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(Based on a World War II poster)
"Another Little Drink,"
William Collins, London, England, 1940
"Another Little Drink,"
William Collins, White Circle Book #336m, Jun 1946
"Another Little Drink,"
Pan Book #G108, London, England, Mar 1958
BELLAMY slid off the high stool, walked unsteadily to the window and stood swaying on his heels looking down at the snow on Conduit Street. The bar-tender mixed himself a whisky and soda and began to polish the chromium counter. Bellamy turned, and leaned against the window, looking at the bar-tender.
He was tall, slim and dark. He looked immaculate although his quiet grey suit was old. There were circles under his eyes. He looked very tired, slightly depraved. His big brown eyes were dull.
He said in a low, rather hoarse and attractive voice: "Why doesn't anybody come in here? Has Mr. March been in, Sydney?"
He began to walk towards the bar.
Sydney said: "No, I 'aven't seen 'im for days. Believe it or not I s'pose 'e's short of money like everyone else in this bloody war. 'E was a good spender when 'e 'ad it."
Bellamy climbed on to the high stool. He picked up his glass and finished the whisky and soda. He looked at Sydney. Sydney mixed another one. Bellamy began to sing off key:
<
"Here's to the good old whisky,
Get it down, get it down...."
The bar-tender said: "No, Mr. Bellamy, let's 'ave the other one."
Bellamy leaned over the bar towards Sydney. Sydney put his head close against Bellamy's. They began to harmonise. They sang:
"If the sergeant steals your rum—never mind.
If the sergeant steals your rum—never mind,
He's entitled to a tot,
But he'll take the bloody lot,
For he's just an awful sot.
Never M-i-n-d!"
They finished on a high-pitched note. It sounded awful. Bellamy picked up his glass and drained it. The bar-tender said:
"Mr. Bellamy, believe it or not, you owe five pounds four shillings."
Bellamy looked at him dully. He murmured:
"Oh, my God! Five pounds four shillings. It must be a he."
He considered for a moment. Then he said:
"Sydney, I feel sick. How much whisky do you have to have to feel sick, Sydney?"
The bar-tender thought for a moment. Then he said: "Believe it or not I've never 'ad enough whisky to feel sick."
Bellamy got up. He walked to the chair where his overcoat lay and began to struggle into it.
He said: "I hoped Mr. March would come in. Where the hell is that one?" He fumbled in his coat pockets. "Have you got a shilling, Sydney?"
The bar-tender put his hand in his pocket. He produced a shilling and laid it on the bar top. Bellamy picked it up, walked to the fruit machine which stood up against the wall beside the bar, put in the shilling and pulled the handle down. When the machine stopped working the three golden lemons were in a line. There was a dick, and a gold coloured plaque came out into Bellamy's hand. He grinned feebly. He took the plaque over to the bar and put it down.
"That's the first time I've ever got any money out of one of those machines," he said. "Five pounds. That leaves four shillings on the bill I owe you. Well run that."
"What you say, Mr. Bellamy," said Sydney. "Congratulations on that win. Believe it or not I think you ought to 'ave one on the 'ouse."
Bellamy nodded. He wished Sydney would stop saying "Believe it or not." The bar-tender poured out another double Haig. Bellamy stood teetering on his heels. Then he began to put on his gloves. He picked up his hat, put it on. Said:
"Goo'-bye, Sydney," and walked out of the room.
The bar-tender heard him going unsteadily down the stairs. He grinned. He picked up the whisky and soda that Bellamy had left and put it under the bar.
Outside it was dark and cold. Bellamy, his hands in his overcoat pockets, his feet crunching in the snow, walked down Conduit Street, turned into Bond Street, then off towards Albemarle Street. He began to feel sick.
Half-way down Albemarle Street he looked into a doorway. A dim blue sign twinkled: "The Malayan Club. First Floor. Open." Bellamy turned into the doorway and began to walk up the stairs. When he came to the turning in the stairs he leaned against the balustrade for a moment and then sat down. He closed his eyes for a moment and leaned back against the wall. The cold air on top of the whisky he had been drinking most of the afternoon was making his head spin.
To his left on the small landing at the turn of the stairway was a cloak-room door. To his right, looking up the stairs, Bellamy could see that the double doors of the Malayan Club were slightly open. Through the aperture he could see a table already laid for dinner. He got to his feet and began to walk up the stairs. He pushed open the door.
The Malayan Club was an "L"-shaped room with the bar round the corner from where Bellamy stood. He walked up to the bar. He grinned drunkenly at the blonde barmaid:
"Hullo, honey," he said. "And how is my little Blondie?"
The girl smiled.
"I'm swell," she said.
She shot a quick glance at the only other occupant of the room—a woman.
Bellamy leaned up against the bar. He looked at Blondie. He looked from her carefully-marcelled hair down to her neat shoes. He murmured:
"Did anyone ever tell you that you've got something, honey? Well, you have. You have sex appeal plus. You are practically a unique woman. One of these days when the weather gets a little better I'm going to make love to you. I'm going to tell you that your eyes are like amethysts and that the curve of your hips is just nobody's business. I'll probably write you a poem too. That's the sort of fellow I am."
She said: "Mr. Bellamy, really! Anyhow, you talk to all the girls like that."
"You lie in your teeth," said Bellamy. "You are the only woman I ever really loved. One day when I've got time, you might remind me to tell you what I really think about you."
She smiled.
"That ought to be good," she said. He leaned over the bar and whispered something in her ear.
"Mr. Bellamy!" Her eyes twinkled. "You've got your nerve!"
"That," said Bellamy, "is about all I have got. Blondie, what ought I to drink?"
She smiled at him. She was thinking that there was something rather nice about Nick Bellamy, that he was a mug to drink so much. She was wondering why he never did any work.
"The hair of the dog that bit you is what they say," she smiled.
He grinned. The grin showed his even white teeth below the small black moustache. He said:
"All right. A double Haig." She hesitated. Then:
"Are you going to pay for it, Mr. Bellamy?"
He looked at her vaguely.
"What's the idea?" he asked.
She looked a little uncomfortable.
"Your bill here is over seven pounds, Mr. Bellamy," she said. "The Guv'nor says nothing doing until that's paid."
He said nothing. He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and produced a cigarette case. He opened it and took out a cigarette. The woman who had been sitting by the fire in the other corner of the room came over to the bar.
She was of middle height with a round and attractive figure. She was fair; her face was pleasant and the features well-cut. Her eyes were very blue.
She was well-dressed in a tailored suit which seemed cut to accentuate the curves of her figure. Her silk stockings were beige and very sheer, and her small feet were encased in patent leather pumps with four-inch heels. Stuck in the front of her black crepe de chine turban was a small diamond question-mark.
She came up to the bar and stood beside Bellamy. She said in a quiet well-bred voice:
"Don't let them get you down, Nicky. And have that drink on me."
She ordered two double whiskies and sodas. Bellamy smiled at her.
"Whoever you are, you're a sweet," he said. "I think that's very very kind of you. Having regard to the amount of money that I've spent in this bar you'd think they'd've stretched my credit to one more drink." He made a little bow. "My name's Bellamy," he said. "How d'you do?"
She laughed.
"I'm very well," she said. "But why pretend you don't know me? We've met before." She flashed him a smile. "I'm not in the habit of buying strange men drinks, Nicky," she said.
"Well, what d'you know about that?" said Bellamy. "And how could I forget somebody like you? I wonder where we met and if it was me—if it was me!"
"I've seen you half a dozen times," she said. "At Ferdie Mott's place usually. I was there with Harcourt March that night you won £120 on one hand at poker, and I've seen you do a little losing too. But I can understand you not remembering me. Most of the time you were too cock-eyed to remember anything."
He said: "I know. Isn't it awful? Every morning when I wake up I make up my mind I'm going to give up drinking because it interferes with work. But as the day goes on I come to the conclusion that it is work that interferes with drinking." He said to her with great gravity: "I like drinking."
He drained his glass.
"So I see," she said. "What about another?" Bellamy said: "I think you're very kind." She ordered two more whiskies.
"Just in case you'd like to remember me the next time you see me," she said. "I'm Iris Berington—Mrs. Iris Berington."
He nodded.
"Of course," he said. "Now I'm beginning to remember. I saw you around one day in some club with Harcourt. So he must be a friend of yours. He's an old friend of mine. So now I'm an old friend of yours. I'm very fond of Harcourt, but I like you better.
"Harcourt's good fun," she said. "He has one trouble. The same as yours. He drinks a little too much."
Bellamy said: "Impossible! You can't drink too much."
She laughed.
"You're incorrigible. But I suppose you've heard that from a lot of people?"
He said airily: "I've heard that from a lot of women. I like being that way."
He looked at her seriously.
"Iris," he went on, "I think you're marvellous. One of these fine days when I've got time I must tell you what I really think about you."
She smiled at him: "A few minutes ago you were saying exactly the same thing to the barmaid.'
"I know," said Bellamy. "Didn't anybody ever tell you that history invariably repeats itself?"
She said:
"And you consider yourself history?"
"History's practically my second name," said Bellamy. "Anyway, honey, if you'll be Cleopatra I'll have a stab at being a successful Marc Antony."
He walked over to the chair where he had left his hat.
"I must be getting along," he said. "There was some place I had to go to—somebody I was looking for. If I could only remember where it was or who it was. Goodbye, Iris, I'll be seeing you, and the next drink'll be on me."
She put her hand over his.
"I'm often around here," she said, "usually about eleven o'clock at night. I'll always be very glad to see you, Nicky."
"That's very nice of you," said Bellamy. "You know," he said dramatically, "it's my fatal beauty that does it."
She smiled.
"I bet it is," she said. "Well, so long!"
She went back to her seat by the fire. Bellamy walked to the door. With his hand on the door-knob he turned and said:
"I say, if you see Harcourt by any chance, tell him I'd like to see him sometime."
She said: "Yes, of course I will. Where is it you want to see him?"
"Oh, just around," said Bellamy vaguely. "You see, he and I use all the same clubs and bars around here. As we both possess the swellest thirsts it's practically impossible for us to miss each other for very long. 'Bye, darling."
He went out.
VANNING looked at his watch as the car swung round by Norfolk Street and stopped in front of the office. It was just after six. He told the chauffeur to wait.
He walked quickly across to the entrance of the building. He was thinking that it was damned cold and wondering whether Freda would want to go to Carola's party. He stubbed his toe on the sandbags piled against the side of the outside door.
Vanning was big, burly and compact. His shoulders were wide and he moved with the quickness and certainty of a man who is consciously fit. His face, ruddy, round and inclined to run to a jowl which made his thick neck seem thicker, was also determined, intelligent and sensitive.
He went up the stairs three at a time. On the first floor he stopped to light a cigarette. Then he walked along the corridor and pushed open one half of the big double doors whose frosted glass proclaimed the offices to be those of the Vanning International Trading Corporation Limited—an imaginary organisation which concealed the activities of the "C" Bureau.
He walked through the big outer office where a solitary clerk remained at his desk, through the middle office where a dozen men and two women were hard at work, along the short passage into his own room.
He shut the door behind him and stood looking at his secretary. She was standing in front of the big mahogany glass-topped desk lit by one powerful desk lamp. Her face was drawn. Vanning looked at her for a moment and then switched his glance to the desk.
Lying on the desk top were five newspapers folded into column and double-column widths. Three of them were German, one Turkish, one Roumanian.
Vanning crossed to the desk in three quick paces. He stood looking down at the newspapers, reading the German ones. His eye, taking in the hand of his secretary that rested on the desk top, noted vaguely that her fingers were trembling.
She moved a little as he dropped into the chair and began to read the translation of the Turkish newspaper. After a moment he stopped reading. He said:
"Christ!"
He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. His face was grim.
She said: "Sir Eustace has been through. They know about it. He wants you to see him as soon as possible. I told him you'd be back at six o'clock."
He nodded.
"Does anyone here know, Mary?" She shook her head.
"Nobody. Of course not. I did the Turkish translation myself."
Vanning got up. He walked over to the window, pulled aside the heavy curtain and stood peering into the blackout. She stood watching him, looking at his broad back and heavy shoulders. When he turned she evaded his eyes.
He said: "This is the third time. You didn't know that, did you? It's the third time. God... it's fearful... it's bloody! And what the hell am I to do about it...?"
She said: "Sir Eustace said you weren't to take it too much to heart; that he could imagine how you would feel about it. He said he wanted you to know that. He said..."
Vanning said: "Shut up, Mary. I don't want his sympathy. All I want is to get my hands on this damned traitor."
He walked over to the door. As he opened it he growled at her over his shoulder.
"Get through to Sir Eustace. Tell him I'm on my way." He slammed the door.
The secretary went over to her desk on the other side of the big room. She fumbled about in the drawers for her aspirin bottle. She could not find it.
She was crying when she picked up the telephone.
Vanning stopped his car at the Whitehall end of Birdcage Walk.
He got out and walked for fifty yards in the direction of
Wellington Barracks. Then he pushed open the iron gateway of an
old-fashioned house that backed on to the Walk, crossed the small
garden and rang the door-bell.
The door opened immediately. An elderly butler, obviously waiting for Vanning, said:
"Please come this way, Sir. Sir Eustace is already here."
Vanning took off his coat, followed the butler down the long passage and into the warm, well-lighted study at the end. The servant announced him and disappeared.
Vanning walked over to the desk at which the Under-Secretary was working. He said abruptly:
"This is pretty damned awful, Sir. I suppose you knew about it as soon as we did?"
The Under-Secretary nodded.
"We get the German and Turkish papers very quickly," he said. "I suppose we get them at the same time as you do."
He got up, came round the desk and shook hands with Vanning. His thin, experienced face was unperturbed and smiling.
He indicated the armchair by the side of the fire. Then he went back to the desk and returned with a box of cigars. He took two cigars out of the box, pierced them, gave one to Vanning and produced a match from a gold case. Then he sat down in the other chair facing Vanning.
"I expect you are feeling rather bad about this thing, Vanning," he said. "You feel that it's all very mysterious and that someone in your bureau must be implicated. Well I don't want you to worry too much and I can tell you that the Minister joins me in that wish. Your bureau has done too much good work for you to be unduly perturbed about this incident. More especially as...."
Vanning interrupted. He stuck his big head forward. His eyes were hard.
"Thank you, Sir Eustace," he said. "It's nice of you to say that, and it's nice of the Minister to indicate that I've done some good work in this War. I'm not such a fool as not to realise that quite a lot of that good work has been nullified by these incidents. I realise that I've had a free hand with the 'C' Bureau, that the staff is my staff, the responsibility mine, and that if leakages occur I'm going to be held responsible in the end."
He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
The Under-Secretary smiled slowly. He examined the glowing end of his cigar.
"I wonder if it would help you if I gave you an indication of what the Minister thinks about you, Vanning," he said quietly. "Perhaps it might help if I told you that he thinks so much of what you've done—apart from the 'incidents' as you call them—that you can regard your inclusion in the next Honours List as a certainty."
His smile deepened.
"Smoke your cigar quietly," he said. "And relax. You're too valuable to tear your mind to pieces by worrying over this thing. Incidentally," he went on, "you will not feel so bad when I tell you that neither the Minister nor I am very surprised at the fact that the Goebbels organisation got their hands on your propaganda before you had a chance to issue it. I might almost say that we expected it."
His smile deepened as Vanning's eyebrows went up in surprise.
"You see," the Under-Secretary continued, "there are two angles on this business. The obvious angle, and the one that is not quite so obvious. Let me deal with your own attitude first of all."
He broke his cigar ash carefully into the ash-tray on the arm of his chair.
"Six months before War was declared, you registered the Vanning International Trading Corporation Ltd.—apparently an international Import business, but in fact cover for the activities of the 'C' Bureau—our most important organisation for the dissemination of pro-Allied propaganda in enemy and neutral countries. You selected your own staff. But in remembering this please also remember that every member of your staff was first of all checked thoroughly by the Special Branch at Scotland Yard before he, or she, was appointed. Therefor the Special Branch must share responsibility for those appointments."
Vanning nodded. "That's true enough," he said. "But...."
"At the end of September—I think it was"—the Under-Secretary went on, "the first incident occurred. The propaganda which you had arranged should go to the Central European neutrals appeared in the Balkan newspapers some three days before the copy had even left your organisation. It was not in the form in which you proposed to issue it. The copy had been twisted, falsified and generally edited so as to defeat its own ends and to nullify the effect of the real copy—even if we had been fools enough to issue it after the original publication.
"There is no doubt, of course," said the Under-Secretary smoothly, "that the Goebbels organisation had somehow received copies of the propaganda and, after doing their worst with it, had issued it to the Balkan people."
"You will remember," the quiet voice went on, "that the Minister and you and I had a conference. It was arranged that you should go through your staff list with a fine-tooth comb, and that on the pretext of economy you should dispense with the services of anyone on whom the slightest, the most vague, suspicion might rest. As a result of that combing-out process you dispensed with the services of three people. I'm afraid that I only remember the name of one of them."
He looked enquiringly at the other.
Vanning said: "The three people who went were Harcourt March, Ferdinand Mott and Nicholas Bellamy."
The Under-Secretary nodded.
"Exactly," he said. "I only remembered the name of Bellamy. I remembered that name for reasons which I will produce."
"We imagined," he went on, "that with these people gone, the rest of your people were absolutely above suspicion. Yet there was another leakage in November and now, in January, there is this last and most important leakage."
He drew on his cigar slowly.
"For which somebody who is on my staff now must be responsible," said Vanning.
The Under-Secretary said: "Perhaps partly responsible. But the point I have to make is an important one. After you had dispensed with the services of March, Mott and Bellamy, the Minister suggested that it might be a good thing if some sort of observation were kept on these three people. You will remember that it was arranged that you should appear to be rather upset at having to part with them and that you should make it your business to keep in touch socially."
"I've done that," said Vanning. "I've had them to dinner now and again, and my wife has had them to her cocktail parties. The process has been quite useless, of course."
"But," said the Under-Secretary, "perhaps more importantly you will remember that we had also arranged that the Special Branch should keep a fatherly eye on the three of them just in case."
"And I didn't agree with that," said Vanning brusquely. "I made it quite clear at the time. Sir, that I had absolutely nothing against any of the three. Nothing tangible, I mean."
"I remember," said the Under-Secretary. "You thought it a little unfair on them. They were the three people on whom some possibly unfounded and very vague suspicion had fallen and so they had to be sacrificed."
Vanning said: "Even 'unfounded and vague suspicion' did not apply to Bellamy, Sir Eustace. I was glad of the opportunity to get rid of him but only because he was drinking like a fish, appallingly lazy and very slack in his work. He could work when he wanted to but he seldom wanted. That's why I got rid of him."
The Under-Secretary said very softly: "I remember you bringing that up at the time. No suspicion—no matter how vague—fell on Bellamy. He was just a case of laziness and too much drink-taking." He began to smile again. "That is the interesting part of this business," he said.
Vanning's eyebrows went up again.
"You mean...?"
"I mean this," said the other. "The Special Branch, for reasons best known to themselves, have come to the conclusion that they have a very good lead in connection with this business. They are, in fact, fairly certain that, given a little more rope, the individual they want will proceed to hang himself. They propose to give him that additional rope, which is the matter for our discussion."
"So it is someone on the staff," said Vanning. "Someone who is still in the organisation?"
"Plus someone who is outside it," said the Under-Secretary.
He laid his half-smoked cigar in the ash-tray.
"The Special Branch believe," he said, "that some quite lesser member of your staff—not anyone who is handling really important work, but someone with access to documents that would enable him (or her) to anticipate the lines of your propaganda issues from time to time—is in touch with somebody outside your staff, someone sufficiently experienced in your methods to enable him to work up the raw material supplied by his confederate and get it over to the Goebbels organisation before you have issued your own copy."
He got up and stood with his back to the fire, his hands clasped behind him.
Vanning nodded.
"What do they propose to do?" he asked. The Under-Secretary smiled.
"They have a scheme," he said. "A scheme which they think will supply the evidence they want, which will put the further information they must have—information as to methods and technique—into their hands. This is the scheme:
"Harbell of the Special Branch, who is in charge of this business, wants you to support him by very carefully following out these instructions.
"He wants you to contact the man Bellamy—the one you got rid of for laziness and liquor. He wants you to tell Bellamy the full story of the leakages and to tell him about this last one. Your attitude will be that you are fearfully worried about this business, and that you are, on your own responsibility, asking Bellamy to investigate the leakages. You will tell him that his past experience in your organisation will be invaluable to him in this connection, and you will tell him that you will be prepared to supply him plentifully with money. In fact you will be appointing him an unofficial investigator who will report to you personally from time to time."
Vanning got up. His face was flushed. His eyes angry.
"Harbell must be stark, staring, raving mad, Sir Eustace," he said. "It would be lunacy to put such an investigation into Bellamy's hands. The man's a sot. He's drunk every day by lunch-time. He's seldom, if ever, sober. His brain is mildewed with whisky. He's lazy, incompetent and he talks all the time. Within ten minutes of getting such an appointment he'd be telling the world about it in some West End bar or club. The idea of employing Bellamy is fatuous—and impossible."
The Under-Secretary nodded.
"That was exactly my own reaction," he said. "I'm afraid that I put it even more strongly than you did just now. But the idea isn't at all bad. Anyway Harbell wants it done and he's in charge of the Special Branch section dealing with the leakage. He has an excellent reason for wanting Bellamy employed."
"Which is?" queried Vanning.
The Under-Secretary looked at Vanning with a benign smile. He said:
"Vanning, Bellamy is the man they want. Harbell is practically certain that Bellamy, working with someone in your office, is responsible for the leakages. He was personally responsible for the first one. Then, after he was discharged by you he made a contact with someone on your staff—probably some silly woman; they tell me he has a way with women—and that 'someone' who is relatively unimportant in your organisation has been supplying Bellamy with his raw material. He has done the rest.
"Harbell doesn't think that Bellamy is such a fool. Harbell thinks he's pretty clever—almost brilliant. Although the Special Branch are practically certain of their man they still need some further information. They think that they will get it this way. They think that if Bellamy is employed to investigate this matter and report to you, he must give himself away. They believe that the reports he makes to you must, of necessity, be framed so that they lead away from himself, because he himself is the criminal, and he, naturally, knows that fact. Also the fact that he receives this appointment from you will give him an added confidence in his ability to pull the wool over all our eyes. D'you see?"
Vanning said: "I see. My God... Bellamy... Nicky Bellamy. Who'd have thought it?"
The Under-Secretary said: "Quite. It's always the person one doesn't suspect, isn't it?"
Vanning shrugged his shoulders.
"Well.... The Special Branch know their job, I suppose," he said.
The Under-Secretary nodded.
"Believe me," he said, "they know their job very well. I take it that you will contact our friend Bellamy and appoint him as your investigator." He smiled again. "You will give him the necessary rope to hang himself with."
Vanning nodded.
"Very good, Sir Eustace," he said. "It shall be done. I will contact him to-night if possible."
The Under-Secretary said: "That will be excellent. I'll let Harbell know that you are doing that. And, by the way, Vanning, don't stint our friend for money. I should like to think that his rope was a silken one."
He held out his hand.
Vanning went into his office at seven o'clock. He said to his
secretary:
"Get through to Nicholas Bellamy—the one who used to work here. Telephone his flat. Find out where he is. Let me know."
As the secretary was going out of the room she said:
"Mrs. Vanning has been through. She wanted to know if you were going to Miss Everard's party to-night."
Vanning shook his head.
"I shall be working here," he said. "When you've found Mr. Bellamy put him through to me here."
She was almost at the door when he called her. She stopped, turned round.
"Is Mr. Bellamy friendly with anyone on the staff here?" he asked casually.
She considered for a moment.
"I believe he meets two or three people in the copy department," she said eventually.
"I see," said Vanning. He smiled at her. "When did you see him last?" he asked.
She blushed.
"I had dinner with him about a week ago, Mr. Vanning," she said.
She closed the door softly behind her.
One of the telephones on Vanning's desk jangled—the private wire to his flat. He picked up the receiver. It was Freda.
"Shall you be coming home for dinner, Philip?" she asked. "And what about Carola's party...?" He interrupted.
"Listen, Freda," he said. "It's happened again... it's happened again." His voice was grim.
There was a little pause. Then she said tremulously:
"They haven't stolen some more..."
"They've got the stuff we were working on," he said. "They've got it in print already in Germany, Turkey and Roumania, so beautifully twisted that it's going to do irreparable harm. What do you think about that?"
She gave a little gasp.
"Oh, Philip," she said. "How terrible..."
"But you haven't heard anything yet, Freda," he went on. "There's a joke to this—a damned awful joke. Listen. I've just come back from Sir Eustace. The Special Branch suspect somebody. Someone outside the office who's rewriting our original notes supplied by someone working inside. And who do you think it is? It's Bellamy... Nicky Bellamy... that rotten traitorous sot!"
She said: "Good God, Philip. What are they going to do?"
"They've got a scheme," said Vanning. "I didn't like it at first but the more I think about it the better it seems. I'll tell you about it when I get back. But I shan't be home to dinner and I shan't be able to go to Carola's party. I'm working late. I've got to redraft all our stuff as a result of this.
"Poor Philip," she murmured softly. Then she said: "Don't worry, it will work out all right. It will be all right. I'll get Harcourt to take me to Carola's. Ho telephoned through. He's coming here for a cocktail."
"All right," said Vanning. "But don't let him or anyone else even get an inkling about Bellamy. Be careful. Even watch the inflection of your voice when you mention his name. This has got to be kept on the ice until we can get him set. Good-bye, honey."
He hung up the receiver. Outside, in the outer office, he could hear his secretary ringing one bar after the other—trying to find Bellamy.
IT was a quarter to eight when Vanning went into the Buttery at the Berkeley Restaurant. He walked straight to an unoccupied table and sat down. On the other side of the room Bellamy, in a big overcoat with an astrakhan collar, was deep in conversation with a good-looking woman.
Vanning watched them. Bellamy was telling a story. He leaned across the table illustrating the points in the story with facile fingers. The woman, who was wearing a smart green hat, leaned back in her chair obviously amused. When Bellamy came to the end of the story they both laughed. Then he got up, leaned over the table and said a few words to her, picked up his hat and came over to Vanning's table.
He said: "'Lo, Philip. I say, do something for me. I have just been having drinks with that woman over there. Get the waiter to put them on your bill, will you?"
Vanning said: "Is it as bad as that?"
"It is," said Bellamy. "It's worse than that." He went on cheerfully: "I had a bit of rotten luck this afternoon. I won a jackpot in a fruit machine of £5, and dam' it I owed 'em five pounds four shillings at the bar, so of course I had to pay the bill. Pretty tough, don't you think, Philip?"
Vanning said: "Well, you don't look broke. That fur coat cost some money."
Bellamy grinned. The thought flashed through Vanning's head that if Bellamy were to take a pull at himself, he'd be quite a good-looking fellow.
Bellamy said: "I wouldn't know about that. It's not mine."
Vanning looked up.
"Your friend's going," he said.
The woman with whom Bellamy had been drinking had got up. Vanning could see that she was about forty years of age, well turned out, good-looking. She smiled good-bye at Bellamy, who waved back to her.
Vanning said pleasantly: "Now who would that be?"
Bellamy grinned.
"Dam' nice woman," he said. "I don't know who she is. I never met her before."
Vanning said: "My God, this is the Berkeley. Do you mean to say you just sat down and got into conversation with that woman and bought her a drink?"
Bellamy's eyes opened.
"Why not?" he said. "I happened to sit at her table. She had a sense of humour anyway. She liked the story I told her."
"I hope it was a decent one," Vanning said.
Bellamy raised his eyebrows.
"Absolutely," he said. "My stories are always decent. Clever—and not too risqué. Double Haig please! And to what do I owe the pleasure of this appointment?"
Vanning called the waiter, ordered the drinks.
He said: "Nicky, I want you to go easy on the liquor. I've got a job for you."
"My God!" said Bellamy. "So it's happened at last. I've got a job. How awful!"
"You don't mean to say that you don't want a job?" said Vanning.
Bellamy smiled sweetly.
"Ever since you chucked me out of that office of yours, Philip," he said, "I've done my best to avoid one, but it looks as if you've caught up with me." He leaned towards Vanning—"So you just can't get on without me. That great secret organisation—the 'C' Bureau just can't get along without little Nicky."
Vanning said: "You keep your head shut about the 'C' Bureau. Just remember that that organisation is the Vanning International Trading Corporation Limited."
"Oh, that's all right," said Bellamy. "After all I'm only talking to you."
"I know, Nicky," said Vanning. "But you talk too much. If you're going to do this job you've got to stop talking and you've got to stop drinking."
Bellamy said: "It doesn't sound much of a job. Tell me about it, Philip."
He fumbled for a cigarette. Vanning, looking at him, found himself thinking of his conversation with the Under-Secretary, and of his remark: "Harbell doesn't think that Bellamy is such a fool. Harbell thinks he's pretty clever—almost brilliant." Vanning thought that either Harbell was mad or Bellamy was a very good actor. Was it so ridiculous that Bellamy should have the mind, the planning ability and the guts to get away with stealing and selling national secrets to an enemy?
The waiter put the drinks on the table. Bellamy had by this time found his cigarette case. He opened it. There was only one cigarette inside. He held the case towards Vanning, who shook his head and produced his own case.
"Have one of mine, Nicky," he said. "Listen and don't interrupt. You're luckier than you think. You've got a chance of making good."
Bellamy nodded.
"I'm listening," he said. "I'm all ears." Vanning dropped his voice.
"First of all," he said, "I want you to carry your mind back to the end of last September. You remember I had to ask you and March and Mott to go, because we were reducing staff? I was fearfully sorry to do it because although you were a bit erratic in your work, the stuff you did do was quite brilliant. Another thing was, you had a better idea of what we were trying to do, a better idea of how the organisation actually worked than the other two. I was more sorry to lose you than either Harcourt or Ferdie Mott. So you can imagine how glad I am that I am able to tell you that you can work for me again. But not in exactly the same way."
"Go on, Philip," said Bellamy. "I'm pulsating with interest."
"To cut a long story short," said Vanning, "a rather serious position has arisen in regard to the 'C' Bureau. For the last month I've been working on some special propaganda intended for the Roumanian and Turkish newspapers and for one or two of the Balkan editions. It was good stuff. Well, somehow Goebbels got hold of it. First of all he got hold of our copy, turned it inside out, and has published his version in the papers in Germany, Roumania and Turkey. He's kicked the ground from under our feet. This is the third leakage. The first one was in September last; the second one was in November."
Bellamy pursed up his lips.
"That's not so good, Philip," he said. "A nigger in the wood-pile, hey? Spies at work?"
"Something like that," said Vanning. He finished his drink.
"There's one thing that's obvious, Nicky," he said. "Somebody in the office, someone who has access to the original research copy from which my own notes are made—maybe one ox the people in the Research Department—is getting that stuff out of the office and passing it to someone who's got a pretty quick means of getting it over to Germany."
Bellamy nodded.
"Probably working through Holland," he said. "I believe Holland's lousy with German spies—all made up with false beards. Where do I come into this?"
Vanning said: "This way. You're going to find the nigger in the wood-pile. You were fairly popular in the office, Nicky. Everybody liked you, especially the women. Have you kept touch with any of them?"
"One or two," said Bellamy casually. "I've seen 'em now and again."
"All right," said Vanning. "Well, you've got to keep up those contacts. You've got to make fresh ones. I'm relying on you to find out who the criminal is. I want you to work with and for me, to report to me, and you've got to work fast, Nicky. This is a bad business. The C' Bureau is a pretty important Government organisation. It must be above suspicion."
Bellamy nodded airily.
"That's O.K." he said. "But I don't see that I can do a lot. If I go up to somebody who works in the office and ask them if they've been selling stuff to the enemy, they are not likely to say yes, are they? All the same," he went on, "I've always fancied myself as a sleuth. This will give me the opportunity of putting one or two ideas I've had into practice. Have you any suggestions?"
"Yes," said Vanning. "I'm going to send you a list of everybody who works in the office. I'm going to send you a note of their background as far as we know it, every bit of information we've got about them. You'll have to check on it, and remember this, your checking will have to go pretty deep. These people have already been checked by the Special Branch. What you've got to do is to look out for the people who've moved their addresses since they joined the staff, people who've made new friends, new contacts. Another thing," he went on, "you can bet your life that anybody who is selling this stuff is getting well paid for it. Look out for a woman who's buying herself a lot of new clothes, or a man who's spending more money than he usually does, or has got himself a new mistress or something like that."
"I'm ahead of you, Philip," said Bellamy. "This job is going to suit me down to the ground. But it's likely to be an expensive sort of job, you know." He looked at Vanning, his dull eyes twinkling a little.
Vanning said: "I'll look after that."
He put his hand into his breast pocket of his coat and brought out an envelope which he placed on the table.
"You can have all the money you want, Nicky," he said. "I'm only going to make one stipulation. You've got to lay off the liquor. You've got to do a real solid job of work. There are £100 in that envelope," he said. "That's to start you off. I want a report from you at the end of this week. I want a report from you at the end of every week—a written detailed report of what you've done, and the less you and I are seen together the better. When you've got your report ready you had better telephone through to my wife. Then Freda can make an appointment for you to meet me somewhere in the West End—a place like this is the best sort of place. We might have met here casually, and you're always in bars anyway. From time to time if an idea occurs to me I'll drop you a note at your flat. Understand?"
"I'm ahead of you," said Bellamy. "Another thing," he said, "I think it's dam' decent of you to give me this chance, Philip. I think it's just come in time."
Vanning said: "Meaning what?"
Bellamy gave a little shrug.
"I think Carola's been getting a little bit fed up with me," he said. "I've got an idea that she doesn't like me quite as much as she used to. As a matter of fact I've been expecting her to tell me that our engagement is at an end any day. But this will maybe put a different complexion on things."
Vanning nodded.
"There's just another thing," he said. "Don't talk about this, Nicky, and for God's sake don't get drunk, because if you do you certainly will talk."
Bellamy said: "I suppose Freda'll have to know. Is she going to Carola's party to-night?"
"Yes," said Vanning. "She said Harcourt was going to drop in for a cocktail, that he'd take her along. I'm working late at the office. You can tell her if you like."
Bellamy grinned.
"Freda'll be pretty glad," he said. "She's been working on me trying to get me to get a job for weeks. Just as if there were any jobs going for people like me at this time."
He leaned across the table. "The trouble with me is, Philip," he went on glibly, "I'm too brilliant for a normal job." Vanning grinned wryly.
"Well, you've got an abnormal job now," he said. "So you can use your brilliance on that." He got up, put out his hand.
"Well, Nicky," he said, "good luck to you. Don't let me down."
Bellamy looked up at him. Vanning saw that his eyes were twinkling. Looking into those eyes, trying to look beyond them into the brain behind them. Vanning thought he saw something—a suggestion of that other character, that other man that lay behind those eyes. He picked up his hat and walked out.
VANNING took a cab in Piccadilly and drove back to the offices. On the way he was thinking about Bellamy, looking at Bellamy with a different eye.
It would be funny, thought Vanning, if the Special Branch were right about Bellamy being a brainy sort of fellow—a man who had sufficient brilliancy and technique to evolve a system of getting secret propaganda out of the country and into enemy hands.
It would be very funny. Yet Vanning found it difficult to believe that Bellamy had the backbone. Everything about Nicky; his laziness, his ability to absorb liquor all day and every day, his ability to lounge through life, his incompetency in the ordinary routine businesses of everyday existence—all these things seemed to add up to a very different picture.
Yet, Vanning pondered, there was something about Nicky. He had an extraordinary nerve. Take for example the incident with the woman in the Berkeley Buttery. Apparently Nicky had gone in to wait for Vanning, had sat down at the same table and within a few minutes was deep in conversation with a woman who, if Vanning knew anything, was a lady. Not only was he deep in conversation but she was listening and amused, had allowed him to buy her a drink, for which, at that moment, he could not even pay I You had to have something to get away with things like that. Either a mentality so childlike and imbecile that it failed to realise the ordinary social rules and regulations or else a definite sense of being different, a sense of power that told you that you could get away with anything.
Vanning allowed his mind to wander on this subject.
He began to recollect that Nicky had always had a way with women. All the women in the office had liked him, had helped him do his work, had tried to cover up for him when he did something more damned stupid than usual. Even his own wife Freda—who knew that Bellamy was one of the three who had been dismissed on the excuse of economy—had a liking for him. She had been surprised and appalled when he had told her on the telephone that the powers-that-be believed that Bellamy was responsible for the leakages.
Vanning began to think about the time of the first leakage. He thought about the three people who had been sent off about their business—Bellamy, March and Mott. He wondered what Nicky would think about the other two men now that he was "investigating" (the thought of Bellamy investigating brought a sardonic grin to Vanning's lips), with money in his pocket and the knowledge that he had the power to throw suspicion on other people.
Vanning toyed with this idea. He began to imagine just how Bellamy—taking it for granted that he was the brilliant and cautious crook that the Special Branch thought him to be—would begin to work. He was in a position where he had to report to Vanning by the end of the week. In other words he had to do something. What would he do? It seemed that there was only one thing he could do—one line of action that would enable him to produce results and, at the same time, "cover up" for himself.
He would begin to think in terms of suspecting Harcourt March and/or Ferdinand Mott. He would reason that as the three of them were dismissed at the same time and he had been the one selected by Vanning to do the investigating, that it would be the easiest way out of a difficult situation for him to suggest that it might be worth his while to keep an eye on March and Mott. He would suggest that as they had been employed in the "C" Bureau they both would have the requisite knowledge of the organisation and the manner in which copy was prepared, to organise for copy thefts. All they needed was the assistance of someone now working in the Bureau and with a slight knowledge of the lines on which future propaganda would be evolved.
Bellamy would suggest that it would be easy for one of them to get such basic information. They could get it fairly easily. All they had to do would be to contact one of the women in the research department, for instance. If one of these women were fool enough to divulge that she was checking on "Food Imports into Germany" statistics—for example, then it would not take a great deal of brains for either Harcourt or Mott to realise that Vanning was planning a "Food Shortage in Germany" campaign for two or three months ahead. Either of the two would visualise the angles on which Vanning would handle this, and all they would have to do would be to draft out a few thousand words on these lines and get them into Germany. Goebbels would do the rest. Knowing just when the copy was going to be sprung he could sail in with some fake stuff that would carry enough of the Vanning technique, sufficient of the true statistics falsely applied, to damn the real copy when it was issued.
Vanning's grin broadened. These would be the lines that Nicky would work on. The more he thought about it the more he appreciated the Special Branch scheme. "Give him enough rope and he will hang himself," they said. Well, Bellamy had the rope now—lots of rope.
And all he had to do was to put it round his own neck. Harbell of the Special Branch would do the rest!
BELLAMY finished his whisky and soda, took a long and careful look round the Buttery, got up and wandered out into the street. He looked at his wrist watch. It was a quarter past eight.
He strolled along Piccadilly, turned into Half Moon Street, walked halfway down the street, stepped into a doorway, lit a cigarette. Then, after a moment's hesitation, let himself into the house. He walked up the stairs to his rooms on the second floor.
Bellamy went into the bathroom and turned on a bath. Then he went to his bedroom and telephoned Carola.
"Hello, Nicky." she said.
Her voice was cool and casual and soft. He liked her voice.
He said: "Are you alone, Carola?"
"No, Vanessa's here," she answered. "She dropped in on her way home." There was a little pause—then: "Are you drunk or anything, Nicky?"
He grinned into the transmitter.
"Not very," he said. "I'm just what you might call 'nice and easy.' I've got some terrific news, Carola. I've got a job. I'm working for Philip Vanning. It's all terribly confidential and all that sort of thing."
"How lovely," said Carola. "Tell me about it."
He told her about it—all about it.
She said: "How wonderful, Nicky. How fearfully important you're going to be. You'll have to drink a lot less, won't you? You won't be able to do a job like that if you're tight most of the day. I suppose I mustn't tell anyone. Can't I tell anyone, Nicky?"
He said: "Well, you can tell Vanessa, but she's to keep it under her hat. She isn't to tell a soul. I don't mind Vanessa knowing. She doesn't talk."
"All right," said Carola, "I'll tell her that it's terribly secret. Nicky, I wonder why Philip gave you the job. Does he think that you'll be a good investigator? It's rather odd, isn't it?"
"Not at all, sweet," said Bellamy. "I've got hidden talents. You wait. Ill show you something!"
"Well, show me a little sobriety," said Carola primly. "I'm tired of a fiancé who's cock-eyed the whole time. And don't have anything to drink before you come to my party. And don't make any scenes. And don't quarrel, please!"
"O.K., Chief," said Bellamy. "I'll be round about nineish. I'll try to be good. Bye, Carola." He hung up.
He sat down on the untidy bed and began to undress. Then he put on a very old bathrobe and went along to the bathroom. He spent a great deal of time cleaning his teeth, and very little time in the bath.
Afterwards he put on a well-cut but ancient dinner jacket and the fur coat. He counted through the ten ten-pound notes that Vanning had given him and put them in his pocket.
Then he went out and took a cab to Piccadilly. He stopped the cab at Hatchett's, almost went in, changed his mind, walked towards Albemarle Street. He went into the Malayan Club entrance and went slowly up the stairs.
The bar was empty. The blonde barmaid was engrossed in the evening paper. She looked up and smiled at Bellamy.
He produced a ten-pound note and laid it on the bar. He said:
"That's to pay my bill, Blondie. And you can keep the change." She registered extreme pleasure. "Come into a fortune, Mr. Bellamy?" she asked.
He smiled at her. She thought that he had nice teeth. He leaned over the top of the bar and said very quietly:
"Tell me something. I'm curious about the lady who stood me those drinks here this evening. I think she's very cute. I suppose she gets around a lot with Mr. March?"
She said: "I don't know. They come here sometimes." He nodded.
"Let you and I have a really big drink," he said. "It helps. Mine as usual." She served the drinks.
Bellamy said: "Things are very bad, I think." He looked at her closely. "You've got a nice mouth, honey," he said. "It's just the right shape and you use the right shade of lipstick. I think its a marvellous mouth. Most women will use lipstick that's too dark for them."
"And you don t like the taste of dark lipstick, eh?" She looked at herself in the mirror-panelling. She said: "You've got your nerve, Mr. Bellamy."
"Not me," he said sorrowfully. "I can't get any breaks with women. They just haven't any use for me. It's terrible."
She smiled.
"Now I'll tell one," she said. "I've heard they fall for you like ninepins." She pushed a curl back into place. "Look at Mrs. Berington this evening," she said.
He shook his head.
"I haven't a chance there, honey," he said. "How could I? Besides, it would be stealing from a friend. Mr. March would probably cut my throat or something...."
She said: "I think she's pretty fed up with Mr. March. She doesn't like mean men." Bellamy's eyebrows went up.
"Now I can't have that," he said. "Harcourt's not mean... anything else, but not mean."
She shrugged.
"All right then, he's not mean," she said. "Then he just hasn't got it."
Bellamy said: "My God... you don't mean he's hard up? Harcourt hard up... impossible!"
She smiled. Her smile said "I could tell you a lot if I wanted to."
Bellamy changed a ten-pound note. He began to play the fruit machine. He lost two pounds. He looked at his watch. It was half-past nine.
He said:
"I'll tell you what. We'll drink a little bottle of champagne. I feel happy. And I like talking to you."
She said: "What a scream you are, Mr. Bellamy," and went to the storeroom for the champagne.
When she came back Bellamy began to tell her stories about people who'd made and lost fortunes. They finished the bottle. Bellamy ordered another.
Ten minutes afterwards she began to call him Nicky.
BELLAMY was tight when he arrived at Carola's party. Even the walk from the Malayan Club through Berkeley Square had not been able to offset the effects of several glasses of champagne followed by Bacardi rum.
On the way he had been thinking about Carola. He realised rather ruefully that this was not the occasion to arrive in his present state. He had an idea that she had asked two or three of her more stiff-necked relations. Bellamy thought that they were not very keen on him in any event, and this fall from grace would probably put paid to any chance of winning their approval.
Carola met him the hall. She was smiling. Bellamy, swaying a little as he handed his hat and coat to the maid, felt a tiny pang as he watched the smile disappear. They stood looking at each other uneasily.
Carola was of medium height. The oval of her face was superbly framed by Titian red hair. Bellamy had spent quite a lot of time, since he had known her, thinking about the extraordinary beauty of that hair. Her features were delicately and regularly carved and her eyes, of the deepest blue, looked steadily out on to a world which she insisted was a good place no matter what happened.
Bellamy thought that everything about her face showed an intense and sensitive intelligence. He knew perfectly well that most of her people wondered what the devil she could see in him. He grinned inwardly as he thought that he was really rather inclined to agree with them.
Even he felt it was rather a shame to let Carola down in public. But then Bellamy was forced to admit to himself that the viewpoint of a man who drinks a lot is never one which is enabled to spend too much thought on the essential niceties of life.
She said coldly: "You're tight, Nicky." She raised her voice a little. "I did ask you to stay sober," she said.
He grinned vaguely.
"It's all right, Carola," he said. "I'm not too bad, and I won't start anything, I promise. I'll be as good, as sweet as any sucking dove."
Before she had time to reply, Harcourt March appeared in the open doorway. Just behind him Bellamy saw, out of the corner of his eye, was Iris Berington.
He noticed that she had had her hair set since he'd seen her last. He noted too, with appreciation, the quiet and well-cut dinner frock that she was wearing.
Harcourt said: "Hello, Carola... Hello, Nicky I It's cold, it's raining and there's a war on."
He grinned vacuously. He thought he had said something very funny.
Bellamy began to fumble for his cigarette case. He was looking at March. He was thinking that he disliked March. Carola was shaking hands with Iris Berington.
Bellamy found his cigarette case, lit a cigarette, offered one to March, who produced a lighter.
Harcourt March was short and inclined to stoutness. He was the type of man whose clothes are rather too well-cut and for some reason are always a little too tight. Bellamy noticed with a vague distaste that his collar was a good half inch too small for his neck. A red fold of flesh appeared above it.
His face was round, inclined to be mottled. His nose was large and Bellamy could see just under the surface of the skin a tiny network of red veins which denoted continuous drinking. He found himself hoping devoutly that his own nose would never look quite like that.
March put the lighter back in his pocket with a flourish and tapped his pocket afterwards. He always did things like that. He imbued the most ordinary, the most trivial action with a certain dramatic quality, as if he were deliberately endeavouring to attract attention.
Drawing the smoke down into his lungs and wishing that the headache which was beginning to make itself felt would disappear, Bellamy found himself wondering what a lovely person like Vanessa March could have seen in a man like Harcourt. Here was a case of the beauty and the beast, but in this case the beast was not in any way noble. It was an insignificant beast.
They all went into the drawing-room. The room was a large high-ceilinged "T" shaped apartment. The stem of the "T" was long, and the top of the "T" formed two long alcoves running to left and right at the end of the room. From the alcove on the left was a door leading to Carola's bedroom. The doorway from the right alcove led into the dining-room.
There were a lot of people there. Bellamy, leaning up against the doorpost of the drawing-room, gazed vaguely around at an expanse of starched shirts, many of them worn by the elderly and military types that represented the majority of Carola's male relatives. One or two of them he thought looked at him a little queerly. He imagined them saying to each other and their wives: "Here's Bellamy. He's drunk again. Damn the feller! What the devil can Carola see in him?"
He wandered through the large room, threading his way through little groups of people. He went into the alcove on the right of the room. Set against the wall was a long table from which drinks were being served. Bellamy got himself a large whisky and soda and stood there drinking it. He thought that whisky, on Bacardi rum on champagne, did not taste extraordinarily pleasant.
From where he was standing he could see the whole length of the room. Down at the other end Harcourt March and Mrs. Berington were deep in conversation. Bellamy thought that the conversation must be of a serious nature because, although from time to time she smiled at Harcourt and looked about the room, he could see that between these little bits of "theatre" they were talking quite urgently, and, if he knew anything, not too good-humouredly. Iris Berington was annoyed about something, Bellamy thought.
On the other side of the room, diagonally opposite Harcourt, Vanessa March was sitting on a settee talking to Carola's uncle. Every now and then she flashed a glance across the room towards Harcourt and Iris. Once Bellamy thought he saw her lip curl ominously. Bellamy thought it must be pretty tough for Vanessa to have to watch her husband and his lady light-o'-love so deep in conversation in a friend's house.
When Carola's uncle went away, Bellamy wandered over and sat down by her side.
"'Lo, Vanessa," he said.
She looked at him.
"Hullo, Nicky," she said. "How are you?"
"I'm all right," he said. "But I've got a grouse. They're charging too much for whisky these days, or else the glasses don't hold enough."
Bellamy was thinking that Vanessa was a very lovely woman. Her black hair made a perfect foil for the intense whiteness of her complexion. Her big melting brown eyes, the tremulous delicacy of her well-cut mouth, added to her slim grace and vivid personality, made a striking picture.
Bellamy looked over towards Harcourt. He hiccoughed softly.
"Y'know, Vanessa," he said, "I agree with you." She laughed.
"What do you mean, Nicky?" she said. He grinned at her.
"I agree with what you're thinking about Harcourt," he said. "He's a dam' fool, that's what he is. Y'know, Vanessa," he went on, "you're a lovely woman. I suppose I've seen as many good-looking women as most men, but I don't think I have ever seen a woman who's quite as fascinating as you are. That being so, I think Harcourt is a first class mug to go trailing around after the little Berington thing. Another thing," he continued seriously, "I think he's got a nerve to bring her to Carola's party. I bet Carola didn't ask her." Vanessa smiled—a slow smile.
"Strangely enough she did, Nicky," she said. "She asked Mrs. Berington at my request. I'd much rather Harcourt had her here and stayed sober than stayed put with me and got drunk."
Nicky said: "I think you're rather a swell person to stand for it, Vanessa."
She put her hand on his knee.
"Nicky dear," she said, "it isn't like you to talk like that, and you're talking like that only because you are a little bit tight, aren't you? You're not behaving like the usual tactful Nicky. After all," she went on, "I don't care about Harcourt. Why should I? He bores me. He's bored me for a long time. He's stupid... inefficient... he's an utter fool."
Bellamy grinned.
"That's the stuff to give 'em," he said. "Now, that's the way I like to hear a woman talk. Y'know, Vanessa," he went on, "if I weren't so keen on Carola I think I could be very interested in you."
She laughed.
"That's very sweet of you, Nicky," she said. "But let me give you a word of advice. If you are keen on Carola, I should drink a little less. She's pretty fed up with you, Nicky." She dropped her voice. "She told me you'd got a job investigating some leakage or something in the 'C' Bureau. Why don't you take advantage of the job, Nicky? Why don't you turn over a new leaf?"
He said: "It's funny you saying that. Every morning regularly about ten o'clock, I make up my mind to turn over a new leaf. I start turning it over, but the dam' leaf gets so heavy at about twelve o'clock that it gets the better of me and turns itself back again."
His face lit up.
"Look, there's Ferdie," he said.
Ferdinand Mott came into the room, walked over to Carola and shook hands with her. He was a tall, fine-looking man. When one looked at him one thought automatically of a cavalry officer, which was strange because Ferdinand had never been in the Army. He had nice manners and was easy to get along with. His smile was almost permanent.
Bellamy said: "Can I get you a drink, Vanessa?"
"No thanks, Nicky," she answered. "I won't have a drink just now. I must be going."
"Well, I need one," said Bellamy. "So if you'll excuse me I'll go and get one."
He got to his feet and walked back to the alcove. Vanessa, watching him thread his way between groups of talking people, found herself thinking that Nicky was always graceful—even when he was drunk.
Bellamy found Mott drinking a whisky and soda. He ordered one for himself.
Mott said: "Well, Nicky, how are you? And how's life?"
"I'm all right, thanks, Ferdie," said Bellamy. "And I think life's bloody!" His voice was pitched a trifle higher than usual. "Money's my trouble," he said.
Mott grinned amiably.
"It's everybody's trouble these days," he said.
He offered his cigarette case. Bellamy helped himself and fumbled in his pocket for a lighter. He looked at Mott. The expression in his eyes was not pleasant.
He said: "How's that dam' crooked club of yours going along, Ferdie?"
Mott's smile wavered a little.
"The Club's all right, thanks, Nicky," he said. "But I don't know that I appreciate your description of it. It's not a crooked club."
Bellamy laughed unpleasantly.
"Oh no!" he said. "Well I've never won any dam' money there, and I have yet to meet someone who has. There are one or two people who play in your club, Ferdie, who ought to go on the stage as sleight-of-hand experts."
Bellamy's voice was loud. A half dozen people in the vicinity were looking over their shoulders.
Mott said between his teeth: "Listen, Nicky, you're drunk and I don't propose to quarrel with you here. If you think there's anything funny about the way my Club's run, come round and tell me in my office."
He sunk his voice to a whisper. "Then I'll be able to knock your teeth down your throat personally, you drunken bastard."
"Oh, really!" said Bellamy.
He stepped back. He threw his whisky and soda straight into Mott's face.
Someone said: "Oh, my God...!"
Mott, his face livid with rage, took his handkerchief and began to wipe his face. The man in the white jacket, behind the drinks table, looked uncomfortable. One or two people, scenting further trouble, moved out of the alcove into the main part of the room.
Bellamy stood with the empty glass in his hand, grinning stupidly at Mott. He moved towards the table and put the glass down.
Then Carola appeared—swiftly and quietly. She took Bellamy's left arm in her right hand, pushed him across the space between the drinks table and the door that led to the dining-room. She pushed him inside.
He leaned up against the table. Carola, almost trembling, stood in front of the still half open door.
"Nicky," she said, "please do me a favour. Take your hat and coat and get out of here. I've had enough of you."
She pulled her engagement ring off her finger and held it out towards him. He looked at it vaguely but made no effort to take it. She took two steps towards him and dropped it into the breast pocket of his double-breasted dinner jacket.
"I'm through with you, Nicky," she said. "For the last three months most of my friends and all my relatives have been telling me I was a fool to be engaged to you, that you are nothing but a drunkard; that you can't even behave like a gentleman. It has even been suggested that you're only interested in me because of my money. I've been fed up for a long time but to-day when I heard that you had got this job, I thought there might be a chance for you."
Bellamy said: "Oh hell!"
Carola went on: "When you're drunk you're impossible. You can't carry your liquor anyway. You make scenes. Please go. I don't want to see you again."
Bellamy looked towards the half open doorway. On the other side of it, he could see a shadow on the carpet.
"I see," he said. "So this is my congé? All right, Carola, you have it your way. Although why you should object to me telling Mott the truth about that dam' crooked club of his I don't know, unless—" His voice was sarcastic.
"Unless what, Nicky?" Carola asked. Her voice was unsteady.
He began to fumble for his cigarette case.
"Why don't you tell the truth, my dear?" he said. "I've guessed it for some time. The fact of the matter is you're dam' keen on Ferdie Mott—" he pointed towards the open doorway—"the fellow who's just outside that door listening as hard as he can, damn him."
He pushed against the table behind him and stood swaying on his feet. She looked nervously behind her at the half open door.
"What chance have I got against the one and only Ferdie Mott?" said Bellamy thickly. "The one and only Ferdinand—God's little gift to womankind—who never gets tight, who always has money in his pocket, who never has to write out cheques knowing dam' well that they're going to bounce back again with 'r.d.' written all over 'em. Ferdinand who is reliable and has nice manners and is generally nice to know even if he does run a lousy gambling club." He paused to get his breath.
"All right, my dear," he said. "If it's all over, it's all over and that's that. And most of your friends and all your relations can now go into a huddle and congratulate themselves that you've got rid of Nicky—the bad boy, the cock-eyed king, the pride of the cocktail bars, who would, in due course, have blotted the fair escutcheon of the Everards so dam' much that it would have looked like an advertisement for Stephen's Ink."
He hiccoughed.
"My heart is too full for words," he said. "Anyway it's either that or whisky on top of rum and champagne. So I'll be toddling along. So long, sweetheart—and mind you keep your feet dry!"
He pushed past her through the door into the drawing-room. He walked towards the door.
Mott went into the dining-room. Carola was sitting in the chair by the table. Her head was buried in her hands. She was sobbing.
Mott said: "Don't worry, Carola. You've done the right thing, believe me. My dear, he's not worth a girl like you. He's not only stupid, he's just impossible."
Outside in the hallway, the butler helped Bellamy on with his coat. He was opening the door when Bellamy said:
"Soames, is Mrs. March here?"
"No, Sir," said Soames. "She left with Mr. March about twenty minutes ago."
"I see," said Bellamy. "And Mrs. Berington?"
"She's gone too, Sir," said Soames.
Bellamy said: "Too bad. It looks as if I shall have to go off by myself. Good-night, Soames."
He was almost out of the door when a maid came into the hallway.
"Mrs. Vanning's on the 'phone, Mr. Bellamy," she said. "She wants to speak to you."
Bellamy turned back into the hallway. He followed the maid along the passage that ran at right angles away from the drawing-room. At the end of the passage was the telephone. He picked up the receiver.
"Hullo, Freda," he said.
He leaned up against the wall, his eyes closed.
Freda's voice was hoarse.
"Nicky," she said, "please do something for me. Tell Carola I'm fearfully sorry I couldn't get along to her party. Tell her I've got an awful cold. And I want you to do something for me."
"Anything I can, my dear," said Bellamy.
Her voice was urgent.
"I want you to come round here and see me, Nicky," she said. "It's important. Will you get into a cab and come here right away. Come in by the side entrance. I'll leave the door leading into Philip's study on the latch. You needn't ring. Please don't come in by the front entrance."
"All right, Freda," said Bellamy. "It all sounds very odd and mysterious. I'll come along right away."
He wandered unsteadily back to the hall. He said to the butler solemnly:
"Will you present Mr. Nicholas Bellamy's compliments to Miss Everard and tell her that Mrs. Philip Vanning regrets she cannot come to Miss Everard's party because she has a cold. And bob to your uncle!"
The butler said: "Very good, Sir."
He closed the door behind Bellamy.
LEANING back in the corner of the cab Bellamy lit a cigarette from the stub of the last one. He threw the stub out of the window and noticed vaguely that the night was darker than usual and that it was still raining.
His head was aching. He told himself that it was dam' silly to drink Bacardi on top of champagne. Anyone knew that that was about the quickest way to get cockeyed. He grinned a trifle ruefully at the thought that he supposed he had really wanted to get cockeyed.
By now the cab was in Mount Street. The Vanning flat was only a few hundred yards away. Bellamy switched his mind over to Freda Vanning. He was interested. He wondered what it was that had inspired Freda to telephone him and ask him to come round so urgently. Bellamy couldn't understand anything being urgent to Freda. She was so self-contained, poised, cool and generally self-sufficient. To indicate that a matter was urgent would be tantamount to a confession of weakness from Freda's point of view.
He began to fumble in his pockets—feeling for loose change to pay the cab. Then he remembered Carola.
Carola had been pretty tough. She had looked good during that telling-off business. She always looked good when she was angry. And on the other side of the door, listening hard, that damned Ferdie Mott had been standing, probably showing his pretty teeth in his usual damned ready-made smile and patting himself on the back. Well... Ferdie had his cue all right. Bellamy was right out now as far as Carola was concerned and Ferdie would waste no time in trying to make the most of the situation for his own ends. First of all he was—and always had been—keen on Carola, and secondly he disliked Bellamy like poison. Things were going Ferdie's way all right.
But then things always went Ferdie's way. Bellamy allowed his mind to wander over the details of Ferdinand Mott's career. He had been Public Relations Officer to a firm of manufacturers until the beginning of 1939. He was paid a good salary—too much salary. And he wasn't any good. They were just going to get rid of him when along came the Vanning job and Ferdie joined the "C" Bureau staff. He wasn't too bad at that job. He had a flair for writing copy easily and quickly.
When the axe came along in September and he, Bellamy and March were discharged from the job, Mott apparently, was the only one of the three who had any ideas at all. He had the idea about starting Mott's Club—and it was a damned good idea.
Ferdie wasn't a bad psychologist, Bellamy thought. He knew that when a war started, people were first of all rather excited and then bored afterwards. Ferdie knew that if there was a time to make money out of a gambling club it was during a war. You wanted nice cosy premises, a very select clientele and some good-looking and clever women to bring in people to play. You did not want to worry about liquor licences. You gave your members what drinks they wanted and you relied on the cagnotte for your profits. Mott had done well out of the club.
He had the right sort of personality for the job too. People liked Mott. He was well set-up and smiling, always well-dressed, always ready to buy anybody a drink at any time, well-spoken, good-mannered and attractive to women—well, anyway, to a certain type of woman who wasn't too discriminating. Mott gave the impression of being well-bred even if he wasn't and some very nice people used Mott's Club.
And if on occasion one or two people had been a little bit clever at the tables that was not necessarily Mott's fault, and he did not, of necessity, know about it. Bellamy grinned when he realised that his rudeness to Mott at Carola's party had been absolutely gratuitous. There hadn't been any apparent necessity for it, but Bellamy had meant to annoy Mott and he had succeeded.
He realised, a little gloomily, that Ferdie would go all out for Carola now.
Bellamy sighed, rapped on the window, stopped the cab, got out a trifle unsteadily and paid the man off. The Hyde Apartments were just along the street. He remembered that Freda had asked him to go in the side door.
He turned down the side street to the right of the apartments and into the passage that bisected the block or mansions, walked along until he came to the service door. He pushed it open and began to walk up the stairs to the second floor.
Arrived there he meandered along the passage at the back of the Vanning flat, turned into the little passage in which the outlet door to Philip Vanning's study was situated and tried the handle. The door was on the latch as Freda had said it would be. Bellamy pushed it open and stepped into the study, closing the door quietly behind him. The electric light was on.
He crossed the room, opened the door on the other side, walked through the rather large dining-room and into the drawing-room. He expected to find Freda there, was surprised that she was not there.
He went out of the opposite door into the short passage leading to the bedrooms and bathrooms. He called out "Freda" once or twice but nothing happened. At the end of the passage he could see that the door of her room was half open. He wandered along and tapped on it. There was no answer. Bellamy pushed the door open and went in.
The first thing he saw was Freda's leg. It was hanging over the side of the bed and it was a very well-shaped leg. Bellamy noticed rather vaguely that Freda had on an exquisite pair of new shoes with very high heels.
She was obviously asleep. Bellamy grinned at the idea of walking over to the bed and implanting a swift kiss on the end of her nose and then claiming a pair of gloves from her. He moved into the room and across to the bed. He stopped a few paces from it and stood looking rather stupidly at Freda who was, quite obviously, dead.
Bellamy made a little hissing noise between his teeth and, more from habit than anything else, looked at his wrist watch. It was eleven-fifteen.
He went close to the bed and looked at Freda. She did not look awfully nice, he thought, and immediately qualified the thought with the proviso that nobody looked nice after they had been strangled, which is what had happened to Freda.
Bellamy stepped back and took off his overcoat. He put it on a chair with his hat, and went into the bathroom. He turned on the cold water faucet and sluiced his face and hands. He wiped the tap afterwards with his handkerchief. Then he went back into the bedroom, took the gloves out of his overcoat pocket and put them on.
He took a long and very searching look at Freda. She was wearing a black dinner frock that suited her tall and quite charming figure. One side of the frock was caught up. On that side one leg was hanging over the edge of the bed. Her hair had been dressed quite recently, and she was wearing a three-quarter coat of summer-ermine that had fallen open and away from her.
On the occasional table on Bellamy's side of the bed was a very smart little hat—the sort of black velvet thing that a woman wears when she goes out in the evening and wants to wear a hat. Bellamy looked at it gloomily. Then he took off one glove and ran his hands along one side of Freda's fur coat, putting it back into place over her. He put his hand on her forehead. Then he replaced the glove.
He walked round to the other side of the bed and looked at the bed-table. The electric lamp on it was lit, and on the floor between the table and the bed Bellamy could see something that looked like a sheet of writing paper and a fountain pen. He stooped down and picked them up. The pen was the pen that Freda always used and the other object was the remains of her writing-pad. There were only two sheets left on the pad, which was of an attractive grey colour, and on the top sheet Freda had obviously began to write a note to him. He read the words:
Dear Nicky,
It is urgent that I see you. For your own....
That was all. Apparently Freda had been interrupted and the pad had fallen down by the side of the bed. Bellamy put the pen back on the floor, tore the top sheet off the pad and put it in his pocket. He replaced the pad on the floor near the pen.
He went out of the bedroom and walked along the little passage into the dining-room. He went over to the sideboard. Inside was a silver tray with three clean tumblers on it. Bellamy took one tumbler off the tray and put it on top of the sideboard. He took off his gloves, picked up the tray and dropped the other two tumblers on to the floor. They broke, and he left the pieces where they were. He put the tray back in the sideboard, picked up the third glass, a decanter of whisky and a syphon that were in the sideboard, and took them into the bedroom.
He poured a large measure of whisky into the glass, squirted in some soda, took a drink. Then he went over to the bed, picked up Freda's right hand and squeezed the fingers round the glass. Then he let the hand fall back on to the bed and pressed the rim of the glass between the dead lips. He held it up to the light to make sure that the imprint of her lipstick was on the glass.
He put the glass, the carafe and syphon on the bed-table. He went into the bathroom and took a drink of cold water, afterwards polishing the dental glass that he used with a towel.
He went back into the bedroom and put on his gloves.
The telephone in the corner of the bedroom began to ring.
Bellamy slipped into his overcoat, picked up his hat, and with a final glance at Freda, went out of the room. He left the light on. He walked quickly along the passage, through the dining-room, through Vanning's study and out into the side corridor. He left the door on the latch. The telephone was still jangling.
He moved quickly and quietly down the stairs and into the street passage. It was still raining.
He turned up his overcoat collar and walked slowly through the passage, turned into Shepherd Market, then out into Piccadilly.
He stopped for a moment to light a cigarette. Then he began to walk towards his flat in Half Moon Street.
BELLAMY lay on his bed looking at the ceiling. After a while he realised that the room was cold. He got up, switched on the electric fire and put on the fur-lined overcoat. He pulled an armchair in front of the fire, sat down, found a loose cigarette in his overcoat pocket, lit it and began to think about Freda.
All sorts of ideas and fancies began to twist themselves about in his head. He began to play with them, examining one, eliminating another, trying to form a logical sequence of thought in his mind. The process was not easy.
One idea predominated. If there was a woman who was not likely to become involved in any of the sordid circumstances which usually led up to murder, it was Freda.
But all the same somebody had murdered Freda.
Bellamy, inhaling deeply, then pushing the smoke slowly out of his mouth with his tongue, began to think about women who got themselves murdered. The words 'got themselves murdered' appealed to him. Most women who died violently were, in some manner, active or even passive, partly responsible for their own deaths.
In murders in which jealousy was the motive they had to give cause for jealousy. In murders for gain they had to possess something sufficiently valuable for the murderer's risk to be worth the candle. Bellamy, by no stretch of imagination, could possibly visualise Freda being the object of a murder for revenge.
Yet, almost simultaneously with these thoughts, Bellamy realised how little one knew about anyone. Whenever somebody was murdered the most astounded people were always the closest relatives and the friends who thought they knew all about the victim's mind, habits, associates and general atmospherics.
And they were always so fearfully surprised after the murder had taken place, proving thereby that, in effect, they knew nothing of the peculiar, intimate and sinister associations that had enmeshed the unfortunate victim.
Where death by violence was concerned, truth was invariably stranger than fiction. People who wrote crime fiction and people who reviewed it always insisted on a murder being a logical sort of business with a clear-cut motive and a definite sequence of events leading up to the killing.
But murder was seldom like that in fact. It was invariably illogical, judged by normal standards of the mind, and quite often irresponsible. He remembered reading only a few days before a newspaper report of a man in a night club who had walked up to another man whom he did not even know and hit him over the head with a bottle of champagne. Here was definite, illogical fact; yet such an incident, recorded in a novel, would appear ridiculous to a degree.
Bellamy could not think of anybody who would want to murder Freda as far as he knew, and as far as his knowledge of Freda's personality permitted him to know anything about her. She was a beautiful, remote, and cool personality, who was always well-turned out, always at ease, never bothered unduly about anything or anyone and who had, so far as he knew, no odd or mysterious desires or connections of the sort which would bring her into proximity with a murderer.
And Freda had seemed to be a happy woman. In an age when the majority of women were rushing round in circles either trying to get something or get rid of something, loving men too much or disliking them too greatly, she presented a picture of contentment that was quite unique.
Bellamy was certain that no one would want to murder Freda, but a small and sardonic smile twisted his mouth at the thought that it was remotely possible that someone had been forced to murder Freda.
The smile disappeared when he realised that he was mainly concerned with a fact that he had carefully kept at the back of his mind, a fact that he disliked admitting because, so far as he personally was concerned it was definitely ominous and extremely inconvenient.
And that fact was that, whoever had murdered Freda, the circumstances had carefully arranged themselves so that he, Bellamy, should be suspect.
He stubbed out his cigarette, got up, walked along to the sitting-room and mixed himself a large whisky and soda. He needed the drink. Then he went back to the bedroom and sat down again before the fire.
He felt in his jacket pocket and took out the sheet of dove grey notepaper, the sheet that he had torn from Freda's writing pad, and read the words she had written:
Dear Nicky,
It is urgent that I see you. For your own....
They were written in Freda's neat, decided and unhurried handwriting. The words "For your own...." intrigued him. He supposed she was going to write: "For your own sake." He grinned ruefully. Even if it was for his own sake he would never now know just why she had wanted to see him.
Then what? Freda had begun to write the note. Then apparently for some reason she had stopped quite suddenly. Had she decided that she would not write to him, that the matter was so urgent that she ought to see him immediately, and then telephoned him at Carola's and asked him to come round?
Bellamy's first thought had been that she was writing the note when she had been interrupted by her murderer; that the remains of the writing pad and her pen had fallen from her hand on to the floor. But this idea seemed improbable if not impossible. It was hardly likely that Freda would be lying on her bed writing a note to him wearing a fur coat. And Bellamy remembered that the room had been very warm.
He lit another cigarette although his mouth was dry and acid from over-smoking. Then he walked over to the window, pulled aside the curtain, peered out into the black-out. He could see very little, but he could hear the rain pattering on the window. A gloomy night, he thought. He walked back to the fire.
After a few minutes he went to the telephone and rang through to the Malayan Club. He recognised the voice of the blonde barmaid at the other end of the wire. Bellamy took his handkerchief from his pocket, put it over the mouthpiece of the transmitter, and spoke through it.
"Hello," he said. "This is Mr. Browning. Is Mrs. Berington there?"
The blonde barmaid said No, she was not there. Bellamy asked if she was expected, adding that he was an old friend of Mrs. Berington's. The barmaid said Mrs. Berington was not expected, but that she had been through on the telephone and said that she was going to Mott's Club. Bellamy said thank you and hung up.
He stood a few minutes in the middle of the bedroom looking at the door. Then switched off the fire, picked up his hat and went out. He walked into Piccadilly and waited for a taxi. He told the driver to take turn to Mott's Club.
BELLAMY stopped the taxi near Acacia Road, in St. John's Wood. He turned into the deserted road, walked for fifty yards and then turned into the long stone paved passage that led to Mott's Club.
Ferdie had planned the lay-out of the Club well, Bellamy thought. The long stone covered-in passage, bordered with pots of evergreens, leading to the neat blue door at the end, with its dimly fit and carefully blued-in ship's lantern, added a romantic touch to the business of approaching a gaming house.
Bellamy gave the blue door a push, opened it, stepped inside and found himself in another passage. This one led through the front part of the house, passing alongside the rooms that Mott kept for his personal use. It sported a luxurious pile carpet, and the walls were adorned with sporting prints. At the far end of the passage was the small, glass-fronted office through which potential gamblers must pass before they reached the club proper.
Bellamy stopped halfway down the passage and lit a cigarette. Seated in the office, smoking a cigar, was Layton—Mott's watch-dog. Bellamy could see him put aside the newspaper he was reading.
He began to grin amiably. When he got to the office he stepped inside and said casually:
"Good evening, Layton. What's new?"
Layton said, not unpleasantly: "Only one thing, so far as you're concerned. The bar's up. You can't come in."
Bellamy's grin broadened.
"You don't say so," he said. "I suppose that's a recent order from the boss. But he couldn't have meant it. Ferdie would never put the bar up to me. Anyone else, but not me."
Layton said: "I'm sorry, but those are my orders. The guv'nor says you are not to be admitted."
He got up as Bellamy took a step towards the door on the other side of the office.
"Don't start anything," he said. "If you do I shall have to throw you out."
Bellamy said quietly: "Don't be a fool, Layton." He was still smiling. "You know dam' well that you can't start anything that looks like a rough house. Mott wouldn't like it and it's not good for business."
Layton said: "Apparently Mott thinks you're not good for business, and throwing you out won't start a rough house either. Why be a fool? You're going out."
"And?"
Bellamy's voice was cool. He took a sudden step towards Layton and then side-stepped quickly. He hit Layton in the mouth with a staccato short-arm jab that was as sudden as it was surprising.
Layton fell over backwards, knocking his chair to one side. When he began to get up Bellamy reached down, caught him by the collar and pulled him to his feet. Then, before Layton was set, while he was still off-balance, Bellamy hit him again on the side of the jaw.
Layton went down hard. He stayed down. He looked up at Bellamy reproachfully and almost respectfully.
"Don't try anything else, Layton," said Bellamy. "I'm sick of you and your reputation for being fearfully tough. Just take things easy and stay put. If I hit you again I'm going to hurt you."
Layton said nothing.
Bellamy went through the door on the other side of the office into the ante-room beyond. It was a large, well-furnished room with a bar in the corner, behind which a tired-looking individual in a white jacket was polishing glasses.
Bellamy walked quickly through the room and out of the door on the right. He walked down another short passage, pushed open the door at the end, and stepped into Mott's office.
Mott was sitting at his desk smoking a cigarette. By the side of the desk, seated in an armchair, her fur coat about her shoulders, was Carola.
Mott's eyebrows went up. He threw his cigarette end into the ash-tray. Carola was looking at Bellamy. Her eyes were very blue, very hostile.
Bellamy said: "It's all right, Ferdie. Don't worry. I'm not tight and I'm not going to be unpleasant. On the contrary..."
He looked over his shoulder as Layton appeared in the doorway rubbing his jaw.
Mott said: "It's all right, Layton. I can handle this." Bellamy took out his cigarette case.
"I owe you both an apology," he said. He lit a cigarette. "I behaved in a lousy way at Carola's, Ferdie. God knows what was the matter with me. You know as well as I do that I didn't mean what I said to you."
He looked at Carola.
"That goes for you too, Carola," he said. "I just don't know what possessed me this evening. I'd been drinking champagne and I had some rum on top of it. Not a very good mixture. I'm prepared to do or say anything that will put things right—if it's possible."
Mott began to smile.
"It's all right so far as I'm concerned, Nicky," he said. "But you know you do make things pretty difficult for your friends. No one ever knows when you're going to fly off the handle—and you can be damned rude when you want to be."
"I know," said Bellamy. "I'm a bad fellow. The trouble with me is I'm invariably rude to people who matter to me instead of picking on someone who doesn't. I hope you'll forgive me, Carola."
She shrugged her shoulders.
"I'll forgive you, Nicky," she said softly. "But I'm through with you. You know that. I meant that. I just can't keep up with you."
He said: "I don't know that I blame you, Carola. But I haven't got so many friends that I can afford to lose any."
Mott's smile was friendly.
"Let's forget it," he said. "Of course I was fearfully cut up when you suggested that things weren't run on strictly straight lines here. But I know you didn't mean it."
Carola got up.
"You're forgiven, Nicky," she said. "But so far as my friendship is concerned, you're on probation. I'm going to try my luck at roulette, Ferdie," she concluded.
She went out through the side door into the main room.
Bellamy sat down in the chair up against the wall. He looked thoroughly miserable. Mott got up, went to a cupboard and produced a bottle of whisky, a siphon and two glasses.
"Have a drink, Nicky," he said. "I don't bear you any ill-will. You know that. But you're an awful fool to yourself."
Bellamy grinned ruefully.
"Well, I haven't done myself very much good," he said. "I've lost Carola. What a damned fool I am, and just at a time when I've a chance..."
Mott nodded.
"Carola told me," he said. "In confidence of course, and I shan't breathe a word. You are an awful old ass, Nicky. You know you've got brains—however much you may try to disguise the fact—and Vanning must think something of you to have given you that job, It's an important job. It might lead to anything." He thought for a moment. "It's pretty tough on Vanning," he said. "His whole heart and soul is in that 'C' Bureau of his. The very thought of a leakage must be breaking his heart."
Bellamy nodded.
"He's pretty cut up about it," he said. "Although what the devil he expects me to find out I don't know. One doesn't know where the devil to start on a job like that."
Mott grinned.
"I don't think you'll find it too difficult, Nicky," he said easily. "It's some woman I bet."
He got up and handed the whisky and soda to Bellamy.
"It always amazes me that there aren't more leakages in war-time Government organisations," he said. "Look how they get started. Someone has an idea to start a thing like 'C' Bureau—a damned good idea too. All right—well the first thing they want is expert staff. They put someone in charge like Philip Vanning—a first class man who knows his job and is absolutely reliable; they take trouble in finding a man like that. Then a staff gets itself engaged. And the staff has to be expert too. But they never take sufficient trouble in investigating the staff. Providing a man or a woman has the proper technical qualifications everyone imagines that he or she must, of necessity, have the proper patriotic and moral attributes."
He knocked the ash off his cigarette.
"For some unknown reason the powers-that-be imagine that everyone they employ is above suspicion," he continued, "and even supposing they were, and as patriotic as you like, yet they may talk too much. The powers-that-be seldom realise that a certain type of mentality wants to show off; to suggest that it's doing a most important and secret job; that it knows every secret of national importance that there is to know."
He stubbed out his cigarette.
"That's the type that gives things away 'by accident,'" he went on. "It never means to give anything away. But it does nevertheless. We all know the type of man or woman who is working in a Government office and gets into an argument somewhere. Someone makes a statement, and our friend raises an eyebrow at the crucial moment or produces a pitying smile which says: 'How wrong you are and what I could tell you if I were allowed to talk,' never realising that the very process has given some other observant individual something to work on."
Bellamy said: "You're right, Ferdie. You're awfully right."
He drank his whisky and soda, got up.
"'Lucky at cards unlucky in love,'" he quoted. "I'm going to find out if the proverb's true." He looked towards the card-room. "What are they playing tonight, Ferdie?" he asked.
"There's roulette," Mott said. "And Harcourt March is trying to get a poker table going. I'll take a hand myself in a few minutes."
Bellamy moved towards the door.
Mott said hurriedly: "Just a moment, Nicky."
Bellamy stopped. He stood quite still, looking at Mott, smiling.
"It's about Carola," Mott said a trifle uneasily. "I'm mad about her. I've been crazy about her for months. Naturally I've never let her know. I'm not the sort of man who poaches on a friend's preserves. But that row at her place to-night brought things to a head, Nicky. After you'd gone I had a little talk with her, and I'm afraid I showed my hand. You know how these things happen?"
Bellamy nodded.
"I know," he said softly.
"I didn't think I had a chance," said Mott. "But it seems that Carola doesn't exactly dislike me. She said, in effect, that she'd realised for a long time that you and she were temperamentally unsuited anyway."
He got up, put his hands in his trouser pockets, and went over to the fireplace. He stood with his back to the fire watching Bellamy.
"Of course... there's nothing definite between us," he said. "But Carol rather gave me the idea that after a bit she and I might become engaged. I haven't been doing so badly at this place, and I'm proposing to sell it and settle down in the country somewhere."
He stopped speaking. There was a moment's pause. Then he went on:
"I thought I ought to tell you, Nicky. I thought it better that you should know."
Bellamy shrugged his shoulders.
"Thank you, old horse," he said. "I'm glad you did. In a way it's better. It makes things sort of definitely final." He sighed. "Well, dam' good luck to you, Ferdie," he said.
He grinned.
"'Lucky at cards unlucky in love.' By Jove! I ought to break the bank to-night." He went into the card-room.
There were eight or nine people at the roulette table. Carola was playing and Iris Berington was seated opposite her. Through the open door that led to the bar Bellamy could see Harcourt, looking not too happy, drinking by himself.
He walked towards the roulette table. As he approached, Mrs. Berington looked at him. As her eyes met his she drooped her eyelids in a rather attractive and inviting manner. He smiled at her.
The croupier spun the wheel. He was a tall white-faced thin young man with tuberculosis that Ferdie Mott had picked up from one of the better-class Mayfair gaming rooms. He looked bored and tired. He said to Bellamy:
"It's after twelve-thirty. You'll have to pay a fine to play, Mr. Bellamy. It'll cost you two pounds."
Bellamy produced two one pound notes, handed them over. He put a five-pound note on black as the croupier threw the ball in, and murmured: "Rien ne va plus." When the ball stopped rolling Bellamy saw that black had come up. He waited until his five-pound note was covered, picked up his money and said: "'Lucky at cards unlucky in love.'" He grinned at Carola. She produced a cold little smile.
They began to stake again. Bellamy wandered away from the table, through the open door, into the bar. Harcourt March was starting his fourth whisky and soda.
Bellamy said: "How's it going, Harcourt?" March grinned at him.
"Bloody awful," he said. "Money's as tight as hell.
"I hate this war and I've got a chilblain on each little toe, and there's nothing worse."
"Isn't there?" said Bellamy. "That's all you know. Wait until you've got corns as well."
He asked the bar-tender for a whisky and soda.
Harcourt said: "I say, old boy, you distinguished yourself to-night at Carola's, didn't you? They didn't like you a bit. You should have heard old Rennifrew—Carola's uncle—holding forth to a select côterie in the corner, on your sins, after you'd gone. Oh boy! Does he like you!"
Bellamy grinned.
"I know. I've blotted my copybook for ever with the Everard clan," he said. "Never mind. What can't be cured must be endured."
Harcourt said thickly: "Women are the devil. If it weren't for women a fellow could have the devil of a time."
Bellamy was still grinning.
"You mean if it weren't for one woman a fellow could have a devil of a good time with a lot of women. Can you give me a cigarette, Harcourt?"
March produced his case and Bellamy took a cigarette. March put the case—an ornate one—back in his pocket with the usual flourish. He said:
"It's odd about women. I s'pose what you just said is more or less correct. A man takes a lot of trouble trying to get one woman, and when he's got her he spends the rest of his time thinking what a hell of a time he could have with a whole lot of women if it weren't for her."
Bellamy blew a smoke ring.
"You have the wisdom of Solomon, Harcourt," he said. "And all you need is a drink."
He signalled the bar-tender, who mixed a large whisky. Bellamy handed it to March, who began to drink it in gulps.
Bellamy said: "Life is what you make it. Rome wasn't built in a day. A stitch in time saves nine and bob to your uncle."
He leaned up against the bar.
"The trouble is, Harcourt," he went on, "that life would be swell if everything would stay put. But nothing ever does stay put. Things happen with a regularity that wouldn't be so fearfully sickening if all drinks were free."
Harcourt nodded. He was swaying a little. He said:
"You're a philosopher, Nicky. That's what you are."
"Absolutely," agreed Bellamy. "I'm a fellow who can always wait. 'All things come to him who waits'—all the things nobody else wants!"
He flipped the ash off his cigarette.
"Life's all right," he said. "It's people. They are never satisfied with a situation. They've got to add something. If a thing's perfect they've got to do something to spoil it. A little thing can do an awful lot of harm."
He grinned reminiscently.
"I remember one quite ridiculous incident that caused a death," he said. "When I was in Oklahoma in '32, I used to go to a little wayside café, just outside the city limits on one of the big national roads. It was owned by a fellow called Joe. Not at all a bad chap.
"Joe was crazy about a woman who used to drive up at night and have coffee and hamburgers. She was a streamlined city lady and she gave herself an awfully good time playing Joe along. He used to look at her with the eyes of a love-struck bull. He weighed about sixteen stones too.
"Joe had taken a lot of trouble painting a sign that stood on the verge of the road. The sign said: 'Joe's Lunch Room. The best eats always on view. Take your pick.'
"One night after the place was closed the streamlined lady drove past and had a big idea. I think she must have been a little cock-eyed that night. She drove back into Oklahoma and hired a sign-painter. She drove him back to Joe's and got him to add some words to the sign."
"Next morning it was a dull sort of day and when Joe arrived and looked at the sign he read: 'Joe's Lunch Room. The best eats always on view. Take your pick. You'll need it!'"
Harcourt said: "That's not bad. What did Joe do?"
"He shot himself," said Bellamy. "He didn't think it was funny. It was the last straw so far as he was concerned."
Harcourt said: "I bet she got a kick out of it. I bet she thought she'd done something clever in driving that poor mug to suicide. Anyhow what's the moral to the story? It ought to have a moral."
"I know," said Bellamy dryly. "I've often wondered what the moral was myself." He went on: "You've got no grumble about women, Harcourt. Look at the woman you won for yourself. You'd have to go a very long way to find a woman like Vanessa. She has everything—she's beautiful, she has intelligence and she understands men."
March hiccoughed.
"Like hell..." he said. He looked round the room and then sank I us voice to a whisper. "Vanessa makes me sick," he said. His voice became vicious. "She's beautiful, she has intelligence and she understands men..." he muttered, mimicking Bellamy. "Pah!"
He gulped down the remains of his whisky and knocked on the bar with his glass for another.
Bellamy laughed softly.
"All right," he said. "All right. Well you've got to admit that even if you are not positively raving about Vanessa at the moment, she gives you your head and doesn't make a song and dance about it. She doesn't even bat an eyelid when you parade that pretty little Berington thing in front of her."
March said: "Nonsense I Why should she worry if I get around with Iris? Anyhow Iris is like the rest of em. She's nothing but a damned little gold-digger. It's all right with her when a man has money and it isn't when he hasn't. I'm sick and tired of the whole lot of 'em. I prefer cards!"
He winked ponderously at Bellamy and wandered off in the direction of the card-room.
Bellamy began to walk round the room, looking at the pictures on the walls. He had smoked the cigarette March had given him almost to the end. He glanced quickly at the bar-tender who was engrossed in polishing glasses, stubbed out the cigarette in an ash-tray and quickly slipped the butt into his trouser pocket. Then he walked into the card-room.
Ferdinand Molt, March and three other men had started a poker game. They were playing three pound rises—pretty high stakes, Bellamy thought. He walked over to the roulette table and stood there watching. He thought that when he looked at Carola she evaded his eyes. He gave her a final smile to which she did not respond, and then moved away.
He walked back to the poker table and sat down in a chair, away from the table. A round of jackpots had gone up and down and there was about fifty pounds in the kitty.
Harcourt opened the jackpot for ten pounds. Bellamy got up, and walking behind him saw that he drew cards to a pair of knaves. The three cards that he drew were no good to him. But he bet another ten pounds.
Bellamy went back to his seat. By looking out of the corner of his eye he could just see Mott's hand. Mott was holding four queens. The other three men threw their cards in and when it came to his turn to speak Mott threw his hand in too. Harcourt showed his pair of knaves and collected the kitty, now worth seventy-five pounds.
Bellamy drew in his breath softly. He was wondering why, on a practically unbeatable hand, Mott had thrown his cards in. Well... there was only one explanation. He was deliberately allowing March to win!
Bellamy closed his eyes. He sat there, relaxed in the chair, apparently asleep. At the end of half an hour he got up and looked at the poker game.
March's face was flushed. He was winning about two hundred pounds.
Bellamy began to walk towards the bar. On his way he passed close to the roulette table. Iris Berington looked at him. He made an almost imperceptible movement of his head towards the bar.
The bar-tender was sitting on a chair behind the bar. He was nearly asleep. Bellamy ordered a whisky and soda. A minute later Mrs. Berington came into the room.
Bellamy said: "Iris, I want to show you an interesting picture. Come and look at it."
She walked across the room with him. They stopped before a water colour. Bellamy said softly:
"Iris, I've got to talk to you. Somewhere where we can be alone. It's really rather urgent."
She laughed softly.
"Is it, Nicky?" she said. "Well... I'm going home in a few minutes. It's half-past one now. You'd better wait for me at my flat—Clarendon Mansions, just off Brook Street. I shall be there at a quarter to two. Meet me in the downstairs lounge."
"Thanks," said Bellamy.
She went back into the card-room. Bellamy went back to Mott's office and got his hat and coat. When he went into the card-room, Mrs. Berington had begun to play roulette again. He murmured a good-night to everyone and went out.
He walked for ten minutes and then took a taxi to Brook Street.
In the cab he leaned back and relaxed. He was tired but not unhappy.
He was thinking about March.
BELLAMY sat in the downstairs lounge of Clarendon Mansions smoking a cigarette, waiting for Mrs. Berington. The lounge was cold and deserted.
He was thinking about the ill-concealed pleasure and self-satisfaction which had showed in Ferdie Mott's face when he was talking about his engagement to Carola. Bellamy grinned cynically. He tried to conjure up a picture of Ferdie—after he had disposed of the gaming club—in the character of a country squire. Anyway he would try to look the part. Bellamy visualised him striding about the countryside in neat breeches, an exquisite pair of well-boned cavalry boots and a hacking jacket that would be just a trifle too loud and too waisted.
Bellamy began to think about the poker game. Why had Mott deliberately allowed March to win a couple of hundred pounds? Bellamy, who had been watching the game through half-closed eyes, had realised that the other two men who were playing did not matter very much. Whenever a hand was played in which they were betting, Mott had played normal poker, but whenever they went out of the betting, leaving the issue to be decided between him and March—who by this time was very tight and quite reckless—Mott had thrown his hand in again and again, although Bellamy knew he was holding winning cards.
He shivered a little as the outside door opened. A cold gust of wind came into the lounge and with it came Mrs. Berington, her furs pulled close about her.
He looked at her with a new appreciation, wondering exactly what she was trying to get out of life. That Iris was a gold-digger with an eye for the main chance, he knew. Blondie at the Malayan Club, after three glasses of champagne, had told him that. But he was especially intrigued with the association between Harcourt and Iris, even if that association was nearing it's end.
He was curious too about March and March's finances. Harcourt was not a good gambler, had no profession. It was true that his wife Vanessa had money of her own, but like everyone else her income had been sadly depleted since the war began. It was obvious that she was not feeling at all well disposed towards Harcourt. It was more than unlikely that he had been getting money from her.
Where had the money come from and why, if what the barmaid at the Malayan Club said was true, had it suddenly stopped?
Bellamy said: "Hullo, Iris. I think you're sweet to worry about my troubles at this time of night." She looked at him wickedly.
"I thought night was always the time to worry about men," she smiled. "Let's go upstairs. It's fearfully cold down here, Nicky."
Her voice was soft, inviting.
They walked over to the lift. Bellamy opened and closed the gates. She pressed the third floor button. As the lift ascended she said:
"What's the trouble, Nicky? Anyway, I know it's one of two things."
He raised his eyebrows.
"I know you're clever. Iris," he grinned, "but I didn't know you were as clever as all that. So it's one of two things, is it?"
She nodded. She was smiling. He could see her teeth were quite perfect.
The lift stopped at the third floor. They got out. Bellamy followed her down the passage. The place was expensive looking. He thought casually that the rent must be considerable.
She unlocked the door of her flat. They went in. Bellamy took off his hat and coat, left them in the hall, and followed her into the drawing-room.
The room was cosy and well-furnished—almost too well-furnished. A big fire was burning.
He said: "Well, Iris, I want to know what my particular trouble is."
She dropped her fur coat on to a chair. Then she went over to the sideboard and produced a decanter of whisky, a siphon and some glasses.
"Experience has shown me, my dear," she began, "that man invariably suffers from one of two troubles—money trouble or woman trouble. Of course if he's very unlucky he suffers from them both at the same time."
Bellamy grinned wryly.
"I should think most men had one as the result of the other," he said. "They almost automatically come together."
She brought his drink over and handed it to him. She stood quite close to him, her own glass in her hand, smiling up into his face.
"I don't think you're the type of man who would have the two troubles at once," she murmured. "I can't visualise you having trouble with a woman, Nicky."
He raised his eyebrows again.
"No? Why not?"
She crossed over to the fireplace and put her glass down on the mantelpiece. Then she came back to him, put her arms round his neck and kissed him on the mouth. She knew how to kiss. Her body was pressed close against him. Eventually she stepped back and said with a delightful little moue:
"I've been wanting to do that ever since the first time I saw you. Does that amuse you?"
"I wish I'd known that before. Iris," he said, smiling at her. "At the same time you said just now that you couldn't visualise me having any trouble with a woman."
His smile deepened. "Well, it looks as if I'm going to have a spot of trouble with one now."
He looked at her with one eyebrow cocked up. She thought there was something rather whimsical and extremely attractive about the way he looked. She put her hand on his arm.
"Don't worry, Nicky," she said. "You're not going to have any trouble with me. I'm the sort of woman that you don't have trouble with."
Bellamy drank some whisky and soda. She went back to the fireplace for her glass. She stood in front of the fire and raised the glass to her lips.
"Here's to you, Nicky," she said cheerfully, "... and me!"
He laughed. Then:
"You must be a unique sort of woman. Iris. Do you mean to say that you haven't ever made trouble for any man?"
She sat down in the big armchair by the side of the fire and crossed her legs. She had charming legs, slender well-cut ankles.
She said pensively: "Well, I suppose I have made trouble for one man, but only one as far as I remember. Of course when I say trouble I mean real trouble."
Bellamy moved over to the other side of the fire.
He said: "I suppose if I suggested that the unfortunate individual was Mr. Berington, the guess would be out of order?"
She nodded.
"The guess is all right," she murmured. "But even then I didn't make a lot of trouble for him. I just divorced him. He didn't like that a bit."
"Ah," smiled Bellamy. "So you're a little alimony hound, are you?"
"If you like, Nicky," she replied. "But not a very successful alimony hound. I'm afraid my marriage was the major mistake in a fife that has not been entirely without incident." She looked at him mischievously. "I was a bit green when I married Berington," she continued. "I thought he possessed more money than he really had. That's why the alimony isn't too good."
Bellamy said: "It's a sad world, but still I should think so far as you were concerned there were as good fish in the sea as those that have already been caught."
"Are there?" said Iris. She became suddenly serious. "Don't you make any mistake about me, Nicky. You think I'm merely a gold-digger, but even if I am the fact need not worry you. You haven't got very much gold to dig for, have you.? And even admitting that I like gold-digging, yet I would have you know, Sir, there are gold-diggers and gold-diggers."
He laughed.
"You interest me, Iris. I think you're a sweet."
He went over to the sideboard and helped himself to a cigarette. On the way back he said to her casually:
"When you came in to-night I thought you looked perfect. I loved the way the wind blew your skirts about your ankles. You're graceful. I think you could be very interesting."
He went over to her, leaned down and kissed the tip of her nose.
She said: "In case you don't know my mouth is just underneath."
He sat down on the settee. He said to her:
"Don't deflect me. I want you to elucidate a point. You said there are gold-diggers and gold-diggers. Do you belong to the first or the second group, and what are the groups?"
She replied: "There's a type of gold-digger for which I have no use at all. She looks at men generally. She sees there is gold 'in them thar hills' and she proceeds to dig. I don't like her. I think she's inartistic."
"I see," said Bellamy. "So you're fastidious. You're finicky about your men. Your prospects have to have certain attributes?"
"Precisely," she said. "When I dig for gold I like the men to be at least interesting."
Bellamy grinned.
"May I have another drink?"
"You may have anything you like," she answered smilingly. "Perhaps you'll get me one too—a little one." He got the drinks.
Iris asked: "Do I still intrigue you?"
Bellamy said: "More than ever, because for a fastidious gold-digger you go off the rails sometimes."
"Meaning what, Sir?" she asked.
"Meaning that if you like to dig for gold in interesting spots, I'm surprised that you've been carrying out mining operations on Harcourt March." He looked at the ceiling. "I can't conceive a more stale, flat, unprofitable, uninteresting and entirely fearful fellow—from a woman's point of view I mean—" he added quickly, "than Harcourt March."
She looked into the fire.
"I agree with you. Harcourt is all those things. But Harcourt was really rather a special case."
Bellamy's eyebrows went up again.
"Was?" he said.
"Was!" she repeated. She laughed prettily. "I'm not such a fool as to play two men as different in temperament, character and outlook as you and Harcourt March at one and the same time. I'm through with Harcourt."
"And now you're playing me?" Bellamy smiled cynically. "My dear, you make me feel like a fish."
"Don't be silly, Nicky," she said. "I should think you were the one man in the world who couldn't be played. I don't think I've ever known a man with an instinct for women quite as quick as yours."
"By jove," said Bellamy. "I am a one, aren't I? So I've got an instinct now?"
"Like hell you have," she went on. "You are a much more clever person than people think. I've often wondered about you. I've often wondered how you manage to exist, where you get your money from."
Bellamy made a face at her.
"I'm getting frightened of you, Iris."
"Oh don't bother, Nicky," she said pleasantly. "I'm not really curious. I'm not asking you to tell me where you get your money from."
"So long as I've got some?" asked Bellamy with a smile.
"I don't even care about that," she said. She leaned back in the chair, put her hands behind her head.
Bellamy said: "You've got a nice figure, Iris, especially when you sit like that."
She said: "I know. What do you think I sat like that for?"
They both laughed.
She said: "Nicky, believe it or not, but I don't give a damn whether you've got any money or not. I'm for you, Nicky. There's something about you that gets me into a flat spin. There are two things about you that appeal to me."
"Such as?" he said.
"First of all," said Mrs. Berington, "you're a very attractive man, and secondly, my womanly instinct tens me that you're casual and damned dangerous. Women like men who are casual and dangerous whatever they may say to the contrary."
Bellamy shrugged his shoulders.
"I'm not dangerous. I'm not doing a thing," he said mildly.
"No," she said. "But you will. When I said you were dangerous I meant that you're the type of man that a woman like me might be fool enough to fall for in a very big way."
"Maybe," said Bellamy. "But you could always stop falling whenever you wanted to, couldn't you, my dear?"
"It might not be so easy as that," said Iris gloomily. "By the way," she went on, "this rather intimate conversation has led us away from the point at issue. You said you wanted to see me urgently about something—what?"
Bellamy's face became very serious.
"Look here, Iris," he said. "When I spoke to you this evening, I felt that I might be in a bit of a jam. What you've said since about being keen on me helps in one way, and it doesn't in another. Let me give you a word of advice. If I were a woman like you, I wouldn't have very much to do with a man like me. The process would be like mixing a Seidlitz powder—it fizzes when you mix the two packets. The point is," he went on, "I want an alibi."
"How thrilling," she said. "This sounds like a film. What is it—a woman I suppose? But perhaps I ought not to ask the question. What's the alibi you want, Nicky?"
He said: "You left Carola's party to-night just a few minutes before I did. Where did you go?"
"Oh dear, you sound like the district attorney," she answered. "Well, Sir, if you must know, I came here and changed my frock before I went on to Mott's place."
"Did anybody see you come in here?" asked Bellamy.
"No one saw me come in. The hall porter was upstairs. I came up in the lift by myself."
"And then you went straight on to Mott's place from here?"
She nodded.
"Yes, I left here at about eleven-forty."
"All right," said Bellamy. "Would it be all right—if a rather difficult situation arose I mean—if I said that I came here and had a drink with you at about twenty past eleven, that I was here until you left?"
"Why not?" she said. She stubbed out her cigarette. "All this is very mysterious," she said. "Do you know I believe you're trying to enlist my aid to save you from being cited as a co-respondent."
"Something like that," said Bellamy. "The point is will you back me up and, if necessary, say that I was here from just after quarter-past eleven until you left for Mott's Club at eleven-forty?"
"That's all right, Nicky," she said. "I'll do that for you with pleasure." She looked at him. Her eyes were soft. "But I shall expect repayment," she concluded with a smile.
Bellamy grinned.
"So you're going to blackmail me," he said. "I'm putting myself in your power. You sound almost like the wicked squire."
She got up.
"Well, Nicky," she said, "if you fancy yourself as the village maiden you'd better be prepared to fight for your honour any time from now on. However, my first demand is not too impossible."
"No?" he said. "And what is it?"
"Come and lunch with me to-morrow, Nicky," she answered. "I want to talk to you. I'll give you lobster and sweet womanly sympathy. Will you come?"
"I shall be here," said Bellamy. "With bells on. I like lobster and I'm a devil for womanly sympathy. I can't get enough of it."
She laughed.
"You've probably had a damned sight too much if I know something about you—and for Heaven's sake don't drink so much. You weren't at all popular at Carola's to-night."
He went into the hallway. She helped him on with his coat. He said:
"I wonder why women always try to reform me. I don't think it's fair."
She said: "I'm not trying to reform you. I don't want to reform you. I just want you to drink a little less. See?"
She put up her face to be kissed.
"Good-night, Casanova," she said. "Try to be good. And don't be late for lunch."
She closed the door softly behind him.
Then she went back into the drawing-room and stood looking into the fire.
BELLAMY walked slowly back to his flat. The rain had given place to a biting east wind and he was glad to turn up the astrakhan collar of his coat.
He was thinking about his alibi, wondering whether Iris Berington would be tough enough to stand for it and stick to it when she discovered what had happened during the time that Bellamy was supposed to have been with her.
He wondered whether they had found out about Freda Vanning. They must have done this, he thought. In any event Philip Vanning would have returned to the apartment by midnight—he seldom worked later than that hour. Bellamy suddenly realised that the telephone call that had come through to the apartment as he was leaving was, in all probability, from Vanning. Possibly he had telephoned through to Carola and discovered from her that Freda had not been to the party because of her cold.
And when Freda failed to answer the telephone Philip would want to know why.
He began to think about Iris. He thought that Iris might also present a rather difficult problem in the near future. She was no inexperienced love-struck lady who had suddenly conceived a passion for a casual acquaintance. She meant business. When a woman like Iris fell for a man she fell hard. And Iris was not the sort of woman to give up easily. She imagined herself to be in love with him—or she was in love with him, and she would raise holy hell and devils if she thought he had merely been 'taking her for a ride.'
What had happened to-night did not matter very much. What was a kiss here or there? But if he went on with it—and it looked as if he must go on with it if he wanted her to hold up the alibi—then he would have to play ball and be good. Or at least give her the impression that he was.
He found himself asking why he had so suddenly decided, at Mott's Club, to ask her for assistance. He knew very little about Iris and he knew he was taking the devil of a chance. If she threw him down over the alibi things might be very difficult unless, in the meantime, the police had discovered some other suspect—somebody to whom circumstantial evidence pointed even more strongly than it did to himself.
He sighed to himself as he turned into Piccadilly and began to walk towards Half Moon Street. Life—and death—depended on such little things. If Freda had not asked him to enter the apartment block by the side door he would have gone through the front entrance, in the normal manner, and the hall porter would have seen him. In these circumstances Bellamy could have sounded the alarm immediately he had discovered Freda's body and all would have been well.
Even then he realised his story would have sounded a little thin. It was so unlike Freda to ring anyone up and want to see them urgently at eleven o'clock at night.
For some reason which he could not explain, Bellamy found himself connecting Harcourt March with the mystery. Vanning had told him that March was going in for a cocktail and that he was taking Freda on, afterwards, to Carola's party. Why had Freda so suddenly discovered that she had a cold and was unable to go? Had not she known that she had a cold when she had telephoned through earlier to Vanning, at his office.
What had happened to Freda during the evening? Something had happened. Something of sufficient importance to upset her usual poise and decide her not to go to Carola's but to telephone through and get Bellamy to go to her as secretly and quickly as possible.
Had Freda felt—for once in her coolly impersonal life—that she was in danger and wanted someone to be with her. If so why had not she telephoned to Philip?
Bellamy thought he knew the answer to that one.
Nothing short of actual knowledge that something pretty terrible was going to happen would make Freda disturb Vanning when he was working. If she had merely thought there might be some sort of trouble that needed a man to deal with it, she would not have bothered her husband. Bellamy was just the sort of man that she would telephone. He was the sort of person that women did ask to do things for them. He was that.
He turned into Half Moon Street and fumbled in his trouser pocket for his front-door key. He had turned into the doorway and was putting the key in the lock when a figure detached itself from the shadows of the next entrance.
The figure stood close to Bellamy. It had its hands in its raincoat pockets and a bowler hat slightly on one side of its head.
The figure was that of a middle-aged, stocky man, with bright eyes set in a round face, and a mild expression.
Bellamy said: "Can I do anything for you?"
The man took his right hand out of his pocket. He handed Bellamy a small leather case with a transparent celluloid front. Bellamy switched on his torch and looked at it. It was a police officer's Warrant Card. It bore the name of Detective-Inspector Meynell of the Criminal Investigation Department.
Bellamy handed the card back. He was smiling pleasantly.
The police officer said: "I'd like a few words with you if it's convenient, Sir."
Bellamy said: "What's the trouble?" He felt for his cigarette case.
Meynell answered: "There's been a murder, Sir. A lady named Mrs. Philip Vanning, at the Hyde Apartments. We are informed that she telephoned you tonight at Miss Everard's flat at about eleven o'clock. We thought you might have some information that might help us, Sir."
Bellamy said: "My God! How awful. Poor Freda!" He opened the door.
"You'd better come in. Inspector," he said.
He stood aside for the police officer to enter. As he closed the door, Bellamy saw the Squad car slide quietly up to the kerb.
They had been waiting for him.
BELLAMY led the way into the sitting-room. He turned on the electric fire and pulled up an armchair. He said cheerfully:
"Sit down, Inspector. You must have been pretty cold waiting outside."
The police officer nodded.
"Ours is a cold job, Mr. Bellamy," he smiled. "I must say I prefer working in the summer."
"What about a drink?" Bellamy asked.
He went to the sideboard.
"No, thank you, Sir," said the Detective-Inspector. "I never drink when I'm doing a job of work."
Bellamy mixed a whisky and soda for himself; then he pulled up another armchair and sat down on the other side of the fire.
He proceeded to drink his whisky and soda slowly. Over the rim of the glass he was looking at Meynell curiously. He surmised that Meynell was a very solid and not fearfully intelligent person, and simultaneously he concluded that the surmise was probably wrong.
There were very few unintelligent Detective-Inspectors at Scotland Yard and, whilst Bellamy's life and activities had not brought him into actual contact with the C.I.D. type, he knew that the English police system was very effective. They were very quiet and unassuming, and kindly and helpful, these C.I.D. people. They were also very consistent and extremely tenacious. They did not bully or get tough, or try even the mildest form of third degree; but their tenacity, the continuous working at some small point, the innocent but carefully planned questions—all these things constituted something which might be even more dangerous than a third degree.
Bellamy put his glass on the mantelpiece. He lit a cigarette. He offered his case to the police officer, who shook his head.
Bellamy said quietly: "This is pretty awful. Mrs. Vanning was a friend of mine. I used to work in her husband's business. I'm very sorry for him. It's dam' bad luck."
The policeman nodded.
"He's pretty badly hit, Sir," he said. "It was a devil of a shock, of course. I should say that Mr. Vanning is fairly a tough sort of man, but it's a bit hard to be told all of a sudden that your wife's been strangled."
"My God!" said Bellamy. "Strangled!... How fearful. Yet it sounds almost impossible. I'm certain that Mrs. Vanning hadn't an enemy in the world. She couldn't have. She wasn't that kind of woman."
The Detective-Inspector asked qmetly: "What kind of a woman was she, Mr. Bellamy?"
Bellamy was silent for a moment. Eventually:
"There are certain types of women about whom one wouldn't be too terribly surprised to hear that they'd been murdered. You know the types I mean, Inspector? They don't have to be criminal types. There are women who are quite nice persons and yet they have certain obvious defects, or desires, or even virtues. You can imagine, for instance, that a woman might lay herself out—quite unconsciously of course—to be murdered because she was so nice that she just couldn't say no at a time when she ought to say no. I can imagine a woman being 'murderable' because she was—possibly in quite an innocent sort of way—curious to a degree or jealous to a degree."
He smoked for a moment. Then went on: "Any woman who was unhappy would be a possible 'murderee.' If a more or less normal person is unhappy they try to do something about it. If it is a man he begins to experiment with women. If it is a woman she begins to think in terms of men. It's a natural form of escapism."
"But Freda Vanning wasn't like that. She was not only happy, she was contented. Nobody would get Freda in a corner. No one could threaten her. She was too honest, too straight, too self-contained. She had so much within her that she had a ready-made means of escape from anything that might temporarily annoy her. She had books—which she loved—a happy home and a thousand friends on the end of the telephone. She was not the sort of woman who gets herself mixed up in the convolutions of life that end in murder. She just wasn't the type."
He looked at the Detective-Inspector. Then he began to grin. Meynell thought that when Bellamy grinned he looked rather like a mischievous schoolboy. He was a trifle shocked.
Bellamy said with a humorous twist of the lips:
"My next lecture will be given in the main hall on Thursday next. There will be a silver collection!"
He blew a smoke-ring airily.
Meynell produced a smile. It was a deprecating smile.
"It's a funny thing, Sir," he said, "but that's what people always say when somebody they know has been murdered. Nobody ever thinks that the people walking about the streets—I don't mean crooks or card-sharpers or prostitutes—I mean the normal ordinary people—ever have enemies, but they do unfortunately."
The corners of his mouth drooped a little.
"Anyway," he went on, "Mrs. Vanning had one enemy all right."
Bellamy shook his head.
"All the same," he said. "I still find it difficult to believe that anybody would want to kill Freda Vanning." He knocked his cigarette ash into the fireplace. "Tell me about it. Inspector," he said. "What happened?"
Meynell, who had been holding his bowler hat in his hands, put it carefully on the floor between his legs. He leaned back in the chair. He said:
"Naturally enough, Sir, we know very little about it, but the facts as we have them are these: It seems that Mrs. Vanning was alive at eleven o'clock to-night, because at that time she rang through to her husband's office, spoke to his secretary and asked for him. Mr. Varming, who'd been in another department of his business just down the road, came in to the office just as his secretary hung up the receiver. He did not get through to his wife immediately because, when his secretary had suggested to Mrs. Vanning that she would get Mr. Vanning to ring up immediately he came in, Mrs. Vanning said she would prefer him to ring up at eleven-thirty.
"Mr. Vanning apparently thought that was a little bit odd," the police officer went on. "He couldn't understand that."
Bellamy nodded.
"There might have been a very good reason for her wanting him not to ring before eleven-thirty."
"Quite, Sir," said Meynell. "That's what I was thinking. It rather looks as if Mrs. Vanning might have been expecting a visit from somebody between eleven and eleven-thirty. She might have been, although she could have had another reason."
Bellamy cocked one eyebrow inquiringly.
"At eleven-thirty Mr. Vanning, who had finished his work by then, asked his secretary to get through to Mrs. Vanning on the telephone. There is a private wire from his office to his flat—in the sitting-room—and the secretary naturally used that. She heard the ringing tone all right but there was no reply.
"So after a bit she used the ordinary telephone that reaches tenants in the Hyde Apartments through the switchboard in the hall porter's office. The night porter put her through to the flat—that telephone is in Mrs. Vanning's bedroom—but there was still no reply.
"By this time Mr. Vanning was wondering what had happened and where his wife was. He asked the night porter to go up and see if she were at home.
"The night porter went up. He let himself in with his pass key. He found Mrs. Vanning lying on the bed in ner room. She had been strangled."
Bellamy raised an eyebrow again.
"It rather looks as if she was expecting somebody between eleven and eleven-thirty. Inspector," he murmured, "and it looks as if the somebody wasn't very nice either."
"Not at all nice," Meynell agreed.
Bellamy threw his cigarette stub into the fireplace and lit another—his last one. He said casually:
"Just how do I come into all this?"
"Well, you don't really, Sir," said the Inspector. "We thought there was just a chance that you might know something. After the night porter discovered Mrs. Vanning's body, he rang through to her husband and asked him to come home immediately, told him that something pretty bad had happened. Then he dialled 999 and our information Room got the story. I went round there right away."
"And you've no definite ideas about it, Inspector?" asked Bellamy.
"Not yet, Sir," said the policeman. "The photograph and fingerprint people haven't finished with their job yet. They may tell us something."
"The point is," he went on, "that after Mr. Vanning had met me and got over the shock, he told me that he'd understood from an earlier telephone call he'd had from his wife that she was going to a party given by a Miss Carola Everard to-night. Apparently she'd changed her mind and hadn't gone."
"I went round to Miss Everard's place. I thought there was just a chance that Mrs. Vanning might have telephoned through there. I wanted to check up on anything, no matter how slight the chance was. When I got there the butler told me that just after eleven o'clock to-night Mrs. Vanning had been through on the telephone and asked to speak to you. I thought, Sir," he concluded almost apologetically, "that you might have something that would help us.
"I wish I had," said Bellamy. "It's quite true—Mrs. Vanning did telephone me and the time that's been given you is more or less correct. It was, I think, just after eleven o'clock. She told me that she had a cold, that she wouldn't be coming along to the party, and she asked me to make her apologies to Miss Everard. Miss Everard was my fiancee," said Bellamy. "I gave the butler the message before I went."
"Quite," said Meynell softly. "Needless to say, Sir, you didn't see anything of Mrs. Vanning after you left?"
Bellamy raised his eyebrows in surprise.
"Why should I?" he said. He hesitated for a moment. "Of course I know, Inspector," he went on, "that you have to check on everything, and I realise that the telephone call from Freda Vanning to me at Miss Everard's party would make you want to know what I was doing, more especially as she must have telephoned me almost immediately after she'd phoned through to her husband's office."
His tone became confidential.
"I want to be perfectly straight with you. Inspector," he said. He shrugged his shoulders. "Naturally, I've got to be. But I do hope that what I am going to tell you will be strictly entre nous."
He smiled deprecatingly.
"You see," he said a little lamely, "it concerns another woman." Meynell smiled understandingly.
"Well, Sir," he said, "our business is to do our job as successfully as we can without causing anybody any trouble. What we want to do," he went on, "is to discover who murdered Mrs. Vanning, and that's all. I can't make any promises of course, but you can take it from me that Scotland Yard isn't interested in disclosing information that concerns any woman unless the process is officially necessary." Bellamy nodded.
"Quite!" he said. "Only you see the point is that I was engaged to Miss Everard, and she broke off the engagement actually at her party. To tell you the truth," he said, "I went there a little tight. She didn't like it and we had a few words.
"Naturally," Bellamy went on with a twisted smile, "I wasn't too pleased. I'd had one or two whiskies and sodas at the party, and I suppose I was caught rather on the rebound after being given the air by Miss Everard. When I left the party I walked round and saw a woman friend of mine."
Meynell nodded understandingly.
"I quite understand, Sir," he said. "That's just the sort of thing a man would do. I bet you were feeling pretty cut up. Miss Everard's a very beautiful woman," he added inconsequently.
He paused for a moment.
"And... er... and what would the name of this lady be, Sir? You see we might want to check up on that."
"Of course," said Bellamy. "It was a Mrs. Iris Berington. She has a flat on the second floor at the Clarendon Mansions just off Brook Street."
The Inspector produced a note-book. He made a note of the address.
"You say you walked round there, Sir," he said. "Have you any idea as to what time you got there?"
Bellamy thought for a moment.
"I couldn't say exactly," he said, "but it should not be difficult to work out. Mrs. Vanning telephoned me at Carola's party at three or four minutes past eleven. I should say I left at about five past. Then I walked round to the Clarendon Mansions. I walked pretty fast," said Bellamy, "because it was cold. I imagine it would take me about ten or twelve minutes. I should say I got round there somewhere between a quarter and twenty past eleven."
The Detective Inspector nodded.
"I see, Sir," he said. "And you didn't see anything of Mrs. Vanning when you were on your way I suppose? You didn't see anything of her immediately after you left the party?"
"Good God, of course not," said Bellamy in a surprised tone. "How could I? I thought you had an idea that she'd asked Vanning not to telephone her before eleven-thirty because she was expecting someone to visit her at the flat. Why should she have gone out?"
"That's an interesting point," the police officer answered. "You see, Sir, there's this fact to be taken into consideration, and you'll agree that it's a little bit odd:
"I've told you that there are two telephones in the Vanning flat. There's the private wire to Mr. Vanning's office, and there's the ordinary fine that runs through the switchboard in the hall porter's office. Well, Mrs. Vanning used neither of those lines when she got through to her husband at eleven o'clock. Usually she used the private line when she wanted to speak to his office. But she didn't on this occasion, and she didn't use the other line because the night porter who went on duty at a quarter to eleven has informed us that the Vanning line was not switched through to the flat. It was only through to his switchboard. So she couldn't have used that."
Bellamy nodded.
"So she went out?" he said.
"That's right, Sir," said Meynell. "She must have gone out. We've got an idea about that. There is a second entrance to the flat out on to a corridor leading to the service stairs. The door was on the latch. Outside the service entrance downstairs is a passage and at the end of that passage is a telephone booth.
"It looks to me as if, for some reason best known to herself, Mrs. Vanning went out of the flat through the second door, down the service stairs, and used the telephone at the end of the passage to get through first of all to her husband's office and then to you afterwards.
"We know from the night porter that neither of those calls went through his switchboard, and we know from Mr. Vanning's secretary that Mrs. Vanning did not use the private fine when she spoke to the office. So she must have gone out, and she was murdered pretty soon after she got back ... at least that's my guess."
"Why do you think that?" Bellamy asked.
"Because she'd got her fur coat on, Sir," said Meynell. "She was killed before she had time to take it off, and her hat was where she'd thrown it on the table in her bedroom. She couldn't have wanted to wear her fur coat in the bedroom because there was a big fire burning. The room was very warm.
"Of course," the Detective Inspector continued, "she may have been done in by some stray fellow who'd got into the mansions by the service door while Mrs. Vanning was using the telephone booth at the end of the passage. He might have seen her come out of the service door and walk along the passage and go into the booth. He could have easily walked up the service stairs to the second floor and, prowling about on the chance of picking something up, he might have discovered that the second door to the Vanning flat was open.
"And he slipped in, and was nosing around when Mrs. Vanning returned and discovered him in the bedroom. Then he killed her. That's a theory of course. It could have happened."
Bellamy nodded.
"But you don't think a lot of that theory?" he said.
"Honestly, I don't, Sir," said Meynell. "What I would like to know is why Mrs. Vanning had to go out to malce those telephone calls to her husband's office and to you. That's what I want to know, and I don't suppose I ever shall know because she's not here to tell us."
He smiled a little grimly.
"However," he went on, "would you mind going on with your story, Sir? You said that you arrived at Mrs. Berington's flat between a quarter and twenty past eleven. What happened then, Sir?"
"I had a drink with Mrs. Berington," Bellamy replied. "She'd been at the party too. She'd left a little while before me. She'd gone back home to change her frock before going on to a Club. We talked for about ten or twelve minutes, and then we left the place together. She went to Mott's Club in St. John's Wood, and I walked back home here. I was feeling very undecided, rather unhappy. I concluded I'd made a fool of myself at the party."
"Anyway," he went on, "I came to the conclusion that I would go on to Mott's Club and go back home with Mrs. Berington. I didn't want to be alone. So I did that. I took a cab and went out to Mott's Club."
"And did you go back with Mrs. Berington?" asked Meynell.
"No," said Bellamy, "I didn't. Not with her. That wouldn't have been clever," he said. "You see there several people at the club who knew us. So I left first and waited for her at the Clarendon. She followed me."
"I quite understand, Sir," said the Detective-Inspector, "and it's been kind of you to be so frank. Needless to say what you have told me will be regarded as being confidential."
Bellamy smiled gratefully.
"I'm glad to hear that," he said. "After all, Mrs. Berington wouldn't like..."
"Precisely," interrupted Meynell. "She'd naturally resent your visit becoming public property. But I don't think you need worry about that, Mr. Bellamy."
He began to draw on a pair of well-worn leather gloves.
Bellamy opened his cigarette case. It was empty. As he closed it, Meynell produced one—an old-fashioned, plain, solid silver case.
"Have one of these, Sir," he said. "They're the same as yours."
He handed the case to Bellamy, who thanked him and helped himself to a cigarette. Meynell got up.
"You wouldn't have any ideas about this murder, of course, Sir?" he said. "You wouldn't have an idea—for instance—about anyone who might want Mrs. Vanning out of the way. I mean someone she knew who knew her fairly well. Someone who knew her well enough to have telephoned her earlier in the day—there were calls on the house line during the afternoon, but we can't check who they came from—and made an appointment to meet her somewhere outside the flat?"
Bellamy shook his head.
"She knew a lot of people," he said. "But I don't know of anyone who would want to kill her. She was a self-contained sort of woman. She was happily married. She was awfully fond of her husband, and I don't think that she was the sort of woman who would have an affaire with anyone. I say I don't think because, Inspector, you know as well as I do that you can know a woman for years and yet know very little about her really—especially as regards love affairs."
The police officer nodded. He picked up his hat and got up. He said:
"You're dead right there, Sir." He sighed. "I've got an idea that this is going to be the very deuce of a job," he went on. "Being a policeman I've been trained—ever since I was doing my four years on the street—to look for motive. And I don't think I've ever struck a case of murder where there has apparently been less obvious motive than in this one."
He walked over to the door.
"Good-night, Sir, and thank you," he said. "I'm sorry I've taken up so much of your time at this hour of the night."
"That's all right," said Bellamy.
He led the way downstairs and stood at the doorway until the Squad car drove away. Then he closed the door softly and walked slowly back to his sitting-room.
He sat there for a few minutes looking into the fire.
Then he went into the bedroom and searched the telephone book for the number of Clarendon Mansions. He found it and rang the night porter. He asked to be put through to Mrs. Berington. He was told that she had a direct line. The night porter gave him the number.
Bellamy said thanks and dialled it. He could hear the ringing tone but there was no reply.
He hung up the receiver. He stood, looking at the telephone, grinning. So Iris had gone out.
Bellamy thought that he might even be able to make a guess as to where she had gone.
He wandered back to the sitting-room. He stood in front of the fire with his hands on the mantelpiece, thinking.
He stayed there for quite a little while thinking about Iris Berington, Harcourt March and Detective-Inspector Meynell. Meynell had been very nice and frank about the whole story—too frank. Bellamy knew enough about the C.I.D. to know that they did not discuss all the possible convolutions in a murder case with odd people like himself—unless they had a very good reason for doing so.
He put his hand into his trouser pocket and produced the cigarette stub that he had placed there while he had been at Mott's Club—the butt end of the cigarette that Harcourt March had given him.
He looked at it. It was called État Maroc—a unique blend of Cyprian and Turkish tobacco that March invariably smoked.
Bellamy went over to the writing desk in the corner of the room and picked up an envelope. He slipped the cigarette end inside, locked the envelope in a drawer.
Then he went to bed.
DETECTIVE-INSPECTOR MEYNELL stopped the Squad car at Cannon Row, got out, told his driver to call it a day, and walked slowly across the courtyard to Scotland Yard.
On the way to his office he looked gloomily at his wrist watch, whicn told him that it was half past four. He reflected that the life of a police officer was not a bed of roses by a long chalk, and that, in any event, he thought that he was going to have a little trouble over the Vanning murder.
Like most other detective officers Meynell was happiest when he was investigating something that had a more or less obvious motive. He had already come to a vague conclusion that the murder of Mrs. Freda Vanning was going to be another 'unsolved crime.' He did not quite know why he thought this but he did think it, and reflected that it was just his luck to have been given the case to handle.
He opened the door of his office and went in. Greers, the detective-constable who "carried the bag" for Meynell, was sitting at his own desk yawning his head off.
Meynell went over and stood in front of the desk. He put his gloved hand in his overcoat pocket and produced the old-fashioned, plain cigarette case.
"Have you got anything yet?" he asked.
Greers nodded.
"They've done the pictures and they've got a lot of prints, Mr. Meynell," he said. "I waited because I thought you might want them to-night."
Meynell fumbled in his jacket pocket with his free hand. He produced a clean handkerchief. He wrapped the cigarette case in the handkerchief.
"Take this down, Greers," he said. "And get them to do a quick check on it with the other prints. There are prints on that case—all of 'em belong to a Mr. Nicholas Bellamy. I'd wiped the case off before I talked to him. I gave him a cigarette... the old trick."
"I'll wait," said Meynell. "You tell the lab people to ring through to me here when they've done the check." Greers went out.
Meynell took off his hat and coat and filled a briar pipe. He sat down at his desk, smoking patiently, waiting.
IT was eleven o'clock when the maid awakened Bellamy. He sat up in bed, drank his tea and looked at the front page of the newspaper.
There was nothing about the murder.
He got up, wandered over to the window and looked out on to Half Moon Street. It was a cold, bright day. Bellamy shivered a little in his red silk pyjamas. He walked back to the bed and sat down.
He sat there for five minutes looking at the floor, thinking. Then he got up, went over to the wardrobe and opened it. There was a strange collection of suits hanging on the rail. Those hanging on the left were new and well-cut. Towards the other end of the rail they descended both in quality and shape. Those at the extreme right hand end were old and shabby.
Bellamy yawned and selected a good-looking blue pinstripe. He threw the suit on the bed and went to the telephone. He dialled Carola's number.
He said: "Good morning, honey. How you must hate me? What a bad fellow I am! You do forgive me, don't you?"
His voice was whimsical.
Carola answered: "You're a fearful person, Nicky. At this moment my aunt is with me. She's been telling me what an awful man you are; congratulating me on being rid of you. But I've told her that I shall just keep you hanging around as a sort of tame cat. You know," she went on, "there is something about you that's rather nice."
"I know," said Bellamy. "Sometimes I even like myself a little bit. But one thing I'm certain about, and that is that I'd rather be your tame cat than the Queen of Sheba's favourite. Do I ever see you again or are you going to drive me out to the wilds of Africa big-game hunting—I believe that's the conventional thing for dismissed suitors, isn't it?"
"It is, but I shouldn't like you to indulge in it," said Carola. "I have too much sympathy for the lions. You'd probably evolve some system of cheating them. However," she went on, "I am going to be in the Buttery at the Berkeley at twelve o'clock. Vanessa and I are meeting there for a cocktail. If you happen to be there ..."
"I'll be there with bells on," said Bellamy. "I've got a new suit. I'm going to turn over a new leaf, and how I'm going to turn that leaf over! You'd be surprised!"
"All right," she laughed. "Well, Nicky, see that you behave yourself."
Bellamy said softly: "Carola, are you really stuck on Ferdie Mott? You're not really in love with that tailor's dummy, are you?"
Her voice was prim.
"You mind your own business, Mr. Bellamy," she said, "and don t interfere in my affairs. Otherwise I shan't let you drink cocktails with me. Good-bye!"
She hung up.
Bellamy lit a cigarette. Then he performed a strange dance on the bedroom carpet, desisting only when he realised that his feet were cold.
Punctually on the stroke of twelve, Bellamy walked into the
Buttery at the Berkeley. In the corner were Carola and Vanessa
March. As he walked towards them he thought he had seldom seen a
more distinguished, beautiful pair of women. Vanessa was wearing
a new Persian lamb coat with a little hat to match. Her black
hair was attractively dressed, and her eyes were sparkling.
Bellamy said: "Good morning, you women. I have a very nice line in silk stockings this morning—two bob a pair and guaranteed not to run. A pair of silk garters is given away with each pair, the only stipulation being that the salesman is allowed to put 'em on."
Vanessa laughed. She showed her white teeth.
She said: "You are a fool, Nicky."
Carola said: "Good morning, Nicky. I hoped you'd come here to abase yourself but you look positively happy."
Bellamy sat down and signalled a waiter. He made a contrite face. He said to Carola:
"Look, honey, don't rub it in. I'm a terrible person, and I'm ashamed about last night, you just don't know." He looked at Vanessa. "You feel for me, don't you?" he said to her. "You ought to. You know I've adored you ever since I first met you. I'm nuts about your shape, Vanessa."
She smiled at him. She said:
"Tell me something, Nicky: Have you ever met a woman without trying to flirt with her?"
"Of course he hasn't," said Carola. "Nicky's the world's worst flirt. I don't think he's ever encountered any woman without telling her that he loved her."
"Is that true, Nicholas?" asked Vanessa. "If it is you must have had an awful lot of rebuffs."
"I have," said Nicky. "But I've had an awful lot of affairs too! On the balance I should say it works out on the right side of the ledger. I'm a sweet-natured bloke," he added ruminatively.
Vanessa looked at Carola. She said:
"He's quite shocking, isn't he? I don't know what you ever saw in him."
"Neither do I," said Carola. "It must have been pity. I think the man's a half wit."
Bellamy said: "I don't like being pitied. I am a rather fine type of man. Women instinctively realise the goodness in me."
Vanessa raised her hands in dismay.
"Oh, my God!" she exclaimed.
The waiter brought the cocktails.
Bellamy said: "I won five pounds last night. I was a fool not to go on playing. I feel I should have won a lot of money if I'd gone on playing."
Carola asked why.
"Unlucky in love, lucky in cards," said Bellamy with a rueful grin. "Seeing that you gave me the air last night, Carola, I ought to have won a fortune. Instead of which I drank whisky with Harcourt and watched him win. Believe it or not," he said to Vanessa, "your old man won some money last night."
"Did he?" said Vanessa, "how uninteresting!"
"It wasn't," said Bellamy. "He took most of it off Ferdie. And I thought Ferdie was a good poker player too."
Vanessa pursed her lips.
"I don't know about that," she said, "but I do know that as a poker player Harcourt is lousy. But then Harcourt is lousy at anything."
Carola said quietly: "You know, Vanessa, I think you're a little bit hard on Harcourt."
Vanessa looked at Bellamy, then she shifted her glance to Carola. Her beautiful grey eyes were hard.
"Do you, my darling?" she said. She looked at her watch. "It is a quarter past twelve," she said. "I must go. I've a lunch appointment. I'll leave you two to try and make it up."
Bellamy got to his feet as she rose.
"And remember," Vanessa went on wickedly, "that even if you didn't make a success as an engaged couple, there's no reason why you shouldn't be quite good friends."
"O.K., pal," said Bellamy. "Go straight home now, and don't get your feet wet." Vanessa nodded to Carola.
"Good-bye, sweet," she said. "Nicky, you're a fool." She went out.
Bellamy sat down and finished his cocktail. Then he looked at Carola. He said:
"Have you noticed, my honeypot, that just round the corner in that little passage that leads into the restaurant there's a most attractive picture that they've just hung?"
"No." said Carola, "I haven't. Why?"
"I want you to look at it," said Bellamy. "It's quite marvellous. Come on."
He got up. With a little shrug she rose and followed him. Bellamy walked through the Buttery into the passage that led through to the restaurant. The passage was deserted. He stood looking at a spot on the wall.
"Isn't it a lovely picture, my dear?" he said.
Carola said: "Nicky, don't be such an ass. There's no picture there."
He said in a surprised voice: "What do you mean—you must be mad!"
As she turned towards him, he put his arms round her. She did not struggle. They stood there for a moment with his lips pressed close against hers. As he released her she said softly:
"You absolute madman!"
He grinned at her. Then he said with a cynical twist of the lips:
"I bet you won't tell Ferdie that, will you, darling? Let's go back and have another cocktail. Then I must go. I've a lunch appointment with a lady."
They went back to the Buttery. They had just sat down at the table when Carola exclaimed.
"Look, Nicky, Vanessa's come back!"
Bellamy screwed round in his chair. Vanessa had just come through the door leading into the Buttery. She had a newspaper in her hand. Her face was strained. She came straight over to the table, sank into the third chair.
She said: "My God! This is awful. Someone's murdered Freda."
She laid the midday edition of the Evening News on the table. Bellamy, glancing down, saw the caption. They looked at each other. Bellamy muttered:
"It's impossible. I don't believe it."
He looked quickly at Carola. She said:
"Poor, poor Philip! This will break him up. Whoever could have done a thing like that?"
Vanessa nodded.
"I'm going home; I feel awful," she said tensely. "Isn't it terrible? Do you know something made me buy the newspaper, and when I saw that on the front page I nearly fainted."
Bellamy said: "I think we ought to have a little drink to pull us together."
"No," said Carola firmly. "Vanessa looks quite ill. I'm going to take her home. I've got my car round the corner. Good-bye, Nicky."
Bellamy got up.
"'Bye," he said.
He watched the two women go out, and ordered another cocktail.
BELLAMY walked slowly around to Clarendon Mansions. His face was thoughtful. He wondered if Iris Berington had seen the midday edition of the paper, read the news of Freda's murder. Anyway, he thought, even if she had not, somebody would have telephoned her about it.
That being so, she would quickly realise that the alibi which she had agreed to give Bellamy the night before, was one that covered him for the actual time in which the murder must have been committed. That fact would be obvious to her. She would realise that it was not a question of saving him from "being cited as a co-respondent" as she had put it, or some other affaire with a woman. It was a question of murder. That being so she would be forced to tell Bellamy that she could not go through with it.
Walking across Berkeley Square, Bellamy realised that it would be impossible for Iris to go on with that alibi. She was a gold-digger, and even if she was a fastidious one, gold-digging was her profession. He imagined that the alimony she was getting from her late husband was fairly small; that she relied on someone paying the bills.
With such an unsure background, she could not afford to have any trouble with the police. Women like Iris never could. They relied on their affaires not being made public. They did not like figuring in murder cases. He wondered just what excuse she would make. He thought that their talk might be interesting, that her excuse would be even more interesting.
She welcomed him with a smile. Bellamy thought that the flat looked very attractive by daylight. As they passed the door of the dining-room he noticed that the table was Laid for lunch. He followed her into the drawing-room and stood in front of the fire smoking a cigarette; watched her as she went over to the sideboard and returned with two cocktail glasses—one in each hand. She put them carefully on the mantelpiece, then took his face between her hands and kissed him on the mouth.
"It's pretty awful, isn't it, Nicky?" she said.
"On the contrary," said he, "I think that was very nice. What are you grumbling about?"
She picked up the Evening News from the settee. She handed it to him.
"Freda Vanning has been murdered," she said. "Didn't you know?"
He did not answer the question.
"It is pretty awful," he said.
He knew that while he was pretending to read the report her eyes were watching him closely.
"You never met Freda Vanning, did you?" he asked. She shook her head.
"She was a charming woman," said Bellamy. "A delightful and beautiful person. Poor Freda."
He handed her a cocktail and drank his own. He went on, casually:
"It just shows you, doesn't it—'in the midst of life we are in death.'"
Iris got up. She walked over to the window and stood looking out on to Brook Street. Bellamy began to grin. Here it comes, he thought. This is where she walks out on me.
After a moment she turned away from the window, helped herself to a cigarette from a box on the sideboard. She fit it and blew a smoke ring. She watched it sail across the room.
"I've had a rather interesting morning, Nicky dear," she said.
She looked at him seriously for a moment, then the corners of her mouth twitched humorously.
"I wonder if you'd like to hear about it?" she said.
"Of course," answered Bellamy. "I'd like to hear about anything that you consider interesting. Tell me what happened. I'm all ears!"
She said quite coolly: "This morning about twelve o'clock, a police officer came here. He was a Detective Inspector from the Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard—a Mr. Meynell."
"Ah!" said Bellamy. "Nice fellow Meynell."
She sat down on the settee and crossed her legs.
"I found him quite nice, Nicky," she said. She looked at him quizzically. "He's very interested in you," she went on.
"Is he?" said Nicky. His voice was casual. "What did he have to say to you?" he said.
"He said quite a lot," Iris went on. "He was ouite interesting. He told me what they knew about Mrs. Vanning's murder. He also said that she telephoned you at Carola Everard's party just after eleven o'clock, and that she must have been murdered between that time and about eleven thirty-five.
"He said that they had to check up on everything—no matter how slightly it was connected with events—and that he wanted to know what I'd been doing. He told me what you'd told him about coming round here. He read that out of a note-book he brought with him."
"I see," said Bellamy. He began to smile. "And what did you say?"
She laughed softly.
"Well, of course, Nicky," she said, "I told him it was true. After all, I arranged with you last night what I was going to say."
Her eyebrows were raised a little.
"Did he seem satisfied?" asked Bellamy.
His voice was still casual.
"Yes and no," she answered. "He asked me a lot ©f questions, but I was able to answer them quite successfully I think. Then he produced a sheet of foolscap paper from his pocket and asked me if I would like to make a statement about it and sign it. He told me that if I wanted to think over it first of all I could do so."
She got up. She came over and stood close beside him.
"I said there was nothing for me to think over, Nicky; that when one was telling the truth one hadn't got to think. So I sat down at the desk over there and wrote out the statement for him, telling him how you came round here and all about it—on the same lines that you'd told him. Then I signed it. He went away. He seemed quite happy."
Bellamy heaved a sigh of relief. He said:
"I think that was pretty sporting of you. Iris. I think it was damned sporting of you."
She smiled up at him.
"So you think I've been a good girl?" she murmured. He grinned at her.
"I think you've been a hell of a good girl," he said.
"Very well then, Sir," she said. "You may give me a kiss. Then we'll have lunch. Are you still looking forward to lobster? You haven't lost your appetite?"
Bellamy grinned. He reached out for her, kissed her. He said:
"Nothing would make me lose my appetite, Iris. Let's go and deal with the lobster."
It was three o'clock. Bellamy was sitting in the armchair in the drawing-room. Iris was perched on his knees. Her arms were round his neck and every now and then she kissed him on the mouth. He thought that she had a marvellous technique in kissing, that there was an intensity about Iris which was rather amusing.
Eventually she said: "What are you thinking about, Nicky? Are you worrying about anything?"
He shook his head.
"I don't worry a lot," he said cheerfully. "It doesn't do much good."
"You're telling me," said Iris. She kissed him again. "I can't visualise you worrying much," she said. "Not about any damned thing—not even about me."
She pouted prettily.
He put one arm under her legs and the other about her shoulders. He got up, lifting her with him. He laid her down on the settee in front of the fire. Then he moved over to the fireplace and stood with his back to the fire looking at her.
She smiled at him.
"You're a lot stronger than you look," she said. "You're a strange man." He nodded.
"I'm a mixture of Hackenschmidt and Clark Gable," he said with a crooked smile. He lit a cigarette.
"I think we ought to dine together," he said. "You to wear a very delightful frock, and I'll put on tails—even in war-time—in your honour. We'll dine very well—at the Savoy, where it's always cheerful. We'll drink a bottle of champagne good and we'll dance and talk a lot. And then..."
He paused and looked at her, one eyebrow cocked.
She laughed. It was a delightful laugh. "And then...?" she echoed. "Well... we'll see about 'and then' when the time comes. Will you call for me?"
"I'll call for you at eight," said Bellamy.
He looked at his watch.
"I must go now," he said.
She got up in one quick, supple movement.
"I'll get a whisk and take some of the powder off your coat lapels," she said mischievously. "Of course, I ought to leave it there .. . but the next woman might not like it."
She smiled at him over her shoulder as she went out of the room.
AT three o'clock the telephone in Detective-Inspector Meynell's room rang. Greers answered it.
"It's Superintendent Harbell of the Special Branch," he said to Meynell. "He wants a word with you."
Meynell looked surprised. He took the receiver.
"Meynell here. Sir," he said.
"Good-afternoon, Meynell," said Harbell. "I must apologise for poaching on your preserves, but I've a good reason. Have you got anything yet in the Vanning case?"
Meynell raised his eyebrows. Why the devil were the Special Branch interested in a murder investigation?
"Quite a bit, Mr. Harbell," he said. "I saw a Mr. Bellamy last night. He had been telephoned just after eleven by Mrs. Vanning. He denied having seen her. He gave me a verbal statement with an alibi. He said he was with a woman friend. I saw her this morning and she confirmed his story."
"I see," said the superintendent.
"But," Meynell went on, "the alibi is a fake, Sir. We've found Bellamy's fingerprints in the Vanning flat. There were prints on the glass she'd been drinking out of—his prints—and on the whisky decanter and siphon. We know Bellamy wasn't there earlier in the evening, so it's obvious that his alibi is a put-up job between him and the girl-friend."
"Thanks, Meynell," said Harbell. "You don't intend to do anything drastic yet... you're not applying for a warrant or anything?"
"Well, Sir..." Meynell began.
"Look here, Meynell," said the superintendent. "I'd better put my cards down, otherwise you'll be wondering why the Special Branch is sticking its nose into your affairs. The point is we're interested in Bellamy, but from a different angle—a more important one—a matter of national importance. It must take precedence to the murder."
"Quite, Sir," said Meynell. "I quite understand."
"Get your inquest held," said Harbell. "Get it adjourned for a week or so. In the meantime give Bellamy his head. Directly I've finished with him you can have what's left... if there is anything left. See?"
"I see, Sir," said Meynell. "I quite understand. I'll do that, Sir."
He hung up. He looked at Greers with a frown.
"Life's like that," he said. "I get a nice case. I think it's in the bag and the bloody Special Branch have to stick their nose in and mess me about just when I want to get a move on. Oh well...."
He shrugged his shoulders, put his hands in his trouser pockets and looked out of the window.
"I'd have cleaned this job up in two days," he said.
Greers said: "It's tough luck, Mr. Meynell. But it'll be all the sweeter when you get him."
AT four o'clock Bellamy arrived at Scotland Yard. He asked for Detective-Inspector Meynell. Three minutes afterwards he was shown into Meynell's room.
The Detective-Inspector was sitting at his desk smoking a pipe when Bellamy entered. He got up and smiled cheerfully.
"Sit down. Sir," he said. "It's a nasty cold sort of day, isn't it? Makes you feel depressed, and you don't even know why."
Bellamy produced his cigarette case and lit a cigarette. Meynell sat down again and looked at the blotter in front of him. Bellamy moved his chair a little nearer to the desk and put his black soft hat on the comer of it.
He drew a deep breath of smoke and blew it out through pursed lips. He said:
"I suppose plenty of people make damned fools of themselves in making statements over murders, don't they, Inspector?"
Meynell grinned.
"I don't know, Sir," he said. "I haven't handled as many murders as all that. Exactly what do you mean?"
"I mean I've been a bloody fool," said Bellamy. "All that stuff I told you last night about having been with Mrs. Iris Berington round at Clarendon Mansions after I left the Everard party was all nonsense. I didn't see Mrs. Berington after the party until I arrived at Mott's Club."
"I see," said Meynell quietly.
He got up and went over to the window. He stood, looking out, his back to Bellamy.
"What are you trying to tell me, Mr. Bellamy?" he asked.
"I'm trying to tell you that I'm a first-class idiot," Bellamy answered. "And I'm trying to make up for the fact by telling you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth."
Meynell turned and came back to the desk. He said: "I'm glad about that, Sir. You see, I know you went to see Mrs. Vanning last night. We found your fingerprints all over the place." He sat down at the desk.
"If you'd like to wash out entirely what you told me last night, Sir, I'm perfectly agreeable," he said. "And if you want to make another statement I shall be very glad to listen to it. If you want to. I want you to understand that if you make a statement now it's a voluntary one. I'm not asking you to do it. And if you'd rather see your lawyer first, well ... I shan't mind."
Bellamy said: "Thank you. Inspector. I'd like to say what happened last night. I'm prepared to make a statement, but before I do it I'd like to ask you a favour."
Meynell raised his eyebrows.
"Have you seen Mrs. Berington yet?" asked Bellamy. The police officer nodded.
"I saw her this morning, Mr. Bellamy," he said. "She confirmed your alibi for last night."
"Oh, damn it!" muttered Bellamy. "What a cursed fool I was to drag her into this."
Meynell grinned.
"That's all right, Sir," he said. "I quite understand. But, providing no harm's done, it doesn't matter. Of course, we don't like people to try and make fools of us; but so long as they realise the fact in time and try to put things right—as you seem keen on doing—before any sort of obstruction has been caused to us in the execution of our duty, we don't go out of our way to make nuisances of ourselves."
Bellamy sighed. He looked relieved.
"That's very decent of you," he said. "I told you that Mrs. Berington is rather fond of me. I asked her to support my alibi before she knew anything about the murder. I have an idea she thought I wanted that alibi' merely for the benefit of a jealous husband—that was all. She agreed, however, and apparently she's kept her word. I'm awfully glad that you won't make any trouble for her."
Meynell knocked out his pipe. He looked at Bellamy with a twinkle in his eye. He said:
"Lots of women give us dud alibis, Mr. Bellamy. They always do it because they're stuck on the man. It's extraordinary what women will do for a man they're keen about. But you needn't worry about Mrs. Berington... not now."
He pressed the bell on his desk. Detective-Constable Greers came in quickly.
"Mr. Bellamy wants to make a statement in the Vanning case, Greers," said Meynell. "It'll be quicker if you take it down."
Greers sat down at his desk and flipped open his notebook. Meynell said to Bellamy:
"Just let's have the story in your own words, Sir."
Bellamy nodded. He said:
"Last night just after eleven o'clock Mrs. Vanning telephoned me just as I was leaving Miss Carola Everard's flat. She asked me to tell Miss Everard that she couldn't come to the party because she had a cold. She also asked me to go round and see her at once. She said it was urgent.
"I went round in a cab. I stopped the cab this side of the apartments and went in by the side door. She asked me to do this. I went into the flat by the second door. I went into the drawing-room and Mrs. Vanning wasn't there. When I called her name she answered from the bedroom and told me to come in. I went in. She was lying on the bed. She was wearing a fur coat.
"We talked for a little while. She told me I was drinking too much and jeopardising my chances with Miss Everard. Then I suggested that a drink was indicated. I was a little bit annoyed with her for trying to lecture me. She told me to get the whisky from the dining-room. I went there and, fumbling about with the tray, I broke two of the glasses. They fell on the carpet. There was only one more glass there. So I carried that, the decanter and the siphon into the bedroom and mixed a drink. I drank it and she told me to mix another drink for her, that she would use the same glass. Then she began trying to lecture me again and I said I wasn't standing for it. I'd been drinking quite a bit during the evening, and I picked up my hat and walked out of the flat the same way as I came in. I left her lying on the bed with the glass of whisky and soda in her hand."
"She called good-night to me as I went out. That is all I know."
Meynell said: "Just one moment, Mr. Bellamy. At what time did you arrive at the flat—as near as you can guess. And at what time did you leave?"
Bellamy thought for a moment, then:
"I must have got there by ten minutes past eleven," he said. "And I was there about ten minutes. I had certainly left the flat by eleven-twenty or a minute or so after that."
The Detective-Inspector nodded.
"Put those times in—approximately, Greers," he said.
Then he looked at Bellamy.
"I'm glad you came along to-day, Sir," he said. "Very glad. What you've said is more or less confirmed by the fingerprint evidence. We found the bits of the smashed glasses and your fingerprints on the glass that was used with Mrs. Vanning's prints over them."
He sighed.
"This is a funny case, Sir," he said. "If you left Mrs. Vanning alive at eleven-twenty, she was murdered between that time and about eleven thirty-four. The night porter went into the flat and found her dead just on eleven thirty-five. It was pretty quick work for somebody or other. I suppose you didn't think of asking Mrs. Vanning why she was wearing her fur coat?"
Bellamy shook his head.
"I told you," he said, "I was a little tight."
Meynell got up.
"Thank you for coming, Sir," he said. "Anyway this statement helps."
Bellamy said: "D'you think you'll need me any more?"
"Not to-day, Sir," Meynell. "If we want you we'll get into touch. Of course, Sir, you won't be leaving town?"
"No," said Bellamy, "I shan't be leaving town."
"Excellent," said the Detective-Inspector. "Well.... Good-day, Sir...."
"Good-day," said Bellamy. He smiled at Meynell and went.
As the doors closed behind him Greers looked at Meynell. Meynell grinned sardonically and began to fill his pipe.
BELLAMY leaned back in the barber's chair and had his face massaged. He liked having his face massaged. You could think, and while the towels were on your lace the barber couldn't talk to you and expect to be answered. Not that Bellamy minded barbers talking. He didn't. You could learn a lot from barbers, especially this one. Mondell was definitely good.
When he took the cold towel off, the barber went on where he had left off.
"I told her I wasn't standing for it, Mr. Bellamy," he said. "I said to her: 'You get out of here, you bitch, before I clock you one.' That gave her a nasty set back, I'm telling you. So she tried to strike an attitude, and she said in a Greta Garbo sort of voice, she said: 'What... you'd hit a woman.' I said: 'Why not? You'd hit me if you got the chance, wouldn't you?'
"She thought that one over for a bit, and then she said Yes, I would. That is if I wasn't a lady. But I'm a lady, I am, and so I'm just going to disregard you and your bleeding insults. And if you want to know what you are I'll tell you.'
"So I said: 'All right, you tell me.' She said: 'Yes, I will.' She said: 'You're a bastard, that's what you are.'
"I said: 'O.K., lady. So I'm a bastard, am I? All right,' I said. 'So now we know where we are. And,' I said, 'I'd like to tell you something. If you was born in wedlock then I'm glad I'm a bastard, and how do you like that?'
"She said: 'Monsooer Mondell, do you call yourself a gentleman? You get me here under the pretence of givin' me a water wave for nothin'. You make a big pass at me an' when I say not to-day you threaten to pour dye on my permanent. An' you got the bloody nerve to put 'Court Hairdresser' on the window in gold.
"Then she tosses her head. She says: 'Just you wait until my friend Mr. Jules Delarouche comes back from off his holiday. Just you wait. I'm goin' to bring him round here and I'm goin' to make you repeat some of them insulting remarks of yours, and if he don't smack your lousy ears back then I'll be surprised.'
"So I says: 'Well, you will be surprised,' I says, 'because if by your friend Mr. Jules Delarouche you mean Jimmy Mack—an' that's what his real name is—then you'll be surprised all right because Jimmy was wiped up last night at that dump of his in Maddox Street by the Vice Squad from the Yard. I don't reckon he'll be back from the holiday those boys'll get for him for a coupla years at least, by which time a henna wash three times a week will be as much use to you as a grease spot on a curlin' iron. What you'll 'ave to do then is to have it bleached blue an' pretend your mother was a French marquise.'
"So she gets up an' she draws herself up, and she says: 'O.K. Mondell, I've tried to treat you like a lady an' you can't take it. What do I care,' she says sort of haughty, 'if they have wiped Jimmy up. I got other friends—influential friends.'
"She goes to the door an' she says sort of wistful: 'I've made my mistakes,' she says. 'An' I've paid. But I got to thank you, Monsooer Mondell. You've taught me somethin'. An' I've learnt my lesson. Never again,' she says, 'will I let myself get intimate with a low-type hairdresser just for the sake of six facials an' a few henna washes.' Then she sweeps out."
The barber sighed.
"She was a rorty one, she was, Mr. Bellamy."
Bellamy said: "She must have been."
From upstairs the hotel noises came to his ears vaguely.
The barber began to spray Bellamy's hair with eau-de-Cologne. Bellamy said:
"Mondell... what happened to that card game—it was a pretty fast one too—that Lily Purcella and her husband used to run in Jermyn Street. Are they still in the racket?"
"Are they, Mr. Bellamy?" answered the barber. "I should think they are. They're runnin' it in a place in Knightsbridge now. Faro, chemie an' anything you like. It gets a bit tough around two o'clock in the morning though." He grinned. "You're not looking for any trouble, are you, Mr. Bellamy?"
Bellamy grinned.
"I might be," he said. "There's a friend of mine wants to lose a little money... he likes chemie."
"Well, if it's like that, Sir," said the barber, "you just ring up Knightsbridge 78654 Extension 2, an' ask for Lily. I'll have a word with her and say you might be comin' through. She'll look after you, Sir,... and your friend."
"Thanks," said Bellamy.
He got out of the chair. He gave the barber a pound and got into his coat, put on his black soft hat slightly over one eye and went out.
He took the lift up to the lounge. He walked along to a telephone booth and rang through to the Malayan Club. He asked if Mr. March was there. Blondie said he was. Bellamy asked how he was.
"A bit depressed if you ask me," said the barmaid. "I think he's had some bad luck or something. Do you want him?"
Bellamy said yes and waited. After a moment March came to the telephone.
"Hello, Harcourt," said Bellamy. "This is Nicky. It's awfully cold, isn't it?"
March said: "It's lousy. Did you ring uptto tell me it was cold?" Bellamy laughed.
"Not exactly," he said. "I'm just on my way to pick up a girl friend. We're dining together, and I thought you and I might meet afterwards. I rather wanted to see you, Harcourt. There's something that you and I ought to talk about."
There was a little silence. Then March said:
"Is there? Well... I shall be here at eleven o'clock."
"All right," said Bellamy cheerfully. "I'll pick you up."
He hung up.
He stood for a moment outside the telephone booth, lighting a cigarette. He was smiling.
Two well turned-out women on their way to the restaurant glanced at him. One said to the other:
"That's Nicky Bellamy. Fearfully attractive, my dear, but oh so very dangerous."
"Is he, darling?" murmured the other woman. "And just how did you find that out?"
BELLAMY and Iris Berington sat at a table by the wall on the far side of the Savoy Restaurant dance floor.
She said: "I like the Savoy. I like the band and I like the people who come here. I'm happy. I'm for you, Nicky."
He grinned.
"Are you, Iris?" he said.
He signalled the waiter, ordered a second bottle of champagne. When it was brought and poured, he said:
"If you've ever been to the flicks and seen a gangster picture you'll know what 'the pay-off' means. Do you know what it means?"
She smiled at him.
"I think so, Nicky," she said. "When somebody gets bumped off, or pinched, or framed, or railroaded, or has their best girl stolen... because they've done something for which someone else wants revenge. That's the payoff, isn't it?"
"That's right," said Bellamy. "So now we'll finish this bottle... which is the pay-off so far as you are concerned."
He looked at her over the rim of his glass. His mouth was smiling but she saw that his eyes were hard.
"What's the idea, Nicky?" she asked. "You sound a little dramatic."
She was intrigued.
He said: "Iris, you're in a jam—a bad jam—a very bad jam. Possibly I'll get you out of it and possibly I won't. It depends mainly on how you behave."
She looked at him curiously.
"What the hell do you mean, Nicky?" she said.
"I mean this," said Bellamy. "I'd hate you to think that you've taken me in for one moment. I know your type very well, my dear. You're as hard as nails, as tough as they come and you've never done an unselfish thing in your life for anyone."
He finished his glass of champagne. She said nothing.
"You thought I was taken in by that stuff about falling for me, I suppose," he went on. "My dear, you've never fallen for anyone in your life. You're much too tough, and you're certainly too selfish to take a big chance for the sake of an odd bird of passage like I am."
Her eyes were hard.
"Meaning what?" she said softly. "And I'd like to know just why I'm in a jam—the very bad jam you mentioned just now?"
"I'll tell you," said Bellamy. "It's that alibi you were kind enough to hold up for me when Meynell came round to see you. I'm afraid I was a bit careless. When I asked you to say that I'd been with you, at your flat—during the time that someone was busily engaged in strangling Freda Vanning—I entirely forgot that I'd left my fingerprints all over the Vanning flat."
He paused for a moment.
"You see, I'd been there. I went there after I left Carola Everard's party."
She looked across the dance floor. She was frightened.
"My God..." she said. "You awful swine, Nicky... What will they do to me?" He shrugged his shoulders.
"They might even charge you as an accessory to murder," he said. "Naturally they'd think that if you knew me well enough to give me a fake alibi, you knew me well enough to know that I was there somewhere about the time that Freda was killed."
He lit a cigarette.
"They could be very tough if they wanted to," he said.
He handed her his cigarette case, lit the cigarette for her.
She said: "For God's sake... what am I to do?"
"I'll tell you that in a minute," said Bellamy casually. "In the meantime I want you to tell the real reason that you were prepared to give me that alibi, the real reason why you were so keen on telling the police that during that particular time you were with me. Shall I?"
"Go ahead," she said.
She was watching him, her eyes steady.
"The point was that you did not think that I'd been to the Vanning flat," said Bellamy with a grin. "But you did think that someone else had. And that someone else afterwards came and saw you. You were so certain that that someone else had been round to Freda Vanning's and killed her, that you positively leapt at the chance of giving me an alibi which would prove that you were with me. See, Iris?"
She said: "I see."
"Now you listen to me, my dear," Bellamy went on casually. "I'm prepared to do a deal with you. Of course, I realise that I'm in a rather difficult spot myself; but I think I can see my way out of it, and, if you are prepared to behave yourself I think I can get you out too...."
She smiled cynically.
"At a price?" she asked.
He nodded.
"At a price...."
She stubbed out her cigarette.
"Well... what is it?" she asked impatiently.
Bellamy said: "This is the price. I want you to tell me the truth. I want you to tell me why you were prepared to give me that alibi, and why you were prepared to hold it up even when Meynell came round to see you and you knew that he was interested in my movements round about the time that Freda Vanning was killed."
She said: "Supposing I tell you. How do I know that you can fix things so that I shall be all right with the police?"
"If you tell me the truth," said Bellamy. "If you answer the question I've asked you fully—the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth—then I'm going straight from here to Scotland Yard. I'm going to tell them that I was at the Vanning flat. I'm going to tell them that I persuaded you to give me that lake alibi and that when you saw Meynell you didn't know that there was a possibility of a murder charge hanging on to it."
She finished her glass of champagne.
The waiter, hovering near, refilled the glasses.
She looked at Bellamy. She looked at him for a long time. Then she said:
"You might give me a cigarette."
Bellamy gave her one.
"I'm going to chance it," she said. "I'm between the devil and the deep sea. So I'll take a chance on the devil. I'll tell you what you want to know. But if you don't put me right with the police..."
Bellamy put up his hand.
"No threats. Iris," he said. "I've told you I'll look after you... if you behave."
She drew a deep breath of cigarette smoke down into her lungs. Then she said:
"It was March. Harcourt came round to see me at eleven-thirty last night."
Bellamy interrupted.
"Why start with last night, Iris?" he said. "Why not go back a bit and tell the story from the beginning?" He smiled at her quizzically. "You once indicated to me," he went on, "that Harcourt March wasn't an especial favourite of yours; that you weren't really keen on him. You said you had a special reason for gold-digging in his vicinity. Well, what was the reason?"
She laughed.
"What do you think?" she said. "Harcourt had money—plenty of it—-and I like money." Bellamy nodded.
"Then he stopped having money, eh?" he asked.
"That's right," she said. "Harcourt with money was possible." She laughed a little harshly. "Harcourt without money was just a pain in the neck."
Bellamy grinned.
"You two must have been a happy pair of lovebirds," he said. "I suppose you've been quarrelling for some time?"
She nodded.
"I wanted to finish it off," she said, "and he didn't want to. In his way he's rather fond of me. Two days ago—the day before I went with him to Miss Everard's party—we had a showdown. I told him I couldn't go on wasting my time going around with him—not unless he got some money from somewhere. He said he was going to have some money. I told him I didn't believe him. I said he'd been saying that for two or three weeks."
"Ah!" said Bellamy. "And what did he say then?"
"He said this time was a certainty," Iris went on. "He said he'd have some money by the next day."
Bellamy nodded. He was smiling.
"You didn't ask him by any chance where he was going to get it from, Iris?" he demanded.
She paused for a minute. Then she looked at him. She said:
"Yes, I did. He told me."
Bellamy cocked one eyebrow.
"This is becoming interesting," he said. "And where did March think he was going to get the money from?"
She played with the stem of her wine glass. After a minute she said:
"He told me he was going to see Freda Vanning; that he was going to have a cocktail with her yesterday evening about nine o'clock; that he was going to bring her along to the Everard party. He said he was going to get the money from her. He said she'd give it to him all right."
Bellamy raised both eyebrows.
"This is interesting," he said. "And did he get the money?"
She shook her head.
"No," she answered. "That's why he called for me and took me to the party."
"And that's what you were talking so seriously about while you were, there," said Bellamy. "I thought there was something on between you two."
She said: "Well, naturally I was fed up. I'd really thought he meant it when he said he was going to get that money from Freda Vanning. And he was furious—furious with himself and with me, and more furious with her."
Bellamy said: "Naturally. Harcourt isn't a good-tempered fellow at the best of times. Tell me—what happened afterwards?"
"I got fed up," said Iris, "so I went off. I understood that he was going home with his wife."
Bellamy said: "That was a nice change, wasn't it? By the way, Iris, what do you think of Mrs. March?"
She smiled.
"I don't," she said. "I don't think anything about her. Why should I? I haven't spent a lot of time in thinking about men's wives."
"Quite," said Bellamy. "It was a silly point to raise. So Harcourt was going home with his wife for once?"
"He was" she said. "But he didn't. When he came to my flat at eleven-thirty he was wet through. He said he'd been walking about. He said that when he'd left the party with his wife they'd had a row outside; that she'd taken a cab and gone home. He said he'd been walking about trying to think things out. He looked pretty awful too, I'm telling you."
"I see," said Bellamy. "And you didn't believe him."
She stubbed out her cigarette end viciously.
"To tell you the truth, I didn't," she said. She stopped talking for a moment. Then: "While he was standing there in the hallway," she went on, "I looked at him. The idea suddenly came into my head that he'd been to see Mrs. Vanning again; that there'd been trouble. He looked like that. Immediately I thought the idea silly and dismissed it from my mind. He asked me what I was going to do, if I was going anywhere. I told him I was going to Mott's Club. He said if I liked he'd go back and change his overcoat and return and pick me up. That he'd take me out there."
She shrugged her shoulders.
"I said I didn't mind," she went on. "He went off and came back after he'd changed his overcoat. We went to Mott's Club."
Bellamy nodded.
"Well, he had some luck last night," he said. "I saw him win two hundred." He grinned. "Maybe that's because he was unlucky in love."
She smiled cynically.
"I was through with him," she said. "I'd written him off in my mind. Then at Mott's Club you said you wanted to see me urgently. Well, I was curious. Another thing is, I've always had a sort of fancy for you, which is something which has got me nowhere, but there it was.
"When you told me you wanted that alibi I thought it was some ordinary thing, that you'd got in a jam with somebody's husband or something. I'd do that for anybody I liked. This morning when I saw the noon edition of the newspaper I got frightened. I thought then that my idea of last night had been right; that Harcourt had been round there to see Mrs. Vanning again; that there'd been trouble and that he'd killed her. I wouldn't put it above him. I felt very pleased that you had asked me to say that I was with you. I didn't want to be mixed up in any business with the police.
"I had just put the newspaper down when that Detective-Inspector came. Then I was scared. I thought he'd come to ask me about Harcourt. Directly he told me who he was I made up my mind that I was going to stick to that story of your having been here at eleven-thirty whatever happened. So I stuck to it.
"Naturally I was surprised," she went on, "when he began talking about you, saying that he'd seen you, but I still didn't care. I got the idea in my head definitely that Harcourt had been round there. I thought perhaps Meynell was trying to catch me out, so I stuck to the story. And what a dam' fool I was—because it looks as if Harcourt didn't go there. It looks as if you were the one who went there."
Bellamy said: "How do you know Harcourt didn't go there? Harcourt left the party before I did. I didn't leave until after eleven and I was only with Mrs. Vanning two or three minutes, and she was alive when I left her. There was time for Harcourt to have..." He paused for a moment—"looked in, and still to have got round to your place by just after eleven-thirty."
She said viciously: "I'm sick of Harcourt and I'm sick of you. I'm sick of the whole business."
"I bet you are," said Bellamy. "And you're not so sick as scared." He leant over the table towards her. "All right. Iris," he said. "I think you've told the truth and I think when I've told the police my story they won't bother you very much. But I'd like to give you a tip. You keep away from Harcourt March. I think he's dangerous—very dangerous."
"You're telling me," she said. "So Harcourt's dangerous. All right, but I'm damned if he's as dangerous as you are."
Bellamy grinned.
"I thought you said that the fact that T was dangerous was one of my attractions, Iris. So you've changed your mind, eh?"
"I have," she said, "definitely. And as far as you're concerned, I suppose I've served my purpose?"
"That's right," said Bellamy. "But anyhow you've had your bottle of champagne and I'm going to put you into a cab and you can go home and ponder on the iniquities of men—especially this one!"
She said: "You don't have to put me into a cab. I can get a cab for myself. Good-night, Mr. Bellamy. Thank you for nothing and damn your eyes!"
She got up, flung her cloak round her and walked out of the restaurant.
Bellamy watched her go. Then he fit another cigarette.
IT was just after eleven o'clock when Bellamy arrived at the Malayan Club. Harcourt March was sitting at a table at the far end of the lounge, near the fire. Bellamy thought he looked cock-eyed. With him was a thin man who might have been anything you liked, and a well-dressed woman.
The woman was slim and good-looking. She sat nicely and had good legs. She looked as if she might be a lady, as if she were very tired and rather bored.
Bellamy winked at the blonde barmaid, and went over to March's table. He said cheerfully:
"'Lo, Harcourt. I'm punctual, you see."
March grunted. He was wearing a dinner jacket, and he had spilled some brandy on the lapels of his coat.
Bellamy thought that he looked rather old, very tired and extremely antagonistic. He looked at Bellamy with bleary eyes stuck in a head that was already nodding with too much alcohol.
He said: "Well... what the hell is there to be so dam' punctual about. What does it matter? You tell me that, Bellamy."
Bellamy grinned.
"Oh, I dunno..." he said. "Punctuality is my only virtue so I make the most of it." He looked at the woman. "My friend Harcourt forgets to be a nice little boy and introduce people sometimes," he went on. "My name's Bellamy. How do you do?"
She smiled at him.
"I'm glad to meet you," she said. "I'm Fenella Roque, and this "—she indicated the man on the opposite side of the table—"is Mr. Lancelot."
Mr. Lancelot said in a very rude tone of voice: "So what?"
Bellamy took no notice. He sat down. He said: "How do you do, Mr. Lancelot. Perhaps we might have a little drink?" He looked towards the bar.
Lancelot said: "We were talking. We were having a private conversation." Bellamy got up. "Sorry I butted in," he began.
The woman said: "Don't be silly. Lance ... you know we weren't. Why must you always be so rude to everyone."
Bellamy smiled at her. She thought he had good teeth and a nice mouth.
"I didn't mean to break up the party," he said evenly, "but I've got to talk to Harcourt here some time, and I particularly want him to be able to understand what I'm talking about."
He grinned amiably across the table at March, who looked back sullenly.
"Are you trying to tell me how much drink I ought, or ought not, to take, Nicky?" he said. "Because if you are, you can shove off. No feller is going to tell me when to stop drinking."
Lancelot said: "That's the stuff to give 'em, Harcourt."
He looked at Bellamy with eyes that were acid and bloodshot.
Bellamy smiled happily. He said:
"You didn't really mean that you wanted me to go, Harcourt. Not really."
He lit a cigarette and looked at Harcourt through the flame of his lighter.
Lancelot said sarcastically: "I should have thought it was pretty obvious what he meant. When I went to school shove off meant shove off."
Bellamy said: "So you did actually go to school?"
Before Lancelot could answer he turned to the woman.
"These boys evidently want to be private," he said. "Let you and me go and have a little drink at the bar. Shall we?"
"I'd love to," she answered.
They got up. On their way to the bar Bellamy looked over his shoulder at Lancelot and grinned.
They sat on high stools at the bar and he ordered the drinks. When they were brought he said:
"Here's to you, Mrs. Roque. I used to know a woman who looked like you when I was in the States some years back. She was fearfully good-looking and attractive too...."
She laughed.
"You've got a first-class nerve, I think, Mr. Bellamy," she said. "Is it a habit of yours to cut yourself into a party and then promptly carry off the one female member thereof?"
He smiled at her. Then he screwed round on his stool and looked across the room at Lancelot who, talking to March, was watching them.
"You mean Mr. Lancelot won't be so pleased?" he asked.
She twitched her lips at him.
"I don't mind particularly about Lance," she said. "I'm a little bored with Lance..."
Bellamy said: "That's funny. The woman I was telling you about—it was in Florida—was a little bored with a man too. He used to get rather annoying when he was tight. And he used to say: 'Sez you' a lot too. I think it was the 'Sez you' that did it.
"One night," continued Bellamy, "when he'd been drinking a little more than usual and saying 'Sez you' quite a lot, she suggested that they went for a bathe. She said she'd found a very swell place. It was an awfully hot night and I suppose the idea of cool water appealed to him. So they got into their swimming suits and drove down to the creek she'd told him about.
"He dived in right away. She hadn't bothered to tell him that the swamp was alive with moccasins—a most fearful type of snake; your head swells up to double the size if they get you..."
She gave a little shudder.
"And that was the end of him..." she said. "She wasn't a fearfully nice woman, was she?"
"No ... I suppose not," said Bellamy. "Not actually nice—but rather charming to talk to."
Lancelot came up behind them. He said to Bellamy:
"Has anybody ever told you that you were superfluous?"
He had a little difficulty in getting the word out.
Bellamy turned round and grinned at him. Then ho said to Mrs. Roque:
"What do you think? Do you think I'm superfluous?"
She said: "No... I think I rather like you. Hello, Lance."
Bellamy said: "The lady doesn't think I'm superfluous. Have a drink?"
Lancelot said to Bellamy: "I'd like to have a word with you."
Bellamy finished his drink. He said to the woman: "I'll be back in a minute."
He got up and walked out of the lounge. He walked down the stairs to the first landing and turned into the cloakroom. The place was empty.
Lancelot followed him in. He said as he closed the door:
"Look here, I don't know who the hell you are or what the hell you think you're doing. But I'm telling you one thing—"
Bellamy grinned. He held up his hand.
"Oh no," he said. "You're not telling me anything."
He smacked Lancelot fairly across the face.
Lancelot gasped. Then he stepped back and flung a wild punch at Bellamy who caught it easily on his left fist. Then he hit Lancelot on the jaw with a sudden half hook. The impact of the punch made a staccato sound.
Lancelot slithered down on to the floor. Bellamy said:
"You go home. Don't you bother about Mrs. Roque. I'll look after Mrs. Roque. I think she's rather nice. And don't argue, Lancelot. If you do I'm going to hurt you... and I'd like that."
Lancelot got up. He stood swaying a little, trying to brush his clothes with flaccid fingers.
Bellamy went to the door.
"There's a cab rank just along the road," he said. "You go and get yourself a cab and go home. You need a lot of sleep. And go home now. If you come up to the bar I'm going to beat you up. Understand?"
Lancelot mumbled something. Bellamy watched him as he stumbled towards the door, down the stairs to the street. Then he lit a cigarette and went back to the bar.
Fenella Roque looked at him. Her eyes were mischievous. Bellamy thought that she had quite a nice figure and that she knew how to choose and wear clothes.
She said: "So Lance isn't coming back?"
Bellamy ordered two very dry Martinis. He smiled at her and straightened his tie.
"He wasn't feeling awfully good," he said. "He thought he felt a little ill. He's gone home. He asked me to apologise."
She nodded. Her mouth was twitching.
"I'm sorry he wasn't feeling very well, Mr. Bellamy," she said. "And I suppose you bruised your knuckles opening a door?"
She was looking at his right hand.
"Oh that..." he said. "Yes, I knocked 'em on the cloakroom door. Very careless of me."
Blondie brought the drinks. She shot an arch look at Bellamy. Mrs. Roque said:
"She seems to like you, doesn't she?"
"I come here rather a lot," said Bellamy. "Do you like me?"
She laughed.
"I think you're very refreshing, Mr. Bellamy," she said. "I admire your technique."
Bellamy said: "Thanks. Have you known Harcourt March for long?"
"Casually," she said. "Sort of on and off. Harcourt's a funny person, but so is Lancelot for that matter." She shrugged her shoulders. "Most of the men I meet socially are a little bit odd," she said with a vague smile.
Bellamy finished his Martini.
"I'll tell you what," he said. "Let you and me and Harcourt go to a little gaming party that a Miss Lily Purcella runs in Knightsbridge. I want to talk to Harcourt and he's in a bad temper. I think under your kindly influence, and with the aid of a little game of cards of some sort I might get him to unbend. What do you think?"
She put her glass down on the marble topped bar. Then she turned round on her high stool and took a long look at Bellamy. She looked him over quite carefully. Then she looked at herself in the mirrored wall behind the bar and put a straying tendril of hair back into place.
"All right," she said. "I always was a girl for adventure."
Bellamy said: "I thought you were. I like adventurous girls. Sometimes they get a fifty-pound note if they're very good."
She sighed.
"I knew I was going to like you directly I saw you, Nicky," she murmured.
Bellamy ordered two more Martinis.
THE night was pitch black. The cab—the driver hanging over the wheel, peering into the darkness ahead of him—crawled along the left hand white-edged pavement of Bond Street, turned into Bruton Street and proceeded precariously towards Berkeley Square at twenty miles an hour.
Bellamy sat on the back seat with Fenella Roque. Now and again his nostrils caught a suggestion of the perfume she was wearing. He recognised it. It was called Vers Mon Coeur and it cost a lot of money.
Bellamy found himself wondering about Fenella and if she were the right sort of person for what he wanted. He thought that she might be....
On the other side of the cab, on the tip-up seat, with his back to the driver, opposite Mrs. Roque, Harcourt March was perched. The night air had finished him off. He was quite drunk. He sat supported by one arm that was stretched along the ledge of the window, his head nodding with the movement of the cab, his eyes glazed with the look of the almost, but not quite gone.
Fenella Roque moved a little as Harcourt almost fell into her lap. Bellamy put his hand out and pushed March back on to his seat. He said:
"Take it easy, Harcourt. You'll be all right in no time. Just sit back and relax."
March grunted. Mrs. Roque said:
"He's a funny little thing, isn't he? Almost pathetic, don't you think? Or don't you think anything's pathetic?"
Bellamy grinned in the darkness.
"I wouldn't know," he said. "I don't know an awful lot about pathos."
She said: "Neither do I. I used to, but I got over it. Pathos is so pathetic." She laughed and then went on: "That was a silly crack if you like."
He said, turning towards her:
"Not at all. I think it was pretty good. It was like one of the lines in a film ... So you think Harcourt's pathetic?"
Her knee touched his in the darkness.
"I suppose he is really," she said. "He's a damned fool, of course, but then all men are damned fools, aren't they—present company always excepted."
Bellamy could visualise her smiling.
"The point is that Harcourt isn't my type. He's not my cup of tea by any means...."
Her voice, which was rather husky and attractive, dwindled away.
The cab turned out of Berkeley Square and began to negotiate Charles Street. Bellamy looked down at the uluminated dial of his wrist watch. He saw that it was twelve-thirty. He said:
"Exactly what is your cup of tea, Fenella?"
She laughed softly.
"I never know until I've tasted it," she said.
She took the cigarette from the case Bellamy handed to her. In the flame of his lighter he could see the clear carving of her jawbone and the sensitive cut of her nostrils. He caught a sudden flash of Harcourt, his chin sunk into his collar, on the other side of the cab.
Bellamy began to think of the cigarette stub—the butt-end of the cigarette that Harcourt had given him at Mott's Club, and which he had kept—that now reposed in the envelope in his desk in Hall Moon Street.
She said suddenly: "Exactly what is this? I'm beginning to feel like X42—the mysterious woman spy who has access to the confidential documents in every Embassy on the Continent and who manages, quite marvellously, to get through to Chapter twenty without getting seduced."
Bellamy laughed.
"It's nothing like that," he said. "Nothing so romantic. And the only person with whom you might have to fight for your honour is Harcourt."
She sighed.
"That's what I was afraid of," she said. Then: "I don't want to seem a curious sort of girl," she went on, "but I'm naturally interested in this set-up, in which, at the moment, I seem to be taking a vital even if uninteresting part. What I mean is where do I go from here?"
"It's quite simple," said Bellamy. "The point is that Harcourt has a couple of hundred which he won last night in a poker game. Harcourt plus two hundred pounds is of no use at all to me. To suit my purpose he has to be minus the two hundred... See?"
"I'm not quite certain, Sir Galahad," she said. "Do I take it that the essence of this nice but nefarious plot is that somebody is going to take Harcourt for the two hundred?"
"That Is more or less correct," he answered. "You see, Fenella, before we left the Malayan Club I had a talk on the telephone with a Miss Lily Purcella who runs the rather select spieler to which we are now proceeding. She's going to arrange a quiet little game of chemie for us in a private room. Lily will be playing and so will her boy friend—a gentleman named Tony—I don't think he ever had another name—yourself and myself. The way Harcourt's feeling now he ought to be fairly ripe for plucking in an hour's time. He'll be coming out of that alcoholic stupor and he'll be a little reckless. Whoever's working the shoe will see that he gets the wrong cards at the right moment. Do I make myself plain?"
"I see..." said Fenella. "Is that all?"
She sounded a little disappointed.
"Not quite," said Bellamy. "By the time Harcourt has lost his money he ought to be nearly sober. Then, while you other people have a drink and a sandwich I'm going to have a little talk with him."
He nicked the ash from his cigarette.
"When I've finished talking to Harcourt," he continued, "he'll be a little depressed I think. Then we shall probably begin to think about going home. You will have made sixty or seventy pounds out of the game and Miss Purcella ought to have cleaned up another hundred or so."
She said: "This is beginning to sound more interesting."
"It's all right up to the moment," said Bellamy. "Well... after that, if I know anything about Harcourt, he will feel the need of womanly sympathy. I suggest that you indicate to him that you are not entirely disinterested in him. You might even go so far as to go back to his flat—he doesn't five at home any more; he has a flat in Conduit Street which he uses for his more intimate affairs—or he might even take you on to a club somewhere."
She sighed again. She said:
"I am going to have a time, aren't I?"
"In any event," said Bellamy, "I should think that Harcourt, would in the early hours of the morning, be in his usual state of dither and liquor. He'll probably end up by passing out on the settee."
"And then I suppose I go home like a good girl?" asked Fenella.
Bellamy said evenly: "No... that's just what you don't do. What you do is to go over that flat thoroughly while he's asleep. I want you to search that place with a fine tooth comb. Up the chimneys and under loose floorboards and all the rest of it. D'you think you can do it?"
"I'm with you so far," she said lightly. "Go on... this is really getting to be fun I What am I supposed to be looking for?"
"You're looking for some documents," said Bellamy.
"Any sort of papers or notes, or documents relating to trade propaganda organisation. Anything that looks like that. You might find something, but I don't think you will."
She said: "D'you know, I believe that you're X42? I believe you've got a set of false whiskers in your pocket. You're not going to search me at any moment, are you?"
"No," said Bellamy.
She sighed again.
"I was afraid of that too," she murmured.
"I'm not X42," said Bellamy. "I rather wish I was. I'm trying hard to get myself out of a pretty tough jam, that's all See?"
Fenella said: "No... I don't. But it doesn't matter. Well, what do I do next?"
"You ring my flat to-morrow at lunch time," said Bellamy. "It's in the book. And you tell me whether you've found anything or whether you haven't. In any event you've got to fix it with Harcourt that you're seeing him again to-morrow. You've got to stick by him all to-morrow, and you've got to see that most of the time he's had just enough liquor to keep him nice and quiet. Then to-morrow evening you might take him around to the Malayan Club about nine o'clock and I'll telephone you there. I'll add some money to whatever you win to-night to bring the sum up to a hundred. Is it a deal?"
"It's a deal," said Fenella. "I'm fearfully glad I haven't got to hide a dead body or kill somebody lor the money."
Bellamy said solemnly: "I always pay more for a killing, sweet."
The cab pulled into the kerb with a jerk. Harcourt March opened his eyes. He said drunkenly:
"Where the hell are we? I thought we were going to play chemie?"
He peered at them as Bellamy flashed on his torch, and then sat blinking, running his tongue over dry lips.
As Bellamy began to get out of the cab, March said to Mrs. Roque:
"What the hell's been going on. I s'pose Nicky's been trying to make you, Fenella?"
She said: "Yes, of course. I tried to fight him ofi with a hat pin, but it was no good."
He hiccoughed.
"My God..." he said. "What did you do?"
She got out of the cab. She said, over her shoulder: "I just gave in. What could I do? I screamed at you for help but you were asleep."
Bellamy put his arm in the cab and grabbed Harcourt. He drew him out of the cab.
"My God," said Harcourt. "D'you hear that, Bellamy. Fenella says you made her while I was asleep. I'll never forgive myself."
Bellamy put his arm under March's shoulders. They began to walk towards Miss Purcella's place.
IT was just after three o'clock.
Miss Purcella—a heavy, peroxide blonde with watery blue eyes and a well-controlled figure—was stacking the cards on the green baize table. Tony, a sleek black-haired South American, who looked after Miss Purcella's place for her and acted as a general stooge, was downstairs getting whisky and syphons. Fenella Roque—conscious of the fact that Miss Purcella was eyeing her figure and frock with a certain feminine envy—was putting the stray tendril of hair back into place in front of the mirror over the mantelpiece.
March, heavy, near-sober and sullen, sat in the armchair at the end of the room lighting a cigarette with unsteady fingers.
Bellamy, wandering about the well-furnished room, looking at the prints on the walls, winked at Miss Purcella, who said girlishly:
"Mrs. Roque, we need to powder our noses, don't we? Let's meet the men downstairs. It's so much warmer in the drawing-room. Let's... and we'll have coffee. I need coffee."
Bellamy said: "Yes... you people go down. I want to have a word with Harcourt."
Bellamy wandered over to March. He drew up an armchair. Tony came in with a whisky decanter, syphon and glasses, he put them on the table. He went away with the women.
Bellamy walked over to the table and mixed the drinks. He came back and handed one to March. He sat down in the chair opposite March and looked at him kindly. He said:
"Dam' tough luck, Harcourt."
March nodded.
"It's bloody," he said. "I was tickled silly this morning because I'd won a couple of hundred last night at Mott's place. That was something in hand anyway. Now I'm dead broke. It's damned awful."
Bellamy said: "It can be tough. You had the most fearful cards. Listen, Harcourt. Can I lend you a little money? I can spare twenty."
"By jove... you're a pal." said Harcourt.
Bellamy took a bundle of notes from his pocket and handed March two ten-pound notes. Then he began to drink his whisky. After a minute March said:
"Didn't you want to see me about something, Nicky?"
Bellamy nodded. His face was serious.
"Harcourt," he said. "I don't want to put the wind up or anything, but I think you're rather in a bad jam. I'm afraid Iris has ratted on you."
March stiffened. He said very quietly:
"What in the name of hell and devils do you mean, Nicky?"
Bellamy took two cigarettes from his case. He handed one to March and put one in his mouth. He produced his lighter and lit the cigarettes. Then:
"Somebody killed Freda last night, Harcourt. You know that. You've seen the papers. Well the police have been asking me questions about it because Freda telephoned me at Carola's party just after eleven o'clock and they think that she was killed some time between eleven-twenty and half past eleven. They're not quite certain about the time."
"So what..." said Harcourt. "I'm dam' sorry about Freda, but what's it cot to do with me?"
"I'll tell you," said Bellamy patiently. "The point is that you went to see Iris at eleven-thirty. And she'd got an idea that you'd been to see Freda. She knows that you and Vanessa had a quarrel outside Carola's place and that you went off on your own. She says that when you arrived at her place you said you'd been walking about, that your coat was awfully wet and that she's certain that you'd been to see Freda."
March said: "It's a damned lie. I never went near Freda. It's a bloody lie...."
Bellamy shrugged his shoulders.
"Maybe," he said. "But the police have already been to see Iris. There's some fellow called Meynell—a Detective-Inspector—in charge of the case. He's been around to see Iris and he'll probably go and see her again."
He leaned towards March.
"You see, Harcourt," he said, "the trouble is that in a case like this the police always look for motive. They've told me—well this fellow Meynell has told me—that there just isn't any motive that they can see for anyone wanting to murder Freda. But they'll alter their opinion pretty quickly when Iris starts talking next time."
Harcourt looked at Bellamy. The pudgy fingers that held the glass were trembling. His face had gone a peculiar off-white colour.
"My God, Nicky," he said. "My God... Do they think I did it?"
Bellamy shrugged his shoulders.
"After all, Harcourt," he said, "you had a motive. Iris says that you told her that you were going round, ostensibly to pick up Freda and have a cocktail and take her along to Carola's party, but in reality you were after some money. Iris says you were pretty desperate for money and that you told her you were certain that you'd get some from Freda. I must say it'll sound a bit odd to the police, won't it?"
"You see, Iris says that Freda wouldn't come across with the money and that you were fearfully annoyed with her, that you were in a shocking temper at Carola's party and that her considered opinion is that you went back to see Freda, after you'd sent Vanessa off home, and that you had a first-class row with her. Iris went so far as to say—mind you, I don't say that I believe it for a moment—that she wouldn't put it above you to have lost your temper and set about Freda. It all sounds pretty grim, I must say."
He drank some more whisky.
March was trembling. His arms and fingers and legs were moving jerkily. He said in a thin voice:
"My God, Nicky. They can't hang this on me. They can't. What am I going to do about this?" His face flushed angrily. "That damned Berington..." he said. "She grabbed what money I had and now she's turning on me like a damned snake. She's got it in for me."
Bellamy nodded.
"It's pretty tough, Harcourt," he said. "By the way ... if you didn't go to see Freda after you left Carola's place where did you go? There must have been someone who saw you."
Harcourt said: "Damn it, there wasn't anyone saw me. I was just walking about. I was fed up. I was fed up with Freda and Iris and everybody."
"So you were fed up with Freda," said Bellamy. "I should forget that if I were you, Harcourt. Of course, I believe you if you say you were walking about, but you'll understand, old boy, that it sounds damned odd for a fellow like you to be wandering about in the black-out—and it was raining pretty hard too... I don't like it."
"So you don't think they'll believe me," mumbled March. "My God, they've got to believe me. Or what the hell shall I do? What shall I tell 'em?"
Bellamy said quietly: "Listen to me, Harcourt. The thing's not as bad as all that—yet. After all you can't go accusing a fellow like you of murder just on any old sort of circumstantial evidence. You just can't do a thing like that."
"There's another thing," he went on. "They've got to prove that a person's done murder in this country. They've got to prove it. That's the law. You haven't to disprove it. Why should you? Anyhow the suggestion's quite ridiculous. Except of course that these dam' police are awfully nosey and efficient and worrying. ..."
He took the glass from March's shaking fingers, went to the table and half filled it with neat whisky.
"Drink that down," Harcourt, he said. "It'll steady you, old fellow...."
March gulped the drink down. He made a wry face at its strength.
"My advice to you is to sit still and say nothing," said Bellamy. "Just go on as if nothing had happened. I just shouldn't discuss the case with anyone. If the police do come to you, you can tell 'em what actually happened and hope that they'll believe it. But I shouldn t worry too much about it."
March said: "I want another drink. Damn the police!"
Bellamy mixed more drinks.
Harcourt said: "They've got to prove it. They just can't go around making cheap accusations. To hell with 'em."
Bellamy nodded. He said cheerfully:
"That's the spirit. We'll just have one for the road, and then we'll toddle. By the way you might drop Mrs. Roque. I think she's a bit for you...."
"What the hell do you mean?" said March. "She was telling me..." Bellamy grinned.
"She was pulling your leg," he said. "She told me in the cab that she thought you were a most interesting fellow; that you had character and courage and a sense of humour."
March produced a smile.
"Well, there's something in that," he said. "I don't talk a lot about myself, but I s'pose I've got my good points."
Bellamy went to the door.
"I'll just tell Mrs. Roque to get her things on," he said. "And then we'll go."
Harcourt nodded and began to walk unsteadily towards the whisky decanter.
Bellamy put Fenella Roque and March into the cab. March flopped into his corner. He was exhausted from shock and whisky.
Fenella shook hands with Bellamy.
"Thank you for a lovely evening," she said.
When she took her hand away Bellamy felt the visiting card she had left in his fingers.
He said: "It's been awfully nice, Fenella, you've been sweet."
She looked at March. He was lying back in the corner asleep. She said:
"This is where I take the bacon home—and I mean bacon. Good-night, Nicky, dear. Do come and see me sometime and tell me some more stories."
He put his hand through the window. There were four folded ten-pound notes in it. Her long fingers closed round the money.
"Good-night... Fenella," he said.
He gave her a final grin as the cab moved away. Then he stood on the kerb tearing the visiting card into little pieces, dropping them into the gutter.
IT was four o'clock when Bellamy arrived at his flat. He went into the sitting-room, threw his overcoat on the settee, lit the electric nre and stood for a few moments looking at its glow. Then he went into the kitchen and put on a kettle. While it was boiling he walked up and down the flat corridor smoking a cigarette.
When the kettle boiled he made tea. He prepared a tea tray, took it into the sitting-room, put it on the corner of his desk. He sat down, drank two cups of tea and concentrated on the letter that he intended to write.
He spent some minutes thinking about the letter. Then he took a sheet of notepaper and began to write:
My dear Carola,
Writing this letter is a very difficult process for me, and it's all the more difficult because it is being written to you. I know you've been fed up with me for quite some time, but I had hoped when I got this job from Philip Vanning that I would be able really to take a pull at myself and generally behave like a normal individual.
You can take it from me that I wasn't at all surprised when you threw me out after that bad show at your party, ft was a bad business, but I still hoped even although I knew you were keen on Molt that there might be some sort of vague chance for me. However, I am afraid that's quite finished now, because what I'm going to tell you is not going to make me any more popular with you, although for once it isn't my own fault.
The point is I am in rather a bad jam about Freda's murder. When site rang me up at your party she not only asked me to give you that message about her not being able to come because she had a cold, but she also told me she wanted to see me urgently and asked me to go round there at once. I went round there. The little door that leads from Philip's study into the passage was on the latch. She'd said it would be. I went in, but I couldn't find her anywhere, and when I called her name she didn't answer.
Eventually, noticing that her bedroom door was ajar and the light on inside, I knocked and stuck my head round the corner.
Poor Freda was lying on the bed. She'd been strangled.
The first idea that came into my head was, I suppose, a rather ridiculous one. It was an instinct at self-preservation. Of course if I'd done the right thing I should have dashed downstairs at once, seen the ntglit porter and telephoned the police. But I didn't. The only thing that came into my mind was that someone had killed Freda and Dial there was a fairly good chance that I might be accused of having murdered her.
Now I come to the most important part of this business, and it is on this point that I want to ask your advice. You know me as well as anyone, my dear, and you know that whatever my sins may be they are usually sins of omission, coupled with the fact that I drink a little too much and that I am casual and inclined to be lazy. But you know I don't go about killing people.
The point is that when I was able to take my eyes away from Freda I saw that a cigarette end was still smoking in the ash-tray. You can imagine the incongruity of that scene—a dead woman whom I had known well lying strangled on the bed, and a cigarette end smoking in the ash-tray. It seemed the obvious thing for me to do to go over and put my finger on it. But as I was about to do this I got a shock.
Enough of the cigarette was left for me to see that it was an "État Maroc," the blend that Harcourt March smokes. Freda hadn't been stnoking it, because she never smokes Turkish cigarettes.
Having regard to what I have heard since it is my considered opinion that when I entered the flat Harcourt March was in the bedroom; that he'd just put the cigarette end into the ash-tray on the table. When he heard me coming through the study he was so keen on getting out of that room without being discovered that he otnitted to put the cigarette end out. I imagine that he slipped into the small sitting-room opposite Freda's bedroom, leaving her door open, and that when I went into he bedrootn he sneaked out of the flat.
If some confirmation of this idea is wanted it is this: Mrs. Berington—the girl with whom Harcourt has been getting around lately—has told me that he arrived at her place very wet and looking pretty awful. Slie believes that Harcourt killed Freda. Her reason for believing this is a strong one.
It seems that she and Harcourt have been quarrelling about money for some time, and it appears that the day before Harcourt had told her that he was going to get some money—that he'd have money by the next day. She asked him where he was going to get it from and he said he was going to get it from Freda. He told her he was going to see Freda, have a cocktail with her and take her along to your party; that he was going to get the money then.
Well apparently he didn't succeed. He did not take Freda to your party, and we know that the excuse that she put up for her not attending—i.e. that she had a cold—is not true, because she had told Philip Vanning earlier in the evening that she was going to your party.
Anyway Harcourt went round, picked up Mrs. Berington and brought her instead. Mrs. Berington said he was furiously angry with Freda.
As you know Harcourt left with his wife, Mrs. Berington having gone off by herself earlier. But Harcourt did not see Vanessa home. Apparently they had a few words outside. Vanessa took a cab and went off to her flat, whilst Harcourt says that he walked about in the black-out and in the pouring rain until eleven-thirty, when he appeared at Mrs. Berington's flat.
It doesn't sound so good, does it, Carola?
I come into this business because I've made rather a fool of myself about it. When the Scotland Yard people came to me—having heard about Freda's telephone call to me at your place—I said first of all that I'd never been there. Later I realised that this was a ridiculous story, because I'd left my fingerprints all ever the place. So I went to Scotland Yard, saw the Detective-Inspector—a fellow by the name of Meynell—and told him another story. But I didn't tell him the truth on this occasion. I told him that I'd seen Freda, had a few minutes conversation with her and left her alive lying on her bed.
I think I've been a fool from the start. I wish to God I'd told the whole truth in the first place.
There is no doubt about it that the police must more or less suspect me at the moment, and I feel that I could clear myself very easily by going to see them and telling them 'the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.' But if I do this I must implicate Harcourt. If I tell them everything I know it is going to look pretty bad for Harcourt, and although hes a funny sort of fellow and none of us like him very much, yet some sort of feeling about playing the game is making me keep quiet about this business until I've asked your advice.
Carola, I know you're through with me, but I am asking you to do this service for me. I want you to show this letter to Vanessa. I want you to ask her to tell you, honestly and sincerely, if in her opinion there was anything on between Freda and Harcourt. I've been wondering why Vanessa suddenly got so fed up with Harcourt and why Harcourt, who was always a fairly decent sort of bloke about women, just: as suddenly began to make a fool of himself with every pretty woman who came across his path.
The point is this: If Vanessa thinks that there was something on between Freda and Harcourt—although to everyone who knew Freda this sounds almost impossible—then I must believe that it was Harcourt who killed her.
I am going to put this letter through the letter-box at your place so that you get it first thing in the morning. Will you have a talk with Vanessa, and will you tell her that I'm going to come and see her some time to-morrow?
Vanessa's a fearfully nice woman. She's a good friend of yours and I don't think she has any reason to dislike me. She'll have time to think this over. She'll have time to make up her mind as to what she's going to tell me when I go round there. If she believes live worst then I think I shall be justified in telling the police what I know. For my own sake I've got to do something soon.
My best wishes to you.
Yours ever,
Nicky.
Bellamy put down his pen. He read the letter through. Then he
folded it, put it in an envelope, addressed the envelope, put on
his hat and coat and went out.
As he walked down Half Moon Street he was whistling to himself.
BELLAMY got up at twelve o'clock. He walked over to the window and looked out on to Half Moon Street. It was a bleak, dull-looking sort of a day. He began to think about Harcourt and Fenella—especially Fenella.
He remembered her vaguely, and somehow in connection with Mott's Club. He thought that probably she was one of the women Mott used to get business for the Club, one of the women who brought men in to play. If that were so she might be inclined to talk to Mott about her adventures with Bellamy and Harcourt.
Well... supposing she did? Bellamy grinned, rang the bell for his tea and went into the bathroom.
When he came back his tray was waiting him. There were two or three letters on it. One of them was from Vanning.
Bellamy sat on the bed and opened the letter. Enclosed in the thick manilla envelope was a list of the people employed in the "C" Bureau, their addresses and any changes of address since the inception of the Bureau, and a series of marginal notes—probably supplied by the Special Branch, Bellamy thought—on their spending capabilities, their relatives and their women—if any.
He looked at the list and then began to tear it into small pieces. He threw the pieces in the waste-paper basket. Then he sat down on the bed and began to read Vanning's letter:
My dear Nicky,
This letter is written with a certain amount of difficulty. First of all this horrible thing about my poor Freda has upset me more than I can say. I feel, however, that the only thing that will preserve my sanity, and prevent me from going right off the deep end is work. Freda was always so keen on the success of this organisation. She always wanted me to make good. She wanted to be Lady Vanning... poor darling, and so I feel that, in her memory, I ve got to clean up this business about the leakages. In that I am, as you know, more or less dependent on you.
I enclose the list of people employed here and such information about them as is quickly available. If you want any more—special—information about any particular person you must let me know and I'll get it for you.
Sir Eustace came through on the telephone to-day. I think the Government are pressing him a little about the leakages and he wants a report of some sort from me fairly soon. So, if you don't mind, I'd like a report from you, covering your activities up to the end of this week, by Friday or Saturday at latest. I can draft then something out from my own viewpoint and show him that I am moving in the matter.
Telephone if you want me. I'm filling every minute of every day with work. It's the only solution. You'd better destroy this when you've read it, and see that the list doesn't get lost.
I'm sorry to hear about you and Carola. You're a damned fool, Nicky. Carola is a fine girl and you've lost something valuable. I saw her at Claridge's yesterday for a minute and she said she thought that you really were turning over a new leaf. I hope she's right.
Good luck to you,
Yours ever,
Philip Vanning.
Bellamy read the letter through twice and then burned it. He
began to dress, singing: "In the Merry Merry Month of May"
in a falsetto voice while he was dressing. He had just tied his
tie when the telephone rang.
It was Fenella. She said cheerfully:
"Good-morning, Nicky. How do you feel? I feel awful. I had a very hectic time with Harcourt and I need encouragement."
He grinned into the receiver.
"You sound all in one piece, anyway, my child," he said. "Have you anything really interesting to tell me?"
"Yes and no," she answered. "We met Iris Berington last night at The Priory and there was a little scene... nothing very much ... nobody got hurt physically I mean. But I didn't find anything."
Bellamy asked: "Did you search the place thoroughly?"
"Did I?" she laughed. "Beyond stripping the wallpaper off Harcourt's flat. I did everything else."
"I see," said Bellamy. "Where's Harcourt and where are you?"
She said: "Harcourt's sleeping it off. He looks like an unconscious alligator, and you can hear him snoring in Peru. I'm talking from the call-box opposite—in the tobacconist's. I've been home and changed into a coat and skirt. Also, Sire, I'm going to charge up to you one evening frock. The one I was wearing last night was ruined when Iris threw a tankard of bitter beer at Harcourt...."
Bellamy laughed.
"It sounds as if you had an evening," he said. "Would you like to meet me at the cocktail bar at The Carlton in half an hour? D'you think Harcourt will stay put for an hour or so?"
"Definitely yes," she answered. "I should say, judging by appearances that he's going to sleep until some time in 1942. Does that suit you?"
"Excellently," said Bellamy. "You can have lunch with me, buy yourself a new frock on the way back and then stay by the wreck until I need him to-night. 'Bye, Fenella."
He hung up, finished dressing, went downstairs and told the housekeeper that any telephone calls were to be put through to him at the Carlton.
He was drinking his second Martini when Fenella arrived. She looked quite charming in a dark grey suit with a tailor-made hat in velvet to match. She was smiling, fresh and attractive. She looked like anyone of the well-turned-out women one sees lunching in a good restaurant. Bellamy wondered vaguely just what her story was. He supposed it was the old one, the one that has been told with odd variations ever since there were men and women.
She drank a double dry Martini. Then she settled herself in her chair with a graceful wriggle and said:
"I'd better get all this business off my chest first, Nicky, because I hate mixing business with lunch. Don't you?"
He smiled at her. He ordered some more cocktails and told her to go ahead.
"After we left you, Harcourt was quite comatose until we neared his flat," she said. "Then he came up for air and decided that he didn't want to go home. I thought that was a good idea because although I'm a girl who can always hold her own in a free for all with an alcoholic gentleman who has good manners, I wouldn't back myself to romp home ahead of Harcourt if he got really passionate."
Bellamy said: "The idea of Harcourt getting passionate is too appalling. Something like a playful hippopotamus...."
"Maybe," she said. "But I'm not very good with playful hippopotami. I've never experienced one yet."
"Too bad," said Bellamy. "Go ahead, Fenella."
"Harcourt said that we'd go to the Priory," she went on. "He asked me if that was all right and I said that one bottle party was very much like another one and that provided nobody was going to ask me to do a fan dance that was all right by me.
"So we went to The Priory. On the way Harcourt was pretty morbid. He nearly had me crying once or twice. The general theme was that he was a misunderstood fellow, that his wife hated the sight of him, that women let him down, that he lost his money at cards and that practically everything that could happen to him had happened, and that death would be a welcome relief."
Bellamy said: "That sounds like Harcourt. What did you do?"
"I was very sweet and very feminine and very comforting," she said. "I said that the darkest hour was before the dawn...."
Bellamy said: "That was a marvellous crack, Fenella. I bet you also said that 'While there's life there's hope.'"
"Well, I did, as a matter of fact," said Fenella brightly. "I produced any number of wise saws and ancient proverbs. In point of fact I was a little too successful because Harcourt got very boyish and peculiar all suddenly and tried to vamp me terribly intimately. Luckily we were just going round the corner by The Priory, and he fell off the seat. So I escaped with a slightly disarranged coiffure and ladders in both stockings—chinon stockings do run so easily...."
She finished her cocktail, and took the cigarette he offered her.
"He behaved quite nicely for a bit after that," she went on. "Except that dancing with him was rather like being in a rough house with a polar bear. However, all was well until Iris Berington came in with a young man. Harcourt didn't like that a bit. He began to make some very rude remarks about Iris. First of all they were sotto voce but as the time went on and Harcourt had absorbed a couple of immense whiskies and sodas his voice began to carry."
Bellamy nodded sympathetically.
"He really did get a little tough." Fenella continued, "and eventually the young man who was with Iris came to our table and did a little polite remonstrating. Har-court was very bitter. He said he hadn't said a thing about Iris. He said that apart from the fact that she was a lousy cow, that she would steal the gold stopping out of her sleeping mother's back teeth, and that she'd taken first prize in a cradle snatching competition when she was fifteen, she was a very nice woman—if you liked that sort of woman."
Fenella flicked the ash from her cigarette delicately.
"The young man was feeling a little upset, I think. First of all he was in R.A.F. uniform and didn't want any sort of trouble—he looked an awfully nice type of boy—and secondly I think he was a bit stuck on Iris. She'd probably told him some fairy story about herself and, being nice, he'd believed it."
Bellamy smiled.
"I know," he said. "The R.A.F. are damned efficient in the air. Those boys have to have one hundred per cent 'quick reaction'... but Iris is a different proposition I think...."
"You're telling me," murmured Fenella. "If I was in the Air Force I'd rather much have an encounter with half a dozen Messerschmitts than get into range of Iris' artillery. However," she continued, "I gave the Flight-Lieutenant a quick look and indicated that Harcourt was cockeyed, and he tried to play ball. He told Harcourt not to be silly and just be nice and quiet.
"Harcourt said he always was nice and quiet; that seeing that Iris had taken him for every penny he'd got, nothing remained for him but absolute quietness. He said that if he was in the Air Force and knew a girl like Iris he'd just get into his airplane and fly away like hell was after him. He said that he had nothing against her personally, and that a lot of men would be crazy about ner, but that if he had his way he'd get her working on the Economic Commission, because, if the Government would only turn Iris loose on Germany, he, Harcourt, would lay his last shirt button to a baby elephant that she would positively ruin the country in a couple of weeks."
Bellamy said: "Harcourt must have been very interesting."
"By this time," said Fenella, "Iris, tired of waiting for the return of her escort, appeared on the scene and took matters into her own hands. She was very angry. She called Harcourt a very rude name and, at the same time, threw a pint tankard of bitter beer at him. She scored a direct hit on Harcourt, and I got a good half of the beer over my frock. I didn't mind—it wasn't a fearfully good frock, and I thought that perhaps you'd buy me a new one."
Bellamy said: "Oh, you did...? Well, what happened next?"
"Everyone was getting a little worried," said Fenella, "so I thought I'd persuade Harcourt to go home. He and Iris were getting very bitter with each other in a quiet way. Iris told him that he was all washed up so far as she was concerned, and he retaliated by telling her that she was a 'copper's nark' of the worst description, and that he'd have the law on her if she told lying stories about what she thought he was doing on Monday night. She asked him where he got his information and he said 'Bellamy.' Iris then said that she wouldn't place too much reliance on what Bellamy said, and that if she knew anything Bellamy would be behind the bars before many days were gone. Harcourt said that he was perfectly able to take care of himself except where she was concerned, to which Iris replied brightly that that was what he thought, and that in her opinion he was a bloody fool of the very first order, and that he'd better watch out for Bellamy who was very dangerous."
Bellamy said: "Oh dear, just fancy that!"
"I hope it isn't true," said Fenella. "Although I think you'd look too sweet peeping out from behind the prison bars. Do you think they'd let me come and feed you buns?"
They both laughed. Then he said: "Let's go and have luncheon."
They went into the restaurant. Bellamy ordered lunch. When the waiter had gone, Fenella said:
"Of course, as I've said before, all this is none of my business, and I'm not at all a curious sort of girl. But I'd get much more of a kick out of life if I knew what all the trouble was about."
Bellamy said: "There isn't any trouble, Fenella, and so far as you are concerned, my dear, your work is very nearly finished."
She pouted prettily.
"That's too bad," she murmured. "And just when I was beginning to enjoy myself."
"All good things must end," said Bellamy cocking one eyebrow at her. "The point is that when you've had lunch I want you to go back and rejoin Harcourt. By the way, how are you going to get in? If he's asleep he'll never wake up....'
"It's all right, Nicky," she said. "I've got the key. I took it off his key-ring. I always think of little things like that."
"Splendid," said Bellamy. "Well ... you stay around with Harcourt until this evening. Maybe he'll take you to dinner somewhere. Then you get him along to the Malayan Club about nine o'clock. I'll be there soon after that and I'll take him off your hands. Is that all right?"
She nodded.
"That suits me very well" she said. "I don't think I could stand too much of Harcourt. Not at close quarters I mean. Anyhow, I'll guarantee to have him there at nine o'clock."
She paused for a moment, then she went on:
"Shall we meet again after to-night... you and I, I mean?"
Bellamy grinned at her.
"I doubt it," he said. "Besides, I think it would be better for you if we didn't. Surely Iris indicated sufficiently well last night that I was rather a dangerous person?" She nodded.
"I know," she said. "I'm rather inclined to dangerous men... that's always been my trouble. It's been quite a relief toddling about with someone like Harcourt who isn't really dangerous within the meaning of the Act."
When luncheon was over Bellamy ordered a bunch of violets. When they were brought and the bill paid, he wrapped the stem of the violets in four five-pound notes. He handed the flowers to Fenella.
"That will take care of the new frock," he said.
A page boy came up to the table. He said there was a telephone call for Mr. Bellamy. Fenella got up.
"Well... good-bye, Nicky," she said. "I shall see you to-night, but I might as well make my official farewell now. Thanks for the violets and the extra twenty. I'll buy an intriguing evening frock and every time I put it on I'll think of you."
"Then I hope you'll wear it a lot, Fenella," he said.
He grinned at her amiably.
"I'll get myself a cab," said Fenella. "You take your telephone call. Some old time when you want somebody drugged or kidnapped or something you might give me a ring."
"I won't forget," said Bellamy. He watched her go.
He lit a fresh cigarette and wandered out to the telephone. It was the housekeeper at Half Moon Street.
Miss Carola Everard had been through, she said and had asked her to tell Mr. Bellamy that Mrs. March would be glad to see him for tea about four o'clock.
VANESSA was lying on a settee pouring tea when Bellamy arrived. She looked very beautiful, very tired and a little worried. She was wearing a long parma violet house coat that hugged the lines of her slim figure, violet sandals and very sheer chiffon stockings in an intriguing shade of beige. She wore ruffles of Venetian lace at her throat and wrists.
On the other side of the fire Carola sat and looked demure in a black coat and skirt and a black and white woollen jersey. She had a smart leopard-skin toque perched over one eye and a matching coat was flung over the back of a chair.
Vanessa looked up and smiled when Bellamy came in. She said:
"Do you want tea or a whisky and soda, my poor suspect, and I know the answer before you say it."
Bellamy said: "You're wrong. I'm drinking tea. I'm a reformed character. How goes it, Carola?"
"It goes all right, Nicky," said Carola. "Except we're all terribly worried about you and Philip and everything. This business of poor Freda is too shocking. None of us can realise that it's true. All the time I expect the telephone to ring and the poor darling to come on the line and ask me to go round and talk."
Vanessa said in her soft voice: "I feel like that too. It's quite awful, isn't it? I suppose we shall all get over it in time... but it's horrible. I shall never forget the shock I had when I bought that newspaper and saw it on the front page."
Carola got up. "I'm going," she said. "I've a lot to do and you two can talk just as well without me."
Bellamy helped her on with her coat. He said airily:
"I bet you've got a date with Ferdie."
Carola said: "How did you guess? And why shouldn't I have? He's my young man now. You might as well know, Nicky, that we're engaged."
He looked at the new ring on her engagement finger, and pulled a face.
"That's right," he said. "Rub it in, Carola. You're trying to make me feel like Lo Huen Chin...."
Carola said as she drew on her gloves: "And what did he do—or not do?"
Bellamy took the tea-cup from Vanessa.
"He was a bloke in Chinese mythology," he said. "He was a fearfully fine young feller and he was terribly stuck on the daughter of one of the local gods. One day she came down off her pedestal and told Lo Huen Chin that she was one hundred per cent for him and in spite of the fact that she was a god's daughter, she would consent to marry him."
"Well, this news knocked Lo Huen Chin to the boundary for six. He'd been absolutely nutty about the girl, but he'd never expected that she was going to fall for him and the news was a sort of anti-climax—if you get me. In fact he was so affected and overjoyed that he went off and got thoroughly cock-eyed on the local tipple of those days—saki or some such stuff—and wasn't even sober for months...."
Carola smiled.
"And what did the god's daughter do?" she asked.
Bellamy said: "She was fearfully cut up of course, and went off and married some other bloke.'
"And then Lo Huen Chin realised what a fool he'd been?" queried Carola.
She smiled at Bellamy.
"Nothing of the sort," said Bellamy. "Because the god's daughter, whilst being one hundred per cent as a god's daughter, was absolutely lousy as a wife. Old Lo Huen Chin, returning home at night, stewed to the gills, used to stand outside the house and listen to her nagging her new husband like the devil. Then the old boy did a fearful grin and toddled off home and had a couple more for luck and burned joss sticks to the gods for saving him from a fate worse than death."
Vanessa laughed.
"It's no good, Carola," she said. "You can never get the better of Nicky in argument or anything else."
"Oh, can't you?" said Bellamy. "She doesn't have to try to get the better of me. She's done it. She's chucked me for Ferdie Mott. I say, Carola, tell me something. Is he as good at necking as I am?"
Carola said primly: "That's got nothing to do with you. That's a matter entirely between Ferdie and myself." She laughed. "So long, you two...."
She went out.
Bellamy sighed.
"There's a swell girl," he said. "What a fool I was to get myself the chuck." Vanessa shrugged gracefully.
"You asked for it, Nicky," she said. "And you got it. Candidly, I don't think that's the worst of your troubles."
Bellamy's face was serious.
"I know," he said. "You've seen the letter I wrote to Carola?"
Vanessa nodded. She poured herself a cup of tea.
"It isn't quite so good, is it, Nicky?" she said.
"It's lousy," said Bellamy. "I've thought about it until I'm tired. I'm damned if I know what to do, Vanessa."
Vanessa looked at him. She had put the cup of tea down on the little table by the side of the couch. She stretched out her arms behind her head. Bellamy thought that she was quite beautiful and that there was a certain restfulness about Vanessa that was fearfully difficult to describe. Vanessa had something all right.
"There's only one thing for you to do, Nicky," she said. "If you've any sense you won't hesitate to do it. You'll go round to Scotland Yard and you'll see the police officer in charge of the case and tell him the complete truth. When you've done that you'll be safe. If you don't do it you'll be suspect."
He nodded.
"You're right, of course," he said. "But if I do that they'll arrest Harcourt as sure as shooting. They'll pull that boy in at once."
He felt in the breast pocket of his jacket and brought out the envelope. He opened it and took out the stub of the cigarette that Harcourt had given him at Mott's Club.
"You can just see the name on it, Vanessa," he said—"État Maroc—Harcourt's own particular brand. I found that still smoking in the ash-tray beside poor Freda's bed." Bellamy lied with the easiness born of long practice. "He'd been there," he said, "I'll bet anything he was there when I went into the flat. He hid and sneaked out directly he got the chance while I was in the bedroom."
Vanessa smiled. She put out one hand for his tea-cup and busied herself fining it.
"That wouldn't be unlike Harcourt," she said. "He's spent most of his fife sneaking in and out of things and places."
"You don't like him, Vanessa?" he asked. She smiled. It was a hard smile. "I loathe him," she said.
She opened the cigarette box on the table and put a cigarette between her lips. Bellamy moved over and lit it for her. Bending over her he noticed the loveliness of her eyes as they looked up into his.
"I know more about Harcourt than anyone else," she said. "I ought to. I've been married to him for seven years. During that time I've never known him to do anything really unselfish or decent. If I hadn't taken care of my last pennies he would have gone through those like he went through the money I had when I married him. God knows why I did marry him," she went on bitterly. "If ever there was a dyed-in-the-wool fool it was me."
Bellamy nodded.
"I know," he said. "Harcourt's a hard case. Although I've no right to say that. I'm not so hot myself." Vanessa smiled.
"There isn't a comparison," she said firmly. "Not at all. Your sins are those of omission. You drink a little too much. You've neglected your job. You're a funny fellow, Nicky. But underneath you're nice. Every woman you meet knows that. Also you're generous and unselfish and you never sponge on people."
She made a little grimace.
"Harcourt would steal the last copper from a sleeping beggar's collecting box," she said.
Bellamy took out his cigarette case and lit a cigarette. He smoked for a moment before he said:
"Vanessa, tell me something. And don't hate me for asking the question. Do you think there was anything on between poor Freda and Harcourt?"
Vanessa inhaled. She blew the smoke out of her nostrils.
She said: "D'you mean to ask if Harcourt was having an affaire with Freda?"
Bellamy nodded.
"That's what I meant," he said.
"Of course he was," said Vanessa coolly. "I've known that for a long time. And I'll answer your next question for you. You re going to ask me why a woman as coolly impersonal and remote and self-contained as Freda should have anything to do with a dirty little cad like my husband Harcourt. Well, I'll tell you."
Bellamy drew on his cigarette.
"I told Harcourt to get out some months ago," said Vanessa, "because I didn't see why I should share him with the bunch of odd women and cheap floosies that he'd been getting about with—more especially when he was giving them my money. So I told him to get out. He didn't mind. I don't think he likes to lead any sort of decent life. Anyway he got out. I didn't discuss the matter with my friends because there was nothing to discuss."
"Well ... he made a dead set at Freda. Philip was fearfully busy on his new job and was seldom at home. Freda was lonely. Harcourt used to go round there for tea and cocktails and sympathy. He's not entirely without brains. And there must have been something in him that appealed to Freda. Anyhow she fell for him. I know because I made it my business to find out. I wanted to satisfy my curiosity... that was all."
"My God..." said Bellamy. "Think of that. And you believe that he was getting money from Freda?"
Vanessa laughed.
"My dear Nicky, don't be so absolutely juvenile," she said. "Harcourt would take money out of the church offertory if no one was looking. Of course he was getting money from Freda. How do you think he's been existing?"
Bellamy threw his cigarette end away and fit another. He said:
"It's pretty damned awful, isn't it, Vanessa? Here we all are. We've all been more or less good friends ever since Ferdie Mott and Harcourt and I began to work for Philip at the 'C' Bureau. We've all known of course that you and Harcourt weren't quite hitting it off, but I never suspected it was as bad as that."
He was silent for a moment. Then he said:
"Vanessa... you think Harcourt killed Freda. I know you do. I feel it."
Vanessa swung her legs to the floor in a quick graceful movement. They were lovely legs. She said:
"For God's sake, Nicky, what's the matter with you? Isn't the thing as plain as a pikestaff?"
She threw ner cigarette end into the ash-tray on the table.
"Listen, Nicky," she said. "Examine the sequence of events for yourself. Harcourt, by some mysterious means known to himself, is able to get Freda for a mistress. You knew Freda well. She was a swell person. She was marvellous. Well ... for some reason best known to herself—and in spite of the fact that her husband adored her—she fell for Harcourt—or the particular line he was putting on at that time. Well... you'd think that Harcourt would be satisfied with that, wouldn't you? But is he? Oh no... He doesn't want a first-rate woman—a woman like Freda. He has to have another string to his bow ... that fearful Berington piece. And he has the damned effrontery to buy her with the money he was getting from Freda. And he had the damned effrontery to take her about, to take her to Carola's party. If you want to know why Freda didn't go to Carola's party, why she said she had a cold, there's the reason. After she'd told him that she hadn't any more money for him he walked out on her. He deliberately went round and collected that little bit Iris Bering-ton and took her to Carola's party instead... flaunting her in our faces.
"And then the worst happens... from his point of view I mean. The Berington tells him that she's getting bored with him. That without money he is of no use to her. So he goes back to Freda in a fury. He goes back to her filled with anger and hatred and drink and he killed her. Of course he killed her."
Bellamy nodded.
"You're right, Vanessa," he said. "Quite obviously right. It's no good. It's no good my having any false ideas about friendship or sportmanship or any odd things like that. After all murder's murder."
Vanessa said: "What're you going to do, Nicky?"
"I shall go to Scotland Yard to-morrow," he said. "I shall tell this Meyncll fellow the whole story. After all I've got to look after myself."
Vanessa nodded.
"Of course," she said. "It's the obvious thing for you to do. If Harcourt has some sort of defence let him produce it. I don't say that he meant to kill Freda but quite a lot of murderers don't mean to kill people but they do, don't they? Harcourt must look after himself. Why should you bother about him?"
"I don't know..." said Bellamy. "Except that it's always seemed to me that there was something pathetic about Harcourt."
"Precisely," said Vanessa grimly. "That damned pathos. That's why I married him. I thought there was something pathetic about him. And I suppose that's why Freda fell for him and that's why she gave him money. It's a pity his pathos didn't prevent him from murdering her. Poor Freda wasn't a bit pathetic but she was strangled and you sympathise with the man who did it because he is so pathetic. My God ... it's awful... these pathetic people!" Bellamy got up.
"You've been a pal, Vanessa," he said. "Thanks a whole lot." He grinned at her and cocked one eyebrow. "Thank you for the tea too...."
Vanessa rose to her feet. She stood smiling at him.
"You go down to Scotland Yard and tell the truth," she said. "Otherwise you'll be the next person to be slightly pathetic."
She put her hands up to his face and drew his head down. She kissed him on the lips.
"I've often wanted to do that," she said, "mainly because you're my idea of a man—under all that damned silly superficiality that you put on like an overcoat. You get off now, Nicky... I've got to get my hair done."
"O.K., boss," said Bellamy.
At the door he stopped and turned. He said:
"Harcourt was a mug, wasn't he? Fancy chucking a woman like you for the Berington. He must have been nuts!"
He went out grinning.
It was five o'clock. Bellamy wandered up the stairs and into
the Malayan Club. The place was empty. Blondie, behind the bar,
threw him a quick smile.
"And how's Mrs. Roque?" she said wickedly.
Bellamy said: "I'd like a double whisky and soda. And why bring Mrs. Roque up?"
She said: "I was watching you two last night. I knew when that Lancelot tried to start something you'd paste him. She knew it too. She didn't like that Lancelot. She was awfully pleased. I could see it in her eye."
Bellamy said: "Well... if she didn't like him why did she get around with him? She didn't have to, did she?" The blonde barmaid grinned.
"She works for Ferdie Mott of Mott's Club," she said. "She and Mrs. Berington bring their men friends along. Mr. Mott gives them a rake off.'
"Ah..." said Bellamy.
He drank his whisky and soda and went across to the telephone box. He called the number of the "C" Bureau and asked for Mr. Vanning.
When Vanning came on the line, Bellamy said:
"Philip, thanks for your letter and the list. I'm not going to say a word about Freda, but you know how I feel. The best thing you can do is to work like hell and give yourself no time to think."
Vanning said: "Thanks, Nicky."
"I've got some news for you, Philip," said Bellamy. "I've got a definite idea about that leakage. I want to see you. Can you manage to-night?"
Vanning said: "What about the Berkeley Buttery at seven? Will that do?"
"That will be fine," said Bellamy. "Listen, Philip. You've just had a knockout blow. D'you think you can stand another? Can you take it?"
"Don't worry," said Vanning grimly. "I can take anything after what's happened. Nothing could hurt me much now."
"Right," said Bellamy. "Till seven o'clock."
He hung up the receiver. Then he went back to the bar and ordered another double whisky and soda.
BELLAMY sat in front of the fire in his sitting-room and smoked cigarettes. He was thinking about the talk he was going to have with Vanning. He realised it might be a little difficult. Bellamy thought that life moved quickly—too quickly sometimes.
He allowed his mind to wander over the things that had happened—the sequence of events since Monday evening when Vanning had given him the job of investigating the propaganda leakages.
He got up and began to walk about the room. Now he was thinking about Fenella Roque. His first guess about that charming lady had been right. She was one of Ferdie Mott's women—one of the discriminating women he used to keep a steady supply of customers going for his gaming club.
He began to grin as he thought that Fenella would have tola Ferdie everything that had happened during the last forty-eight hours. She would have told Ferdie all about Harcourt and the game at Lily Purcella's. Bellamy's grin broadened as he imagined what Ferdie would think when he heard that the two hundred pounds which he had been so careful to allow Harcourt to win on Monday night in the poker game had been just as carefully taken off him by Bellamy.
Fenella would tell Ferdie all about her visit to Har-court's flat, her search for the propaganda documents and the fact that Bellamy was not yet through with Harcourt, that she was taking him to the Malayan Club that night to be picked up by Bellamy who had still more business with him.
Ferdie would be doing some very heavy thinking, Bellamy thought.
At a quarter to seven Bellamy put on his fur-lined overcoat and black soft hat and walked round to the Berkeley. It was a bitterly cold night. The streets were pitch black, lit only by the occasional torches of pedestrians and the dim lights of vehicles; a morbid night, Bellamy thought.
Vanning was sitting in the corner of the Buttery. At first glance he looked very much as usual. It was only when Bellamy approached the table that he saw the deep fines in Vanning's face and the tired strain of his eyes. Philip was pretty badly hit, thought Bellamy. He wondered how he would take the next shock.
Vanning said: "Hello, Nicky!"
His voice was as controlled as ever. Bellamy could see that the fingers of his right hand—short practical fingers—were clenched; that the knuckles showed white. Vanning was having a bad time.
Bellamy said: "I've got some pretty serious things to talk to you about, Philip, and I might as well tell you that I don't know another man to whom I could talk as straight as I'm going to talk to you. You said you can take it. Well, by God, old boy, you've got to take it! It's not going to be so good."
Vanning grinned. He said:
"I told you over the telephone, nothing could affect me very much now. I've got to a state of mind when all I want to do is to get on with my job and try and forget everything."
Bellamy nodded.
"I bet you have, Philip."
He lit a cigarette. Neither of them said anything until the waiter brought the drinks Bellamy had ordered. Then Vanning said:
"You've got an idea in your head, Nicky—about the leakages, I mean?" Bellamy nodded.
"I've got a lot of ideas, Philip," he said. "The trouble is sorting them out."
He drew a deep breath of smoke down into his lungs and exhaled slowly.
"You realise, Philip," he continued, "that this leakage business is a pretty tough proposition. I should think that whatever the results of our investigations may be the Government would want 'em kept quiet. It wouldn't do any good for the public to know too much about this thing, would it?"
Vanning nodded.
"That's true enough," he said. "But that's a point that needn't concern us at the moment. The thing is to find out who is responsible."
Bellamy said: "I'm going to talk straight to you, Philip. I'm going to start with the night of Carola's party. You remember you told me that Freda was going there, that Harcourt was going in for a cocktail and that he'd take her round. You know that Freda hadn't got a cold. If she had she'd have told you."
Vanning said: "I don't see what..." Bellamy put up his hand.
"I know you don't, Philip," he said. "You've just got to listen. The point is," he went on, "that Harcourt didn't take Freda to the party. He took Iris Berington instead. Freda stayed at home. Harcourt left the party before I did. He left with Vanessa. I left by myself soon after eleven o'clock, but just before I was leaving Freda came through on the telephone. She sounded fearfully strange. She asked me to tell Carola that she hadn't been to the party because she had a cold, and she asked me if I would go round and see her at once—that it was urgent. She asked me to go in by the side entrance. She said that she'd leave the door leading into your study on the latch. Naturally I was surprised. I was a little bit tight, but I had sense enough to know that it wasn't like Freda to talk like that."
Vanning was looking at Bellamy. His eyes were wide with astonishment.
"I took a cab and I went round there," said Bellamy. "I went into the flat, walked through your study into the sitting-room. I couldn't see a sign of Freda. I went into the passage and called her name. Nothing happened. Then I knocked on the bedroom door which was ajar and put my head round. I saw her lying on the bed. She was dead then, Philip. You can imagine how I felt.
"The point was," Bellamy went on, "that there was a cigarette end still burning in the ash-tray on the table. That cigarette was an État Maroc—the brand that Har-court smokes. Quite obviously he'd just been there, and it is my considered opinion that he was actually in the flat at that moment."
"My God!" said Vanning.
Bellamy, drawing easily on his cigarette, congratulated lumself on being able to tell lies with such easy fluency.
"I believe," he went on, "that he arrived in the flat almost immediately after Freda had telephoned me. Of course he didn't know that I was on my way round, and she didn't tell him, because she was frightened. She was probably glad that I was on my way round. Harcourt killed her some little time before I arrived and probably whilst I was in the bedroom, he was in the little sitting-room opposite, and sneaked out while I was getting over the shock."
Vanning said nothing. He looked straight at the table in front of him. Bellamy continued in an even voice:
"I've discovered several interesting things. They are these: That when Harcourt went to have a cocktail with Freda earlier in the evening, he went there expecting to get some money from her. He believed that she would give him money because, Philip—and I want you to get hold of yourself now—he'd been getting money from her for some time. I know that she refused to give it to him. I know that because he told Iris Berington so. She has also told me that Harcourt was furious with Freda, and she believes that when he left Carola's party he went straight back to the flat, had a quarrel with Freda, lost his temper and killed her."
"That theory is supported by the fact that Harcourt has no alibi for that tune ... he says he was walking about the streets in the black-out. I ask you! Imagine Harcourt walking about in the rain."
Vanning said: "My God! This is awful. But it's ridiculous. It's..."
Bellamy interrupted.
"The worst has got to come, Philip," he said. "You might as well know it." He stubbed out his cigarette end in the ash-tray. "You see, Philip," he said, "we men are such fearful egoists. We seldom know what's going on under our noses. You know how fearfully keen you've been on the 'C' Bureau. You've worked like a nigger—twelve and fifteen hours a day. You possibly hadn't realised that in the process you'd been neglecting Freda."
Vanning said: "What the devil do you mean, Nicky?"
Bellamy said grimly: "Philip, Freda was Harcourt's mistress. Vanessa suspected it some time ago. She made it her business to find out. She' told me this afternoon that she knew it for a fact. There's no doubt about it. She'd probably got tired of him. Possibly she'd found out that he was getting around with Iris Berington. That, I imagine, was the cause of all the trouble."
Vanning's shoulders drooped. He said:
"My God, Nicky! This is too terrible. I can't believe it."
Bellamy said: "Philip, I'm afraid there's even worse to come."
Vanning began to laugh harshly.
"Impossible!" he said. "You're telling me that there's something worse than what you've already told me. Don't be funny."
Bellamy said: "Listen, Philip. I take it that you're not a very rich man, and I take it that Freda's allowance, whilst being adequate, was not large."
Vanning nodded.
"The question I've been asking myself," said Bellamy, "was how it was that Harcourt got so much money. And he must have had a lot. That Berington woman is a gold-digger of the worst description. A man would have to have plenty of money to get around with Iris Berington."
Vanning said: "What are you getting at, Nicky? And," he went on, "let me tell you something: I don't believe this business about Freda giving Harcourt money. She hasn't had more money than usual. How could she? And where would she get the sort of money from that Harcourt would want to go splashing about London?"
"Precisely," said Bellamy. "Now think, Philip. Where would Harcourt and Freda get quite a lot of money. Think, Philip."
Vanning's fist clenched. Then his fingers extended and he gripped the arm of the chair.
"Oh, my God!" he said. "You don't mean...?"
"I do mean," said Bellamy. "I mean there's the story of your propaganda leakage. Freda, who knew what you were doing—who had access to your papers when you were working at the flat—had been giving the stuff to Harcourt, and Harcourt had been selling it. Can't you see the set-up? Can't you see how it all fits in. The jigsaw puzzle isn't so difficult, Philip, when you get some of the pieces put together."
Bellamy lit another cigarette.
"The whole thing's pretty simple when you look at it from that point of view," he said. Vanning raised his head.
"Nicky," he said, "this is a fearful business. But, by God, I believe you're right. Now I come to think...
"Quite," said Bellamy. "It is only when one comes to think that one remembers the little incidents that one had noticed and that seemed so innocent."
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Now listen, Philip," he went on. "You've got your job to do, and I've got mine. You gave me this investigation to do and for once in my life I'm going to see something through. You and I are both up against Harcourt, but we don't want to think in terms of being tough with him—that would be easy. We've got to be clever."
Vanning said: "Why?"
"The reason is obvious," said Bellamy. "You can take it from me that Harcourt is going to swing for Freda. Well, that's all right. When they hang him he'll pay that portion of his bill. But there is something we've still to discover. We've got to find out where he was selling that propaganda. I don't think that should be difficult."
Vanning said: "I want a drink."
Bellamy stopped talking until the waiter had brought fresh drinks. Vanning gulped the double whisky and soda down.
"All right, Nicky," he said. "You go ahead. What's your idea?"
Bellamy said: "This is my idea: I think if we put the screw on Harcourt we can make him talk. I think he's in a fit condition to talk. He's scared, depressed and broke. He hasn't a bean."
Vanning said: "So he's broke too ... is he? I'm damned glad. I hope he suffers hell's torments."
Bellamy nodded.
"I understand just how you feel, Philip," he said. "And I sympathise. I believe that if Harcourt had any money he'd have got out before now. I didn't want him to get out. So I fixed things."
Vanning raised his eyebrows.
"Harcourt won a couple of hundred pounds on Monday night," said Bellamy. "He won the money in a poker game at Ferdie Mott's place. He knew by that time that Iris Berington would be pretty well through with him, and I thought that if he had the two hundred in his pocket he'd clear out. So I got him into a little game of chemie and arranged that the shoe was rigged on him practically every time he called against the bank. He lost the lot. He's got nothing but the remains of twenty pounds I lent him."
Vanning looked at Bellamy. He smiled a little. He said:
"You're coming on, Nicky. It looks as if you've been putting your heart into this job."
"You bet I have," said Bellamy. "Between you and me and the door-post I haven't given up all hopes of getting Carola to give me another break. I've got an idea in my head that she's still got a soft spot for me. Anyhow, I'm going to try. And I'm going to start in by getting Harcourt where I want him."
"Good luck to you, Nicky," said Vanning. "But you haven't told me yet what your idea was."
"It's quite simple," said Bellamy. "My idea is to have a showdown with Harcourt. I'm going to suggest that we have that to-night. I don't see why we should waste any time about it. In any event I propose to go down to Scotland Yard to-morrow and tell them the whole story about what happened on Monday night. I told them a cock and bull story in the first place and then another which was only a half-truth. To-morrow I shall give them the whole business from A to Z."
"But I think we can fix Harcourt to-night. I think he's in the right frame of mind to talk. After all the man's got a murder on his mind as well as knowing that he's guilty of being a damned traitor in forcing poor old Freda to help him in stealing that propaganda stuff."
"I've arranged that he shall be at the Malayan Club—that's a place not far from here—at nine o'clock to-night. I expect he'll have had a few drinks by the time I pick him up. He'll be nice and mellow. I propose to bring him round to your place about ten o'clock, Philip, and then we'll both give him the works. We'll tell him just what we think and just what we know."
Vanning said: "Yes... that sounds a good idea, Nicky."
"You know Harcourt," Bellamy went on. "When he's in a corner he starts off by lying, and the more he lies the deeper in he'll get. I'll bet you anything you like that we shall be able to fill in all the blanks from the story he puts up. And he won't have very much time to think anything out. He'll have to make it up on the spot and I don't think he'll be very successful."
"Then .. . when he's said his piece, we'll tell him what we know. You see the whole point is that if we can get a confession from him about Freda, and the police get him on that, there need be no publicity at all about the propaganda business. If he gets hanged on the murder charge there's no need for anyone to worry about the other thing, except of course that we shall have to find out from him where he's been selling the stuff, and just how he's been getting it abroad, maybe he's working with someone in this country who's taking it abroad via Holland or Belgium."
Vanning nodded.
"I think your idea's all right, Nicky," he said. "But there's just one thing I want done. I'm all for having a showdown with Harcourt, and I don't see why we can't do it to-night. That's as good as any time. But there's something I want..."
He hesitated for a moment. Bellamy said:
"Go on, Philip...."
Vanning said, passing his hand across his forehead: "It's about Freda. I want to talk to Harcourt about Freda. I want to know just where I failed her and just how he was able to get a first-class woman like she was to fall for a little rotter like him. I'll never be satisfied until I know that. You understand, don't you, Nicky?"
Bellamy said: "Of course, Philip. Of course I understand. What do you want to do?"
"You get him at ten o'clock as you suggested," said Vanning wearily, "and bring him round to the flat. Then you clear off and leave him with me for an hour. Ket me talk to him. I shan't set about him or anything. I've got beyond hating him. And I shan't say anything about the propaganda business. I'll leave that until you come back."
"That's all right," said Bellamy. "Let's do it like that."
"You come back at eleven o'clock," said Vanning. "By that time I shall have got at the truth about Freda. I shall know what I want to know. Then we can put the screw on him and get the information we want about the leakages."
Bellamy finished his drink.
"Right, Philip." he said. "We'll do it like that. I'll bring him along at ten or thereabouts." Vanning got up.
"You've done pretty well, Nicky," he said. "I was right to put you on to this job. I knew you could make good if you wanted to. Well ... I'll see you later. So long, Nicky...."
He went out slowly.
Bellamy looked after him and sighed. Then he ordered a whisky and soda.
OUTSIDE the Berkeley, Vanning hesitated for a moment. He was bewildered. He began to walk down Piccadilly. He picked up the first taxi that passed and told the man to drive him to his flat.
Inside the cab he sat, his head bowed, his hands clasped in front of him, concentrating... trying to get his brain to work.
He got out of the cab at the Hyde Apartments, took the lift up to his flat. He went into the sitting-room.
Harbell, the Superintendent of the Special Branch, was standing in front of the fire, smoking a pipe. He was a tall thin man with iron grey hair. He wore horn-rimmed spectacles. He looked like anything else but the Superintendent of the Special Branch. He smiled sympathetically at Vanning.
"Well... how did you get on?" he asked.
Vanning took off his overcoat. He looked very tired. He threw the overcoat on a chair and went across to the sideboard. He mixed two whiskies and sodas and carried them back to the fire. He gave one glass to Harbell, then sat down with a sigh of weariness.
Harbell sipped his whisky and soda. He put the glass on the mantelpiece behind him. He said:
"Well, what did our crooked friend have to say? I'll bet it was good."
Vanning got up. He began to walk about the room.
"Was it good!" he said. "My God! Was it good!"
He stopped walking and faced the superintendent.
"I tell you, Harbell," he said, "I misjudged Bellamy. I didn't think he was clever. Well, I apologise. He's so clever it almost amounts to genius. But I'll tell you one thing that's going to surprise you...."
Harbell said: "Nothing can surprise me."
"This will," said Vanning grimly. "I don't believe Bellamy killed Freda."
Harbell said: "What?"
"Listen to this," said Vanning. "A certain portion of Bellamy's story this evening was the truth. It had to be the truth because he says he's got confirmatory evidence, and he's not fool enough to say that unless he can produce the evidence."
Harbell nodded. He picked up his glass again.
"I see," he said. "And who does he suggest did kill Mrs. Vanning?"
"Bellamy says Harcourt March did it. And personally I'm inclined to believe it's true. And I'm not jumping to conclusions easily. I believed from the first that as regards the propaganda leakages Bellamy would try to throw unmerited suspicion on either Ferdinand Mott or Harcourt March. I believed he would do that because it would seem to him the easiest way out of a difficult situation."
Harbell nodded.
"I thought that too," he said.
"Don't you see, Harbell... don't you see what he's trying to do?" Vanning went on. "He knows he's got a first-class case of murder against March. He says he can—to all intents and purposes—prove that March killed my poor Freda. So you see what his scheme is going to be...?"
Harbell grinned.
"It's obvious," he said. "He's going to tell us that March was responsible for stealing the propaganda. He's going to link up the two crimes. And he thinks that circumstances are one hundred per cent for him. Mrs. Vanning can tell us nothing, and as for March... well... if Bellamy can hang the murder on to March who's going to believe anything that March says? Not bad reasoning. Not that it'll get him anywhere."
"Right," said Vanning. He began to walk about the room again. "I've had some pretty awful shocks to-day," he said, "and this isn't easy to talk about. But you've got to know the truth, Harbell."
"March's wife, Vanessa—she's an awfully good sort—has told Bellamy to-day that there was something on between that swine March and Freda. She says that he was Freda's lover. Well, looking back, I can see that March must have had some attraction for Freda. She was always trying to sell that damned fellow to me, trying to get me to take him back, to give him another chance. And he was always round at the flat." He shrugged his shoulders despairingly.
"You know how things are, Harbell... Ever since this damned war started—and for some time before it—I've been rather neglecting Freda. My whole time has been taken up by my work, but of course I never suspected anything like that. Well, apparently Vanessa March did. She made her own enquiries. She discovered it was true and she told Bellamy it was true."
"Well... he's also discovered—because Iris Berington, this other woman of March's, has told him—that March expected to get money from my wife on the evening of the Everard party. She refused to give it to him. He was furious with her." Harbell nodded.
"I'm beginning to understand," he said.
"Can't you see how it all fits in?" said Vanning. "Freda and March had this quarrel, so she didn't go to the party. She had to think of some excuse for not going, so when she rang up Bellamy just before he left Miss Everard's place she told him to tell Carola Everard that she'd got a cold. But that wasn't the main reason why she rang Bellamy. She told him she wanted to see him urgently, and now you can guess why."
"Poor Freda was frightened sick. She had an idea that March was coming back. She didn't want to be alone. She wanted to get somebody round here, and it seemed to her that the best person would be Bellamy. The devil of it was that he got there too late. He told me to-night that when he arrived he found Freda dead; that one of March's cigarettes was still smoking in the ash-tray. Bellamy believes that at that time March was actually in the flat hiding in one of the other rooms, but that he slipped out."
"If Bellamy can prove his theories it looks as if he might be right about March. Anyway I can't see Bellamy killing anybody. He's not the type. But March is."
Harbell said: "Does Bellamy know what March says he was doing during the important time?"
"That's the whole point," Vanning answered. "March has got no alibi. He says he was walking about in the black-out. It is obviously damned nonsense."
Harbell said: "Well, there's the motive that Meynell was looking for." He grinned again. "Meynell will be pretty annoyed when he knows I have more or less been making use of him," he said. "It's a bit tough for a police officer in charge of a murder case to have the Special Branch pulling strings behind his back. But that's how it's got to be, and Meynell's going to get a surprise. He thinks Bellamy's the murderer."
He began to refill his pipe.
"It's pretty awful for you, I must say, Vanning," he said. "But there's the motive. If what Bellamy and Mrs. March say is true, it looks like the old, old story."
Vanning said miserably: "It's pretty grim, but I'm afraid it does."
"And our friend Bellamy is taking every advantage of the fact," Harbell went on.
Vanning grinned cynically.
"The situation was absolutely made for him," he said. "He had the effrontery to suggest to me this evening that March had been getting the propaganda information from Freda, that she would know the propaganda schemes I was working on, that she'd told March. By God, he's clever."
Harbell said: "He certainly is. But don't let that worry you. I know Bellamy is the man we're looking for over that propaganda business."
Vanning walked over to the sideboard and helped himself to a cigarette.
"I still don't understand what he's getting at," he said. "Mind you, Harbell, he's got the nerve of the devil. He thinks he's got such a cut and dried case against March that he suggested to me that he brought March round to see me to-night, that we had a showdown."
Harbell raised his eyebrows.
"He has got a nerve, hasn't he?" He paused for a moment. Then he said quietly: "Don't get fearfully upset at what I'm going to say, Vanning, but we have got our job to do. I've told you that I know Bellamy was the man who was selling that propaganda, but I'm not quite certain where he got it from...."
Vanning looked at him—his mouth open in amazement.
"Good God, Harbell!" he said. "You don't think..." Harbell shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't think anything," he said. "I want facts. Don't you see. Vanning ... if Mrs. Vanning was the person who had given the propaganda information to Bellamy, the obvious thing for him to do, knowing that March was her lover, was to say she'd given it to March. Who'd believe March anyway?" Vanning nodded miserably.
"I don't know what to think," he said. "Pretty soon I shan't be able to think at all."
Harbell said sympathetically: "Don't worry. Just let's do this thing the way Bellamy wants it done. I told Sir Eustace that if we give Bellamy enough rope he'll hang himself. Well, let's go on paying out the rope. Have this showdown that he's so keen about. After all," Harbell went on with a cynical smile, "it's going to be very interesting for you to hear what March has to say, and Bellamy will have to be damned clever to keep his end up."
Vanning said: "You're right. But he is damned clever."
Harbell smiled.
"Don't worry, Vanning." he said. "I've got the trump card up my sleeve and when the time comes I'll play it." He looked at his wrist-watch. "I must be getting along," he said. "I wish I could be present at your interview with Bellamy and March to-night. It ought to be very interesting. But in any event you'll let me know what happens in due course."
"Incidentally," the superintendent went on, "I'll have a word with Meynell in the morning. I'll give him all the new angles and I'll tell him he'd better lay off for a few days. We don't want him messing this thing up now. We can always get March when we want him."
He went over to Vanning—held out his hand.
"Don't take things too much to heart," he said. "I don't think a man's ever been in a tougher situation than the one you're in, but time changes all things, you know. There's always to-morrow."
They shook hands. Vanning said:
"I wish I could think that, but it seems to me that all the to-morrows are going to be tinged with the memories of the yesterdays—the days that are gone; that I'm going to spend the rest of my life cursing myself for not looking after Freda better."
He sighed. Then he squared his shoulders.
"I'll let you know what happens to-night, Harbell," he said. "Bellamy can't go on lying and twisting and scheming for ever."
"You bet he can't," said the superintendent. "He's had lots of rope and it's beginning to tighten. Good-bye, Vanning."
He went out.
BELLAMY stood in front of the automatic roulette machine in Sydney's bar in Conduit Street. He put a shilling in the slot and pulled the handle. He lost.
"Believe it or not, Mr. Bellamy," said Sydney, mixing a whisky and soda. "Life's like one of them bleedin' machines. You just can't win. That's what I always say."
Bellamy asked: "Sydney, why do you always preface every remark you make with the words 'Believe it or not'?"
"Well..." said Sydney. "It's obvious, Mr. Bellamy. Because you can."
"What the devil do you mean," said Bellamy..."'because I can'?"
"Believe it or not..." said Sydney seriously.
Bellamy grinned.
"I see," he said. "I hadn't realised your reason was so good. And why is life like one of these machines, Sydney?"
"Well, Mr. Bellamy," said the bar-tender. "What I always say is, believe it or not, it's obvious. You play the red and the black comes up. You play the black and the red comes up. You never know where you bloody well are, do you?"
"Very seldom," said Bellamy.
"Life is like a pack of cards," said Sydney, polishing the chromium bar. "Every time you think you've got the ace you find you 'aven't."
He rested his head on one hand and gazed mournfully at Bellamy.
"I've 'ad my tragedies, Mr. Bellamy," he went on. "Last year I was after a bit of skirt who used to work round 'ere modellin' for a dress firm. If I was a blinkin' poet I could tell you about 'er figure. That girl 'ad more figure in the right place than you could think of. She used to model for outsizes, but that don't mean to say she 'adn't got shape. What I mean is, believe it or not, she 'ad quality an' quantity too, an' being a bit thin myself it would 'ave meant a lot to me."
"It was about a year ago," he continued, "an' I done everything I could to try an' get that girl. I tried partin' my 'air in different ways an everything. Believe it or not I absolutely worked tryin' to get that girl."
"And did you?" asked Bellamy.
"No," said Sydney, "I never did. I was doin' a bit of 'orse racin' at the time and I couldn't do wrong. Every 'onse I backed arrived like clockwork. I 'ad the dough all right but I couldn't get the girl."
"So one night I went to a spieler around 'ere and tried my 'and at faro. I lost every nickel I 'ad. So I thought well... unlucky in cards lucky in love, I thought, an' I got my 'at an' I dashed round to 'er place like a blood-'ound. I was desperate. I thought now or never. I'm goin' to sweep 'er off 'er feet.
"I rung the door bell and the landlady opened the door. I pushed past 'er an' rushed up to Helena's bed sittin'-room, an' I didn't arf win a basin full I can tell you...."
"She still didn't like you, eh, Sydney?" asked Bellamy.
Sydney shook his head.
"It wasn't that so much," he said. "But she was in bed with a feller in the 'Orse Guards. He didn't arf give me a pastin' too, I can tell you ... It just shows you, don't it?"
Bellamy put a shilling in the machine. He backed the red. He pulled the handle. Red came up and the winnings jingled down into the cup.
Sydney said: "There you are... believe it or not... what did I tell you...?"
BELLAMY went into the Malayan Club at a quarter past nine. He was wearing a dinner jacket. He looked immaculate and happy.
Fenella Roque was sitting at the bar drinking a double Martini with a cherry in it. Over in the corner Harcourt March, just a little unsteady on his legs, was playing one of the fruit machines.
Bellamy hung up his hat on a peg and went over to the bar. Fenella turned her head and flashed a smile at him.
"I'd like to buy you a drink, Nicky," she said.
He smiled at her. She thought that there was something very pleasant about Bellamy... something friendly. She realised that this appearance of his was merely superficial, that underneath he was dangerous, or tough, or very clever. She was not quite certain which. But she liked talking to him and being friends with him. She was an experimentalist where men were concerned and she thought that being friendly with Bellamy was rather like being matey with a handsome tiger-cub. You liked to look at it and play with it, and all the time there was the delightful, risky feeling that suddenly it might turn on you and tear at you with sharp claws or bite with unreasonable teeth.
Bellamy said to her: "Thanks, Fenella, I'd like a Martini—a large Martini."
She ordered the drink. She said softly:
"Well ... I kept my bargain, Nicky. There he is, waiting for you, in the corner. He doesn't know he's waiting for you. He thinks he's going to take me on to the Priory. You'll have to disabuse him."
"Thank you, my dear," said Bellamy. "I'll disabuse him when the time comes."
He began to drink his cocktail. Fenella said, rather breathlessly, as if she were a little frightened:
"What are you doing to that poor devil, Nicky? He's in a deuce of a state. He's frightened of his own shadow. You've put the fear of God into him about something. He's such a poor thing, you know...."
Bellamy grinned.
"Don't tell me you're getting motherly, Fenella," he said.
"I'm not," said Fenella sharply. "Being motherly isn't quite my métier—if you get me. But I think it's a damned shame to kid that poor devil that he's suspected of something...."
He put his hand on her arm. Fenella turned sharply and looked at him. His eyes were as cold as ice. She shuddered. She was suddenly afraid.
Bellamy said quietly: "Fenella dear ... so many women have ruined a promising career by being curious or by jumping to conclusions or by trying to protect people like Harcourt from the natural results of their own actions. You take a tip from me, my dear, and mind your own business... it's safer...."
Fenella shrugged her shoulders. She said with a little smile:
"Perhaps you're right, Nicky. Come back all I said."
She finished her drink. Bellamy ordered two more Martinis. He smiled at her amiably.
"That's right, Fenella." he said. "Be the little wise woman." He paused to light a cigarette. "And for God's sake don t try to serve two masters. It's a fatal habit."
Fenella looked at him oddly.
"What do you mean by that one, Nicky?" she asked. "You work for Ferdie Mott," said Bellamy. "You get around. You get acquainted with odd people who want to gamble, you take them along to Mott's Club and you draw your commission. Well. .. that's all right . .. That's your business, and if you like it—or if you can't find anything else to do—it's more or less O.K."
He drew a deep breath of cigarette smoke and exhaled slowly.
"But once you begin to be sympathetic with birds like Harcourt you 11 find yourself supping," Bellamy went on, in his even voice. "Sympathy's a bad thing when it's expended on the wrong type. Its liable to lead you into all sorts of queer situations. Give it up, Fenella."
She said: "I think you're right. I'll give it up."
"Oh no, you won't," Bellamy said, still smiling. "You'll just go on being you. Good-night, my dear."
He turned away and went to the other end of the bar. He said to Blondie:
"Listen, Blondie. Give me a whisky and soda and a glass of soda water with a little angostura in it. I'll take those two drinks now. Then, while I'm talking to Mr. March you can make me up a stiff mixture in a flat quarter-whisky bottle. I want to take it away with me.... One third whisky, one third brandy and one third gin...."
Blondie said.: "Oh, my God . .. what a mixture I Are you trying to take the fining off your stomach."
She put the two drinks he had ordered first on the bar. She said:
"I'll make the other up. Whoever's going to drink it has my sympathy."
Bellamy turned away, carrying the two glasses in his hand. As he passed Fenella he caught a whiff of the perfume she was wearing. He looked over the bar at her reflection in the mirror. Her face was white and set.
He went over to the corner of the room where March was still fiddling with the fruit machine. He said to him:
"Here's some soda and angostura, Harcourt. Sit down, drink it and listen to me."
March said angrily: "Who the hell are you talking to, Nicky? I'd like you to understand..."
Bellamy said: "Sit down and shut up. If you keep your mouth shut and your ears open I may be able to prevent you swinging on the end of a rope in about two months' time. I said may. Your present situation doesn't allow for any cheap theatricals, Harcourt."
March sat down at the table. Bellamy saw that his hands were trembling. He put the soda and angostura in front of March.
"Drink it," he said. "All of it... And listen to me."
March picked up the glass and gulped the drink down.
Bellamy stubbed out his cigarette end. He took a fresh cigarette and lit it. He drank the whisky and soda and set the glass down quietly on the table. Then he said:
"If you listen carefully to me, and if you do what I tell you to do, I'm going to guarantee that you'll be all right. So the thing for you to do is not to talk or interrupt with funny ideas of your own because there's very little you can have to say to me that I can't guess for myself. Understand, Harcourt?"
March said: "I understand. I'm not making any promises. I don't trust you, Bellamy. But I'm listening."
"That's all right," said Bellamy. "Whether you trust me or not is a matter of complete indifference to me. But you'll do what I tell you to do for two reasons. Here they are: If you don't do what I say then as sure as shooting you're going to swing for killing Freda Vanning. That's the first reason. The second reason is that if you do what I tell you to I'm going to give you a hundred pounds to-morrow evening. I should think you could do with a hundred—especially as your source of income has been cut off...."
March said: "What the hell do you know about my source of income?"
Bellamy grinned sardonically.
"Everything," he said quietly. "So much that we don't even have to discuss it. Now will you stay quiet?"
"All right," said March. "I'm listening. It looks as if I've got to. Also I need that hundred pounds."
"I bet you do," said Bellamy. "And when you've earned it take a tip from me, Harcourt. Give yourself a little holiday somewhere. Get down to the country and lay off the liquor. The sort of fife you've been leading doesn't suit you."
March twiddled with the glass before him.
Bellamy said: "We're going to leave here in a minute or two. We're going round to see Philip Vanning at his flat. Don't look surprised, Harcourt. I haven t even started yet....
"Scotland Yard have got everything on ice for you," Bellamy continued in his quiet voice. "They've got a cut and dried case against you. They have so much evidence—circumstantial evidence it's true; but plenty of people have hanged on circumstantial evidence—that you don't stand a dog's chance. Just stay quiet while I tell you what their case is.
"Their case is that Freda Vanning was your mistress and had been for some time. One person can definitely swear to that, and Iris Berington can confirm the evidence by the fact that you told her you were going to get money from Freda Vanning on Monday night.
"You were supposed to take Freda Vanning to Carola Everard's party on Monday. You called for her for that purpose. You and she quarrelled. She wouldn't give you any money. You took Iris Berington to the party and told her that you'd quarrelled with Freda and that she wouldn't give you any money.
"You left the party with your wife. She went off to her flat. You went off somewhere. You say you walked about in the black-out. You've got no alibi. Nobody's going to believe you. You turned up at Iris Berington's flat just after eleven-thirty looking like death. She believed that you'd been to see Freda again. She believes you killed Freda. Your own wife believes you killed Freda. And a jury will believe you killed her. So just bite on that."
March opened his mouth.
Bellamy said: "Shut up. I've told you to listen. It's your only chance."
March shrugged his shoulders. He seemed to have shrunk in size. His eyes were terrified.
"Vanning wants to see you," Bellamy went on. "He wants to see you because he's suffering from a pardonable curiosity. He wants to see you because he wants to know just how a fellow like you could get a first-rate woman like Freda for a mistress. I'm going to leave you alone with him to discuss that part of the business.
"But there's a second and—from your point of view—a much more important part of this affair," Bellamy went on. "In case you don't know I'm telling you now that on three separate occasions since last September somebody has been selling the 'C' Bureau propaganda schemes to the enemy. They've got away with it too. Ferdie Mott and you and I were sacked after the first steal... some time in September last. We were sacked I suppose because any of us three might have had something to do with it. There was nothing against us but the Government weren't taking any chances.
"Ever since then they've been trying to find out who is responsible for the leakages. Well, I've an idea that now Vanning knows who was responsible. He's got the idea in his head that his wife was the person who was passing the information to someone else who was selling it. He's got an idea that that someone else was you.
"If you're a wise fellow, when you're having your talk with Vanning to-night, you're going to suggest that his ideas are right. I don't want you to begin to deny that you killed Freda or that you ever sold any propaganda. I'm not interested in your denials. And no one else will be either. You might remember that. What I am interested in is the fact I'm dealing with.
"Now listen carefully. It is my firm and considered opinion, Harcourt, that they've got enough on you to hang you for killing Freda. But if you're clever enough to suggest to Vanning that you were also responsible for selling propaganda material with which Freda supplied you, then I tell you that you're going to be as safe as houses. If you want the reason here it is:
"In the eyes of the Government the propaganda leakages are much more important than the murder of Freda Vanning. They must be. One thing is a crime against an individual. The other thing is a crime against national security. And there's a war on. You see the difference. Very well.
"Once you succeed in mixing up the two crimes you're safe. Once you succeed in establishing the fact that Freda was supplying you with the information and that you were selling it, they're only going to worry about one thing. They're going to worry about the method you used in selling the stuff. They re going to want to know who you sold it to, where the deals were carried out, how it was got into Germany.
"You realise, Harcourt, that on those fines you've got something to bargain with. They'll never hang you while you can still be of use in giving them that information. And you can do a deal with them. Such things have been done before... believe me. Once you've got the idea in their heads that you were the boyo who was selling the stuff they're going to let you go so that they can keep an eye on you. If you play your cards properly you'll get away with the whole bag of tricks. But if you don't... well, I'm sorry for you. You can say what you like; you can deny what you like but they'll hang you for the Freda Vanning job as sure as my name's Bellamy. So you can think that over."
March said nothing. He looked like a man who has been poleaxed. He sat staring straight in front of him. His fingers were trembling. His eyes were wide.
Bellamy got up and went to the bar. The blonde barmaid had made up the flat quarter whisky bottle. She handed it to Bellamy who put it in his hip pocket. He ordered two double whiskies and sodas and took them back to the table where March sat. He said:
"Drink one of these, Harcourt. It'll pull you together."
March drank the whisky. He said in a low voice: "I feel awful, Nicky. I don't know whether I'm on my head or my heels. All this seems like a sort of play or something. I keep thinking that I'll wake up every minute and find I've dreamed it."
Bellamy said: "This is the sort of nightmare that you don't dream. It's the sort of thing that really happens. That truth which is stranger than fiction. Come on... we're going to see Vanning."
Harcourt got up. He squared his shoulders. He said: "All right, Nicky. By God, I'm going to take your advice. I'm going to do what you say. After all, what the hell does it matter what I say to Vanning. I can always say something else to-morrow. I'm not on oath. Vanning's flat isn't a law court." Bellamy nodded.
"You're perfectly right, Harcourt," he said. "I think you've said a very wise thing."
March stood on his feet. He swayed a little. He said: "And I think you're the devil himself. I'm dam' sure of it."
Bellamy grinned. "You're right again," he said. "This way out, Harcourt."
He took March by the arm and piloted him towards the door.
THE cab crawled along in the black-out towards Berkeley Square. Bellamy, drawing on his cigarette, could hear March breathing heavily.
He thought cynically that Harcourt was beginning to pay his debt to society. He said suddenly:
"Fenella's a nice woman, don't you think, Harcourt?"
March shifted uneasily. He said:
"I like her. There's something about Fenella I like—something good."
The words almost fell out of his mouth. Bellamy had to concentrate to hear what he was saying.
"I'm sick of women," March went on, "sick of the whole dam' boiling of 'em. All my life I've been in trouble and it's always been a woman. I ought to try and go to some place where there aren't any, but you can't... you can't escape 'em."
"But you like Fenella?" Bellamy said softly.
"Yes," said March, "I do. I can't help liking her."
Bellamy nodded in the darkness.
"I rather fancy she's got a soft spot for you too, Harcourt," he said, "in spite of your rather mottled background. I suppose you've talked quite a lot to Fenella during the last twenty-four hours?"
March said miserably: "I've had to talk to somebody. If I hadn't I should have gone mad."
"Quite," said Bellamy. "And I bet you're not feeling too good now."
He put his hand in his hip pocket and produced the flat quarter whisky bottle filled with the mixture Blondie had prepared.
"Take a long swig at this, Harcourt," he said. "It's strong stuff but it's very good. It'll pull you together."
"Thanks," said Harcourt.
He took the bottle. Bellamy heard the gurgle as the raw mixture hit the back of Harcourt's throat.
"My God!" said Harcourt more thickly than ever. "It is strong."
Bellamy peered through the window. He estimated they were about a hundred yards from the Hyde Apartments. He took the bottle from March and put it in his overcoat pocket. Then he rapped on the front window, told the driver to pull up.
"We'll walk the rest of the way, Harcourt," he said. "The air will clear your head. You want to be nice and cool for this interview."
He grinned.
Bellamy got out of the cab, paid the driver, switched on his electric torch. Then he helped March out.
For a few steps March walked steadily, then as he breathed the night air down into his lungs, the liquor began to take effect. He reeled unsteadily. He would have fallen had not Bellamy caught him by the arm.
"Steady on, Harcourt," said Bellamy. "It's no good going on like that, you know. You've got to have your wits about you."
March said: "My God! Am I tight!"
Bellamy rang the bell at the Vanning apartment. When he took
his finger off the bell-push he was smiling amiably. His left
hand was under March's armpit holding him up.
Vanning opened the door. He looked at Bellamy and then at March.
"Come in," he said.
He stood at the door whilst Bellamy piloted March into the flat.
Bellamy said: "Well, here he is. Personally, I think he's cockeyed. I'd hoped he'd be sober."
Vanning looked at March. His face was very white—very set. His jaw was sticking out.
"What a specimen of humanity!" he said.
March said nothing. He stood there supported by Bellamy, his head wagging foolishly from side to side. Bellamy piloted him across the hallway, along the short passage into the sitting-room. He pushed March on to the settee in front of the fire. March's head fell back. He had passed out. Bellamy moved to the fireplace and stood with his back to the fire, opening his cigarette case. He was looking at March, smiling cynically. When Vanning came into the room Bellamy said:
"I don't think he's as bad as he looks, Philip. He gets drunk very quickly, but he gets over it very quickly too. I should say he'll be all right in about twenty minutes. Then you might give him a glass of soda-water. After which his brain will work—possibly!"
Vanning nodded. He looked at the recumbent figure as if it were loathsome. Bellamy, drawing on his cigarette, thought it would take a great deal more than twenty minutes and a glass of soda-water to bring March back to any semblance of intelligence. He said:
"I must be going, Philip. I'll leave this hog here with you. I'll come back after eleven. By that time you ought to be finished with him, and we can get to work on him jointly."
Vanning said: "All right."
Bellamy went out. At the door he looked over his shoulder. Vanning was standing at the head of the settee looking down at March as if he were some curious sort of animal.
Bellamy began to walk towards Berkeley Square. He picked up a
cab on the west side of the Square, drove to the Malayan Club.
There were half a dozen people in the bar, but Fenella had gone.
Bellamy walked to the far end of the bar. He ordered a Martini.
He said to the barmaid:
"So Mrs. Roque's gone?"
Blondie said pertly: "That's right. You're getting to be observant, aren't you?" She smiled at him. "I don't think she likes you as much as she used to," she added archly.
"No?" said Bellamy. "Why do you think that?"
Blondie said: "As if you don't know. Anybody could see by the way she was talking to you to-night that she was a bit upset about something. That's funny for her too because she's always smiling."
"Is she?" said Bellamy. "Oh well, we all upset people sometimes you know, Blondie. We have to. We even upset ourselves occasionally. I remember a woman once in a train..."
Blondie said: "Yes...?"
She pushed a newly-hennaed curl back into place. She said with a smile:
"I bet it was in America too."
"Why?" said Bellamy. "Why should it be in America?"
"All your best stories happen in America," said Blondie.
"You're quite right," said Bellamy. "It's a good place for things to happen. Nothing exciting ever happens in London."
"You're telling me!" she said. "But about this woman...?"
"Oh, it's nothing very much," said Bellamy. "I was on a train—the Chicago Flyer as a matter of fact. Whilst I was eating my dinner I noticed her. She was sitting at a table not far from my own in the restaurant car. She had the most amazing figure I'd ever seen in my life. It was superb. I sat there wondering just what sort of face she'd have...."
"I know," said Blondie. "It's a sort of natural curiosity."
"Correct," said Bellamy. "The natural line of thought is that if a woman has a very good figure she won't have a face to match. Anyway," he went on, "I became fearfully curious about this woman's face. After a little while she got up and walked towards the observation car at the rear end of the train."
"When I'd had my dinner," Bellamy went on, "I tried to read, but I couldn't. I couldn't concentrate on my book. I kept worrying about that woman's face."
"So you went along and had a look?" asked Blondie brightly. "Did you get a surprise?"
"Did I get a surprise?" said Bellamy. "D'you know I walked the whole length of that train to the observation platform at the back, and there she was. She was a negress ... as black as coal...."
Blondie said: "I bet you were disappointed."
"I was," said Bellamy. "I was leaning against the rail when she turned round, and I was so unutterably amazed that I fell off the train."
"Good God!" said Blondie. "What happened then?"
"Well," said Bellamy. "It was a pretty bad show. There was another train coming along and it ran over me. I died in great agony about an hour afterwards."
She said: "You are a one, aren't you. Nobody ever knows how to take you or when to believe you."
"I know," said Bellamy. "That's what I thought."
He finished his drink and went out.
IT was a quarter to eleven. Bellamy stood in the middle of his bedroom in Half Moon Street surrounded by clothes. He was folding them neatly, packing them into a large trunk. He sang quietly to himself.
Finally he finished. He pushed the filled trunk into one corner of the room. Then he looked at his watch. He walked over to the telephone and rang Carola Everard's number.
Her maid answered. Miss Everard was not in. Bellamy asked where she was. He said it was rather important. The maid replied that Miss Everard had gone to Mott's Club a quarter of an hour ago. He hung up.
He lit a cigarette, put on his overcoat and hat and went out. It was very dark in the deserted street. Bellamy switched on his torch and began to walk towards the Hyde Apartments. He amused himself by wondering exactly what had happened between Vanning and March. He thought that the answer was probably nothing.
Ten minutes later he rang the bell at Vanning's flat. Vanning opened the door. He stood, just inside the hallway, looking at Bellamy. He was frowning.
Bellamy said: "Well, Philip, I hope you found out what you wanted to find out."
He stepped into the hall. He was about to take off his overcoat when Vanning said:
"I shouldn't bother to take that off, Nicky. Not unless you want to stay and talk to me. He's quite useless to us. He's dead drunk. He's been sleeping like a pig ever since you brought him here."
Bellamy heaved a sigh of relief.
"Well, I'm glad he's still alive," he said with a wry grin. "I thought it was on the cards that you'd probably strangle him if he said anything to annoy you in the slightest degree. I think you've marvellous self-control, Philip."
Vanning led the way into the drawing-room. He said: "I haven't. I don't have to have self-control with March. I'm looking forward to the morning when they hang him."
"So am I," said Bellamy.
He opened his case and took out a cigarette. March was lying in the corner of the settee where Bellamy had left him. His breathing was almost stertorous. He was sleeping heavily.
Bellamy said: "Philip, can I have some more money? I'm a bit short."
Vanning nodded.
"You can have fifty, Nicky," he said.
Bellamy smiled at him. "Make it a hundred, Philip," he said. "If you don't mind. You said I could have all the money I wanted and I think you'll agree that I've earned it. Besides I haven't finished my job yet."
Vanning went out of the room. He came back after a minute or two with ten ten-pound notes. He handed them to Bellamy.
"I suppose you mean that you haven't got that confession out of that thing yet," he said, indicating the recumbent figure on the settee. "D'you think you'll get it?"
Bellamy said: "I'll get it all right. I know just how I'm going to get it."
"You're pretty sure of yourself, aren't you, Nicky?" Vanning said. "May I ask how you propose to get this confession—about the propaganda I mean."
Bellamy said: "That's easy. Directly this bird is in a fit condition to talk, I'm going to point out to him just how he hasn't got a dog's chance of escaping the gallows—except one way...."
Vanning raised his eyebrows.
"Is there any way that he can escape the gallows, Nicky?" he asked.
Bellamy shrugged his shoulders.
"Between you and me I think he's got a sporting chance," he said. "Suppose he doesn't play ball and refuses to admit that he killed Freda. After all there's a certain of amount of circumstantial evidence against him. But"—he smiled grimly at Vanning—"there's a certain amount of circumstantial evidence against me too. I came round here to see Freda, didn't I? And Freda was alive soon after eleven o'clock because she telephoned me. So she must have been. Well... she was discovered strangled soon after eleven-thirty. And I'd been here in the meantime. If March has a good lawyer he can easily play the old game of getting his client out of a bad jam merely by throwing lots of suspicion on somebody else—the somebody else being me. Having regard to all things—and unless a jury is going to believe what I told 'em about that cigarette of March's still being alight when I arrived—they might say 'not guilty' you know..."
Vanning thought for a moment. Then he said:
"You're an extraordinary fellow, aren't you, Nicky? When you talk to me and try to prove that March killed Freda you put the thing so neatly, so aptly that I know that what you're saying is true. And when you talk to me on the lines that March might not have done it I find myself thinking as a juryman at the trial would think. I find myself being not quite certain."
Bellamy grinned.
"March did it all right," he said. "But the point is if he confesses to have been in on the propaganda stealing, then they'll want to know a lot of things from him. They'll want a lot of information, won't they? I should think he could give them quite a run for their money. He might even get away with it too... you never know."
Vanning said: "I see... But in any event you think you can make him confess."
"Yes," said Bellamy. "I'm going to take him home. I'm going to stay with him until he's sober. When he comes out of this jag he'll be in just the right frame of mind for me to work on him, and I'm backing myself to get both confessions. One about Freda, and the other about the propaganda. After which I'm going to ask you to let me have another two hundred and fifty and I'm going to take myself for a nice quiet holiday far from the madding crowd."
Vanning nodded.
"It sounds all right," he said. "And you think that you'll be able to get these confessions some time tonight?"
"Definitely," answered Bellamy. "Armed with those I'm going to toddle along to see my friend, Detective-Inspector Meynell, who at the present moment, is I am sure quite certain that I'm a murderer, and give him the truth about the situation. I expect he'll be a little annoyed with me but then people have been annoyed with me before."
"You've got a first-class nerve, Nicky," said Vanning. "I must say that for you. You don't frighten easily."
"What's the good of being frightened?" asked Bellamy. He went over to the settee and began to shake March, who stirred uneasily. "I've never known anyone get anywhere by being frightened," he went on. "Being scared is a non-productive process... definitely."
March opened his eyes. He blinked uncertainly at Vanning, looked uneasily about the room.
"There's a good specimen of a frightened man," said Bellamy. "He's frightened sick. He's afraid of his own shadow. Most of that's liquor of course. But if he had his wits about him and his nerve he could still give us all a run for our money."
He bent down, put his arm round March's shoulders, yanked him to his feet. March stood there stupidly.
"Be a good fellow and telephone down to the porter for a cab, Philip," Bellamy asked. "I'll take our boy friend back home, stick his head under some cold water and get to work on him."
Vanning moved towards the telephone.
"I should think you'll have an excellent opportunity for looking round his flat," he said. "You might find something interesting."
"That's already been done," said Bellamy. "I thought of that. But nothing came of it."
Vanning said: "No... he'd be too cunning for that. Anything he had to hide would be well hidden."
He spoke to the hall porter, ordered a cab.
"Don't be too tough with him, Nicky," he said as he hung up the receiver. "You know the law about extracting confessions by force...."
Bellamy laughed.
"Yes..." he said. "But I have my own methods. One of these days I'm going to write a book for beginners. I'm going to call it 'Third Degree Made Easy'."
He put his arm about March, led him towards the door.
BELLAMY got March out of the cab in Conduit Street and propped him up against the wall. He was muttering unintelligibly.
Bellamy paid off the cab, took March's key ring out of his pocket and opened his front door. Having done this he pulled March towards him, and using the fireman's lift carried him up the stairs. The indicator in the hallway told him that March's flat was on the second floor.
He opened the door with the same key, found a switch, investigated until he found the bedroom and dropped March on the bed. Then he went downstairs and shut the front door.
He returned to the flat, closed the door and went into the bedroom. He stood looking at March for a moment. He was thinking about Vanning's remark that March would be too cunning to hide anything in the flat. That anything he had to hide would be well hidden.
He leaned over March, untied his tie, took off his collar and opened the neck of his shirt. He laid March out flat on the bed and began to search him systematically. He went through all the pockets in the recumbent man's clothes and found nothing but the usual things one finds in pockets.
Then he looked inside the waistcoat. In the lining was a "secret pocket" of the sort that many tailors cut in a waistcoat. Bellamy put his fingers inside. They encountered a folded piece of paper. He pulled it out, took it under the electric light.
He unfolded the paper. Inside was a Yale key. Bellamy began to smile. His smile was one of supreme happiness.
The piece of paper was of the grey shade that Freda always used. Quite obviously it had been torn from her writing pad. It was identical with the piece of notepaper on which she had written the unfinished note to Bellamy, the note written on the writing pad he had found by the side of her bed.
There was a typewritten message on the sheet of paper. It was dated ten days previously from Flat 142, Jordayne Court, St. John's Wood, N.W.8. It said:
You dear silly old Harcourt,
You left this here last night. You'd leave your head behind you if it wasn't screwed on.
F.
Bellamy folded the piece of notepaper and put it, with the
key, in his jacket pocket. He sat down on a chair looking at
March who was sleeping heavily.
Bellamy got up and made a tour of the flat. It was small but comfortably furnished. It was untidy and rather dusty. It was, he thought, the sort of place that Harcourt would five in.
He went into the kitchen. In the cupboard he found a package of salt and a tin of mustard. He took a glass from the dresser, filled it three-quarters full with water from the tap, added the salt and mustard.
He looked round and found a tin wash-basin. Then he took the emetic and the basin back to the bedroom and dealt with the drunken sleeper.
Five minutes later he was smoking a cigarette, looking at March who, breathing more easily, had gone to sleep again.
Life was rather good, Bellamy thought. It twisted and turned in the most extraordinary manner, but it was still good. More—it was adventurous. Colourful things happened and one got away with a great deal if one kept one's nerve and was quite consistent.
Too many people gave up too easily, he thought, blowing a smoke ring. People like March who had neither the nerve not the ability to plan a job and see it through to the bitter end, who were deflected by fear, or too much liquor....
He began to think about Carola, who had given him the air because he was drinking too much—he smiled, almost sweetly, at this idea—and Fenella Roque, who was a consistent person with a good nerve.
He thought that Fenella was a rather useful person to have in mind. She did not ask too many questions and she would play the game and not go behind one's back—unless she wanted to for a very definite reason.
Fenella had gone behind his back. She'd talked. Not only had she talked but she had made March talk. She had talked to Ferdie Mott, firstly because he was her employer and secondly because she wanted to ask Ferdie about March. She wanted to know if March was as black as Bellamy had painted him. In any event she wouldn't care and for the very best reason from a woman's point of view. The reason being, of course, that she was in love with March.
Bellamy began to think about that: Women were strange beings. Here was Fenella, who was tough and attractive and quite clever in her own method of life—such as it was—falling for March because she was sorry for him. Vanessa had been right when she had said that pathos was Harcourt's only quality—if you could call pathos a quality.
Vanessa had said that she had married March because he was pathetic, and here was Fenella falling in love with him, trying to help him as much as she could, for the same reason.
Bellamy put his cigarette end in the ash-tray on the table. He watched it smoke. It reminded him of the story he had told about finding a stub of one of Harcourt's cigarettes still burning beside Freda's dead body.
That, he thought, had been rather an artistic touch.
He pressed out the cigarette, fit another, picked up his hat. He stood for a moment looking at March, then moved towards the door. He stopped suddenly and stood quite still, facing the door, his hands in his overcoat pockets, as he heard someone coming up the stairs.
He heard the flat door open. He stood quite still. After a moment the bedroom door opened.
Fenella Roque stood in the doorway. She was wearing a new skunk coat of rather fashionable cut. She looked very tired. She said:
My God... Nicky. Doesn't one ever get rid of you? You're beginning to haunt me. Why in God's name don't you leave this poor devil alone?
She pointed to March on the bed.
Bellamy said: "My dear, you're unkind. Having filled Harcourt with the lousiest mixture you could possibly think of earlier this evening, I've been nursing him like a baby."
She said quietly: "Then why did you give it to him in the first place?"
She moved to the bed and put her hand on March's forehead.
"I didn't want him to talk too much," said Bellamy. "If he'd talked too much it wouldn't have been so good. So I fixed it so that he couldn't talk at all. The trouble with Harcourt is that he talks too much at the wrong time."
She slipped off her coat and took the cigarette that Bellamy offered her. She sat down on the stool before the dressing table and looked at Bellamy.
He said: "You didn't think you could fall in love with someone like Harcourt, did you, Fenella?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"I suppose every woman—even a woman like me—wants something to look after," she said. "You don't have to tell me I'm a damned fool. I know. But the knowledge doesn't alter the situation. Even the knowledge that I'm a double damned fool. . .."
Bellamy blew a smoke ring.
"Why a double one?" he asked.
She moved uneasily.
"Harcourt's bad enough on his own, God knows," she said. "He's irresponsible, fatuous and drunken. He's drinking like a fish because he's frightened. He's in a pretty bad jam too... That on its own would be bad enough. But then, on top of it all, there's you...."
Bellamy was thinking that she had a rather attractive voice—especially when she was tired.
He said: "There's me ... is there? And what am I doing, Fenella?"
"You're playing hell with his nerves," she said. "You're quite ruthless, aren't you? He's shot to pieces. He's fearfully afraid of you. And I think that you're quite wrong about him ... I do really."
Bellamy said: "What do you think, Fenella?"
"I think you're afraid that they'll try and hang the Freda Vanning business on you. Iris Berington told me about it. She's cleared out. I think she's wise. But I can put two and two together without making five of it. You re afraid that they'll accuse you of that murder and so you're putting everything you can on to Harcourt. I think it's stupid because I'm certain he couldn't do a thing like that. He hasn't the courage."
Bellamy laughed softly.
"That's a new one," he said. "I've never heard that one before. I didn't know that courage was one of the qualities of a murderer."
She shrugged her shoulders. Her eyes were miserable.
"Oh, I didn't mean that." she said. "You know what I meant. I meant to say that Harcourt hasn't any of the things that would enable you to get out of a tough spot. He's like a child when he's frightened. He gets more desperate all the time. He'll clutch at anything, any excuse, do anything that he thinks will help him, even if it only makes things worse for him. I wish I knew what to do...."
"About what?" asked Bellamy.
"About him and me," she said. "If I had any sense I'd mind my own business and leave him where he is. But I haven't any sense. I'm fond of him in the oddest sort of way. I believe that with a little help he might be made into something. I don't think he's ever had a chance."
Bellamy lit a fresh cigarette.
"All this means that you're in love with him," he said. "Well... why shouldn't you be? There's no need for you to be afraid, Fenella. By the way, do you know anything about him?"
"Not much," she said. "Only what he's told me himself. And I'm not afraid for myself. I'm afraid for him. I'm afraid about this murder. I think he's in a very dangerous position. If they put that little beast Berington in the box against him he's as good as hanged already."
She put her head between her hands. She began to cry.
Bellamy said: "Fenella, I'm going to tell you something. It may help you and it may not. I know pretty well all there is to be known about Harcourt. The worst thing I can say about him is that he's a pretty low sort of blackmailer. D'you like blackmailers?"
"It depends on why they are blackmailers," she said. "Nobody is born a blackmailer."
Bellamy got up. He picked up his hat.
"You're in a bad way, Fenella," he said. "You're in love with Harcourt in spite of everything that he's done or been. However... there's always a silver lining. If you like to produce him to me at the Malayan Club tomorrow at about six o'clock I'll give him a hundred pounds. You might see that he's sober... Then I suggest you give yourselves a holiday. I don't think London agrees with Harcourt."
She looked up quickly.
"Why should you give him a hundred pounds?" she asked. "And there's another thing... D'you think they'd let him go. D'you think he won't be arrested?"
Bellamy smiled at her. He looked quite amiable and unruffled. She found herself thinking that he was the weirdest man, that he possessed some strange quality that seemed to put him above the ordinary worries and cares of life. He could plot and plan, make use of people, scheme, make people unhappy, push and pull them about almost as he wanted, and all the while he remained cool and unperturbed, acting quietly, talking quietly in that rather attractively hoarse voice. She found herself wondering what sort of woman Nick Bellamy would really care for. If he could care for any woman....
He was at the door. He was still smiling. He said quietly:
"I'm going to give March—or you, T don't mind which—the hundred pounds, because he did what I told him to do to-night. He learned off his little piece and even if he was too drunk to say it I believe he would have said it if he'd had a chance."
He opened the door.
"And he won't be arrested," he said. "I promise you that, Fenella. Good-night, my dear...." He closed the door softly behind him.
IT was very cold outside. Bellamy walked quickly back to his flat. He went straight to the waste-paper basket in the sitting-room and began to turn over the papers and oddments he had thrown there when he had packed his clothes.
At the bottom of the basket were two or three dozen assorted visiting and business cards, of all sorts, shapes and descriptions. He took them out, stacked them neatly in a pile and began to search through them. Eventually he found the one he wanted. It read:
MR. JOHN PELTING,
Representing
The Fraser Private Detective Agency,
14, James Street, W.C. Cen. 26754.
He went into the bedroom, threw off his overcoat and his
dinner suit. He opened his trunk and began to pull things out. He
found the clothes he wanted and dressed himself. He put on a
rather well-worn blue serge suit with a low white collar and a
black tic. Over this he put on a brown overcoat. He took a bowler
hat out of the cupboard.
He lit a cigarette and felt in the pocket of his discarded dinner jacket for the note he had taken out of March's waistcoat pocket. He stood under the electric light looking at it, and the Yale key that was with it.
142, Jordayne Court,
St. John's Wood, N.W.S.
You dear silly old Harcourt,
You left this here last night. You'd leave your head behind you if it wasn't screwed on.
F.
So that was it. The idea was that 142 Jordayne Court was the
"love-nest" and Harcourt had left the key behind one night; that
Freda had sent it back to him with a mild reproof.
Here ... in this note, Bellamy realised, was the ending of the story. The final grim touch.
He put the note and key into his pocket, put on the bowler hat, switched off the light and went out. He walked through into Berkeley Square and found one solitary cab on the rank. He told the river to take him to Jordayne Court, St. John's Wood. Then, as the cab moved slowly off he lay back in the corner, relaxed, smoking quietly, humming to himself.
The night porter at Jordayne Court was a stolid square-faced
individual with one arm and three war ribbons on his uniform
coat. He looked at Bellamy through the glass window of his box
inside the main entrance. Behind him, on the wall, was a clock.
Bellamy saw that it was one o'clock.
"My name's Pelling," said Bellamy in a rather businesslike voice. "I represent the Fraser Private Detective Agency."
He handed the card to the night porter, who read it and then grinned at Bellamy.
"Divorce... eh?" he said with a wink.
"Right," said Bellamy.
"Orlright," said the night porter. "Now I wonder 'oo you're after round 'ere. I'm makin' one guess. An' I bet I'm right. If it ain't 142, on the third floor, East side, then I'm a Dutchman."
Bellamy grinned pleasantly.
"Right first time," he said. "So you had ideas... too."
He took out his note-case and opened it. He began to draw a ten-pound note out of the case. The night porter's eyes were attentive to the process.
Bellamy drew the note out and put the case back into in his pocket. He looked at the note, twisting it in his fingers.
"I always said No. 142 was a blinkin' mystery flat. Only last week I told the porter—my mate on the West wing—that one of these fine days there'd be a blow-up around 'ere. A blinkin' mystery flat... that's what I always said...."
Bellamy began to fold the ten-pound note. He asked:
"Why was it so mysterious?"
"Becos we never saw the tenants in it... well not really," said the night porter. "Why even the lettin' agents never saw 'em. The flat was took by somebody on the telephone—a woman. Then she paid six months' rent in advance. The flat was furnished and the rent was pretty stiff. References was given on the telephone too. That's what the lettin' agents say."
"Well, the party livin' there was a woman. Tall an' nice sort of figure. I've never seen 'er properly. Nobody 'ere 'as. She never used to come in this entrance at all. She used to come in the East side door, walk along the corridor and go up the stairs. Never used the lift. An' she always used to come 'ere after eight o'clock. Nobody ever saw 'er in the day. The service people used to go in the flat to clean up, an' very often it 'adn't been used for days. It's been like that the last fortnight.
"My mate on the West side said that some feller used to come, late at night. 'E never got a proper glimpse of 'im. This feller never used the lift either. Used to come in always by one of the sub-doors away from the lift entrances and walk along the corridor an' go up the stairs. Pretty clever they was."
Bellamy said: "It looks as if they were."
The night porter nodded.
"Of course," he said. "We didn't take any notice. It ain't our business to be curious. It's pretty 'ard letting expensive flats like these in these times an' providin' tenants behave themselves an' keep the terms of their leases an' pay the rent... well... what goes on is their business. I always used to get thirty bob a month for tips from No. 142. But they never give it to me. It used to be sent through the lettin' office. Smart, eh?"
Bellamy pushed the folded ten-pound note through the window of the porter's office. He said:
"I wonder if I could go up and take a look around. I'll tell you what I'm looking for. We're pretty certain that the parties we're watching have been coming here. Using this place as a 'love-nest.' Well, by what you say it's going to be pretty difficult to get the woman identified, and I've got to make certain. Once I'm certain that this is the place we can keep close observation an' get 'em when we want 'em."
The night porter nodded.
"What is it you're lookin' for?" he asked.
"Well," said Bellamy, "I'm looking for anything that links the flat up with the woman in the case. For instance, we know the perfume she uses. There might be a bottle up there. There might be some odd letters or something like that, that'll show me that this is really the spot. Once I'm certain I can get you—or your mate—to give me a telephone call at the office some time when they're both here. Of course, we shouldn't expect you to work for nothing...."
The night porter picked up the ten-pound note.
"Orlright, Mr. Felling," he said. "You go up an' take a look around. There isn't been anybody there for a fortnight like I said. Nobody's likely to disturb you an' if she should come along while you re there you can say you're the Superintendent seein' that the cleanin's been done properly. Just leave your 'at an' coat down 'ere an' it'll look O.K."
Bellamy grinned. He began to take off his overcoat. He said:
"I can see you're an experienced night porter." The night porter grinned.
"This ain't the first time I've come across divorce cases," he said. "When you been in my line as long as I 'ave you get used to almost anythin'."
He turned round and took a key off the board behind him. Then he opened the door of his office and took Bellamy's coat and hat, handed him the key.
"Take the lift up." he said. "Press the third floor button. The flat's the third door down the corridor to your right when you get out of the lift."
Bellamy took the key, walked over to the lift and went up to the third floor. He opened the door of the flat with the key the hall porter had given him. Then he switched on the fight, closed the door, took out the key he had found in the note to Harcourt and compared the two keys. They were identical.
He walked through the flat. It was large and very well-furnished. There were two bedrooms, a dressing-room, a tiled kitchen and a luxurious bathroom. He wandered through these rooms, switching on the fights and glancing cursorily around him.
The sitting-room was a large, artistically planned and furnished room. In one corner was a big walnut writing desk. Bellamy went over to it and tried the drawers. They were unlocked. He pulled the top drawers open. They were empty. The larger drawers, those down the sides of the desk, were filled with a miscellaneous collection of paper backed novels, old newspapers and circulars. There was nothing personal in them.
He came to the last drawer. It was tidily arranged. There was a pile of yellow-covered novels in the drawer, and underneath this pile Bellamy could see that some papers were stacked. He took out the novels and put them on the floor. Then he put the pile of papers on the desk and began to go through them.
They were, apparently, typewritten copies of leading articles that had appeared in English ana foreign newspapers. Each article was headed with the name of the newspaper and the date of publication. Those dealing with foreign papers had attached to them a rough translation.
Bellamy looked at each typewritten sheet in turn, placing it on one side when he had finished with it. After he had disposed of a dozen sheets he came to a small pile of half a dozen sheets of faint-ruled foolscap paper. They were pinned together and covered with closely spaced typewriting.
Bellamy began to grin. He felt in his pocket for his cigarette case. He sat looking at the papers before him.
They showed a complete layout of the "C" Bureau propaganda scheme for the last two months. There were notes as to the copy that was being handled for the different allied and neutral newspapers. The whole of the final scheme, with the date when it was to be issued, shown, with the complete outline of the copy and the names of the neutral newspapers for which it was intended were clearly indicated.
Bellamy bent down and put the French paper-backed novels back in the drawer. On top of them he put the other sheets. He kept the final pile of foolscap on the desk.
When he had re-arranged the drawers he closed them. In front of him on the desk was a filled stationery case. He selected a large envelope, folded the propaganda scheme sheets in two, slipped them into the envelope.
He licked the envelope and sealed it. Then he took his fountain pen and addressed the envelope to:
Ferdinand Mott, Esq.,
Mott's Club,
St. John's Wood, N.W.
By hand.
He slipped the envelope under his waistcoat, switched off the lights in all the rooms, closed the front door quietly after him and went downstairs.
He said to the night porter. "It's O.K. It's the party we're looking for, all right. I found some of her handkerchiefs with her own initials on in one of the drawers in the bedroom. I haven't disturbed anything."
The night porter said: "Well, that's orlright."
He handed: out Bellamy's overcoat and hat. Bellamy put them on and returned the flat key.
"You might telephone for a cab for me," he asked. "If you can get one."
"There's always a cab to be got round 'ere," said the night porter. "I'll call through. An' when you want somethin' else done, just let me know. But keep it quiet. The lettin' office don't like bad publicity."
"I'll remember that," said Bellamy.
He lit a cigarette.
When the cab came he told the driver to take him to Mott's Club.
BELLAMY paid off the cab outside Mott's Club, walked to the entrance, found the door open, and began to walk along the passage inside. Mott's watch-dog was sitting in the office half-way down the passage. He gave Bellamy a surly grin.
Bellamy nodded and walked straight on. When he passed the door leading off into the card-room he opened it and looked through. Two tables were playing inside, and Mott was seated at the far one. He was watching nine or ten people playing roulette.
Bellamy closed the door quietly and walked along the passage until he came to the door of Mott's office. He knocked. A woman's voice said, "Come in."
He opened the door and went in. Carola was sitting by the side of the desk, smoking a cigarette. On the other side of the desk, stacked against the wall, was a pile of suitcases and travelling bags. The other door, leading to the card-room was wide open. Through it, on the other side of the room, Bellamy could see Mott's profile amongst the other people.
Carola said: "Hello, Nicky."
She looked through the open door towards Mott.
"Good-night or good-morning, my sweet," said Bellamy softly.
He walked over to the open door. He called out hello to Mott.
Mott turned towards him and waved his hand. "Come and have a drink, Nicky," he said. He was smiling cheerfully.
Bellamy leaned up against the door-post. He half turned towards Carola.
"So you're going," he said.
He looked at the pile of baggage.
"Correct, Nicky," said Carola pleasantly. "We go from Victoria to-morrow evening. We are to be married in Paris on the next day."
She smiled wickedly at Bellamy.
"Don't you wish it was you?" she said.
Bellamy grinned at her.
"I love you like hell," he said softly. "I think you're marvellous. I can't imagine you for one moment with a person like Ferdie Mott. But one never knows with women...."
He shrugged his shoulders. He was grinning at her.
Carola made a face at him. She said:
"You drank too much. I had to throw you over. It hurt me more than it hurt you. Really, I'm quite crazy about you, Nicky. I love you so much I could eat you."
Bellamy said: "You don't say. Tell me... what is it that makes you feel like that about me?" She shrugged her shoulders.
"I don't know," she said. "But I like the way your clothes fit you and the way you walk, and I've never met anyone who could kiss in just the same way as you. And you talk in a rather oddly attractive voice that has a strange note in it. Also I've been told that you're dangerous where women are concerned... and I know that quite a lot of women are crazy about you, and that you can be as cold as the devil or..."
"Hush," said Bellamy. "Ferdie might hear. I'd hate to spoil his evening. Tell me do you like being kissed by Ferdie? Is it nice?"
"Rats," she said. "I'm not going to tell you. I've a good reason. I don't know. Ferdie's never kissed me yet, and he's not going to until we're married."
Bellamy was watching Mott, who was busily engaged in staking on numbers. Bellamy turned away from the open door and pulled the envelope from under his waistcoat.
Carola said: "Darling... you're not going to undress or anything, are you?"
Bellamy threw the envelope into her lap.
"Sit on that," he said. "I don't want Ferdie to see it. It's my wedding present to him. I'm going to have a drink with him in a minute. While we're in the bar just undo one of his bags and stick that envelope inside, so that to-morrow when his bags are unpacked hell remember me."
Carola slipped the envelope beneath her thigh. She said:
"Very well, my lord, I will do as you wish. I don't suppose I shall be able to do anything else for you before I go off with Ferdie."
He said: "No... I don't suppose you will. I shall think of you to-morrow."
She did not reply. Mott was just leaving the roulette table and was moving towards the office.
Bellamy said: "I'm going to see Vanessa some time to-morrow, about eightish or thereabouts. I'll give her your love."
"Do," said Carola. "Well... if I don't see you again. Good-night, Nicky."
"Good-night, Carola," he replied. He walked to meet Mott. He said with a smile: "Hello, Ferdie. What about that drink you promised me...?"
They walked into the bar on the other side of the card-room.
Carola shut the office door. She went over to the pile of baggage and selected a large suit case that had a key still in the lock. She unlocked the case and slipped the envelope under the suits that were in it. Then she opened the door and returned to her seat.
Mott ordered two large whiskies. He was smiling. Bellamy thought he looked too happy. Mott said when the drinks were served:
"Well... here's to you, Nicky. You know we're off to-morrow. We're going to be married in Paris on Friday. We shall be back in three weeks and then I'm going to buy a little place in the country and settle down as a country squire."
Bellamy said: "Can you imagine that! By the way, Ferdie, there's a question I want to ask you."
Mott drained his glass.
"Ask on," he said.
"Last Monday night I was watching you playing poker here with Harcourt and those two other fellows. You deliberately let him win a couple of hundred pounds. Why?"
Mott looked at Bellamy quickly. For a split second his eyelids drooped. Then he said:
"Well... Poor old Harcourt has been having a hell of a time. That woman Berington has given him a very tough runaround. I knew he was absolutely broke. I felt sorry for him—especially as it was on Monday night that I realised that I had a chance with Carola."
Bellamy said: "Ah!"
He drank his whisky. When he put the glass down he said:
"I've had a wrong impression of you, Ferdie. I didn't know you'd do a decent thing like that. It just shows you how little you know about people, doesn't it?"
He took out his case and offered it to Mott. When the cigarettes were lit, Bellamy said:
"Well... I'm going home. I hope you two will be very happy."
"Thanks, Nicky," said Mott. "You will understand what I mean when I say that I'm damned sorry I pinched your girl...."
Bellamy began to walk towards the door. He said over his shoulder:
"Don't worry, Ferdie. Nobody ever pinched a girl from me... not one I wanted anyway." He went out.
BELLAMY awakened just after six o'clock. He lay on his back, his hands clasped behind his head, looking at the shadows cast by the electric fire on the ceiling. He felt quite peaceful and rather amused.
He got out of bed and went across to the window. It was a dolorous evening. A cold east wind whistled through the mews on the other side of Half Moon Street making a moaning noise appropriate to a black-out that seemed blacker than ever.
He turned away from the window and began to whistle softly to himself. He went over to the electric fire and stood in front of it warming his legs through his thin silk pyjamas.
After a while he began to search for a cigarette. He found one eventually in the sitting-room, lit it, went into the bathroom and turned on the bath.
He lay in the bath for a long time, turning things over in his mind.
The telephone began to ring in the bedroom. It continued to ring. Bellamy took no notice at first, but after a while its jangling got on his nerves. He wondered who it would be. He thought for a moment that it might be Carola, but dismissed the idea from his mind at once. Carola was much too clever to telephone him at the flat unless it was a matter of absolute urgency.
Well... why shouldn't it be? He thought of Ferdie Mott and the journey to Paris. He cursed Ferdie Mott cheerfully. He got quickly out of the bath, wrapped a bathrobe round him and went into the bedroom. By the time he arrived there the telephone had stopped ringing.
He went back to the bathroom, dried himself, shaved, returned to the bedroom and began to dress. He put on the dinner jacket he had left unpacked from the night before.
When he had finished dressing he rang the bell and sent the page-boy out for cigarettes. He sat on the bed until the boy returned, waiting. Simultaneously with the arrival of the cigarettes the telephone began to ring again.
Bellamy looked at his wrist-watch. It was a quarter past seven. It was Blondie, at the Malayan Club.
"I've a message for you," she said. "Mrs. Roque has been through on the telephone. I tried to get you before. She wants to see you. She says it's urgent. She says you'd arranged to see her here later, but she'd be awfully obliged if you could manage to come round here now. She says she'll be here at any minute."
"All right, Blondie," said Bellamy. "When she arrives tell her that I am on my way.'
"O.K.," said Blondie brightly. "Got any more stories?"
"Millions of 'em," said Bellamy. "But I never tell stories over the telephone. They lose so much if my own charming personality isn't visible... see, Blondie?
"I see," she said. "You are a caution, aren't you?"
"Like hell I am," said Bellamy cheerfully.
He hung up.
He waited for a minute or two, then he took off the receiver and dialled a Whitehall number. He said:
"This is Bellamy. I shall be round in about three-quarters of an hour. You might tell Sir Eustace."
He replaced the receiver and lit a fresh cigarette. Then he dialled the "C" Bureau and asked for Mr. Vanning. Vanning came on the line.
"Hello, Philip," said Bellamy. "I want to see you. Everything's going very well. I got the whole story from March. The whole thing is in the bag. But I've got to see you."
"All right, Nicky," said Vanning. "I shall be at the flat at eight-thirty. Can you come round then?"
"I'll be there," said Bellamy.
He walked about the room for a few minutes then he dialled Vanessa's number. She said:
"Well, Nicky ... did you do what I told you to? Did you go down to Scotland Yard and tell them the whole story?"
"I did," said Bellamy. "I stripped my soul bare to them. I undressed mentally. I told them everything I could think of. I said that I thought you had the best legs in the western hemisphere, and that when you walked I desired nothing better than to walk behind you and watch the superb undulation of your too charming hips. I said..."
Vanessa interrupted.
"You madman," she said in her low voice. "Don't you ever take anything seriously? Did you tell them the whole truth—you idiot?"
"Did I?" said Bellamy. "You should have heard me." The he tripped easily off his tongue. "I told them every damned thing I knew about the whole business. They're going to arrest Harcourt."
She said: "I thought they would. That's going to be pretty awful for me."
"Never mind, my poppet," said Bellamy. "You've still got me. I adore you. I'd practically do anything for you. I go to bed with your picture sewn in the inside of my pyjamas like a porous plaster."
"Stop being a fool," said Vanessa. "And tell me what it is you want."
Bellamy said: "Divine woman, I rang you up because I saw Carola last night—or rather early this morning—and I told her that I might be drinking a cocktail with you somewhere in the region of eight o'clock. I thought she might have telephoned you and told you that before she went off on her wedding trip. I'm ringing you up to say that I can't get round until about nine-thirty. Is that too late?"
"It's never too late to see you, Nicky," said Vanessa. "I shall be dining here anyway. I'll expect you. Come and cheer me up, you lunatic."
"I will," said Bellamy. He grinned into the telephone. "So long, sweetness."
He hung up the receiver. He walked across the room to the chest of drawers, unlocked the top drawer. He took out a .32 Colt automatic pistol. He slipped out the empty ammunition clip, opened a box of cartridges, loaded two cartridges into the clip, re-inserted the clip, pulled back the recoil action in order to move one cartridge into the breech, slipped on the safety catch and put the pistol into his hip pocket.
He put on his hat and the fur-lined overcoat and went downstairs. He rang the service bell in the hallway and waited for the housekeeper. When she appeared he said:
"I'm leaving here to-night. I've packed my things. Someone will call for them to-morrow. I'll look in probably in the afternoon and collect any mail and see you again. Good-night."
He went out.
He picked up a cab in Piccadilly and told the driver to take him to the Malayan Club.
Fenella Roque was sitting at the table at which she and March
and Lancelot had been seated on the night when Bellamy first met
her. It was in the far corner of the room. She sat looking
straight in front of her. She looked like death.
Bellamy glanced round the room. There were two people drinking and talking quietly at the far end of the bar. Blondie was engaged in mixing cocktails.
Bellamy went up to the bar. He said cheerfully:
"Blondie, mix two very dry Martinis and bring them over to the corner table."
He walked away, sat down opposite Fenella Roque.
He said: "What's the trouble, Fenella?"
She looked at him. Her eyes were quite dull. There were heavy lines underneath them and her face was taut and colourless.
She said quietly: "Harcourt's dead."
Bellamy took out his cigarette case. Blondie brought the Martinis.
Bellamy took two cigarettes out of his case. He put one between Fenella's lips and lit it, then his own. Blondie went back to the bar.
Bellamy said: "Take it easy, Fenella. It's pretty tough, but that's how life goes. What happened r He didn't..."
"No," she said. "He didn't do that. ... He was almost cheerful after I had a talk with him this afternoon. He went over to Mott's Club. He left there soon after six o'clock. He wasn't very tight either. He was knocked down by a car just near Acacia Road. They don't know who the car belonged to. It got away in the black-out. He was fearfully smashed. He must have died pretty quickly... thank God...."
Bellamy asked: "Why did he go to Mott's Club?"
"Somebody telephoned," she said. "Somebody telephoned and gave him a message that Ferdie Mott had left for him. Somebody or other wanted to see him and apparently it was urgent. He didn't tell me what it was about."
Bellamy said: "You'd feel better if you could have a really good cry. Why don't you?"
"I'm beyond crying," she answered. "I feel numb. I feel I don't want to go on living. I'm tired of everything. I've been bored for a long time. Then, suddenly, Harcourt came along and I wasn't bored any more. Now I'm going to be bored again—all the time—and I can't stand it."
He said: "Drink that Martini. You'll feel better. And remember this, Fenella. You ought to know as well as anyone that nothing is as bad as it seems. There's always to-morrow. I suppose it's pretty cold comfort for me to tell you that this is probably the best thing for Harcourt."
She looked at him. She said:
"Is death a good thing for anybody?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"For Harcourt, at this moment, yes," he said. "He was in a bad way. He'd got himself into a fearful method of thinking and living and drinking. Another thing is that you would have had to know the truth about him in a day or so. Believe me you wouldn't have liked it. It wasn't particularly nice. Now you don't have to know it. You can go on thinking every nice thing you want to about him."
"Was it so bad?" she asked.
"Pretty bad," he answered. "I don't think you'd have been very keen on Harcourt in the long run. I think this car smash has saved you a lot of heartache."
A faint smile nickered across her face.
"Sometimes you're awfully nice, Nicky," she said. "You're comforting. Strangely enough I can almost believe what you say about Harcourt."
"You didn't love him really, my dear," said Bellamy with a smile. "You were doing the next best thing. You were thinking you loved him. You wanted to love something or somebody because you're much too nice a woman to go around the West End rubbing shoulders with the riff-raff that haunts these bars and so-called clubs and getting them along to Ferdie Mott's to play chemie, or faro or roulette.
"When Harcourt came along with that pathetic attitude of his you were just ripe for falling. So you fell. You fell all the quicker because you made up your mind that I was out to frame Harcourt for an odd murder or something...."
"Maybe you're right, Nicky," she said. "But I still feel like death."
He smiled at her.
"We all do, periodically," he said. "Things happen or not as the case may be. We play the red and the black comes up. Well ... the black's come up for you... that's all. Next time you play the red perhaps the red will come up. That's the other side of life. The thine is to take it easy and relax. In fact there isn't anything else to do."
She looked at him again. Her eyes were a little brighter.
"I wonder if you're right, Nicky," she said wistfully.
Bellamy put his hand into the breast pocket of his dinner jacket. He brought out ten ten-pound notes. He said:
"I've an idea. Here's the hundred that I promised Harcourt. Well.. . it's yours now. Take yourself away to some place—a village in Devonshire or Somerset or somewhere like that—where there aren't any cocktail bars and where people say good-morning to you even if they don't know you. Go to some place where you can eat simply and sleep a lot and walk through green fields. Forget Piccadilly and Harcourt and this lousy place, and all the rest of the cheap hang-outs round these parts. All you need to do, my girl, is to sort yourself out. You won't know yourself in a month."
He pushed the money across the table.
"Thanks, Nicky, you're pretty decent really," she said. "Possibly I'll do what you say. If I do... where do I find you... that is supposing I wanted to find you... sometime... again...?"
"I'll be around," said Bellamy.
He grinned at her, picked up his hat and went out of the Club.
When he had gone she put the money in her handbag. Then she began to powder her nose.
BELLAMY walked down to the cab rank fifty yards from the Malayan Club. He told the driver to drop him outside Wellington Barracks.
He sat back in the cab, thinking things out, arranging points in his mind. The sudden dimmed lights of traffic, appearing and disappearing vaguely, seemed to him as ephemeral as most of the other so-called realities of fife.
He began to think about March. March had paid his bill to society. There was no doubt about that. Even if the executioner had been an unidentified car....
Possibly Harcourt had over-paid the bill, but Bellamy was practical enough to believe that March, with his weaknesses and his vices, his inability to keep up with life, or even to look it fairly in the face, was safer where he was—wherever he was.
His smile softened when he thought of Carola. There teas a woman if you like. A steady, beautiful, cool and reliable person who could never do anything that wasn't done... who could never be little or mean or cheap....
And Fenella. Bellamy began to grin. He was not wasting a great deal of sympathy on Fenella. She would forget March as quickly as she had fallen in love with him—or thought she had. And the nearest she would get to a quiet village in Somerset or Devon would be a still fashionable seaside resort away from the threat of bombers, where men were still men and women were dam' glad of it.
The cab stopped outside the Barracks. Bellamy got out, paid off the man and began to walk along in the direction of Whitehall. He turned, suddenly, through an iron gate, belonging to a house that backed on to Birdcage Walk, crossed the small garden and rang the bell.
An elderly butler opened the door. He said:
"Good evening, Mr. Bellamy. Sir Eustace is waiting for you."
Bellamy said: "It's a long time since I've seen you, Charles. I'd almost forgotten what you looked like." 9
He left his hat and coat in the hall. He followed the butler along the long passage and into the warm, well-lit study.
The Under-Secretary was seated at his desk, facing Bellamy. On his right, in a big chair in front of the fire, was Harbell, the Superintendent of the Special Branch.
Bellamy said: "Good evening, Sir Eustace. Good evening, Harbell."
Harbell said: "Well, Nicky, have you brought home the bacon? I imagine it's in the bag or else you wouldn't be here."
The Under-Secretary opened a drawer in his desk. He came round the desk with a box of cigars in his hand. He took three or four cigars out of the box and selected one carefully. He pierced the cigar, handed it to Bellamy, produced a gold lighter and held up the flame.
Bellamy lit the cigar carefully, inhaled a lung-full of the smoke. He said:
"You know, Sir, they're awfully good cigars. And it is rather swell to have one's cigars presented to one, pierced and fit by one of His Majesty's Under-Secretaries. It makes 'em taste twice as good."
The Under-Secretary said: "You seem to have retained your zest for hie and your sense of humour, Bellamy. I'm beginning to suspect that you've been enjoying yourself."
Bellamy grinned.
"I've learned that I've an unlimited capacity for mixed liquor, Sir," he said. "And by the way, Harbell, you ought to pass a chit down to the Marlborough Street D.DI to take a look at some of the dives in his area. I don't mind vice, and I don't mind crooked card games, but I can't stand doctored whisky. It's too much!"
Sir Eustace said: "Well. . . Harbell tells me that he's had a long conversation with you on the telephone this afternoon, that he knows all about everything and that he's fairly satisfied with the position. Is that right? Or is there anything else I ought to know?"
Bellamy said, drawing on the cigar: "There's something I didn't tell Harbell, Sir. I didn't know it myself. I've only just learned it. March is dead. He was knocked down and killed by a hit and run driver out at St. John's Wood this evening. That's the only other development."
Sir Eustace looked at Harbell.
"What does that mean to you. Superintendent?" he asked. "Does it alter things very much? Does it make a great deal of difference?"
Harbell shrugged his shoulders. He looked at Bellamy.
"It makes things a lot easier, Sir Eustace," Bellamy said, "in a way. I think that if I'm allowed to handle this thing on my own, you won't be dissatisfied with the result. After all I imagine it is the result that interests you mainly?"
The Under-Secretary opened a cigarette box and gave himself a cigarette. He lit it carefully. He said:
"I want to be assured that there's no repetition of the leakages. With regard to the other part of the business, I suggest that you two make your own arrangements. I'm quite willing to listen to as much as you would like me to hear."
Bellamy said: "I don't think you want to know anything else, Sir. Perhaps it would be as well if you didn't know anything else."
Sir Eustace smiled.
"Where ignorance is bliss, eh?" he quoted. "Well, I'm prepared to leave it to you both as I said before. When the matter can be considered closed then perhaps I'll allow myself to be just a little curious." He looked at Bellamy. "Just when shall I be able to tell the Minister that the matter is closed, Bellamy?" he asked.
Bellamy leaned against the side of the fireplace. His weight was pressing the Colt automatic against his thigh.
"I think to-night should see the matter finally closed, Sir," he said. "Except for sweeping the odd bits into the corners and writing 'Settled' on the dossier."
The Under-Secretary got up.
"That sounds excellent," he said. "And now I'll leave it to you two to do the sweeping-up of the odd bits."
He held out his hand.
"Good-night, Bellamy," he said. "We are all very grateful to you. It's been annoying work, I'm sure."
Bellamy shook hands. He went out of the room. Harbell followed him. He said:
"Nice work, Nicky. They'll be giving you an Iron Cross in a minute."
"I deserve it too," said Bellamy. "You sit on your over-stuffed posterior on the end of the telephone all day doing sweet nothing at all, while I'm drinking myself to death in low haunts. It's not British."
"Like hell it isn't," said Harbell. "You get the best of everything. While all the other people in your section are hanging around the back areas looking for spies and other uninteresting things like that, you do nothing but drink all day and make love to beautiful women all night. And you get paid for it too!"
"And fought to get a rise," said Bellamy. "Look at the years of study I've put in learning just what you can say to which woman without getting your ears slapped off."
"Poor old Nicky," Harbell murmured.
He took Bellamy's cigarette case out of his side pocket and helped himself to a cigarette.
"Dam' funny about March," he said. "Now that was a coincidence if you like. Or was it...?"
"It wasn't," said Bellamy. "It was a deliberate job. It was almost a brainwave."
Harbell helped him on with his overcoat.
"Let me know about things as soon as you know." he said. "And do you want anything?"
"Yes," said Bellamy. "I want a tail put on me. A good man who will pick me up when I leave the Malayan Club—I'm going there now—in about twenty minutes' time. He's to stick to me tight. I'll tell him what I want him to do when the time comes."
"All right," said Harbell. "I'll fix it. I'll put Lazenby on. Good-night, Nicky. Be good."
Bellamy said: "I'll try to be. 'Bye, my «tweet and spindle-shanked superintendent... Don't get your feet wet I And if you want me later this evening you can get me at Sydney's Bar in Conduit Street."
Bellamy sat on a high stool at the Malayan Club and ordered a double Martini—very dry. When she brought the drink, Blondie said:
"I wish you'd been here about half an hour ago. You'd have laughed your head off."
He asked why.
"You remember that girl who used to be behind the bar at Faloppi's Club?" said Blondie. "Well, I reckon that she was one of the nicest and prettiest girls that you'd see in a day's march. Well, she was in here. She was in here with the fellow she says she's going to marry. You've never seen anything like it. He's about five feet nothing tall and he's got the ugliest face I've ever seen in my natural. A fair sight I'm telling you. Well, Gladys is tall and slim and sort of queenly-looking—you know what I mean—and to see those two together was a scream. Love's a funny thing."
Bellamy said: "But definitely, Blondie."
"I've warned her time and time again against getting married," Blondie went on. "I said to her: 'You get married an' you get taken for a ride'—that's what I said. 'Marriage,' I said, 'is just a snare and a delusion.' But it's no good she just wouldn't listen...."
Bellamy said: "I know. It's amazing, isn't it? I remember a woman in Pennsylvania...."
"My God," said Blondie, "I knew it. While I was telling you that bit just now, something in my mind sort of told me that directly I'd finished you'd start telling me about some woman you knew somewhere."
She looked at him coyly.
"When you came back here on Monday night and bought that champagne, I thought, just for a minute, that you were a tiny little bit interested in me."
Bellamy's face became quite tragic.
"I am, Blondie," he said. "If I could only tell you. But I just can't let myself fall for any woman. There's a reason—a terrible reason...."
She said: "Oh, Mr. Bellamy ... I'm so sorry. I didn't know."
"I fell in love with a French countess when I was seventeen," said Bellamy hoarsely. "She was marvellous. I've never met a woman like her. We were to be married in the springtime. I left her one evening and next day when I returned she had developed a squint. It was awful. My poor, poor Hortense was so boss-eyed that at lunch time I was sitting next to her she began to eat off my plate by mistake. I couldn't bear it...."
"My God..." said Blondie. "How shocking! What did you do?"
"I killed her," said Bellamy. "I put her in an old sack and threw her in the river. I've never looked at another woman since. But her eyes still haunt me."
Blondie said: "You are a devil. I thought you were telling the truth for once. Anyway, what about this woman in Pennsylvania?"
Bellamy said: "She was unique, and she was particularly good-looking. She was forty years of age and she had four daughters. Three of them were married, and the last one was aching to be married.
"Her mother didn't approve of the match at all. The man the girl was keen on hadn't any money or any prospects or any looks or anything at all. However, the girl made the mother's life such a misery that eventually mama promised that if the girl would go and visit her three married sisters before doing anything desperate, and if she came back home and was still keen on marrying her boy-friend, then mama would agree.
"So off went the girl. The first married sister was living in Oklahoma. When she arrived at the farm the sheriff's men were distraining for rent, and the unfortunate wife was sitting on the floor in a bedroom with no furniture, with two black eyes that her husband had presented her with earlier in the day before going off with a blonde who lived nearby. That was lesson number one.
"The girl then took train and visited the next sister. She was working in a laundry in San Francisco. Her husband had run off with her jewellery and all the spare cash on their wedding night. She had permanently bent shoulders through bending over the wash-tub, chronic bronchitis and housemaid's knee brought on by worry. That was the second lesson."
"Our heroine thought that over, and then went to visit her third and last married sister. She lived in Hollywood. When she arrived she discovered that her sister's husband had married, altogether, sixteen different wives during his lifetime and they were all alive. Her sister was about the tenth one.
"So she went back home...."
"Well..." said Blondie, "I bet she had learned her lesson all right. I bet she didn't want to get married after that."
"She had no choice in the matter," said Bellamy cheerfully. "When she arrived home she found that her mother had married the young man in her absence. It was a terrible shock for the girl. She spent three weeks trying to find out what the relationship would be between herself and the first child of the marriage, and when she discovered that her late fiancé was now her father-in-law by marriage and that his son would be her grandson by marriage she poisoned herself with ground glass...."
"And died in great agony... I know," said Blondie.
"I must say that's a funny ending to a story," she went on. "I suppose there's a moral somewhere."
"I wouldn't know," said Bellamy, getting off the high stool. "The last time I saw a moral it cut me dead. Walked right past me without so much as a how-do-you-do. 'Bye, Blondie!"
He got his hat and went out.
BELLAMY stood in the street near the doorway that led to the Malayan Club. He lit a cigarette. He held the lighter close to his face so that Lazenby could see it was him. Then he began to walk towards Berkeley Square.
There were three cabs on the rank. Bellamy took one. He told the driver to go to the Hyde Apartments. Just behind him, out of the back window, he could see the lights of Lazenby's cab.
Vanning opened the door of the flat. He was smoking a pipe. His face looked less strained. He said: "Hello, Nicky. I'm glad to see you."
He closed the door behind Bellamy, who hung up his hat and coat, and then led the way to the sitting-room.
Bellamy went over to the fireplace. He stood in front of the big fire watching Vanning who was busy at the sideboard.
"Whisky?" asked Vanning, holding up the decanter.
Bellamy said: "Yes please, Philip. I'll have another little drink... it'll probably be the last one I'll have with you anyhow...."
He took out his cigarette case. He was grinning at Vanning.
Vanning said: "I don't get that one, Nicky. Is there a catch in it?"
Bellamy said, as he took the glass from Vanning: "It was pretty clever of you to get March out of the way. I think that was a neat touch. You were certain that they were going to hang Freda's murder on to March, and by killing him, at just the right moment—because you thought I'd already told my new story implicating him to the Yard—you made a certainty of that job. There was also a good chance, of course, that they'd think it was suicide."
Vanning had gone back to the sideboard. He finished his drink and put the glass down.
"Have you gone mad or anything, Nicky?" he said. "You ought to see a doctor. Are you actually telling me that Harcourt is dead?"
"Harcourt was knocked down and killed by a hit-and-run driver out near the Acacia Road in the black-out this evening," said Bellamy, "soon after six. He was badly smashed up. I expect you ran over him two or three times and made certain of him. There's never anyone much around those parts at that time."
Vanning put his hands in his trouser pockets. He looked steadily at Bellamy. Bellamy was still grinning. He was grinning in the weirdest way. His lips were drawn over his white teeth. He looked macabre.
"It was as easy as winking," said Bellamy. "You thought I was going to the Yard to-day to tell 'em that stuff about March, and you knew they'd believe it. There was every reason why they should. You telephoned through to Mott this morning and got him to leave a message for someone to ring Harcourt in the late afternoon and get him to go out to Mott's Club. Harcourt went because he was expecting to meet you... and he wanted to meet you."
"Did he really?" said Vanning, still standing quite immovable. "May I know why?"
"He wanted some money," said Bellamy. "He wanted the money that he couldn't get from you because it hadn't come through and you hadn't got it. That's why he wanted to meet you. Well ... he didn't get any money. He just got bumped off and 'bumped' is about the right word for it."
He inhaled cigarette smoke with obvious pleasure.
"Mind you, Philip, I haven't got a lot of sympathy for Harcourt," said Bellamy evenly. "He was a cheap, stupid fellow. He'd have came to a bad end anyway."
Vanning said: "Now I know you're quite mad. I always thought you had a screw loose, Nicky. But if we are to continue with this comedy, perhaps I might be allowed to ask exactly why I killed Harcourt. I'd like to know. It would interest me."
Bellamy nodded.
"I can understand that, Philip. The reason is an interesting one too. Quite obviously you had to kill March because, although he wasn't overburdened with brains, he'd have been a poor sort of idiot if he hadn't known that you'd killed Freda. You knew damned well that he was going to keep his mouth shut just so long as he himself was safe. You also knew that, immediately he got the idea into his head that suspicion was going to fall on him; that there was a chance of his being arrested, he'd talk and talk plenty. Just as you knew that until that situation actually arrived he'd keep quiet because you were his source of income."
Vanning went to the settee and sat down. He took out a cigarette case and selected a cigarette. He seemed quite unperturbed except that Bellamy could see that his fingers were trembling a little.
"You're an odd sort of cuss, aren't you, Nicky?" he said. "I remember at one time I thought you were the world's most complete mug. I think you're rather clever."
"A lot of people have thought that I was a complete mug, Philip," said Bellamy. "It never got them anywhere though."
Vanning lit the cigarette.
"What you say interests me a great deal," he said. "But of course it's pure theory. No one could ever prove—in a thousand years—that I killed Harcourt, and you know it."
"You're dead right," said Bellamy. His voice was quite casual. "But I could prove, more or less easily, that you killed Freda. The joke is I shan't have to. You won't let me."
"Won't I?" Vanning's voice was as cool as Bellamy's. "Now you are being interesting. So I won't let you prove that I killed Freda." He pushed himself back into the corner of the settee. "By the way," he said, "just why are you so certain that I killed Freda as well as March r I seem to have been doing murder on wholesale fines...." He smiled amiably. "You ought to write film scenarios, Nicky," he said. "Your sense of the dramatic is excellent."
"It's not bad," admitted Bellamy.
He leaned up against the side of the fireplace and put his hands in his jacket pockets.
"It was so damned simple after I'd had my first interview with Meynell—the Detective-Inspector that was put on to Freda's murder—that it was like stealing a child's rattle, Philip," he said. "You see, you worked everything out pretty well. But you were forced to work it out more or less quickly and you couldn't give the attention to details that you would normally have used. However, I'll come to all that in a minute."
He threw his cigarette end into the fire.
"The point is, Philip," he said. "I want to do a deal with you. I think we can do a deal. Are you willing to talk business?"
Vanning's eyes brightened almost imperceptibly.
"I like listening to you, Nicky," he said. "So go right ahead. Just get everything you want off your chest. I'll listen hard. If it gets too funny I can always laugh. You won't mind that... will you? Then, when you've finished I can—possibly—have another laugh at this 'deal' idea...."
Bellamy grinned.
"You're still not giving anything away, are you, Philip?" he said. He shrugged his shoulders. "Well... it doesn't matter. You 11 agree to the deal in due course. But I must get you into the right frame of mind first."
"Of course," said Vanning sarcastically. "Is it going to cost me an awful lot of money? And shall I have to pay on the spot?"
"More or less," Bellamy answered.
He took out another cigarette. He took quite a time in lighting it. He was watching Vanning through the flame of the lighter.
"Harcourt began sticking you for money some months ago," said Bellamy pleasantly. "He began to blackmail you directly he realised that his wife, Vanessa, was your mistress. I bet he didn't like that. After all when a man and woman have lived together and put up with each other for seven years, and when the woman is as attractive as Vanessa is, it must be pretty tough luck on a boob like Harcourt to find that one of his friends is her lover."
He flipped the ash off his cigarette into the fire.
"You didn't want any scandal, and neither did Vanessa," Bellamy went on. "So you paid. And in order to pay you had to have money. So you started selling the propaganda schemes. You were quite mad about Vanessa. I can understand that. She's the type of woman that a solid sort of fellow like you would fall for. You'd have done anything for her. You have done anything. You've done murder.
"Well... there was the first leakage—last September. And of course the Government started raising hell about it. So you had a very bright idea. You got rid of March and Mott and me. You didn't want March about the place anyway, you wanted Mott outside, and I was a damned nuisance, neglecting my work and drinking too much, so you fired me too. And that was that.
"By this time March had left Vanessa and gone to live on his own. He was angry in his silly sort of way, but he thought he was stinging you both badly by taking every available bean you had, and he'd found Iris Berington who was prepared to give him a good time while the money lasted. Harcourt thought it was going to last for ever.
"You were worried because your own income was not very big—certainly not enough to keep March quiet—and, in order to keep him quiet, you had to arrange the second leakage. It was easier this time for reasons that we both know. But you didn't want to have to do it again. You knew you couldn't go on for ever.
"Well... things came to a head. March was short of money and was worrying you. The Government was worrying you. Iris Berington was getting sick of Harcourt because he had no money. So she told him to get out. Then he got really angry. He told you that unless you found some money in a hurry so that he could stop Iris from taking her hook, he'd go and see Freda and tell her the whole bag of tricks. I imagine you asked him to lay off for a bit and said you'd get the money. You then arranged the third—and last—leakage. But unfortunately Mister Goebbels' agent didn't pay any too quickly and things came to a head between you and March. To be exact they came to a head last Monday."
Vanning threw his cigarette end into the fire. He stirred a little, then folded his hands in front of him.
"Harcourt was supposed to take Freda to Carola's party last Monday evening," said Bellamy. "He probably told you earlier in the day that unless you found some money, he'd tell Freda. You thought he was bluffing. He wasn't. You told him to hang on for a bit. You didn't believe he'd kill the goose that was laying the golden eggs by telling Freda the truth. But Harcourt had another scheme. He knew Freda pretty well. He knew that the news that Vanessa was your mistress would hit her for six. He knew that the one thing Freda couldn't stand was scandal. He thought that she'd find some money for him. He probably thought she'd have enough anyway to keep Iris quiet for a bit. He told Iris that he was going to get money from Freda, but he didn't tell her why.
"You know the rest. He went to see Freda. He had a cocktail with her and he told her the whole bag of tricks. Naturally, Freda decided at once not to go to Carola's party. She tried to get in touch with you. She couldn't because you were with me instructing me to investigate the propaganda leakages. After you left me at the Berkeley Buttery you went off to your office at the 'C' Bureau. You heard that Freda had been telephoning you so you went out. You probably had dinner somewhere and then you went home. You were beginning to wonder if March had really had the nerve to blow the gaff to Freda. You came into the Hyde Apartments by the back door in the passage. You came up the service stairs and through the side door. Freda was here. It was probably about half past ten and she told you plenty. She told you all about it in no measured terms. Well... that was all right.... but I imagine that while she was talking to you she remembered the fact that you had been paying March a lot of money. He would have told her that. She probably asked you where you had been getting it. And then, while she was speaking, that awful idea came into her head... that it was you who had been selling the propaganda schemes...."
Bellamy stopped and looked hard at Vanning. Vanning said nothing. He was looking at the floor. Bellamy threw away his cigarette end and lit another.
"That was a bit too much, wasn't it, Philip?" he said. "You lost your temper, didn't you... and you strangled Freda. Then you began to think of a way out of the job. It didn't take you long to get an idea. The thing for you to do was to arrange an alibi for yourself.
"You took Freda's fur coat out of the wardrobe and you put it on her. You put the little velvet hat on the table beside her. You did this because you were going to get through to Vanessa, and you were going to ask her to telephone through to your office and say she was Freda and ask for you to telephone her at eleven-thirty, and then she was to telephone me at Carola's party and say that she was Freda, that she had a cold, and that she wanted to see me urgently. The fact that Freda was supposed to have a cold and to be urgent about something would get over the voice problem.
"Vanessa... not knowing why she was doing it... said she would. She'd do anything for you, wouldn't she, Philip? And she didn't know then that you were a murderer. You told her to make those telephone calls just after eleven. That gave you time to get back to your office and arrive almost immediately after Vanessa, pretending to be Freda, had telephoned you. A first-class alibi, which could be confirmed by your secretary, and by me and the maid at Carola's who gave me the message.
"But you realised that these telephone calls from Vanessa pretending to be Freda would have to come from outside the Hyde Apartments. They had to. You had to have a reason why Freda hadn't telephoned from her own apartment either on the private wire or on the ordinary telephone. That's why you put her fur coat on. The fur coat showed that she had been out and that she had telephoned your office and me while she was out.
"You slipped up there, Philip. You slipped up badly. When I came here and found Freda, I wondered why she was lying on the bed wearing a fur coat. I felt it. It was quite dry. So was her hair. And the velvet hat on the table was unspotted. I knew that she hadn't been out. I wondered why, in a warm room, she should be wearing a fur coat.
"I soon found out. When Meynell told me that Freda had telephoned from outside, that neither the private wire or the house fine had been used for the calls to your office and to me, then I knew that some other woman had made the calls, that the murderer had put a fur coat on to Freda's dead body, so that it should appear that she'd gone out."
Bellamy grinned at Vanning.
"It was a pity that you forgot that it had been raining all the time," he said. "Freda's fur coat ought to have been wet."
Vanning said hoarsely: "My God... what a fool I was ... I forgot about the rain. . .
"Quite," said Bellamy pleasantly. "Well, it wasn't very difficult for me to guess who it was had done the telephoning. Who knew that I was at Carola's party? Whoever telephoned me there must have been a woman who knew that I was there. Vanessa left before I did. So it had to be her.
"Directly the Berington told me that Harcourt had said he was going to get some money from Freda I guessed the rest.
"You thought you were sitting pretty. There were two first-class suspects for the murder. March and me. And Berington was going round shouting her head off that March had killed Freda. So I faked a little additional evidence in the shape of that cigarette end, just to keep you happy, and to give me a chance to get the other information I wanted.
"You thought something out to keep Harcourt quiet for the moment. You telephoned through to Ferdie Mott late on Monday night and told him to let Harcourt win a couple of hundred pounds at poker. You thought that would keep Harcourt easy for a bit until you could get some more money for him. Harcourt kept quiet. Harcourt probably suspected that you had killed Freda but it was no business of his to say so while you kept him supplied with money. And you killed him before he could talk.
"Once Harcourt was dead then everyone would know that he was the murderer. They'd think he'd chucked himself under the car. And you pulled a marvellous bit of work that didn't come off. When I arranged that interview between you and March and brought him along tight, you put that typewritten note and the key in his waistcoat pocket. The note that was supposed to be from Freda to him. You knew damned well that the people at Jordayne Court had never had a good look at you and Vanessa when you kept your love trysts there. The police and everyone else were going to believe that Jordayne Court was the love-nest run by Harcourt and Freda. More proof that he killed her. More motive.
"Of course you told Vanessa all about killing Freda. But you didn't tell her the real reason why you killed Freda. You probably told Vanessa that you killed Freda because Freda had threatened to hound Vanessa into the divorce court. So Vanessa played ball with you. She was, I imagine, terribly shocked and horrified, but she thought that you had done it in the heat of uncontrollable temper and a desire to save her reputation. And a woman will do anything for the man she loves.
"All I had to do then was to check up that Vanessa was in this with you. So I wrote a letter to Carola in which I suggested that Harcourt was your wife's lover. I asked her to show this letter to Freda. Then I went and saw Vanessa and she played up to the idea. She told me that she knew Harcourt had been having an affaire with Freda, that this was why she'd thrown him out and this was why he'd killed Freda. Poor old Vanessa ... she worked awfully hard to save your neck didn't she? And you both thought it had come off.
"Finally, of course, I go dashing along to Jordayne Court and find the copy propaganda schemes which you had planted there so carefully. These were going to prove that it was Freda who'd been selling the propaganda, that she and March were the people responsible for the leakages.
"It was all jolly good," Bellamy went on. "But it wasn't quite good enough. Was it, Philip?"
Vanning said: "You talked about doing a deal. Well... you'd better do a deal. You're in a jam yourself. And you're wrong about something. If you think that the idea was that only Freda and Harcourt should be suspected about the propaganda business you're slightly off the rails."
He leaned forward. He was smiling.
"Freda and Harcourt and you," he said. "It might interest you to know that the Special Branch have suspected you from the first—about the propaganda leakages. It's all very well your being so clever about who killed who, but that fact won't save your skin. If you've got any sense you're going to play this my way. You're going to let them go on believing that March killed Freda. If you do that then I might be able to make the other job easier for you.... Maybe I can still save your skin over that. Harbell, of the Special Branch, told me himself that he was waiting to get you. The whole reason for ray putting you on the job was because they asked me to... I . .
"Save your breath, Philip," said Bellamy. "I've been working for the Special Branch for seven years. That set-up was my idea. We were tricking you. We wanted to know who you were selling the stuff to, and how you were getting it out of the country. Well, we shall know all that now. That's easy. You sacked Ferdie Mott so that he could look after that end. Once he was out of the 'C' Bureau he couldn't be suspect. He started Mott's Club as a blind. He hasn't made enough out of that place to keep himself in comfort, but he's talking about buying estates in the country.
"Mott will do all the talking we want when the time comes."
"If they get him," said Vanning. "He's probably in France by now."
"I don't think so," said Bellamy with a grin. "You see Carola's looking after him. She's been working with me on this job from the start. All that stuff about her being annoyed with my drinking was all fake. We'd arranged all that. Just as we'd arranged that row at her party. I knew Ferdie was crazy about her and that if e thought she'd given me the air he'd make a play for her. Well... that suited the book all right. She's been able to keep a close eye on him ever since."
Vanning said bitterly: "You think of everything, don't you?"
"I try to," Bellamy replied modestly. "And by the way, Philip, it was quite clever of you to drop that note that Freda was writing to me when you returned home by the bedside, where you thought I shouldn't see it but the police would. I suppose she was writing to me because you'd probably told her that I was the fellow who was stealing the propaganda, and, after she'd had her talk with March, she thought she'd get me round and have a talk with me and tell me to make a clean breast of things or something like that.
"Incidentally, I noticed that there was only one sheet of notepaper left on the pad, under that unfinished note. I suppose you used that sheet to type that fake note addressed from Jordayne Court to Harcourt and signed 'F'."
Vanning shrugged his shoulders.
"Well ... it looks like a showdown," he said grimly. "I tried it and it didn't come off... that's all. Life's damned funny, ain't it, Nicky?"
Bellamy said with a wry grin: "Yes ... it's a scream."
Vanning got up. He walked slowly to the sideboard and mixed himself a whisky and soda. He said:
"What was the deal you offered? Does that still go?"
Bellamy said: "Yes."
He put his hand in his hip pocket and produced the Colt automatic. He laid it on the table by the side of the fireplace.
"Naturally we don't want a lot of publicity about this," he said. "Freda's murderer will be undiscovered. March was killed in an accident and I'm going to suggest that you're so heartbroken over your wife's death that you put a bullet through your head. You'd better do it fairly soon too...." Vanning spun round.
"That's a hell of a deal, isn't it?" he said. His voice was hoarse. "And what do I get out of that?"
"You don't get hanged by the neck until you are dead," said Bellamy. "And we leave Vanessa alone. That's the deal. There's a Special Branch man on the other side of the road... now... watching this place. He'll be on your tail all the time. If you're alive tomorrow morning you'll be picked up and you'll swing. If you're picked up to-morrow Vanessa will be arrested as an 'accessory after the fact' in connection with Freda's murder. Incidentally, I'm going to say this for Vanessa. I don't believe she knows anything about the propaganda business. I don't think she'd have stood for that."
"She doesn't," said Vanning. "I give you my word on that... for what it's worth."
He mixed another drink.
"Will you swear, Nicky, that if I take the quick way out you'll let her go," he asked.
Bellamy said: "That's a bet. I give you my word of honour."
Vanning drained his glass.
"All right, Nicky," he said. "It's a deal"
He leaned up against the sideboard.
Bellamy went out into the hall. He put on his coat and hat. He looked back through the open door into the sitting-room. Vanning was still leaning up against the sideboard.
"You're going, Nicky?" he said. "Well... so long!"
"'Bye, Philip," said Bellamy.
He closed the front door quietly behind him.
VANESSA was reading a novel by the fireside when Bellamy was shown in. She said, shaking a finger at him:
"Here's a nice time to come. You're late. I didn't know that unpunctuality was another of your vices."
Bellamy said: "I'm sorry, Vanessa. I've been rather busy doing a little extra drinking this evening. I find it rather difficult to get enough drinking done in the time at my disposal."
"You ought to do some work," said Vanessa. "You ought to be an air warden or something."
"I know," said Bellamy. "But I don't like work. Work is the ruin of the drinking classes."
He sat down in the armchair opposite her and lit a cigarette.
"What about that investigation you were supposed to be doing for Philip?" said Vanessa. "I suppose you're lying down on that too. You're incorrigible, Nicky."
She put down her book on the small table beside her. Then she looked at the door and said: "My God!"
Bellamy looked over his shoulder. Carola was standing in the doorway.
"What, in the name of goodness, has happened?" asked Vanessa, her beautiful eyes wide. "I thought you and Ferdie were going off to get married in Paris. What has happened, Carola?"
Carola looked at Bellamy. Her eyes were smiling.
"It was quite awful and fearfully exciting, dear," she said to Vanessa. "When we got to Victoria some men came and took Ferdie into the Station Master's office, and they searched his luggage."
"Don't be so mysterious, Carola," said Bellamy. "Tell us what they found ... if they did find anything. They were probably looking to see if he was taking any butter away with him for the honeymoon."
"Don't you believe it," said Carola. "They found a whole lot of that propaganda stuff that Philip's been losing all over the place. It looks as if Ferdie is the one who's been doing the stealing."
"Good God!" said Vanessa. "How amazing. ... I wonder what Philip will say to that. You see, Nicky, the police have stolen a march on you. You ought to have suspected Ferdie. I never did like him an awful lot."
"It just shows you," said Bellamy. "You never know... that's what I always say." He got up.
"Well, Carola," he said. "Now that Ferdie's got himself in bad, I'm going to make another try for you. I'm going to turn over a new leaf, I'm going to be marvellous. Well ... is it a go? You know you worship the ground I walk on."
Carola sat on the arm of his chair. She looked down at him. She said:
"You've got your nerve, haven't you? Perhaps I'll give you another chance."
Her eyes laughed at him.
He got up. He said:
"Vanessa, I'm going off with this young woman to make up for lost time. And let this be a lesson to you, Carola. Never give up a man just because he's lazy and incompetent and drinks like a fish and bounce straight into the arms of a good-looking propaganda stealer again. It just isn't done. Come on, woman."
He put his arm round her waist and led her to the door. He said over his shoulder:
"'Bye, Vanessa. Be good and don't let your feet get wet."
Vanessa laughed. They went out.
Outside in the dark street Bellamy took Carola in his arms.
They stood there in silence, their lips clinging, until the
discreet cough of a War Reserve policeman put an end to the
embrace.
Bellamy said: "I'll get you a cab. You go home. I'm going round to Sydney's Bar. Perhaps there'll be a telephone call for me. I'll ring you later. I'll give you instructions about supper somewhere, you faithless wench."
"Very good, Sire," she said. "You've got to admit that I've been a very good girl. The way I stood Ferdie off was too wonderful for words. I hope you've been as faithful as I have."
Bellamy said with a grin: "In the course of my investigations it is sometimes necessary for me to make advances to women. I hate it, of course, but I must do my duty whatever the cost may be. See?"
"Like hell," said Carola. "Let me catch you investigating any women, and you'll wonder what's hit you."
He stopped a passing cab... put her inside.
"Au revoir, poppet," he said. "It's been fun... hasn't it?"
"Is it all right?" asked Carola. "Is everything all right?"
"It's going to be," said Bellamy. "I did a deal with Vanning. I'll be seeing you...."
He disappeared into the darkness.
BELLAMY went into Sydney's Bar on the first floor in Conduit Street. Sydney was polishing the chromium counter.
"'Allo, Mr. Bellamy," he said cheerfully. "I wondered where you'd got to. Believe it or not, I never seem to see any of the regulars these days. Mr. March 'asn't been in neither. A double Haig?
"Correct," said Bellamy.
He leaned up against the bar. Sydney leaned over towards him. Bellamy began to sing. Sydney joined in. They harmonised. It sounded terrible:
"If the sergeant steals your rum—never mind.
If the sergeant steals your rum—never mind,
He's entitled to a tot,
But he'll take the bloody lot,
For he's just an awful sot.
Never M-i-n-d!"
The telephone began to ring in the booth in the corner of the bar.
Bellamy said: "That'll be for me." He went into the box. It was Harbell. He said:
"It's O.K., Nicky. Lazenby came through ten minutes ago. He was in the hallway at the Hyde and heard the shot. He went up with the porter. Vanning did the job all right." Bellamy said: "So that's that."
"Our press people will release it in the morning," said Harbell. "Suicide brought on by strain of war-work and his wife's death. It ties the ends up all right. I had a long talk with Mott. He's making a full statement to-morrow. Everything's in order."
"Swell," said Bellamy. "Do I get any leave?"
"You get a week," said Harbell. "There's all this stuff about aliens on the East Coast to be done. You start in at the end of next week. And no nonsense."
"You lousy nigger driver," said Bellamy. "I want to get married."
"That's all right," said Harbell. "You can get married a lot in a week. So long, Lothario."
"Sucks to you," said Bellamy.
He hung up.
He went back to the bar and drank his whisky. He put on his hat.
"'Bye, Sydney," he said. "I'll be seeing you sometime...."
"Good-night, Mr. Bellamy," said Sydney.
As Bellamy went out a woman came into the bar. She was pretty and well-dressed. She ordered a drink. She said to Sydney:
"Who is that man? I've seen him quite a bit. Usually in Faloppi's Club. He looks attractive. What does he do?"
Sydney shrugged his shoulders. "Believe it or not, he's just a playboy," he said. "He doesn't do a thing, Mrs. Lake. He just hangs around and does a little drinking...."
"A Trap for Bellamy,"
Dodd Mead, New York, NY, 1941
"Premeditated Murder,"
Avon, New York, NY, 1943
THE admirers of Lemmy Caution and Slim Callaghan—and their name is legion—will warmly welcome Johnny Vallon, a new addition to the Cheyney Gallery, who makes his debut in the present story, and, in fact, dominates it in spite of the presence of many ladies with distinct points of appeal. Johnny is a notable creation, a tough egg returned from war service in the East to team up with Chennault's Investigations. Johnny finds this private-enquiry business a fascinating sort of life, sometimes tedious, sometimes tremendously thrilling, but at any rate a man's game—that's what appeals to Johnny Vallon; and one day a matter of murder did come his way—right in his own office in Long Acre, headquarters of Chennault's Investigations. An urgent phone call, a dash from his Kensington flat to the office, and there was Joe Chennault slumped over his desk, still with the surprised look that dead men sometimes have, for death is a surprising thing. Joe was a swell guy, with the spirit of a lion, but a definitely weak heart, and even the doctors were satisfied that death was due to natural causes. Not so Johnny Vallon, and here the amazing storytelling gift of Mr. Cheyney takes command and sweeps on to an amazing dénouement.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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