Mediterranean Nights (28 page)

We had been settled in the Pentagon for three months when I found him out. The Americans proved very cagey about letting us into any of their major secrets, but they had to let us attend the larger meetings. So, in that way, and through the gossip in our international warren, we managed to pick up quite a lot.

It was on Massachusetts Avenue one night that I chanced to find myself walking along behind my chief. On a street corner he paused and asked a lounger for a light, then gave the man a folded newspaper he was carrying and walked on. As I passed the lounger I recognised him as a Montebanian Communist whom I had once arrested in a riot. The encounter I had witnessed could mean only one thing. Somolo was selling us out to the Soviets.

As he had wangled his appointment by political pull, a report to our Minister of War would never have been believed unless accompanied by supporting evidence, so I set about trying to get it. For ten days I watched him like a hawk, searched his files and came back to the office at unexpected times in the hope of catching him making a copy of some secret document. Instead, he caught me.

Late one night I had been going through his desk when I noticed that his blotter had several lines of ink markings on it. Getting out a pocket mirror that I carry, I turned the blotter up and tried to read the reflection of his writing. It was at that moment that he came in.

Swiftly I pretended to be tidying up and changed the sheet for a clean one; but that was our secretary's job. The shifty glance in his watery eyes told me at once that he guessed what I had been up to. He said nothing. But from that instant it was silent war between us.

The following evening, in a turning near my lodgings, I
was nearly run down by a car. That might have been an accident. But two days later a parcel came for me by post. By the grace of God the pretty little bomb it contained failed to go off; but I knew for certain then that he meant to kill me.

Perhaps I ought to have gone to the Americans. But to denounce my own chief as a spy would have brought dishonour on Montebania. For me such a course was unthinkable. Instead, I took refuge in the Pentagon, as the one place where it seemed certain that he would not dare to murder me and I might still hope to get the better of him. For a fortnight I never left the building, but I must have scared him into playing for safety, as I failed entirely to secure the slightest indication of his guilt.

This afternoon he sent our secretary to hunt up some data for him at the Bureau of Statistics and told her she need not come in again until tomorrow. An hour later two porters arrived and carried in an old-fashioned tailor's dummy, with a wax face and real hair. It had a uniform cap on its head and was clothed in a battle-dress similar to that of an American G.I., but slightly darker in colour.

Somolo smiled at me and asked: ‘What do you think of our new Montebanian uniform? I borrowed the dummy in order that we might show it off with advantage to our international colleagues.'

I had heard nothing of any new uniform, but replied that it seemed both practical and smart. Then he said: ‘I should like to see how it looks on a real person. Oblige me, please, by putting it on.'

Suspecting nothing, I unbuttoned my tunic. Even when he walked to the door and bolted it I thought he had done so only to prevent anyone walking in while I was undressed.

Together we laid the dummy down, unscrewed the stand on which it stood and removed its boots, gaiters and breeches. While I put them on he reseated himself behind his desk. It was as I turned to pick up the battle-blouse that he said:

‘You need go no further. I don't want to make a bullet-hole through your nice new uniform.'

Swinging round, I found myself staring down the muzzle of his gun.

‘I don't know how you got on to me,' he announced, ‘but I know you have. So, as they say, it's “curtains for you”, Captain Vidor.'

Seized with sudden terror I blurted out: ‘You'll never get away with this! You can't! Not here, in the Pentagon.'

‘Oh yes I shall.' His voice was quietly confident. ‘By three o'clock in the morning rigor mortis will have set in. You will be as stiff as that dummy and I shall screw its stand back on to your boots. In my attaché case I have two glass eyes to replace yours and a pot of wax with which to coat your face, neck and hands. The dummy will be easy to dispose of. It is filled only with sawdust and enough small shot to bring it to your weight; so that even if the same porters who brought it up carry you down they will not notice the difference. Without the least suspicion that they are carrying a corpse, they will take you out to my car.'

By then I was trembling. I am not yet thirty. In the spring I had hoped to get married. All the best of my life was before me. I was appalled by the thought that in another few moments I would be dead. Yet he had thought of everything. There seemed no way out.

In my country most of us are Roman Catholics, and I managed to stammer: ‘My rosary and medallion blessed by His Holiness. They're in my tunic pocket. May I … may I hold them as you…'

He shrugged contemptuously. ‘You may say a Hail Mary if you wish; but I shall fire at the first sign of a trick.'

In my country many of us also amuse ourselves by throwing knives, and for years I had carried a small one up the left sleeve of my tunic. As I threw it and flung myself flat he fired. His bullets buried themselves in the wall, but my knife got him through the throat.

Inserting the glass eyes in his head was a nasty business, but the rest was simple. Two hours before dawn I dumped his body far out in the marshes of the Potomac.

They still say there has never been a murder in the Pentagon, but that is no longer true.

STORY XXI

H
ERE
again is something different to add, I hope, a little spice to this mixed pudding. It is a one-act play, and therefore an example from my attempts at story-telling in yet another medium.

Perhaps the word ‘spice' is a little inadvised in this connection as the theme happens to be abortion; but anyone rash enough to expect a Rabelaisian
conte
will be disappointed. The necessity for abortion is never amusing and almost invariably a frightening and tragic matter. That I have here possibly succeeded in giving a farcical touch to an otherwise sordid little tragedy is my only excuse for printing this cynical and highly improbable playlet.

I should never have written
Thyroid
at all had it not been for my old friend, Bertie Van Thai. In many capacities he has been connected with books and plays and films for even longer than I have known him, which is long before I ever started to write seriously myself. After my early successes I met him at a party one night. He told me that he was seeking a curtain-raiser for a very famous actress. With his usual boundless enthusiasm he assured me that I was just the man to provide the very thing he wanted.

That his optimism was entirely misplaced was no fault of his whatever; but it was certainly infectious. Fully convinced that I was the world's coming playwright I went away and wrote this one-act play. But poor Bertie was quite shattered when he read it. In the tones of an indulgent father pained by his young, he told me that two subjects should always be avoided by any author who wishes to be well regarded by the British Public; the one is the White Slave Traffic, the other is Abortion.

Basically he was probably right; certainly, as far as the accepted literary conventions of the past are concerned. But I am inclined to believe that the British Public of today is
prepared to regard both these subjects with a well-balanced detachment. We all know that the world is far from being the place we would like it to be, and that our laws are far from perfect, and therefore have no objection to seeing these facets of life portrayed in fiction, provided they are presented decently.

To my mind the fact that the girl in this playlet should have been tempted to get rid of an unwanted infant is by no means so evil a thing as the hideous tyranny exercised over his household by her ‘Victorian' father. Young people of today may find it difficult to believe that such bigoted and tyrannical parents ever had any real existence, but had they been their present age at the beginning of this century they would have accepted such a portrait as by no means overdrawn.

The poetic justice of the finale still gives me a good laugh, which enables me to hope that you will also get one from it.

THYROID

A PLAY IN ONE ACT

CAST

F
ATHER
(Mr. Cotton):
A man of sixty. Big, heavy build. Round, ruddy face. High, Bold forehead. Brown hair. Walrus moustache. Round, staring eyes. Very slow and deliberate in speech and manner. Walks like a wooden soldier—or as though suffering from locomotor ataxia. Dressed in pepper and salt suit, stiff collar, very small black bow tie
.

M
OTHER
(Mrs. Cotton):
A woman of fifty-five. Fat, untidy, good-natured, but obviously harassed by life. Talks rather fast. Rather common. Dressed in navy-blue redingote piped with red and lace yoke, badly cut
.

W
ENDY
C
OTTON
(their Daughter):
A girl of twenty to twenty-one. Pretty, nice voice, a trifle above her family in manner and speech. Dressed nicely but inexpensively
.

R
OBERT
C
OTTON
(their Son):
A young man of nineteen. Tall nervous, rather long untidy dark hair, weak mouth. Dressed in worn grey flannels
.

C
HARLES
W
ILLMOTT
:
A medical student, in love with Wendy, age twenty-four. Good clothes, smart appearance, pleasant manner and speech. Of a somewhat higher social level than his girl friend's family
.

SCENE

The living-room in the Cotton house in Balham
.

T
IME
:
Four o'clock on a Saturday afternoon in winter
.

T
O
R
IGHT OF
S
TAGE
:
A window in front of which is a table with an aspidistra plant, some old magazines, and a bottle of Thyroid tablets
.

A
T
R
IGHT
B
ACK
:
A bureau desk and, near centre, a door to hall. (Telephone is in hall and cannot be seen.)

I
N
R
IGHT
C
ENTRE
:
An oak gate-legged table with four stiff-backed chairs. (Mother's chair is nearest footlights.)

A
T
L
EFT
B
ACK
:
An open fireplace in which a fire is burning and further left a bookcase full of old and battered volumes
.

I
N
L
EFT
C
ENTRE
:
A large wooden stiff-backed armchair (Father's chair). It faces stage and is a little to the left of fire. Further left, a large sofa. Behind sofa, a small stool
.

O
N
W
ALLS
:
Landseer engravings—‘Monarch of the Glen', etc. Above fireplace an elaborate overmantel with mirrors and a quantity of cheap ornate china
.

N
OTE
:
Artistic licence has been used in the description of the properties of Thyroid. It is essential that the dangers of the drug should be
stressed
in order that the Censor may consent to the production of the play, without fear of the drug being used for illegal purposes. An overdose of many other drugs which are easily obtainable by the general public would have an equally drastic effect
.

[
The sitting-room in the Cotton house, Saturday afternoon, time four o'clock. It is raining
. W
ENDY
seated reading on sofa
, M
RS
. C
OTTON
seated knitting at table
,
R
OBERT
walking restlessly up and down—hands in pockets
.]

W
ENDY
: Oh, Robert—must you?

R
OBERT
: Must I what?

W
ENDY
: Fidget so. Can't you sit down or something?

R
OBERT
(
surlily
): Oh, all right. (
Sits beside her on sofa with his long legs stretched out, contemplating his feet.)

M
OTHER
: Why don't you practise your shorthand, dear?

R
OBERT
: I'm sick to death of shorthand.

M
OTHER
: (
shocked
): Oh, Robert, how can you! And after your father paying all that money for you to take night classes.

R
OBERT
: I didn't ask him to, did I,

M
OTHER
: Robert!

R
OBERT
: Well?

M
OTHER
(
looking round nervously
): It's a good thing that your father's not at home to hear you. What he'd say I don't know. It's quite time you showed a little appreciation of all he's done for you and settled down to work.

R
OBERT
(
bitterly
): Work—I like that. What do you think I do all day, adding up columns of figures in that stuffy office! Surely a chap's got a right to spend his Saturday afternoons as he likes. Besides, Father doesn't pay for it. He pinches the fees out of my miserable screw.

M
OTHER
: Robert! I will not have you say such things. It's only right and proper that you should pay your father back a little of all he's spent on your schooling now you've started to earn money yourself.

R
OBERT
: Well, he can't have it both ways. Out of the thirty bob a week I get from that old swindler Briggs I'm only allowed to keep ten shillings. On that, I'm supposed to dress, lunch, pay my fares, keep myself and every other darn thing—while Father takes the quid. I call that pretty mean, but what's he do then—goes and fixes these rotten night classes on me and I suppose I'll be expected to pay him back for them in twenty years' time. So what I've got to be grateful for, I'm hanged if I know. I've a jolly good mind to have it out with him.