“BROCKLEBANK’S ADVENTURE”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 July 1940, Page 10

“BROCKLEBANK’S ADVENTURE”

COPYRIGHT. PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.

By

R. A. J. WALLING

(Author of “The Man With the Squeaky Voice,” etc.)

CHAPTER 1. The great express of the P.L.M. thundered through the darkness down the valley of the Rhone. Brocklebank sat alone in the cornel- of a first-class compartment, physically comfortable but suffering severe mental unease. He was about to engage in his first skirmish in Harrison's fantastic private war. He had been quite easy in his mind when he landed the night before from the Catania at Cherbourg, and in the crowds at St Lazare, in his hurried journey across Paris to the Gare de Lyon where he caught the ten o’clock train, and all through the hours of daylight swooping down through France.

But just after the stop at Avignon, when the silhouette of the Castle oi the Popes had melted into the purple sky, Brocklebank went into the restaurant car for a late dinner, and there, in the furthest corner, eating his last grape and drinking the last of his wine, was the middle-aged man with the narrow eyes and the closeclipped grey moustache. No doub'. about it. Brocklebank had never seen him in the flesh before. But he could make no mistake. This was the man whose photograph Harrison had shown him in New York, who was pari of the reason, and perhaps the main part, why Brocklebank sat in the Marseilles express this late summer evening. It made him. uneasy because he could not determine whether the man was conscious of him or not. He looked up when Brocklebank entered. No recognition in his eyes. But that might mean nothing. Those narrow eyes were extremely sophisticated behind the scanty eyebrows under the thinning hair.

He took no notice of Bracklebank as he passed out of the car. But Brocklebank remembered that he had left his suit-case locked in the compartment. After- what he had seen in New York, he wondered whether the narrow-eyed man might be curious about its contents. ' That would involve ugly conclusions —for example, that his departure from New Yo.rk had been observed and cabled to England, that his destination and the object of his journey were known, and that Pamela Harrison was in the danger her uncle had imagined but hardly feared. It seemed unlikely, but it might be true. If it were true, the narrow-eyed man would not find what he wanted in Brocklebank’s suit-case. He might come to the conclusion that Brocklebank had it on his person. And if so

He hurried through his dinner and returned to his corner. There were still nearly two hours to go in the train, and then that drive late'at night down to the quay at La Joliette. Brocklebank was taking no chances. He shot up the blinds on the corridor side of the compartment and pulled cut of his pocket an automatic pistol. He locked at the dull, steely-blue thing with distaste. He had never fired a shot in his life. When Harrison pressed it on him he objected. But Harrison said: “You needn’t fire it because you've got it; still, you never know when it may be useful for purposes of coercion.” Well, so it was; you never did know anything. How could he have known a fortnight ago that he’d now be in the rapide on the way to Marseilles Or that a partly bald man with narrow eyes and a little moustache would be travelling with him? Or any of the weird things that happened simply bepause he went down to Battery Park that Saturday afternoon? He pictured it all know, as he sat, with the automatic on his knee, staring at the corridor windows . . .

It was the hot and airless afternoon, when you could hardly breathe in New York, that had driven him to Battery Park. There, at any rate, a man who could not afford a sea trip could get a breeze off the sea.

New York lay behind him, stretching from this tip of Manhattan Island northward for many miles. The supremely exciting city of the earth; the most exotic of all mankind's creations; withal a good humoured, kindly and cynical city, friendly and inimical, but fascinating in all its moods. It had treated a stray Englishman well enough in its offhand way till the Great Depression came and turned it in upon itself. Stray Englishmen had to share the fate of hundreds of thousands ofAmericans and men of all nations whom the New Baghdad had lured into its arms. Brocklebank, with youth and an understanding imagination, had no grouch. Old Waechter had kept him till it became a choice between Brocklebank and a man who had been with Waechter for 20 years. Then he would not have stayed if he could. That was three months ago. The five hundred dollars he possessed when he shook hands with old Waechter had dwindled to two hundred. He had made up his mind to hang on in New York till he had no more left than would buy him a second-class passage home. Always in this amazing place there was a chance that Something might happen. He smiled now at the vague platitude as it passed across the mirror of his memory. But time heaped and the dollars diminished. A big Atlantic transport boat passed down from her dock on the Hudson, headed for the Narrows and the Atlantic and England. Next Saturday, perhaps . . . At four o'clock he began to think of returning to Twenty-third Street, cast about in his mind for ways of travelling. rejected the elevated because it ran through so many back streets, the subway because of the weather, the street car because of the noise, a laxi because it would cost him a dollar. He would walk. Away from Battery Par!:, the streets were as quiet and peaceful on a Sat-' urday afternoon as the city of Lon-

don. Their regular inhabitants had deserted them. Up Broadway and through the Grand Canyon? No —he turned away from that immense cavernous alley into by-streets on the East, seeking a route less awesome in the Saturday silence. He had not gone five hundred yards before Something Happened. It was on a curve in a narrow street, One of the few streets in that rectangular city that failed to be dead straight. A tall, white-haired man came from an office building. A prowling Yellow Cab approached up the other side. The man whistled and beckoned. The driver switched round to cross to his prospective fare. At that moment Brocklebank reached the corner of an alley exactly as a second man stepped out, raised his arm with a gun at the end of it, and took deliberate aim. Brocklebank, unseen immediately behind him, dashed in and hit up his arm.

The man swore and turned upon him Brocklebank. within an ace of death, slasned a heavy fist upward, true to the point. The gun clattered to the pavement, and the gunman with it, stretched on his back, arms spread. The tall man and the taxi reached the corner together. The tall man gave one look at the prone figure and another at Brocklebank. He stooped and picked up the gun. Half a dozen people were running towards them. “You want to be in this?” said the tall man. “Not a bit,” said Brocklebank. A wallet of bills had appeared in the tall man’s hand. “Let’s get out!” said he. “Driver, Canal Street. Come on, sir!" Brocklebank was in the cab. The tall man had his foot on the running board. “Hi!” The half-dozen people had arrived, and promised soon to be half a hundred. “Had a fit or something,” said the tall man. “Going to call the ambulance. Get on, driver.” , “Hi hi!” shouted the crowd. The door banged. The taxi moved. “Up Pine Street. Step on it!” said the tall man, sliding back the window between him and the driver. The taxi gathered speed, swerved across the street,' took the first lefthand turn. Thirty seconds after Brocklebank had swung his arm the shouting crowd was out of sight and hearing. A rapid step in the corridor interrupted Brocklebank’s reflections. A man passed the door without looking cr stepping. Brocklebank caught sight of his uniform cap. An idea occurred to him. He rang. “Do we stop at Arles?" he asked the conductor. “In ten minutes, monsieur." “The time to send a telegram?" “Just, monsieur.” "Wait a moment.” Brocklebank scribbled on a page oi his notebook: “Guichard fils, Cafe du Rat, La Joliette, Marseille. Meet me 22-45 Gare St Charles. —Brocklebank.” He added five francs to the fee. It was worth it. Guichard would know how to deal with a pair of narrow eyes and a clipped moustache-—none better. He felt easier as he leaned back in nis corner, pulled cut the gun again, rested it on his knee, and resumed the thread of his memories.

But for the white-haired man he might have almost forgotten by how the prone figure on the pavement and he would certainly not have been riding in the rapide from Paris to Marseilles with a revolver in his hand. He had twisted round to look out at the back window while the cab sped on block after block to the corner of Pine Street. Not until they were in Broadway and passing City Hall Park did he relax his vigil. Then he sighed, looked at the automatic, dropped it in his pocket. “Well, sir,” he said, 1 “my guardian angel sent you along just in the nick of time.”

"Glad to help," said Brocklebank. The white-haired man looked curiously at him. “Englishman, of course?” “Englishman—yes. But why of course?”

“Stigmata well marked." he replied. “We must be better acquainted. I'm going to walk a block and take another cab. Are you too busy ?" “Never less busy, unfortunately," said Brocklebank. "Ah! Then —come and talk over a tea cup, will you?”

“Delighted,” said Brocklebank. And it was a fateful word. The driver drew in to the sidewalk at the Canal Street corner. The whitehaired man paid him off. They set out together, picked up another cab at Grand Street, and in twenty minutes were standing in the lobby of a Park Avenue apartment house, waiting for the elevator. At the 12th floor the white-haired man stood aside for Brocklebank. followed him on to a landing with two doors, opened with a latch-key the one on the right, and ushered his guest into a flat. If Brocklebank had all the stigmata of an Englishman, lie thought in the white-tiled bathroom as he washed his hands, pulled his lie straight and ran a brush over his chair, they were equally marked in the man he had presumably saved from death half an hour ago. A service flat, he concluded, when he had joined his host in a small sittingroom where a coloured girl was already pulling out the tea equipage. (To be Continued).