The train was due in Torquay at 7.38. It was a hot and gritty ride, with every click of the wheels diminishing the time when I must be back in London. But, when we came out into the deep trees and red soil of Devon, running for miles beside the sea, I began to feel somewhat soothed. I changed at Moreton Abbot, and just on time we pulled into Torquay station on a clear evening with the breath of the sea on the air. Outside, when I was looking round for a station wagon for the Imperial Hotel, a long blue Lanchester drew up at the kerb. A chauffeur drooped at the wheel; and in the tonneau, his hands folded over his stomach, glared H. M. But I almost failed to recognize him, and the reason was his hat.
He wore a fresh-linen Panama hat with a blue-on-white band, and its brim was turned down all around. There was the broad figure, weighing fourteen stone; the broad nose with spectacles pulled down on it; the corners of the mouth turned down, and an expression of extraordinary malevolence on the wooden face. But nobody in twenty Years, I think, had ever seen him without the top-hat which he said was a present from Queen Victoria. The effect of that festive Panama, its down-turned brim giving it the look of a bowl, and the malignant face blinking under it as he sat motionless, with his hands folded on his stomach, was not one that could be seen with gravity. I began to see the explanation of his disguise.
"Take it off," I said out of the corner of my mouth. "We know you."
H.M. was suddenly galvanized. He turned with slow and terrifying wrath. "You too?" he said. "Burn me, ain't there any loyalty in this world? Ain't there any loyalty in this world: that's what I want to know? If I hear just one more remark about disguises and false whiskers and What's wrong with this hat? Hey? What's wrong with it? It's a jolly good hat." Laboriously he removed it, revealing a bald head shining in the evening sun; he blinked at the hat with defiant respect, turned it round in his fingers, and replaced it. His sense of grievance rose querulously. "Ain't I got a right to be cool if I want to? Ain't I got a right-"
"We won't discuss that now," I said. "Speaking of loyalty: I'm here. The wedding is at eleven-thirty tomorrow morning, so let's get on with whatever business there is."
"Well… now," said H.M., rubbing his chin rather guiltily. He covered it up with an outburst about there being no reason why people should get married anyway; but at length he grudgingly admitted that both of us could be back in London on time. Then he waved a flipper at the chauffeur. "Buzz off, Charley. Mr. Butler will drive us back. Your name, Ken, is Robert T. Butler. That mean anything to you, hey?"
And then occurred revelation. "About 1917," I said, with the past opening up. "September or October. Hogenauer — "
"Good," grunted H.M. I climbed into the driver's seat, and H.M., with many curses, climbed beside me. He directed me out of town by the bus route towards Babbacombe; but I thought that under his grousing he seemed very worried, especially since he went to business at once. "It's more'n fifteen years ago, and neither of us is gettin' any younger, but I hoped you'd remember….
"You played the part of one Robert T. Butler, of New York," he grunted, with a curious obstinate look about him. "You were supposed to be an outlawed American sidin' violently with Germany in the Late Quarrel, and rather tied up with their secret service. Your business was to investigate Paul Hogenauer. Hogenauer had been givin' us a lot of headaches. The question was whether he was just what he pretended to be, a good British subject, the son of a naturalized German father and English mother: or whether he was tangled up with the feller they called L. in a bit of work that would have got him shot at the Tower. Humph. You remember now?"
"I don't remember this `L' whoever he is," I said; "but Hogenauer — yes, very well. I also remember that he got a clean bill of health. He wasn't a spy. He was just what he pretended to be."
H.M. nodded. But be put his hands to his temples under the brim of the Panama hat, and rubbed them slowly, with the same obstinate fishy look.
"Uh-huh. Yes. Now consider Paul Hogenauer a minute. Ken, that fellow was and is a genius of sorts…. When you knew him he was about thirty-five. At thirty-five he'd been offered a chair in physiology at Breslau. Then he got to tinkerin' with psychology as well; he'd got a new hobby each week. He was a chess wizard, and no bad hand at cryptograms or ciphers. To add to the staggerin', total, he was a chemist. Finally, there wasn't much about engraving he didn't know, or inks, or dyes — which was one reason why Whitehall wanted to keep on the good side of him if he wasn't a German spy. With all that, dye see, he was a simple-minded soul, with a sort of foggy honesty; or wasn't he? Burn me, son, that's just what I want to know! That's what bothers me."
H.M. scowled malignantly. I still did not see how this concerned me, and said so.
"He got a clean bill of health: sure. And I'm pretty sure there was no hanky-panky about it. But," argued H.M., "immediately after that, what does he do? In October, '17, he leaves the country for Switzerland. Well, we don't stop him. And then he turns up in Germany. And then about a month
later we get a nice, polite letter, as long as your arm and as muddled as your head, explainin' what he's going to do and the reasons for it. Half his heart (that's the words he used) is in Germany. He's goin' over to Germany. He's goin' into the little office on the Koenigstrasse where they move pins and decode letters and try to nail Allied spies. It's his conscience, he says. Now, I'll stake my last farthing he never had a suspicion he was under observation in England, and also that he never did any dirty work over here. But why all this bleedin' honesty? What made his heart suddenly flutter for Germany after three years of war? The whole point is, is he to be trusted?"
I tried to call back recollections from some time ago, and pictured a small, mild, spindly man, already going bald, with a shiny black coat and a tie like a bootlace. Like most ethers, I had been as callow as soap in those days; I remember having been rather contemptuous of him; but since, once or twice, I have wondered whether Paul Hogenauer might not have been discreetly smiling.
"It's interesting enough," I admitted, "but still I want to know where I come in. I suppose Hogenauer's in England now?"
"Oh, yes, he's in England," growled H.M. "He's been here for eight or nine months. Ken, there's some great big ugly black business, goin' on, and I can't put my finger just on it. It's all wrong. Hogenauer is mixed up in it: I don't mean that he's doin' the dirty work, but he knows who is. Or else — Well, Charters and I tumbled smack into the middle of it."
I whistled. "It sounds like a gathering of the old clan. You mean Colonel Charters?"
"Uh-huh. He didn't drop into it officially, of course; he hasn't been connected with the Department for a long time. But he's now Chief Constable of the county, and Hogenauer ran into him, and he sent a line to the old man. We're goin' to Charters's house now."
He nodded ahead. We had left the main road between Torquay and Babbacombe, and turned into a red-soil road which curved up over the great headlands beside the sea. Ahead and to the right, I could see the cliffs of Babbacombe tumble down sheer to the water, and to a strip of pebbled beach laced with a froth of surf far below. The sea was grey-blue, the beach a dazzling white, the cliffs patched with dark green, all in colours as brilliant as a picture post-card. Alone at the top of the headland in front of us, H.M.'s gesture indicated a long, low bungalow built in the South African style, with a veranda around all four sides. There was no other house near it except a smaller, more sedate house in red brick, about a hundred yards away, and separated from the bungalow by a tennis court. On this more prim house the fading sunlight caught a glitter from a doctor's brass nameplate beside the door. We were making for the door of the bungalow, which was shaded with laurels.