Delphi collected works o.., p.471
Delphi Collected Works of Peter Cheyney Illustrated, page 471
He hated it because it constituted a motive. He wanted it to be forgotten like the rest of the business. If O’Farrel had known about the ray... if Peabody had told him that during that short honeymoon he had explained the ray to her, shown her the model, elucidated the various technical points. If O’Farrel had known this...
Peabody could picture him, could almost bear the words accompanied by O’Farrel’s cynically humorous smile; could see the sudden halt in the reckless walk up and down the room.
“So that’s why she went,” O’Farrel would have said. “The logical explanation, my Josiah, at last! There always is one, you know. So the little Russian aristo who was on the run from the Bolsheviks and who married our Josiah, disappeared after, immediately after, little Josiah had explained all about the ray to her. Oh, ho! Of course she couldn’t have heard of that ray before she married Josiah, could she? You poor chump! Haven’t you heard that no government in the history of the world had ever made such wonderful use of women’s beauty for the acquisitions of other people’s secrets as our Soviet friends. And little Josiah fell for it!”
But O’Farrel did not know. He knew nothing of the existence of the ray. Peabody wondered whether he should have told O’Farrel about Irma knowing and understanding about the ray. In spite of the cynical humour, O’Farrel’s advice was often worth having. And he knew women too, slightly too well (so he said). Peabody asked himself what O’Farrel’s advice would have been. Of course he would have jumped at the ray as being the motive for the whole thing.
Was it the motive? The question had burned in Peabody’s brain for years. Once more he began to add his facts, for and against. Suppose they had heard of the invention, somehow. Then it was quite natural that they should try and obtain it by any means. But would the events have worked out exactly as they had.
They didn’t know he was going to marry her. Besides, he, himself, did not know that the ray was usable, practical. He had heard nothing from the British Government who had had the whole thing put up to them years ago, and who had said that if experiments proved successful he would be required for further tests.
He had heard nothing at all, and inquiry, recent inquiry, had evoked the same answer. But it was a motive, a very logical motive.
Peabody bit into the mouthpiece of his pipe and walked on. He was soaked through, for the rain was teeming down now.
On the seaside the mist was less heavy. In front of him, a few yards away, almost opposite the bye-road to Salthaven, he could see the upper part of a house showing over the cliff edge. He realised that it must be the Turkish Café, the café which the man in plus-fours had explained was built on a gallery cut into the cliff face.
Peabody was almost relieved to think about it. He wanted to think about anything but the ray and Irma. He would go there and have tea. As this thought struck him he became aware that he was not alone on the road, for a few yards in front of him on the moor side, a tall round-shouldered figure was moving, a figure whose head was sunk forward so that the man must have been walking looking always about a foot in front of his own feet, slouching along with its hands sunk into the pockets of a dingy green overcoat that cleared the ground only by a few inches.
Diagonally opposite to Peabody, he moved along with a peculiar restlessness showing in his gait. The restlessness of a man who is keen to get somewhere and lacks the necessary strength to hurry. The soft brown hat, pulled over the brow, was dilapidated, and his boots looked like two squelchy lumps which dragged themselves along the road in a weird and jerky manner.
Together they approached the bye-road to Salthaven. Peabody seemed certain that the man in the green overcoat would turn up the road. He wondered why the man had not cut across the moor and saved himself the longer walk. Still, he might be going to Hetton. But Peabody illogically enough, was certain that Green Overcoat was not going to Hetton. He was certain that he would take the bye-road. Perhaps he was going to Sepach Farm, thought Peabody, and this line of thought reminded him again (for some unknown reason) of Plus-Fours and his childish smile and little chubby pipe.
Immediately following this idea came the thought that this man might be Truesmith. Peabody, impelled by some mysterious motive, quickened his steps and walked gradually across the road till he was a pace behind the man.
Green Overcoat, although he most have been aware of Peabody’s proximity, took not the slightest notice.
Peabody spoke. “Excuse me,” he said smiling as usual, “but does your name happen to be Truesmith?”
The man in the green overcoat stopped dead, and turned half round.
Peabody noticed the dark, ill-kept beard, the shaven face, and the eyes, dark rimmed, and cornered with the viscous fluid of premature senility, eyes which glittered. At the corner of the man’s mouth, on the lip, there was a white particle. Peabody recognised it as a piece of dried sunflower seed. The man had been chewing sunflower seed — a Russian habit.
Peabody sensed immediately that the man was Russian, that the green overcoat which he was wearing was a Russian army coat, converted for civilian use. The man stood silently, his mouth working. Then he looked, at Peabody and deliberately, and with unmistakable venom, spat. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his band, and, almost with care, replaced the hand in the tattered overcoat pocket.
“I am not Truesmit’,” he said slowly and harshly. “No, I am not Truesmit’, Captain Peabody.”
He looked straight at Peabody’s eyes. Then spat once more, turned on his heel and walked off. Peabody watched him turn up the Salthaven road. The man did not look back, but Peabody knew, somehow instinctively, that the Russian was going to stop at Sepach Farm. He found himself wondering how he knew this fact, but it was a certain thing, settled definitely in his mind, that the Russian would stop at the farm, and Peabody developed quite suddenly an idea to go after him and talk to him.
The man in plus-fours and his silly chatter, and this tattered, green-coated, devilish-eyed man had started something between them. They had drawn him into — something. Peabody wondered, rather vaguely, if his nerves were going a bit.
He stood quite still in the rain. He felt uncomfortable and unhappy. He disliked the afternoon, the mist, the lonely road — everything. He disliked the forced and cheery conversation of the man in Plus-Fours and his airy discussion of the Turkish Café, but much more he disliked this tall, shabby specimen with the burning eyes, this dirty ill-kept man who possessed some sort of pride and who spat so venomously and deliberately.
But the thing which perturbed Peabody most of all was the knowledge that this man, this Russian, knew his name. How did he know that he was Captain Peabody? Peabody had dropped the rank years before demobilisation. No one ever called him Captain.
He stood there trying to think clearly about the afternoon, trying to arrive at some conclusion, realising, as be did so, that there was no conclusion to be arrived at, but wanting all the time to go on after Green Overcoat, who had disappeared up the Salthaven bye-road, and who was jerking along somewhere on the other side of the mist.
He looked towards the sea. The mist had cleared still more. Opposite him on the cliff edge was a balustrade of stone running down with the steps which led to the gallery on which the Turkish Café stood. A sign swung in the wind on an iron pole by the side of the steps with the words “Turkish Café” painted on it.
Peabody fought down his desire to go on to Sepach Farm, and turning, abruptly walked towards the steps. Peabody, half way down the steps which led to the oaken door of the café, congratulating himself on having definitely renounced the idea of going after Green Overcoat and thoroughly decided that he would forget both that gentleman and Plus-Fours, stopped suddenly.
He found himself confronted with something else which required explanation, and he was sick of trying to elucidate things.
There were half a dozen steps and a small entrance porch between him and the café door, and lying half over the bottom step and half in the entrance porch was a black georgette gown. The diamante buckle at the waist glimmered a little as Peabody, walking carefully, descended the remaining stairs.
He picked it up. It had been lying there for some time, for it was soaked with rain. Peabody wondered how it had got there, and why somebody had not picked it up. He stood before the door of the café, which was closed, holding the gown in his left hand, and biting his pipe stem. He imagined the humorous picture he would present, entering the café with a gown in his hand.
He stood listening. A sound came from within the café. After a moment Peabody recognised it. It was the sound of a woman sobbing. Hoarse, racking sobs. He felt terribly uncomfortable.
He dropped the gown and began to ascend the steps leading to the cliff road. He was scared. He had no desire to enter the café. He was not interested in any woman who had something to cry about, but as he walked up the stairs he had that horrible feeling of being trapped.
Wherever he went he would walk into something. If he went up the Salthaven road there was the possibility of meeting the Russian. Peabody was now thoroughly decided that he did not want to see the man in the green overcoat any more. On the other hand, if he took the road back to Stranover he felt certain that he would meet the man in plus-fours with his airy smile and (so they seemed) ominous questions; behind him, in the café, the place he had selected as a means of forgetting or escaping from the other two, something even more unpleasant was afoot.
Undecided, be descended the stairs again and gave the door a push. It was locked. That decided him. Every man, even a man of the Peabody stamp, is a little curious. He wanted to know what the georgette gown was doing, lying there possessing, he thought, some weird animation of its own, lying in front of this locked door behind which some woman was sobbing.
Peabody stepped back and then flung his shoulder against the door. The lock was rotten; with a splintering of wood the door crashed open. A heavy perfume came to Peabody’s nostrils. He stood, transfixed, gazing at the weird sight which met his eyes.
CHAPTER III
A LONG ROOM confronted him, and a not unattractive perfume greeted his nostrils. His eyes had not accustomed themselves to the gloom of the place when he saw something move.
A woman got up from the armchair in which she had been huddled, at the far end of the café. She turned and passed through the curtains which shadowed the other end so quickly that Peabody was unable to realise anything about her except that she was tall, and that she was wrapped in a gold kimono, which she held closely about her.
The hangings fell to behind her, and he stood wondering, sniffing the heavy perfume which abounded in the place and gazing about him.
His first thought was one of amazement that any sane person should construct and furnish in such outlandish fashion what he had supposed to be an ordinary seaside teashop. The hangings round the walls were of silk and velvet. The lamps, shaded, and throwing a dim and mysterious light about the place — a light which seemed to make more for grotesque shadows than illumination, were of Turkish design and, he thought, valuable. The floor, which was of stained oak was covered with thick, expensive rugs. In a corner, furthest from him, burned a brass brazier on a tripod. It was burning a perfume and the wraith of smoke which floated up from it brought back some old memory to Peabody. At the far end of the café a heavy velvet curtain covered the entire width of the wall, but on the right-hand side he could discern the shape of a circular flight of stairs leading up, he supposed, to the one floor above — the floor which would be above cliff-top level.
And it was up this flight of stairs that the woman, the train of her gold kimono trailing after her like a snake, had disappeared.
It never occurred to him to go after her, to question her. To Peabody, the satisfaction of his elementary sense of duty was enough. He had heard her sobbing. He had entered with the idea of finding out what was the matter, and of asking what the black georgette gown was doing lying out there in the rain. Well, she had seen him enter and she had gone. Obviously she did not want to talk to him. That was that. Peabody thought now, having regard to the rather weird atmosphere of the café, that he would prefer another encounter with Green Overcoat or Plus-Fours to a conversation with this lady in the kimono who had cause to sob so bitterly.
He turned and walked out of the café, closing the door carefully after him. Outside, he stood for a moment in the porch considering. Before him, on the ground where he had thrown it, lay the black georgette gown getting very adequately spoiled in the rain.
Peabody, leaning against the porch and refilling his pipe, took himself to task and considered the necessity of getting himself well in hand once more. He came to the conclusion that he was an old woman suffering from a bad attack of nerves. He had encountered three people on an afternoon walk — rather strange people, he granted, but then all people were, more or less, strange. It was quite on the cards that the man in plus-fours was one of those peculiarly garrulous people who will stop and talk to anybody, anywhere; one of those people who love the sound of their own voices. The man in the green overcoat, well, he was probably some bad-tempered tramp, who knew his name through some coincidence — he might have served as interpreter attached to one of the British units in Russia, or anything like that. The world was very small, and there was probably some quite reasonable explanation for the black gown lying in the rain, and for the woman crying in the café. After all, women often cried, reasoned Peabody, and very often, he had heard (for he knew little about them) without any adequate reason at all.
It was all a lot of nonsense, he told himself as he began to mount the steps leading to the road above. Half way up he asked himself exactly where he was going. He had a decided disinclination to return to Stranover. He thought he would go on to Sepach Farm. Of course, the Russian would not be there. This, said Peabody to himself, was another of the silly ideas which he had developed during the afternoon. Why should the Russian be going to the farm? Subconsciously, Peabody’s idea was to go and see if the Russian was there, but at the moment he would not admit this to himself.
At the top of the steps he stood looking about him and listening. There was no one in sight. The mist had blown away in front of him and he could see some little way up the Salthaven road. To his left, towards Stranover, the mist was still thick. To his right the bleak rain-lashed moorland lying towards Hetton looked ominous. The very sound of the pattering rain on the asphalt road was distasteful. Peabody thought that his surroundings looked like the sort of place where something not very nice could easily happen. The thought disturbed him and he put it quickly out of his mind.
He turned and looked down at the café door. It looked just as it had looked before, but the black gown lying there before it seemed strangely incongruous. Peabody had a half humorous desire to run down the steps, pick up the gown, fold it, and lay it carefully in a corner of the porch out of the rain.
He lit his pipe, shielding the match carefully with his hands, for the wind was high. Then he began to walk across the road. Halfway across the wind dropped for a moment and the rain descended in torrents. Peabody was getting fed up with the rain. His clothes were heavy with it. He crossed the road quickly and stood beneath a tree which afforded a little shelter and which stood in the angle formed by the Salthaven and Stranover roads. He sat down on the gnarled and clawlike root of the tree and puffed at his pipe.
He was deciding whether he should return to the café and shelter there, till the rain ceased — he expected the woman had finished crying by now, or whether he should walk up to the farm and shelter there. It had to be one of the two places. Peabody remembered with a slight distaste than the man in plus-fours had pointed this fact out to him. Then suddenly he ceased thinking.
Somewhere in the vicinity someone was whistling. Peabody listened carefully. Soon the whistling became more distinct. He could recognise the tune— “Annie Laurie” — and the whistler was evidently not in the least perturbed about the weather. He whistled slowly, giving each note its full value, and occasionally whistling a bit of the song several times in succession before continuing with the rest of it. Then, when he had got right through the chorus he would commence the process over again with a maddening sort of regularity.
And he was approaching. Peabody thought that he would emerge from the mist on the Stranover road, but he was wrong. The man came out from the corner directly opposite Peabody, evidently from the moor, and as he leapt the little ditch which bounded the road, Peabody recognised him — it was the man in plus-fours.
He was as cheerful as ever, and, with his round cheeks blown out to their fullest extent with his whistling he looked quite juvenile. His right hand was in his trouser pocket and in his left hand was a little chubby pipe. He stood for a moment looking towards the mist on the Stranover road, still whistling.
Suddenly he stopped — right in the middle of a bar — took his right hand out of his trouser pocket and moved it round to his right hip-pocket, at the same time putting the little chubby pipe into his left-hand jacket pocket.
Then he stood quite still with his head on one side. He seemed to have come to some decision.
He walked slowly across the road until he stood at the top of the steps leading to the café. He stood there for a moment, peering over. Peabody wondered if he had seen the black georgette gown, and if he, too, were curious about it. It seemed to have a strange effect on the man in plus-fours, for he stepped back a couple of paces, slipped his hand to his hip pocket, produced a medium-sized automatic pistol and a cartridge clip, and whistling again — this time quite softly, Peabody could just hear him — proceeded to load the clip into the pistol. This done, he replaced the automatic in his jacket pocket and, keeping his hand in the pocket, he moved slowly down the steps towards the Turkish Café door. He had evidently not seen Peabody, or, if he had, he had not taken the slightest notice of that gentleman.
