Not for export, p.14
Not For Export, page 14
Hambledon and Spelmann went to Ditz's house to see him that night and found him finishing his supper. His tactful wife excused herself from the company; she had to be up early, the days were long, she was not so young as she had been, and so forth. She went to bed and the three men settled down before the dying fire.
Ditz said that things had been pretty quiet in the M.V.D. office for a week or more until tonight when there was a little excitement. Apparently orders had been received that a man named Zardin or something——
"Er—Zolbin?"
"Zolbin, that's right. Zolbin." He was trying to get to the Western sector and was to be captured at all costs. "Must have been important; they put on the whole show for him. Our boss was fair hopping, and when they brought in this Zolbin our boss was that delighted he didn't know what to take for it."
"Did you see the prisoner?"
"Oh, yes. I saw him when they brought him in in our bullet proof Mercedes, and again when they chucked him in the cell. I don't know what he'd had," said Ditz with something like awe in his voice, "but I've never in all my life seen a bloke with such an 'angover. Mister, his eyes was going all ways."
"What are they doing with him, do you know?"
"Nothing, tonight. He was so far gone they couldn't get nothing out of him, one of our boys told me. Oh, and one thing they was all laughing about. This Zolbin, there was two M.V.D. men came with him from wherever he came from and they lost him. Lost him! Swanky headquarters blokes from Moscow or somewhere, and they go and lose him. Our boss is having 'em in in the morning, and I bet he don't offer 'em a bunch of lovely flowers. I wish I could be in the room to 'ear it all, but they'll tell me. They always tells old Ditz, the boys do. Harmless, that's what I am." He tittered.
"Well, listen," said Hambledon. "If anything interesting happens about Zolbin in the morning, could you let us know at once?"
"At once. What exactly do you mean, at once?"
"As soon as the excitement's over, whenever that is."
Ditz looked thoughtful. "I don't get home till late, as you know, and I won't be seen talking to you where I goes for my pint midday. A passing word 'ud be all right if carefully done, but not a long talk if you get me. Tell you what I could do; I could 'ave one of my attacks."
"Attacks?"
"'Eart." Ditz laid his hand over his heart. "My old ticker ain't too good and I do get attacks sometimes. They don't last, but when I do have one—ach! I suppose they'll finish me one of these days."
"But what happens when you have an attack?"
"They sends me 'ome for the rest of the day. They're pretty good like that; they knows there's no one else can manage them old boilers like I can. Mister, they come out of the Ark. I know how to 'umour them, see?"
"Very well," said Hambledon, getting to his feet. "If anything should happen which you think would interest us, you'll come home, will you? Ring this number," said Hambledon, writing his hotel telephone number upon a scrap of paper, "and we'll come down here and see you. All right?"
"All right, providing you makes it worth my while."
"Don't worry, that'll be all right too."
As they walked away from the house Spelmann remarked mildly that the Herr Ditz was not really an admirable type.
"The typical paid informer," said Hambledon. "Why? Does it matter?"
"I feel I want a bath after talking to a creature like that."
"My dear Spelmann! You wait," said Hambledon with sudden passion, "you wait until you feel like that when you see your own face in the glass."
Spelmann opened his mouth to answer, glanced at the grim face beside him, and held his peace.
Early in the afternoon of the next day Ditz rang up the hotel from a call box in the Western sector on his way home. He said merely that he would be at home that afternoon and hung up the receiver without awaiting a reply. Hambledon went alone this time. Spelmann was at Police Headquarters in consultation about quite another matter.
Hambledon heard a confused story of how the arrested Zolbin had turned out not to be the Zolbin they wanted at all but someone else. The story naturally came as no surprise to Hambledon, but he did not say so. The M.V.D. commandant was no end cast down, according to Ditz, especially after the remarks he had addressed to the two M.V.D. officers from Moscow or somewhere, they who had lost Zolbin originally. Apparently he had swapped clothes with a soldier and it was this soldier who was caught.
"I suppose," said Tommy, "that the two Headquarters men were pretty cock-a-hoop about it all."
"Well, no. 'Course, they scored off the commandant and that's a thing doesn't happen every day, but it don't help them with Moscow, do it? Their man's still lost."
"What are they doing about it, do you know?"
"Going off after him. I was off-loading coke when they come out and I 'eard 'em say as they must catch him or else. And the other says yes, and if they don't catch him it'll be better to keep going straight on themselves. No sense in coming back, he says."
"Oh, really. But what is all this fuss about?"
"They was asking the first one—the soldier—where he'd put some papers. He'd stolen them, it seems."
"Stolen them? But Zolbin never got them at all. I know all about those papers."
Ditz stared. "But I heard the boys saying he'd taken his own designs from his office and skipped with them over to the Western sector. Then he got chased out of there back into the Russian sector, so he changed clothes with the soldier and skipped again."
This, about Zolbin's own designs, was a piece of real news to Hambledon.
"Any idea where he's gone?"
"Now, where would he go, mister?"
"I meant, to which part of the frontier?"
"No idea. Nor where the two Moscow blokes have gone, either."
"Have gone already?"
"Are going, then. And you don't catch me asking neither."
Hambledon returned to find Spelmann waiting for him and told him the news. "Zolbin is quite a star in his line, isn't he? I think somebody ought to do something about all this. I mean, those designs of his ought to interest us."
Spelmann nodded. "If those two M.V.D. men haven't started yet it should be possible to find out where they are going."
Hambledon picked up his hat and started for the door. "I'll go and see my people here, they'll find out."
Accordingly, enquiries were set afoot to find out where and when Andrei Ivanovich and Vassily Andreyevich of the M.V.D. were going. It was already known where they lodged and the rest was easy. They were handed on from one casual loiterer to another when they left their hotel the following morning, carrying their small suitcases. When they entered the Friedrichstrasse station there was yet another man studying a timetable near enough to the ticket office to hear what they said. He waited about the station long enough to make sure that they really had gone away by train and then returned to report. Hambledon received the news by telephone half an hour later.
"They went on the ten-fifteen from Friedrichstrasse station for Eisenach."
"Oh, did they," said Hambledon. "Eisenach in Thuringia, beyond Erfurt. Close to the zonal frontier."
"That's right. About ten miles from the frontier."
"Thank you very much indeed," said Tommy. "You are worth every penny of my income tax."
"Impossible," said the voice, and rang off.
Spelmann, summoned by a page from a bier-keller two doors away, came to Hambledon's room to find him studying a railway timetable and packing shaving kit, pyjamas, and a couple of clean collars into a brief case.
"We are going to Eisenach," he said, "on the train which leaves the Friedrichstrasse station at fourteen minutes past thirteen hours. Andrei and Vassily have started already, but I didn't want to travel with them. They saw us in that café when we were sitting at the next table and they ought to remember our distinguished features."
"They had a good look at us," nodded Spelmann. "Also, I remember, you said you were leaving for Cologne next day en route for Paris. They might remember that, too."
"They will reach Eisenach at twenty minutes past twenty hours," said Hambledon. "At least, so says the timetable. In actual fact, I expect they'll be lucky if they get there by midnight. We're supposed to arrive at twenty-one twenty-six."
"We shall probably be in good time for breakfast," said Spelmann resignedly. "What about personal papers?"
"Those we had the other day will do. Building accessories are likely to be wanted even in Thuringia. What were you, brewery fittings? That'll do, too. I must get a German suit, I fear. See you in half an hour."
The boy called Frett had been taken to Cologne by a friend of Hambledon's and accepted provisionally as page boy by the Kolnerhof Hotel. Here he was well fed and clothed and could have as many baths as he wanted. When the novelty of frequent washings wore off he was no more enthusiastic about them than is any other normal boy of fourteen. He was also kept firmly in order, along with his fellow chasseurs, since page boys of all races are just naturally young imps if not wisely restrained. He attended night school four nights a week, he worked hard and was considered promising, and his red head flitted like a flame along the hotel passages at the hall porter's cry of "Chass'!"
Five days after the riot at the Berlin police station, the same day as that on which Hambledon and Spelmann were travelling to Eisenach, Frett was spending his afternoon off wandering idly round the Dom Square at Cologne when he saw a man whom he recognized, one of the few people he knew whom he never wished to see again. Frett dodged behind the arcading of the corner shop opposite the main entrance of the railway station and watched Ackermann cross the tramlines towards the west end of the Cathedral.
"What's he here for?" muttered Frett. "No good, I'll be bound."
Frett followed at a distance, employing all the detective tactics he had learned at the cinema, but Ackermann scarcely looked round. He did not know anyone in Cologne and it did not occur to him that anyone there, might know him. He walked slowly and steadily across the front of the Cathedral and on up the Hohestrasse, occasionally stopping to look into shopwindows. He was quietly and respectably dressed and attracted no attention. About halfway up the Hohestrasse he turned right into an area of cleared ruins, where Frett had to take advantage of all the cover available to watch him without being seen.
There was a wide road here which had been cleared, its original granite setts still showing the fan-shaped patterns in which they had been laid. There were no buildings of any size here, but some enterprising person had taken advantage of a large flat area of concrete to build lockup garages. They went round three sides of an oblong space; upon the fourth side were large double doors. There was a rough but strongly built wall round the lockups which were, in fact, built against it, and there was barbed wire on the top of the wall to discourage any who might think of climbing over it. Frett knew the place well; it was one of his duties to guide motoring guests of the Kolnerhof to this place if they wished to garage their cars in safety. Ackermann slowed to a loitering pace and even stopped to stare about like one who looks for some familiar landmark now missing, but it was plain to Frett that his main interest was in the lockup garages. The double doors were wide open as they always were from eight in the morning till midnight, and the man in charge was sweeping the yard and stacking empty oilcans, wooden boxes, and similar debris tidily together at the far end to await removal.
Frett was peering from behind a contractor's hut when someone on the other side, whom he could not see, began to cough; a dreadful rattling cough of a kind which the boy had heard often enough before. Tuberculosis is common among the ill-housed and undernourished, even if they have not been in a concentration camp. Ackermann continued to hang about and the consumptive went on coughing until a neighbouring clock chimed a quarter to six, alarming Frett, who was due on duty again at six o'clock until midnight. However, at this point Ackermann, having apparently seen enough, walked quickly away and Frett dared not take time off to follow him. Frett did decide that it would not take a moment to have a look at the cougher on the other side of the hut so he circled round it and glanced at the man in passing. He saw a young man, thin to emaciation with great hollows below high Slav cheekbones and the heavy "frontal bar of Beethoven"; Frett did not know him at all, but Spelmann would have recognized him at once, for it was the younger Karas, once footman to the princely family of Pastolsky.
Frett rushed back to the hotel, washed hurriedly, hurled himself into his uniform, and arrived in the hall as the clock struck six, only to be sent back by the porter because the thick red hair had been inadequately brushed. Karas stayed where he was, watching proceedings at the lockup garage until it got dark, when he went away to eat hot sausage and drink hot coffee. He came back again later for he wanted to know what happened when the place closed for the night, if it did close at any regular hour. He had been watching the place for three days, "casing the joint," in the English thieves' argot; it took him some time to learn all he wanted to know, for he was not a burglar by profession and this was, in fact, his first attempt. He did not notice Ackermann and would not have recognized him if he had; Gruiter and Edberg he had known, but from Ackermann he had been mercifully withheld.
Late that night, after half-past eleven, there came to the Kolnerhof a traveller desiring accommodation for the night and a garage for his brand-new Jaguar. His cases were unloaded by the porter and Frett was sent with the motorist to pilot him to the lockups. Frett sat, very smart and upright, in the front seat beside the driver; as the long car turned this way and that to get a straight run in through the big doors, the headlights lit up two lurking figures in different patches of shadow nearby; one was Ackermann, the other Karas, and Frett's sharp eyes saw them both.
"That's queer," he said to himself, "both watchin' this place earlier and both still 'ere."
He nipped out of the car as it stopped in the yard to open the driver's door for him. The garage attendant came forward, and the motorist addressed him in German with a strong English accent.
"I'm awfully sorry," he said, "'fraid I'm rather late. Can you find room for my 'bus, do you think?"
The attendant said pleasantly that the Herr was by no means too late. "It still wants a quarter of an hour to midnight when I close and now I can go away at once for you are taking my last vacant lockup." He opened a pair of doors, admiring the Jaguar as he did so. "Was für eine schöne auto! We must take great care not to scrape her. Back once more, mein Herr, and then forward slowly. So-o-o!"
While this was going on, Frett stood unnoticed behind the car, biting his fingers and asking himself what the Herr Hambledon would do under these interesting circumstances, for Frett assumed Hambledon to be a sort of super-detective whom even the police obeyed. Here was one of the criminals for whom his hero had been searching. Would a real feller such as Frett wished to be go tamely home and leave him loose? Never, never. He knew he would have little chance if Ackermann saw him in the open and his spine crept at the thought of Ackie and the things he did to people. What would a sensible man do? Conceal himself, of course, and collect evidence, for he was sure Ackermann had designs upon one of the cars. At this point his eye fell upon the collection of empty oilcans and boxes, now a sizeable barricade.
The Jaguar was eased into the vacant lockup, the doors were padlocked, and the key given to the motorist who paused on his way out and looked round the yard.
"The Herr desires——" began the attendant, who wanted to get home.
"Nothing, thanks. I only wondered where that boy had gone to."
"Cut off back to the hotel, I expect. Them young imps, they can't wait a minute."
"They're generally patient when there's a tip in the offing. Never mind, no doubt I shall see him in the morning."
His footsteps retreated and there followed the squeak-bump of the big doors being shut and the sound of a key being turned. Silence and loneliness settled upon the yard until a red head arose from behind the oilcans.
"I think I'm a fool," said Frett forlornly, "an' if something don't happen I look like getting the sack out of this. I could climb them gates, but what it'd do to my new uniform——"
14. SLEEP WELL, SOLDIER
A long five minutes passed, and Frett was beginning to creep out on a tour of inspection when a sound at the yard gates sent him scurrying back to cover. An arm appeared over the gate followed by the rest of a man's body, the man got over the top and dropped down inside to lean panting against the door trying to strangle a fit of coughing.
"Poor old Bellows-to-mend," commented Frett.
Karas pulled himself together, picked up a satchel he had dropped over the gate when he climbed it, and came along the yard peering at the numbers painted on the lockup doors. He found the one he sought in the middle of the row on Frett's right, took out a hacksaw from his satchel, and began to saw through the hasp of the padlock.
"Car stealers," muttered Frett disgustedly. "Car stealers, that's all and not even one from our 'otel at that. I shan't half get the bird for this."
Karas was not very expert and the light was bad. He broke a saw blade and went over towards the gates, where the light was better, to replace it. Frett's impatience rose to fever point. There were three tradesmen's delivery vans parked in the open, to be taken out early in the morning. They were on the opposite side of the yard from the busy Karas and Frett wondered whether he could creep along behind them and be over the gate and away before—— The padlock fell with a rattle and Karas pulled open the lockup doors. He went inside. A car door opened and closed again and presently the car itself came out backwards with Karas pushing it. He turned the steering wheel with a hand through the window and the vehicle backed round towards Frett and his barricade. The car was a Citroen and bore the insignia of the French Army headquarters staff. Disaster seemed imminent when Karas snatched at the brake and stopped the car. After a moment's rest he took the brake off again and began to push the Citroen forward towards the yard doors.
