The Black Spiders Read online

  6. News From Canna

  Juanita’s effect on the young subaltern was almost comical. Apparently he had not expected beauty or the bright blue eyes which stared at him with the candour which was so remarkable in any girl. He stopped half-way across the room, and after a moment’s pause, saluted.

  ‘Er—Miss Lang?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Juanita.

  ‘Excuse me, miss,’ said the constable into a lull which began to pall, ‘but can you give us any kind of evidence of identity?’

  Juanita looked at him as if she didn’t understand, and then turned to Murray for interpretation.

  ‘He means, can you prove that you’re Juanita Lang?’ explained Murray, straight-faced.

  ‘Prove the truth?’ She looked at the policeman, obviously annoyed, while the subaltern appeared to be about to speak, and then thought better of it. The girl seemed to hypnotise him; he couldn’t look away from her, was virtually oblivious of everything and everyone else. ‘What on earth do you mean?’ she finished.

  ‘Well, miss, if you’ve any document, such as a letter, or. . .’

  ‘I have not,’ said Juanita coldly. ‘My name in Juanita Lang, and I come from the Island of Canna.’

  It would not have surprised Murray had she coloured furiously, for probably she thought immediately of all the ‘proof’ she could offer—a pair of flimsy panties and a brassiere which were downstairs in the kitchen; he’d put them over the towel-rail. He had the impression that Juanita had led so sheltered a life that she would shock as easily as the Victorians.

  He couldn’t have been wrong.

  Her eyes sparkled, as if she saw the joke, her lips relaxed, and all hint of annoyance vanished. This seemed to puzzle the policeman and to relieve the subaltern’s anxiety, for he smiled broadly.

  ‘No, I am afraid I cannot offer you any proof,’ Juanita said sweetly, ‘unless you can suggest something, Mr. Murray?’

  ‘You had nothing much to prove anything when I found you,’ Murray said solemnly, and Juanita burst out laughing.

  There were depths to Juanita which Murray hadn’t even suspected; she was going to be worth getting to know. But there was something else, too. Excitement and brandy in her coffee had kept her going like this but it was a hard brightness which wasn’t likely to last for long. When reaction from the relief came, her spirits would probably drop completely.

  ‘Constable, does it really matter whether she can prove who she is or not?’ Murray asked. ‘If you carry on like this much longer you’ll make yourself offensive.’

  ‘I don’t mean to do anything like that, sir,’ the policeman said apologetically, ‘but you must admit that the circumstances are a little out of the ordinary.’ No understatement would ever be more masterly. ‘Is there a telephone in the house, sir?’

  ‘Afraid not.’

  ‘I can send my chaps. . .’ the subaltern began.

  ‘I know what I’ll do,’ decided the constable. ‘I’ll ask Syd to go to the station—it won’t take him long—and after that he can get on with his mail delivery. Anything you require, Miss—er—Lang?’

  ‘I’d like to know why you think I’m lying to you,’ she said, sweetly.

  ‘Oh, don’t think that, miss,’ the constable assured her, but he didn’t turn a hair; the subaltern did enough hair turning for a dozen country policemen. ‘Very sorry you’ve had such an unpleasant time, and I’ll arrange for a doctor to come very soon.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous; I don’t need a doctor.’

  ‘Just to check up, miss,’ the constable said, soothingly. ‘That’s all. Would you mind telling me exactly what happened?’

  Juanita told him precisely what she had told Murray, and added a little, under questioning. Her uncle, apparently a leader on the island, had some political problems and had wanted her to leave Canna until they were solved.

  The first time she had realised that anything was wrong was after her taxi had stopped near the house of her aunt, in Hampstead. Two men had forced her into another taxi, one had threatened her with a gun—the other had jabbed a needle into her arm.

  She remembered nothing after that, until she had woken in a house not far from here, and escaped and been followed. She did not know who had tried to help her, but knew that someone had; the unknown man at the corner, Murray realised.

  Apparently satisfied, the constable led the way out of the room, the subaltern followed, and before the door was closed, Juanita looked up at Murray, half smiling, half frowning; then she asked so clearly that the two men at the door could not fail to hear:

  ‘Are they quite normal, do you think?’

  ‘Oh, I should think so,’ Murray said with a grin, ‘and with luck we’ll soon know what it’s all about. Haven’t you any idea?’

  ‘I have not.’ Now her eyes sparkled. ‘And please don’t you start...’

  ‘Sorry,’ Murray said hastily. ‘No offence intended!’ He stood looking down at her, while the policeman made impatient noises from the door. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I’ve sorted some of the things out,’ he promised firmly. ‘Why don’t you take a nap?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ she said. ‘As a matter of fact, though. .

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I would love a cup of tea and some toast.’

  ‘I’ll fix it at once,’ Murray promised, and he went out and closed the door.

  Both the men were waiting on the tiny landing, and neither made any comment, although the soldier’s colour was still high. They went downstairs like a platoon of the Home Guard, and at the bottom Murray said:

  ‘I’m going to make some tea and toast and take it up to her. If one of you would care to explain while I’m doing it, I’d be grateful, but don’t exert yourselves.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, sir,’ said the constable with heavy deliberation, ‘yesterday afternoon a general call was put out to all police stations and branches, for information leading to the apprehension of Miss Juanita Lang, who has been missing from her home. I can’t tell you any more than that, sir, except that all military establishments, naval and air-force establishments, civil airports and termini of all kinds were also requested to keep an eye open for the young lady. If you don’t mind me saying so, it was a bit of a shock to find her here, especially as I understand from the call that she had been forcibly abducted from her home.’ He gave Murray a straight look. ‘But if you know nothing about it, then there’s nothing for you to worry about, is there?’

  ‘No, constable, there isn’t,’ agreed Murray, almost humbly. ‘I’ll go and make that tea.’

  If such a widespread call had been put out for the girl, it made her something precious, and Murray did not doubt that it was connected with her uncle’s political problems. The sharp-featured man undoubtedly came from the island, the girl’s association was with the island, and Judge Lang . . .

  He wished he could remember more about Judge Lang, but fifteen or twenty years ago he hadn’t been seriously interested in outposts of the Empire—or, as they were now called, crucial areas in the defence strategy of the west.

  He made tea and toast, boiled some eggs, and took a tray up to Juanita. She was hungry enough to relish food. He knew that many things were happening in a minor key, outside. Another squad of soldiers had come, complete with gasmasks, and gone into the lounge; the subaltern might be easily embarrassed and very young, but he knew his job. The postman hurried off. A car-load of men in plain clothes had arrived, but so far none of these had shown any interest in Murray or in Juanita. When he took the tray downstairs, however, Murray saw that guards were stationed not only at the gate, but at each vantage spot in the garden. Two were by the well, and the plain-clothes men were obviously very busy there, searching the ground. One man was sitting on the edge of the well itself, and appeared to be staring down, as if he hoped that the water would talk, or that he would discover a new oracle.

  From the front door, Murray saw the newspaper man on a motor-cycle pull up outside the gates. The guards stopped him.
A third soldier went at the double to take the newspapers—there should be The Times and the Post-Dispatch, because even though he had been fired, it remained an excellent newspaper of the popular kind.

  He took the newspaper from the soldier messenger.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  Murray went into the kitchen. He couldn’t go into the lounge, for the door was locked and padlocked—he had not been told what the gas squad had discovered, and was quite prepared to believe that it had been nothing more than tear gas. He sat on a comer of the kitchen table, and as he did so realised for the first time what the situation really implied. He was a prisoner on his own cottage, and until he was given permission, would not be able to leave.

  And if Juanita Lang had been a princess of royal blood, they couldn’t guard her more closely.

  He unfolded the Post-Dispatch, and his gaze roamed over the headlines on the front page, absorbing rather than reading, mentally marking those stories he would want to read first. Then he saw the end column headline, and his eyebrows shot up.

  Policeman Murdered in Canna

  Terrorist attack

  Murray read the story quickly.

  It told him little more than the headline, but it sickened him. There had been rumours of political unrest in Canna for some time, but few people had, taken it seriously, the one colony which appeared to have exactly what it and its natives wanted. No details had reached the public yet; it was just talk, rumours, gossip, raised eyebrows. You could be an internationalist, like Murray, believing in the rights of all peoples to govern themselves and in their duty to co-operate with other peoples—you could even get fired from the Post-Dispatch for holding and expressing views which did not fit in with the policy of the newspaper—but when you read of trouble in Canna, it hurt.

  As Cyprus had hurt; and Kenya, Singapore, Malaya, Uganda, all the places where unrest had at some time or other threatened to disrupt orderly Government. When you believed, as Murray believed, that Whitehall was honestly waiting until conditions were ripe for self-government, this kind of thing hurt badly. It did a lot of harm, too. It gave Moscow red-hot propaganda, which spread to most parts of the world, and it gave the anti-British factions in the United States, on the continent of Europe and in most other countries, plenty to shout about. More: it made the genuine friends of the Commonwealth uneasy.

  There were a lot of things that Murray knew and which were not known to the man in the street. He knew how often the men on the spot badly mishandled negotiations with local leaders; he knew how often sheer political stupidity had allowed a situation to get out of hand. He knew when the stiff-necked ineptitude of Whitehall was to blame for troubles, and he also knew when the chief cause of the troubles was political—when, for party advantage, one side or the other in the House took up an almost wicked attitude, or delayed action, or talked out of the backs of their necks, making fodder for the enemies of Britain.

  He also knew that the situation on Canna had been almost ideal; better even than the Gold Coast, for the Cannan people had centuries of their own culture and their own tradition behind them. Canna had always been a willing partner in the Commonwealth. If there was trouble on the island, it was being stirred up from the outside.

  Of that Murray felt sure.

  Murray tossed a cigarette into the fireplace, and then opened the pages of The Times. With luck, there would be a more detailed story of the murder of the policeman in Canna. There was, but it did not really help him. It was not until he was at the end of the story that he had the clue for which he had been seeking since he had heard that the girl’s name was Juanita Lang.

  ‘. . . there is little doubt that the island’s leader, Sir Meya Kamil, will share the horror which all the people of the island feel as a result of this cruel murder. Sir Meya has not yet commented on the situation, but his daughter, who is known to give unofficial voice to his views, has described it as “an unspeakable outrage”.’

  Meya Kamil, and his daughter—his family—his sister. So that was it. A sister of the greatest man in Canna had married Judge Lang, that was the thing which had teased Murray; so this girl was the great Meya Kamil’s niece. He found himself seeing her in his mind’s eye as she had turned her head to and fro desperately and said: ‘I don’t know where he is.’

  Was Meya Kamil missing? The newspapers gave no hint of it.

  Why had Juanita been sent to England? Murray was folding the newspaper, completely uninterested in other news, when he heard the subaltern approaching; the brisk walk made him feel sure that it was the youngster. He went out, and hid a grin at the salute and the crisp:

  ‘Can you spare me a moment, sir?’ ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘There is a field telephone by the gate, sir, and Superintendent Miller of New Scotland Yard would like to speak to you.’

  Murray echoed slowly: ‘Miller,’ and immediately had a mind picture of a very big, rather ungainly man, with a sandy moustache and thin sandy hair, and a look as if he had been dusted with flour; so ‘Dusty’ Miller. He had not seen Miller for years, and could not be said to be on the Yard’s visiting list, but as he walked towards the gate and the field telephone, he was not marvelling at the thoroughness of the police and the military, but was trying to recall what he knew about Miller, and why it should be Miller, not one of the other Yard men whom he knew fairly well.

  Miller, of course, was Special Branch.

  Miller was a kind of Scotland Yard liaison officer with the security departments, especially with the Department for Home Security, known familiarly to many as Department Z.

  Murray reached the field telephone, and took an instrument from a soldier who looked about sixteen, and told himself that the important thing was to keep an open mind.

  7. Summons

  ‘Nigel Murray speaking,’ Murray said. ‘Did I get your name right? Superintendent Miller?’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Miller, and his voice had an unmistakable tone—it wasn’t quite Cockney and it wasn’t quite cultured. Miller was one of the most downright and matter- of-fact men whom Murray had ever met. ‘You’ve been having a bit of trouble down there, I understand.’

  ‘A little trouble and a lot of mystery.’

  ‘Just up your street,’ said Miller. He was also a humourless man or that was his reputation. A spade was a spade, and he saw nothing funny in calling it a bloody shovel. ‘Well, I was talking to the Post-Dispatch just now; thought you were still on the staff. Who are you with now?

  ‘No one.’

  ‘Free-lancing?’

  ‘I’m what is known in some circles as resting.’

  ‘Like that, is it?’ said Miller, as if pleased, and then went on with hardly a pause: ‘Well, we don’t want anything of the trouble down in Dorset to reach the newspapers—don’t want anyone named, especially. I’m told you haven’t been out of the cottage since the police arrived.’

  ‘With the army.’

  ‘Hm, yes,’ said Miller. ‘I was told they’d taken over; give them half a chance for a bit of practice, and they turn it into full-scale manoeuvres. Well, listen. I’d like to have a talk with you up here. Any objection to coming up right away?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ Murray said.

  ‘What’s the reservation?’

  ‘I’m not sure that I want to leave Juani . . .’

  ‘The girl’ Miller almost shouted. ‘No name!’

  ‘Oh. Sorry.’ This was hush-hush with a vengeance, and Murray realised that in spite of everything that had happened, he hadn’t begun to grasp all the essentials; the sense of unreality with him since the first moment of waking was still very marked. And he was tired; he doubted whether he had had two hours’ sleep during the night. ‘Anyway, I’m not sure that I want to leave her with the people down here,’ he added. ‘They seem to regard her as a freak, and. . .’

  ‘Well, she is a freak, in a way,’ Miller declared; ‘like people who have quads, if you know what I mean. You needn’t worry about that, t
hough; someone’s on the way to take care of her. A Mrs. Wyatt, who should be there soon, she’s flying down. She’ll have a friend with her— chap named Oundle. They’ll have proper credentials, and. they’ll take over. The girl will be all right with them, you needn’t worry.’

  ‘All right,’ Murray gave in. ‘When do you want me?’

  ‘Well, why not come up on the plane that’s bringing Mrs. Wyatt and Oundle?’ asked Miller; ‘be up in no time, that way.’

  ‘Suits me,’ Murray agreed again. When the Yard commanded. . .

  ‘Ta,’ said Miller, and then added heavily: ‘Don’t try to get in touch with any newspapers, will you?’

  ‘You’re not giving me much chance,’ Murray said dryly.

  He rang off, put the receiver down slowly, then took out his cigarettes. His case was empty. The subaltern produced a full one, and insisted. Murray lit up. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Apparently I have to go to London.’ He walked slowly and thoughtfully towards the cottage, which looked very small and solid from the road. It was made of Purbeck stone, and was two hundred years old, little more than a box of granite with a slate roof. But for the garden and the position, it would have looked ugly, but somehow it fitted in with the landscape. He saw the window of his bedroom, and wondered whether Juanita Lang was asleep, or whether she would soon get restless and want to be up.

  The constable, Bob, was coming out of the cottage carrying a photograph, which he tucked away into his tunic pocket.

  ‘You’ll be glad to know that identification has been established, sir.’

  ‘The lady didn’t lie.’

  ‘No, sir,’ the constable said. ‘Very truthful young lady, sir.’

  Murray smiled faintly, and stood aside for the subaltern, whose name he didn’t know. A Reginald, perhaps, or a Lionel? A mother’s pride, no doubt; and in his honest way, England’s pride, too.

  ‘That just about covers everything,’ Murray said, ‘except that no one told me the result of the poison-gas squad’s investigation.’