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  1

  Two Gentlemen Return

  From the Boat Train at Waterloo stepped two large, weary-looking men who created the impression that for some time past they had slept in their clothes. Nor was the impression unjustified, for it was precisely five nights since they had known the luxury of a bed. Even then the bed had been a single one, and they were broad as well as tall, each used to four feet of spring-interior mattress, blankets and luxury eiderdown. To them it seemed that such amenities were never likely to return, for Waterloo Station, with the dim, blue gleams from the lamps hanging from the glass roof, and the bookstalls, was a place of gloom. Vague figures walked past them in either direction.

  On the roof pattered heavy rain, while it was piercing cold.

  ‘I am not,’ said Mark Errol, ‘going another step without a porter. Unless you would like to carry my bag.’

  ‘If you carry me, it’s a deal.’ Michael Errol stifled a yawn, and tried to pierce the gloom—unsuccessfully. He felt too tired even to exchange witticisms with his cousin. ‘Oh, well, we can’t stay here all night. What’s the time?’

  ‘Just after nine.’

  ‘Half an hour late,’ reflected Michael; ‘it might have been worse. I—porter. Porter!’

  ‘Coming, sir!’

  A weedy figure materialised, revealing a wizened face decorated with a wispish moustache. The man jumped into the carriage and pulled down two small suit-cases. The two large men eyed him as they would any phenomenon.

  ‘Two trunks in the van, porter,’ Mark said.

  ‘Aye, aye, sir, I’ll just get a truck. Got your name on?’

  ‘Errol. Put them all in a taxi, and tell the cabby to wait; we’re going to have a drink. And,’ went on Mike, passing over a pound note, ‘tell him he may have to wait a long time.’

  ‘All okey-doke, sir.’ The porter disappeared towards the luggage van, whistling tunelessly. The Errols walked stiffly towards the gates, their eyes lack-lustre and their mouths dry. The sweeping Errol chin which characterised them was not entirely hidden by the gloom; nor were their claims to handsomeness, for they were impressive young men, each topping the six foot mark, each turning the scales at fourteen stone, each possessed of the Errol cleft in the chin but minus the Errol Roman nose. Their noses were straight. Their eyes were grey and fringed with long lashes, their hair dark brown—Mark’s straight and well-brushed, Mike’s unruly—and that their clothes, although untidy, were from Savile Row.

  They were oblivious of those about them as they went towards the buffet—but two people, one a short man with a Punch of a chin and a beaked nose, approached them from one side.

  The second man was taller, and very thin.

  Again the light prevented strangers from seeing the swarthiness of his skin, and the unpleasant closeness of his eyes. He sidled, and sidling out-walked the short man, and drew alongside the Errols.

  ‘Excuse me, gentlemen...’

  His voice was low-pitched, and possessed a note that did not sound English. The Errols stopped with one accord. Mark, who did most of the talking, raised a brow.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ve brought a message from Mr. Loftus, gentlemen.’

  The close-set eyes were narrow, but that might have been because of trying to see through the black-out. Had the Errols disliked all they could see of the stranger, their immediate uncertainties would have been removed, for the name of Loftus was virtually a password.

  They liked to think that they were useful agents of that remarkable organisation called Department Z, but it often appeared that Loftus and others took all the plums, and that if there was a job where it was impossible to triumph, Loftus—Agent Number 1—handed it to them. Certainly he was not popular with them at that moment. All they wanted was drink and food and sleep.

  ‘We do not know a Mr. Loftus,’ stated Mark clearly.

  ‘I—I beg pardon, sir?’

  ‘You heard,’ said Mark, and then resignedly: ‘All right. Where is he?’

  ‘In the booking-hall, sir, in the corner on the left. He doesn’t want to be seen contacting with you.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Mark. ‘All right, whoever-you-are, lead the way, will you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The thin man of the furtive face led the way, and behind the trio followed he of the Punch-like chin. The station was not crowded, and yet they contrived to bump into several people.

  The shadows of the booking-hall engulfed them. Peering across, they saw no figure lurking in the left corner, but the darkness might deliver anyone up at a moment’s notice. Approaching the corner, the thin man fell behind.

  There was a sharp cry from behind them, and on the instant they came to a standstill.

  ‘Mark—be careful!’

  Then the thin man moved.

  He snatched something from his pocket which showed a dull glint and then the something went flying from his grasp, for Mike Errol forgot weariness and moved. He leapt at the man, crashing a clenched right fist towards his stomach, and the man doubled up; a gun fell from nerveless fingers. Mike struck again, a left swing this time to the chin. The furtive one’s feet lifted inches from the ground and he went backwards like a pole-axed bull.

  Mike drew a deep breath.

  ‘Now that,’ he said, ‘is what I call a warm welcome. Hallo, Spats, nice of you to come to meet us. What’s the matter?’

  Spats Thornton, one of Craigie’s most useful agents since he did not look like one, put one hand in his pocket and contemplated the Errols with his chin jutting out.

  ‘You’re the matter,’ said he dispassionately. ‘I heard every word, and you fell for it.’

  ‘So it seems,’ said Mike ruefully. ‘But we can go into that later. Here are two men wearily returning from Italy after a damn’ fool journey, and the moment we get back to London someone draws a gun on us. I want to know why.’ He did not sound over-curious, for he had worked with the Department too long to be surprised at anything.

  Mark stooped down and picked up the gun.

  It was a Webley automatic, and the safety-catch had not been released. Not that a shot would have caused much disturbance, for the small snout of its improved Maxim silencer poked from the muzzle.

  ‘If he’d fired,’ said Mark more dreamily than his wont, ‘it would have been death in darkness and no mistake. What and who is he, Spats?’

  ‘I haven’t a notion. I noticed him come up to you and heard about the message from Loftus.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ exclaimed Mike, and he seemed positively enlivened. ‘There wasn’t a message, we can have that drink! Look after this little dago, Spats; if I don’t lower something...’

  ‘Silence,’ said Spats Thornton.

  There were occasions when he could make his voice sound sepulchral, and it did then. There were folk who claimed that he always seemed to be putting on an act, and in a measure that was true. It was equally true of most of the Department men, for they worked in a world where little was natural, where death lurked in every corner, where it was impossible to know from one moment to the next what was going to happen. Living like that, they developed an unseen armour of what some called humour. It was a peculiar brand, mingling sarcasm with facetiousness, and it puzzled folk who did not know them well.

  ‘All right,’ said Mike, ‘we’re silent.’

  ‘What really puzzles me,’ said Spats, rubbing his chin, ‘is how he knew that there was a message. Bill wants to see you at once and I’ve come to meet you. Someone else knew you were going to be here, and the someone doesn’t w
ant you. If you want a drink there’s just time for it. I’ve got a cab.’

  ‘What about that?’ demanded Mike, nodding towards the man on the ground.

  ‘I’ll watch it,’ said Spats. ‘Go and get rid of your repressions.’

  The Errols walked towards the buffet. There was a certain humour in the fact that they had been sent out on a quest which had carried them through most of Southern Europe where they might have expected excitement, and the first sign of trouble had come at the moment of their return to London.

  Drinking, they considered the mystery of the fact that someone knew that they had been due at Waterloo on the 8.37 (arrival) train.

  From Southampton they had sent a telegram to Bill Loftus, announcing their impending arrival, and to their knowledge no one else in England knew that they had landed. Therefore, it seemed, the leakage was through Loftus.

  ‘Ye-es,’ admitted Mark. ‘Well, let’s get back.’ He yawned, lit a cigarette—Mark refusing—and they strolled back towards the booking-hall. The gloom and the ghostly blue light remained. Thornton lurked in the darkness, and the man remained on the floor.

  ‘Our friend still sleeps,’ said Spats, but he smiled, ‘which one of you hit him?’

  ‘I,’ said Mike with satisfaction. ‘We’d better get him round; they’ll see us carrying him to a cab even in this. Whisky?’

  Spats drew a flask from his hip pocket, adjusted the knee of his trousers, and knelt down. Unscrewing the top of the flask, he held it to the man’s lip, and a trickle of whisky forced itself through.

  ‘He can’t be as bad as that,’ he said almost irritably, while the Errols stood and peered down. ‘Wake up, you lump of sin, or—God!’

  He straightened up, spilling whisky over the dusty platform, where it ran in little globules. Mark replaced him—and Mike also bent down, to see the small hole in the man’s temple, the little trickle of blood coming from it.

  The man had been shot while Thornton had been on guard.

  2

  Craigie and Others

  ‘I’ve been standing here all the time, and I heard nothing and saw nothing,’ Thornton said. ‘It’s fantastic, but I’ve fallen down on the job.’

  ‘Did you have any idea that there’d be one?’ demanded Michael.

  ‘I knew something was in the wind,’ said Thornton, and he shrugged his shoulders. ‘Stay here. I’ll go to phone Bill Loftus; he may have some ideas about the body.’

  The Errols stayed. In each man’s mind there was the thought that if the dead man had been shot in the darkness, the same thing could happen to them. It was not a comforting thought but nor was it worrying.

  Thornton was returning from the telephone kiosk when Mark spoke for the first time.

  ‘Something,’ he said, ‘is up.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ said Mike sarcastically, ‘that you’ve reached that conclusion so soon.’

  Thornton materialised and spoke briefly.

  ‘The Yard’s contacting with the station police. We’re to wait until officials arrive and then to Brook Street as quickly as we can. I hope they’re not long; my cab’s waiting.’

  Mike stared.

  ‘Cab...?’

  ‘Cab!’ exclaimed Mark, and for the first time since the discovery of murder he grinned. ‘There’s another cab and a porter waiting somewhere; we’re not going to be very popular. I’ll go to locate ‘em, Mike.’

  ‘Better have the stuff taken to the flat,’ advised Mike.

  Mark went off, and located his cabby, and the attendant porter. The cabby’s reception was not in the first instance polite. Mark, at times prepared to humour anyone from a cabby to a king, did not feel in that mood just then.

  ‘That’s enough,’ he said sharply. ‘You were told to wait and you’re waiting. Get this stuff to 55g, Brook Street. My man will take it in and pay you.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’ A subdued cabby let in the clutch and started off, while the wizened-faced porter disappeared, as if afraid that the pound he had received already would be demanded from him. Mark remarked to himself that there would have to be an improvement to his temper. He...

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’

  The voice was feminine. It was warm, it had a musical note, was low-pitched and could be called husky. One of the loveliest voices. Its owner had banged into Mark and was recoiling backwards; in the gloom behind her Mark could pick out the outlines of a suit-case, and she was liable to fall over it. He stretched out a hand swiftly, gripped her wrist, and pulled her towards him.

  ‘My fault,’ he said; in the half-light and at close quarters he seemed a remarkably handsome man. ‘Are you allright?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’ He could see enough to tell that she was in furs which were caught together at the neck, that she was neither short nor tall, and that what part of her face was visible beneath the nose-length veil she was wearing seemed to match her voice. ‘It’s impossible in the dark, isn’t it, and I was trying to catch the nine-twelve.’

  ‘Too bad,’ said Mark; ‘it’s turned nine-thirty.’

  ‘What?’

  She seemed so startled that immediately he took pity on her. She pulled back the cuff of her coat, and with the help of a small torch fastened to her wrist, saw that her watch pointed to nine-fifteen. Mark’s watch made it twenty-five to ten, and she looked at him in mingled self-annoyance and disappointment.

  ‘Twenty minutes slow, and I’ve been hurrying...’ She broke off. ‘Well, that means staying in Town overnight, and I’ll have to telephone.’

  ‘I can show you the kiosks,’ said Mark promptly.

  ‘No, I mustn’t detain you any longer.’

  ‘I’m insisting.’ said Mark cheerfully.

  She laughed again, and with more humour, and he wished that the line of telephone kiosks was farther away. As they reached them, and she opened her bag for some coppers, he reminded himself that in the haif-light he could see that she had the shapeliest of lips, and that her nose was the least bit retroussé.

  She found the coppers and turned to a box. She paused, turned back and for a moment, rested her hand on his arm.

  ‘Thank you so much. I shall be all right now.’

  The door closed behind her before he could say more than that he was delighted.

  Mike and Thornton were waiting in the booking-hall and Mike was impatient. The blurred shapes of four policemen were also near by, and the body of the man who had been shot in the darkness was being loaded on to a stretcher.

  The journey to Loftus’s flat in the dark took longer than any of the trio wanted. The tiny lights of other traffic, the faint glow from shop-windows—little better even though regulations had been relaxed to some degree—and the road surfaces which glistened because of a faint drizzle of rain, helped to present London at its worst.

  The cab slowed down.

  ‘Here y’are, sir.’ The driver reached backwards in the way London cabbies have, contorting himself rather than get out to open the door. The trio unloaded themselves on to the pavement outside 55g, Brook Street. Spats paid the man, and they went upstairs.

  Once past the front door the lighting was better, and when a tall, very thin, and large-eyed young man opened the front door of the flat itself, the brilliance from within dazzled them for a moment. They stepped through into an atmosphere of smoke and fug and beer fumes, to meet another trio.

  Sitting at ease in an easy-chair, yet telling the Errols that this meeting was important, was Gordon Craigie. That little-known man, who wielded such considerable but unsuspected influence in England, seemed a trifle thinner and a trifle greyer than when they had seen him a month before. His pale, lined face with the long, lantern jaw—a disgruntled jaw, some would say, despite the curved mouth with the humorous twist at the corners—seemed to have sunk a little at the cheeks, while his grey hair was thin and spread with some care on a cranium not wholly concealed. The sight of him had the same effect on Mark and Michael; they reproached themselves for complaining of fatigue, for Gordon Craigie’s
wide-set grey eyes seemed tired beyond words. They were the eyes of a man who could never catch up on sleep. Yet they were steady, and there was confidence in them.

  A well-charred meerschaum, with a trail of tobacco dangling from the bowl, drooped from his lips to his chest. He was dressed in grey, and his long, white hands were resting on the arms of the brown-leather chair. He nodded but did not smile as the Errols entered.

  Bill Loftus was sitting opposite him.

  Loftus was large and ungainly. That is, he looked ungainly because he created the impression that he was fat. Just why his tailor invariably failed to remove the impression of a too-large paunch no one knew, but it remained a fact. His shoulders were vast and tightly packed, and he had one of his massive legs over the arm of his chair. A fresh-complexioned face, topped with plentiful between-coloured hair, was not handsome. Yet it was pleasant to look upon, with the full lips, the sweeping jaw, and the large nose slightly out of true. His eyes, like Craigie’s, were grey. Also, like Craigie’s, they seemed to see far beyond the surface.

  ‘‘Lo, folks,’ said Bill Loftus, and he waved a hand towards a table on which reposed a small tankard. ‘Have a spot?’

  ‘Sit down,’ said the tall, thin man who had opened the door. ‘For this once I’ll wait on you.’

  Edward—Ned—Oundle, a friend of Loftus since earliest schooldays, was the antithesis of his mentor. They shared the flat and many other things in common, but there was nothing in common in their appearance. Though tall, Oundle was two inches shorter than Loftus, painfully thin, and ingenuous of countenance. This was chiefly due to his saucer-like blue eyes, so innocent and so appealing that many folk thought that he should be led gently from all contact with the evils of this world. His fair, crisp hair was like a halo above his round face, his cherub lips seemed sensitive, and there were times when his voice was soft and gentle.

  Thus Craigie, Loftus and Oundle.

  At that time they were the Big Three of Department Z, Craigie the indisputable leader; Craigie had started the ultra-secret branch of British Intelligence, which he ran independently of the more widespread Espionage Branch. Loftus, his leading agent, was in many ways the best leader Craigie had had. Others had gone, either through death or marriage—the only things that could take a man from the service of the Department. Oundle was nominally Agent Number 2.