Search for a Sultan, page 4
“At the same time,” said the Minister, “we should be eternally grateful if anybody but that wretched Emir Abdul succeeded to the throne of Qathusn. We’re certainly in for an ‘international upset’ if that happens.”
“What happens if Mr. Hambledon finds this heir and he turns out to be as Extremist and anti-Western as the Emir?” snapped the Assistant Secretary, who had been against the project from the beginning.
The Minister gave a wintry smile.
“In that case, I hope Mr. Hambledon would have the tact to lose him again,” he said. “I have every confidence in Mr. Hambledon’s discretion.”
Tommy bowed at the compliment, and, having received the necessary authority, at once telephoned to the Qathusian Ambassador.
“I am delighted to hear this good news,” said His Excellency, “and if there is something I can do to help you, please let me know.”
“Well, if you find anything of interest in Mr. Boukhba’s desk or cupboards there,” said Tommy, “I’d like to know about them.”
“Alas, there is nothing,” said the other. “I have conducted a thorough search myself but evidently he cleared everything out before he left so you will have to look elsewhere. Have you any idea where you might begin?” he added.
“Well I’m on my way now to Scotland Yard to see if Boukhba and his friend have been brought in. Then I shall be off to France—we’ve been lucky enough to find a rather important photograph which originated there and may lead us to the Prince’s wife, if he has one.”
“Splendid,’ said the Ambassador. “I was going to suggest the same thing. Prince Achmed loved France and would have been most likely to choose that country for his er … unofficial marriage. I will give you a personal letter of introduction to my colleague, the Qathusian Ambassador in Paris. He is a nice fellow and entirely to be trusted, so do not hesitate to ask him for help.”
“It’s very kind of you,” said Hambledon. “But I don’t like to trouble you—shall I not just call in at the Paris Embassy and say you were kind enough to send me?”
“No, no,” said the Ambassador. “In such a matter His Excellency might be reluctant to speak freely without a proper introduction. I will get my secretary to write the letter immediately. Can you call for it a little later? Or may I send it anywhere? You may be sure I shall choose a trustworthy messenger!”
“If you could possibly send it to the train,” said Tommy, “I would be most grateful, because I have a lot to do before I leave. I am travelling by the Night Ferry at to o’clock from Victoria. If your messenger would give the letter to the policeman on duty at the barrier, he will see that I get it.”
The matter being thus arranged, Tommy made his way down to Scotland Yard.
“No luck,” said Bagshott. “They’ve hopped it! As far as we can tell, they left the Attaché’s apartment, where Sampiero is known as the valet, by the way, only a few minutes before we got there.”
“Have they gone for good do you think?”
“It looks like it. They’ve taken everything with them and left a month’s rent in lieu of notice with the Hall Porter.”
“H’m,” said Hambledon. “Left just a few minutes before you got there eh? I hope that doesn’t mean they got a tip off from the Embassy.”
“Not necessarily,” said Bagshott. “After all, I take it they intended to make a getaway as soon as they’d found whatever it was they were looking for in the Prince’s apartment. I mean, the Attaché must have known he was all washed up at the Embassy, after last night and everything.”
“I suppose so,” nodded Hambledon. “And you say you found absolutely nothing at the Attaché’s place?”
“Only a collection of beautifully distinct dabs, which match up with those on the wall and the window sill at Prince Achmed’s apartment.”
“Is that enough for a warrant?” asked Tommy.
“Scarcely, perhaps, but enough for us to have all the ports and airfields watched for them.”
“Yes, you could bring them in for questioning, I suppose. I know I’d like to ask them a few. Anyway,” he said, looking at his watch, “I must get cracking. I’ve a lot to do still before I catch the train, but you might let me know at Victoria if anything turns up. Thanks for the photo. It’s all I’ve got to go on so far, but it’s a start anyway.”
*
The policeman on duty by the barrier of No. r Platform at Victoria Station greeted Hambledon shortly before ten that evening and produced two envelopes. One contained the promised letter from the Ambassador, the other a brief note from Bagshott.
“Just after you left,” it said, “a message came through from Stanstead Aerodrome to say that two Qathusn Embassy officials left in a hurry in Prince Achmed’s private aircraft about two minutes before our `alert’ reached there. The Ambassador confirms that it was nobody from his staff.
Looks as if our birds have flown again! Destination—ostensibly Qathusn, but you never know. Have sent warning to Interpol but expect too late for any results.”
*
It was a much refreshed Hambledon who stepped out of the train at the Gare du Nord in Paris at nine o’clock the next morning. The journey had been uneventful, the breakfast excellent and the task before him seemed, after a good night’s rest, reasonably straightforward. If the Prince’s wife was living in France, he ought, he decided, to be able to find her with the help of the Ambassador, the Sûreté and the Shipping Company; indeed, the whole thing might not take more than a couple of days, he thought, almost regretfully—for Paris looked even more attractive than usual in the morning sunshine.
Nine o’clock being somewhat early for Ambassadors, Hambledon decided to begin the day by calling on an old friend of his in the shipping department of Thomas Cook. A man who dealt daily with most of the world’s shipping lines might easily be able to identify the ship in the photograph, he felt, or at least give him the name of the company it belonged to.
The big offices of the travel agents, right opposite the Madeleine, were already open when he arrived and Tommy smiled as he recognised amongst the loiterers on the corner, the usual purveyors of those elaborately sealed packets of photographs, supposed to be very naughty indeed, but which, when unwrapped in privacy by the purchaser, (who pays dearly for them), turn out to be thoroughly respectable reproductions of classical statues in the Louvre!
On the third floor, Tommy was lucky enough to find his acquaintance free for a moment and gave him the photograph to study. The clerk looked at it for a while and then he grinned.
“Elementary, my dear Watson,” he said. “This photograph was taken on board a French liner, the Ile de Levant, in the summer of 1939, on a cruise to the Caribbean!”
He smiled at Hambledon’s astonishment.
“I know it sounds like Sherlock Holmes,” he laughed. “But the fact is there is one clue on this picture which told me everything—the ventilator. The old Levant was specially fitted with that type of ventilator in the spring of 1939 for a series of cruises in the Tropics, but she’d only done one trip when the war broke out, so this photo must have been taken during it. None of the other four ships of the Line were so fitted, and they are the only ‘Iles’ boats I know of, except of course the Ile de France, which certainly never had ventilators like that.”
“Well, that’s marvellous,” said Tommy. “I certainly didn’t expect to strike lucky so quickly. Who do the ‘Ile’ boats belong to? Is it a French Company?”
“Was,” corrected the other. “It never survived after the war. It was only a small affair with half a dozen vessels, and they were all lost in some way during the hostilities, so I suppose they never recovered from the blow.”
“H’m, not so lucky then,” said Hambledon, “I was hoping to be able to look at the passenger list of that cruise so as to identify these people.”
The man looked surprised.
“But you know who this is, don’t you?” he said, pointing to the man in the picture. “Unless I’m very much mistaken, that’s Jolly Prince Achmed, the Qathusn playboy. Younger of course, but I’m sure it’s him.”
“It’s him all right,” nodded Tommy, “but who are the others? That’s what I want to know.”
“Well of course he’s supposed to have had hundreds of girl-friends at one time or another, though I must admit this one doesn’t look quite so much the glamour-puss type he’s usually seen around with. As for the passenger lists, we might have one somewhere in the archives, but it would take a deuce of a time to find.”
An oldish man in the well-known blue uniform with brass buttons, which Cook’s station men and interpreters wear, crossed the room and Tommy’s friend called him over:
“Sam,” he said, “come and have a look at this. Who would you say that was?”
The uniformed man glanced at the photo and said without hesitation. “Prince Achmed of Qathusn, about twenty years ago, isn’t it?”
“Quite right,” said Hambledon. “Did you know him at all?”
“Know him?” said the other. “I’ve seen him off by the boat and the train hundreds of times. Very nice gentleman he is, too. Freer with his money than some of those Easterners, too.”
“Have you ever seen him with the couple in the picture?” asked Tommy.
The man shook his head.
“No,” he said. “You don’t often see him with anybody. He’s funny like that, is Prince Achmed. Always travels on his own or with his valet. They say he’s a lad for the girls, but I never seen him with a bird. I suppose he meets them on the way somewhere, or if he’s going on a cruise—like in this ‘ere picture, p’raps he meets them on board, accidental like on purpose.”
“So that even if I saw the passenger list, it might not be very helpful,” reflected Tommy. “Because, after all, the woman and boy could have been travelling under another name, and there might have been many women with children on board.”
“What’s the idea, anyway?” asked the uniformed man. “Is someone after him for divorce, or something? That won’t please his old Dad, the Sultan.”
“Prince Achmed is dead,” said Hambledon. “Perhaps it hasn’t appeared in your papers. He died of heart failure the night before last, and I have to trace these two in connection with his … er … well his Will, as you might say.”
“Dead, is he?” said the uniformed man. “I’m sorry to hear that. All the good old ones are going, not many of them left now. The sort we get nowadays are more likely to touch you for half a quid than slip you it!”
“Can you think of anybody,” asked the clerk, “who might help the gentleman to identify this lady and boy? I’ve worked out that the ship is the Ile de Levant on that special West Indies Cruise in 1939, but of course the Company’s gone bust, and I don’t know where he could find any of the people connected with it now.”
“Let’s see,” reflected the other man. “Ile de Levant? I must have known somebody on that, I’ve seen it off at Le Havre many a time in the old days … wait a bit … Ile de Levant—that was old … urn … what did we use to call him, something funny. The Stopper, or something. He was the Chief Steward on her for years. Oh, what was his name? I’m losing my memory something shocking these days. Hang on a minute, and I’ll ask one of the lads downstairs. One of them’s bound to remember, we all knew him.”
He ambled off down the stairs and the clerk smiled sympathetically at Tommy’s obvious impatience.
“These old boys,” he said. “Proper gaga some of them. But he’ll probably recall the name in a minute.”
“I might as well go down after him,” said Tommy, “I’ll save him coming up again. Thank you for all you’ve done for me—it’s been invaluable. We must have a good drink together one of these clays. I owe you at least a bottle of champagne, or Qathusn does, if I find these people.”
He shook hands and turned round for his overnight case which he had put down behind him.
“Hullo,” he said, finding it gone, “did old Sam take my bag down for me? I didn’t see him.”
A woman at an adjoining counter lent across.
“Was that your case?” she asked, “I thought it was, somehow. In fact I nearly said something at the time, only you were so busy with those gentlemen.”
“What’s happened to it?” asked Tommy.
“A man took it,” she said, with all the satisfaction of a bearer of bad news. “A little man in a striped suit, just walked by and picked it up as calm as could be and then walked down the stairs with it. I thought he was a thief; something about him you know. You can’t be too careful in Paris, can you?”
Hambledon thanked her, restraining his feelings with difficulty.
“Was it long ago?” he enquired.
“No, only a couple of minutes, you might catch him if you hurry.”
Hambledon doubted it, but he hurried down the stairs to the second floor, glanced quickly around to see if the smart customer was amongst the crowd there and then down again to the first floor, where he met Sam on his way back.
“The Corker,” said Sam. “I knew it was something like that. Lebouchon is his real name, Gaston Lebouchon, meaning ‘cork’ see? We called him the Corker.”
“I’m sorry,” said Hambledon distractedly. “I can’t stop now. I’m in a hurry to get downstairs. Someone stole my suit-case while we were talking up there and . ..”
“Excuse me,” said a voice behind them, “I heard what you were saying and wondered if this might be your case? I just found it in the Men’s Room.”
The bag which he was holding was just recognisable as a piece of luggage—but only just. It had been torn violently open, all the things in it had been raked and jumbled together in a heap, and the lining was hanging loose where it had been slashed.
“That’s mine all right,” said Hambledon ruefully, “for what it’s worth! But whoever took it seemed to have worked on it pretty thoroughly, since I last saw it.”
The American who had found the case clucked sympathetically.
“Too bad,” he said. “Was there much of any value in it?”
“Nothing whatever, thank goodness,” said Hambledon. “But it just shows how careful you have to be, doesn’t it?”
“It sure does,” said the other. “I guess there’s some pretty swift workers this side of the water, and they hang about in places like this, looking for mugs.”
Hambledon grinned ruefully.
“If that means me—I agree with you,” he said. “But I don’t think somehow that this was mere chance. Can you get me a bit of string, Sam?” he asked the uniformed man. “I’d better tie this up a bit and then go and buy a new case.” As he left Cook’s, with the battered suit-case under his arm, Tommy caught sight of one particular postcard seller he knew quite well, a rotund character in a large black beret, whose several gold teeth were revealed in greeting as Tommy approached.
“What’s happened to your luggage, monsieur?” he asked. “Did it fall under the train?”
“It looks like it, doesn’t it?” said Tommy, “I’m just off to buy some more.” Then, remembering that Letord had once told him that this man sometimes acted as a police informer, he told him just what had happened. “I suppose you didn’t see any well known luggage thief or pickpocket slip out in the last few minutes did you?” he concluded. “He was probably in a hurry, so you might have noticed him.”
The postcard seller was silent for a moment, and he looked hard at Tommy before replying.
“Haven’t I seen Monsieur with a certain Surintendant from the Sûreté?” he asked at last.
“Possibly,” said Hambledon. The man nodded. “I thought so,” he said. He looked round furtively to make sure that no one could overhear him.
“Listen, Monsieur,” he said in a low voice. “I will tell you the truth! I did see somebody come out from Cook’s in a hurry just now, but if it was him that took Monsieur’s suit-case, well I’d rather not know anything about it, that’s flat!”
“Why not?” asked Tommy. “Pal of yours or something?”
The postcard seller shook his head slowly from side to side.
“A pal of nobody’s,” he muttered. “Everybody here hates his guts, but they’re scared of him, scared to death—and so am I!”
“Well, of course, it might not have been your nice friend who took my bag,” said Hambledon. “It might have been one of the ordinary sneak-thieves who are always hanging about here.”
The other shook his head again, gravely.
“Nobody would have dared,” he said. “Not while ‘La Cigale’ was there.”
A look of panic came into his eyes as he realised he had let the name slip out.
“,Nom de Dieu, leave me, Monsieur, pass on I beg you,” he pleaded. “I feel knives in my back already. If he sees us talking together, he may guess I am telling you his name, and then—poof! I am kaput for ever!”
“Don’t be so silly,” laughed Hambledon, as he turned to go. “He can’t be as dangerous as all that. Besides, Superintendent Letord will protect you.”
“Monsieur,” said the other hoarsely. “If ‘La Cigale’ wants to kill a man, nobody can protect him. I say to you, as a friend, if he is interesting himself in you, leave France now—and do not come back until you hear he is dead. He is, without exception, the most dangerous man in Paris today.”
Chapter IV, La Cigale
“LA CIGALE?” said Superintendent Letord of the Paris Sûreté, “He’s probably the most dangerous man in Paris.”
“That’s funny,” said Hambledon, who was telephoning him from the cafe almost next door to Cook’s, “someone has just said exactly the same thing to me, about a minute ago.”
“Well, it’s true,” said Letord. “He’s a Sicilian, one of the Mafia probably, and a professional assassin. Why do you ask, anyway?”
“He borrowed my suit-case for a few minutes this morning,” said Tommy, “and I’m not very pleased with the condition he’s returned it in. That’s all.”
“Listen, mon vieux,” said the Superintendent. “This is no joke. If La Cigale is interested in you, watch your step.”
“Thanks! That also has already been said to me, in fact I was advised to leave Paris altogether if La Cigale was interested in me.”
