The Department of Death Page 4

  “Someone dialled 999.”

  “When?”

  “Just after four o’clock.”

  “Very late,” murmured Loftus, “especially if they wanted the police to find Grant there, which was obviously the idea. I wonder what delayed them?”

  “The killers would want to make sure they were safe first. They probably needed time to get all documents out of the house.”

  “Hm, yes,” said Loftus, screwing up his face into a vast and ugly scowl. “But they knew where to lay their hands on everything; they shouldn’t have needed more than half an hour. Anyhow, the delay is a thing to be remembered. The other thing is that Grant doesn’t know who hit him, but does know that Casado went to the place to meet a woman whom he had obviously met there often before. Know who she is?”

  Craigie shook his head. “Not yet. The house was rented furnished. Miller is going to find out more about it this morning.”

  “Good old Dusty! Next, then. Grant isn’t sure, but thinks he knows the woman by sight. He won’t commit himself yet. And if things are what they appear to be, she conspired with the killer to leave him shut up with the murdered man. Remember that dark-haired glossy beauty in white who sat with the Foreign Secretary—the Baroness von Barlack, no less.”

  Craigie said slowly: “Yes.”

  “I fancy Grant thinks it was her. First job now, to find her. Jim had to try—”

  “She dodged him when leaving the ball. So did the woman in scarlet.”

  “Could be significant. Well, I think you and I ought to have forty winks, and then put Bruce on the job. Have you sent for him?”

  “He’ll be here at eight o’clock,” said Craigie.

  As he spoke a green light glowed in the mantlepiece. He leaned forward and pressed a bell-push, and the sliding door opened to admit a solid, brown-clad, brown-haired man.

  “Hallo, Bruce,” said Loftus.

  6 / Assignment for Grant

  It was midday when Grant woke up.

  He didn’t at first realize where he was. The curtains were drawn, but daylight filtered through at the sides, and he knew that it must be late morning. His head ached, giving him the first reminder of what had happened. He sat up cautiously and fingered his scalp. The swelling had gone down slightly but was still painful. He got out of bed and could move without becoming dizzy. He remembered everything vividly. He sipped some water, then lit his first cigarette of the day.

  Someone was moving about the flat, but he didn’t call out. The room was small; the walls plain except for daubs of scarlet in the corner and a dado in violent colours which looked as if it had been hand-painted. That suggested that Faraday liked to lie here and dream Bacchanalian dreams. The nude figures, all linked by grape-vines, were beautifully depicted. The furniture was ultra-modern and pale cream, but the pillows were of down and the bed luxurious.

  Footsteps approached the door, and it opened slowly. Faraday stepped in.

  “Oh, hallo! What’s it like to feel dead?”

  “Deadly. What’s the time?”

  “The sun, as they say, has passed its meridian. You’ve built your strength up nicely. How’s the head?”

  “All right. Any news?”

  “News? My dear chap, it’s the greatest morning for news since the Normandy beaches. Every newspaper, every—”

  “I said news.”

  “Well, not exactly. Like a cup of tea? I know you’re surprised to find me so domesticated, but you’ll get used to it. No, no news worth speaking of. Nothing about our own little spot of bother in the papers, anyhow—they’re too full of crowned heads and Foreign Ministers.”

  “I suppose that’s something to be glad about,” said Grant. “Yes, a cup of tea would be welcome. Thanks.”

  “Bathroom first on the left as you go into the hall, shaving what-not all laid out—I should make a good valet, too! But stall around until I bring that tea.”

  At one o’clock Grant was dressed—still in his tails—and feeling on edge to hear from Loftus. Faraday, who had slept until about eleven, looked fresh and perky. He showed no sign of anxiety to get on with the job, or that he was worried about what to do next.

  “You know, old chap, your chief trouble is that you’re blaming yourself for it all,” he said. “No blame, or, at least, very little.”

  Grant said: “I’m to blame for plenty, but I suppose that doesn’t matter.” He motioned to the newspapers. “That does.”

  “I don’t quite follow.”

  “The Congress of Europe could break on this.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t put it as high as that. It might get a few cracks here and there, but they’ll be mended.”

  “More likely get wider,” said Grant. “This will work two ways. It’ll agitate all the countries concerned as well as some of those outside it, and it will be a nasty shock for public opinion. There’s been a fair wind blowing—that all is well in Europe, we’re really getting together in spite of pressures from without, it’s showing results. Now—back to the old business. Before long there’ll be scrapping and fighting and—”

  Faraday wrinkled his nose.

  “Now I can really put my finger on the spot of your trouble, old chap. If you settle down to think logically about this business, you get yourself into a hell of a mess. You can only see a tiny segment of whatever’s going on. Craigie and Loftus see the thing as a whole, and they decide what wants doing and tell us where and when to get moving. Best for us just to carry out orders. I mean it.” Faraday added. “Think back over the jobs you’ve tackled in the past. If you’d gone into them thinking about the odds against, you’d have said there wasn’t a chance in hell and thrown in your hand right away. Wouldn’t you?”

  “There’s something in that.”

  “You want a dose of Alka Seltzer, you’d feel a lot better after that,” said Faraday. “Be a help if you had some daytime clothes on, too. What about going round to your flat, and—”

  “I’ll wait for Loftus,” said Grant.

  “Welcome. How about food? I can send for some lunch, but can’t manage breakfast! Hungry?”

  “Well—”

  They were in the middle of lunch when Loftus telephoned, was brief, asked Grant to return to his own flat and wait for him there. Grant rubbed his left chin when he replaced the reciever, and looked more cheerful.

  “Assignment fixed?” asked Faraday.

  “I fancy so. He wasn’t sour and didn’t seem sore.”

  Faraday laughed.

  “We haven’t enough bright boys like you, can’t afford to stand you off because you’ve slipped up once or twice. Odd thing—the benighted Ministry doesn’t pay us enough to make it worth our while, always complains about expenses, must keep everything down to a bare minimum, and also complains if we don’t get results. Odder thing, the results always come, although not always fast enough for their lordships or ministerial moguls. Hope you and I work together,” he added. “I think we could get along.”

  Grant said: “Yes, I hope so.”

  He didn’t say that he much preferred working on his own, although he knew that lone-wolf methods had failed him so badly the night before. He hoped Loftus wouldn’t instruct him to work with anyone else all the time; but if there had to be someone, Faraday would do better than most he knew; but he didn’t know many Department Z men.

  Grant decided to walk to his flat, one of a small service block near Shaftesbury Avenue. It was cold enough to wear his scarf tucked tightly round his neck, and the only signs of his evening dress were his trousers and patent shoes. There was still frost on the chimneys where the sun hadn’t touched them, but the sky was cloudless and the day bright.

  Now and again he paused at a shop window, ostensibly to look at the goods displayed, actually to make sure that he wasn’t followed. Nothing aroused his suspicions.

  He hadn’t weighed up all the possibilities by a long way; he was doing a bad job. The woman and his assailant might have worked together; might have worked separately. The woman hers
elf could have been attacked, even kidnapped. Far-fetched? Judged by normal standards, everything was far-fetched. One of the troubles of being in the Service was the difficulty of seeing things normally. Faraday probably had the right angle—don’t think. You had a job and you had your instructions; cut out everything else. Suppress emotions, sentiment, any sense of justice, any sense of fair play. It was one of the callings, perhaps the only one, where there was no room for any of these things: no Queensberry rules. If you were up against it, shoot your way out. If you had to kill in order to get what you wanted—kill. That was exactly the way the other side worked, and you couldn’t beat them if you used kid-glove methods.

  He’d been at the work year in and year out and still had scruples, still let himself think beyond his actual job. He mustn’t. This was his first big chance with Craigie and Department Z, he was little more than a recruit in spite of his long experience abroad.

  He stood on the corner of Piccadilly and the Circus, by Swan and Edgar’s, looked at the statue of Eros pointing his arrow and listened to the people talking and walking about him. Several couples were discussing the Palace murder. Two newsvendors were shouting “Palace Murder, Latest!” Probably there was hardly a man, woman or child in Great Britain who didn’t know about it. Most people on the Continent knew by now; in America—everywhere. This was global news, a world sensation and a world danger. It was nonsense to try to discipline himself not to think, you had to think. If the Department failed to solve this crime and failed to prove that it was the act of a crazy individual or an equally crazy group of zealots, repercussions in Europe and throughout the world would be extremely grave.

  A young girl and an elderly woman passed him.

  “I do hope it doesn’t mean war,” said the woman. “In the Daily World it says—”

  The rest of her words were lost when a bus cavorted round the Circus, back-firing. Grant turned away abruptly and walked along Shaftesbury Avenue. Half-way along, he realized that at the Circus he hadn’t even taken the trouble to look round and find out if he were being followed. He stopped outside a bookshop and pretended to read the titles in the window, while watching in both directions. Finished, he glanced across the road. He recognized no one whom he had seen before that morning, but he did notice a man with an umbrella and a bowler hat.

  Grant didn’t quite know why he picked the fellow out.

  He was a man of medium height, well-dressed in a dark-grey suit, with the bowler hat tipped jauntily to one side and the umbrella hanging over his left arm. He looked the kind of man who would always be in a hurry to get wherever he was going, yet he was dawdling outside an empty window.

  Grant took the next turning left, away from his flat, along an alley and, near the far corner, slipped into the doorway of a shop. He peered out and saw the man with the umbrella, hurrying now. He was a good-looking chap, in a rather colourless way, and seemed worried. Grant went into the shop, bought a box of matches and came out, almost bumping into the man.

  He saw surprise leap into a pair of pale-grey eyes; and also relief. The man stepped aside with an apology and went towards the corner, much more slowly. Five minutes later, when Grant was near his flat, the man was behind him on the same side of the road. Grant passed the front entrance to the block of flats.

  From inside the porter called out: “Morning, sir!”

  Grant ignored him as he went on. At the end of the street was a five-road junction where he could easily throw off pursuit. He hurried along to it, turned sharp left, swung into a little alley which led to the back entrance of the flat. In the alley, he waited and watched.

  The man with the umbrella did not appear.

  Grant went in at the back and pushed open the door leading to the main hallway, to the astonishment of the porter, a small man with one arm.

  “I—I thought it was you, sir. But—”

  “Didn’t want the world to know I’ve been out all night,” said Grant with a grin. “Take me up, will you?”

  “Sure.”

  The porter opened the doors of the lift, and as Grant stepped inside, he glanced towards the street. The man with the umbrella stood there.

  So “they” not only knew what but who he was.

  The sense of danger exhilarated him; it always did. But the fact that he had been identified and located offset all feeling of satisfaction. He stood outside the door of his flat, hearing the lift as it whirred down and waited to make sure that it didn’t come up again. He would find out from the porter, later, whether the man with the umbrella had asked questions. He took out his keys and opened the door of the flat, wondering by what means he had been identified, whether this wasn’t a good reason for advising Craigie and Loftus not to use him on this job. The fact that he was known put a strong weapon in the hands of the enemy.

  The door swung behind him, and closed with a snap. A man he had never seen before stepped out of the livingroom.

  7 / Threats

  “Good morning, Mr. Grant.” The stranger smiled amiably, as if his presence were unremarkable.

  “Oh, hallo,” said Grant. He moved forward, and the other backed into the room. The man had his right hand in his pocket; he withdrew it partially and showed the grey metal of an automatic. “How did you get in?” Grant went on.

  “I’m a difficult man to keep out.”

  “I’ll have to complain to the management,” said Grant. “I thought this place was burglar-proof.”

  “There’s no such thing as a guarantee against burglars,” the other said. “But you can only blame yourself. An impression of your latch-key was taken at Mayberry Avenue last night, and so I just let myself in.”

  “Very clever.” They were both in the long narrow livingroom now, the visitor by the window, Grant near the fireplace. Grant unwound his scarf, tossed it on to a chair, and took off his overcoat. “What can I do for you?”

  “We’re going to have a talk. The telephone is disconnected, so you can’t send for help. I have a man at the door—you didn’t see him, but he’s there by now—and another at the fire-escape.”

  “You’d better come into the bedroom,” Grant said. “I’m tired of wearing tails.”

  He turned and went out of the living-room, half-expecting to be ordered to keep still. He made no attempt to get into the other room in time to slam the door in the face of the man, who followed him in a leisurely way. The bedroom was long and narrow like the sitting-room, furnished pleasantly but with none of Faraday’s modernistic touches. Grant went to the wardrobe and took down a navy-blue suit. Then he went to the chest of drawers for shirts, socks, and all the accessories. He didn’t look at the other again, but believed that he would shoot if he made any attempt to turn the tables. He laid the clothes out on the bed.

  “I’m about ready,” he said.

  “I know you’re from Department Z, Grant. I want to know when you first knew there was going to be trouble last night?”

  “Any organization with a name like Department Z ought to know all the answers,” said Grant. “I imagine that it has an all-seeing eye, and what it can’t possibly see it learns by telepathy.” He began to change his clothes; his nerve was all right.

  “I saw your card, the one that was taken from you last night, so it’s pointless to lie.”

  Grant unbuttoned his stiff boiled shirt, took it off and tossed it on to the bed, and said: “It isn’t a lie. I’m in the Department, of course.” His casualness hid a fierce eagerness to win results from this; his eyes were dull, but he scanned the other closely. He saw no sign of satisfaction; the man hadn’t been bluffing, and the admission about Department Z gave nothing away. “I’m just one of the cogs in the wheel,” he said. “I get orders and carry them out.”

  “Who is the leader?”

  “I don’t even know that.”

  The man put his left hand to his pocket, drew out a wallet, opened it dexterously and took out a card. He put that on the dressing-table, tucked the wallet away, then held out the card; it was a photograp
h. All this time Grant studied him. Grant himself was now stripped to singlet and trunks, and he stretched out for a pin-stripe shirt.

  Every feature of this man’s face was imprinted on his mind. It was long and narrow, inclined to be sallow. The nose was curved inwards, giving him an odd look; it wasn’t a broken nose, just one with a flat bridge. His eyes were grey, there was nothing remarkable about them. He had mousy-coloured hair with lashes and eyebrows of rather a darker shade, and his mouth was small, his chin pointed. There was nothing remarkable about his face, either; but there were the general characteristics and one or two noticeable marks and features. His right ear stuck out more than his left; he had a small pin-head mole at the base of his right nostril; and a vein in his neck was unusually prominent, perhaps because the neck was so long. He was dressed in dark grey, and the suit seemed to be of good English cut. His English was all right; not faultless, the English of an average Englishman with a slight veneer of culture; a man who obviously tried to speak well, but didn’t find it came naturally; he had a faint brogue which Grant couldn’t place.

  He tossed the photograph on to the bed.

  Grant put on his shirt.

  “Look at that,” ordered the other.

  Grant picked it up and turned it over, already steeled to show no sign as to whether it affected him or not. He hoped he kept a poker face, but the thing shook him. It was a coloured photograph, and it showed a man whose body was horribly mutilated.

  “That’s the kind of thing that will happen to you if you don’t talk,” said the man with the gun. “You’re one of the leaders.”

  “Nonsense.” Grant pulled on his trousers. “Supposing you change the subject?” He picked up the photograph again and studied it. “After all, be fair. Don’t threaten me with this kind of treatment because I can’t tell you what you want to know.”

  The man said softly: “There’s nothing you can do to help yourself, don’t forget it. Where is Casado’s body?”