The Trojan Horse (16 page)

I tried to attract the attention of those countless office workers, who hurried past my tin coffin to their firesides in the suburbs. I struggled and screamed. But I made no audible sound. The wheels rumbled across the pavement and bumped a step. Then we were crossing stone again, but the sound was different, and I knew we were inside a building. Then we stopped, and I heard a thick voice cursing the lift. When my carriage was manoeuvred into it, we went down, not up – and down a long way, it seemed. Then more stone passages that had an echoing ring like vaults.

At last came the moment when my box was lifted off the trolley. The journey was over and I felt an indescribable longing to see something and to move. ‘Is he right way up?' I heard a voice ask. The answer was a grunt. ‘Wouldn't do to let him die of apoplexy, would it?' the voice said. There was a chuckle at that, and then footsteps sounded on a stone floor. They were going away from me. They were leaving me. I cried out and struggled. I felt I should stifle. Then I heard the soft thud of a heavy door closing, and suddenly I went limp.

The practice of the Spanish inquisitors – and others before and since them – of walling people up has always had for me a particular horror, and, like all horrors, a particular fascination. I had often thought about that death and how terrible it must be. I know now just how terrible it can be. And I also know that that terror has its limitations. When that door closed, I really believed I was as near to madness as a man ever can be without actually going mad.
The stillness, the sense of being deserted, the utter loneliness filled me with a childish terror. Suppose I were in an old river tideway? I was in the City and deep underground. Suppose I had been left here to drown as the tide slowly rose? I could hear small sounds that I knew instinctively to be rats. But the sound of the boots on the floor had been the sound of leather on dry stone.

It was not drowning I feared. And the more my imagination ranged, the more I began to wish that I had been placed in a tideway. At least it would be a quick death. As the alternative, I saw myself crouching in that tin box, immovable for days, whilst starvation and the intolerable ache of my limbs drove me mad. I did not fear death then. Death, I knew, would be the release. But I did fear madness. And for hours, it seemed, I struggled to get a grip of myself. At last I succeeded in resigning myself to my fate. I allowed my imagination to picture the worst, to picture my skin sagging on my bones as I hung suspended in the box and to picture the horrible twisted skeleton I should eventually be. And then, when I had allowed myself to come face to face with the ultimate end, with thirst and pain, I felt calm and resigned. My restricted circulation caused me great pain. But, now that I had faced the worst and conquered my fear, I knew I could stand it.

For a time I think I lost consciousness. Whether the pain was too great or whether I slept, I do not know. But, when my brain became active again, I knew that some considerable time had passed. By then
my nerves had become dulled to the pain and my brain no longer seemed linked to my body. It was active and quite above the physical. It ranged of its own accord around the problem that had got me into this fix. And in a moment, it had seized upon a few small points and leapt to the wildest conclusion.

And the strange thing was that I knew it was the right conclusion. I felt no elation. My mind was too dulled for that. But I was glad that I had at least pieced the bits together and achieved a pattern. It made Sedel and his gang of secret agents seem less terrifying. Even my own terrible predicament seemed suddenly of little importance.

For the past two days my mind had been fed with scraps and had tried to piece those scraps into a whole. There had been Schmidt and the message I had decoded. There had been the man with the scar on his knuckles who had followed me from David Shiel's studio to my club. There had been Freya and the Cones of Runnel and the boat that had been requisitioned. And then there had been the three Calboyd shareholders – Ronald Dorman, with his sumptuous façade of affluence, John S. Burston, who had been driven over the cliffs below the Belle Toute, and Alfred Cappock. And behind these had been Max Sedel, sleek, well-groomed and efficient, a first-class agent and entirely ruthless.

But none of these mattered. They were the puppets. They were pawns in a game played by a master hand. Behind them loomed the heavy sleepy-eyed figure of Baron Ferdinand Marburg. It was incredible.
He was head of the big merchant banking house of Marburg. He was a pillar of the country's financial system. More, he was reputed to be a member of the shadow cabinet. He was a man of tremendous influence and great power – a man, in fact, above suspicion. But, now I had named him, I did not for a moment doubt that I was right.

Sedel had supplied the link in my mind. It was Baron Marburg who had introduced him to journalism. Once having remembered that, everything else fell neatly into place. His membership of the Junior First National. The golden Marburg eagles on the lapels of the man who had hit me in Cappock's suite. And the scraps of conversation I had heard on the pavement outside my prison. Marburgs stood on the corner between Old Broad Street and Threadneedle Street. Two clerks coming out of the bank would part company on the doorstep if one were going to the Bank tube station and the other to Liverpool Street. Moreover, it was just across the road from the Stock Exchange. Then again, the depth we had descended in the lift. No building but a bank would have vaults so deep. Besides, there was the method Sedel had chosen of removing me from the Wendover. A deed-box, even of such large dimensions, would excite no curiosity, being trundled from the bank's own strong room van to the vaults by men in the bank's own livery.

But I couldn't for the moment see what the man had to gain by it. Perhaps it was one of the departmental heads and not Marburg who was implicated? But I discarded that theory at once, for no one but
Marburg had made over a million pounds available to both Burston and Cappock. Perhaps it was money? But I argued that a man who had a world-wide reputation as a financial genius would have no need to play such a dangerous game to make money. There remained only power as the motive. And to this, the answer seemed clear. He had enough power in this country.

But then I remembered something that Peter Venables of the Foreign Office had told me more than a year ago. Marburg's position as a power in the shadow cabinet had been checked badly when the Government at last swung round to a policy of rearmament. He had strongly opposed it. He had always been a great advocate of close Anglo-German relations and had favoured a secret alliance against the Soviets. He had demanded censorship of the press to prevent the growing virulence of the attacks on Germany. He had not openly favoured Hitler. But he had argued strongly that it was to England's advantage to see Germany all-powerful in Eastern Europe. He had emphasised that a strong Germany was our best safeguard against Bolshevism. But apparently other influences had been at work, especially heavy industry, and his position had been seriously impaired.

Supposing that he had then realised that power – supreme power – was not to be obtained by any one man under a democratic system? He was a dynamic personality, I had been told. I had never talked to him myself. But I had seen him, and I could still remember that powerful, rather stocky figure, with the heavy
face and sleepy, heavy-lidded eyes. I had heard him speak at a Guildhall banquet once. His deep baying voice had had fire and eloquence. Above all, he believed in himself – believed in his destiny, perhaps.

Suppose that, having realised the futility of our own democratic system as a ladder to power – even by the back stairs of the shadow cabinet – he had received an offer of supreme power from Germany. Suppose Baron Ferdinand Marburg was Britain's Führer-designate. That would explain everything. I remembered how much to the fore he had been over that Czech gold business, and then earlier there had been much talk of big reconstruction loans by the banking house of Marburg. Unlike some other big international merchant banking houses, the Berlin and Paris houses of Marburg were directly controlled from London. I remembered Schmidt's phrases about a cancer at the heart of England, and what I had then thought to be melodramatic now seemed to be an understatement. I saw that heavy face with the square, powerful jaw and the high forehead, and those sleepy eyes hooded like a hawk. And I knew that that face spelt doom to Britain – that the influence of that one man, if unchecked, was more serious than the loss of several major battles at the front.

And then suddenly the pain in my head returned, and my brain, which had been working with remarkable clarity for a short time, became dulled again. I don't know whether I slept or fell unconscious. At any rate, I knew nothing until I dreamed that my tin box and I were being pitched into the Thames and
woke in a cold sweat to find the box being tilted backwards and the scratch of keys against the locks. The next instant my eyes were blinded by a glare of light as the lid swung back.

My bonds were undone and I was released from the clamps that held me secure in the box. I was laid on the cold stone floor and my limbs were so stiff that I could not move them. Then began the agony of returning circulation. I think I cried out with the pain. And when I was not half-screaming with agony I was unconscious.

But the pain gradually lessened and, although the light still hurt my eyes, I was able to take stock of my surroundings. I was sprawled on the floor of what looked like a cellar, it had a vaulted stone roof, black with cobwebs and dirt, and from it, suspended by its flex, hung a naked electric bulb. The walls, too, were of stone – great square blocks that reminded me of London Wall. And at intervals round the walls hung rusty chains. I could almost imagine that I was in one of the dungeons of the Tower. The place was empty save for the tin box, which stood upright against one wall like an instrument of torture on show. The lid had been pulled back like the door of a small safe, and inside I could see the clamps and straps which had held me in position. It was only then that the relief of being out of it flooded through me. And with that relief came an overwhelming and ghastly fear of being imprisoned in it again. The box seemed to fascinate me, for it was not until a voice said, ‘I trust you were not too uncomfortable,' that I turned my gaze
upon the two men who had released me and who were now standing by the half-open door.

One was Sedel and the other was the man with the scar on the back of his hand. It was Sedel who had spoken, and there was something feline about the way he watched me. His lips were swollen and black against the white of his face. Two of his front teeth were missing. But I felt no satisfaction at the damage I had done him. He had me at his mercy and I knew he would repay me a hundredfold for that blow.

He seemed to read my thoughts, for his cracked lips spread into a smile. ‘That blow of yours was unfortunate, Mr Kilmartin,' he said. ‘I think you will find that I repay – with a high rate of interest.' He came forward, and in his hand he held a sheet of paper. ‘Will you kindly sign this statement?'

He placed it in my hand. As in a dream I read it through. It was to Crisham, accusing a well-known steel magnate of over-quoting for gun-turrets. It gave details of conversations with works foremen and of estimates obtained from other firms. With weak, shaking fingers I tore the document up, and looked defiantly at Sedel.

But he only smiled. ‘Yes, I had been expecting that. I have had a number of other copies typed.' And he pulled another from his pocket. ‘Now,' he said, ‘are you going to sign?'

‘Of course not,' I said. But deep within me a horrible fear was growing.

He turned to the other fellow. ‘Hans,' he said, ‘come and help me get this fool back into his box.'

I tried to struggle, but I was as weak as a kitten. In a few minutes I was once again clamped into position inside the box. The door closed and suddenly I was in darkness again. I heard the keys scraping in the locks. I struggled, but I was held as firmly as in any nightmare. And then suddenly I lost control of myself. Panic seized me. I heard myself sobbing. They had not gagged me this time. And then I was screaming, screaming with uncontrollable fear.

And through my senseless cries I heard Sedel say, ‘Well, are you going to sign or shall we leave you for the night?'

For the night! At that I stopped screaming. It would be hours and hours. They might never come. They might lose the key or forget about me. ‘Don't leave me,' I sobbed.

‘Will you sign?'

‘Yes, I'll sign,' I cried. ‘I'll do anything, only let me out of this.'

I heard the scrape of the keys again and, as the lid was pulled open, my panic subsided, leaving me weak and disgusted with myself. I signed the document, using the top of the box as a writing-table. I knew it was useless to resist. I could not face that box again. When I had finished, Sedel took the paper and laughed. His hand stretched out and gripped my hair, tilting my head backwards so that I was staring up into his face. ‘So, you weren't going to sign, eh?' he said, and his eyes gleamed. Then he flung me away from him so that I fell sprawling across the floor. ‘Tonight you are free,' he said. ‘Free to lie here and
think about tomorrow. For tomorrow you will go back to your kennel again.'

I saw that he meant it. But I had control of myself again now. I rose painfully to my feet. Then I played my last card, hoping against hope that it would prove an ace. He had his back to me and was moving towards the door. ‘Perhaps you would take me to Baron Marburg,' I said.

I had the satisfaction of seeing him swing round on me. His eyes searched mine. ‘So,' he said, ‘you know all our little secrets.' There was a sneer in the way he said this. ‘You are cleverer than I thought, Mr Kilmartin. May I ask why you wish to see the Baron?'

‘I have a proposition to make to him.'

At that he laughed in my face. ‘A proposition – you! To save yourself from Cappock's deed-box, you will tell the Baron where we can find Schmidt's daughter, perhaps?' He crossed the room to where I stood, rather unsteadily supporting myself against the wall, and he was laughing softly to himself. ‘Or perhaps you know where Schmidt himself is?'