N or M? Read online

  She said:

  "I must get my things off," and hurried up the stairs. As she turned the corner of the landing she collided with Mrs O'Rourke, whose vast bulk barred the top of the stairs.

  "Dear, dear, now, Mrs Blenkensop, it's a great hurry you seem to be in."

  She did not move aside, just stood there smiling down at Tuppence just below her. There was, as always, a frightening quality about Mrs O'Rourke's smile.

  And suddenly, for no reason, Tuppence felt afraid.

  The big smiling Irishwoman, with her deep voice, barring her way and below Mrs Perenna closing in at the foot of the stairs.

  Tuppence glanced over her shoulder. Was it her fancy that there was something definitely menacing in Mrs Perenna's upturned face? Absurd, she told herself, absurd. In broad daylight - in a commonplace seaside boarding house. But the house was so very quiet. Not a sound. And she herself here on the stairs between the two of them. Surely there was something a little queer in Mrs O'Rourke's smile - some fixed ferocious quality about it. Tuppence thought wildly, "Like a cat with a mouse."

  And then suddenly the tension broke. A little figure darted along the top landing uttering shrill squeals of mirth. Little Betty Sprot in vest and knickers, darting past Mrs O'Rourke, shouting happily "Peek Bo," as she flung herself on Tuppence.

  The atmosphere had changed. Mrs O'Rourke, a big genial figure, was crying out:

  "Ah, the darlin'. It's a great girl she's getting."

  Below, Mrs Perenna had turned away to the door that led into the kitchen. Tuppence, Betty's hand clasped in hers, passed Mrs O'Rourke and ran along the passage to where Mrs Sprot was waiting to scold the truant.

  Tuppence went in with the child.

  She felt a queer sense of relief at the domestic atmosphere - the child's clothes lying about, the woolly toys, the painted crib, the sheeplike and somewhat unattractive face of Mr Sprot in its frame on the dressing- table, the burble of Mrs Sprot's denunciation of laundry prices and really she thought Mrs Perenna was a little unfair in refusing to sanction guests having their own electric irons -

  All so normal, so reassuring, so everyday.

  And yet - just now - on the stairs.

  "Nerves," said Tuppence to herself. "Just nerves!"

  But had it been nerves? Someone had been telephoning from Mrs Perenna's room. Mrs O'Rourke? Surely a very odd thing to do. It ensured, of course, that you would not be overheard by the household.

  It must have been, Tuppence thought, a very short conversation. The merest brief exchange of words.

  "Everything going well. On the fourth a arranged."

  It might mean nothing - or a good deal.

  The fourth. Was that a date? The fourth, say of a month?

  Or it might mean the fourth seat, or the fourth lamppost, or the fourth breakwater - impossible to know.

  It might just conceivably mean the Fourth Bridge. There had been an attempt to blow that up in the last war.

  Did it mean anything at all?

  It might quite easily have been the confirmation of some perfectly ordinary appointment. Mrs Perenna might have told Mrs O'Rourke she could use the telephone in her bedroom any time she wanted to do so.

  And the atmosphere on the stairs, that tense moment, might have been just her own overwrought nerves...

  The quiet house - the feeling that there was something sinister - something evil...

  "Stick to facts, Mrs Blenkensop," said Tuppence sternly. "And get on with your job."

  Chapter 5

  Commander Haydock turned out to be a most genial host. He welcomed Mr Meadowes and Major Bletchley with enthusiasm and insisted on showing the former "all over my little place."

  "Smugglers' Rest" had been originally a couple of coastguards' cottages standing on the cliff overlooking the sea. There was a small cove below, but the access to it was perilous, only to be attempted by adventurous boys.

  Then the cottages had been bought by a London business man who had thrown them into one and attempted half-heartedly to make a garden. He had come down occasionally for short periods in summer.

  After that the cottages had remained empty for some years, being let with a modicum of furniture to summer visitors.

  "Then in 1926," explained Haydock, "it was sold to a man called Hahn. He was a German, and if you ask me, he was neither more nor less than a spy."

  Tommy's ears quickened.

  "That's interesting," he said, putting down the glass from which he had been sipping sherry.

  "Damned thorough fellows they are," said Haydock. "Getting ready even then for this show - at least that is my opinion. Look at the situation of this place. Perfect for signalling out to sea. Cove below where you could land a motor-boat. Completely isolated, owing to the contour of the cliff. Oh, yes, don't tell me that fellow Hahn wasn't a German agent."

  Major Bletchley said:

  "Of course he was."

  "What happened to him?" asked Tommy.

  "Ah!" said Haydock, "thereby hangs a tale. Hahn spent a lot of money on this place. He had a way cut down to the beach for one thing - concrete steps - expensive business. Then he had the whole of the house done over - bathrooms, every expensive gadget you can imagine. And who did he set to do all this? Not local men. No, a firm from London, so it was said - but a lot of the men who came down were foreigners. Some of them didn't speak a word of English. Don't you agree with me that that sounds extremely fishy?"

  "A little odd, certainly," agreed Tommy.

  "I was in the neighbourhood myself at the time, living in a bungalow, and I got interested in what this fellow was up to. I used to hang about to watch the workmen. Now I'll tell you this - they didn't like it - they didn't like it at all. Once or twice they were quite threatening about it. Why should they be if everything was all square and above board?"

  Bletchley nodded agreement.

  "You ought to have gone to the authorities," he said.

  "Just what I did do, my dear fellow. Made a positive nuisance of myself pestering the police."

  He poured himself out another drink.

  "And what did I get for my pains? Polite inattention. Blind and deaf, that's what we were in this country. Another war with Germany was out of the question - there was peace in Europe - our relations with Germany were excellent. Natural sympathy between us nowadays. I was regarded as an old fossil, a war maniac, a diehard old sailor. What was the good of pointing out to people that the Germans were building the finest Air Force in Europe and not just to fly round and have picnics!"

  Major Bletchley said explosively:

  "Nobody believed it! Damned fools! 'Peace in our time.' 'Appeasement.' All a lot of blah!"

  Haydock said, his face redder than usual with suppressed anger: "A warmonger, that's what they called me. The sort of chap, they said, who was an obstacle to peace. Peace! I knew what our Hun friends were at! And mind this, they prepare things a long time beforehand. I was convinced that Mr Hahn was up to no good. I didn't like his foreign workmen. I didn't like the way he was spending money on this place. I kept on badgering away at people."

  "Stout fellow," said Bletchley appreciatively.

  "And finally," said the Commander, "I began to make an impression. We had a new Chief Constable down here - retired soldier. And he had the sense to listen to me. His fellows began to nose around. Sure enough, Hahn decamped. Just slipped out and disappeared one fine night. The police went over this place with a search warrant. In a safe which had been built-in in the dining room they found a wireless transmitter and some pretty damaging documents. Also a big store place under the garage for petrol - great tanks. I can tell you I was cock-a-hoop over that. Fellows at the club used to rag me about my German Spy complex. They dried up after that. Trouble with us in this country is that we're so absurdly unsuspicious."

  "It's a crime. Fools - that's what we are - fools. Why don't we intern all these refugees?" Major Bletchley was well away.

  "End of the story was I bought the place when it came i
nto the market," continued the Commander, not to be sidetracked from his pet story. "Come in and have a look round, Meadowes?"

  "Thanks. I'd like to."

  Commander Haydock was as full of zest as a boy as he did the honours of the establishment. He threw open the big safe in the dining room to show where the secret wireless had been found. Tommy was taken out to the garage and was shown where the big petrol tanks had been concealed, and finally, after a superficial glance at the two excellent bathrooms, the special lighting, and the various kitchen "gadgets," he was taken down the steep concreted path to the little cove beneath, whilst Commander Haydock told him all over again how extremely useful the whole layout would be to an enemy in wartime.

  He was taken into the cave which gave the place its name, and Haydock pointed out enthusiastically how it could have been used.

  Major Bletchley did not accompany the two men on their tour, but remained peacefully sipping his drink on the terrace. Tommy gathered that the Commander's spy hunt with its successful issue was that good gentleman's principal topic of conversation, and that his friends had heard it many times.

  In fact, Major Bletchley said as much when they were walking down to Sans Souci a little later.

  "Good fellow, Haydock," he said. "But he's, not content to let a good thing alone. We've heard all about that business again and again until we're sick of it. He's as proud of the whole bag of tricks up there as a cat of its kittens."

  The simile was not too far-fetched, and Tommy assented with a smile.

  The conversation then turning to Major Bletchley's own successful unmasking of a dishonest bearer in 1923, Tommy's attention was free to pursue its own inward line of thought punctuated by sympathetic "Not reallys?" - "You don't say so?" and "What an extraordinary business!" which was all Major Bletchley needed in the way of encouragement.

  More than ever now, Tommy felt that when the dying Farquhar had mentioned Sans Souci he had been on the right track. Here, in this out of the world spot, preparations had been made a long time beforehand. The arrival of the German Hahn and his extensive installation showed clearly enough that this particular part of the coast had been selected for a rallying point, a focus of enemy activity.

  That particular game had been defeated by the unexpected activity of the suspicious Commander Haydock. Round One had gone to Britain. But supposing that Smugglers' Rest had been only the first outpost of a complicated scheme of attack? Smugglers' Rest, that is to say, had represented sea communications. Its beach, inaccessible save for the path down from above, would lend itself admirably to the plan. But it was only a part of the whole.

  Defeated on that part of the plan by Haydock, what had been the enemy's response? Might not he have fallen back upon the next best thing - that is to say, Sans Souci? The exposure of Hahn had come about four years ago. Tommy had an idea, from what Sheila Perenna had said, that it was very soon after that that Mrs Perenna had returned to England and bought Sans Souci. The next move in the game?

  It would seem, therefore, that Leahampton was definitely an enemy center - that there were already installations and affiliations in the neighborhood.

  His spirits rose. The depression engendered by the harmless and futile atmosphere of Sans Souci disappeared. Innocent as it seemed, that innocence was no more than skin deep. Behind that innocuous mask things were going on.

  And the focus of it all, so far as Tommy could judge, was Mrs Perenna. The first thing to do was to know more about Mrs Perenna, to penetrate behind her apparently simple routine of running her boarding establishment. Her correspondence, her acquaintances, her social or war working activities - somewhere in all these must lie the essence of her real activities. If Mrs Perenna was the renowned woman agent, M, then it was she who controlled the whole of the Fifth Column activities in this country. Her identity would be known to few - only to those at the top. But communications she must have with her chiefs of staff, and it was those communications that he and Tuppence had got to tap.

  At the right moment, as Tommy saw well enough, Smugglers' Rest could be seized and held - by a few stalwarts operating from Sans Souci. That moment was not yet, but it might be very near.

  Once the German Army was established in control of the channel ports in France and Belgium, they could concentrate on the invasion and subjugation of Britain, and things were certainly going very badly in France at the moment.

  Britain's Navy was all-powerful on the sea, so the attack must come by air and by internal treachery - and if the threads of internal treachery were in Mrs Perenna's keeping, there was no time to lose.

  Major Bletchley's words chimed in with his thoughts:

  "I saw, you know, that there was no time to lose. I got hold of Abdul, my sayce - good fellow, Abdul -"

  The story droned on.

  Tommy was thinking:

  "Why Leahampton? Any reason? It's out of the main stream - bit of a backwater. Conservative, old-fashioned. All those points make it desirable. Is there anything else?"

  There was a stretch of flat agricultural country behind it, running inland. A lot of pasture. Suitable, therefore, for the landing of troop-carrying airplanes or of parachute troops. But that was true of many other places. There was also a big chemical works where, it might be noted, Carl von Deinim was employed.

  Carl von Deinim. How did he fit in? Only too well. He was not, as Grant had pointed out, the real head. A cog, only, in the machine. Liable to suspicion and internment at any moment. But in the meantime, he might have accomplished what had been his task. He had mentioned to Tuppence that he was working on decontamination problems and on the immunizing of certain gases. There were probabilities there - probabilities unpleasant to contemplate.

  Carl, Tommy decided (a little reluctantly) was in it. A pity, because he rather liked the fellow. Well, he was working for his country - taking his life in his hands. Tommy had respect for such an adversary - down him by all means - a firing party was the end, but you knew that when you took on your job.

  It was the people who betrayed their own land - from within - that really roused a slow vindictive passion in him. By God, he'd get them!

  "- And that's how I got them!" The Major wound up his story triumphantly. "Pretty smart bit of work, eh?"

  Unblushingly Tommy said:

  "Most ingenious thing I've heard in my life, Major."

  II

  Mrs Blenkensop was reading a letter on thin foreign paper, stamped outside with the censor's mark.

  "Dear Raymond," she murmured. "I was so happy about him out in Egypt, and now, it seems, there is a big change round. All very secret, of course, and he can't say anything - just that there really is a marvellous plan and that I'm to be ready for some big surprises soon. I'm glad to know where he's being sent, but I really don't see why -"

  Bletchley grunted.

  "Surely he's not allowed to tell you that?"

  Tuppence gave a deprecating laugh and looked round the breakfast table as she folded up her precious letter.

  "Oh! We have our methods," she said archly. "Dear Raymond knows that if only I know where he is or where he's going I don't worry quite so much. It's quite a simple way, too. Just a certain word, you know, and after it the initial letters of the next words spell out the place. Of course it makes rather a funny sentence sometimes - but Raymond is really most ingenious. I'm sure nobody would notice."

  Little murmurs arose round the table. The moment was well chosen, everybody happened to be at the breakfast table together for once.

  Bletchley, his face rather red, said:

  "You'll excuse me, Mrs Blenkensop, but that's a damned foolish thing to do. Movements of troops and air squadrons are just what the Germans want to know."

  "Oh, but I never tell anyone," cried Tuppence. "I'm very, very careful."

  "All the same it's an unwise thing to do - and your boy will get into trouble over it some day."

  "Oh, I do hope not. I'm his mother, you see. A mother ought to know."

  "Indeed
and I think you're right," boomed out Mrs O'Rourke. "Wild horses wouldn't drag the information from you - we know that."

  "Letters can be read," said Bletchley.

  "I'm very careful never to leave letters lying about," said Tuppence with an air of outraged dignity. "I always keep them locked up."

  Bletchley shook his head doubtfully.

  III

  It was a grey morning with the wind blowing coldly from the sea. Tuppence was alone at the far, end of the beach.