"BEYOND DOVER"

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 May 1939, Page 12

"BEYOND DOVER"

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.

COPYRIGHT.

By

VAL GIELGUD.

(Author of “Death at Broadcasting House,” etc.)

CHAPTER 11. (Continued). “Oh, I’ll tackle the family!" said Nigel. “After all, it's a chance in a million. You don’t pick up £2OO every aay of the week!” Sally looked over her shoulder. “It's queer you should say that,” said Sally. •■Queer, Sally, why?” “Listen, Nigel, you can keep a sec;ret? Relly Keep one, 1 mean. I’m absolutely serious.” Nigel Craven stared. “Yes, of course, I can.” “You’ll swear not to mention what I’m going to tell you to a soul?” “Of course, if you want me to. Sally, what’s happened?” Again Sally looked up and down the spacious, dusty dreariness of the North Circular Road. “If we’re going to start talking secrets,” said Nigel, hadn’t we better go indoors?” Sally put tier arm in his, and walked hirn a few paces away from the gate. “I think this is better,” she said. “We can’t possibly be overheard 1 like this, in the open.” “My dear girl, what on earth is it? You’ve been reading too many detective stories!" “Shut up, Nigel, and listen to me!” Forthwith Sally proceeded to blurt out the story of Mr Bastin’s astonishing suggestion. “So you see,” she ended a little breathlessly, “I can collect £2OO too, tomorrow, with some more to come! That’s why I said it was queer. Nigel, what shall I do?” It was then that Mr Craven made his mistake. During Sally’ story his expression became less and less encouraging. By its close, he was very red in the face, and looked positively dangerous. In short, he was giving an extremely successful impersonation of the dominant male, unqualified, by any sense of the ridiculous. “Do?” he repeated. “Nothing, of course! You aren’t to touch the thing with a barge-pole! 'Good Lord! You might get into any sort of a mess.” Sally looked up at him, very wideeyed, innocent and bland. “Surely not at the Cosmopolite Grill, Nigel. It’s awfully respectable, you know.” “You can’t possibly go to the Cosmopolite!” “I’m restaurant-trained, Nige. I don’t eat peas witn a knife, or anything like that!”

• “Oh, stop, it, Sally! What’s the good of telling me about it if you're going to talk like this? You don’t mean to say you’re really considering taking it on seriously?” “I don’t see why not,” said Sally slowly. “What about your old-fashioned family you were quoting to me just now?”

“They’re not as old-fashioned as all that. 1 can go out for the evening without giving an explanation. It’s rather different from going to Cornwall with you for a fortnight.” “I should think it was!” said Nigel. “Dining with perfect strangers, and getting yourself mixed up in some infernal snady business!” "If I don’t go, 1 shall lost my job." “And it’s about time you did lose that sort of job. For two pins, I’d go and ask your Mr Bastin what the blazes he means by his behaviour!” And at that point Sally quite suddenly and quite irrationally lost her temper. It may have been that Nigel had put too clearly in words apprehensions which lay at the back of her own mind. It may have been simply that she was tired, and that she found his attitude of possessive certainly quite unbearably exasperating. But lose her temper she undoubtedly did. There was a brief unedifying exchange of personal remarks, and then the gate slammed and Sally ran up the three steps leading to her front door,.fumbling for her latchkey, leaving Nigel Craven to'generalise uncharitably on the subject of young women, and walk back to his rooms at a pace so furious as to cause comment from passers-by. Arrived there, he had a small drink, lit a pipe, sat down and felt better. For a moment he contemplated writing to Sally. But then he had another idea. He borrowed his landlady’s telephone, rang up the Cosmopolite Hotel and asked to. be put through to the Grill Room. CHAPTER 111. Now, almost exactly at the moment when Nigel Craven was ordering a table at the Cosmopolite Grill and Sally Martin was explaining to her father that she would not be home for dinner the following evening, one or two rather singular events were taking place in differents parts of London. It was a pity that Sally perforce remained entirely ignorant of these events; otherwise her decision might have been very different. As it was, easily uppermost in her mind was the furious resentment naturally arising from two quarrels in two days with the same young man. If Nigel thought he could get away with that sort of behaviour he was very much mistaken. She was not quite sure which she objected to most: his assumption that she would jump at the chance of spending a holiday in Cornwall with him; or his assumption of the right to tell her that she couldn’t have dinner anywhere she liked. She paid no attention to the still, small voice pointing out that she had been half engaged to Nigel for six months; ano, to go on with, that she had asked hrm for his advice on the subject, knowing perfectly well that me mere idea would make him very cross indeed. That he had been unreasonably tactless gave her the necessary excuse she wanted. t She made up her mind to go to the Cosmopolite, if only to teach Nigel a lesson. She qualified the rashness of that decision by pretending to herself that to go so far committed her to nothing.

It is unlikely that Sally would have taken this decision 100 light-heartedly if she had known that al the moment she was taking it an inexplicable entry was made with the aid of a latchkey, and by an individual whose back view rather curiously resembled that of Mr Felix Bastin. He was busy for perhaps a quarter of an hour in that office, and on his way out paused to sit down for a minute or two at Sally Martin’s desk in the little room adjoining. Thence he made a telephone call. A young woman, whose business it was during the daytime to run a particularly exclusive flower shop in the West End, was surprised to receive at her private address and after office hours, an order for a special spray to bi? worn with evening dress the follow-

j ng evening, composed of some unusually rare orchids. These orchids were sold by no other shop in London, and their price was proportionate. It was, therefore, quite outside a normal experience that such a spray should be addressed to a villa on the North Circular Road.

These matters, though quite outside Sally’s ken, held none the less a definite connection with the train of events started that afternoon by Mr Bastin’s suggestion; but it is necessary at this point to record one further incident which took place while Sally was still arguing with her father and the intruder was making use of Mr Bastin's office telephone.

This incident was the arrival in a taxi-cab of a short, fat, gentleman in a top-hat, a short black coat, striped trousers and cloth-topped patent-leath-er boots, at the main entrance of the Cosmopolite Hotel in the Haymarket. He proceeded to the reception desk where he introduced himself at Mr Leopold Flanescu. He wished, he said, to engage a suite at the hotel on behalf of a distinguished foreigner, who would be arriving in London next day. The distinguished foreigner wished, most anxiously, to preserve his incognito, and desired according)}' to appear in the hotel register under the unassuming name of Hugo Brando. The polite, but liriTV remonstrances of the management were silenced by the production of a substantial deposit and a private letter signed by the Ambassador of one of the smaller, but yet definitely important, Powers. The matter was accordingly arranged; a private suite was inspected and engaged, and Mr Flanescu took his departure. He would return, he said, the following afternoon, bringing “Mr Hugo Brandon” with him. Mr Brandon would be arriving by the afternoon boat-train from Paris. How long he would be staying in London, Mr Flanescu much regretted that he could not say.

Ten 6’clock the next morning found Mr Felix Bastin grinning and rubbing his hands. Sally Martih was not at her desk in the adjoining room. She had just telephoned —in a brusque and business-like voice—to say that she accepted Mr Bastin’s offer. She was going to look at evening dresses. She would call for Mr Bastin’s envelope and money at noon precisely. And she would expect the flowers she was to wear before evening. She very nearly succeeded in keeping any quiver out of ner voice while she was speaking —but not quite. “That,”- said Mr Bastip, "is extremely satisfactory.” A bearded gentleman of uncertain age, who was sitting on the other side of Mr Bastin’s desk, smoking a cigar, glanced up with eyes abnormally heavy-lidded. “What precisely are you up to now?” he enquired. Mr Bastin placed the tips of his fingers together, and leaned back in his chair. a

“I think, Leyland,” he said, “that you might as well know. We’re on the edge of a mess!” Sebastian Leyland blinked twice. “1 suspected as much. Been speculating again?” “Yes,” admitted Felix Bastin. “I have. And Im not going to apologise.” “Apologies aren’t in my line,” added Mr Leyland. “We’ve known each other too long. Besides, they’re not legal tender—neither cash nor credit. Come along, Bastin —spill it!” “I wish,” said Felix Bastin, “you’d remember that 1 dislike Americanisms. However —the facts are these. I —we — the firm —need twenty thousand pounds, and need it pretty quick. I’ve not got it. And we can’t raise it.” "Well?” “I’ve got in my safe,” continued Mr Bastin, “three pieced of jewellery. They formed part of the regalia of one of the ruling houses dispossessed by the Treaty of Versailles. I needn’t particularise. They are almost priceless. I’m holding them as a personal favour to a client of mine, whose family has a long-established - connection of devotion to the royalty in question. Apparently tne possibility of a restoration is in the wind. The jewels were in the keeping of a bank. Nowadays governments and banks tend to know too much about each other, and it was thought advisable to leave the jewels—which may be wanted at any moment now it seems —where their sudden removal might get to be known in official circles ” "Yes, I see,” interrupted Mr Leyland impatiently, “but where do we come in?” Mr Bastin winked. “The jewels,” he said, “are insured for fifty thousand pounds. That gives you an idea of their real value.” .There was an impressive short silence in the office. Then Mr Leyland blinked once, and stubbed out his cigar. “How are you going to get it?” he asked finally. "Listen,' said Felix Bastin. • “We shan’t get all of it, because to dispose of the stuff will be the devil of a job! But I think we can get enough, if you’ve still got your Amersterdam connections. Leyland nodded. “Good. You take the jewels today, and go. Now —when the affair is looked into, the insurance people and the police will find that a confidential typist of mine is missing: an unusually pretty girl, new to the business world, who said she’d taken Ihe job because her family nad come to grief financially. She’s had opportunity to get at the safe combination. A note of it is to be found in one of the drawers of her desk —it’s not hard to fake the handwriting of numbers, Leyland. A telephone call went out from her desk long after office hours last night—so she was probably here. Why?” Again Mr Bastin winked. “Tonight,” he went on. “she’ll be observed in the Cosmopolite, expensively dressed, with a young man, a foreigner. Tomorrow morning she’ll go with him by ’plane to Paris. Thence into the blue. I don’t think it’ll be surprising if it’s assumed that she has the jewels with her—do you?” “You’re a clever, devil, Bastin, You’ve fixed all that?” “I have. Two hundred pounds, and a young girl’s inevitable yearning for the mysteriously adventurous, were the ingredients, in case you ever need the formula yourself, Leyland.” “But if she’s caught?” “Unless Maurois bungles things, she won’t be. But if she is, well it’ll be assumed she got rid of the boodle en route. Meanwhile you, my dear Ley-

lan, without your beard, will be conducting profitable negotiations in Amsterdam, while 1 might join you in a month or so for a pleasant weekend?” “I,” said Sebastian Leyland gravely, “will be delighted to see you. Have a cigar.” The partners smiled amiably upon each other. Perhaps they would have smiled less complacently could they have known that Phillipe Maurios, with whom Sally Martin was to dine at the Cosmopolite that evening, and whom according to Mr Bastin’s plan she was to accompany to Paris, had slipped in front of a car in the Rue de Rivoli very late the night before, and now lay, stripped, cold and awaiting identification, on a slab in the Morgue. (To be Continued.)