Complete works of peter.., p.352
Complete Works of Peter Cheyney. Illustrated, page 352
Fells said: "I don't quite understand what you mean by that. I don't see how my life touches yours, Tangier. I'm not going to allow it to."
She laughed. She said: "It isn't a matter of what you're going to allow or what I'm going to allow. It's a question of facts, Hubert. You're in love with me, aren't you?"
He thought for a moment; then he said: "I don't know how you know that, but of course I am. I've always been in love with you. I always shall be."
"Precisely," said Tangier in a matter-of-fact tone. "Now let me tell you something. I'm very much in love with you. I have been since the first time I saw you, and whilst it may be very nice for you to want to immolate yourself on the altar of your own conscience, I don't see why I should be included in the process."
Fells said: "You're a most bewildering and amazing person, aren't you? Do you realise what I was cashiered for doing? Do you realise what I was sentenced to prison for?"
Tangier gave a deliberate little yawn. She said: "My dear man, I know all about it and I think nothing of it. All those things happened in quite a different world to the one that you and I are walking in to-day. In any event I've made up my mind that I'm not going to allow it to matter. In other words, I'm going to pursue you relentlessly until I get my way."
Fells laughed. He realised suddenly that it was the first time he'd heard himself laugh for years. He felt extraordinarily happy—excited. He said:
"Tangier, tell me, to what ends are you going to pursue me? What's at the back of that attractive head of yours?"
She said: "My dear Hubert, by fair means or foul I'm going to marry you—I hope. I believe you'd like to marry me and I think it would be a very good thing for both of us. Besides which," she said, "I'm thirty-four years of age and may not get another chance." She laughed. She got up. She came close to him. She said softly:
"Are you going to turn me down, Hubert?"
Fells brought himself back to earth with a jerk. He said: "It's not as easy as you think, Tangier. Even if all the things you say are true, it still wouldn't be easy. Anyhow, not while this war's on."
She said: "I don't know about that. Everything is possible if one wants it enough." She moved away from him; picked up his glass. She said: "I'm going to give you another drink. You look as if you need it. Then I think you might take me to a movie and then we might come back here and eat. We won't talk about this any more to-day. We'll just put it in the back of our minds and brood over it. It's my business to find a way out of this situation—to find a way in which I'll get what I want. I'm going to do it. So it's no good your trying to put obstructions in my path. But we won't talk about it any more now, because talking doesn't do an awful lot of good sometimes. Do you see?"
Fells said: "I see."
She mixed the drink; came back to him with it. She put it on the sideboard beside him. She said:
"Well, do you feel happier about things?"
Fells said: "Yes. But then I always feel happy when I'm near you."
She made a little grimace. She said: "That's nothing. You wait a bit. Life's going to be quite amusing, and probably sooner than you think. Do you see?"
Fells said: "Yes... I see."
He stood looking at her.
VII. -- THE SPANNER IN THE WORKS
I.
FODEN tilted back his chair. He was feeling vaguely amused and happy. He was certain that things were coming his way; that everything was going to be as he wanted it to be. For some reason which he could not quite understand, he felt an extraordinary sense of power. The atmosphere of the Club to which Zilla Stevenson had brought him was pleasing. It was a change after the sort of place he was used to. As a club it was neither distinguished or pleasing to the eye, but there was at least some sort of atmosphere. The music made by the small band placed in one corner of the tiny dance floor was soft and not disagreeable. Life, thought Foden, could be a great deal worse.
He said: "I suppose you know a lot of places like this?"
She looked at him and nodded her head. She said: "Yes, I do. There's not very much to do in the evening and I get taken out a lot. I'm lucky, I suppose."
Foden said: "I heard from Horace this morning. He was coming up to London to-day. He gave me an address and telephone number. I shall be seeing him to-morrow." He went on: "You know, it's difficult to realise that you're his sister."
Zilla tossed her head. "That's what a lot of people tell me," she said. "And sometimes I don't feel like his sister. Horace has been a fool all his life. He's quite content to go on doing the same job day after day—week after week. He's never tried to better himself. He doesn't want to get anywhere. He's always doing odd things—underhand things." Her voice was hard.
"Such as what?" queried Foden.
"This business about the twenty-five pounds," said Zilla—"sending me a wire trying to put the wind up me; making out that it was a matter of life or death. I bet it was!" She laughed sarcastically. "Probably a bookmaker's account," she said.
Foden grinned. He signalled to the aged waiter; ordered more drinks. He said:
"You don't know how right you are. It was a bookmaker's account. You evidently know Horace."
"I know Horace all right," said Zilla. "The trouble is he doesn't know me. He only thinks he does. Mind you, I'm his sister, and so I'm sorry when he gets into a jam, but it's usually his own fault."
Foden said: "You know, Zilla, there are some people who get into jams, and there are some people who don't—or if they do they know how to get out of them. You and I belong to the second class. We're the sort of people who always fall on our feet because we've got brains. Horace isn't. Horace is what is commonly known as a mug."
He lit a cigarette. He said expansively: "Anyway, I don't mind about Horace and I'm going to give him the twenty-five pounds to square things up with the bookmaker, because whatever you may think of him he's done me a very good turn."
She said: "Well, I'm glad he's done somebody a good turn. I suppose I'd be curious if I asked what it was."
Foden said: "Well, I've met you through him, haven't I?"
She said: "Yes, I suppose you have." She smiled at him suddenly. She said: "It's funny you being friends with a man like Horace. You're not his type, are you?"
Foden said: "No, I'm not. Perhaps that's why I like him. Maybe I feel a bit sorry for him."
Zilla thought to herself I bet you do. She looked at Foden out of the corner of her eyes. A very tough, attractive man, she thought, with a great deal of personality and brains—a man who knew what he wanted and would take the most direct way to get it—a man who would be dangerous where women were concerned.
She said pleasantly: "I think you're a card. I think you're rather nice, but I must say all this business is a bit mysterious, isn't it? Your wanting to meet me and Horace being so keen to fix up that we met, and getting my telephone number. I thought there was something in it for him."
She stubbed out her cigarette. "I suppose that's why you're giving him the twenty-five pounds?" she asked.
"That's right," said Foden. He put his elbows on the table. He said: "Look, Zilla—and you don't mind me calling you Zilla, do you—because I think you and I are going to be friends?"
She said quickly: "That's funny you saying that, because directly I saw you I had a sort of odd feeling about you. I felt I'd known you for quite a while. I felt we were going to be friends, and that is funny, because usually I don't go for men—not the ones I meet sort of casually."
Foden said: "Of course you don't. You don't have to. A woman who looks like you look, who wears her clothes like you do, doesn't have to go for any sort of man." He grinned at her. "You're a tough egg, Zilla," he said. "Under all that allure of yours you're as hard as nails. But you've got brains. Horace was right about you."
She said a little petulantly: "Oh, I see. So Horace has been talking about me, has he? That's very nice of him, I'm sure."
Foden said: "Don't worry about poor old Horace. He talked about you because I asked him about you. He mentioned you in the first place quite casually. He thinks a lot of you. But I asked him questions about you because I wanted to know the sort of person that you were."
"Oh, did you?" said Zilla. She looked at him archly. "May I ask what for?" she said.
Foden said: "Listen. In course of conversation with Horace it came out that you were pretty smart on one occasion; that you got some German agent wiped up; that you got five hundred pounds for it——"
She interrupted acidly: "It's very nice of Horace to go discussing my private affairs, I'm sure——"
Foden said: "Take it easy, Zilla. You listen to what I'm going to say."
She said: "All right, I'm listening." She picked up her glass of crème-de-menthe. She hated crème-de-menthe but she was drinking it because it was the sort of drink that the Zilla she was being at the moment would drink.
Foden said: "I was very interested because I've got some information—some very big information. I want to sell it, but I'm not going to be taken for a ride. You see, I've had some experience of trying to give information to the authorities, and it got me just nowhere. The stuff I wanted to give 'em, free gratis and for nothing, they didn't even want to listen to. So this time I'm going to sell it and I'm going to get my own terms."
Zilla said: "Well, that's talking, isn't it? You must have some pretty big stuff to sell."
"I have got some pretty big stuff to sell," said Foden. "I've been kicking about Morocco for years. I've spent nine months inside a Vichy internment camp. You'd be surprised at what I know, but I'm going to sell it, and——" he smiled at her—"I want you to help me."
She said: "Well, that's all very well. But I don't see how I can. What can I do that you can't?"
"Listen," said Foden, "Horace told me that when you gave that information about that agent you met in the train they sent for you and talked to you. Then they gave you five hundred pounds. Horace sort of suggested that you had a job working for these people—Intelligence people or something like that. He suggested that you might be secretary to somebody who mattered."
She said hesitantly: "Well... I suppose that's true in a way. I'm secretary to a man, and I suppose you'd consider him a pretty big shot, but I'm only a secretary. I don't know anything about his business. I don't know what he does." She laughed. "He doesn't talk to girls in the outer office," she said.
Foden said: "That doesn't matter. You could find out things if you wanted to. You could talk to him. You could tell him that you'd met somebody who'd got some pretty good information. You could see what his reaction was, couldn't you?"
Zilla said: "That all sounds very nice, but the first thing he'd say is what is it. You can take it from me they don't pay out money for nothing in this country, and there's one thing I do know—there are hundreds of hare-brained people rushing about thinking that they've got information about the Germans. I know that. We deal with a lot of the stuff in my office, and it even makes me laugh."
"That's all right," said Foden. "But my information is not like that. My information matters. But before I give it, I've got to have a lot of money."
Zilla said: "Well, you've got your nerve all right. Can I have a cigarette?"
Foden said: "Of course." He brought out his cigarettes; gave her one; lit it for her. She noticed that the hand that held the lighter was brown and strong and sinewy. She looked into his eyes through the flame of the lighter. She smiled.
"You're a one, she said. "You've not only got your nerve, but you've got something else too. I ought to tell you to go to hell, but as a matter of fact I rather like you."
Foden grinned. He said: "Strangely enough women usually do. They like me because they understand me; because I never try to make fools of them. Women have a lot more brains than men think."
She puffed out cigarette smoke; looked at him sideways.
"I bet you know a lot about women," she said. "And I bet you've known a lot of women and they've been a damn' sight kinder to you than they ought to have been. You remind me of a dance number I used to be fond of—'He's Love 'em and Leave 'em Joe.' You're like that. You're the type that takes what it wants or what's going and gets out while the going is good."
Foden smiled at her. He thought she knows something, this one. She's got brains all right, but underneath she's like the rest of 'em. But she'd be damned amusing....
He said: "You were saying that you ought to tell me to go to hell?"
"That's what I ought to do," said Zilla.
"But you're not going to?" asked Foden.
She said: "No. I'd do anything I could to help you for two reasons—first of all because I rather like you, and secondly," she looked at him seriously—"possibly there might be something in it for me." She smiled—a delightful odd little smile.
Foden put his large brown hand over her small white one. He said: "Look, Zilla, don't you worry about that. There'd be something in it for you all right, and more than something, I promise you. Do you want some money badly?"
She nodded. "I want some money, and I want some money that looks like real money," she said. "I'm fed up with this country; I want to get out of it. I want to go to South Africa where there's warmth and sunshine—where it's not so damned miserable as it is here. I could get myself a good job in South Africa, but I want some money. When I do a thing I like to do it in style."
Foden said: "I know. I can tell that by your clothes." He paused for a moment; then he said: "You can take it from me that if we played this job the right way there'd be quite enough money for you to go to South Africa or anywhere else you wanted to."
She drew on her cigarette. She blew out the tobacco smoke through pursed lips. She said:
"That's what you think. But you don't know how tough these people are. Naturally they're tough. They've got to be. And they've always got you where they want you."
"Have they?" said Foden. "Why?"
Zilla laughed. "Work it out for yourself," she said. "You go along with your information and you've got to tell them what it is before they'll tell you what they're going to do about it. When they've got it they can make their own terms, can't they? And if you don't like it, you know what you can do. Besides which," she said, "there's another way they've always got you."
"Oh, is there?" said Foden. "And what's the other way?" He was thinking that Zilla was being very useful.
"They've always got you under one of the Defence of the Realm regulations," said Zilla—"withholding information. You'd be surprised at what they can do."
Foden said: "I see. Are you trying to tell me that this is hopeless?"
She shook her head. She said: "I'm not trying to tell you anything. I'm telling you that it's going to be a very hard job."
Foden said: "No, it isn't. You listen to me. You said just now that I'd have to give them the information first. Well, I wouldn't. I'll tell you why. The information I've got is rather peculiar. It's divided into four parts. Each part—if you understand me—is dependent on the part before it. All I have to do is to tell 'em part one. That tells 'em that I know parts two, three and four, and they don't know. All right. If they want to know they've got to pay."
She said: "I see. It's like that, is it?"
"That's right," said Foden, "it's like that. And another thing," he went on, "they're not going to bluff me with threats. You've got to realise, Zilla, that on two separate occasions, years ago, I went to the British authorities in Morocco and gave them information for nothing. They said thank you very much and showed me the door. They did nothing about it. On both those occasions I was proved to be a hundred per cent right. Well, now the stuff I've got is dynamite and they're going to listen. Do you know why they're going to listen?"
Zilla said: "No. You tell me why they're going to listen."
Foden said: "Because they've got to. It's a matter of life or death for them. They'll know that."
She said: "I see. You're pretty sure of yourself, aren't you?"
Foden said: "I'm dead sure of myself. All I want is to be put next to somebody who matters. But it must be somebody who's important. I know these junior officials. If you tell them the whole story and it looks as if it matters they mess you about while they see how they can make it work to their advantage and if you don't tell them anything much they turn you down. You give me fifteen minutes with somebody who matters—some man who's big enough to know what I'm talking about, and he's going to pay me exactly what I want, and he's going to like doing it."
Zilla said: "Well... if it's like that...."
Foden said: "So you've got an idea?"
She said: "Yes. My own boss is a pretty big shot in his way, but he's tough and he's a hard nut. He'd have to be convinced."
Foden said: "It won't take me long to convince him."
There was silence. Zilla, her chin resting on one hand, her elbow on the table-top, looked at the wall on the other side of the Club. She appeared to be thinking deeply. After a while she said:
"What do you think you're going to get for this information?"
Foden said: "I don't think—I know. I want five thousand pounds. I want to start a business in Morocco. If I had five thousand pounds I could start it. So that's the price. And I'm going to get it."
"I see," said Zilla. "And what do I get?"
He said: "You put me next to the right man and you get five hundred."
She thought for a moment; then she said: "All right. It's a deal. But there's only one way that this can be done."
Foden said: "Yes? What's the way?"
She said: "What you'll have to do is to tell me enough about this thing to prove to my boss that you've got some real information. You'll have to tell me that first part you spoke about. All right. Then I'll make an opportunity of speaking to him and I'll tell him that through Horace I've met a man who's told me so-and-so. Well, that ought to interest him, oughtn't it?"
Foden said: "Don't worry. It'll interest him all right. Directly you tell him the little bit I'm going to tell you, he'll want to ring the fire alarm he'll be so excited."
