Spy & Mystery Collection: Major-General Hannay Novels, Dickson McCunn Trilogy & Sir Edward Leithen Series (Complete Edition). Buchan John

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СКАЧАТЬ that certain special ones should be put on duty1 with whom he could arrange matters. I never saw anyone approach what seemed to me to be a delicate job with such businesslike assurance.

      ‘Do you want anyone to accompany you inside?’ Macgillivray asked.

      I said no. I thought I had better explore the place alone, but I wanted somebody within call in case there was trouble, and of course if I didn’t come back, say within two hours, he had better come and look for me.

      ‘We may have to arrest you as a housebreaker,’ he said. ‘How are you going to explain your presence if there’s nothing wrong indoors and you disturb the sleep of a respectable caretaker?’

      ‘I must take my chance,’ I said. I didn’t feel nervous about that point. The place would either be empty, or occupied by those who would not invite the aid of the police.

      After dinner I changed into an old tweed suit and rubber-soled shoes, and as I sat in the taxi I began to think that I had entered too lightly on the evening’s business. How was that little man able to prepare an entrance without alarming the neighbourhood, even with the connivance of the police; and if I found anybody inside, what on earth was I to say? There was no possible story to account for a clandestine entry into somebody else’s house, and I had suddenly a vision of the earringed Jewess screeching in the night and my departure for the cells in the midst of a crowd of hooligans from Apwith Lane. Even if I found something very shady indoors it would only be shady in my own mind in connexion with my own problem, and would be all right in the eyes of the law. I was not likely to hit on anything patently criminal, and, even if I did, how was I to explain my presence there? I suffered from a bad attack of cold feet, and would have chucked the business there and then but for that queer feeling at the back of my head that it was my duty to risk it—that if I turned back I should be missing something of tremendous importance. But I can tell you I was feeling far from happy when I dismissed the taxi at the corner of Royston Square, and turned into Little Fardell Street.

      It was a dark cloudy evening, threatening rain, and the place was none too brilliantly lit. But to my disgust I saw opposite the door of the curiosity shop a brazier of hot coals and the absurd little shelter which means that part of the street is up. There was the usual roped-in enclosure, decorated with red lamps, a heap of debris, and a hole where some of the setts had been lifted. Here was bad luck with a vengeance, that the Borough Council should have chosen this place and moment of all others for investigating the drains. And yet I had a kind of shamefaced feeling of relief, for this put the lid on my enterprise. I wondered why Macgillivray had not contrived the thing better.

      I found I had done him an injustice. It was the decorous face of Mr Abel which regarded me out of the dingy penthouse.

      ‘This seemed to be the best plan, sir,’ he said respectfully. ‘It enables me to wait for you here without exciting curiosity. I’ve seen the men on point duty, and it is all right in that quarter. This street is quiet enough, and taxis don’t use it as a short cut. You’ll find the door open. The windows might have been difficult, but I had a look at the door first, and that big iron frame is a piece of bluff. The bolt of the lock runs into the side-bar of the frame, but the frame itself is secured to the wall by another much smaller lock which you can only detect by looking closely. I have opened that for you—quite easily done.’

      ‘But the other door—the shop door—that rings a bell inside.’

      ‘I found it unlocked,’ he said, with the ghost of a grin. ‘Whoever uses this place after closing hours doesn’t want to make much noise. The bell is disconnected. You have only to push it open and walk in.’

      Events were forcing me against all my inclination to go forward.

      ‘If anyone enters when I am inside?… ‘ I began.

      ‘You will hear the sound and must take measures accordingly. On the whole, sir, I am inclined to think that there’s something wrong with the place. You are armed? No. That is as well. Your position is unauthorised, as one would say, and arms might be compromising.’

      ‘If you hear me cry?’

      ‘I will come to your help. If you do not return within— shall we say?—two hours, I will make an entrance along with the nearest constable. The unlocked door will give us a pretext.’

      ‘And if I come out in a hurry?’

      ‘I have thought of that. If you have a fair start there is room for you to hide here,’ and he jerked his thumb towards the pent-house. ‘If you are hard-pressed I will manage to impede the pursuit.’

      The little man’s calm matter-of-factness put me on my mettle. I made sure that the street was empty, opened the iron frame, and pushed through the shop-door, closing it softly behind me.

      The shop was as dark as the inside of a nut, not a crack of light coming through the closely-shuttered windows. It felt very eerie, as I tiptoed cautiously among the rugs and tables. I listened,’ but there was no sound of any kind either from within or without, so I switched on my electric torch and waited breathlessly. Still no sound or movement. The conviction grew upon me that the house was uninhabited, and with a little more confidence I started out to explore.

      The place did not extend far to the back, as I had believed. Very soon I came upon a dead wall against which every kind of litter was stacked, and that way progress was stopped. The door by which the Jewess had entered lay to the right, and that led me into a little place like a kitchen, with a sink, a cupboard or two, a gas-fire, and in the corner a bed—the kind of lair which a caretaker occupies in a house to let. I made out a window rather. high up in the wall, but I could discover no other entrance save that by which I had come. So I returned to the shop and entered the passage to the left.

      Here at first I found nothing but locked doors, obviously cup-boards. But there was one open, and my torch showed me that it contained a very steep flight of stairs—the kind of thing that in old houses leads to the attics. I tiled the boards, for I feared that they would creak, and I discovered that all the treads had been renewed. I can’t say I liked diving into that box, but there was nothing else for it unless I were to give up.

      At the top I found a door, and I was just about to try to open it when I heard steps on the other side.

      I stood rigid in that narrow place, wondering what was to happen next. The man—it was a man’s foot—came up to the door and to my consternation turned the handle. Had he opened it I would have been discovered, for he had a light, and Lord knows what mix-up would have followed. But he didn’t; he tried the handle and then turned a key in the lock. After that I heard him move away.

      This was fairly discouraging, for it appeared that I was now shut off from the rest of the house. When I had waited for a minute or two for the coast to clear, I too tried the handle, expecting to find it fast. To my surprise the door opened; the man had not locked, but unlocked it. This could mean only one of two things. Either he intended himself to go out by this way later, or he expected someone and wanted to let him in.

      From that moment I recovered my composure. My interest was excited, there was a game to play and something to be done. I looked round the passage in which I found myself and saw the explanation of the architecture which had puzzled me. The old building in Little Fardell Street was the merest slip, only a room thick, and it was plastered against a much more substantial and much newer structure in which I now found myself. The passage was high and broad, and heavily carpeted, and I saw ‘electric fittings at each end. This alarmed me, for if anyone came along and switched on the light, there was not cover to hide a cockroach. I considered that the boldest plan would be the safest, so I tiptoed to the end, and saw another passage СКАЧАТЬ