggressive, but himself, an intelligent personality, a tremendous personal force.

Mr Campion remained quiet and rather foolish-looking.

With another prodigious sigh the huge man lunged forward, and planted one immense arm among the papers.

‘You don't speak Spanish, do you?' he enquired.

‘Not often,' said Mr Campion cautiously. ‘And then only to people who don't understand English.'

‘Oh, you do? Well, that makes things much easier. The fact is, Campion, I've got a job for you.'

If Mr Campion was surprised at this announcement he did not show it, but remained sitting up looking pleasantly interested.

‘It's a difficult job, a ticklish job, but from what I've heard of you you're the man for it. Ever been to South America?'

Mr Campion nodded. ‘Once.'

‘You have? Well, this is splendid!' A gleam of enthusiasm shone for a moment in the grey eyes. ‘That settles it. You
are
the man we want. It's difficult, dangerous, but the reward is enormous. The latest revolution in Peru has proved very unfortunate for our interests. What we want is someone with brains and resource, someone without ties, to engineer a counter-revolution. Wait a minute – wait a minute. Don't say anything yet.' He stretched out a large hand warningly. ‘It's not so impossible as it sounds. The machinery is all there. It simply needs the right man to take it over. Think of it, my dear boy. You could make yourself president, if you liked.'

The Hereditary Paladin of Averna was still hesitating when the other man went on:

‘We'll keep you there as long as you do your best to protect our interests. This firm is a world power; do you realize that? This is no ordinary chance, as you can see for yourself. You'll never forgive yourself if you miss it. You're the man I want. I don't know if you're interested in money, but there might be as much as twenty-five thousand pounds and all
expenses in it if you succeed. You can make what you like on the side, too. It's not an unattractive offer, is it?'

Campion stirred. His face had lost its inanity and had become thoughtful.

‘It's a great deal of money,' he said. ‘But frankly that doesn't interest me so much. The job sounds interesting. I should enjoy it.'

Savanake nodded. ‘You would. That's why I chose you rather than some brilliant young soldier. Frankly, it's a job for an adventurer.'

‘Just what I was thinking,' said Mr Campion, and his eyes behind his spectacles became almost wistful. ‘What a pity,' he added. ‘It really is a pity. I suppose you couldn't hold the offer open for a week or so?'

The big man glanced at him shrewdly. ‘No, I'm sorry, but that's absolutely impossible. The thing must be done now if it's done at all. It'll take you a month to get to the place. There's been some delay already. We've had difficulty in locating you. What's the matter? Thinking about this little business you're engaged on at the moment? Let me see, my enquiries tell me you were down in Suffolk somewhere. My dear boy, leave it. This is the chance of a lifetime.'

He ruffled the papers on his desk and finally discovered the memorandum he sought.

‘Here we are. It's a little government job, isn't it? Government business is notoriously thankless. You take my advice and put it straight out of your mind. Just walk out and leave it. With a bureaucracy of the type which governs this benighted country the chances are that no one will ever notice that you've resigned. And, anyhow, if they do, what does it mean? A long enquiry, a period of unpopularity perhaps which will be safely over by the time you return. By then another government will probably be in power and the whole thing might never have happened.'

Mr Campion remained dubious, and the personage, having pressed home his point, became more practical.

‘I have all the paraphernalia here,' he said. He unlocked a leather file and displayed its contents. ‘There's your reservation on the boat – one of our own liners, of course – here's a letter to the captain, here are your instructions upon arriving on South American soil, here's a letter which we will go into afterwards, and here's five hundred pounds in notes. You'll find it all arranged most thoroughly. I congratulate you, my boy, on seizing this chance of a lifetime.'

Mr Campion looked pleasantly vacant. ‘When you say the matter is immediate,' he said, ‘just how immediate do you mean?'

Brett Savanake glanced up from the papers in his hand and for an instant his cold, grey eyes held Campion's own.

‘When you leave this office,' he said, ‘one of my secretaries will take you down to the ground floor, where a car will be waiting. He will drive with you to Croydon, whence you will both fly to Southampton to catch the
Marquisita
. My secretary will accompany you on board and will conduct you to the captain's cabin. You will remain there until the boat is under way. For obvious reasons you will travel under a pseudonym, and I have prepared passports under the name “Christian Bennett”.'

He paused, and Mr Campion peered at him round the corner of his handkerchief, which still covered half his face.

‘Fine,' he said. ‘I hope you've remembered to pack my woollens?'

‘Your usual tailor has supplied a complete tropical outfit, which is waiting for you on board the
Marquisita
.'

‘Splendid! Now all I've got to think about is a bottle of Mothersill, and a bag of nuts for the natives, I suppose.'

‘That facetiousness,' said the personage. ‘I've heard about that. I find it very irritating myself.'

The young man looked sympathetic. ‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘Still, we are but what we are, and I'm going definitely out of earshot. May I congratulate you on your intelligence system? You've found out quite a lot about me.'

Savanake shrugged his shoulders. ‘It's all here,' he said. ‘Your real name. I see your brother is still unmarried. You'll come into the title some day, I suppose. Rather unpleasant, a thing like that hanging over you. I should imagine that the life of a country squire with a seat in the Peer's Gallery would not appeal to you.'

‘Oh, there are compensations,' ventured his visitor gently. ‘You get a lot of free theatre tickets and people send you samples. Not just a packet of razor blades, but big things: mangles, and patent mackintoshes, and thousands of British cigars.'

Savanake went on impassively. ‘I know your successes, your association with Scotland Yard. Let me see, you are unmarried, unattached.'

‘Fancy-free,' remarked Mr Campion mildly, ‘is the term I've always liked.'

‘You are thirty-two years old,' the voice went on inexorably. ‘You are reputed to be comfortably, but not lavishly provided for. You are reckless, astute, and quite extraordinarily courageous.'

‘I take number nines in shoes,' said the young man with the toothache with sudden irritation. ‘I always wash behind my ears, and in my mother's opinion I have a very beautiful tenor voice. Suppose I decide not to play revolutions with you?'