When I had finished, Cecily looked very drawn and stern. She felt strongly that running about the downs with Polish generals in the middle of the night was not one of the duties of the father of a family. I had implied as much ten times over, and pointed out that there was no phase of the action at which I could possibly have extricated myself. I don’t think she agreed. There had, perhaps, been a little too must gusto in my account of the night’s doings, and not enough repentance.
However, she turned on Sandorski.
“If you are going to stay here, General” she said, “you must promise me one thing.”
“Anything,” he answered gallantly.
“You must promise me that no harm shall come to the man you brought with you.”
“My word of honor that no harm shall come to him under your roof,” he replied.
“I didn’t say anything about my roof. He’s had enough, and you are not to do him any harm at all, now or afterwards.”
“The devil! I don’t even know what he’s been up to.”
“Nor do I. Or care.”
“But, Mrs. Taine, you wouldn’t prevent me from sitting on his head if the police were below?”
“I didn’t mean that at all, and you know it,” she answered violently.
Sandorski thought for a few seconds. He took his word of honor so seriously that he had to draw up a sort of mental contract.
“I promise,” he said, “that he shall not be killed or tortured or handed over to anyone but the British police by me or by my order. Will that do?”
“Yes,” she said, and added illogically: “But I never even thought of such beastly things.”
After breakfast Cecily went to the roof with the general and took Lex’s* pulse and temperature. He wasn’t cold or shivering, and there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with him. Sandorski said he ought to sleep for a few hours more. His first injection had been a stab in the dark. The second was carefully placed.
When the general had been settled in the loft with his patient, I gave him a rope for his future movements, took down the ladder, washed it and put it away. Then I went to bed, pretending the touch of flu that I had warned my clerk I was going to have, and Cecily woke the children.
Before she gave them breakfast, she ran races with them– to get them warm, she said–through the back gate and across the meadow. That effectively destroyed the heavy tracks of Sandorski and myself. Then she carefully examined the shed at the bottom of the garden and removed all traces of occupation.
I didn’t expect the police till the evening at earliest. I thought it would take them some time to make the connection between Blossom’s land and the burned car. But when I was about to get up and start the examination of Lex’s suitcase with Sandorski our local constable and his inspector called–in the hope of catching me before I left for the office. Cecily received them downstairs. She was just taking the children to school. The inspector had more low cunning than I ever put to his credit. He chatted with the boys, and quickly found out that Daddy hadn’t felt very well the night before and was still in bed. Cecily told me afterwards that the little innocents were so sorry for me and so convincing that she almost believed in my illness herself.
The two policemen came up to my room, apologizing profusely. They didn’t tell me what had happened. They said that another abandoned vehicle had been found on the upper road. I started to complain, with the querulousness of an invalid, that I had locked my garage at the usual hour and that I didn’t see why I should be bothered for parking without lights if somebody pinched my car.
“Oh, it’s not that, sir!” the inspector laughed. “Now, we understand from Mr. Blossom that you have rented the shooting over his land. Have you ever noticed anything peculiar up there?”
“I haven’t. But, good Lord, Blossom is there all the time! He could tell you better than I.”
“He sent us to you, Mr. Taine. He was always busy, he said, but you had your eyes open.”
Then, ruling me, I think, off his list of possible suspects, he came clean. He told me that a burned car had been found with the body of an unknown male in it, that the police had had a report of the light of an aircraft being seen on Blossom’s down, and that they had searched the down at first light and seen tracks of landing wheels. Had I ever noticed anything which might Lead Me to Believe … “
Well, no, I hadn’t.
“Are you ever up there at night, Mr. Taine?”
“No, of course not,” I answered rather too sharply.
“Have you ever seen any sign of poachers?”
I disliked that line of questioning, but what he was after was to get at the names of possible poachers who might have been out at night, and might have noticed something. At last they went away, leaving me gently sweating under my dressing gown. It must be a nuisance for the police that almost every man feels slightly guilty in their presence. If that weren’t so, it would be much easier for them to pick out the truly guilty.
It was convenient, however, to have the police out or the way at so early an hour. I rapped on the trap door with a fishing rod as a signal for Sandorski to lower his rope and come down. He brought with him Lex’s keys. We opened his suitcase.
It was of expensive leather, beautifully fitted inside, and contained everything the painfully well-dressed man would require for the night–silk pyjamas, silk dressing gown, liver salts in a silver-topped bottle, monogrammed hair brushes and a deliberately masculine smell. At the bottom, under a change of tasty socks and underclothing, was a briefcase.
It was a case of thin, imitation black leather, untidily stuffed with papers. The lock, however, was good–not at all the bit of cheap metal which can be bent out with a wrench of the fingers. I didn’t like that case; it seemed to me incongruous. I don’t claim any instinct, or any particular powers of observation; but I do believe that you can’t live through five years of very active service without developing a strong sense of self-preservation. The night’s work had put me back in the old mood of treating unknown objects, whether a pin-up picture, a water-closet plug or a bottle of wine, with extreme care. I don’t know how many times I have lectured troops on not whooping with joy every time they came across attractive little surprises.
Sandorski chose a key, but it didn’t fit. He was turning the key ring for another, when I picked up the briefcase and felt it.
“Do you really think this was what they hired a plane for?” I asked.
“Eh? Of course!”
He stretched out his hand for the case, but I didn’t offer it.
“Why couldn’t they have needed a plane just for Lex?”
“For Lex? They could get him in with a lot less trouble. Documents–these and whatever comes after and the replies–that’s what they need an air service for.”
I wanted to be assured that the beastly case was really important. I was not at all eager to prove what I suspected unless it had to be done.
“All right,” I said. “But this time it’s going to be infantry tactics.”
I went into the bathroom (taking the case with me, for I wasn’t going to trust the impetuous Sandorski alone with it) and came back with a new razor blade. I held the top of the case firmly, and cut the seam which fastened the expanding pleats at the bottom to the stiffer side. The case was filled with loose paper, which I pulled out and Sandorski preserved.
Meanwhile I could feel under my left hand a hard cylinder, apparently attached to the side of the case. That confirmed my suspicion that there was a device of some sort connected to the lock–almost certainly a simple incendiary. I would have liked to take the whole thing out into the garden, but appearance in the garden was taboo. And anyway the thing hypnotized me into avoiding all movement. So I started to worry about the new bedroom carpet, which was a convenient and handy object for worry.