“Mr. Taine,” I corrected him.
“I have a warrant for your arrest on a charge of murder of a person unknown–” and he gave me the details and the usual caution.
I don’t mind saying that his neutral, even kindly voice moved me to a sheer panic such as I’ve never felt in all my life.
“You can take down any damn thing you please in evidence against us,” interrupted Sandorski cheerfully. “Got a sharp pencil–ha?”
“Peter,” the other man said to him with the utmost seriousness, “you do understand that if you have broken the law I can’t help you, don’t you?”
“Haven’t even hit a policeman,” Sandorski replied. “Get on with it! Where can we talk?”
“Why not my flat–if you’ve no objection, Inspector?”
I think that perhaps this friend of Sandorski’s–and now of mine–would prefer me not to give his name and address. So I will continue to call him Roland, and merely say that his flat was warm and welcome–especially when he had produced something to eat from the icebox. The policeman was Inspector Haldon of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch.
Sandorski told our story. He said that he had come to England on information received, and left it at that. He had run into me when exploring the shoot, and I had agreed to help him. We had found the beacons and intercepted the plane, and we knew nothing at all about the body in the car. Then he told them of the international connections of the People’s Union, and that it was Robert Heyne-Hassingham and Hiart who had organized the illicit landing.
Roland was at first inclined to think that Sandorski was romanticizing. He said that nobody could be such a fool as to take the People’s Union seriously, not even its founder; and he was horrified at the suggestion that Hiart, who was almost a colleague of his, could be implicated.
He appealed to Inspector Haldon, who grinned in answer.
“I must admit, sir,” he said, “that Colonel Hiart–well, it has been suggested that he was rather too thick with some of his opposite numbers abroad. We keep an open mind, of course, but–”
”Good God, Haldon!” Roland exclaimed, really shocked. “Do you watch me too?”
“Fatherly, sir, fatherly,” said the inspector. “Now General, I understand that you telephoned Mr. Roland last night to wire Flat 9 for sound in order that you could prove your innocence and Mr. Taine’s. What are we going to hear?”
“You are going to hear that courier speak to Heyne-Hassingham, and I hope you’re going to hear him hand over the documents.”
Then Sandorski told him what the documents were.
“Now you see why we ran for it–ha? If Hiart had got his hands on that briefcase, it soon would have gone up in smoke, wouldn’t it? And if the police had it first, he’d have sworn the papers were forged by a mad Pole. Crazy general. Brains removed for experiment in prison camp. Lands planes. Burns cars. And the passenger, so that he can’t talk–ha? I’d have had a hard time proving it wasn’t so. I may have, still. I’m not sure Heyne-Hassingham will come. He might send Hiart.”
“He won’t do that,” said Roland. “Hiart’s in hospital.”
“Pink shot him?”
“Good Lord, Peter, this is England! He fractured his skull when his car tipped over.”
“Now this is all very well, sir,” said the inspector genially. “But what we want to know is if General Sandorski can throw any light at all on that burned body.”
“I? Didn’t know a thing about it till the cops called on Taine.”
“Or you, Mr. Taine?”
“No,” I said, “no … no.”
“Would it surprise you to know that the man had been dead some weeks before he was burned?”
“It would delight me,” said Sandorski. “Here’s my passport! You can see I wasn’t in England.”
“And Mr. Taine?”
“It’s only a week since I met the general,” I replied, as if that fixed it.
Well of course it did. My life was an open book. Haldon must have been wholly content that I had no conceivable motive to go around murdering strangers until Sandorski turned up.
“By the way,” the inspector asked, “what did you do with Mr. Bear’s limousine? We’d better get hold of that before there is any trouble about it.”
“Left it at Salisbury.”
“Then youdidcome by train?”
“Sure we did,” said Sandorski. “Why not? Give your chaps a lecture any time you like, Inspector. Hints and Tips on Train Control.”
Roland let us camp in his flat, while he and Haldon returned to duty at 26 Fulham Park Avenue. The inspector didn’t exactly put us on parole, but he did warn us that he had a man outside, and that we couldn’t avoid publicity and a magistrate’s court if we tried to escape. As soon as they had gone, I tried to call Cecily. Only after sweating with fury did I remember that twelve hours before Sandorski had cut the line.
I thought that our excitement and exhaustion were too insistent for sleep but some time after dawn we must both have dozed off, for we were awakened by Roland returning with the news that it was eleven o’clock and that he had a transcript of the telephone conversation between Lex and Heyne-Hassingham.
Lex had done very well. He had a fine Central European obstinacy. The butler tried to put him off. He kept on ringing, and attracted the private secretary. At last he got on to the great leader himself. Heyne-Hassingham had been very cagey and incredulous, but Lex started to give him the exact details of when he had been sent and by whom. Then Heyne-Hassingham exploded:
“Good God, Riemann!”
Roland looked at us for an explanation, but both Sandorski and I were blank–I fear, suspiciously blank. Of course Heyne-Hassingham had believed the corpse in the car to be Lex, and he now saw that it must be the vanished Riemann.
After that he wanted Lex to come down to his house in Dorset, but Lex wasn’t having any. He thought London-was much safer–and I’m not surprised. So, on second thoughts, did Heyne-Hassingham. He had promised to drive up to town immediately.
Roland packed us into the back of his car, with a very formidable character sitting between us. A former commando sergeant-major, I should think. He looked too lawless for any policeman. It was clear that we were by no means trusted yet.
“Does Heyne-Hassingham know whose body that was in the car?” asked Roland, as soon as he had cleared Trafalgar Square and was driving evenly westwards along the Mall.
“He does,” the general answered. “What was the name he exclaimed when Lex called him up? Something like Riemann, wasn’t it?”
“He knows who killed him, too?”
“No. Thinks I did. He’ll tell you so.”
“How good is your alibi really?” Roland asked, staring straight ahead of him into the traffic.
“Perfect. I was in Vienna up to last week.”
“Day and night, Peter?”
“Nearly. I’d have needed a damn fast plane if I did it– and you ought to know my funds don’t run to that.”
Before we turned into Fulham Park Avenue we were stopped by one of Haldon’s men, who told us that half an hour after the conversation between Lex and Heyne-Hassingham two chaps had turned up in the street and were hanging about; one of them was known to be the Fulham secretary of the People’s Union. It was a sure bet that they were going to report to the revered leader, when his car stopped at the corner, whether anyone suspicious had gone into No. 26.
That didn’t bother Roland. I gathered that the Metropolitan Police by no means always used the front door of a house that interested them. At No. 38 there was a friendly porter, bursting with importance and carefully looking the other way when we passed him. From a skylight in his building we gained access to the roofs of the long, narrow block, and walked along the leads, between the sloping slates and the parapet, to No. 26. We had to climb the party walls, with their projecting chimney stacks, but were hidden from Fulham Park Avenue itself by the gables. We were, of course, in full view of windows of the opposite block, beyond the yards and gardens. Londoners, however, have a remarkable lack of curiosity.