Theirs Was The Kingdom (43 page)

“Indeed I do,” he said, smiling. “We have had our eye on you ever since you arrived, Mademoiselle Avery. We were puzzled at first. It is not usual for a woman to represent commercial interests in Brussels. Particularly a firm of British hauliers, however reputable that firm might be!”

She could not have said why but his words and manner worried her. Behind his polite badinage there was a sneer and his eyes played over her in a way that robbed her of initiative. Then, before she had a chance to ponder this, he was speaking again, softly, politely, and in faultless English.

“You have had your eye on
us
, of course. Three pairs of eyes. You spoke of writing down, mademoiselle. I take that to mean keeping records of your diligent enquiries in a specific trade. A profession, some would call it, but there is no point in mincing matters. Let me be equally frank. I should be obliged if you would hand me any records you have in your possession. It would save us both a great deal of time and inconvenience,” and he held out his gloved hand.

She glanced instinctively at the door and he followed the glance. “You said yourself no one else is lodged on this floor, Miss Avery. The concierge is below, of course, but he is drunk by now. One of my men will have seen to that, as well as a small commission for minding his own business. Now, mademoiselle, you’re not a fool, although I admit to finding you very gullible. A common fault with missionaries, I believe. You have records here, of your visits, your contacts, your interviews with certain young ladies, all but one of whom still lie within our legal jurisdiction. It would be wise, I think, to surrender them at once.”

His insolent directness and his obvious estimate of her fallibility braced her. To gain a moment or two she attempted a bluff.

“You have a search warrant, M’sieur Sicard?”

“No, mademoiselle, no warrant. Why should I bring a warrant? I was invited here. Whatever I found in the way of disorder, or evidence that the place had been searched and its tenant maltreated, would go into my report as having happened at nine o’clock, an hour before I arrived. Who could challenge that? The concierge, who has difficulty in reading his watch when he is sober?”

She said, bitterly, “You’ll find no records here. Mr. Gordon keeps them. There is one thing that might be worth reflection on your part, however. I’m not a missionary, in the sense you use the word. I represent W. T. Stead, one of the most influential journalists in Britain, and if I was molested in any way your superiors would be likely to ask you some very awkward questions within an hour of copies of the
Pall Mall Gazette
reaching Ostend.”

He was not paying the slightest attention to her. His eyes darted about the room, a brace of rapiers in the hands of an expert duellist, and she knew he was considering possible hiding places for the papers he sought. Then he walked to the door and whistled, and in a matter of seconds two other men trotted into the room, approaching him like a couple of well-trained mastiffs.

“Search the place,” he said, in French. “Take the bedroom, Tallien.”

The man addressed as Tallien, the smaller of the two, sidled off into the bedroom and she could hear him turning things over, pulling out drawers and hauling the bed clear of the wall. The other man—a moonfaced, lumpish fellow, with heavy shoulders and blue-rimmed fingernails—poked diligently in the desk, throwing down papers, including her half-finished letter, and probing the back of the compartments as though expecting to find a hidden drawer or a sliding panel. Sicard, still ignoring her, ran his hand down the crevices of the sofa and armchair, then stooped to tug the corner of the carpet free of its floor tacks. Presently the man called Tallien reappeared, carrying both her travelling bags which he handed, wordlessly, to his superior. Sicard emptied the contents on to the table, examined each garment separately and then upended her workbox, scattering pins, needles, and reels of cotton on the floor.

“What time do you expect your colleague back, Miss Avery?”

“You think we share the apartment, monsieur?”

He made a gesture of impatience, the first since he had entered the room. “His lodgings are on the floor above. Do you suppose we fail to keep dossiers on people who come to Brussels to stir up trouble? We know he has been to Malines today. A train gets in from there shortly before eleven. The cab ride here will occupy him ten minutes.”

“If your information is so complete, what point can there be in cross-examining me?”

“There is a point, Miss Avery.”

He picked up hat and cane and drifted back towards the table. “I am sure the young priest’s pockets will yield additional data, but the main record is here. In this room, mademoiselle. I could find it, of course, if I had the patience. But I am not a patient man, Miss Avery.”

He moved across to the fireplace. The two other men went on searching unhurriedly but with thoroughness. He said, at length, “See here, Miss Avery, we are not only wasting time, we are embarrassing one another. I am a trained police official and I do not intend leaving here without those papers. Points I would wish to make are these. My name is not Sicard, and I am not here in an official capacity. You and your people have made enemies in Brussels, and across the frontier in Lille also. If I go away empty-handed you can be sure they will pay you a visit and as I am not renowned for my patience, they are not distinguished for their scruples. They could be—almost certainly would be—crude in their methods. A good deal more crude than I, for instance. They feel their livelihood threatened, and if they were to take steps to guard against that threat—at your expense, let us say—then no doubt that editor of yours would stir up a considerable fuss in London, and my people over here would be moved to make diligent enquiries concerning the culprits. But not so diligent as to find and punish them. Important people are involved, you see. Some of whose names appear in your records.”

“I’ve told you I keep no records here.”

“I have other information, mademoiselle. You have a buff file with leather corners. Loose-leafed, I believe. You have also a personal diary in the form of a pocketbook, small enough to be carried in a reticule. The pocketbook is red. With gold edges. Does that refresh your memory?”

She understood then the source of his information. Monique, the chambermaid, had often passed in and out of the apartment when she had been entering up the master file and diary, and the certainty that the girl had been bribed, or even planted here as a spy, made her fully aware of her own amateurism. Stead had warned her that these people had allies among the police and judiciary, but she had thought of corruption as small and localised.

They were standing facing one another as his two henchmen continued to prowl about in the background. Late traffic was passing up and down the Rue de la Loi and at any minute, she supposed, Gordon would knock on her door to report any progress he had made in Malines. They would almost surely arrest and search him and it was up to her to warn him if she could by creating some kind of diversion.

She did the first thing that came into her head, grabbing a heavy vase that stood on the mantelshelf and hurling it over his shoulder in the hope of smashing the window and attracting the attention of passersby in the street below. He would easily bluff his way out of any ensuing scene, of course, but the action would attract attention to the search and he would surely wish to avoid this at all costs.

She had no luck. The vase struck the window frame and bounded back into the room, smashing at the feet of the probing Tallien, who was in the act of stripping the cover from a cushion. She saw Sicard’s brows contract but she did not see the hand holding the cane go up. The movement was too quick for the eye to follow and the horrid pain caused by the vicious slash across her shoulders was the very first indication she had that he had struck at her with the full strength of his arm.

She let out an involuntary yelp and turned instinctively towards the bedroom, with some idea of rushing there, slamming the door, and locking herself in, but again he was far too quick for her. His foot shot out, tripping her neatly, so that she fell face-foremost among the broken shards of the vase where he pinned her with his foot. Then the cane was flailing down on her, striking her neck and back and buttocks and thighs, a shower of blows that left her sick and dizzy with pain and a kind of paralysing anger. Somehow she got to her knees and dragged herself round facing him. He was standing looking down at her smiling. Behind him, grinning, was the smaller of his creatures, Tallien, and over by the door was the other man, head cocked on one side as though listening.

It was quite silent in the room then, so that the sound of the clanking lift reached them clearly and unmistakably. He made a sign to his men who stood on either side of the door and she was in the act of dragging herself upright when the first tap came and Gordon’s voice called, “Deborah? You’re not in bed are you?”

It all happened with the same fatality, like a scene from a familiar play. She opened her mouth to warn him but no sound came beyond a choking sob. Pain surged through every area of her body but more crushing than pain was a desperate sense of failure. It was all she could do to check herself vomiting at the feet of her bland, smiling tormentor.

They took him as he entered, moving with expert nonchalance, as though they did this kind of thing every night of their lives. In a matter of seconds she was sitting in a chair, held by Sicard, and Ned Gordon was gaping across at her, arms handcuffed behind his back, with Tallien on his right and the other man on his left.

Sicard said, almost apologetically, “We have had a little difficulty here, m’sieur. The lady has forgotten where she put her records. Perhaps you could help us?”

He said, thickly, “Who… who are you? What are you doing here?”

“Does that matter? Let us say, the opposition. Be so good as to give us the papers, m’sieur, and we shall not detain you or Miss Avery another moment.”

He still seemed quite incapable of taking it in but continued to gape, first at her and Sicard, then at the disordered room; he was a big, flustered man, passive and helpless, with his hands secured behind his back.

She said, jerkily, “Police… searching… made an appointment… silly of me… silly of…” And then, as Sicard raised his arm again, and Gordon cried out in protest, she fainted, crumpling forward so that she slid from the chair, her cheek coming into contact with a jagged piece of pottery lying there.

5

They were gone when she opened her eyes to find herself lying on the sofa. The room seemed insufferably hot, and when she tried to sit up ripples of pain ran the length of her body, seeming almost to reach her ankles and the tips of her fingers. She was aware of something wet and sticky on her cheek and when she raised her hand there was blood on her knuckles. Then Gordon was bending over her holding a cloth and an enamel basin and gently bathing her cheek. As she winced in response to the smart, she saw her bag lying open on the armchair, its lining showing as ragged folds.

“You gave them the papers?”

“I had to. Could I stand by and watch you tortured by that fiend? He was about to apply his cigar butt to your feet to bring you round.”

She sniffed and smelled tobacco, then lay back, so tired and pain-racked that she wished she was dead. He said, eagerly, “We’ll prosecute… he’s a man with something to hide. Most of the police are honest and when they hear what happened…”

But she cut him short with a tired gesture. Even that caused her renewed pain.

“We can’t do any such thing, Ned. Not from here, not after this. We’ll go home and make a clean breast of it to Mr. Stead. We just aren’t equipped to fight them on their home ground. The only really useful thing I’ve done here is to find that out.”

“We can remember some of the people and their addresses. And there’s that girl, Doherty. She will have been interviewed by Stead by now.”

She was too tired and far too battered to argue with him. He was a kind, simple man, who assumed, as indeed she had until tonight, that the Belgian authorities were as anxious to clear up this dirty business as were the people Mrs. Butler had enlisted at Westminster. It was understandable that he should continue to believe this. He had not been thrashed from head to foot with a rattan cane, tipped with a metal ferrule.

She said, “The cut on the cheek is nothing. I tried to warn you by throwing a vase at the window but missed. I’ve missed in so many ways.”

He said, eagerly, “Don’t keep blaming yourself. Do you think Stead won’t appreciate the lengths you went to to keep those papers out of their hands? Let me call a doctor before I go to police headquarters and report what happened here.”

It amazed her now that anyone could be so naïve. He seemed incapable of absorbing the fact that this raid had been mounted by the police, almost certainly planned before she had played directly into their hands by making the appointment with Sicard. They had known precisely what kind of data was being assembled here. Every move that he or she or Mrs. Butler had made, every contact they had established, had been checked and rechecked. Bribes had been paid out. Threats had been issued. Dossiers had been built up word by word, and all the information about them had been classified and expertly evaluated. Her approach to the police clerk earlier in the day had been the final piece in the jigsaw, an excuse to get in here without fuss and blow the entire operation sky-high. Whatever charges were laid now, here or in London, would be written down and quietly filed away, to gather dust in some depository of police dossiers. Printed accusations from Stead would be met with counter accusations, involving his reputation and hers. Witnesses like the chambermaid Monique and that police clerk would be primed. The beating she had received would be attributed to some enraged brothel-keeper, who had taken steps to protect his business in his own way, with a couple of hired roughs. There was absolutely nothing to do but to go home and advise Stead to make what he could of Katie Doherty’s statement. Katie, almost certainly, would be discredited in advance, a young harlot who had picked her clients’ pockets and fled across the Channel before she could be arrested. All an exposé would do, she supposed, would be to warn other girls to take elementary precautions against accepting employment with “rich English families living abroad.” It was something, but it was not nearly enough. Nobody would understand that better than Stead. Already a majority in Parliament was seeing his campaign as an attempt to whitewash wantons and sell more of his newspapers into the bargain.