Two Bottles of Relish: The Little Tales of Smethers and Other Stories. Lord Dunsany

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СКАЧАТЬ I’m going to write about Mr Linley again. That brings me to the year 1943. I had a day’s leave, and got a lift on a lorry, and slipped up to London, and the first thing I did was to go round to Lancaster Street to have a look at the old flats. I wanted to have a look at them just to prove to myself that it was true that I hadn’t always lived in a barrack-room. Well, they’d gone, those flats had. There was a square of grass and weeds and flowers; and there was a lot of groundsel. And in a way I liked the look of it, though it wasn’t what I had come to see. They were rather dingy and dark, those flats as I remember them, and they called them Clarence Gardens. Now they really were gardens; or at any rate there was sunlight there, and some sort of flowers. I suppose there’s no one that doesn’t sigh for the country a bit some time or another in London, and here a bit of the country was, wild as any bit of the country you could see, even wilder than some of it. And for a moment I was glad to see this bit of sunlight and grass among all those miles of pavement, till I thought of all the slaughter that had gone to growing that groundsel. I looked up into the air then to see if I could locate just where our flat had been, because it seemed odd to think that I should have once been walking about, or sitting and listening to Mr Linley somewhere up towards the blue sky. And as I turned my eyes up from the groundsel I saw an officer standing near me and looking at me. I came to attention and saluted, and the officer said, ‘Why, it’s Smethers.’

      And I said, ‘It’s not Mr Linley!’ For he looked so different in uniform.

      And he said: ‘Yes, it is.’ And he shook hands.

      And in a moment we were talking about the old flat.

      Then he surprised me very much by saying: ‘You are just the man we want.’

      Well, I’d had all sorts of jobs to do since they made me a soldier, all sorts of jobs, but nobody had ever said that to me. And here was Mr Linley saying it, just as if it was true.

      ‘Whatever for?’ I asked.

      ‘I’ll tell you,’ he said. ‘That man Steeger is getting to work again.’

      ‘Steeger!’ I said. ‘The man that bought the two bottles of Numnumo.’

      ‘That’s the man,’ said Linley.

      ‘And shot Constable Slugger,’ I said. ‘What’s he up to now? His old tricks?’

      ‘Worse,’ said Linley.

      ‘Worse!’ I said. ‘Why, the man’s a murderer.’

      ‘He only murdered a couple of people, so far as we know,’ said Linley. ‘He was only a retail murderer. But he’s a spy now.’

      ‘I see,’ I said. ‘He’s got into the wholesale business.’

      ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and we want you to help watch him.’

      ‘I’d be glad to help,’ I said, ‘in any way I could. Where is he?’

      ‘Oh, he’s here all right,’ said Linley. ‘He’s in London.’

      ‘Why don’t you arrest him?’ I asked.

      ‘That’s the last thing we want to do just yet,’ said Linley. ‘It might warn a lot of others.’

      ‘What’s he done this time?’ I asked.

      ‘Well,’ said Linley, ‘they found out only the other day that he has recently received a thousand pounds. Somerset House found it out, and reported it.’

      ‘Has he been killing a girl again, and getting her money?’ I asked.

      ‘No, that’s not so easily done,’ said Linley. ‘He found poor Nancy Elth with her two hundred pounds, but he can’t find a girl with money every day.’

      ‘Then where did the thousand pounds come from?’ I asked.

      ‘The easiest money of all,’ said Linley.

      ‘Spying?’ I said.

      ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘It’s the best paid of all the crooked jobs in the world. Especially at first: they’ll give almost anything to get a new man into their clutches, provided he’s likely to be of any use to them. And Steeger should be a lot of use. He’s a really skilful murderer, and should be a skilful spy.’

      ‘And where is he?’ I asked again.

      ‘We’ve found him all right,’ said Linley. ‘There never was any difficulty in finding Steeger. The difficulty always was in proving he’d done it. Aye there’s the rub, as Hamlet remarked.’

      ‘And what has he given away?’ I asked.

      ‘Nothing as yet,’ said Linley. ‘That’s why we want you to help watch him. A thousand pounds is good pay, and it must be for good information. And of course it has been paid by a German in this country, or a Quisling or some such cattle. But they’ve not been able to get it out of the country yet.’

      ‘How do you know?’ I asked.

      ‘Because there is only one thing that the Germans would pay on that scale for,’ said Linley, ‘and we know that they don’t know it yet.’

      ‘What’s the thing, might I ask?’ I said.

      ‘Where the second front is going to be,’ said Linley. ‘We think he has found it out somehow and the other spy has paid him for it out of his loose cash. But it’s worth a million if he can get it to Germany. And a hundred million would be pricing it low, but they’d probably pay him fifty thousand for it. Anyway we know they don’t know it, and the thousand pounds is a mere tip. But that’s what the tip would be for.’

      ‘How did he find it out?’ I asked.

      ‘We don’t know as much as all that,’ said Linley.

      ‘I see,’ I said. ‘And you want him watched so that he doesn’t get out of the country.’

      ‘Oh, he can’t do that,’ said Linley. ‘But we want to see that he doesn’t send the news.’

      ‘How will he try to do it?’ I asked.

      ‘By wireless, probably,’ he said.

      ‘How will he do that?’ I asked.

      ‘Well, we’ve located all the sending-sets,’ said Linley, ‘that have ever spoken since the war began; but there may still be some silent ones hidden, and waiting for a bit of very big news like this. And I think we’ve located all the carrier pigeons; though there might be one or two of them somewhere that we don’t know of; but it’s easier to hide a wireless set than a pigeon, because you don’t have to feed it.’

      ‘And you want me to watch him?’ I asked.

      ‘Only now and then,’ said Linley. ‘He’s in London, and we know more about all the houses here than you’d think. We aren’t really afraid of his working a sending-set anywhere in London, but we can’t answer for the open country, and he has to be watched when he moves.’

      ‘What about the other man,’ I asked, ‘the spy who pays him?’

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