“ANNOUNCER’S HOLIDAY”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 December 1940, Page 10

“ANNOUNCER’S HOLIDAY”

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.

COPYRIGHT.

By

VAL GIELGUD

(Author of “Africa Flight,” “Outpost in China,” etc.)

CHAPTER V. {Continued!. He realised that the Count was speaking again: “Don’t mistake me in any way, please, Mr. Bland. I don t mean to appear either threatening or mistrustful. I merely tell you the facts. Don’t allow a mistaken humanitarianism to get the better of your commonsense. You will be given your introduction to Miss Mahler by Lucia here after her first night. After that you have a free hand. But if you fail —not through her invincible stubbornness, which is, of course, a regrettable possibility—but through any deliberate action on your part, you will most certainly find yourself sharing the lady’s early demise. I don’t wan’t you to accuse me of engaging you under false pretences.” “Thank you,” said Geoffrey, a little breathlessly. “And very glad I am that it is said and done with,” added von' Reichenberg, smiling With the utmost geniality. “I’d like you to stay and converse with us on general subjects, but you've a .long journey home and probably want to get away. Have a little more whisky.” But Geoffrey refused. He found it almost impossibly difficult to think, let alone to plan, in that queer, scented, over-cushioned room; with the Count twinkling sardonically behind his eyeglass, and the girl Lucia watching him like some dangerously attractive little cat. He felt an overwhelming need for fresh air, commonplace and preferably masculine society. And he wanted to talk the whole thing over with the real Charles Bland. “I don’t know whether it will be necessary for us to meet again,” said the Count, as he shook hands. “I go about as little in London as possible. It saddens me to see the changes—the end of the Quadrant, the commercialisation of Berkley Square, these new flats that are so like barracks. But I mustn’t keep you. I think we quite understand one another?” “Surely,” Geoffrey agreed. How he hated the large and rather flabby hand pressing his own! The girl Lucia accompanied him down the stairs and into the hall. Outside the open front door —it was clear now that the Count could control that door from the sitting-room—the fog was perceptibly thinning. “Up the steps, turn to your left, walk about a hundred yards—and ask a policeman!” said Lucia.) “Take care of yourself going home—and this for youi’ trouble!”

With a swift movement she slipped an arm round Geoffrey Allardyce’s neck, and kissed him full on the lips. Then she ran back and up the stairs. “I’ll meet you for dinner and the first night at the Havana Restaurant — seven o’clock the day after tomorrow. White tie, tails, and a buttonhole, please. You must do us both credit! But not a poinsettia! Don’t forget.” Geoffrey walked out into the thining fog, with extremely mixed feelings. That kiss —regrettable, looked at strictly, he supposed, but oddly agreeable in fact. But this would never do.

He made his way slowly up the thirty-two steps—he did not count them this time —and did not bother to see whether the door of the strange house closed behind him. CHAPTER VI.

There is an odd convention which has crept into the writing of stories of unusual happenings; a convention that, unless the story is avowedly one of the detection of crime, the hero must never dream of calling in the police. He must for choice manage to include the police among his other enemies—by misunderstanding, of course. The convention has its uses. It has produced excellent stories. But in actual practice, the man or woman who runs into the odd and hypothetically criminal, remembers that he pays his rates, that the police force is pretty efficient, and rings up Scotland Yard or any police station.

Now while Geoffrey Allardyce was quite sufficiently intoxicated with romantic notions to abide by this convention, Charles Bland was far otherwise. Apart from his mania for gambling on anything from a race to a share and a not very strong head for liquor, Bland was reasonably shrewd. He also had a pleasingly and usefully wide circle of acquaintances, which included one Moresby, a Detective-Superinten-dent at Scotland Yard.

Charles Bland therefore, having heard Geoffrey’s tale of adventure through, almost without comment, and slept on it, murmured something the next morning about a visit to his solicitor, and departed from Soho Square to Whitehall. ;

Superintendent Moresby was a large and rather fleshy man in his fifties. He had none of the higher education of some of his younger colleagues, and mistrusted most of them —in particular Detective-Inspector Simon Spears, who had made what was in his view an outrageously inflated reputation in the Broadcasting House case. At the same time he was as reliable as the Bank of England, enormously well-informed about the criminal population of London, and innately good-natured in spite of a liver, whose working did little to improve a naturally hot temper. His office was comfortless and practical in the extreme, indeterminately brown walls with a yellow dado atop, steel filing cabinets of a dull green, a solidly unattractive desk, a dreary view of back windows in an adjoining block. “Well, Mr. Bland, in trouble again?” was his rather discouraging welcome to Charles. “Yes," replied Charles. “likewise no —if you understand me.” “I don’t,” said Moresby. "You surprise me. Superintendent,” said Charles, "you do indeed. I'd thought that from the all-seeing eye of the Metropolitan Police nothing could be hid.”

“If you don’t mind,” said the Superintendent a little grimly, “I’m a pretty busy man.” “Of course. I'll get to the ham-bone. Give me a chance.” “Well?” "Well,” said Charles. “O—may 1 smoke? Thanks.” He lighted a Turkish cigarette, and proceeded through a disolving cloud of smoke, “It’s not me for once. At least only by proxy, if you understand me. You see ” “I don’t,” said Moresby, and the words sounded like a groan. But there was also a genuine irritation behind the sound, and Charles came to business. He omitted nothing; the corkscrew, the poinsettia, his meeting with Lucia, the mistaking of Geoffrey’s identity, the note and the £5OO note —at which Moresby’s eyebrows shot skywards —Geoffrey’s trip to Limehouse and finally the remarkable figure of the red-bearded Count von Reichenberg. “It’s quite a good story,” admitted Superintendent Moresby when Charles had finished. “But you don’t believe a word of it?” “Some of it. Even quite a lot of it. I don’t believe that stuff about submachine guns in Soho; More likely gardening tools, or bicycles in sections.”

“Bicycles wrapped round grapefruit? Rather rust-making surely?” To that sally, Moresby made no reply. He was frowning. “We might look into that,” he said at last. “Just in case—but the rest of it —” and he shrugged his big shoulders.

“Too much like a fairy-tale?” hazarded Charles. “The wicked prince, the pure young actress, and the gallant young rescuer straight from that most modern of all castles of Uplift, Broadcasting House?” “Not at all,” said Moresby. “It’s our business, Mr. Bland. I know to begin with that it’s true this young sprig—we’ll go on calling him Xavier, shall we? —is very much one of the boys. A nice time the Special Branch had. looking after him, last time he was over here. He wanted to ride a polo pony into his hotel at three in the morning.” “Well?” “He’s due over here in about twen-ty-four hours,” Moresby went on. “Coming for this Austrian girl’s first night, no doubt. We’re getting ready for him. And we’ve been asked to be specially careful of the ladies he sees. I don’t know anything about Miss Mahler except that a friend of mine in the show ”

“Moresby!” interrupted the scandalised Charles. “I’m amazed. I really am!”

“Well, you needn’t be!” said Moresby shortly. “I’m a bachelor, as you very well know, Mr. Bland. And the lady is a cousin of my tobacconist. Not a young lady, of course. She plays charwomen and duchesses as a rule — character bits. And her information about the West End stage is extremely reliable, thank you very much.” “I apologise,” said Charles grinning. “You must ask me out to meet her at supper some time.” ‘!She’s careful of her company,” hetorted the Superintendent. “But she says that Miss Mahler is pretty and a lady, nice to the chorus-girls and all that sort of thing. Doesn’t know her weight.” “Sounds too good to be true,” was Bland’s cynical comment. “But the main point is,” said Moresby seriously, “that apart from those problematical arms, which don’t seem to have any bearing, where’s my crime? If your Mr. Allardyce does or does not succeed in stopping this girl from tying up with our little pet Xavier, where does the Yard come in? Oh I know —this threat to murder her if all else fails, Mr. Bland, that's your friend's yarn, and they may even have said it to bring him up to scratch. You’ll forgive me if I doubt very much if they meant a word of it.” “I see the difficulty.” “That’s nice of you. Of course, there’s the identity of this fellow with the red beard and the mirror in his eye! What was his name Reichsomething?” “Von Reichenberg, calling himself a Count.” Moresby scratched his jaw.

“The description’s familiar somehow,’ he grunted. “It brings someone to mind—but that’s not the name. Wait a minute.”

He crossed the room and unlocked one of the filing-cabinets, from which he took a large black and yellow folder. Inside, thick sheets of officiallooking paper were carefully bound together in two’s and three’s. Charles noticed, as Moresby turned them over, that in most cases a photograph surmounted the top sheet. “From your pal’s description,” said Moresby suddenly, “would you say this was at all like Reichenberg?” “1 should just say’ so,” murmured Charles. “There couldn’t be another face like that: eyeglass, genial look, breadth of shoulder, moustache and beard —is the colouring right?” “Sandy, growing thin,” read Moresby from the dossier. “This looks like something. He’s an Austrian Pole too. according to this file. Principal hobbies are cats and claret. Very particular about his shoes. Unmarried.” “Hello! Where does the fair or rather dark Lucia come in?”

“Quite. But what’s more important is this business of the name.” “Why?” “The name of this man,” said the Superintendent, tapping the file impressively. “is not von Reichenberg. It is Casimir Konski. And M.I. —which by interpretation is Military Intelligence—” “I know that much. Go on.” “M. 1.5. have a note to the effect that he is, politically speaking, quite one of the most dangerous men in Europe!" (To be Continued).