Hammond Innes - The Trojan Horse

I thought of David Shiel, who ran a photographic studio and dark-rooms in Shaftesbury Avenue. It was only a few minutes’ walk. And I had a sudden urge to see whether or not Schmidt had gone to the length of actually writing something on those blank pages and, if so, what he had written. I rose and collected my coat and paid the bill. Then, with the book stuffed safely in my overcoat pocket, I went out into New Compton Street and made for Cambridge Circus.

I no longer had a feeling of being followed, but I tried to pretend that I had. My brain was excited and I was reluctant to miss any of the sensation of adventure in following up the clues I had been given.

Five minutes later the aged lift was staggering up with me to the top floor of 495 Shaftesbury Avenue. With the aid of an assistant and a secretary, David carried on a great deal of photographic work from the studio. He went all over the place, taking films as the spirit and the film companies moved him, and in his more prosaic moments he hired out cameras, executed any still work that came his way and let his dark-rooms out to all and sundry. By my sister’s marriage into a Border family, he was technically my nephew, but he had never evinced any signs of respect on that account, and he was a friend rather than a relation. Many a cheerful evening I had spent at somewhat Bohemian parties that had spread haphazardly from his rooms to the studio. He rented the entire top floor and lived on the premises, partly because his camera-hire service was a day and night service and partly because it was cheaper and more convenient.

The antiquated lift stopped with a jerk and I stepped out into a bare corridor. At the end was a glass door with ‘David Shiel’s Photographic Centre’ painted on it in black, and four empty milk bottles ranged against the wall below it. He answered my ring himself and let out a whoop at the sight of me. ‘The very man,’ he said. ‘Come right in, Andrew. If there’s any man I could have wished to see it would have been a lawyer.’

‘I’m a barrister,’ I reminded him as he dragged me into the room. He was a great bear of a man with long dark hair and a wide friendly face.

‘What the hell’s it matter?’ he said, as he helped me off with my coat. ‘You know your legal onions, so to speak, and I want advice. How do you get money out of a company that’s less yielding than a stone?’ He crossed over to a barrel that was a permanent office fixture and returned with a foaming tankard of beer. ‘There, drink that and tell me what I do. I’ve received a red slip from the telephone people. They’re going to cut me off if I don’t pay them by the 23rd — that’s Friday. And these bastards owe me a hundred quid, and they won’t pay.’

‘What’s the matter?’ I said. ‘Are you broke?’

He buried his face in his tankard and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Business is pretty bad and this place eats money, what with the rent and Miriam and the telephone bills. John has joined up — he’s under the reserve age, that’s one blessing. If I can hold on for another six months, I’ll be all right. There’ll be plenty of work when the American stock is exhausted and it’s all-British films. But, in the meantime, I can’t carry on without the phone. It makes you curse when you’re owed the better part of four hundred pounds and can’t get the money because people are too bloody lazy to pay up. Meanwhile, I’m short of cash and that means a camera will have to go, and what sort of price will it fetch now? I haven’t got a single one out on hire.’

I said, ‘Give me their address and I’ll see what I can do. What do they owe you the money for anyway?’

‘That’s very nice of you, Andrew. I did some film work for them. The company is Calboyd Diesel. I went up to their Oldham works to take shots for publicity purposes. They beat me down to a lousy price as it was.’

‘Calboyds,’ I murmured. The hand of Fate, it seemed. Then I said, ‘Look, David, I want you to do something for me.’ I pulled The Face from the Barbican out of the pocket of my overcoat. ‘Did you know there was a solution which can be used as an invisible ink and which only becomes visible when placed under a mercury vapour light?’

‘Several,’ was the reply. ‘But I never heard of them being used as invisible inks. They’re of the genus tar and are soluble in benzine. They become fluorescent under an ultra-violet ray.’

‘And a mercury vapour lamp gives off an ultraviolet ray?’ I asked.

‘Certainly.’

‘Then I wonder if you’d mind placing the blank pages at the end of this book under an ultra-violet ray?’ I passed the book over to him and he opened it and glanced at the blank pages. Then he looked at me.

‘So,’ he said, ‘you are the master mind behind the British Secret Service? I always knew you couldn’t really be a lawyer. Or perhaps you’re a spy? Anyway we can discuss that when we’ve found what’s written in the Book of Books.’ He drained his tankard. ‘My God!’ he said, as he glanced at the title, ‘you have a lurid taste in thrillers.’ Then he glanced across at me. He was suddenly serious. ‘You really mean there’s some writing here?’

I nodded.

He rose to his feet. ‘Well, we’ll soon see if it’s one of the benzine solutions,’ he said, and led me to the largest dark-room.

He soon had the first of the blank pages fixed under the enlarger. Then he switched out the light and turned on the mercury vapour lamp of the enlarger. Instantly, the blank page became covered with parallel luminous lines, as though a snail had drawn itself backwards and forwards across it. ‘By God, yes,’ David said, ‘we’ve got something here all right.’ I leaned closer, peering at the page, so that the brightness of it hurt my eyes. I could see that the luminous lines were of writing, but it seemed a jumble of unintelligible letters.

‘The first thing to do is to photograph the paper,’ David announced. ‘Then we’ll be able to see what it’s all about.’

He got a Leica and set to work. When he had taken photographs of all six of the blank pages, he said, ‘You go outside and swill some beer. I’m going to develop them now.’

I left the dark-room very conscious of his capability at his job. I suppose I had always taken his photographic centre for granted before. I had never been here when he was actually working. My only clear recollection of the man was of him lounging around in the most amazing clothes, drinking vast quantities of beer and telling dirty stories. But I had heard from friends how he had built the business up from nothing, starting with a single camera in a cellar office in Frith Street. I knew, too, that he had decorated the studio himself with the help of an odd carpenter.

It was a big room, running the whole length of the frontage, and it was panelled throughout in a good oak plywood. The dark-rooms were on the inner wall. There were four of them, well appointed, with their own sinks, enlargers, lights and telephones. The place was cluttered with apparatus. I knew, of course, that he must be capable to stand on his own two feet in such a precarious profession. It was just that I had not been conscious of it before. I had taken him as I had found him, a good-natured friendly fellow, who led rather a peculiar life and ran a somewhat unusual business.

Now that I had seen him at work, I looked at him from a different angle. He was, as I have said, a great bear of a man. The wide shoulders and the fine head, with its mane of dark hair, made him a striking figure. He wore a pair of old brown corduroys, a dark-green polo sweater and sandals. But though his height and breadth were striking, it was his hands I had noticed. They were fine hands, with long and slender fingers. They were the hands of an artist, but capable hands.