Delphi collected works o.., p.515
Delphi Collected Works of Peter Cheyney Illustrated, page 515
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.
II
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.”
