Barney shook his head. 'As no ranks or titles appear on cheques, and many of them are only surnames with initials, the only name I recognized at first sight, apart from the Tory M.P. and the motor-magnate, was that of Diane Duveen, and I should not have thought a little blonde smack-bot like that would have enough brain to be interested in any serious movement.'
'No, she is a bit out of series. To the majority of them a common denominator applies; they are super-tax payers, middle-aged to elderly, not known to have any affiliations with Labour or to be particularly generous to other charities and, outwardly, at least, respectable. But that doesn't get us anywhere.'
With a shrug of his lean shoulders, Verney put the pass sheets in a drawer, and added: 'Well, that's that; no doubt we'll solve the puzzle in due course. Now tell me what you've been up to?�
'The usual thing, Sir. Attending branch meetings most nights, and getting a bit closer to my Communist buddies in between times. I handed a detailed report in to your P.A. just now. There is nothing in it of special interest; but I've made one bit of progress on what you call my second string.'
'You mean Mrs. Wardeel's set-up and the lovely that you have been interesting yourself in?�
'That's it; Mrs. Mauriac. We had a bit of an upset when I last took her out, two Sundays ago; but I saw her again on Tuesday at Mrs. Wardeel's and we patched it up. In fact, she took me back to her flat afterwards and gave me supper.'
'She did, eh!' C.B. raised a prawn-like eyebrow. Then I'll have to ask you for your expense money back.'
Barney grinned. 'No, there was nothing like that. And I couldn't get her to talk. All the same, I'm convinced that her pal, the Indian occultist Ratnadatta, is leading her into something pretty nasty; and I'm more than ever inclined to believe that Ratnadatta got hold of Teddy Morden and led him up the same street.'
'When we last talked of this you said the Mauriac woman had assured you that Ratnadatta's circle went in only for Yoga. What has happened since to convince you that she was lying?'
'Well, first go off she 'fessed up to Ratnadatta's crowd being a bunch of Satanists and said he had blindfolded her both going to and returning from their hang-out. Then spilling a glass of wine seemed to rattle her, and she abruptly took it all back; swore she had only been pulling my leg. But she had already told me that she was going for the second time to a meeting there with Ratnadatta the following Saturday. Last night I tackled her about it. She tried to sell me the Yoga stuff again, and refused to tell me where the meeting place is. As I had no means of making her, she could have got away with that if she hadn't made a stupid blunder. She said that she couldn't give me the address of the place because it is in a district in which she had never been before, somewhere up in North London.'
'And what do you deduce from that?'
'That she honestly does not know where it is; so she really must have been blindfolded both times when she was taken to it. And Ratnadatta would not have taken the precaution of blindfolding her unless something much more sinister than Yoga goes on there.'
'Come, come! It's too much to expect any woman to know every district well enough to identify a street in which she is set down from a taxi after dark!'
'I agree; but where she bogged it was telling me that the place was in North London.'
'Why shouldn't it be?'
'Because I know that it was not. She was taken to a house off the far end of the King's Road, Chelsea. That S.W.10 district, as you know, is now made up of big blocks of post-war Council flats, mostly built on sites that were left derelict by bombs, and streets of slums that escaped them. This place is down near the river, only a stone's throw from where Cremorne Gardens used to be. At one time I believe they rivalled Vauxhall Gardens as a favourite haunt of eighteenth century boys and girls at which to have their fun.'
'How did you find out that she was taken there?'
'She had told me that she was going to meet Ratnadatta at Sloane Square Tube at nine-thirty. I parked my car nearby, watched them meet and, when they got into a taxi, followed them.'
Verney gave a thin-lipped smile. 'Good work, partner; good work. And what sort of a place was it that he took her to?'
'An old Georgian mansion, most of which is concealed behind high walls. Sounds a bit improbable in a slum quarter like that; but that's why I mentioned Cremorne Gardens having once been nearby. This place must be a relic from those days. Its entrance can be approached only down a cul-de-sac, and they're darned careful not to attract the attention of the locals to the fact that quite large meetings are held there. In a courtyard in front of the house there were a few cars, but I stooged around for about half-an-hour and nearly all the people who entered the place, including Ratnadatta and Mrs. Mauriac, either paid off their taxis or parked their cars some way off, because they arrived at the place on foot.'
After pulling at his thin-stemmed pipe thoughtfully for a minute, Verney opened a drawer in his desk, took out a folder, threw it across to Barney, and said: 'I'd like you to read that through. It's a report, by our man at the Long-Range Rocket Experimental Station down in Wales, on a scientist there who seems to be going a bit round the bend, and a statement by the egg-head himself. Take it over to the armchair by the window while I get on with some other work. When you've done, let me know what you think of it.'
Barney moved over to the window and spent the next twenty minutes reading through the contents of the folder. To Squadron-Leader Forsby's original report and the two sections of Otto Khune's account of his strange association with his brother, Lothar, a final document dated two days previously had been added.
It was a letter from Forsby in which he said that Otto appeared to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown and had given out to his colleagues, as a reason for his state, that he was suffering from terrible nightmares; so Forsby had installed a tape-recorder id the scientist's bedroom on the chance that it might pick up something if he talked in his sleep.
It had. From the long jumbles of talk that had been recorded, it emerged that Lothar was proposing a clandestine exchange of secret information about the latest rocket fuels, by which, he argued, each of them could gain great prestige as a scientist on producing as his own discovery the other's knowledge. Just as he had in 1950, he was now working on Otto and pressing him to meet him in London on the coming Saturday or, if he could not manage that, on the Saturday that followed, and showing him in his dreams a house to which he should come at midday, with directions how to find it.
When Barney reached that passage, he jumped to his feet and exclaimed: 'C.B.! Sorry, Sir, I mean. The description of the place at which Lothar wants Otto to meet him next weekend ...'
The buzzer on the Colonel's desk sounded, cutting him short. Verney answered it, then looked back at Barney and nodded.
'That is why I asked you to read the Khune file. I felt pretty certain you'd confirm my impression. It tallies with yours of this Georgian mansion to which Ratnadatta took Mrs. Mauriac'
CHAPTER XII A TANGLED SKEIN
On the previous Tuesday night Mary had gone to bed in a very happy frame of mind. For the best part of two hours she had forgotten her loneliness and bitterness and had felt more like her normally cheerful self than at any time since she had lost her husband. Barney's anxiety that she should break off her association with Ratnadatta had obviously been inspired by genuine concern for her, and to have once more a man eager to safeguard her well-being was just the tonic she had needed.