Haldon and a police stenographer were squatting in the shelter of a water tank. We waited with them for some ninety minutes of cold politeness. Then the front-door bell of Flat 9 spat a startling ring at us from the receiver, and we settled down to listen.
The door opened and shut. Lex took control of the interview from the start, for he insisted solidly upon Heyne-Hassingham proving his identity. When his legal mind was satisfied, and Heyne-Hassingham–to judge by his voice-dancing with impatience, Lex said:
“Here is vot I bring for you! I push–so!–and we may open. If I not push, all burn!”
“Very ingenious,” agreed Heyne-Hassingham coldly and hurriedly.
He was a frightened man. His hoarse tone was enough for Haldon to give me a confident wink. It was the first friendly gesture that the inspector had permitted himself.
They must have been very close to the microphone, for we actually heard the key turn in the lock of the briefcase, and then a rustle of papers, overwhelmingly loud, as Heyne-Hassingham withdrew the roll of documents and glanced at the contents.
He pulled himself together and thanked Lex for his devoted services in words that would better have fitted the Archbishop of Canterbury than a damned idealistic crook of a politician.
“I did little,” Lex answered. “But soch gallantry, soch bravery I have seen! I vant you now to hear–”
“I will, my dear chap, I will indeed,” Heyne-Hassingham interrupted. “But later, if you don’t mind. I must get you out of England at once. You’ll have your orders in an hour or two. Understood?”
Haldon jumped for the skylight of No. 26, intending to pick up Heyne-Hassingham outside the door of the flat before he could get rid of his papers.
“Don’t touch Lex!” Sandorski shouted. “And don’t take Heyne-Hassingham past the windows. It’s a gift!”
Roland saw what he meant at once. If Lex stayed in the flat and knew nothing of Heyne-Hassingham’s arrest, and if Sandorski then smuggled him abroad, it would be proved up to the hilt that the general was indeed Heyne-Hassingham’s trusted agent, and, for a few days at any rate, all Lex’s contacts would be wide-open to inspection.
Heyne-Hassingham’s head and shoulders appeared at the skylight, with Haldon a close two rungs of the ladder below him. For a moment the great leader looked his part. Worry and terror and self-control had given him the ascetic face of a saint.
He took two fairly confident steps towards the water tank. Then he saw me, knew that he was trapped, and had, I suppose, no thought but how to get rid of his papers. He lost his nerve, jumped the low party wall onto the leads of the next house and bolted. It wasn’t as crazy an act as it seemed. If he could get a lead of a few seconds and drop that roll of documents down a smoking chimney pot, he could afford to stand on his dignity afterwards.
Sandorski went away after him well ahead of the rest of us. His featherweight build was just right for this gymnasium stuff; he could hop over the slates like a London sparrow. Heyne-Hassingham managed to keep away from him for the length of half a dozen houses, and then, when the general was nearly on him, jumped onto the parapet overlooking Fulham Park Avenue. I don’t know what he meant to do. His position was by no means desperate enough for suicide. But he was unbalanced in more senses than one, and it was Sandorski’s grab for him that was decisive. I was the only person who saw what happened. Sandorski was, perhaps, a little clumsy. It was as well, for I doubt if Haldon could ever have got a conviction for high treason against a competent defense.
The punishment, however, was correct. Heyne-Hassingham fell on the area railings beneath, and a spike took him under the chin. When we got down to the street, we couldn’t see much of his sprawling body, but his head looked at us as if from the top of Temple Bar. A mean and surburban Temple Bar–that was about what Heyne-Hassingham was worth.
At Scotland Yard Haldon took me first, and alone. I didn’t have any difficulty. I told the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but I started it with the appearance of Sandorski on my shoot. I had merely to appear a bit of a romantic fool, showing myself far too easily convinced by Sandorski’s story.
“Somewhat irresponsible for a married man with children, isn’t it?” asked Haldon.
“Oh, well,” I replied weakly, “one wants to escape from time to time, you know.”
“You’d better tell that to Mrs. Taine,” he said, with a dryness that suggested he wasn’t wholly satisfied.
He pressed a bell on his desk. There was a moment of awkward silence. Then the door opened, and in came Cecily.
Damn Haldon! I couldn’t help it. I seemed to have been away from her for a year.
“Who’s looking after the children?” I asked.
“I told the police they had to come with me,” she said “There’s a sergeant out there, playing with them. They wanted to see how handcuffs worked.”
She stifled a sob and looked at us both, very still but not white. She forced herself to appear natural and proud. I don’t know how she did it.
“Mrs. Taine,” said Haldon. “There is just one point I want cleared up. You stated to the Dorset police that you were absolutely certain that no one had ever hidden in your house. Would you care to amend that?”
“No,” she answered. “No one was ever hidden in my house.”
I could have believed her myself. I said:
“It’s all right, darling. Tell him the truth.”
“That’s very wrong of you, Inspector,” she complained hotly. “How was I to know? Of course there were two of them in the roof, General Sandorski and a man they called Lex.”
“I see,” he answered with a heavy neutrality. “Mrs. Taine, when did you first know that your husband was engaged in these activities?”
That was a vilely clever question. I stayed frozen, for Haldon was watching both our faces. If she answered that she had known for three weeks, I was done.
“What activities?” she asked.
“Assisting the police.”
“Oh, when he brought General Sandorski home the first time,” she replied, straight off the bat.
“Thank you, Mrs. Taine. I should say perhaps that my report from the Dorset police”–was there a shade of irony in his voice?–”states that you gave an impression of absolute honesty and innocence.”
“Didn’t I?” I asked.
“You were rather too pleased with your acting, Mr. Taine,” he replied, and added mysteriously: “It’s a fault that Mr. Roland will doubtless take in hand. We don’t want to lose people like you, you know.”
He let Cecily go, telling her that he would only detain me another minute. Then he joined me on the public side of his desk, and produced a decanter of whisky.
“We’re allowed a good deal of liberty at the Special Branch,” he said.
I answered that I had noticed it. He had tidied up Fulham Park Avenue with remarkable speed.
“Heyne-Hassingham was a prominent man,” he went on, “and I think I shall be permitted to make the inquest as uncomplicated as possible. No Lex. No Sandorski. Just a combination of a routine police inquiry and overwork. That will give us time to throw the net a little wider. But there is just one thing bothering me, and I daren’t leave it hanging about unsolved in the background. That corpse in the car. If you can, let me have a statement for the files– completely off the record, as a little bit of fiction, perhaps-just so that I know what happened.”