Traitor's Purse (24 page)

The hallucination was so vivid, the pain in his side so acute, and the sense of self-disgust so strong that it brought
him
to his feet. He was ill. This blow on the head had affected him seriously. Good lord! Nothing like that must happen now. Things were a damned sight too serious. Of course they were, because no one
knew
. He and Oates were the only pair on earth who knew the full strength – and it was stupendous when you saw it in the round. It was criminally dangerous; he’d argued that from the beginning. Besides, where was Oates?

He went over to the judas-window in the cell door and peered through it into the empty passage outside. Not a soul, of course. He sighed and, putting his fingers to his mouth, gave a very reliable imitation of a police whistle. Five minutes’ intensive effort produced the desired result.

The turnkey, puce in the face with fury, put his head in at the farther door.

‘Shop,’ said Campion pleasantly. ‘Can I see the manager?’

‘You’ll be lucky if you see fresh air again, my lad. We’ve had to send Detective-Sergeant Doran to hospital.’

(Hospital? Why should the word send a thrill of terror through him? He was ill, dangerously ill. He’d have to go and see old Todd of Wimpole Street, when he got back. Where had the old man evacuated himself to?)

‘I’m sorry for Doran,’ he said aloud. ‘I can’t say I recognize the name. Still, I sympathize with your domestic worries. And in the meantime, do you think you could make an effort to do a little business? This isn’t the Central Coachingford Station, is it?’

The turnkey came farther into the passage, looking like a mystified bullpup.

‘You’ve changed your tune, ain’t you?’ he demanded.

‘I’m no longer unconscious, if that’s what you mean,’ said Campion with gentle dignity. ‘And while we’re on that subject, as a Metropolitan man I don’t like to criticize your County arrangements, but, just to soothe my curiosity do tell me, when you bring in a concussion case do you usually leave it for the best part of a day and a night without medical attention?’

The turnkey gaped at him, his small eyes bewildered.

‘You’re crackers and you’re impudent,’ he said. ‘That’s what you are. You won’t get anywhere by putting it on either. Shouting for a doctor now, are you? You’ll be lucky if you see a magistrate the way you’re going on.’

Campion, whose face was pressed against the narrow slit in the door, frowned reprovingly.

‘Just clear your mind,’ he said. ‘Save a little time by using the brain with which I see a kind Government has issued you. Which of the five Coachingford Police Stations is this one?’

‘Waterhouse Street. You know that as well as I do, or ought to, after the way you tore the road up coming here.’

‘Really? It’s that sort of concussion, is it? Bits of bone sticking in the grey matter. My hat, you don’t look after your professional guests, do you? Have you left me here since last night biting buttons off the furniture?’

‘Being difficult won’t pay,’ said the turnkey and turned away in disgust.

‘Let us hope Superintendent Rose will accept your diagnosis,’ Campion murmured, reflecting that it was better to mention the regular police Superintendent rather than the C.I.D. man. What was his name? Hutch, was it?

‘Superintendent Rose?’ The name appeared to have certain magic properties. The turnkey was hesitating but at the last moment some new consideration appeared to make up his mind for him. ‘Superintendent Rose doesn’t bother himself with snide-panners who beat up plain-clothes men. Besides, you’ve only been in an hour and a half. What d’you think this is – a quick-lunch counter?’ he said and went out, locking the door behind him.

Campion was astounded. He had always found County Police particularly intelligent. This type of crass idiocy was new to him. The clock outside chimed another quarter hour and he cursed it. It had lost its charm and was now irritating. The whole thing was really damnably unfortunate. Besides, he’d got work to do. There was that date with the C.I.D. Super to go over the Nag, and he wanted to have a look at the Institute.

He had discovered the main game, he was sure of that. He had told Oates so, definitely. He lay down on the hard bed and began to rearrange his mind. He seemed to have the afternoon before him. Oates – and where was he, by the way? – had the wind-up. That was very unlike him and argued that he must have had the importance of the thing pretty hot and strong from the Cabinet itself.

Well then, to return to business. When Oates had borrowed him from Headquarters and had first come out with this staggering tale of thousands of counterfeit notes, so perfect that ‘one has to boil them down to detect them,’ he had said that he thought the scheme was on a colossal scale and might actually be aiming at some sort of sudden unofficial inflation, which would of course pitch the country’s whole economy into hell, destroy public confidence, pull down the Government, and, if issued at the right moment, bring about the moral collapse of the nation. Since Britain, as usual, seemed to have nothing absolutely ready to save her morals, the danger had seemed terrifying.

As he lay looking at the little barred window high in the wall, Campion reflected that so far he had been inclined to doubt the possibility of the scheme being so enormous. Oates had shown him the notes which had been found in two or three industrial towns. They had certainly been cracking good forgeries and could have been manufactured only in the official printing houses of an enemy power. Moreover, and the ingenuity of that move still took his breath away, they had been artificially dirtied most ingeniously.

Oates had put various picked men on to the job in different towns. All of them had drawn a blank save the man at Coachingford. He had reported the presence of some sort of crook organization, either in the town or at Bridge. Poor chap, he hadn’t got much further. They’d fished him out of the estuary with a broken neck. It had been professional work, very neat and nasty, done with a lead pipe as like as not.

Campion stirred uncomfortably. There was something
curious
about that killing, something personal and near at hand. What was it? There was something on his mind that kept escaping him. It was probably nothing important but he found it irritating.

That damned clock again. That was a quarter to three, he supposed. He dismissed his irritation and went on dreamily with his reminiscences. Well, Oates had borrowed him and sent him to Coachingford. Amanda had got them both an invitation to stay at Bridge with Lee Aubrey, who was brilliant, he supposed. Everybody said so. Personally he suspected these academic dreamers. Still, let that pass, He had instated old Lugg in the town with a stock of the counterfeit and some old clothes. Then he had spent half a day at Bridge making arrangements, had come into Coachingford, changed into a tramp’s outfit, and had gone off reconnoitring.

That had been an experience he would never forget. All the subversive element in the town was in a ferment. ‘Blokes were giving away cash – great wads of it.’ And the riff-raff of the place had been turned into a great greedy bulging-eyed secret society, getting rich quick as quids were handed to them behind doors, in doss houses, over greasy coffee-tables.

This had been a discovery, but it had been followed by another one. He had discovered that a whisper was going round to the effect that the great day was coming on the sixteenth. That was going to be milk-and-honey day, the day when it was going to be everybody’s duty to spend and the wherewithal was going to be miraculously provided.

That had been a peculiarly uncomfortable discovery because the sixteenth was to be a red-letter day in other, more orthodox financial circles. On the sixteenth the Minute Fifteen Defence Loan was to be presented to the public. There was no doubt about it, the whole affair was alarming. If it was by any staggering chance as bad as Oates thought it was then it was hair-raising.

Leaning back on the bench Campion reflected on his subsequent actions. For a long time it had been impossible to locate any of these munificent agents and he had finally
decided
to take the bull by the horns and appear himself as one of them. That had drawn the flock. The whole bunch had turned up together, as he had known they would. Both he and Oates had been able to get a good look at them. They had made quite an impressive gathering and it had occurred to him then that it had taken someone with a real flair for organization to get that crew together.

Then there had been the fight and the police had come up. He remembered very little of the action save the sticky paving-stones of the quay and the awful mud-coloured water, thick with scum and rubbish.

Since the police had no idea who he and Oates were, either, they had been extraordinarily lucky to get away alive. That was why it had been so criminally dangerous for Oates to have come down and taken part himself. Suppose they had both been put out, then what might have happened? Of course, if Oates’ theory of engineered inflation had anything in it at all he was justified in trusting as few people as possible, since any whisper of such a disaster might very easily start a scare nearly as bad as the thing itself. Good God, it was a horrible idea!

Campion pushed his hands through his hair and shivered. All the same, now he looked at it in cold blood he still maintained that the enormous scale of the plan as Oates saw it must be impossible because of the difficulties of distribution.

As long as the Enemy stuck to his present method of doling the money out by hand to the vagrant population the whole affair could be dealt with by the police. But a decisive blow of the kind Oates envisaged would demand instantaneous distribution of the stuff all over the country. Campion did not see how it could be done without the cooperation of the public. After all, the public had got to be induced first to take and then to spend the cash. It just was not possible. It is notoriously difficult to give away money by cash in the street. Generations of ordered living had taught the ordinary citizen that there is something very fishy and dangerous about banknotes which are not paid
for
in blood and sweat. No, the thing as Oates foresaw it could not happen, not on that scale, thank God.

And yet … yet …

He got up and walked irritably up and down the cell. This knock on the head was serious. It was having an extraordinary effect on him. The clock chiming another quarter sent an unexpected and unwarranted thrill of pure despair through him. Why was that? What the hell was the matter with him? There was a burden on his shoulders. Self-disgust leant on his arms. His feet were heavy with grief. Misery and the utter wretchedness of failure clung to him. This was terrible. This meant he was a … what was it? Manic depressive? Something like that. Perhaps he ought to try and sleep it off. After all, he must not go sick now. Today must be the fourteenth, by jove. And the sixteenth was the zero-hour. However, since he had located the actual men engaged the round-up should not take long. Fortunately the police had a few new powers under the Emergency Laws. They could finish this thing off quickly and release him to his work again. Perhaps there would be time to get married in the interim, if only … If only what?

Once again there was that physical tug at his heart, again that overwhelming sense of self-disgust, and again a definite picture in his mind of Amanda herself, hurt and puzzled, waiting for the other lines of a doggerel couplet. It was mania all right, obviously. Some variety of mental kink, probably irritatingly well known. The sooner he got himself out of here and put himself into the hands of a reliable doctor the better. All very well to be gallantly negligent about a sore thumb or a lump on the skull, but mental trouble was a different caper altogether.

It wasn’t going to be very easy to get out either, with this peculiarly obtuse specimen on the door. He must have been taken in completely by the vagrant’s outfit; that and the money, of course. Those two taken together would be a difficult pill for any honest copper to swallow.

He glanced ruefully at his clothes and made a discovery which took him completely off his balance.

He was not wearing the suit in which he had had the quayside fight
.

He stared into the cloth of his trouser knees and wrenched at the inside pocket of his jacket to find the tailor’s label. It was his suit all right. He recognized it and knew too that it should have been hanging up in a wardrobe in his bedroom in Lee Aubrey’s house in Bridge. Moreover, it was a new suit according to the date on the label, yet as he looked at it now he saw that it was dirty and crumpled and showed signs of having had hard wear for some little time.

The jolt to his nervous system was tremendous, the mental equivalent of a gigantic thump between the shoulder-blades. Then a frightful misgiving crept up close to him and laid its cold cheek on his heart. He had been here some time. How … long?

Out in the town the clock struck again, announcing that yet another quarter of an hour had passed.

XIX

HE SAW AMANDA
through the judas-window. She came walking into the passage with the turnkey, completely unselfconscious and comfortably serene.

‘Hullo,’ she said cheerfully as she caught sight of half his face through the slit. ‘They phoned your message to me, but they won’t let me bail you out.’

‘What message?’ The question was in his mouth but he did not put it. His eyes had narrowed and his thin face wore a startled expression. The instant he had seen Amanda it had come to him that something revolutionary, he was not at all sure that it was not evolutionary, must have taken place within him. He had grown old, or seen a great light, or else his blundering feet were on the ground at last. He thought he knew what it was all right. The symptoms were unmistakable. That sense of exasperated shame, that desire
to
kick himself or to cover his eyes with his great burning ears, all these indicated that his self-confidence had received a dangerous blow. A great weakness must have been uncovered. His misgivings increased and he remained staring at the girl through the judas-slit, with his eyes fixed and his forehead wrinkled.