The Black Spiders Read online

  ‘and grenades and .32 pistols and ammunition sent for examination and report. British manufacture confirmed. Date of manufacture July 1951. Part of consignment of weapons transferred from Egypt to Cyprus during evacuation of the Canal Zone. Consignment was in small cargo vessel, Fatema, registered Mombasa. Ship’s master disappeared and was later identified in Egypt, extradition requested and agreed. Investigation and subsequent trial proved he diverted cargo, but at that time no proof of place of delivery. Master of Fatema tried in Nairobi on charge of fraudulent delivery of cargo and sentenced to seven years imprisonment in Nairobi. Subsequent search of master’s home and grounds yielded substantial sum in gold. Source of gold neither discovered nor disclosed.’

  Craigie read this almost as quickly as Loftus wrote it down and then read it again, aloud, for Harrison’s benefit. Harrison looked puzzled for a moment, but then said abruptly:

  ‘So the arms have been on the island since 1953.’ ‘That’s what it begins to look like,’ Craigie agreed. ‘I remember that consignment and the arrest of the master— it was always taken for granted that he’d delivered the weapons to French North Africa and undoubtedly he did deliver some there, but. . .’ He broke off.

  It was a day when he had hardly time to think, no time to switch smoothly from one thing to another, for news kept coming at him from all sides. Now it was a telephone which showed a white light. It was near him, and he stretched out for it, saying quietly: ‘Here’s Miller.’ ‘Hallo,’ he said into the telephone. ‘Craigie here.’ He

  listened . . . His eyes sparkled, and obviously the fresh news surprised and worried him. He rang off, after a brisk: ‘Yes, thanks, I know you will,’ looked up at Loftus and Harrison, as if this news was the last straw.

  ‘There’s rioting in Parliament Square on the Canna issue,’ he said. ‘If it gets any worse they’ll have to call up police reinforcements or the military, to help clear the square.’

  ‘So they’re organised over here,’ Loftus said in a strangled voice.

  20. The Sign of the Black Spider

  On his way to the office, Murray had driven by St. James’s Palace into the Mall, then past the Horseguards’ Parade and out into Parliament Square, and next along Whitehall. He knew there would be room to park fairly near the Department office, but as he approached the gates of the park, where he would turn left into Parliament Square, traffic was standing in line. There were fifty or sixty cars at least—as well as a long line of cars in Birdcage Walk.

  He heard a different sound from anything he had heard before, a roaring, as of water at a deep waterfall.

  There was a parking space nearly opposite Downing Street. He slipped into it; walking would probably be quicker. When he got out of the car, the roaring was much louder. He closed and locked the car, and found himself looking down at his feet when a leaf was blown, rustling, under the car. His fear of the spiders was as acute as ever; even a leaf could make him jump.

  Then several mounted police went at a trot past him, towards the line of cars.

  He walked up the steps towards Downing Street. There were only a few people there, with the usual policeman standing outside the Prime Minister’s house, which looked almost drab and commonplace. The roaring was certainly much louder, and he placed it more accurately; it was like the continuous roar of a football crowd, when excitement was rising. But a football crowd seldom kept up the same pitch of excitement as this.

  He reached the top of the steps.

  A little group of policemen, some eight men in all, appeared at the far end of the street, all moving very quickly. Murray didn’t think very much about it, being far too anxious to get to Craigie’s office. The story of the gold revealed by the earthquake in Canna might prove to be the key the Department needed.

  He wondered if any member of the royal family was at the Abbey; that might explain the roaring.

  Then the policemen lined up across the street, and as they did so, the roar seemed to take on a menacing note.

  A dozen youths, most of them dusky-skinned, came running round the corner. Murray expected them to pull up at sight of the police, but they rushed on without slowing down; and as they came, a great horde of people appeared from Whitehall. One moment the buses were passing along normally with other traffic, and a few people walked by; the next, a milling mob of people surged from Whitehall into Downing Street, and the little line of policemen had no chance at all to keep them back. Suddenly more policemen came running from the steps which Murray had just climbed—a dozen or so; twenty; thirty. They moved at the double, and had their truncheons drawn.

  Among the mob at the far end of the street were several mounted police.

  There was some kind of chant coming from thousands of frenzied people, and Murray couldn’t make it out at first. He stood close against the wall, while more police came hurrying, as it at all costs the crowd had to be pushed out of Downing Street. The faces of the mob were not all dark; some were almost black, but most were brown, and many were white. Teeth were bared as they bellowed, and gradually Murray was able to distinguish the words of the chant.

  ‘Give us Meya Kamil or get out.’

  Murray sensed the shrill note of violence in the cry, sensed the passion which was in the crowd. These were not all Cannans. There were many who had been roused to a point of riot by some unknown forces, and who had completely lost control. ‘Give us Meya Kamil or get out,’ they roared, and fell upon the policemen as if they would mow them down and trample them underfoot. One policeman fell. The others somehow held together, arms linked, giving ground very slowly, their feet moving almost as if they were retreating in unison with the chant.

  ‘GIVE US MEYA KAMIL OR GET OUT.’

  A policeman moved suddenly to Murray’s side, as about fifty rushed up to reinforce that line which was holding the crowd so bravely, but which could not have withstood the pressure much longer by itself.

  ‘Back into the park, sir, please,’ the policeman said, civilly; ‘must clear the steps and the street.’

  Murray said: ‘Can’t I help? I. . .’

  ‘Sorry, sir; don’t argue, please.’ The man was as calm as if he was talking about closing time. ‘We don’t . . .’

  A big, burly, dusty-looking man came along, walking quickly, his blue eyes missing nothing. This was Miller, a welcome face because it was familiar. Murray called out eagerly:

  ‘Superintendent!’

  Miller glanced up and then came across.

  ‘Hallo,’ he greeted. ‘Having a nice time, aren’t we? What are you doing here?’

  ‘I want to see . . . ?’

  ‘The Boss?’ Miller broke in, obviously to make sure that Murray didn’t say ‘Craigie’. ‘Well, you won’t get through Parliament Square for the next hour; I’m not sure you’ll get into Whitehall from Admiralty Arch, either. I’d better find you a car.’

  ‘Didn’t realise you were on business, sir,’ the uniformed policeman said, even more civilly. ‘Sorry I troubled you.’ He went on to help the others and Murray saw that the police were now pushing the crowd back into Whitehall, but that Whitehall was a seething mass of people. Stranded in the middle of the crowd at the end of Downing Street was a London Transport bus, and several of the rioters were scrambling on to it. One of them tossed a heap of leaflets up into the air, and they fluttered down and about like huge snowflakes.

  ‘GIVE US MEYA KAMIL OR GET OUT,’ cried the crowd.

  ‘Hand that to any of the police cars you see,’ Miller said to Murray, passing him a card; they’ll take you round the quickest way; I’ll be seeing you.’

  He hurried off, burly and vigorous.

  The chanting seemed to be dying down as Murray reached the park, seeing three police cars drawn up alongside parked cars, each with a man standing by it. But suddenly another group of rioters appeared. These were mostly young and mostly white as he; they came tearing along as if intent on forcing their way into Downing Street from the other direction. They were not chanting, but were flinging t
he leaflets right and left, and one of these floated close to Murray. He grabbed, touched but missed it, and then picked it up from the ground.

  He turned it over—and shivered.

  The picture on the back was remarkable—a lifelike reproduction of one of the black spiders. And from it there came a balloon with the familiar words inside: GIVE US MEYA KAMIL OR GET OUT.

  Murray gave Miller’s card to the first of the men by a police car, who glanced at it, and then opened the door. The driver was already at the wheel. Police had held the rioters back from here, as they had from this end of Downing Street, and there was no great delay, although reinforcements of police filled the road.

  ‘One of the ugliest riots I’ve ever seen, sir,’ remarked the police driver, ‘bad as the Paris riots before the war. I happened to be over there then. Same people behind them, if you ask me.’ He spoke without heat, yet in a tone of deep contempt. ‘If you ever get any trouble in London, it’s always the Commies—I don’t say it’s them behind this Canna business, mind you, but whenever they see their chance, they take it. Anything to give the Empire a kick in the pants.’

  ‘These aren’t all communists,’ Murray said.

  ‘Oh, no, I didn’t mean to suggest they were,’ the policeman agreed, ‘but there’s a good sprinkling, and they add fuel to the flames. Been a lot of coloured people over here from different colonies, too, and not all of them have had a square deal. Easy to get them worked up, if you know the right means. Proper art, this rabble rousing, but it won’t get them anywhere in the long run.’

  Murray said: ‘I suppose it won’t.’

  ‘Well, you can have as much sympathy as you like with what the poor beggars want, but who’s got any time for the way they go about getting it?’ Now, feeling crept into the driver’s voice, and the other man looked at him as if anxious that he shouldn’t say too much. ‘Perhaps conditions on Canna ought to be better, although everyone’s seemed happy enough with the old boy in charge, but when they start killing helpless women and children just to stir up trouble, start throwing hand grenades regardless, kidnapping kids and committing atrocities not far off Mau Mau horrors; well—you can’t deal with them kindly. Only one thing to do, then—use force.’

  ‘A lot of people agree with you,’ Murray said.

  ‘Don’t you, sir?’

  ‘George, perhaps this gentleman . . . began the man next to the driver, uneasily.

  ‘Don’t stop him, let’s go on,’ said Murray. He could still hear the roar of the crowd in the distance, and saw many more policemen walking briskly towards the scene of the trouble, but no one seemed flurried. ‘A straight answer to a straight question,’ he went on. ‘Yes, I think you have to use force of a kind. But I’m quite sure it will never settle anything permanently.’

  ‘Well, does.anything ever settle anything?’ the driver demanded. ‘Couldn’t exactly say that the United Nations have settled anything, could you? If you ask me, you want a law with a kick in it, and if there isn’t a kick, there’s no law worthwhile.’

  ‘George. . .

  ‘No, let him carry on.’

  ‘Well, sir,’ the driver declared, and now there was no doubt of his bitterness, ‘take what’s happening in Canna today. Everything looked all right with this chap, Meya Kamil. Then he disappeared, and before you know where you are there’s a full-scale revolt. That must have been planned for a hell of a long time. Not much doubt where it’s heading, either. Someone is going to say the island wants absolute independence and a republic—and bang goes another bit of the Empire. Well, I happen to have had a son who was killed in the Cyprus troubles, and what I say is, if the politicians let it come to fighting, then they want to go in with all they’ve got, and no holds barred. The other way is just playing at it. I’d send a division, and some of the Navy and the Air Force, and I’d make the devils know we meant business.’

  So would many thousands of others.

  And if it were done that way, it would create a bitterness and a hatred in the people of the island which nothing would ever eradicate.

  Craigie was alone in the office when Murray arrived.

  He was standing at his desk and looking at the island’s relief map; it seemed to be littered with red flags, thirty of them at least. He pressed his hands against his forehead as Murray went in, and Murray was quick to see that the expression in his eyes was very different from what it had been. Craigie saw these issues clearly, and knew exactly what would happen if the rule of force was vigorously imposed.

  There was fear in him.

  ‘Well, Nigel,’ he said, ‘they don’t mean to lose any time, do they? If it goes on for many more days I should say it will be beyond Meya Kamil or anyone else to remedy. We can’t keep pace with it.’

  ‘We might be nearer than we think,’ Murray said quietly. He felt the rising of his own excitement when he saw the glint which sprang to Craigie’s eyes, and went on: ‘Did you know there was gold on the island—a very big deposit, out in the hills where the earthquake struck twenty years ago?’

  Craigie said, almost breathlessly: ‘No, I didn’t. Are you sure?’

  ‘Juanita seems to be sure. Her father and Meya Kamil found it years ago. Everyone else with the party was killed in a fall of rock, and the two decided to keep it secret. They believed that if the gold were found and mined it would completely change the character of the island and the people so.. .’

  ‘Gold,’ repeated Craigie, and his voice became suddenly higher pitched. ‘There was gold on the Fatema, the ship which carried those arms, the master was paid in gold. Man named Crossman. He’s in a Nairobi jail now.’ He moved swiftly towards the desk and picked up a telephone. ‘If we can find out who paid him, we might be much nearer the end than we think.’ He paused, then spoke into the telephone. ‘Prime Minister . . .’

  His voice seemed to crackle.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’d bring Crossman over here if he won’t talk where he is, but there ought to be some way to make him talk.’

  ‘Yes,’ he repeated, ‘I’ll talk to my chief agent in Nairobi, and I’ll call you back.’

  When he rang off his eyes were glistening, and he looked much younger than he had a few minutes ago; hope had taken the years away. He didn’t pick up another telephone at once, but looked at Murray as if there was a lot that he wanted to say, but he didn’t quite know how to say it.

  Then:

  ‘We need to check all the movements of that ship, and get the files on the master’s movements before he was caught. Rondo was on that job for us; who did he have with him?’ He turned swiftly to one of the cabinets, pulled out a drawer, and began to touch files which Murray could only just see.

  A telephone light glowed, and there was a faint buzzing sound.

  ‘Answer that, will you?’ He kept touching the files, and as Murray moved, he went on speaking sotto voce, ‘if we could prove that someone is after independence for the island just to get hold of rich deposits of gold—but who can convince the people, except Meya Kamil?’

  Murray said: ‘Hallo.’

  ‘That isn’t Craigie or Loftus,’ a woman said, in a voice which he recognised at once. ‘It’s—oh, Nigel!’ That came with a wealth of relief. ‘This is Jane Wyatt, T-T-A . . .’

  ‘Yes, Jane,’ Murray said.

  ‘Nigel,’ Jane went on, and her voice was almost quivering with emotion, ‘Juanita thinks she knows where Meya Kamil is, she . . .’

  Then, Jane stopped.

  There was a pause.

  Then, Murray heard a scream.

  21. Life or Death

  To Murray, there was horror in the scream and horror in the silence from Jane. He stood for a second, gripping the telephone so tightly that it hurt, aware that Craigie was coming towards him, while he said:

  ‘What is it? Jane, what is it?’

  She didn’t answer, and there was no other scream, no other sound except the faint buzzing of the telephone line.

  ‘Jane!’

  The sliding door op
ened, and Loftus came in, clothes rumpled and a lock of hair falling over his right eye; he pushed it back impatiently, but obviously didn’t think much about it. He said something, but Murray didn’t catch it as he thrust the telephone into Craigie’s hand, and declared roughly:

  ‘I’m going over there.’

  ‘I’ll send others,’ Craigie said. ‘What . . .’

  Murray was already striding towards the door, which for once stood open, and Loftus moved to one side as if he knew that it would be folly to try to stop him.

  ‘Jane said that Juanita thinks she knows where Meya Kamil is. Then there was a scream, and that’s all.’ Murray reached the door and added roughly: ‘If they’ve hurt either . . .’

  He broke off.

  He went racing down the stairs and into the street. It was nearly dark and difficult to realise now, that there had been such a crush and a roar. A few groups of people were moving about Whitehall, and there were more police than usual, but that was all. The Jaguar was too far away, but the police car was parked nearby, and the driver stood by it.

  ‘Whereto, sir?’

  ‘Dineley Street, off Jermyn Street, and quicker than you’ve ever been in your life.’

  ‘Right, sir.’

  If Murray hadn’t been in the car he would never have believed that one could drive so fast through London. The driver simply put his foot down, and weaved through the traffic, beat the lights, and did it all without jeopardising them or anyone else. They were swinging out of the Mall and towards St. James’s Street almost as soon as Murray himself could have wished; there had been only moments of waiting.

  He didn’t know how soon Craigie could get other men to the house. But what good would that do? What had happened to the men watching? All this at stake; and . . .