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‘Isn’t that rather a highly coloured story?’
‘Oh yes. Quite easily not believed. Do you believe it?’
He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘You know what you’re talking like? A beautiful spy in a thriller.’
‘Yes, perhaps. But I am not beautiful.’
‘And you’re not a spy?’
‘I might be so described, perhaps. I have certain information. Information I want to preserve. You will have to take my word for it, it is information that would be valuable to your country.’
‘Don’t you think you’re being rather absurd?’
‘Yes I do. If this was written down it would look absurd. But so many absurd things are true, aren’t they?’
He looked at her again. She was very like Pamela. Her voice, although foreign in intonation, was like Pamela’s. What she proposed was ridiculous, absurd, quite impossible, and probably dangerous. Dangerous to him. Unfortunately, though, that was what attracted him. To have the nerve to suggest such a thing to him! What would come of it all? It would be interesting, certainly, to find out.
‘What do I get out of it?’ he said. ‘That’s what I’d like to know.’
She looked at him consideringly. ‘Diversion,’ she said. ‘Something out of the everyday happenings? An antidote to boredom, perhaps. We’ve not got very long. It’s up to you.’
‘And what happens to your passport? Do I have to buy myself a wig, if they sell such a thing, at the counter? Do I have to impersonate a female?’
‘No. There’s no question of exchanging places. You have been robbed and drugged but you remain yourself. Make up your mind. There isn’t long. Time is passing very quickly. I have to do my own transformation.’
‘You win,’ he said. ‘One mustn’t refuse the unusual, if it is offered to one.’
‘I hoped you might feel that way, but it was a toss-up.’
From his pocket Stafford Nye took out his passport. He slipped it into the outer pocket of the cloak he had been wearing. He rose to his feet, yawned, looked round him, looked at his watch, and strolled over to the counter where various goods were displayed for sale. He did not even look back. He bought a paperback book and fingered some small woolly animals, a suitable gift for some child. Finally he chose a panda. He looked round the lounge, came back to where he had been sitting. The cloak was gone and so had the girl. A half glass of beer was on the table still. Here, he thought, is where I take the risk. He picked up the glass, moved away a little, and drank it. Not quickly. Quite slowly. It tasted much the same as it had tasted before.
‘Now I wonder,’ said Sir Stafford. ‘Now I wonder.’
He walked across the lounge to a far corner. There was a somewhat noisy family sitting there, laughing and talking together. He sat down near them, yawned, let his head fall back on the edge of the cushion. A flight was announced leaving for Teheran. A large number of passengers got up and went to queue by the requisite numbered gate. The lounge still remained half full. He opened his paperback book. He yawned again. He was really sleepy now, yes, he was very sleepy … He must just think out where it was best for him to go off to sleep. Somewhere he could remain …
Trans-European Airways announced the departure of their plane, Flight 309 for London.
Quite a good sprinkling of passengers rose to their feet to obey the summons. By this time though, more passengers had entered the transit lounge waiting for other planes. Announcements followed as to fog at Geneva and other disabilities of travel. A slim man of middle height wearing a dark blue cloak with its red lining showing and with a hood drawn up over a close-cropped head, not noticeably more untidy than many of the heads of young men nowadays, walked across the floor to take his place in the queue for the plane. Showing a boarding ticket, he passed out through gate No. 9.
More announcements followed. Swissair flying to Zürich. BEA to Athens and Cyprus—and then a different type of announcement.
‘Will Miss Daphne Theodofanous, passenger to Geneva, kindly come to the flight desk. Plane to Geneva is delayed owing to fog. Passengers will travel by way of Athens. The aeroplane is now ready to leave.’
Other announcements followed dealing with passengers to Japan, to Egypt, to South Africa, air lines spanning the world. Mr Sidney Cook, passenger to South Africa, was urged to come to the flight desk where there was a message for him. Daphne Theodofanous was called for again.
‘This is the last call before the departure of Flight 309.’
In a corner of the lounge a little girl was looking up at a man in a dark suit who was fast asleep, his head resting against the cushion of the red settee. In his hand he held a small woolly panda.
The little girl’s hand stretched out towards the panda. Her mother said:
‘Now, Joan, don’t touch that. The poor gentleman’s asleep.’
‘Where is he going?’
‘Perhaps he’s going to Australia too,’ said her mother, ‘like we are.’
‘Has he got a little girl like me?’
‘I think he must have,’ said her mother.
The little girl sighed and looked at the panda again. Sir Stafford Nye continued to sleep. He was dreaming that he was trying to shoot a leopard. A very dangerous animal, he was saying to the safari guide who was accompanying him. ‘A very dangerous animal, so I’ve always heard. You can’t trust a leopard.’
The dream switched at that moment, as dreams have a habit of doing, and he was having tea with his Great-Aunt Matilda, and trying to make her hear. She was deafer than ever! He had not heard any of the announcements except the first one for Miss Daphne Theodofanous. The little girl’s mother said:
‘I’ve always wondered, you know, about a passenger that’s missing. Nearly always, whenever you go anywhere by air, you hear it. Somebody they can’t find. Somebody who hasn’t heard the call or isn’t on the plane or something like that. I always wonder who it is and what they’re doing, and why they haven’t come. I suppose this Miss What’s-a-name or whatever it is will just have missed her plane. What will they do with her then?’
Nobody was able to answer her question because nobody had the proper information.
CHAPTER 2
London
Sir Stafford Nye’s flat was a very pleasant one. It looked out upon Green Park. He switched on the coffee percolator and went to see what the post had left him this morning. It did not appear to have left him anything very interesting. He sorted through the letters, a bill or two, a receipt and letters with rather uninteresting postmarks. He shuffled them together and placed them on the table where some mail was already lying, accumulating from the last two days. He’d have to get down to things soon, he supposed. His secretary would be coming in some time or other this afternoon.
He went back to the kitchen, poured coffee into a cup and brought it to the table. He picked up the two or three letters that he had opened late last night when he arrived. One of them he referred to, and smiled a little as he read it.
‘Eleven-thirty,’ he said. ‘Quite a suitable time. I wonder now. I expect I’d better just think things over, and get prepared for Chetwynd.’
Somebody pushed something through the letter-box. He went out into the hall and got the morning paper. There was very little news in the paper. A political crisis, an item of foreign news which might have been disquieting, but he didn’t think it was. It was merely a journalist letting off steam and trying to make things rather more important than they were. Must give the people something to read. A girl had been strangled in the park. Girls were always being strangled. One a day, he thought callously. No child had been kidnapped or raped this morning. That was a nice surprise. He made himself a piece of toast and drank his coffee.
Later, he went out of the building, down into the street, and walked through the park in the direction of Whitehall. He was smiling to himself. Life, he felt, was rather good this morning. He began to think about Chetwynd. Chetwynd was a silly fool if there ever was one. A good façade, important-seeming, and a nicely suspicious mind. He’d rather enjoy talking to Chetwynd.
He reached Whitehall a comfortable seven minutes late. That was only due to his own importance compared with that of Chetwynd, he thought. He walked into the room. Chetwynd was sitting behind his desk and had a lot of papers on it and a secretary there. He was looking properly important, as he always did when he could make it.
‘Hullo, Nye,’ said Chetwynd, smiling all over his impressively handsome face. ‘Glad to be back? How was Malaya?’
‘Hot,’ said Stafford Nye.
‘Yes. Well, I suppose it always is. You meant atmospherically, I suppose, not politically?’
‘Oh, purely atmospherically,’ said Stafford Nye.
He accepted a cigarette and sat down.
‘Get any results to speak of?’
‘Oh, hardly. Not what you’d call results. I’ve sent in my report. All a lot of talky-talky as usual. How’s Lazenby?’
‘Oh, a nuisance as he always is. He’ll never change,’ said Chetwynd.
‘No, that would seem too much to hope for. I haven’t served on anything with Bascombe before. He can be quite fun when he likes.’
‘Can he? I don’t know him very well. Yes. I suppose he can.’
‘Well, well, well. No other news, I suppose?’
‘No, nothing. Nothing I think that would interest you.’
‘You didn’t mention in your letter quite why you wanted to see me.’
‘Oh, just to go over a few things, that’s all. You know, in case you’d brought any special dope home with you. Anything we ought to be prepared for, you know. Questions in the House. Anything like that.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Came home by air, didn’t you? Had a bit of trouble, I gather.’
Stafford Nye put on the face he had been determined to put on beforehand. It was slightly rueful, with a faint tinge of annoyance.
‘Oh, so you heard about that, did you?’ he said. ‘Silly business.’
‘Yes. Yes, must have been.’
‘Extraordinary,’ said Stafford Nye, ‘how things always get into the press. There was a paragraph in the stop press this morning.’
‘You’d rather they wouldn’t have, I suppose?’
‘Well, makes me look a bit of an ass, doesn’t it?’ said Stafford Nye. ‘Got to admit it. At my age too!’
‘What happened exactly? I wondered if the report in the paper had been exaggerating.’
‘Well, I suppose they made the most of it, that’s all. You know what these journeys are. Damn boring. There was fog at Geneva so they had to re-route the plane. Then there was two hours’ delay at Frankfurt.’
‘Is that when it happened?’
‘Yes. One’s bored stiff in these airports. Planes coming, planes going. Tannoy going full steam ahead. Flight 302 leaving for Hong Kong, Flight 109 going to Ireland. This, that and the other. People getting up, people leaving. And you just sit there yawning.’
‘What happened exactly?’ said Chetwynd.
‘Well, I’d got a drink in front of me, Pilsner as a matter of fact, then I thought I’d got to get something else to read. I’d read everything I’d got with me so I went over to the counter and bought some wretched paperback or other. Detective story, I think it was, and I bought a woolly animal for one of my nieces. Then I came back, finished my drink, opened my paperback and then I went to sleep.’
‘Yes, I see. You went to sleep.’
‘Well, a very natural thing to do, isn’t it? I suppose they called my flight but if they did I didn’t hear it. I didn’t hear it apparently for the best of reasons. I’m capable of going to sleep in an airport any time but I’m also capable of hearing an announcement that concerns me. This time I didn’t. When I woke up, or came to, however you like to put it, I was having a bit of medical attention. Somebody apparently had dropped a Mickey Finn or something or other in my drink. Must have done it when I was away getting the paperback.’
‘Rather an extraordinary things to happen, wasn’t it?’ said Chetwynd.
‘Well, it’s never happened to me before,’ said Stafford Nye. ‘I hope it never will again. It makes you feel an awful fool, you know. Besides having a hangover. There was a doctor and some nurse creature, or something. Anyway, there was no great harm done apparently. My wallet had been pinched with some money in it and my passport. It was awkward of course. Fortunately, I hadn’t got much money. My travellers’ cheques were in an inner pocket. There always has to be a bit of red tape and all that if you lose your passport. Anyway, I had letters and things and identification was not difficult. And in due course things were squared up and I resumed my flight.’
‘Still, very annoying for you,’ said Chetwynd. ‘A person of your status, I mean.’ His tone was disapproving.
‘Yes,’ said Stafford Nye. ‘It doesn’t show me in a very good light, does it? I mean, not as bright as a fellow of my—er—status ought to be.’ The idea seemed to amuse him.
‘Does this often happen, did you find out?’
‘I don’t think it’s a matter of general occurrence. It could be. I suppose any person with a pick-pocket trend could notice a fellow asleep and slip a hand into a pocket, and if he’s accomplished in his profession, get hold of a wallet or a pocket-book or something like that, and hope for some luck.’
‘Pretty awkward to lose a passport.’
‘Yes, I shall have to put in for another one now. Make a lot of explanations, I suppose. As I say, the whole thing’s a damn silly business. And let’s face it, Chetwynd, it doesn’t show me in a very favourable light, does it?’
‘Oh, not your fault, my dear boy, not your fault. It could happen to anybody, anybody at all.’
‘Very nice of you to say so,’ said Stafford Nye, smiling at him agreeably. ‘Teach me a sharp lesson, won’t it?’
‘You don’t think anyone wanted your passport specially?’
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Stafford Nye. ‘Why should they want my passport? Unless it was a matter of someone who wished to annoy me and that hardly seems likely. Or somebody who took a fancy to my passport photo—and that seems even less likely!’
‘Did you see anyone you knew at this—where did you say you were—Frankfurt?’
‘No, no. Nobody at all.’
‘Talk to anyone?’
‘Not particularly. Said something to a nice fat woman who’d got a small child she was trying to amuse. Came from Wigan, I think. Going to Australia. Don’t remember anybody else.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘There was some woman or other who wanted to know what she did if she wanted to study archaeology in Egypt. Said I didn’t know anything about that. I told her she’d better go and ask the British Museum. And I had a word or two with a man who I think was an anti-vivisectionist. Very passionate about it.’
‘One always feels,’ said Chetwynd, ‘that there might be something behind things like this.’
‘Things like what?’
‘Well, things like what happened to you.’
‘I don’t see what can be behind this,’ said Sir Stafford. ‘I dare say journalists could make up some story, they’re so clever at that sort of thing. Still, it’s a silly business. For goodness’ sake, let’s forget it. I suppose now it’s been mentioned in the press, all my friends will start asking me about it. How’s old Leyland? What’s he up to nowadays? I heard one or two things about him out there. Leyland always talks a bit too much.’
The two men talked amiable shop for ten minutes or so, then Sir Stafford got up and went out.
‘I’ve got a lot of things to do this morning,’ he said. ‘Presents to buy for my relations. The trouble is that if one goes to Malaya, all one’s relations expect you to bring exotic presents to them. I’ll go round to Liberty’s, I think. They have a nice stock of Eastern goods there.’
He went out cheerfully, nodding to a couple of men he knew in the corridor outside. After he had gone, Chetwynd spoke through the telephone to his secretary.
‘Ask Colonel Munro if he can come to me.’
Colonel Munro came in, bringing another tall middle-aged man with him.
‘Don’t know whether you know Horsham,’ he said, ‘in Security.’
‘Think I’ve met you,’ said Chetwynd.
‘Nye’s just left you, hasn’t he?’ said Colonel Munro. ‘Anything in this story about Frankfurt? Anything, I mean, that we ought to take any notice of?’
‘Doesn’t seem so,’ said Chetwynd. ‘He’s a bit put out about it. Thinks it makes him look a silly ass. Which it does, of course.’
The man called Horsham nodded his head. ‘That’s the way he takes it, is it?’
‘Well, he tried to put a good face upon it,’ said Chetwynd.
‘All the same, you know,’ said Horsham, ‘he’s not really a silly ass, is he?’
Chetwynd shrugged his shoulders. ‘These things happen,’ he said.
‘I know,’ said Colonel Munro, ‘yes, yes, I know. All the same, well, I’ve always felt in some ways that Nye is a bit unpredictable. That in some ways, you know, he mightn’t be really sound in his views.’
The man called Horsham spoke. ‘Nothing against him,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all as far as we know.’
‘Oh, I didn’t mean there was. I didn’t mean that at all,’ said Chetwynd. ‘It’s just—how shall I put it?—he’s not always very serious about things.’
Mr Horsham had a moustache. He found it useful to have a moustache. It concealed moments when he found it difficult to avoid smiling.
‘He’s not a stupid man,’ said Munro. ‘Got brains, you know. You don’t think that—well, I mean you don’t think there could be anything at all doubtful about this?’
‘On his part? It doesn’t seem so.’
‘You’ve been into it all, Horsham?’
‘Well, we haven’t had very much time yet. But as far as it goes it’s all right. But his passport was used.’
‘Used? In what way?’
‘It passed through Heathrow.’
‘You mean someone represented himself as Sir Stafford Nye?’
‘No, no,’ said Horsham, ‘not in so many words. We could hardly hope for that. It went through with other passports. There was no alarm out, you know. He hadn’t even woken up, I gather, at that time, from the dope or whatever it was he was given. He was still at Frankfurt.’
‘But someone could have stolen that passport and come on the plane and so got into England?’
‘Yes,’ said Munro, ‘that’s the presumption. Either someone took a wallet which had money in it and a passport, or else someone wanted a passport and settled on Sir Stafford Nye as a convenient person to take it from. A drink was waiting on a table, put a pinch in that, wait till the man went off to sleep, take the passport and chance it.’
‘But after all, they look at a passport. Must have seen it wasn’t the right man,’ said Chetwynd.
‘Well, there must have been a certain resemblance, certainly,’ said Horsham. ‘But it isn’t as though there was any notice of his being missing, any special attention drawn to that particular passport in any way. A large crowd comes through on a plane that’s overdue. A man looks reasonably like the photograph in his passport. That’s all. Brief glance, handed back, pass it on. Anyway what they’re looking for usually is the foreigners that are coming in, not the British lot. Dark hair, dark blue eyes, clean shaven, five foot ten or whatever it is. That’s about all you want to see. Not on a list of undesirable aliens or anything like that.’
‘I know, I know. Still, you’d say if anybody wanted merely to pinch a wallet or some money or that, they wouldn’t use the passport, would they. Too much risk.’
‘Yes,’ said Horsham. ‘Yes, that is the interesting part of it. Of course,’ he said, ‘we’re making investigations, asking a few questions here and there.’
‘And what’s your own opinion?’
‘I wouldn’t like to say yet,’ said Horsham. ‘It takes a little time, you know. One can’t hurry things.’
‘They’re all the same,’ said Colonel Munro, when Horsham had left the room. ‘They never will tell you anything, those damned security people. If they think they’re on the trail of anything, they won’t admit it.’
‘Well, that’s natural,’ said Chetwynd, ‘because they might be wrong.’
It seemed a typically political view.
‘Horsham’s a pretty good man,’ said Munro. ‘They think very highly of him at headquarters. He’s not likely to be wrong.’
CHAPTER 3
The Man from the Cleaners
Sir Stafford Nye returned to his flat. A large woman bounced out of the small kitchen with welcoming words.
‘See you got back all right, sir. Those nasty planes. You never know, do you?’
‘Quite true, Mrs Worrit,’ said Sir Stafford Nye. ‘Two hours late, the plane was.’
‘Same as cars, aren’t they,’ said Mrs Worrit. ‘I mean, you never know, do you, what’s going to go wrong with them. Only it’s more worrying, so to speak, being up in the air, isn’t it? Can’t just draw up to the kerb, not the same way, can you? I mean, there you are. I wouldn’t go by one myself, not if it was ever so.’ She went on, ‘I’ve ordered in a few things. I hope that’s all right. Eggs, butter, coffee, tea—’ She ran off the words with the loquacity of a Near Eastern guide showing a Pharaoh’s palace. ‘There,’ said Mrs Worrit, pausing to take breath, ‘I think that’s all as you’re likely to want. I’ve ordered the French mustard.’
‘Not Dijon, is it? They always try and give you Dijon.’
‘I don’t know who he was, but it’s Esther Dragon, the one you like, isn’t it?’
‘Quite right,’ said Sir Stafford, ‘you’re a wonder.’
Mrs Worrit looked pleased. She retired into the kitchen again, as Sir Stafford Nye put his hand on his bedroom door handle preparatory to going into the bedroom.
‘All right to give your clothes to the gentleman what called for them, I suppose, sir? You hadn’t said or left word or anything like that.’
‘What clothes?’ said Sir Stafford Nye, pausing.
‘Two suits, it was, the gentleman said as called for them. Twiss and Bonywork it was, think that’s the same name as called before. We’d had a bit of a dispute with the White Swan laundry if I remember rightly.’
‘Two suits?’ said Sir Stafford Nye. ‘Which suits?’
‘Well, there was the one you travelled home in, sir. I made out that would be one of them. I wasn’t quite so sure about the other, but there was the blue pinstripe that you didn’t leave no orders about when you went away. It could do with cleaning, and there was a repair wanted doing to the right-hand cuff, but I didn’t like to take it on myself while you were away. I never likes to do that,’ said Mrs Worrit with an air of palpable virtue.
‘So the chap, whoever he was, took those suits away?’
‘I hope I didn’t do wrong, sir.’ Mrs Worrit became worried.
‘I don’t mind the blue pinstripe. I daresay it’s all for the best. The suit I came home in, well—’
‘It’s a bit thin, that suit, sir, for this time of year, you know, sir. All right for those parts as you’ve been in where it’s hot. And it could do with a clean. He said as you’d rung up about them. That’s what the gentleman said as called for them.’
‘Did he go into my room and pick them out himself?’
‘Yes, sir. I thought that was best.’
‘Very interesting,’ said Sir Stafford. ‘Yes, very interesting.’
He went into his bedroom and looked round it. It was neat and tidy. The bed was made, the hand of Mrs Worrit was apparent, his electic razor was on charge, the things on the dressing-table were neatly arranged.
He went to the wardrobe and looked inside. He looked in the drawers of the tallboy that stood against the wall near the window. It was all quite tidy. It was tidier indeed than it should have been. He had done a little unpacking last night and what little he had done had been of a cursory nature. He had thrown underclothing and various odds and ends in the appropriate drawer but he had not arranged them neatly. He would have done that himself either today or tomorrow. He would not have expected Mrs Worrit to do it for him. He expected her merely to keep things as she found them. Then, when he came back from abroad, there would be a time for rearrangements and readjustments because of climate and other matters. So someone had looked round here, someone had taken out drawers, looked through them quickly, hurriedly, had replaced things, partly because of his hurry, more tidily and neatly than he should have done. A quick careful job and he had gone away with two suits and a plausible explanation. One suit obviously worn by Sir Stafford when travelling and a suit of thin material which might have been one taken abroad and brought home. So why?
