The Dark Frontier (14 page)

“Only a little larger, Mr. Casey.”

Casey sighed.

“Well, Professor, I guess you know a lot that I don’t. I’ll certainly be interested to hear it.”

Carruthers hesitated for a moment. Then he made up his mind.

“What I’m going to tell you,” he said, “may strike you as absurd and fantastic. I admit that it may sound so. But I believe it to be the truth. For that reason I am going to ask you to forget the fact that you are a newspaper man. This is a truth which must not be published until it is history. I have heard it said that a newspaper man is a reporter first and a man afterwards. I am asking you to reverse that situation.”

Casey was looking at him curiously.

“OK, Professor,” he said briefly.

“In the first place, Mr. Casey, I think I ought to tell you that I am not Professor Barstow.”

Casey received this information calmly. He produced a cablegram from his pocket.

“Before you go on, Professor, I guess I ought to show you this cable.” He handed it over.

Carruthers read it. It was twelve days old.

The cablegram was signed “
NASH.”

“I suppose,” said Casey, “you wouldn’t care to let me see your passport, Professor?”

With a grim smile Carruthers passed it to him across the table. Casey glanced at it and passed it back.

“Looks all in order to me, Professor. I suppose you won’t tell me about those mysterious circumstances?”

Carruthers was silent for a moment. His thoughts were groping their way back through a dark fog. For a moment he forgot Casey. He had come to a wall in the fog. He could not see it nor yet touch it, but he knew it was there. He turned away and his mind became clear again.

“I’m afraid I don’t know, Mr. Casey. I have never had the pleasure of meeting Professor Barstow, nor do I know anything of him. This passport was given to me by certain responsible persons. What I really am does not matter. My name is Carruthers.”

Casey met his eyes for a few seconds; then he nodded.

“OK,” he said, “we’ll skip that bit for the moment.”

Carruthers filled his pipe again and lighted it.

“It was quite by accident that I met this man Groom,” he began. “He mistook me for this Professor Barstow. There must be some facial resemblance between the two of us. At all events I did not disillusion him.”

He drew at his pipe, blew out a cloud of smoke and went on.

“It was at an hotel at Launceston in Cornwall …”

W
hen first I heard the story of the man who called himself Carruthers, I did not believe it.

That is understandable. Even now, as I sit writing in the pitiless glare of a Parisian wallpaper, it is difficult to realise that what has happened has not been a dream—by dyspepsia out of repressed reflexes. But my eyes wander back to a scar on my wrist and I remember vividly how painful that bullet graze was as I toiled down the hillside in the Kuder Valley. “Only a flesh wound,” say the novelists. Let them try it for themselves. But I grow diffuse. The reference to the dream-like confusion of my thoughts is no mere conceit. It is apologetic; for I find it difficult to begin at the beginning, to sift impressions from facts and to present a logical account of those breathless days I spent with Carruthers.

For Carruthers I shall call him. Whoever he was before he came to Zovgorod, whoever he is now, has no bearing upon my picture of him. It is as Carruthers that I think of him.

His was a strange patchwork of a personality. You received the impression that you were seeing him through binoculars that moved in and out of focus of their own volition. In the everyday affairs of life he was a nonentity, a blur. I can, indeed, remember little of his life in relation to them. It was only in moments of crisis that he became an individual. At such moments he was immense. He had a sort of full-blooded theatricality about him that never failed to win my complete confidence. It would not have occurred to me to question his ability to deal with the most desperate situation. Yet, once the mood was past, I invariably found myself amazed by the way in which sheer luck had converted what, in cold blood, seemed asinine decisions into strokes of genius. I see now that in thinking this I was mistaken. The play of action upon circumstances must be determined by some universal law. Carruthers must have been gifted with subconscious understanding of it. The character he had so curiously borrowed was but a highly stylised mask; a motley that was significant only against its special background.

By the time Carruthers had finished his story that night in Zovgorod, the waiters were switching out the lights. Somewhere it was striking one o’clock. I had all but finished my cigarettes and the table was littered with ash and Carlsberg glasses.

“And that,” he said, leaning back, “is all.”

I lit my remaining cigarette without replying. A host of questions rose to my lips. I examined them one by one. To most of them I found the answers readily enough. This man whom Carruthers knew as Groom was not unknown to me by reputation. He was an arms agent with many
noms de guerre
. The official list of directors of Cator & Bliss contained twenty names. Any of them might be the man in question. If he were Grindley-Jones in China, Harcourt in South America, and Coltington in the Near East, he might well be Groom in Europe, and would no doubt reserve yet another identity
for the boardroom and general meetings. As for his encounter with Carruthers, it was, after all, perfectly understandable. A business man feeling rather pleased with himself over a deal he’s putting through meets a man who’s an expert on the subject of the deal in question. What a stroke of luck for him! What could be more feasible than that he should secure the services of the expert to protect himself against trickery. Rovzidski’s death was an inevitable corollary of the whole affair. It was a typical Red Gauntlet job. I had examined these and other questions to my satisfaction, but I was still in the dark on one point. I put it to him.

“Those telephone exchanges,” I said, “you told me you could explain that.”

“I imagine,” he replied, “that the Kassen bomb is electrically detonated. The telephone exchanges served as a practice means of centralising the firing of it. That accounts, too, for the retirement tactics. You trick the enemy into advancing and then blow him sky-high. Your offensive consists of mining the enemy. I expect that they had some means, too, of projecting the explosive charges. That field gun order to Skoda probably supplies the clue there; but the charges are so small and easily laid that the mining method is probably regarded as the simplest. It would be quite easy to launch a rather feeble attack, leave your charges and retire before the counter-attack.”

“Wouldn’t the enemy get used to that pitch?”

“Yes, they would. When they did, you would launch a real attack and hold your position. They would hesitate to counter-attack and face the magdanite, while if they did decide you were bluffing and attacked, you would retire again leaving your charges as before. Think, too, of the amount of magdanite one aeroplane could carry. It would be an almost infallible method of prosecuting a war. The enemy’s losses would be enormous; those of the magdanite users would be small because they would never attack in strength.”

I had to admit the probable truth of this.

He was thoughtful for a moment and then asked me once more and very gravely for my assurance that I would not send the story to my editor.

“You needn’t worry,” I told him, “they’d think I was crazy if I did.”

He seemed satisfied and asked me if I believed him.

I answered, frankly, that I didn’t know what to think.

He assured me that time would show that he had spoken the truth.

“Mr. Casey,” he went on, “I have been thinking over what you have told me. May I suggest that we join forces.”

I hesitated. I must admit that I had been impressed by his arguments for the necessity of the task to which he had set himself. But I always make a point of mistrusting my emotions and said so. He smiled.

“I do not ask for your emotional support. I fancy that an alliance would be mutually advantageous. You will get your story; I will carry out my purpose.”

We shook hands on it. As we did so, the proprietor informed us that the restaurant was closed and asked us to leave. We apologised and Carruthers tipped the man extravagantly. “An offering to the Gods,” he explained when I told him that an Ixanian never says “thank you” unless he thinks you a fool.

We left the restaurant and Carruthers proposed a walk back to the Hotel Bucharesti where I was staying. He was silent on the way. I asked him if he had a plan of action in mind, but he was evasive. We would, he said, make our plans in the morning and we arranged that he should call at my hotel. He refused to come in for a drink and we said good-night at the entrance. I watched his spare, lank figure walk away along the sidewalk until the darkness hid him. Then, from a doorway, another figure appeared and walked slowly after him. His escort had found him again. It was not until I turned to go inside that I realised that my head was aching abominably.

• • •

I was still asleep when Carruthers arrived. He was sitting in my armchair waiting when I opened my eyes.

“How’s the head?” he inquired a little abstractedly.

“Fine.” It wasn’t, but I thought it might save a lot of talk to say so.

“Good.” His eyes gleamed. He lit his pipe and leant forward. “Groom says he’ll have the Kassen secret by tomorrow.”

I sat up in bed and lit a cigarette.

“But I thought you heard the Countess say he was on the wrong track.”

“I think she was mistaken. Groom has more up his sleeve than this man Prantza. Don’t forget that affair might well be a blind to put the Countess’s agents off the scent. He’s very confident and talks about our leaving the day after tomorrow.”

“What are you going to do, wait until he’s got it and then steal it from him?”

“No. If we do that we are adding to our difficulties. Remember, there are very probably only two copies of the process left. One is with Kassen and the other with the Countess. If Groom gets one of them, a third copy will be made and they’ll be more than ever on their guard. Besides, we might fail to get Groom’s copy and he is almost certain to make a duplicate himself. The more copies of that conditioning process there are, the more trouble we’re going to have disposing of them.”

“What’s your idea, then?”

“I believe that Groom intends to steal one of those two copies. I should think that it will be the Countess’s; Kassen’s place is too well guarded. Where does she live?”

“She’s got a big house not far from the Palace. It stands in its own grounds.”

He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “She may keep her copy there. I don’t think she’d risk leaving it in the care of anyone but herself. Do you know if the place is guarded?”

“I didn’t see any guards.”

“That probably means that it’s very well guarded.”

“Then I don’t see …”

“You’re quite right, this speculation is useless. We’ve got to know how Groom proposes to get his information and stop him.”

“How?”

“This afternoon at four o’clock he’s having a conference with his agents.”

“How do you know?”

“I overheard him telling the waiter to take drinks and cigars to his room at four. He’s had these conferences before. I recognise the symptoms.”

“You mean his bunch of tough guys?”

“As you say, the tough guys.”

“Well, Mr. Carruthers,” I said, “I don’t see how, short of hiding in the closet, you’re going to get much out of the conference.”

“That’s where you can help me, Mr. Casey. Will you come round to the Europa at three o’clock sharp and ask to be shown up to my room?”

“Sure, but …”

“On your way there, Mr. Casey, I would like you to execute a small commission for me. I would do it myself only I should first have to go to a lot of trouble to get rid of the gentleman shadowing me.”

I nodded resignedly.

“I want you to go into two telephone booths and remove the receiver from each. Just cut the wire at the point where it enters the box arrangement so that there’s a length attached to both receivers when you’ve got them.”

“Supposing I’m caught?”

He seemed to recognise the possibility.

“Yes,” he admitted, “it will call for circumspection on your part. But it is essential that we have them.”

“I suppose you’re going to hook up a detectaphone?”

“Yes.”

“How are you going to do it with two telephone receivers? You need a microphone.”

He smiled cryptically.

“I will show you when you arrive,” he said. “Meanwhile, I have work to do—at three o’clock then, Mr. Casey.”

He walked to the door. Suddenly he stopped and listened intently. Then, with a quick movement, he flung open the door. Outside, a waiter was bent double by the keyhole. He straightened himself with a start.

“Your breakfast, Monsieur,” he said in French.

“What were you doing outside that door?” I asked.

“Bringing your breakfast, Monsieur.” His face was blank.

“I didn’t ring.”

“Pardon, Monsieur, they told me you had.” He made a movement to go. Carruthers stopped him and put his hand on the coffee-pot.

“Lukewarm,” he said in English. “Must have been outside for about ten minutes. Does he speak English?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I don’t suppose our friend the Countess would employ anyone who didn’t for this job. Most waiters know a little. We’ll have to stop his mouth. Attract his attention.”

I started to complain angrily that the coffee was cold. The man leant forward apologetically to pick it up. Carruthers glided behind him. The unsuspecting waiter made no defensive movement. I waited for the blow. Carruthers made no move but straightened himself and nodded with satisfaction as the man went out.