N Or M? Part 21

He wandered down again and stared at Smugglers' Rest. A tidy little place. Nice bit of garden. Nice view.

He eyed it benignly. "I would say such wonderful things to you," he hummed.

Through a side door of the house a man came out with a hoe and pa.s.sed out of sight through a little gate.

Albert, who grew nasturtiums and a bit of lettuce in his back garden, was instantly interested.

He edged nearer to Smugglers' Rest and pa.s.sed through the open gate. Yes, tidy little place.

He circled slowly round it. Some way below him, reached by steps, was a flat plateau planted as a vegetable garden. The man who had come out of the house was busy down there.

Albert watched him with interest for some minutes. Then he turned to contemplate the house.

Tidy little place, he thought for the third time. Just the sort of place a retired Naval gentleman would like to have. This was where the master had dined that night.

Slowly Albert circled round and round the house. He looked at it much as he had looked at the gate of Sans Souci - hopefully, as though asking it to tell him something.

And as he went he hummed softly to himself, a twentieth century Blondel in search of his master.

"There would be such wonderful things to do," hummed Albert. "I would say such wonderful things to you. There would be such wonderful things to do -" Gone wrong somewhere, hadn't he? He'd hummed that bit before.

Hallo, funny, so the Commander kept pigs, did he? A long drawn grunt came to him. Funny - seemed almost as though it were underground. Funny place to keep pigs.

Couldn't be pigs. No, it was someone having a bit of shut-eye. Bit of shut-eye in the cellar, so it seemed...

Right kind of day for a snooze, but funny place to go for it. Humming like a b.u.mble bee, Albert approached nearer.

That's where it was coming from - through that little grating. Grunt, grunt, grunt. Snoooooore. Snoooooore. Snoooooore - grunt, grunt, grunt. Funny sort of snore - reminded him of something...

"Coo!" said Albert. "That's what it is - S.O.S. - Dot, dot, dot, dash, dash, dash, dot, dot, dot."

He looked round him with a quick glance.

Then, kneeling down, he tapped a soft message on the iron grille of the little window of the cellar.

Chapter 13.

Although Tuppence went to bed in an optimistic frame of mind, she suffered a severe reaction in those waking hours of early dawn when human morale sinks to its lowest.

On descending to breakfast, however, her spirits were raised by the sight of a letter on her plate addressed in a painfully backhanded script.

This was no communication from Douglas, Raymond, or Cyril, or any other of the camouflaged correspondence that arrived punctually for her, and which included this morning a brightly coloured Bonzo postcard with a scrawled "Sorry I haven't written before. All well, Maudie," on it.

Tuppence thrust this aside and opened the letter.

Dear Patricia (it ran), Auntie Grace is, I am afraid, much worse today. The doctors do not actually say she is sinking, but I am afraid that there cannot be much hope. If you want to see her before the end I think it would be well to come today. If you will take the 10:20 train to Yarrow, a friend will meet you with his car.

Shall look forward to seeing you again, dear, in spite of the melancholy reason.

Yours ever, Penelope Playne.

It was all Tuppence could do to restrain her jubilation.

Good old Penny Playne.

With some difficulty she a.s.sumed a mourning expression - and sighed heavily as she laid the letter down.

To the two sympathetic listeners present, Mrs O'Rourke and Miss Minton, she imparted the contents of the letter, and enlarged freely on the personality of Aunt Gracie, her indomitable spirit, her indifference to air raids and danger, and her vanquishment by illness. Miss Minton tended to be curious as to the exact nature of Aunt Grace's sufferings and compared them interestedly with the diseases of her own cousin Selina. Tuppence, hovering slightly between dropsy and diabetes, found herself slightly confused, but compromised on complications with the kidneys. Mrs O'Rourke displayed an avid interest as to whether Tuppence would benefit pecuniarily by the old lady's death and learned that dear Cyril had always been Aunt Gracie's favourite grandnephew as well as being her G.o.dson.

After breakfast, Tuppence rang up the tailor's and cancelled a fitting of a coat and skirt for that afternoon, and then sought out Mrs Perenna and explained that she might be away from home for a night or two.

Mrs Perenna expressed the usual conventional sentiments. She looked tired this morning, and had an anxious hara.s.sed expression.

"Still no news of Mr Meadowes," she said. "It really is most odd, is it not?"

"I'm sure he must have met with an accident," sighed Mrs Blenkensop. "I always said so."

"Oh, but surely, Mrs Blenkensop, the accident would have been reported by this time."

"Well, what do you think?" asked Tuppence.

Mrs Perenna shook her head.

"I really don't know what to say. I quite agree that he can't have gone away of his own free will. He would have sent word by now."

"It was always a most unjustified suggestion," said Mrs Blenkensop warmly. "That horrid Major Bletchley started it. No, if it isn't an accident, it must be loss of memory. I believe that is far more common than is generally known, especially at times of stress like those we are living through now."

Mrs Perenna nodded her head. She pursed up her lips with rather a doubtful expression. She shot a quick look at Tuppence.

"You know, Mrs Blenkensop," she said, "we don't know very much about Mr Meadowes, do we?"

Tuppence said sharply: "What do you mean?"

"Oh, please don't take me up so sharply. I don't believe it - not for a minute."

"Don't believe what?"

"This story that's going around."

"What story? I haven't heard anything."

"No - well - perhaps people wouldn't tell you. I don't really know how it started. I've an idea that Mr Cayley mentioned it first. Of course he's rather a suspicious man, if you know what I mean?"

Tuppence contained herself with as much patience as possible.

"Please tell me," she said.

"Well, it was just a suggestion, you know, that Mr Meadowes might be an enemy agent - one of, these dreadful Fifth Column people."

Tuppence put all she could of an outraged Mrs Blenkensop into her indignant: "I never heard of such an absurd idea!"

"No. I don't think there's anything in it. But, of course, Mr Meadowes was seen about a good deal with that German boy - and I believe he asked a lot of questions about the chemical processes at the factory - and so people think that a perhaps the two of them might have been working together."

Tuppence said: "You don't think there's any doubt about Carl, do you, Mrs Perenna?"

She saw a quick spasm distort the other woman's face.

"I wish I could think it was not true."

Tuppence said gently: "Poor Sheila..."

Mrs Perenna's eyes flashed.

"Her heart's broken, the poor child. Why should it be that way? Why couldn't it be someone else she set her heart upon?"

Tuppence shook her head.

"Things don't happen that way."

"You're right." The other spoke in a deep, bitter voice. "It's got to be the way things tear you to pieces... It's got to be sorrow and bitterness and dust and ashes. I'm sick of the cruelty - the unfairness of this world. I'd like to smash it and break it - and let us all start again near to the earth and without these rules and laws and the tyranny of nation over nation. I'd like -"

A cough interrupted her. A deep, throaty cough. Mrs O'Rourke was standing in the doorway, her vast bulk filling the aperture completely.

"Am I interrupting now?" she demanded.

Like a sponge across a slate, all evidence of Mrs Perenna's outburst vanished from her face - leaving in its wake only the mild worried face of the proprietress of a guest house whose guests were causing trouble.

"No, indeed, Mrs O'Rourke." she said. "We were just talking about what had become of Mr Meadowes. It's amazing the police can find no trace of him."

"Ah, the police!" said Mrs O'Rourke in tones of easy contempt. "What good would they be? No good at all, at all! Only fit for finding motor cars, and dropping on poor wretches who haven't taken out their dog licenses."

"What's your theory, Mrs O'Rourke?" asked Tuppence.

"You'll have been hearing the story that's going about?"

"About his being a Fascist, and an enemy agent - yes," said Tuppence coldly.

"It might be true now," said Mrs O'Rourke thoughtfully, "for there's been something about the man that's intrigued me from the beginning. I've watched him, you know." She smiled directly t Tuppence - and like all Mrs O'Rourke's smiles it had a vaguely terrifying quality - the smile of an ogress. "He'd not the look of a man who'd retired from business and had nothing to do with himself. If I was backing my judgment, I'd say he came here with a purpose."

"And when the police got on his track he disappeared, is that it?" demanded Tuppence.

"It might be so," said Mrs O'Rourke.

"What's your opinion, Mrs Perenna?"

"I don't know," sighed Mrs Perenna. "It's a most vexing thing to happen. It makes so much talk."

"Ah! talk won't hurt you. They're happy now out there on the terrace wondering and surmising. They'll have it in the end that the quiet inoffensive man was going to blow us all up in our beds with bombs."

"You haven't told us what you think," said Tuppence.

Mrs O'Rourke smiled, that same slow ferocious smile.

"I'm thinking that the man is safe somewhere - quite safe..."

Tuppence thought: "She might say that if she knew... But he isn't where she thinks he is!"

She went up to her room to get ready. Betty Sprot came running out of the Cayleys' bedroom with a smile of mischievous and impish glee on her face.

"What have you been up to, minx?" demanded Tuppence.

Betty gurgled, "Goosey, goosey gander..."

Tuppence chanted: "Whither will you wander? Upstairs!" She s.n.a.t.c.hed up Betty high over her head. "Downstairs!" She rolled her on the floor - At this minute Mrs Sprot appeared and Betty was led off to be attired for her walk.

"Hide?" said Betty hopefully. "Hide?"

"You can't play hide and seek now," said Mrs Sprot.

Tuppence went into her room and donned her hat. (A nuisance having to wear a hat - Tuppence Beresford never did - but Patricia Blenkensop would certainly wear one, Tuppence felt.) Somebody, she noted, had altered the position of the hats in her hat cupboard. Had someone been searching her room? Well, let them. They wouldn't find anything to cast doubt on blameless Mrs Blenkensop.

She left Penelope Playne's letter artistically on the dressing table and went downstairs and out of the house.

It was ten o'clock as she turned out of the gate. Plenty of time. She looked up at the sky and in doing so stepped into a dark puddle by the gatepost, but without apparently noticing it she went on.

Her heart was dancing wildly. Success - success - they were going to succeed.

II.

Yarrow was a small country station where the village was some distance from the railway.

Outside the station a car was waiting. A good-looking young man was driving it. He touched his peaked cap to Tuppence, but the gesture seemed hardly natural.

Tuppence kicked the off side tire dubiously.

"Isn't this rather flat?"

"We haven't far to go, madam."

She nodded and got in. They drove, not towards the village, but towards the downs. After winding up over a hill, they took a side track that dropped sharply into a deep cleft. From the shadow of a small copse of trees a figure stepped out to meet them.

The car stopped and Tuppence, getting out, went to meet Antony Marsdon.