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Chapter ten

The House by the Sea

We stayed at the Griffin Hotel in Bradgate. At seven o’clock in the morning I was looking out of a window there. It was a beautiful day.

A man was fishing down at the port, and I remembered Royer’s story about the lion.

A small warship was lying south of the port. I called MacGillivray’s man.

‘Officer,’ I said, ‘do you know that ship? Perhaps Whittaker sent her here.’

‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘She’s usually along this part of the coast.’ And he told me her name and the name of her captain. I went to the telephone and sent a telegram to Sir Walter about them.

After breakfast Scaife, MacGillivray’s officer, and I walked along the beach. We went towards the steps on the Ruff but stopped less than half a kilometre from them.

‘I won’t come all the way with you,’ I said. ‘These people know me very well. I’ll wait here. You go on and count all the steps.’

I sat down behind a rock and waited. There was nobody on the beach. It was ten o’clock when Scaife came back.

‘There are six lots of steps,’ he said, ‘and they lead to six different houses.’ He took a piece of paper from his pocket and read: ‘Thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-nine, forty-two, forty-seven and twenty-one.’

I felt so pleased that I almost got up and shouted.

We hurried back to Bradgate and sent a telegram to MacGillivray. I wanted six good men, and they had to stay at different hotels in the town.

‘Now go back to the thirty-nine steps,’ I said to Scaife, ‘and have a look at the house. Then go to the post office. Find out who lives there.’

He brought back some strange but interesting facts. The house was called Trafalgar Lodge and it belonged to an old man named Appleton.

Mr Appleton often stayed there in the summer. He was at the house now. Nobody knew a lot about him but he seemed kind and quiet.

Scaife made some excuse to visit the house and met three women there.

‘They look after the place,’ he said, ‘and they can’t possibly be Germans. They talk too much for that.’

‘Did you look at the houses on each side of Trafalgar Lodge?’ I asked.

‘Yes. The house on the right is empty. They’re building the place on the left.’

Before dinner I walked along the Ruff myself. I found a quiet place away from the houses and sat down there. I could see the house quite well.

It was a red stone building with large windows. There was a garden all around the house, and the British flag was flying from a tall post!

While I was watching, a man left the house to walk along the hill-top. He was an old man wearing white trousers and a blue coat.

He had a newspaper under his arm. He walked quite a long way and then sat down on a seat to read the paper.

A few minutes later he put down the paper and looked out to sea at the warship. He looked at it for a long time. I watched him for half an hour, and then he got up to return to the house.

I went back to my hotel.

I was not very happy about that old man. He did not look like a spy, but perhaps he was the old man from that Scottish farm.

In the afternoon we had some excitement. A sailing boat came up from the south and stopped near the Ruff. She was flying the British flag.

Scaife and I went down to the port and spoke to the coastguard there. We said that we wanted to go fishing. So the coastguard got a boat for us, and we sailed out of the port.

We caught a lot of fish that afternoon. And at about four o’clock we sailed quite close to the sailing boat. She looked like a beautiful white bird on the water.

‘She’s a fast boat,’ Scaife said. ‘If anyone wants to get away quickly, they’ll go in a ship like this.’

Her name was the Ariadne. We spoke to a few men on her, and they were clearly Englishmen. Then an officer joined them, and the men stopped talking.

The officer was a young man and he spoke English very well. But we were quite sure that he was not an Englishman. His hair was cut very short and his clothes looked quite foreign.

In the evening I met the captain of the warship at the hotel.

‘We’ll probably need your ship tonight or tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Has anyone spoken to you about that?’

‘Yes, sir. I’ve had a message from the Admiralty. I’ll come in close when it’s dark. I know what to do.’

About an hour later I walked back along the hill-top towards Trafalgar Lodge. The old man and a young man were playing tennis in the garden.

While I was watching them, a woman brought out bottles and glasses. The young man, who was rather fat, took the things from her.

‘Those people seem all right,’ I said to myself. ‘They’re quite different from those terrible men in Scotland. I’ve probably made a mistake.’

Then another man arrived at the house on a bicycle. He was thin, dark and quite young. They finished the game of tennis and they all went into the house.

I walked slowly back to the hotel. Was I wrong about those men? Were they acting while I was watching them? They did not know that anyone was watching them. And they were acting like any other Englishmen.

But there were three men in that house: the old man, the fat one and the thin, dark man. The house fitted Scudder’s description. A sailing boat was lying less than a kilometre away and she had a foreign officer.

I thought about Karolides and the danger of war. And I remembered the fear in Sir Arthur Drew’s face.

I knew what I had to do. I had to go to that house and arrest those men. If I was wrong, it was my problem. But I did not like the job at all.

Suddenly I remembered my friend Peter Pienaar in Rhodesia. Peter was a criminal before he became a policeman. In fact the police accepted him for that reason. He knew all the worst criminals in the country.

Peter told me that he once got away from the police very easily. He put on a black coat and went to church. And he chose to sit next to a police officer. They sang together and used the same book.

And the policeman did not know who Peter was! I asked him why And Peter replied, ‘Because the place and my clothes were different.

He knew me in my usual clothes, in a street or at a hotel. But he could not imagine me in church or wearing a long black coat.’

These thoughts made me feel more comfortable. Our German enemies were as clever as Peter. They lived in an English house, and the British flag was flying in the garden.

They used English names and played English games. Their private life was completely English, and so nobody thought twice about them.

It was now eight o’clock in the evening. I met Scaife at the hotel and gave him his orders.

‘Put two men in the garden,’ I said, ‘and hide three others close to the windows. When I want you, I’ll call.’

I was not hungry, so I went for a walk. I saw the lights on the Ariadne and on the warship. I sat down on a seat and waited for more than an hour.

At half past nine I went to Trafalgar Lodge. Scaife’s men were in their places by now, but I did not see anyone. There were lights in the house and the windows were open.

I pushed the doorbell. One of the women opened the door.

‘May I speak to Mr Appleton?’ I asked.

‘Yes, sir. Please come in,’ she said.

I had a plan. I hoped to walk straight into the house and to watch those three German faces. But when I was inside, I felt less sure of myself. I saw their hats and coats and walking sticks in the hall.

There was a large clock in one corner. English pictures were hanging on the walls, and the place was like thousands of other English homes.

‘Your name, sir?’ the woman asked.

‘Hannay. Richard Hannay.’

She went into a room and called my name. I followed just behind her, but I was too late. The three men had a moment to hide their surprise.

The old man was standing up, and he and the fat one were wearing dinner-suits. The other man was in a suit of blue cloth.

‘Mr Hannay?’ the old man said. ‘You want to speak to me, I believe. Come into the next room, please.’

I pulled a chair towards me and sat down on it.

‘You know me,’ I said, ‘and you know my business.’

The light was not very good in the room. But I saw that they all looked surprised.

‘Perhaps we do know you,’ the old man said, ‘but I can’t remember. I’m sorry that I don’t know your business, sir. Will you please tell me?’

I thought about Peter Pienaar and said, ‘This is the end. I’ve come to arrest you all.’

‘Arrest us!’ the old man said. ‘But why?’

‘I’m arresting you for the murder of Franklin Scudder in London on 23 May.’

‘I don’t know that name,’ the old man said, and his voice seemed very weak.

The fat man spoke then. ‘I read about that in the papers. But this is terrible. We don’t know anything about the murder, sir. Where do you come from?’

‘Scotland Yard,’ I said.

There was a silence when they heard that. The old man looked down at his feet and seemed very nervous.

Then the fat man said, ‘This is surely a mistake, uncle. We can easily prove our stories.

I wasn’t even in England on 23 May, and you were ill, weren’t you, Bob? You were in London, uncle, I know; but you can explain your business there.’

‘That’s right, Percy! Now what did I do on 23 May? Oh, I remember. I came up in the morning from Woking and had dinner with Charlie Symons. I was at Grantham House in the afternoon, wasn’t I?

Yes, that’s right. And I stayed there all evening.’

The fat man looked at me. ‘I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake, sir. We’ll help you if we can, of course. But sometimes Scotland Yard is wrong.’

‘Yes, of course,’ the old man said. ‘We’ll do anything to help you, sir, but this is clearly a mistake.’

‘Won’t Nellie laugh when she hears about this’ one of them said.

‘Oh, she will! I can’t wait to tell Charlie about it too. Now, Mr Hannay, I’m not angry with you, but you’ve come to the wrong place.’

Surely they weren’t acting. What they said was all true. It was my mistake. And I wanted to say, ‘I’m sorry,’ and leave the house.

But the old man had very little hair. The fat man was there too, and the third man was dark and thin.

I looked at them and I looked around the room. Everything was all right and in its place. And I did not know their faces.

‘Don’t you agree, sir?’ the old man asked me. ‘Haven’t you come to the wrong house?’

‘No. This is the right house.’

‘Well, we have other things to do with our time,’ the thin man said. ‘Are you going to take us to the police station? You’re only doing your job, I know, but it’s very difficult.’

I did not answer him. I thought, ‘Oh, Peter Pienaar, help me!’

The fat man stood up. ‘Perhaps Mr Hannay needs more time,’ he said. ‘It isn’t an easy problem for him. Let’s play cards for half an hour, shall we? Do you play, sir?’

‘Yes. I’ve got a lot of time and I like a game of cards. ‘We went into the next room, and I looked around. Books and newspapers were lying around. The tennis things were in an open cupboard in the corner.

We sat around a card-table in the middle of the room. And the dark man brought me a drink. I played with him against the others.

It was like a dream. The windows were open, and I could see the moonlight on the sea. The three men were not afraid at all. They were talking and laughing together. But my heart was beating very quickly.

I did not play very well that night. My thoughts were too ugly for me to follow the cards. I was not sure about these men, and they knew it of course.

I looked at their faces again and again but did not know them. They did not only seem different. I felt sure that they were different. ‘Oh, Peter,’ I thought once more.

Then suddenly I saw something. The old man put down his cards to drink some wine.

And he did not pick them up for a moment. He sat back in his chair and began to play with his right ear.

I remembered that Scottish farm. I was standing in front of him again after telling him my story.

And, there, in Scotland, he sat back and played with his ear. It was only a little thing, but I remembered it well.

The clouds lifted from my eyes and everything was clear again. The faces of the three men changed suddenly and I knew all their secrets. It was the dark man who killed Scudder.

I was playing cards with him, but his eyes looked cold and hard now. The fat man was different too. He did not have one face but a hundred faces. And he was probably the Lord Alloa of the night before.

But the old man was clearly the chief criminal.

He was as hard as rock and quite without fear. I remembered Scudder’s words: ‘If you see his eyes, Hannay, you’ll never forget them.’ And it was true.

We continued to play, but my heart was full of hate. When the dark man spoke to me, I could not answer him.

‘Bob! Look at the clock,’ the old man said. ‘You’ll miss your train if we don’t hurry.’ He turned to me. ‘Bob has to go back to London tonight.’ The voice was now as completely false as their faces.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but he isn’t going tonight.’

‘Why not?’ the young man asked. ‘I have to go. I’ll give you my address.’

‘No. You have to stay here.’

That probably made them nervous. They knew that I knew them. They had only one chance now, and the old man took it.

‘Well, arrest me, Mr Hannay, and let the others go. Will that be all right?’

I shouted, ‘Scaife!’

The lights went out. Strong arms held me, and I could not move.

‘Schnell, Franz,’ a voice cried, ‘zum Boot, zum Boot!’

I looked out of the window. Two police officers were running across the garden. The dark man jumped through the window and was running towards the steps.

Suddenly the room filled with people, and I was free. I caught the old man and held him. Scaife and another policeman fell on the fat one.

The lights came on.

We looked out of the window again. Franz reached the steps before the policemen. He opened the gate, which locked itself behind him. And the policemen could not follow. We waited for a few minutes.

Suddenly the old man was free again. He hurried to the wall of the room and pushed something.

A great noise rose up from below the house. The steps flew into the air.

‘Dynamite!’ I cried. ‘They’ve destroyed the stairs!’

The old man was looking at me and laughing. A terrible light burned in his eyes.

‘He is safe,’ he shouted. ‘You cannot follow him. He has gone. He has won. Der schwarze Stein ist in der Siegesthrone!’ Two police officers caught the old man by the arms, and I said my last words to him.

‘Franz hasn’t won anything. He’ll reach the Ariadne quite safely, I’m sure. But she was in our hands an hour ago.’

Everyone knows that the war began early in August 1914. That was about six weeks after I helped to catch those three German spies.

I was an officer during those unhappy war years. But perhaps my best work was done before it started.