Hammond Innes: The Trojan Horse

‘Is any van there?’ It was the voice of the Jewish tailor. A sense of relief flooded through me. ‘Yes, I’m just coming down,’ I said, and switched on my torch. He was standing on the landing below with his hairless head craned up towards me.

‘Did you get vat you vanted?’ he asked.

‘Yes, thanks,’ I said, as I came down the stairs. ‘I’ve taken the papers and also a book I lent him.’

He nodded. ‘If you see ’im, tell ’im I vill ’ave to let the room on Thursday unless ’e pays me the next veek’s rent. A man ’as got to live, yes? But I vill keep ’is things in my shop vor a week, tell ’im. I do not vish to be ’ard.’

I thanked him and hurried on down the stairs.

By the time I had reached the bottom of the stairs I was almost running. I had my torch, but outside that reassuring beam the house pressed about me, dark and silent. The blank doorways on the landings seemed to crowd forward to watch me pass, shadows leapt back as I flashed my torch and the walls threw the sound of my footsteps back at me as though, hurry as I might, I should never leave the house. It was a childish fancy. But a strange house is like that. So long as you ignore it, it will take no notice of you. But once you become aware of it, it closes round you, colouring your imagination with its own atmosphere. This house was unfriendly, and it was with a sense of relief that I pulled open the door and went out into Greek Street.

But even in the street, I could not shake off that feeling of being watched. It was very dark and the houses rose on either side, blank like walls. I sensed rather than saw the movement of people about me. They were vague shadows, distinguishable only by the flicker of a torch until they appeared suddenly in the light of my own torch, passed me and were swallowed by the darkness again. A woman’s voice spoke to me and for a moment I saw white, red-lipped features at my side as she shone her torch on her face. And all the time I was walking towards Shaftesbury Avenue, I had that sense of being watched. It was as though I were being followed.

I became so certain of this that I turned sharp left towards Charing Cross Road and slipped into the doorway of a tobacconist. Several figures passed along the pavement. None of them were anxiously peering ahead or hurrying as though to catch someone up. Mentally I pulled myself together. The house and my discovery that Schmidt’s rooms had been searched had obviously got on my nerves. I began to think of food, and decided on Genaros on the other side of Charing Cross Road.

I left the shelter of the tobacconist’s and continued along the pavement. As I came out into Charing Cross Road, I was checked by a flood of people crossing my path. They had been held up by a car and had just crossed the road. And as I slowed up, a man hurrying in the direction of Cambridge Circus, cannoned into me. I only just managed to keep my feet and I felt the book slide from underneath my arm. I made a wild clutch at it and it fell to the ground. ‘I’m so sorry,’ a voice said. A torch was flicked on to the book where it lay, face up on the muddy pavement, and the man bent quickly down to retrieve it. I saw a hand dart into the beam of the torch as I dived for the book. The white line of a scar showed across the knuckles. The fingers were almost closing on it when the feet of the passers-by suddenly swung closer and a foot kicked against it, sliding it towards me across the pavement. In an instant my hand had closed on it.

I straightened myself, the blood drumming in my ears. The man said, ‘So sorry, I’m afraid it’s got dirty.’ I swung my torch up towards him, but he had disappeared into the crowd. The incident left me with an uneasy feeling. Either I was being a fool or else the man who had searched Schmidt’s digs had failed to find what he had known to be there, and waited to see if anyone would come to show him what it was. I hurried across Charing Cross Road and into New Compton Street. I remembered how the Jew, Isaac Leinster, had hesitated at the foot of the stairs leading up to Schmidt’s room whilst I stood waiting for him at the top. I remembered, too, how he had come up the stairs from his own room so quietly that it was his breathing and not his footsteps that I had heard. Small though he was, he was a heavy man and the stairs were uncarpeted. And there was the unfriendly watchfulness of the house as I had left it. Had that all been imagination?

I turned into the entrance of Genaros and in the warm friendliness of the place, my fears melted away. As I ordered my dinner, I thought of a time when I had been scared on Dartmoor for no earthly reason. Anything can seem curious if your senses are keyed up to misinterpretation. I chose my dinner carefully. Then, having wiped the dirt off the back of the book, I opened it and began to look through it for some mark that would indicate what I was expected to find.

There was nothing. The pages were as virgin as they had been when Schmidt had bought the book, though soiled on the outer edges where it had fallen on the pavement. There were no pencil marks, and though I searched diligently through it from cover to cover, whilst at the same time attempting to deal adequately with the courses as they were laid before me, I could see no signs of any markings or pinpricks under selected words. At the end there were several blank pages, but there was not a mark on them. By the time I had reached the sweet, I had decided that the only thing to do was to read the book through. There must be some clue in the writing. I turned to the chapter headings and glanced through them to see whether they suggested anything. One called Cranston Develops the Message seemed promising.

I finished the zabaglione and, having ordered a Grand Marnier with my coffee and lit a cigarette, I settled down to discover what it was Schmidt had wanted me to find in the book. Of its kind, it was good, and though I had dipped into it near the middle, I was soon absorbed in the search of a representative of M.I.5, called Cranston, for a message he was certain had been left for him by one Barry Hanson, who had been murdered. The only clue Cranston had was given him in a telephone conversation he had had with his friend a few days previously. Hanson had told him he was on to something pretty big and that, if he should get snuffed out, Cranston would find all the details in the Figurehead of the Orient. Barry Hanson had been duly snuffed out and Cranston had trotted round to his digs to seek out the Figurehead of the Orient. And this was where I began to see a similarity between my own experiences and Cranston’s. Of course, Cranston was on the point of leaving Hanson’s digs without having found what he wanted, when suddenly he caught sight of a book called The Figurehead of the Orient . He looked through it, and there were blank pages at the end. He took it back to M.I.5 and had the blank pages placed under a mercury vapour light. The message, which was written in a solution of anthracene and was invisible to the naked eye, then became fluorescent and it was possible to photograph it. It was all about a secret organisation headed by a personage described as the Face from the Barbican.

I put the book down and found that my coffee had grown cold. I sipped slowly at my liqueur and then, after marking the passage with my pencil, turned to the end of the book. The blank pages stared up at me, innocent of any mark. Was it conceivable that, if they were placed under a mercury vapour lamp, invisible writing would be revealed? Technically I presumed that it was quite possible. But the whole thing was too absurd. I had that placid feeling of well-being that comes after a good meal. Schmidt had admitted to an interest in criminology. Had his interest taken the form of reading thrillers and detective stories, and then attempting to transmit them into real life? That was the sort of kink a man’s brain might take. I might almost have been Cranston, routing around in another fellow’s digs with the feeling that I might be murdered at any moment.