The Bat that Flits Read online

  Out of the inside pocket of his jacket he produced a thick roll of something done up in a newspaper wrapper. The stamps, I saw, were foreign ones.

  “Postman tried to push it through the letter-box,” he went on. “Too big. Got stuck, ha-ha. Wrapper torn all down one side, ha-ha. Look what it says.”

  That was really too tempting. I couldn’t resist the Vicar’s exhibit. So I came over. And I must admit that it was interesting. Through the long slit in the wrapper the name of the journal showed plainly enough. L’ Action Communiste was what it was.

  “Ever had any like these before?” Wilton asked through a yawn.

  “Rather,” the Vicar answered. “Every week. Ever since October. No idea what they were. Burned them if I’d known, ha-ha.”

  “Better leave ’em with me,” Wilton told him.

  But that brought out another side of the Vicar’s nature.

  “That all right?” he asked anxiously. “Her property, you know. Rights of the individual. Interception of letters criminal offence. Don’t like being a party to it. . . . ”

  “More cider?” Wilton asked.

  Chapter XVII

  I was still thinking about that batch of Communist literature and wishing that the Vicar hadn’t gone in for counter-espionage himself, when suddenly the whole emphasis shifted. And this time it was Kimbell who came up from nowhere right into the centre of the picture.

  It was the postal censorship that was behind it all. Wilton had opened quite an efficient slitting-and-steaming department in a back room in Bodmin just opposite the Co-op., and Swanton claimed indignantly that there were now big subhuman thumb-prints all over his weekly copy of the New Statesman.

  Then the vigilance team really did turn something up. One of the chaps, who happened to be able to read, discovered that someone from the Bodmin Institute was in daily, or rather every-other daily, correspondence with an address in Vienna’s Russian zone. The missing days, he found out from his colleague at the other end of the counter, were filled in by the replies that came through in the other direction as regularly as clockwork. And when they saw that the two-way exchange was in code, they wanted to have Kimbell arrested on the spot.

  Wilton invited me over the same evening. He had one of the dwarf captains still with him. He was a nice boy with a fine fresh complexion, as though he used wire-wool instead of a safety-razor. And he must have had a rather pleasant sense of humour because he called me “sir” right from the start.

  There was a chessboard set out on the table and the Captain was standing over it, looking as pleased with himself as though he had just invented the game.

  “It’s the same as draughts, sir,” he was saying to Wilton as I came in. “There are sixty-four squares altogether. Thirty-two white ones, and thirty-two black. I’ve just counted.”

  But I couldn’t let that one pass.

  “Better count ’em again,” I told him. “I think you’ve left one out.”

  Then, before the Captain could answer Wilton beckoned me over. That is to say that he stood where he was with his back turned towards me and made a sort of scooping movement in the air with his left arm.

  “You play chess?” he asked.

  “I did once,” I said. “Man who taught me took up bridge almost immediately afterwards.”

  “Ever heard of an ’E’?”

  “Name again, please,” I said.

  “An ’E.’”

  I shook my head.

  “Game must have changed since my time,” I told him. “I’m not surprised. It seemed to me pretty much exhausted twenty years ago.”

  Wilton did his usual straightening act. Shoulders and arms and knees and things kept appearing in the most unexpected places.

  “I suppose you know why we’re doing all this?” he asked.

  That stumped me. Of course I knew. The whole Institute knew. But what I didn’t know was whether anyone except Kimbell was supposed to know.

  “There’s going to be a tournament,” I suggested.

  “Kimbell said he’d told you.”

  I eased up at that.

  “Why so he did,” I answered. “I shall be forgetting my own name next.”

  “And what did he tell you?”

  That stumped me.

  “About correspondence chess, I think it was,” I answered. “Can’t stand it myself. Takes all the tang and fury out of the game.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “I’d believe anyone.”

  “Then it might interest you to know that with Continental or any other notation this game still can’t be played. It says here”—Wilton waved the paper in his hand—“to move some of the pieces into squares that just aren’t there.”

  I reflected for a moment. This certainly did seem to raise some interesting possibilities.

  “And it isn’t draughts either,” Wilton went on, in his slow quietish drawl.

  “Or backgammon,” I volunteered, wanting to show helpful. “No dice.”

  There was a pause. Quite a long pause. Wilton seemed to have a natural knack for reading other people’s minds. Because the next moment he asked the apple-cheeked Captain if he could find some more tonic water.

  As soon as he had gone, I turned to Wilton.

  “Why are you telling me all this?” I asked.

  “I’m still hoping you’ll be able to help me,” he said.

  “But I don’t know anything about chess.”

  Wilton was lighting a fresh cigarette from the stub of the old one. He was rather slow about it, I thought. And when he had finished he moved over to the window and began looking at the clouds again.

  “Chess isn’t the only game,” he said.

  Chapter XVIII

  Evidently after I had left him, Wilton must immediately have made things over to the Inspector. Or, at least, that was how I worked things out. Because less than four hours after I had downed my last gin tonic, the police swooped. It was the trampling of a lot of heavy feet in the annexe corridor that woke me up. Only it wasn’t Kimbell that they were arresting. It was Dr. Mann.

  The first thing that I heard really distinctly were the words:

  “Plees, plees, I am innocent.”

  Next came a low rumble that could only have been an English copper explaining about what could be used as evidence and what could not, and then Dr. Mann’s voice again:

  “Let me go. I can explain everything.”

  I had a kind of proprietary interest in any explaining that little Dr. Mann might be thinking of doing, and I made a quick grab for my Jaeger.

  When I opened the bedroom door it was not a pretty sight. Two large plain-clothes men, complete with an Inspector in uniform, were dragging Dr. Mann along between them. And they hadn’t even given him time to put a collar on. He looked as though he were half-way to the scaffold already.

  Moreover, at the sight of me he began struggling. Of course, with all that weight against him, he didn’t stand a chance. But it was obvious that the one thing he wanted was to come to me for protection.

  “What’s going on here?” I asked.

  But the Inspector saw the flaw in that approach.

  “You keep right out of this, sir,” he said. “We don’t want the whole Institute disturbed.”

  It was the tone of voice as much as anything else that annoyed me. So I turned bloody-minded.

  “I only wanted to be quite sure it wasn’t a kidnapping,” I said, raising my voice so that most of North Cornwall could hear. “What with stolen cultures and explosions and rifle shots, what is going on round here?”

  But I could have saved myself the trouble. Because next moment Dr. Mann started screaming. I had never heard someone scream before when he wasn’t being hurt. And it was horrible. One of the policemen said something that sounded like “these bloody foreigners “ and tried to clap his hand over Dr. Mann’s mouth. But the Inspector knew enough to stop that. The way things were going, bruises might be a key point for the defence.

  As soon as Dr. Ma
nn had used up all the air in his lungs I addressed him.

  “Don’t worry, old chap,” I said. “You go along with the nice, kind gentlemen. We’ll soon have you out again.”

  By now, other doors all the way down the corridor had opened. Kimbell was the first to appear and he went a delicate duck-egg green at the sight of the Inspector. Then he did something that was rather odd. He turned on his heel and went back inside his room again. A moment later, I heard the sound of a key turning. It was left to Swanton to speak up for civil liberties.

  “You’re twisting the man’s arm,” he said to one of the policemen. “I shall call witnesses.”

  It was Bansted he turned to. But Bansted was standing there with a very different kind of expression on his face. It was obvious that if called upon he would step up smartly and go to the assistance of the law.

  So Swanton had to go on single-handed.

  “It’s the half-Nelson,” he said. And in his emotion his voice went up into treble clef as he said it. “You know that can dislocate a man’s elbow. I shall report this.”

  That made the Inspector turn nasty.

  “If I have any more trouble from you,” he said, “I shall have to take you into custody for obstructing.”

  By now Swanton was quivering with the sort of frustration that makes a man want to do something damn silly just for the hell of it.

  “Very well,” he said, right up on top A by now. “Do it.”

  I thought that things had gone far enough by now. So I stepped forward. Gillett and Rogers and the others were out there on the landing by now. But it was my big moment.

  “That’s all right, officer,” I said. “I’ll be responsible for him. He won’t give you any more trouble.”

  The Inspector looked at me rather queerly. From his point of view, it was rather like a puff-adder going bail for a black widow.

  But taking advantage of the sudden calm, I acted quickly. Putting my arm round Swanton’s waist—he was only junior Miss size—I yanked him into the cubicle behind me. He was so surprised that he came easily. But, having got him there, it wasn’t by any means so easy to keep him. In the end, I had to stand with my back up against the door and my two hands ready in case he started anything. He was still pretty angry.

  “You filthy swine,” he said. “You’re just a bloody nark yourself. I might have known it.”

  But here I shook my head sadly.

  “Oh, sonny,” I said. “If you only knew.”

  Then he did a silly thing. He tried to kick me. But it was his knee that he used and not his foot. And, because it hurt, I hit him.

  Hit him hard and felt better for it.

  Chapter XIX

  1

  Down at the police station next morning nobody would say anything.

  “What about bail?” I asked. “I’m afraid I’ve never been mixed up in anything like this before.”

  The sergeant merely shook his head at me.

  “All in good time, sir,” he said. “Bail’s a matter for the Court, bail is.”

  “And when do you expect the case to come up?” I persisted. “I take it that habeas corpus still obtains within the Duchy.”

  The sergeant, however, didn’t seem to be any too anxious to commit the Duchy to anything.

  “If you care to look in this afternoon, sir,” he said, “the Inspector’ll be back by then.”

  “That’s nice of you,” I said. “But I don’t think I’ll bother. We seem to have been seeing so much of each other.”

  Just as I was going out, I met Swanton. He had cycled down. There was a piece of sticking-plaster on the corner of his mouth where I had hit him, and I felt rather ashamed when I saw it.

  “It’s no use,” I said. “They won’t let you see him.”

  Swanton looked a bit dashed. I think that he had pictured himself thrusting files and hacksaw blades in through the grille of the cell door.

  “And they won’t say when he’s going to be charged,” I told him.

  Swanton pulled the corners of his mouth down, and shook his head disapprovingly. Then he pushed past me.

  “Where are you going,” I asked.

  “Just to see if you’ve been telling me the truth,” he said. “Nothing personal about it.”

  Altogether I was getting quite fond of the boy.

  “Pity you’ve got your bike,” I replied. “I’d like to have offered you a lift.”

  I cut a pretty good figure at the breakfast table. That was because I was the only one who had actually been down to the station to inquire about our poor brother. Rogers was the first to say anything.

  “I must say I’m not surprised,” he remarked. “I always had my doubts about him. Nothing definite, you know. Just doubts.”

  This brought an approving nod from Bansted. He was in one of his more severe, must-reduce-your-overdraft moods this morning.

  “Never did approve of having foreigners on this kind of a job,” he said. “Stands to reason they haven’t got the same loyalties.”

  Dr. Smith gave a slow, unhumorous sort of smile.

  “I suppose you’ve overlooked the fact that our friend Mellon here is a foreigner,” he said. “Does that mean that you don’t approve of Mellon?”

  Satisfied that he had said something to embarrass someone, he stuffed another piece of toast into his mouth and went on eating.

  But nerves were a bit frayed all round. And it was Mellon and not Bansted who answered.

  “Say, why are you always picking on me?” he asked. “Just because you’re a bum lecturer over on our side you don’t have any cause to wash other people’s heads for them.”

  “And I object most strongly,” Bansted replied. “I had no thought of Mellon when I was speaking. I don’t regard Mellon as a foreigner. I was referring to Mann, and to Mann alone.”

  I could understand Bansted’s feeling of bitterness towards Mann. After all, it had been Mann who had seen him go out on to the moors with that pop-gun of his.

  But before anyone else could answer Mellon spoke up the way his father’s people would have liked to hear him.

  “Well, I’m sorry for Mann,” he said sweetly. “You show me a refugee, and I’ll show you someone who’s taken a pretty tough hiding.”

  Then Gillett said something. He had been rather more silent than usual, I thought. It may have been that with a profile like that he couldn’t risk spoiling things by talking with his mouth full.

  “I’m glad for his sake that this is England,” he remarked. “At least he can be assured of a fair trial.”

  But this last remark was too much for Kimbell. He got up so suddenly that he nearly overturned his chair.

  “Of all the bloody rot,” he said. “Do you imagine that a refugee ever gets a fair trial? Can you imagine any jury that wouldn’t rather convict a foreigner? I can’t, if you can.”

  And with that Kimbell left us. In the doorway he nearly collided with Swanton, who was just coming back from his early morning cycle ride. It only occurred to me later that it was highly significant that Kimbell and Swanton should have been going in opposite directions. They hadn’t even stood shoulder to shoulder when Mann had been arrested.

  But it could hardly have been that one of them had discovered something about the other. My guess was that they both knew everything already.

  2

  Dr. Mann was charged the following morning. And we couldn’t any of us have been more astonished if it had been a bicycle that he was supposed to have pinched . . . “that between the 20th and the 27th November he did steal 1,000,000 international units of penicillin and did unlawfully attempt to transmit them to a foreign country in contravention of . . . ” was how the charge read.

  We all went down to the court house in a body to hear it read. And right up to the moment when the doors opened, Swanton was convinced that the case would be heard in camera. He clearly suspected trickery somewhere when we were all invited inside, and a policeman asked if we would like to have the window closed.

&nb
sp; But as soon as little Dr. Mann appeared in the dock, we could all see what the poor fellow must have been through. He was completely tallow-coloured. And, from the circles under his eyes, he didn’t look as though he had been having a particularly good sort of night. But it was the eyes themselves that were the most remarkable thing about him. There was a quality of—this is the only way I can put it—defiance about them.

  But if the charge itself had come as a surprise, there was a bigger surprise waiting for us. And it was Gillett who sprang this one. He had been unusually restless for him ever since he had been in court. Twice he took out his Eversharp and got ready to scribble something down on the little loose-leaf jotter that he always carried. And twice he put it away again. But the third time he went right ahead. And when he had finished what he was writing, he beckoned to one of the policemen. Even in this small particular there was an air of distinction about Gillett. The way he called the policeman over was like a restaurant regular snapping his fingers at a rather slow waiter.

  I watched the passage of the piece of paper. It went from the policeman to the Inspector, from the Inspector to Wilton, from Wilton to the magistrate’s clerk, and from the magistrate’s clerk to the magistrate. And, wherever the little piece of paper went, whispering broke out all round it.

  Altogether it was obviously being a big morning for the bench. The magistrate was a bald, retired builder, who wore a stiff, white shirt front with the ends of the narrow black tie tucked in underneath the collar. He had the air of a puzzled double-bass player who is anxiously trying to discover where the horns have got to. Finally, he called Wilton over to him and they went through the score together. That settled it.

  “The prisoner has applied for bail,” the double-bass player announced at last, “and the court sees no reason to oppose it. Bail has accordingly been arranged in the sum of one hundred pounds and the prisoner is free to leave the court.”

  “Good,” said Gillett. “I wasn’t sure they’d allow it.”

  “You paying?”

  Gillett smiled.

  “Not exactly. He won’t run away.”