The Tiger In the Smoke Page 3

  ‘I understand that, Miss – I mean Mrs Elginhrodde. He was in France, wasn’t he, brought up by a grandmother? And he wasn’t very old when he died – twenty-five, I think?’

  ‘Yes. He’d be thirty now.’ She looked round as she spoke, nervously and yet not entirely unhopefully. The movement was quite subconscious and it struck both men as pathetic. It was as though the war years had peeped out at them suddenly and the coloured clothes all round them in the fog had been washed over briefly with khaki. To add to the illusion, the dreary thumping of a street band away out in Crumb Street behind them reached them faintly through the station noises. It was only the ghost of a tune, not recognizable yet evocative and faintly alarming, like a half-remembered threat. Luke hunched his wide shoulders.

  ‘The studio portrait and the passport didn’t really tell us much, you know,’ he said, sketching in a very large square followed by a very small one with his restless long-boned hands. ‘I think I ought to tell you that as far as our experts can tell from measurement of the features, as far as they can tell, it’s not the same man.’ He was watching her, trying to appraise her reaction. The face she turned to him was both disappointed and relieved. Hope died in it, but also hope appeared. She was saddened and yet made happy. There was shame there and bewilderment. She might have been going to cry. He began to be very sorry for her.

  ‘I did find this last night,’ she said, turning to Campion. ‘I’m afraid the whole thing is very dark, but it’s a snap a child took of a dog we had, and that’s Martin in the background. I don’t know if it’s any use at all, yet I think anyone who knew him would recognize it.’

  She brought a little faded square from the depths of her big handbag and handed it to him. The D.D.C.I. looked over his shoulder. It was the yellowing print of an overexposed snap of a plump, negroid-looking dog wallowing on a London lawn, and far in the background, laughing, with hands in pockets and head thrust forward, was a boy wearing a braggadocio moustache. There was nothing definitely characteristic there except perhaps his spirit, and yet the picture shook them both, and they stood looking at it for a long time. At length Luke tapped his coat pocket.

  ‘I’ve got one of the street pictures here but this isn’t the time to get it out,’ he murmured, and once again his glance roved round the vast station. He was puzzled and making no secret of it. ‘Yes, I see why you got the wind-up.’

  His shrewdness and friendliness took any offence out of the observation. ‘There is a look there. I see what you mean. Yes. Tell me, Mrs Elginbrodde, did your husband have any young brothers or cousins?’

  ‘No, none I ever heard of.’ The suggestion was a new idea to her and in the circumstances hardly attractive.

  ‘Now look here – ’ Luke became a conspirator and his over-padded shoulders seemed to spread even wider to screen her, ‘ – the only thing you’ve got to do is to keep your head. It all depends on you. It’s a million to one that this will turn out to be the usual blackmail by a customer with a record as long as a train. He’s behaving altogether too cautiously so far, and that may mean that he’s not sure of his ground. He may just want to look at you, or he may risk talking to you. All you’ve got to do is to let him. Leave the rest to me, see?’

  ‘Time is getting on,’ put in Mr Campion behind him. ‘Fifteen minutes to go.’

  ‘I’d better go to the platform.’ Meg moved as she spoke and Campion drew her back.

  ‘Not yet. That’s where he’ll look for you. Don’t move from here until we spot him.’

  She was surprised and her narrow brows rose high on the smooth forehead, which was rounded like a little girl’s and had been fascinating Luke for some time.

  ‘But I thought the message meant that he was coming off the Bath train?’

  ‘That’s what he wants you to think.’ The D.D.C.I. was in danger of becoming fatherly. ‘He wants you to watch the train so that he can pick you out at leisure. The post-mark was London, wasn’t it? He doesn’t have to go to Bath to take a platform ticket.’

  ‘Oh! Oh, of course.’ She sighed on the word and stepped back beside him, her hands folded. In spite of their escort she looked lonely, peering out anxiously, waiting.

  The fog was thickening and the glass and iron roof was lost in its greasy drapery. The yellow lights achieved but a shabby brilliance and only the occasional plumes of steam from the locomotives were clean in the gloom. That tremendous air of suppressed excitement which is peculiar to all great railway stations was intensified by the mist, and all the noises were muffled by it and made more hollow-sounding even than usual. From where they stood they could see all the main-line gates, and over on the left the great entrance with its four twenty-foot doors and the bright bookstall just beside it.

  The afternoon rush was beginning, and wave after wave of hurrying travellers jostled out of the booking-hall and fanned on to the wide ledge of one of the longest platforms in the world. Away to their right was the other carriageway climbing bleakly into Crumb Street, and behind them was the tunnel to the Underground and the double row of telephone boxes.

  Luke was watching the main entrance with misleading idleness, while Campion kept a discreet eye on the Underground, and neither was prepared for the sudden cry beside them.

  ‘Oh! Look! Over there. There he is. Martin!’

  Meg had forgotten everything else in the world. She stood transfixed, pointing like a child and calling at the top of her voice.

  Fifty yards away on a strip of sooty pavement, which was otherwise deserted, a neat, soldierly figure had appeared. He wore a distinctive but well-cut sports jacket and the inevitable green pork-pie hat and had just turned in smartly out of the drive from Crumb Street. He had a brisk, purposeful step and was not looking about him. Even at that distance the shadow of a large moustache was discernible, and from behind him, as though designed to increase the somewhat theatrical militariness of his appearance, the rowdy street band thumping out the violent marching song sounded clearly from the distance.

  ‘Martin!’ Meg broke away before they could stop her. There was something in the cry which reached the man above the noises of the station. It was not the sound itself but something emotional which ran through the other loiterers, as if between them they had made a telephone wire. Campion saw a line of turning heads and at the end of it the stranger starting violently, stopping, pausing frozen for a moment. Then he ran.

  He fled like a deer down the first avenue of escape. A mass formation of porters’ trucks, each piled high with luggage, lay ahead of him, and his pursuers were sweeping down on him from his left, so he turned right through the open gateway of the suburban-line platform where the slow down train stood waiting. He ran as though his life depended on it, blindly, knocking strangers headlong, leaping over suitcases, darting round lamp-standards only just in time to avoid disaster. Luke shot after him, clutching his coat skirts round him and gaining because of his superior stride. He sped past Meg, who would have followed him had not Campion’s hand closed firmly on her wrist.

  ‘This way,’ he said urgently, and swept her on towards the other platform immediately behind and parallel with the stationary train.

  Meanwhile the crowd hampered everybody. Luke charged through it like a bull, shouting the familiar ‘Mind your backs, please!’ of the station staff. Porters paused in the fairway, staring. Ticket collectors hesitated and got in the road. Children appeared from nowhere and scampered up and down, screaming, and the great solid mass of apathetic gazers who spring out of the very stones of a city the moment there is anything to look at, shuffled after the fugitive, making any return journey impossible.

  On the other platform, however, when at last they reached it, Mr Campion and the girl found themselves practically alone. The suburban train, still unlit and lying like a black caterpillar on the second row of rails, was separated from them by a gulf of blackness striped with dull silver. Since all the excitement was taking place on the other side of it, there were no faces at the windows and no sign of movement
from within. Meg was very white and her hands were shaking.

  ‘He ran away,’ she began huskily. ‘Martin – ’

  The words died abruptly. Campion was not looking at her. He was watching the dark side of the train, his coat buttoned tightly and his hands ready. The overhead lamp shining on the fog made it look as though the scene was taking place under muddy water. Distances were deceptive and colours untrue. For Meg it was a moment of unreality. She did not believe in it and her eyes, as they followed Campion’s gaze, were incredulous.

  At last the moment he waited for occurred. A door half-way down the train swung back abruptly and a dark figure dropped out on to the line. He tripped over a sleeper but recovered himself and stumbled across to the platform, only to find the stone rim level with his shoulders. He sprang at it and clung there, his head turned from them as he peered anxiously down the line. Any incoming engine must crush him but at the moment there was no sign of one, only the fog and the coloured lights.

  He slipped back and made another effort, just as Campion’s lean arm shot out and caught him by the collar. At the same moment Luke appeared behind him and the train became alive with spectators. Windows rattled down, heads were thrust out, and the shrill clatter of voices broke over them in a wave. Luke dropped on to the line with unexpected lightness. He was in perfect condition, lithe and powerful. He caught the stranger by the waist, heaved him into Campion’s arms, and vaulted up beside him, his hat still in place.

  A white face with narrow black frightened eyes looked up at them. All the soldierliness had vanished. The swagger had melted and the body shrunk into the clothes. The moustache looked enormous and ridiculous. He made no sound at all, but stood shaking and twitching, ready to run again the moment the grip on his arm should relax.

  ‘Oh … oh, I’m so sorry. How crazy of me. Now I see him close he’s not even like him.”

  They had not noticed Meg come up, and her wondering voice took them by surprise. She was staring at the captive in bewilderment, the colour pouring into her face, relief fighting with disappointment in her eyes.

  ‘It was at that distance – I could have sworn, I don’t know why. The build, the clothes, the – ’ She put out her hand to touch the tweed coat-sleeve and the prisoner leapt away from her as if she had been a live rail. There was a momentary struggle, and as they overpowered him again Luke jerked the man towards him so that their faces all but met.

  ‘You’re losing something, mate,’ he remarked with ferocious good humour. ‘Look at this. It came off in my hand.’ The movement was too swift to be resisted. The stranger swore in a husky whisper and was silent again. The moustache had been lightly gummed, and now the skin on the long upper lip was pale where it had been. Luke tucked the piece of hair into his waistcoat pocket. ‘Nice one,’ he said shamelessly. ‘Must have cost a packet and come from a swell costumier’s. I’ll take care of it for you.’

  Without his moustache it was difficult to believe that the stranger had ever resembled any other man closely. He had a distinctive mouth, marred by the scar of a sewn hare-lip, a broken tooth in the centre front, and an indefinable air of slyness which at this moment was overshadowed by a terror quite out of proportion to his crime, at least so far as it was suspected.

  Meg put her hand up to her cheek. She was incoherent with embarrassment and bewilderment. It was evident that two more different men than the captive and Martin Elginbrodde were impossible to imagine, and yet she had been so sure.

  Luke grinned at her. ‘He didn’t risk coming too close, did he?’ he said. ‘But he took you in at a distance. Quite a performance.’

  She turned away abruptly and Luke lifted his chin to peer down the platform. Two heavy men in raincoats were running towards them, followed by a small section of the crowd who had just discovered what had happened.

  ‘Your men?’ Campion sounded relieved.

  Luke nodded. ‘I put them on the entrance doors in case. They spotted the rumpus and used their heads.’ He raised his hand to the newcomers as he spoke and returned to his prisoner. ‘Well, Chatty,’ he said cheerfully, ‘don’t go getting any funny ideas about this being an arrest.’ He shook the arm he held by way of emphasis. ‘This is just a friendly invitation to a quiet talk in a nice warm room. You may even get a cup of tea, for all I know. Understand?’

  The man said nothing. He might not even have heard. His face was wooden. Only his eyes shifted uneasily. He was quiet now but there was still a tenseness in his body. He was still ready to make a dash for freedom the moment he got a chance.

  Luke surveyed him, his head on one side, his bright eyes inquisitive.

  ‘Why are you worrying?’ he said softly. ‘There’s not more on your mind than there is on mine, by any chance?’

  In spite of the hint, which was broad enough, there was no relaxing, no let-up. The weak mouth remained tightly closed, the muscles were still flexed under the tweed sleeve.

  Luke handed him over to the newcomers, who arrived breathless and unsmiling.

  ‘No charge. Held for questioning.’ He might have been delivering a parcel. ‘He wants taking care of. Don’t hurry him, but see he gets there. He seems bent on taking exercise. I’ll be right behind you.’

  Meg and Campion walked down the shadowy stone way together and Luke walked beside them. The solid knot of men in front moved quickly. The crowd stared at them but parted for them, and they turned out of the gate at the top and round the bend, out of sight.

  The girl was quite silent for some time, but the emotional conflict in her mind was as apparent as if she had explained it. Campion watched her out of the corner of his eye.

  ‘You’ll have to put this clean out of your mind, if you can, you know,’ he said at last. ‘If I may, I’ll put you in a taxi outside the station, and then after Luke has had a chat with this fellow I’ll get him to come back with me. I don’t see the purpose of this performance at all, but I think you’ll have to face the fact that it is only a performance.’

  She paused in her walk and faced him. ‘You mean you’re quite certain it wasn’t Martin in the photographs?’

  ‘Oh no, it was this fellow every time. That’s practically sure.’

  ‘Practically?’ Her wide mouth twisted and her eyes looked darker. ‘Practically sure Martin is dead again. I’ve been remembering him. He was a very – very sweet person, you know.’

  A wave of old-fashioned black anger swept over Luke’s dark face. In common with everything about him, it was vivid and more than life-size.

  ‘That’s the thing which makes me wild,’ he announced with a bitterness which startled them both. ‘A chap gives his life and as soon as the grass has grown a bit and there’s the chance of a spot of happiness for the woman who is the only thing left of him, a ruddy great pack of ghouls come scrapping round looking for a ha’porth of gold out of his eyeteeth. Forgive me, Mrs Elginbrodde, but it makes me spiteful.’

  ‘A pack?’ she said dully. ‘Are there more of them?’

  ‘Oh yes. I’ve seen that quivering little mug before somewhere. He’s nothing. He’s the tailor’s dummy. If he’d been on his own he’d have done a bit of talking. I’m not the one that lad is so frightened of. That’s the only thing he did tell us.’

  ‘Then Martin might – ’

  ‘No.’ He spoke with a tenderness unexpected in him. ‘No, lady, no. Put that clean out of your mind. That dear chap and his dog have gone, gone where the dear chaps do go, gone with a few I knew. You’ve got your own life and you go and live it and make a do of it, as no doubt he’d like you to. Now you go home. Will Mr Levett be there?’

  ‘No. Do you want him? He brought me here and went on to his office. He’s going to ring me at five. He has some sort of business appointment this evening.’

  She saw his expression and smiled to reassure him. ‘Oh, I shall be all right. My father is there. In fact, there are quite a lot of people in the house. We’d be very glad to see you if you could manage it.’

  ‘Fine.’ It was obvious
that Luke thought of clapping her on the shoulder and quite as obviously changed his mind. ‘Splendid. Wait for us. Now we’ll put you in a cab just over here …’

  He was still fierce when they closed the taxi door on her some minutes later and caught a last glimpse of her face as it changed after her valiant parting smile. As they pushed up the drive into Crumb Street, Campion was struck once more both by his power and the unexpected emotional depths he had revealed. Luke was as moved as if Elginbrodde had been his brother and was identifying him in his mind with some soldier he had loved. It made him an alarming enemy for someone.

  Meanwhile Crumb Street, never a place of beauty, that afternoon was at its worst. The fog slopped over its low houses like a bucketful of cold soup over a row of dirty stoves. The shops had been mean when they had been built and were designed for small and occasional trade, but since the days of victory, when a million demobilized men had passed through the terminus, each one armed with a parcel of Government-presented garments of varying usefulness, half the establishments had been taken over by opportunists specializing in the purchase and sale of secondhand clothes. Every other window was darkened with festoons of semi-respectable rags based by bundles of grey household linen, soiled suitcases, and an occasional collection of surplus war stores, green, khaki, and air-force blue. The fine new police station on the corner was the chief ornament to the district, and the D.D.C.I. advanced upon it with the tread of a proprietor. The impatient traffic was moving a little and they were held up for a moment or so on a street island. As they waited, Mr Campion reflected that the evil smell of fog is a smell of ashes grown cold under hoses, and he heard afresh the distinctive noise of the irritable, half-blinded city, the scream of brakes, the abuse of drivers, the fierce hiss of tyres on the wet road.

  Just above it, like an appropriate theme-song, sounded the thumping of the street band. There was nothing of the dispirited drone there. It triumphed in the thick air, an almighty affront of a noise, importunate and vigorous.