“Mr. Cavell!” The welcome Stella Chessingham gave me bore no resemblance to the one I had received from her at dawn that morning. The light was back in her eyes, the anxiety vanished from her face. “How nice! I — I’m so sorry about this morning, Mr. Cavell. I mean — it is true what my mother told me after they’d taken him away?”
“It’s perfectly true, Miss Chessingham.” I tried to smile, but with the way I felt and with my face still aching from the hasty scrubbing away of the now useless disguise before leaving MacDonald’s house, I was glad I couldn’t see what sort of attempt I’d made at it. As far as our respective positions were concerned, compared to twelve hours ago, the boot was on the other foot now, and with a vengeance. “I am sincerely sorry but it was at the time necessary. Your brother will be released to-night. You saw my wife this afternoon?”
“Of course. It was so sweet of her to come to see us. Won’t you and your — um — friend come in to see Mother? She’d be delighted I’m sure.”
I shook my head. “What time did my wife leave here?”
“About five-thirty, I should say. It was beginning to get dark and — has something happened to her?” she ended in a whisper.
“She’s been kidnapped by the murderer and held as hostage.”
“Oh, no! Oh, no, Mr. Cavell, no.” Her hand clutched her throat. “It — it’s not possible.”
“How did she leave here?”
“Kidnapped? Your wife kidnapped?” She stared at me, round-eyed in fear. “Why should anyone want—–”
“For God’s sake answer my question,” I said savagely “Had she hired a car, taxi, bus service — what was it?”
“A car,” she whispered. “A car came to pick her up. The man said you wanted to see her urgently . . .” Her voice trailed away as she realised the implications of what she was saying.
“What man?” I demanded. “What car?”
“A — a middle-aged man,” she faltered. “Swarthy. In a blue car. With another man in the back seat. I don’t know what kind except that — of course! It was a foreign car, a car with left-hand drive. Has she—–”
“Oregon and his Fiat?” the General whispered. “But how in God’s name did he know that Mary was out here?”
“Simply by lifting the telephone,” I said bitterly. “He knew we were staying at the Waggoner’s Rest. He asked for Mary and asked if she was there and that fat fool behind the bar said why no, Mrs. Cavell wasn’t there, he himself had just driven her out to Mr. Chessingham’s house less than a couple of hours ago. It would be on Oregon’s way, so he stopped by to see. He’d everything to gain, nothing to lose.”
We didn’t even tell Stella Chessingham good-bye. We ran down the steps, intercepted Hardanger changing over from the radio van to the police Jaguar, and almost bundled him into the car. “Alfringham,” I said quickly. “The Fiat. He took it after all. I didn’t think he would take the chance—–”
“He didn’t,” Hardanger ground out. “Had a report just now. He ditched it in the village of Grayling, not three miles from here, in a side street — and not twenty yards from the local constable’s cottage. The constable -was just listening to our radio broadcast, lifted his eyes and there it was.”
“Empty, of course.”
“Empty. He wouldn’t have ditched it unless he’d another lined up. An all-station alert is out for stolen cars. It would be stolen in Grayling, hardly more than a hamlet, I understand. We’ll soon find out.”
We soon found out and it was ourselves that did the finding. Just two minutes later, running into Grayling, we saw a character doing a sort of war dance on the pavement and flagging us down with a furiously waving brief-case of sorts held in his right hand. The Jaguar stopped and Hardanger wound down his window.
“It’s monstrous,” the man with the brief-case shouted. “Thank God you’re here. An outrage, a damnable outrage! In broad daylight—–”
“What’s the matter?” Hardanger cut in.
“My car. In broad daylight! Stolen, by God! I was just paying a call in this house and—–”
“How long were you in there?”
“Eh? How long? What the hell—–”
“Answer me!” Hardanger roared.
“Forty minutes. But what—–”
“What kind of car?”
“A Vanden Plas Princess 3-litre.” He was almost sobbing with rage. “Brand new, I tell you. Turquoise. Three weeks old — ”
“Don’t worry,” Hardanger said curtly. The police Jaguar was already in motion. “We’ll get it back for you.” He wound up the window, leaving the man standing behind us, open-mouthed, and spoke to the sergeant in front.
“Alfringham. Then the London road. Cancel the call for the Fiat. It’s now a turquoise Vanden Plas Princess 3-litre. All stations. Locate, follow, but don’t close in.”
“Blue-green,” the General murmured. “Blue-green, not turquoise. It’s policemen you’re talking to, not their wives. Half of them would think you were talking about their Christmas dinner.”
“It all started with MacDonald,” I said. The big police car was hissing along the wet tarmac, the pine trees lining the road cartwheeling back into the pitch darkness behind, and it seemed easier to talk than to sit there going quietly crazy with worry. Besides, the General and Hardanger had been patient long enough. “We all know what MacDonald wanted, and it wasn’t just to serve the cause of the Communist world. Dr. MacDonald had only one deeply-felt and abiding interest in life — Dr. MacDonald. No question but that he was a genuine dyed-in-the-wool fellow-traveller at one time — Madame Halle did not strike me as a person who would make a mistake over anything — and I don’t see how he could otherwise have formed his contacts with the Communist world. He must have earned a great deal of money over the years — you’d only to look at the contents of his house — but he spent it fairly judiciously and wisely, not splashing it around too much at a time.”
“The Bentley Continental he had,” Hardanger said. “Wouldn’t you call that splashing it around a bit?”
“He’d that expense well covered, with a water-tight explanation. But,” I acknowledged, “he got greedy. He was getting in so much money during the past few months that it was burning a hole in his pockets.” \
“Working overtime sending samples to Warsaw and information to Vienna?” the General asked.
“No,” I said. “Blackmailing Gregori.”
“Sorry.” The General stirred wearily in his corner seat. “I’m not with you.”
“It’s not difficult,” I said. “Gregori — the man we know as Gregori — had two things: a beautiful plan and a stroke of very bad luck. You will remember that there was nothing sub rosa about Gregori’s arrival in this country — it sparked off a minor international crisis, the Italians being hopping mad that one of their top-notch bio-chemists should turn his back on his own country and go to work in Britain. Somebody — somebody with more than a smattering of chemistry and a fairly close resemblance to Gregori — read all about it and saw in Oregon’s impending departure for Britain the opportunity of a lifetime and made his preparation accordingly.”
“The real Gregori was murdered?” Hardanger asked.
“No question of that. The Gregori who set off from Turin with all his worldly wealth stacked in the back of his Fiat was not the Gregori who arrived in Britain. The original Gregori met with a very permanent accident en route and the impostor, no doubt with a few judicious alterations to his features to make his resemblance to the now dead man even closer, arrived in Britain in Gregori’s car complete with clothes, passport, photographs — the lot. So far, so very good.
“Now the bad luck. Apart from the reports of his work, the original Gregori was completely unknown in Britain — as a person, that is. There was probably only one man in Britain who knew him well — and by a one in a million chance Gregori found himself working in the very same laboratory as this man. MacDonald. Gregori didn’t know that. But Mac-Donald did — and knew that Gregori was a fake. Don’t forget that MacDonald had for many years been a delegate to the W.H.O. and 111 wager anything you like that the original Gregori held a similar position for Italy.”
“Which accounts for the missing photographs in the album,” the General said slowly.
“The two of them — MacDonald and the original Gregori — standing arm in arm, no doubt. In Turin. Anyway, probably after weighing up the situation for a day or two, MacDonald told the spurious Gregori that he was on to him. We can guess what happened. Gregori would have produced a gun and said that it was just too bad but that he would have to silence him and MacDonald, nobody’s fool, would have produced a piece of paper and said that that would be just too bad because if he died suddenly his bank — or the police — had orders to open immediately a sealed envelope containing a copy of that paper, which would contain a few interesting facts about Gregori. Gregori would then have to put his gun away and they would have made a deal. A one-way deal. Gregori to pay MacDonald so much per month. Or else. Don’t forget MacDonald was now in a position to pin a murder rap on Gregori.”