The Terror Trap Read online

  * * *

  “And,” muttered Burke, “I’ve got one, too.”

  16

  SURREY TO SOUTH WALES

  Burke digested the coal strike story as he walked to Toby Arran’s Brook Street flat, having parted with a Horace Miller equally disturbed by the news.

  It appeared there had been a long-standing wages grievance at Granton’s collieries chiefly caused by the company’s policy of deliberately employing non-union labour. Burke had been appalled, times out of number, by the working conditions of coal-miners. He invariably read news of mining trouble—too frequently, for there had not been a month in the last two years without strikes or rumours of strikes—with a bias towards the men’s point of view.

  But Burke’s cause was Gordon Craigie’s, or Department Z’s, or England’s, according to how he looked at it. Colliery troubles had been things seen, for the most part, from afar off. He admitted that he did not know the rights and wrongs of the situation: he also admitted that working conditions in the mines were improving, and would undoubtedly improve still further. He certainly hoped so: few things left as great a mark on him as the stories of explosions and mine-disasters. Burke had no fear of death; but he had a considerable dislike of the idea of being buried alive.

  Now, however, Department Z’s activities and the Granton colliery strike had converged. Burke had no doubt whatever that this strike was connected some way or other, with the accursed affair on which he was working. So far, he had gone from one complication to another, one shock to the next and little had been done towards reaching an explanation. Now, he told himself there was a chance of getting something from a visit to Wales; his decision to go there, voiced to Gordon Craigie the previous day, was confirmed as he read the report.

  The Granton strike, in the way that strikes have, had spread with lightning-like rapidity. According to the paper Burke read—the Clarion—the affair had been brought to a head by (a) refusal on the part of the owners to negotiate sensibly; (b) the introduction of a strong body of non-union labour (the major crime, from the miners’ point of view) and (c) the influence of a small number of practised agitators.

  This latter was a somewhat startling admission for the radically-inclined Clarion. So before turning into Brook Street, Burke bought a copy of its more conservative rival, the Evening Post.

  The headlines read:

  * * *

  ALIEN AGITATORS CAUSE COAL STRIKE OMINOUS SIGNS OF PROTRACTED STRUGGLE

  * * *

  The accompanying news-story flatly stated that the primary cause of the Granton strike lay with certain foreign agitators—but for whom, their local correspondent claimed, there would have been a peaceful settlement. Clearly, little was yet known beyond the bare facts of the strike, but the co-operation of the Durham, Northumberland and South Wales coal fields was certainly an ominous sign. Concerted action meant a delayed settlement; the strike might well become a national calamity.

  And the work of Department Z was to avert national calamities. This time, it was going to be a stiff job. All the bitterness of years would come out, now. The miners were ready for a long struggle; the owners would not give way to what was, in effect, open war.

  At the Arrans’ flat, Jim Burke said grimly:

  “Toby, we’ve got one hell of a job. I’m going to Surrey for an hour or two. You’re going to Craigie, and you’re to ask him to get all the men he can. All of ’em. Because....”

  He knew that Toby Arran would get down to it, and he himself started at once for Byways. He wasn’t going to risk missing Tommy Wigham; it was just possible that that young man knew something. Tommy had stayed at the Boar, in Cottesdon.

  As they left the flat together, Burke stopped short.

  “What’s biting?” asked Toby.

  “I’ve been robbed.” Jim Burke glanced up and down the street. “When I came in, Toby, I had a car——”

  Arran stared.

  “You didn’t! I saw you walking.”

  Burke stood very still for a moment, staring back. Then suddenly he started to laugh; and the echoes of his laughter went up and down Brook Street.

  “I forgot it!” he said at last. “I left it at Braddon’s. I forgot the darned thing! And—” he snorted glorying in it—“so did Miller!”

  Which helped to reveal to Toby Arran that when Jim Burke and Horace Miller had left the helpful solicitor’s, they had been suffering, severely, from a form of shock.

  Burke found the car still in Quentock Street, and made short work of the run to Surrey. He reached Byways at ten past twelve, and one of the first things he saw, as he entered the house, was Tommy Wigham’s freckled face.

  He shook hands solemnly.

  “You didn’t telephone me,” he pointed out, “although you promised to.”

  “I f–forgot your number,” Wigham stammered. “B–but I think you might have t–told me where Mary was——”

  “Don’t let it worry you,” said Burke. He turned as Tim Arran came in. “How is Miss Brent, Doctor?”

  “Very much better,” said ‘Doctor’ Arran. “I think we might let her receive Mr Wigham.”

  “Th-that’s d-decent of you!” gasped Tommy, beaming. “Sh-she’ll be glad to see me, I kn–know——”

  Burke didn’t think so, but he left Arran to entertain while he went into the kitchen, where he poked Martha Dale in the ribs, kissed Patricia—who hugged him—and asked whether Mary Brent was ready for her caller.

  Patricia told him that Mary was bearing up well; she was not moping—it would have been hard to mope, Burke knew, in the company of Tim Arran, Bob Carruthers, Martha Dale and Patricia. Of Tommy Wigham, it appeared, Mary thought with kindness but without affection: she was obviously more concerned for Dick Lavis, who was, in fact, a good deal better than might have been expected.

  “She’s upstairs,” Pat added. “And Jim—I wouldn’t let Wigham see her alone. He’s likely to make some silly reference to her father, and it’ll upset her.”

  “I’ll be guardian angel,” Burke assured her. “I’ve an idea that Tommy Wigham doesn’t love me, and he can go on not loving me.”

  It was obvious, from Wigham’s manner, that he felt the company of Burke was unnecessary, but he did not put his thoughts into words—at first. He almost burst into the room, where he pumped Mary’s hand up and down and hoped she wasn’t feeling too bad, four times. There was a glimmer of a smile on Mary’s lips and Burke was glad. She had humour—and she had spirit.

  For ten minutes Tommy chattered and stammered on, glaring from time to time at Burke. Finally convinced that Burke meant to stay, he kept himself under control with an obvious effort.

  “W-well,” he said at last. “I’d b-better be going, Mary. I’ll come again, day after tom-morrow. May 1?”

  “Why, yes,” said Mary.

  “G-good!” Tommy shook hands again, and was reluctant to let go. Mary took her hand away and he turned embarrassedly from the bed.

  Then suddenly he turned back again.

  “I f-forgot, d-dash it!” he stammered. “I brought some g-grapes, Mary. Where did I p-put them?”

  He looked round the room, agitatedly. The grapes were nowhere in sight.

  “You must have left them downstairs,” Burke suggested. “I’ll shout down for them.”

  But as he stood up, Tommy Wigham glared at the squashed mess of grapes on his chair. Burke was not even wet. Between his trousers and the burst bag there had somehow miraculously been a newspaper...

  “Y–you clumsy idiot!” Tommy Wigham exploded. “Wh–why the hell couldn’t you s–see where you were s–sitting? What did you want to s–stay here for, anyway? I th–think——”

  “Tommy!” said Mary Brent.

  The word had a remarkable effect on Tommy Wigham. His temper left him. He looked at Mary with a shame-faced grin, and muttered an apology to the big man, who apologised roundly, in turn. The grapes, Burke assured him, would be replaced quickly, by special messenger. He could quite understand why Mr Wigh
am had lost his temper, and hoped he would be forgiven.....

  A very mild Tommy shook hands with Mary again, and left the room. Before following him, Burke murmured to Mary Brent:

  “Don’t be tempted to sample the grapes, even if there’s a whole one among ’em.”

  As a still-amused Mary promised she wouldn’t, he hurried down to usher Wigham into the sitting-room, insisting that he stayed for coffee. Tommy protested, but accepted.

  “You can entertain Mr Wigham,” Burke told Tim. “I’ll just see to that coffee.”

  Timothy Arran nodded, and proceeded to keep the Wigham lad quiet for ten minutes, chiefly talking about Mary.

  Burke, meanwhile, asked Martha for the coffee, chattered briefly with Dick Lavis, who was looking pale but cheerful, and spent an enjoyable five minutes with Pat. They were interrupted by Bob Carruthers, who apologised at once as he saw how Patricia’s eyes were shining, and the smile on Burke’s face.

  “Never mind,” Burke reassured him. “We’ve got to be moving, anyway. You’re coming with me, Bob.”

  “Where?” asked Carruthers.

  “I don’t know,” grinned Burke. And didn’t.

  A few minutes later they were in the Talbot, and following Tommy Wigham’s Morris two-seater. As Burke had expected, Wigham stopped at a Dorking pub for lunch: Burke left Carruthers to watch him and hurried round to a nearby garage, where he hired an old but well-maintained Austin, capable of sixty miles an hour on a good road. Wigham would have recognised the Talbot; he would not recognise the dilapidated Austin.

  “But why?” asked Bob Carruthers, when he returned, “all this?”

  Carruthers, that deceptively mild-mannered, blonde young man, had a love of action only exceeded by his devotion to Burke. He affected to believe that Burke had no sense and less instinct; he actually considered Burke as capable a man as he had ever known.

  “I don’t trust Tommy Wigham,” said Burke slowly.

  They were in a small café opposite the pub where Tommy Wigham was lunching: directly he showed himself, they would move to their newly-acquired Austin. “I had my doubts about the little man from the first—I just didn’t see, then, how he could be mixed up in it. But now I know it’s no use waiting—we’ve got to tackle him. And I’ve one very sound reason for mistrusting the chap.”

  “What is it?” asked Carruthers.

  “That there are,” said Jim Burke, simply, “at the outside, six drapers in Dorking.”

  As Carruthers stared, Burke went on, seriously:

  “Bite into this, Bob. At eleven o’clock yesterday morning, Wigham met Tim Arran in a draper’s shop. He was, it seemed, selling pants. He continued to sell them—or try to—to Dorking drapers, all yesterday afternoon. Then he arranged to call at Byways, to see Mary, at noon today.”

  Carruthers looked baffled.

  “Because,” Burke looked coldly across the busy High Street to the pub, “he had to see more drapers about pants, this morning. Now I don’t think that’s right, Bob. If a commercial traveller couldn’t get round all the Dorking shops he wanted to in one day, he’s a rotten traveller.”

  “Oh–ho!” murmured Carruthers, seeing the light.

  “More than that,” said Burke. “I know Wigham stayed at the Boar, in Cottesdon. As a commercial traveller, it seems, he made that out-of-the-way Hampshire village headquarters—I don’t think! He might have stayed there occasionally—if, say, he’d been to Winchester, or was going there next day. But a village pub fifty-odd miles from London as the headquarters of a salesman dealing in a competitive article like pants——”

  Carruthers nodded, grinning appreciatively. “Then what is he?”

  “I don’t know. But I think he’s a long way from being a commercial traveller. And you see where that leads us to, young feller?”

  “I’ll buy it.”

  “Wigham ‘accidentally’ met Tim Arran yesterday, according to his story,” said Burke, slowly. “He met him in the course of his travels. If he isn’t a traveller, it’s reasonable to say he didn’t meet Tim accidentally. He forced an encounter that looked beautifully genuine. If he forced it, he must have know Tim was down here. In other words, he guessed—or knew—Mary Brent was in Surrey—at the cottage. Follow?”

  “I’m right on it.”

  “Fine. Then how did Wigham know where Mary was? Guesswork?”

  “You mean,” snapped Carruthers, “that he knew you’d sent her down to Byways—?”

  “Either that, or he followed her, with Patricia and you the other day,” agreed Burke. “Oh, Mr. Tommy Wigham is a very interesting man—and a dammed good liar. Ah! There he is——”

  It was half-past one when the chase started.

  Those who know Surrey will know the delights of the road they followed. Autumn was changing the leaves of the trees, now, to mellow tints. A blue sky and a bright sun lent an added glory to the countryside, and the air was like nectar. The country never failed to stir Burke, and he revelled in the beauty of it, today.

  But it did not prevent him from keeping on the Morris’s tail.

  He was surprised, early in the journey, when Tommy Wigham branched off the London road at Leatherhead. He was still surprised when, at four o’clock that afternoon, he found himself in Bristol. Tommy Wigham obligingly stopped for tea, and Burke and Carruthers sampled the delights of a snack bar.

  It was half-past six and a dark, moonless night, when they arrived in Swansea. They could not see the grim buildings of the mining villages through which they passed. They did see the crowds gathered in Swansea, the street corner meetings, the numerous policemen, the half-frenzied stump-speakers. They heard the bellowing of agitators, of red-hot strikers; they heard the more reasoned but equally grim counsel of men who had been in many strikes, and knew just what was in the offing.

  And they watched Tommy Wigham drive into an open garage, and come out, ten minutes later, on foot.

  “I’ll garage the ‘bus,” said Burke. “You follow Wigham. Telephone me when you can, at the Station Hotel.”

  “Right.”

  Bob Carruthers jumped out quickly: he didn’t ask questions.

  Burke did; but he asked them of himself.

  Why had Tommy Wigham come to the strike area?

  Who was Tommy Wigham?

  17

  GRAPES AND OTHER THINGS

  Before leaving Byways, Jim Burke had left instructions with Tim Arran to do certain things with a bag of squashed grapes. Tim went into Dorking that afternoon and left the bag with a chemist. When he called back an hour later, a grave-faced man ushered him into a room behind the shop, and said:

  “What did you expect me to find in those grapes, Mr. Arran?”

  Timothy shrugged.

  “I didn’t expect you to find anything; I thought it possible you might.”

  The chemist was eyeing him as though he might just possibly be a criminal of the worst type.

  “Well?” asked Timothy.

  “It’s a matter,” said the man at last, “that I feel I must report to the police. I admit that I promised absolute secrecy, but frankly I cannot see my way to—”

  “You can tell all the police in the world,” Tim told him, gently. “Or at least, you can tell any man at Scotland Yard above the rank of Detective-sergeant. What’s in ’em?”

  “Arsenic,” said the chemist, bluntly. “Enough arsenic in each of the five grapes I have tested, to kill—well, two or three men. I haven’t tested any more, although it looks as if every grape was poisoned.”

  He was a middle-aged man who took his calling seriously, and since he had first discovered traces of arsenic in the grapes he had been very worried. But now, as he looked at Timothy Arran’s face, he felt less anxious. Timothy was as strikingly handsome as poor Toby was ugly, and despite his slight build he carried an indefinable but obvious air of authority.

  Timothy was nodding thoughtfully.

  “Thanks, Mr. Wainwright. Now you’ll want to be reassured that I’m not—er—peddling ar
senic, shall we say?”

  Wainwright smiled, more reassured every moment.

  “Good.” Timothy nodded again. “Telephone Scotland Yard—I’ll pay for the call—and ask either for Superintendent Miller, or Sir William Fellowes. Mention my name and tell them the circumstances.”

  The chemist obeyed with alacrity. Miller was out, so he had the pleasure of talking to the Commissioner of Police himself. When Sir William Fellowes assured him that he could safely rely on Timothy Arran, he replaced the receiver and smiled more cheerfully.

  “Will you take the—er—grapes, Mr. Arran?”

  “I’d rather you kept them safely here,” said Timothy. “Pack them in two lots, if you will, and deliver one to anyone who might call for them—a policeman or not a policeman. Then if you keep the other lot for me, personally, we’ll be sure some of them get to the right place.”

  Wainwright stopped smiling.

  “You don’t seriously think anyone will try and get these—these things back?”

  “No,” said Timothy Arran, “but all things are possible.”

  He felt grim as he left the shop. He knew that only Jim Burke’s intervention had saved Mary Brent from sampling those grapes.

  Mr Tommy Wigham, the nervous, devoted, indignant seller of men’s underwear, had deliberately tried to poison her.

  “Tommy Wigham,” murmured Timothy, and doubled his fist. He would dearly have liked to connect with Tommy’s snub nose, right there and then. Instead, he concentrated on finding a telephone kiosk.

  All Craigie’s men knew that a telephone kiosk was one of the safest places from which to make a telephone call; the chances of the lines being tapped were so small as to be insignificant. Timothy telephoned a Whitehall number, and was soon talking to his Chief.

  “J.B.’s after Wigham,” he reported.