The Misadventure of Shelrock Holmes (49 page)

ee would drop in parachutes from overhead, as he,

Boling had done. At dusk this would be done. In the night, Eastbourne would be firmly held, with a picked invasion corps Ian

ossnge road toward the house, Boling considered the matter as good as accomplished. He needed only a word from the house-dwellers to set him on his way.

He found the opening in the chin-high hedge of brambles and flowering bushes, and in the strengthening light he trod warily up the flagged path. The house, now visible, was only a one-story cottage of white plaster, with a roof of dark tiling. Gaining the doorstep, Bolmg swung the tarnished knocker against the stout oak panel.

Silence. Then heavy steps and a mumbling voice. The door creaked

open. A woman in shawl and cap, plump and very old — past ninety, it seemed to Boling —put out a face like a cheerful walnut.

"Good morning," she said. "Yes, who is that?" Her ancient eyes blinked behind small, thick lenses like bottle bottoms. "Soldier, ain't you?"

"Right you are," he responded in his most English manner, smiling to charm her. This crone had a London accent, and looked simple and good-humored. "I'm tramping down to Eastbourne to visit my uncle," he went on plausibly, "and lost my way on the downs in the dark. Can you direct me on?"

Before the old woman could reply, a dry voice had spoken from behind her: "Ask the young man to step inside, Mrs. Hudson."

The old woman drew the door more widely open. Boling entered one of those living rooms that have survived their era. In the light of a hanging oil lamp he could see walls papered in blue with yellow flowers, above gray-painted wainscoting. On a center table lay some old books, guarded by a pudgy china dog. At the rear, next a dark inner doorway, blazed a small but cheerful fire, and from a chair beside it rose the man who had spoken.

"If you have walked all night, you will be tired," he said to Boling. '"Stop and rest. We're about to have some tea. Won't you join us?"

"Thank you, sir," accepted Boling heartily. This was another Londoner, very tall and as gaunt as a musket. He could not be many years younger dian the woman called Mrs. Hudson, but he still had vigor and presence.

He stood quite straight in his shabbiest of blue dressing gowns. The lamplight revealed a long hooked nose and a long lean chin, with bright eyes of blue under a thatch of thistledown hair. Boling thought of Dr. Punch grown old, dignified and courteous. The right hand seemed loosely clenched inside a pocket of the dressing gown. The left, lean and fine, held a blackened old briar with a curved stem.

"I see," said this old gentleman, his eyes studying Boling's insignia, "diat you're a Fusilier — Northumberland."

"Yes, sir, Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers," rejoined Boling, who had naturally chosen for his disguise die badges of a regiment lying far from Sussex. "As I told your good housekeeper, I'm going to Eastbourne. If you can direct me, or let me use your telephone — "

"I am sorry, we have no telephone," the other informed him

Mrs HudL gulped and goggled at that, but the old blue eyes

barely flickered a message at her. Again the gaunt old man spok*.

"There is a telephone, however, in the house just behind us-the

a policeman, especially an odious

country'one, and so he avoided comment on the last^suggesnon. In-stead he thanked his host for the invitation to refreshment, woman brought in a tray with dishes and a steaming kettle, and a moment later they were joined by another ancient man.

This one was plump and tweedy, with a dropping gray mustache and wide eyes full of childish innocence. Boling set him down as a doctor, and felt a glow of pride in his own acumen when the newcome was so introduced. So pleased was Boling with himself, indeed, that he did not bother to catch the doctor's surname.

"Th 1S young man is of your old regiment, I think the lean man informed the fat one. "Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers.

"Oh, really? Quite so, quite so," chirruped the doctor in a katy^d fashion that impelled Boling to classify him as a simpleton. Qu

w s with the o'ld Fifth-but that would be well before your time young man. I served in the Afghan War." This last with a proud protruding of the big eyes. For a moment Boling dreaded a torrent rrmu^cence; but mePunch-faced man had just finished relighting his curved briar, and now called attention to the tea which Mrs,

H Tt™ Dipped gratefully. Boling permitted him.lf a moment of ironic meditation on how snug it was so shortly 1 for bombs and bayonets would engulf this and all other houses in the neighborhood of Eastbourne.

Mrs Hudson waddled to his elbow with toasted muffins. Poor lad, she said maternally, "you've torn them lovely trousers

From the other side of the fire bright blue eyes gazed through the smoke of strong shag. "Oh, yes," said the dry voice, you walkedI ova the downs at night, I think I heard you say when you came. And yo

f 11 p )5

^"Yes, sir," replied Boling, and thrust his skinned knee into view through the rip. "No great injury, however, except to my uniform. The King will give me a new one, what?"

"I daresay," agreed the doctor, lifting his mustache from his teacup. "Nothing too good for the old regiment."

That led to discussion of the glorious past of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, and the probable triumphant future. Boling made the most guarded of statements, lest the pudgy old veteran find something of which to be suspicious; but, to bolster his pose, he fished forth a wad of painstakingly forged papers — pay-book, billet assignment, pass through lines, and so on. The gaunt man in blue studied them with polite interest.

"And now," said the doctor, "how is my old friend Major Amidon ?"

"Major Amidon?" repeated Boling to gain time, and glanced as sharply as he dared at his interrogator. Such a question might well be a trap, simple and dangerous, the more so because his research concerning the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers had not supplied him with any such name among the officers.

But then he took stock once more of the plump, mild, guileless face. Boling, cunning and criminal, knew a man incapable of lying or deception when he saw one. The doctor was setting no trap whatever; in fact, his next words provided a valuable cue to take up.

"Yes, of course — he must be acting chief of brigade by now. Tall, red-faced, monocle — "

"Oh, Major Amidon!" cried Boling, as if remembering. "I know him only by sight, naturally. As you say, he's acting chief of battalion; probably he'll get a promotion soon. He's quite well, and very much liked by the men."

The thin old man passed back Boling's papers and inquired courteously after the uncle in Eastbourne. Boling readily named Philip Davis, who would have been at pains to make for himself a good reputation. It developed that both of Boling's entertainers knew Mr. Davis slightly — proprietor of the Royal Oak, a fine old public house. Public houses, amplified the doctor, weren't what they had been in the eighties, but the Royal Oak was a happy survival from that golden age. And so on.

With relish Boling drained his last drop of tea, ate his last crumb of muffin. His eyes roamed about the room, which he already regarded as an ideal headquarters. Even his momentary nervousness about the constable in the house behind had left him. He reflected that the very closeness of an official would eliminate any prying or searching by the

enemy He'd get on to Eastbourne, have Davis set the machinery going, and then pop back here to wait in comfort for the ripe moment when, the chief dangers of conquest gone by, he could step forth. . . .

He rose with actual regret that he must get about his business "I thank you all so much," he said. "And now it's quite really must be on my way."

"Private Boling," said the old man with the blue gown, you go, I have a confession to make."

"Confession?" spluttered the doctor, and Mrs. Hudson stare.

amazement. . _

"Exactly " Two fine, gaunt old hands rose and placed their nngei tips together. "When you came here I couldn't be sure about you, things being as they are these days."

"Quite so, quite so," interjected the Doctor. "Alien enemies and all that. You understand, young man."

"Of course," Boling smiled winningly.

"And so," continued his host, "I was guilty of a lie. But now that I've had a look at you, I am sure of what you are. And let me say that I do have a telephone, after all. You are quite free to use it. 1

the door there."

Boling felt his heart warm with self-satisfaction. He had always considered himself a prince of deceivers; this admission on the part of the scrawny dotard was altogether pleasant. Thankfully he entered a dark little hallway from the wall of which sprouted the telephone. He lifted the receiver and called the number he had memorized.

"Hello," he greeted the man who made guarded answer. "Is that Mr Philip Davis? . . . Your nephew, Amos Boling, here. I'm coming to town at once. I'll meet you and the others wherever you say ... What's the name of your pub again? . . . The Royal Oak? Very good, we'll meet there at nine o'clock."

' "That will do," said the dry voice of his host behind his very shoulder. "Hang up, Mr. Boling. At once."

Bolincr spun around, his heart somersaulting with sudden terror. The gaunt figure stepped back very smoothly and rapidly for so aged a man. The right hand dropped again into the pocket of old blue dressing gown. It brought out a small, broad-muzzled pistol, which the man held leveled at Boling's belly. "I asked you to telephone, Mr. Boling, in hopes that you woulc

somehow reveal your fellow agents. We know that they'll be at the Royal Oak at nine. A party of police will appear to take them in charge. As for you — Mrs. Hudson, please step across the back yard and ask Constable Timmons to come at once."

Boling glared. His right hand moved, as stealthily as a snake, toward his hip.

"None of that," barked the doctor from the other side of the sitting room. He, too, was on his feet, jerking open a drawer in the center table. From it he took a big service revolver, of antiquated make but uncommonly well kept. The plump old hand hefted the weapon knowingly. "Lift your arms, sir, and at once."

Fuming, Boling obeyed. The blue dressing gown glided toward him, die left hand snatched away the flat automatic in his hip pocket.

"I observed that bulge in your otherwise neat uniform," commented the lean old man, "and pondered that pocket pistols are not regulation for infantry privates. It was one of several inconsistencies that branded you as an enemy agent. Will you take the armchair, Mr. Boling? I will explain."

There was nothing to do, under the muzzles of diose guns, but to sit and listen.

"The apparition of a British soldier trying hard to disguise an American accent intrigued me, but did not condemn you at first. However, the knee of your trousers —I always look first at the trouser knee of a stranger — was so violently torn as to suggest a heavy fall somewhere. The rest of your kit was disarranged as well. But your boots —I always look at boots second —were innocent of scuff or even much wear. I knew at once that your story of a long night's tramp, with trippings and tumblings, was a lie."

Boling summoned all his assurance. "See here," he cried harshly, "I don't mind a little joke or whatever, but this has gone far enough, I'm a soldier and as such a defender of the realm. If you offer me violence — "

"There will be no violence unless you bring it on yourself. Suffer me to continue: You caused me even more suspicion when, calling yourself a private of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, you yet patently failed to recognize die name of my old friend here. He, too, was of the Fifth, and in civilian life has won such fame as few Fusiliers can boast. The whole world reads his writings — "

"Please, please," murmured the doctor gently. "I do not seek to embarrass you, my dear fellow," assured the lean host, "only to taunt this sorry deceiver with Ins own dumsine* After that, Mr. Boling, your anxiety to show your credentials to i who had not asked for them and had no authority to examine tl your talk about the service, plainly committed to memory from a book; and, finally, your glib talk about one Major Armdon who does not exist — these were sufficient proof.

"Does not exist?" almost barked the doctor. "What do you mean? Of course Major Armdon exists. He and I served together.

Then he broke off abruptly, and his eyes bulged foolishly. 1 coughed and snickered in embarrassed apology. " "Dear me, now I know that I'm doddering," he said more gently. "You're right, my dear fellow-Major Amidon exists no longer. He retired in 1910, and you yourself pointed out his death notice me five years ago. Odd how old memories cling on and deceive -good psychological point there somewhere ...

His voice trailed off, and his comrade triumphantly resumed the

indictment of Boling: ,

"My mind returned to the problem of your disordered well-kept shoes. By deductive reasoning I considered and one possibility after another. It was increasingly plain that you had fallen from a height, but had not walked far to get here. Had you traveled in a motor? But this is the only road hereabouts, and at one, running to a dead end two miles up the downs. We have been awake for hours, and would have heard a machine. A horse then? Possible, even in these mechanized times, but your trousers bear no trace of sitting astride a saddle. Bicycle? But you would have worn a clip on the ankle next the sprocket, and that clip would have creased your trouser cuff. What does this leave? "What?" asked the fat doctor, as eagerly as a child hearing a story. "What indeed, but an airplane and a parachute? And what does a parachute signify in these days but G *™«™™™-^ has come to our humble door in the presence of Mr Boling? white head bowed, like an actor's taking a curtain call, then turned toward the front door. "Ah, here returns Mrs. Hudson, with Constable Timmons. Constable, we have a German spy for you I charge."

Boling came to his feet, almost ready to brave the two pistols that covered him. "You're a devil!" he raged at his discoverer.

The blue eyes twinkled. "Not at all. I am an old man who has retained the use of his brains, even after long and restful idleness."