CHAPTER EIGHT
That night Shaw’s sleep was disturbed, full of nightmare figures, shadowy, menacing forms set against the dark backcloth of Africa. It was still very early and he was dead out when the telephone bell rang beside his bed. The harsh jangle of the public line tore through layers of returning consciousness, bringing him wide awake and sweating. He reached out hazily for the handset.
Thick with his disturbed sleep, he said, “Shaw here.”
And then all sleep vanished and he sat bolt upright. The voice was making an effort at steadiness, and it said, “It’s me. Gillian Ross. I’ve just had a phone-call. It was a man who said he was speaking for the one I told you about — Sam Wiley.”
“Go on.” Shaw sat tense, every nerve in his body jumping, the pain nagging again at his guts. That pain told him, if nothing else did, that events were about to start moving properly at last, that pain which would be with him now until the moment of action came, and then would pass, forgotten in the chase.
The girl said, “Sam Wiley, the man said, has some information for me. He wouldn’t give it over the phone.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He wants me to go along and see him.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere! Where are you to go?”
“He wouldn’t say that either. There’ll be a man to meet me at Tower Hill station, at half-past eleven this morning. On the eastbound platform. He’ll take me to Sam Wiley, and I’ve got to be absolutely alone.”
“Description? I mean, who have you to look out for?”
She said, “He didn’t tell me that. He said the man would know me, and he would make the contact.”
“Uh-huh… now, what did you say — what was your reaction?”
“Well, I told him to go and take a running jump,” she said. “I’m not a child, Commander Shaw. It’s a pretty obvious trap, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it certainly is.” Shaw’s face was tense. “What was his answer to that?”
“He said in case I changed my mind, his man would be at Tower Hill just the same. If I told the police and his man was arrested, it’d be the worse for me in the end, and it’d be bad for Pat too.”
“He’s alive, then?”
There was a shake in her voice when she answered. “Yes… and they’ve got him, you see. Well, he said if I didn’t change my mind he… he’d get me. He said I couldn’t stay indoors for ever, and the first time I went out, I wouldn’t come back. He told me in detail what he would do to me. It didn’t sound — nice. So what do I do now?”
Shaw thought: She’s got one hell of a lot of pluck, that girl. Except when he’d mentioned MacNamara, she’d sounded fine and steady, though he could sense the terrible strain that was in her. He said, “Listen carefully. Miss Ross. They’re not going to get you. Stop even thinking about that. You’ve done a very brave thing in ringing me at all, considering that threat, and I’d like you to go on being that way. Now, what I want to know is this: After the man had made the threat about MacNamara, did you change your mind about keeping the rendezvous?”
She said hesitantly, “I–I think I did, but I didn’t say that to the man. But you mean you’d like me to keep it, don’t you? Well, I’m willing to help, if it’s going to help Pat.”
“Good girl!” he said tautly. “You can help a lot, and you won’t be on your own if you do, I promise you. Will you? Think carefully now, and remember it can still be dangerous-”
She broke in, “I said I would and I meant it.”
“Right. Listen carefully. I’ll have you under constant observation from the moment you leave Oakley Street — there’s already a man watching your flat, by the way, and he’ll be behind you, or some one will, all the way. Get on the District Line at Sloane Square. There’ll be one of our chaps at Tower Hill, and I shan’t be far away myself.”
“Won’t they suspect something?”
“Well, they won’t feel quite certain you haven’t in fact told the police, of course, in spite of the threat. They’ll be taking a chance — a calculated risk, I suppose. It looks as though they felt this was the best bet — that it was essential to get hold of you at all costs.” He added, “They’ll never spot our chaps, though, so don’t worry. They’ll obviously have plenty of ways of throwing a possible pursuit off the beam, too, but there again, we’re pretty good at dealing with that sort of thing — we’ve got to be! We’re going to pull this off, Miss Ross, you and my department between us.”
She said, “I’ll do my best.”
“I know you will.” He spoke encouragingly, but his knuckles whitened on the handset. “All you’ve got to do is to follow out exactly what the man told you and be on the eastbound platform at Tower Hill at eleven-thirty. You won’t see me, and you won’t feel there’s any help at hand — but it will be there just the same. So don’t worry. All right?”
“Yes.”
“Fine! I’ll get things organized right away. You just sit tight till you leave for Sloane Square.”
As Shaw put down the receiver he felt he’d done just about the hardest job he’d ever been called upon to do. His hands were sweating; the receiver, as he jammed it back on its rest, was hot and sticky. Inside himself he knew he was doing right, doing the only possible thing from the standpoint of the Outfit and the execution of his assignment. If the worst came to the worst Gillian Ross might even have to suffer, the one going down in the interests of the many. There was nothing unique about that kind of situation, of course; somewhere along the line it always cropped up and had to be faced; but with a girl it was different, so much worse. As that receiver went down Shaw’s face was hard, his lips tight, bloodless. Gillian Ross wasn’t going to suffer if he could help it — but any human being could slip up.
His hand went out for the other phone, the personal ‘hush’ line to the Admiralty and Latymer himself. He asked for the closed extension to Eaton Square, and within the minute he was talking to Latymer.
Latymer barked, “Ah — Shaw. Want to know about last night, I suppose — well, there was nothing in the Rogue’s Gallery. The albino was brought in and Carberry went down to the station to see him. He’s been efficiently grilled, but he’s not opening his mouth and no one can prove anything.”
“Are they holding him, sir?”
“No, dammit, they can’t. Nothing to hold him on. It’s your word against his, and he’s got witnesses who’ll swear nothing funny was going on at all.”
“Well, it can’t be helped. Anyway, sir, there’s been a big development this end.”
“Ha. And that is?”
Shaw told him in detail.
Within ten minutes of that call, word had gone out to the man watching the Oakley Street flat that Miss Ross would leave for Sloane Square at about 10:45 a.m. and that he was to tail her there and hand her over to another agent at Sloane Square station. Orders had gone out to yet another of the Outfit’s agents to be at Tower Hill at eleven-thirty, at which time the Sloane Square tail would hand over to him as he got off the eastbound District Line train behind Gillian Ross. Plain cars equipped with two-way radio were alerted at a garage in Streatham, and in a yard behind a seedy-looking fish-shop in south-east London a red-faced man in shirtsleeves started up a van bearing the legend J. C. Grimes, Fishmonger and ran it through until the Rolls-Royce engine concealed beneath an anonymous bonnet was ticking over sweet and true. And Post Office engineers, on very high authority indeed, clapped earphones to their heads and began a listening watch on Gillian Ross’s Chelsea number — just in case.
In the meantime Shaw was dressing and listening with half an ear to the B.B.C.’s eight-o’clock news. When he caught something about Nogolia he dropped everything and concentrated. The announcer’s smooth, measured tones sounded ominous: