Rolling Stone (2 page)

When Peter came back he was lying on his side watching the door, but the eyes had no sense in them and the muttering had begun again.

Peter went over to the window and stood there with his back to the room listening. This was Spike Reilly whom he had been following, and he thought he was a dying man. What he ought to do, what he had every opportunity of doing, was to pick up that suit-case and go through it. He had only to open the connecting door—there was a key on this side all right—and step into his own room with the suit-case in his hand. Whatever papers there were, he could go through them at his leisure.

He could—well, he just couldn't. Irrational thing, one's code. If Spike had been drunk—oh, yes. If Spike had been dead—why certainly. But since Spike was dying—devil take it, it couldn't be done. Not if Garrett, the Foreign Office, and Scotland Yard all stood in a row and yelped. This pleasing picture occupied him for a space.

He wondered how soon the doctor would come, and became aware that the voice had died down. Turning, he saw that the man was looking at him. The look, at first blank, became intent. In a whisper Spike Reilly said, “Who are you?” and even as he asked the question, the eyes went blank again, and the voice failed on a gasp.

There was no more sound or movement. Nothing. Peter stood where he was and listened. Not a breath. Nothing. Neither Pierre Riel nor Spike Reilly any more. Just a dead man lying there on the tumbled bed.

Peter picked up the suit-case and went through the communicating door into his own room.

CHAPTER III

He would have to be quick. And yet perhaps not so very quick. Their client's condition had obviously aroused no passionate interest in either M. or Mme. Dupin. He did not think it likely that they would hurry themselves over sending for a doctor. On the other hand, not safe to count on that. Get on with the job, and get on with it quick.

There was, as a matter of fact, very little in the suit-case. Pyjamas and washing things had been taken out, and had left a good-sized gap. There remained a pair of black laced shoes, a pair of pants, a woollen undervest, a packet of cigarettes, a brand new pair of braces, a small writing-block, a packet of envelopes, and a battered paper-covered novel entitled
Her Great Romance
. And that was all. He shook the novel and flicked through the pages—just in case. It wasn't a likely receptacle for papers of a private and particular nature, but you never could tell.

He repacked the suit-case, took it back into the next room, and turned his attention to the garments which had been flung down anyhow, half on a chair, half trailing to the ground. There was a rain-coat—nothing in the pockets. Trousers—a key-ring and a handful of loose change. Waistcoat pocket—a cheap cigarette-lighter. He took up the coat—handkerchief and cigarette case in the breast pocket on the left, pocket-book on the right. Peter let everything fall and grabbed the pocket-book. He took it over to the window.

The first thing that came out was a folded letter. It fell right out on to the floor, and he had to stoop down to pick it up—two sheets, torn from one of the cheaper blocks, and the top one began, “Dear Jimmy—”

He stood there frowning at the sheet. There was no address, no date. “Dear Jimmy”… He couldn't remember that he had ever read a private letter belonging to someone else before, and he didn't like doing it now. But he supposed he had to. Well, it might be a private letter, or it might not. He would just have to see. By the cold, rainy light at the window he read:

“Dear Jimmy,

It's no use your going on asking me to tell you things about Mrs. Simpson, because it wouldn't be safe for you and it wouldn't be safe for me—at least that's the idea I've got about it. You've never seen her, and she's never seen you, and I don't see why you can't leave her alone. I'm sure I'm sorry I ever mentioned her name, and if it hadn't been for getting into the same bus like I told you, I don't suppose I should ever have thought about her again. She didn't think I'd recognise her either, and I don't suppose hardly anyone would, because of course it's fifteen or sixteen years, and she's aged a lot more than that and everything about her different. But there's one thing that won't ever change about her, not if she was a hundred, and when I'd spotted that, sitting opposite her in the bus, well, I was quite sure and I spoke to her. And of course she said I was making a mistake and it was no such thing, so I waited till she got off, and I followed her. And I said, ‘Well, Mrs. Simpson, if you don't want me to know you, that's one thing, but if you think you can persuade me that you're someone else, well, that's another.' So then she came off it and we had a talk, and she said she'd got her reasons for keeping quiet, and better for everyone if I didn't talk. I didn't like the way she looked at me when she said that, and I told her I'd hold my tongue. And that's just what I mean to do, so it's no use your asking me about when I knew her before, or how I knew her again, or where she is, because, as I said to start with, I think we'll both be a lot safer if I hold my tongue. I've got my own ideas, and I'm keeping them to myself, and if you'll take my advice you'll clear out of this job you're in and keep clear, because I don't like the sound of it.

Yours affectionately,

Louie.”

This was queer stuff if you like. What was it Spike Reilly had said in his voice of delirious triumph? “I know—I know—Maud Millicent Simpson—what have you got to say to that? If I can find her, I can find you—can't I? And I'm going to find you—” Maud Millicent Simpson—Mrs. Simpson—encountered in a bus sixteen years after some unspecified event—a person whom it was safer not to know—“If I can find her, I can find you—can't I?”

Peter thought Garrett would be interested. He put the letter away carefully and went on turning out the pocket-book.

Notes. Spike Reilly carried quite a lot of money—a great deal more than one would have expected—enough for a long journey. That made you think a bit.… A passport made out the name of James Peter Reilly. So wherever he was bound for with that bulging pocket-book, it was under his own name.…

But Pierre Reil
here
. Why?… Protective colouring—a most natural desire to melt into the landscape. Riel in Belgium. Reilly—well, where would one be Reilly? England, Scotland, Ireland, or the United States of America. Quite a nice wide field for speculation, but Peter had a hunch that the first and nearest of these countries would fill the bill. He reflected in passing that the photograph on the passport wasn't very much like the man on the bed. Of course he was dead.… His own passport photograph would have fitted a dozen people he knew.

The thought just slid over the surface of his mind and was forgotten, because the next thing that came out of the pocket-book was a sheet of cheap greyish paper with lines of figures written across it—

10. 16. 27. 1. 103. 8. 9.… They went on like that, row after row of them, all down one side of the sheet and all down the other. Peter's finger-tips tingled. He slipped the pocket-book back into the pocket from which it had come and threw the coat across the chair, because this, most unmistakably, was the goods. A cipher, and Mr. Spike Reilly's marching orders no doubt. His eye travelled down the paper, looking for repetitions of the same number or group of numbers—something which might stand for the commonest letter E, or for such words as
a, and
, or
the
.

When he had turned the page and come to the bottom of it, he whistled softly. There was no help that way. He began to wonder—and then with extreme suddenness he stopped wondering.

A pencil mark—a thing which he had seen without noticing, and which came up now as invisible writing comes up when you hold it to the fire. A pencil mark.… He had the suit-case open and the paper-covered novel out of it in a flash. A well thumbed book. That ought to have attracted his attention at the very outset. Read and re-read by the look of it, the pages dog-eared and thumbed—dirty pages, with here and there a pencil mark, and here and there a smear as if indiarubber had been used. He called himself a dull fool for having seen no more than a dirty trashy novel, because now he was prepared to eat the pages if they did not hold the key to the cipher.

He went through into his own room again and sat down to
Her Great Romance
, the sheetful of figures propped before him.

10. 16. 27. 1. 103. 8. 9.… On the simplest plan this would be page 10 line 16, page 27 line 1, page 103 line 8. But then how did you know which word or letter of line 16 to pick? If it was a letter, perhaps the third number gave it—say the twenty-seventh letter of the sixteenth line on the tenth page. No, that was a wash-out, because in the next group it would give you page 1 line 103, which was absurd.… Come back to page 10 line 16.

He flicked the pages over and found the place. Round about line 16 a girl called Gloria was putting on a yellow hat. The Y of yellow had a faint pencil mark under it. It was the second letter in the line, the first being A—“a yellow hat”—just like that.

Peter wrote the Y down on a slip of paper and turned to page 27 line 1. The first letter of line 1 had a just visible pencil mark under it. It was an O—“‘One life, one love, one fate,' said Lord St. Maur.” Peter said “Well, well,” and wrote the O down after the Y.

On page 103 line 8 the ninth letter was marked, and it was a U. Peter said “Eureka!” He had a perfectly whole possible word on his paper, and he saw how the thing was worked. The first number, 10, was a page number, and the second, 16, was a line number, and the next number, 27, was a page number; but to get the letter number of page 10 line 16, you took the 2 from 27, which was the next page number. The next group gave page 27 line 1, and the 1 from the next page number, 103, as the letter number. And so forth and so on. Simplicity itself, and a quite unbreakable cipher if Spike Reilly hadn't been so free with his pencil marks, and so careless as to carry only one novel in his suit-case.

If
Her Great Romance
had been unmarked and lost in a crowd of other similar romances, a lot of things might have happened differently. One man might have lived, and more than one might have died. Terry Clive would probably have come to a sticky end.

As it was, it took Peter no more than a quarter of an hour to collect the dotted letters and arrange them in words and sentences. He tried to hold his mind back from making sense of them, because something kept telling him to hurry, but some of the meaning got through and he finished the job in a state of tingling excitement. The deciphered message ran:

“You are to come over here. I have work for you. Double pay and bonuses. Cross Thursday. Go Preedo Library Archmount Street. S.W. noon Friday. Say you expect call. Await instructions.”

There was no signature.

Peter sat and looked at the words. This was Tuesday. If one crossed on Thursday as the note suggested, one would naturally make a point of being on hand to take that call in Preedo's Library, wherever that might be. And someone could be told off to find out who was at the other end of the line. A word to Garrett would fix that all right. These thoughts moved on the surface. They fell into place and made a neat picture. But underneath something disturbed and disturbing took shape and came blundering into view.

Peter got to his feet, got to the door, got to the head of the stairs, and stood there listening.… Nothing. Nobody. He went back to his own room, half drew out his pocket-book, and slid it back again.

Crazy—that's what it was.

Well, with a strong enough motive you took a crazy risk.

In this case just how strong was the motive?

And the answer to that was, ask Garrett.

For his own part, he had an idea that Garrett was fussed—and Garrett didn't fuss easily.

He thought about Garrett's last letter: “The thing is a snowball. I don't know where it's going to roll or what it's going to pick up on the way. It started with picture-lifting, fairly plastered itself with blackmail from the insurance companies, and has now added a murder. No knowing where it'll stop—” Well, he had been roped in because he had stumbled on something odd, and because he wasn't a regular agent. The novelist is a privileged Nosey Parker. It is his job to watch people and listen to them. It flatters some, and flutters some but no one suspects him of being in with Scotland Yard or the Foreign Office.

Peter contemplated the impossible—the plan which had come surging up in the middle of his neat picture—and found angles from which the impossible began to look possible. Of course if the doctor were to come butting in, the whole thing blew up. But there didn't seem to be any sign of the doctor. The Dupins didn't hurry, hadn't hurried, wouldn't hurry. There would be time enough and to spare.

No harm in having a look at the passports anyhow. He went through into the next room. Took out Reilly's pocketbook, extracted Reilly's passport. Took out his own pocketbook, extracted his own passport.

Well, here they were, side by side.

James Peter Reilly.

Accompanied by his wife? (Apparently and most fortunately not. Children ditto.)

National status—British subject by birth.

He turned the page.

Place and date of birth—Glasgow, 1907. (Glasgow Irish, was he?)

Domicile—Glasgow.

Colour of eyes—grey.

Colour of hair—brown.

Special peculiarities—scar on back of right hand.

Peter laughed suddenly.

“And that settles it,” he said, “because—” He lifted his own right hand and made a fine wide gesture. The impossible, thus warmly invited, advanced and made itself at home. Peter's hand with the long white scar across the knuckles came down on his own passport.

John Peter Carmichael Talbot. (Also, thank heaven, without a wife or any other encumbrances.)

National status—British subject by birth.