Читать книгу Now or Never - Cyril Henry Coles - Страница 7

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Some time in the small hours it was reported at police headquarters that the other two Argentines who had escaped arrest when the first two were captured a week earlier had been found in a café in Montmartre. That is, their identity was not yet proved beyond doubt, but they carried the passports of the missing men and such words as they were able to utter were in the Spanish language. They had been doped. Remedial measures restored an uncertain degree of consciousness to the prisoners, who denied indignantly that they were the missing Argentines. When asked why, if that were the case, they were carrying those passports, they held their aching heads and became evasive. Pressed further, they gave the names of D’Almeida and Piccione and said that they were staying at the Hotel Ambassador, suite No. So-and-So. They were left in peace for a time while enquiries were made at the hotel.

The police sergeant making the enquiry asked to see their rooms and was taken to them. He found two suitcases in each room; they were only partially unpacked and their clothes were lying untidily about or had been hastily thrown into drawers. (This was a libel upon D’Almeida, who was naturally tidy, but Forgan and Campbell had had a busy night with so much to do and little time to do it.) The policeman particularly noticed the small labels inside the lids of the suitcases, which stated the names and addresses of various shops in Buenos Aires, Argentina. One of those in D’Almeida’s room announced also that it was made of “best Argentine leather.” The suits also, heavily padded on the shoulders, bore the labels of Buenos Aires firms.

He looked further and found in the bottom of a suitcase in Piccione’s room a thing which Forgan in his haste had overlooked. It was a small tortoiseshell and gold cigarette-case with an inscription on the inside, “Juanita, from Annibale” and a date. It was on the list of stolen articles. The list had been circulated, and the Argentines, who had brought it away with the rest of the proceeds of the robbery, had found it unsaleable at the moment; it was too recognizable. In the hurry of selling their luggage, they had forgotten that it was there, but the police sergeant recognized it at once from the description. He left the rooms as they were, locked them up and also sealed them and departed for headquarters whistling under his breath a charming little ditty which begins “Dis-moi, grand-mère,” to which he always resorted when he was pleased.

Confronted with this testimony, the prisoners became even more emphatic in their denials and said that they were Spaniards from Madrid, not Argentines from Buenos Aires, and that their own passports were in their rooms at the hotel. Asked why, if that were the case, the sergeant of police had not found them when he searched the rooms, the prisoners said that the passports had been hidden to prevent their falling into the hands of unauthorized persons. The police superintendent who was conducting the enquiry, a man never at his best before breakfast, took this remark as a reflection on the police, and D’Almeida had considerable difficulty in soothing him. Eventually the prisoners undertook, if they were allowed to return to the hotel, to produce their own passports.

When they arrived there under escort, they both said with all the emphasis they could command—they were still feeling anything but well—that the luggage was not theirs, although it was labelled with their names in their own handwriting. (Campbell, thorough in all things, had soaked their labels off their own luggage and stuck them upon the Argentine cases). While D’Almeida was arguing this point, Piccione asked to be allowed to go to the bathroom. The detective who had him in charge agreed, but put his foot in the bathroom door to prevent its being locked.

A moment later he heard an odd scraping noise which reminded him of flower-pots being stacked, for his father was a market-gardener. He opened the door to see Piccione in the act of lifting down the lid of the cistern.

“What are you doing there?”

Piccione turned the lid over, looked inside it and then set the lid down on the floor and burst into tears.

“Los pasaportes,” he sobbed, his French deserting him, “the passports, they were here and they are not.”

D’Almeida and the other detective came in.

“What is all this?”

D’Almeida explained how and where the passports had been hidden. The detectives looked at each other, and then one of them climbed up and looked into the cistern. What he saw appeared to surprise him, for he uttered a grunt, pulled up his right sleeve and plunged his arm into the water.

“Are they there, then?” asked D’Almeida anxiously.

The detective drew out from the cistern two small boxes, one covered with leather and the other with velvet, such as ladies use to carry their trinkets when they are travelling. When opened they were seen to contain jewellery; nothing very startling in value, but good of their kind and eminently saleable.

“These,” said the senior detective, “answer the description of goods stolen in a small robbery within this hotel last night. If so, they can readily be identified.”

(Forgan had watched two ladies go down to dinner the evening before, had abstracted the housemaid’s pass-key for a few moments and just snatched the first thing that offered.)

D’Almeida put his hands over his face and staggered back against the wall, Piccione’s legs gave way and he sank down upon the floor. In the face of this circumstantial evidence, it was in vain that they told their story about being lent passports for the evening by two friendly Argentines named Cierra and Bonamour who also were staying at the Ambassador. The detectives laughed shortly and removed the prisoners.

“But,” said Piccione plaintively, “why does all this have to happen to us?”

.....

It had been arranged that Forgan and Campbell should stay at the Dom Hotel in Cologne. They went, therefore, at their leisure, arriving very late one night and taking up the accommodation reserved for D’Almeida and Piccione. They had passed the frontier on their own passports, since frontier officials are people who really examine passports and compare photographs with the faces they purport to reproduce. Also there was some rapid juggling with labels on luggage between the frontier and Cologne. Reception clerks in hotels merely take a passport in order to copy accurately the traveller’s name and home address into their records; establishment of identity is no business of theirs and their own work keeps them quite busy enough.

The senores D’Almeida and Piccione arrived, therefore, at the Dom Hotel as expected, talking voluble Spanish to each other and German with a strong Spanish accent—a most peculiar noise—to all Germans with whom they came in contact. For example, instead of saying “Danke schön,” which means “Thanks very much” and rhymes with “banker burn,” they said “Darnka schoona,” and it sounded horrible, but was understood. Forgan and Campbell had, in fact, learnt their German in the Argentine, and this horrid accent was natural to them. The original D’Almeida and Piccione would have talked in much the same way.

On the morning after their arrival they slept late, breakfasted at leisure and strolled out into the Dom Square shortly before midday; Spaniards are not as a rule early risers. The first thing they saw when they came out through the revolving doors was the familiar figure of Tommy Hambledon sitting at a small table by the door of a small public-house near by, drinking beer and talking to two friends.

Forgan and Campbell stood on the pavement and stared about them. It was the first time they had ever been in Germany, and Cologne Cathedral, always an amazing sight, is still more so now that it towers above ruins. They remained by the door, talking and pointing out things to each other until they saw Hambledon rise to his feet, feeling in his trouser pocket for money. They then walked slowly away towards the open-air café in the Square, where they sat down at a table and waited for Hambledon to join them.

“What the devil d’you mean,” he said: “ ‘We are the Spaniards’? Where are they?”

“They are on their way to Buenos Aires,” said Forgan, “on a slow cargo-boat, La Luz de la Luna. They are quite safe and well. They are in charge of the Captain.”

“We saw that in the Paris papers,” added Campbell. “That they had sailed in her, I mean.”

Hambledon looked from one to the other. “What is all this? Some of your devilment, I know.”

“Oh, that is unkind,” said Forgan reproachfully. “They said it was their life’s ambition to see Buenos Aires before they died, so they went.”

“We may have helped them a little,” said Campbell. “Do you think we did, Forgan?”

“I like to think so,” said Forgan dreamily. “This helping hand to the passing stranger, what does it cost us? Nothing. And yet——”

“Come on,” said Tommy. “Out with it.”

“It all started,” said Forgan, “because we thought we would enjoy a few days in Paris on our way here, so we drew our holiday money and went.”

They told Hambledon the whole tale, and he leaned back in his chair and laughed till he cried.

“You told us,” finished Forgan, “that the Spaniards were not personally known to their contacts here, so we thought we would do instead. They had some very helpful notes in their luggage. We think we can talk intelligently to whoever meets us.”

“And if we get out of our depth,” said Campbell, “we can just be dark and mysterious, can’t we?”

“You may end by getting your throats cut,” said Hambledon.

“That, in itself, would be a new experience,” said Forgan.

“It would be one I should not care to repeat,” admitted Campbell. “And yourself? I hope that you are having a pleasant holiday and getting some interesting photographs?” There was a waiter hovering nearby for a repetition of their order.

“Not very interesting so far,” said Hambledon. “I hope to get some later, perhaps, when I’ve had a little more time here.”

“You want to look round first, of course,” said Forgan. “Do you know this place at all?”

“I used to know it very well. In fact, I lived here at one time many years ago. I don’t recognize much of it now.”

“It looks as though there had been drastic alterations,” said Campbell. “If you do get any good photographs, we shall be interested to see them. Will you have another glass of wine? The waiter seems to think we ought. I don’t know what it was, but it was very nice.” He called up the waiter and renewed the order in his extraordinary German, and the man went away to fetch it. “While we have a moment’s privacy, what comes next?”

“Sit tight and wait till you are approached,” said Hambledon. “I am making a few contacts which may be useful, but the first move is with the other side. If you want to get in touch with me, ring up the Gurzenich Hotel. But I shall be about and we shall meet. Be careful. I expect they’ve got somebody planted in your hotel and probably in mine, too. I don’t know.”

The waiter came back with the wine to find them discussing cameras. “If you want to buy one,” Hambledon was saying, “there’s the Fotohaus Stein in the Hohe Strasse, down there——”

Hambledon went back to his hotel through the ruined area and along the Unter Goldschmeid. This part of the town, between the Hohe Strasse and the river, had had nothing whatever done to it since the raids except a perfunctory clearing of some of the roads by the simple process of throwing the rubble to either side or shovelling it into bomb-holes. It was quite desolate and uninhabited. The gaunt ruin of the Rathaus towered over it and but few people were ever seen there. Indeed, there was nothing for which anyone would wish to go there unless he wished to pray among the ruins, and the Cologne people did not seem to do that. Yet that district had an odd attraction for Hambledon; his feet seemed to carry him there of their own accord.

A little way along the Unter Goldschmeid one comes to the Laurentz Platz, an open space where there was once a statue of which only the plinth is now standing. There were two girls at the corner here, apparently peering across the Platz with their backs to Hambledon. He remembered Spelmann’s reference to “girls who frolic among the ruins” and his face hardened. At that moment they turned and came towards him in haste. Before they reached him, they turned off up a little path which ran between the rubble-heaps, broke into a run and were immediately out of sight.

A man came, walking slowly, across the Laurentz Platz. It seemed that the girls were anxious to avoid him, which struck Hambledon as a little odd. The man was very obviously English and about thirty years of age. He walked as though he had no particular destination in view, and even at a distance he had an air of depression and discouragement. He passed Hambledon quite close, appearing scarcely to notice him, so absorbed he was in his own unhappy thoughts.

Hambledon had lunched at his hotel and was standing in the hall, lighting a cigarette and wondering what he could most usefully do until the other side made some move, when a man addressed him with some comment about the weather which Hambledon answered mechanically.

“The Herr finds matters of interest for his camera in our poor Köln?”

“Oh yes,” said Tommy. “There are views of the Cathedral which must have been quite unobtainable before all this happened.”

“That is so. No doubt that is so. But the Herr will forgive a word of kindly warning?”

Hambledon looked at him, and the man went on:

“The Herr has been seen several times to walk along the Unter Goldschmeid among the ruins.”

“Well? What of it?”

“It is not very wise. Why go there? No one could find it pleasant. It is much pleasanter where the shops and the people are, is it not, or along the quays beside the Rhine?”

“What are you warning me against?” said Hambledon bluntly; in his character of English tourist, he felt that it was natural to be blunt.

“It is dangerous to wander among the ruins. That is all. There are most attractive coach tours; let the Herr entertain himself in that way. The desk-clerk has all the particulars.”

“It’s an idea, certainly,” said Hambledon amiably, and strolled off to consult the desk-clerk about tours, of which there appeared to be quite a choice, both by road and river. Hambledon looked at leaflets until the man who had addressed him walked out of the door and then asked the clerk who he was.

“The gentleman who spoke to you? I don’t know. He is not a resident and I don’t remember seeing him before. Many people come here for meals, or to call on our guests. We don’t know them all, naturally.”

Tommy nodded. “Seems a pleasant fellow. He suggested these tours. I think I’ll go, one of these days.”