Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard MEGAPACK®. Josephine Tey
it, they haven’t. They never read anything but a local paper, and local papers report London affairs in one line. The place is thirty-six miles from a railway station, and the policeman lives in the next village, four miles away, and has never seen anything more criminal than a salmon poacher. That’s where you are going. I have written a letter, saying that you are coming because you are in bad health. Your name is George Lowe, and you are a journalist. There is a train for Edinburgh from King’s Cross at ten-fifteen and you are catching that tonight. There isn’t much time, so hurry.”
“And what the police are catching is me at the platform barrier.”
“There isn’t a barrier at King’s Cross. I haven’t gone up and down to Scotland for nearly thirty years without knowing that. The Scotch platform is open to any one who wants to walk on. And even if there are detectives there, the train is about half a mile long. You’ve got to risk something if you’re going to get away. You can’t just stay here and let them get you! I should have thought that a gamble would have been quite in your line.”
“Think I’m afraid, do you?” he said. “Well, I am. Scared stiff. To go out into the street tonight would be like walking into no-man’s-land with Fritz machine-gunning.”
“You’ve either got to pull yourself together or go and give yourself up. You can’t sit still and let them come and take you.”
“Bert was right when he christened you Lady Macbeth,” he said.
“Don’t!” she said sharply.
“All right,” he muttered. “I’m sort of crazy.” There was a thick silence. “All right, let’s try this as a last stunt.”
“There’s very little time,” she reminded him. “Put something into a suitcase quickly—a suitcase that you can carry yourself—you don’t want porters.”
He moved at her bidding into the bedroom that led off the sitting-room, and began to fling things into a suitcase, while she put neat parcels of food into the pockets of the coat that hung behind the door.
“What’s the good?” he said suddenly. “It’s no use. How do you think I can take a main-line train out of London without being stopped and questioned?”
“You couldn’t if you were alone,” she said, “but with me it’s a different matter. Look at me. Do I look the sort who would be helping you to get away?”
The man stood in the doorway contemplating her for a moment, and a sardonic smile twisted his mouth as he took her in in all her upright orthodoxy. “I believe you’re right,” he said. He gave a short, mirthless laugh and thereafter put no difficulties in the way of her plans. In ten minutes they were ready for departure.
“Have you any money?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said; “plenty.”
She seemed about to ask a question.
“No, not that,” he said. “My own.”
She carried a rug and an extra coat: “You mustn’t suggest hurry in any way; you must look as though you were going a long journey and didn’t care who knew it.” And he carried the suitcase and a golf-bag. There was to be no hole-and-corner business. This was bluff, and the bigger the bluff, the more chance there was of carrying it off. As they stepped into the foggy road, she said, “We’ll go to Brixton High Street and get a bus or a taxi.”
As it happened, it was a taxi that offered itself first. It swelled out of the dark before they had reached a main thoroughfare, and as the man heaved what they were carrying aboard the woman gave the address of their destination.
“Cost you something, lady,” said the driver.
“Well, well,” she said, “isn’t every day my son has a holiday.”
The driver grunted good-naturedly. “That’s the stuff! Feast and famine. Nothing like it.” And she climbed in, and the taxi ceased its agitated throbbing and slid into action.
After a silence the man said, “Well, you couldn’t do more for me if I were.”
“I’m glad you’re not!” she said. There was another long silence.
“What is your name?” she asked suddenly.
He thought for a moment. “George Lowe,” he said.
“Yes,” she said; “but don’t think next time. There is a train north to Inverness that leaves Waverly at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. You’ll have to spend tomorrow night in Inverness. I have written down on a paper what you do after that.”
“You seem to be perfectly sure that nothing’s going to happen at King’s Cross.”
“No, I’m not,” she said. “The police are not fools—that Scotland Yard man didn’t believe half I said—but they’re just human. All the same, I’m not going to give you that bit paper until the train’s going.”
“I wish I had that revolver now!” he said.
“I’m glad you haven’t. You’ve made a big enough fool of yourself already.”
“I wouldn’t use it. It would just give me courage.”
“For goodness’ sake, be sensible, Jerry. Don’t do anything silly and spoil things.”
They fell to silence again, the woman sitting upright and alert, the man shrunk in the corner, almost invisible. Into the west of London they went like that, through the dark squares north of Oxford Street, out into the Euston Road and with a sharp left-handed turn into King’s Cross. The moment had come.
“You pay the taxi and I’ll get the ticket,” she said.
As Lamont paid the taxi-man the shadow of his turned-down hat hid his face, so that his retreating back was all that the incurious gaze of the driver noted. A porter came and took his things from him, and he surrendered them willingly. Now that the time had come, his “nerves” had gone. It was neck or nothing, and he could afford to play the part well. When the woman joined him from the booking-office, the change in him was evident in the approbation on her cold face. Together they went on to the platform and followed the porter down it, looking for a corner seat. They made a sufficiently convincing picture—the man with the rug and the golf-bag and the wraps, and the woman in attendance with the man’s extra coat.
The porter dived into a corridor and came out again saying, “Got you a corner, sir. Probably have the side to yourself all the way. It’s quiet tonight.”
Lamont tipped him and inspected his quarters. The occupant of the other side had staked his claims, but was not present other than in spirit. He went back to the doorway with the woman and talked to her. Footsteps came down the corridor at his back, and he said to her, “Have they any fishing, do you think?”
“Only sea-fishing in the loch,” she said, and continued the subject until the steps had moved on. But before they faded out of earshot they stopped. Lamont cast as casual a glance as he could achieve down the corridor, and found that the owner of the steps had halted at the open door of his compartment and was examining the luggage on the rack. And then he remembered, too late, that the porter had put his suitcase up with the initials outside. The G. L. was plain for all the world to read. He saw the man stir preparatory to coming back. “Talk!” he said quickly to the woman.
“There’s a burn, of course,” she said, “where you can catch what they call beelans. They are about three inches long.”
“Well, I’ll send you a beelan,” he said, and managed a low laugh that earned the woman’s admiration just as the man stopped behind him.
“Excuse me, sir, is your name Lorrimer?”
“No,” said Lamont, turning round and facing the man squarely. “My name is Lowe.”
“Oh, sorry!” the man said. “Is that your luggage in the compartment, then?”
“Yes.”