Donald Hamilton - The Devastators

"You must excuse the appearance of the place, sir," Walling said. "Since the accident to my associate, I have been, you know, rather swamped with work. In here, if you please."

He opened the door to an inner office, showed me a wooden armchair, and went behind the desk and sat down. This room was small, and seemed crowded by the few pieces of oak furniture and the two glass-fronted shelves holding more books. The window behind Walling gave me a view of roofs and chimney-pots, wet with rain. I wasn't thinking about the weather, however. I was experiencing the professional annoyance that comes with learning that your briefing has been incomplete in one area and may therefore be in others. Well, that's what happens when you come late on a job and have to depend on other organizations for your information.

"Your partner had an accident?" I said. "I am sorry to hear it, Mr. Walling. I hope it wasn't serious."

Walling gave me a suspicious look, as if he thought I was indulging in irony at his expense, or the missing Simpson's.

"He was killed, Mr. Helm. He was run over by a lorry -and killed. Five days ago. I… I am very much upset by his death, as you can imagine. Very much upset. And now the office girl has been taken ill…" He clasped his hands together to keep them from wandering around nervously, as they seemed to have a tendency to do. "But I am boring you with my troubles, sir. You are from America, you said?"

"That's right."

"And you have reason to believe you have illustrious connections in Scotland? You would like us to trace them for you?" Suddenly his tone was sharp, almost sarcastic.

I said, "That's right, Mr. Walling."

He said in the same sharp, scornful voice: "I presume you want a handsome family tree to hang on the wall, complete with coat of arms, showing your relationship to the present Duke of Glenmore. You did say Glenmore over the telephone, did you not?"

He was making it fairly clear that he thought I was a phony, in one way or another. A little salesmanship was in order, and I said smoothly, "Yes, but I don't give a damn about the present duke, Mr. Walling. I didn't even know there was one. As I told you on the phone, it's an earl we seem to be connected with, a long time back. Robert Glenmore, Earl of Dalbright, if that's the proper way to say it. He had two sons, Robert and Edward, in that order. Robert stayed in Scotland as far as I know. Being the oldest, I guess he had something to inherit if he stayed. Edward went to Sweden by way of Germany some time around 1631. He married over there and had kids, who married and had kids, and so forth, until my mother came along. She married, went to the U.S., and had me. I've got all that." I took a long envelope from my inside jacket pocket and laid it on the desk between us. "That's all in here: photostats of the family Bible and other stuff. It's what happened before Robert and Edward and their noble papa that I'd kind of like to find out about."

"Yes, of course." Walling's voice was a little warmer than it had been, but his look was still cold and suspicious. "May I see?"

"That's what I brought it for."

He took out the papers and examined them carefully. I bad a sudden, funny impulse to snatch them out of his hand and say to hell with the whole business. I mean, I don't particularly hold with ancestor-worship, but this stuff had meant something to my mother, and I was using it to play dirty games with. I could have had the research department cook me up a set of documents under the name of Ross or Sinclair or McTavish that would have served just as well. Maybe.

Walling said abruptly, "Excuse me just a moment."

He rose and went into the outer room. I heard him opening and closing books out there. I reached for the newspaper I saw on the desk, perhaps just to kill time, perhaps because I saw that it was folded to an inside page on which an item had been encircled-and a name underlined-with red crayon. I wasn't there to make like a detective, of course, but the habit dies hard. It was a short piece from Scotland. The heading read: MAN FOUND DEAD IN ULLAPOOL MYSTERY

The name that had been underlined was that of my predecessor, Buchanan, described as an American tourist. Apparently the British authorities had let the story out at last. It told me nothing I hadn't known before reading it, except that the body had been found by a London doctor on a walking tour. The death was attributed to natural causes but the authorities were puzzled to account for a sick man's getting himself so far out on a lonely moor. The nature of the disease was not mentioned.

I heard Walling returning, and tossed the paper casually back on the desk, letting him see me do it and think whatever he liked. He glanced from me to the paper and back again as he sat down, but he did not comment.

Instead he said, "My apologies, Mr. Helm."

"For what?"

He regarded me steadily across the desk. I hadn't been impressed with him at first glance, but he was growing on me: he wasn't a fool. The nervous mannerisms that had thrown me off were due, I decided, quite simply to his being scared, and that was understandable. His partner had died. A recent client had died. His secretary had come down sick. Death and disease were striking all around him. In his place I'd have been scared, too.

He said deliberately, "People sometimes come in here and try to pull our legs, Mr. Helm." His voice was expressionless, but he left a little pause in case I wanted to squirm or look away guiltily. I didn't. He went on: "For one reason or another they would like us to supply them with authenticated sets of aristocratic ancestors. Sometimes they try to mislead us with false information. Sometimes they just offer us a handsome fee-perhaps I should say bribe-to 'discover' that blue blood flows in their veins. And of course there are so-called genealogists who accept such commissions." He laughed shortly. "If you had said your mother's name was Lewis and you wanted to trace the honest Welsh coal miners from whom she was descended, I would have received you more cordially, but in this line of work, Mr. Helm, one develops an instinctive mistrust of anyone-particularly, if you'll pardon my saying so, anyone from overseas-who claims to be related to a family of importance. Why, just recently we received by post a rather munificent check from an American named McRow, who wished us to prove that he was descended from the chiefs of the ancient clan McRue." He was watching me as he said it.

"McRue," I said. "That's a new one on me. I've heard of the Scottish McRaes and the Irish McGrews, but never McRue."

"It's an older form of the same name. That branch of the family was wiped out in a feud over two hundred years ago-unless this American McRow actually is a direct descendant, as he claims."

"You couldn't confirm it?"

"My associate was working on it when he died. I haven't had an opportunity to study his results. As I say, I have been very busy." Walling shrugged, still watching me carefully. "And then there was another American who called himself Buchanan. I handled that myself. I'm afraid I was not very polite. He was so obviously an impostor."

I said, "Is that the man in the piece you've got marked in the paper I was just looking at? You mentioned him on the phone."

"Yes, the fellow seems to have contracted some kind of fatal illness up north. Naturally, I was interested, since I talked with him in this office not very long ago."

"And you think he was a phony?"

Walling moved his shoulders minutely. "One should speak no ill of the dead, of course, but I rather doubt the chap's name was even Buchanan. At the time, as I said, I was rather annoyed. His clumsy approach was an insult to the profession. I do not say we cannot be misled, but we like to have it done with a certain amount of finesse."