Page 21 of N or M? (Tommy & Tuppence 3)

Mrs Sprot said, with sudden energy:

"Men! All of you! Ask the women!"

Tommy's eyes sought Tuppence. Tuppence said, her voice low and shaken:

"I - I agree with Mrs Sprot."

She was thinking, "Deborah! Derek! If it were them, I'd feel like her. Tommy and the others are right, I've no doubt, but all the same I couldn't do it. I couldn't risk it."

Mrs O'Rourke was saying:

"No mother alive could risk it and that's a fact."

Mrs Cayley murmured:

"I do think, you know, that - well -" an

d tailed off into incoherence.

Miss Minton said tremulously:

"Such awful things happen. We'd never forgive ourselves if anything happened to dear little Betty."

Tuppence said sharply:

"You haven't said anything, Mr von Deinim?"

Carl's blue eyes were very bright. His face was a mask. He said slowly and stiffly:

"I am a foreigner. I do not know your English police. How competent they are - how quick."

Someone had come into the hall. It was Mrs Perenna; her cheeks were flushed. Evidently she had been hurrying up the hill. She said:

"What's all this?" And her voice was commanding, imperious, not the complaisant guest house hostess, but a woman of force.

They told her - a confused tale told by too many people, but she grasped it quickly.

And with her grasping of it, the whole thing seemed, in a way, to be passed up to her for judgment. She was the supreme court.

She held the hastily scrawled note a minute, then she handed it back. Her words came sharp and authoritative.

"The police? They'll be no good. You can't risk their blundering. Take the law into your own hands. Go after the child yourself."

Bletchley said, shrugging his shoulders:

"Very well, If you won't call in the police, it's the best thing to be done."

Tommy said:

"They can't have got much of a start."

"Half an hour, the maid said," Tuppence put in.

"Haydock," said Bletchley. "Haydock's the man to help us. He's got a car. The woman's unusual looking, you say? And a foreigner? Ought to leave a trail that we can follow. Come on, there's no time to be lost. You'll come along, Meadowes?"

Mrs Sprot got up.

"I'm coming, too."

"Now, my dear lady, leave it to us -"

"I'm coming, too."

"Oh well -"

He gave in - murmuring something about the female of the species being deadlier than the male.

III

In the end Commander Haydock, taking in the situation with commendable Naval rapidity, drove the car. Tommy sat beside him, and behind were Bletchley, Mrs Sprot and Tuppence. Not only did Mrs Sprot cling to her, but Tuppence was the only one (with the exception of Carl von Deinim) who knew the mysterious kidnapper by sight.

The Commander was a good organizer and a quick worker. In next to no time, he had filled up the car with petrol, tossed a map of the district and a larger scale map of Leahampton itself to Bletchley and was ready to start off.

Mrs Sprot had run upstairs again, presumably to her room to get a coat. But when she got into the car and they had started down the hill she disclosed to Tuppence something in her handbag. It was a small pistol.

She said quietly:

"I got it from Major Bletchley's room. I remember his mentioning one day that he had one."

Tuppence looked a little dubious.

"You don't think that -"

Mrs Sprot said, her mouth a thin line:

"It may come in useful."

Tuppence sat marvelling at the strange forces maternity will set loose in an ordinary, commonplace young woman. She could visualize Mrs Sprot, the kind of woman who would normally declare herself frightened to death of firearms, coolly shooting down any person who had harmed her child.

They drove first, on the Commander's suggestion, to the railway station. A train had left Leahampton about twenty minutes earlier and it was possible that the fugitives had gone by it.

At the station they separated, the Commander taking the ticket collector, Tommy the booking office, and Bletchley the porters outside. Tuppence and Mrs Sprot went into the Ladies' Room on the chance that the woman had gone in there to change her appearance before taking the train.

One and all drew blank. It was now more difficult to shape a course. In all probability, as Haydock pointed out, the kidnappers had had a car waiting, and once Betty had been persuaded to come away with the woman, they had made their getaway in that. It was here, as Bletchley pointed out once more, that the co-operation of the police was so vital. It needed an organization of that kind who could send out messages all over the country, covering the different roads.

Mrs Sprot merely shook her head, her lips pressed tightly together.

Tuppence said:

"We must put ourselves in their places. Where would they have waited in the car? Somewhere as near Sans Souci as possible, but where a car wouldn't be noticed. Now let's think. The woman and Betty walk down the hill together. At the bottom is the esplanade. The car might have been drawn up there. So long as you don't leave it unattended you can stop there for quite a while. The only other places are the Car Park in James Square, also quite near, or else one of the small streets that lead off from the esplanade."

It was at that moment that a small man, with a diffident manner and pince-nez, stepped up to them and said, stammering a little:

"Excuse me... No offense, I hope... but I c-c-couldn't help overhearing what you were asking the porter just now." (He now directed his remarks to Major Bletchley.) "I was not listening, of course, just came down to see about a parcel - extraordinary how long things are delayed just now - movements of troops, they say - but really most difficult when it's perishable - the parcel, I mean - and so, you see, I happened to overhear - and really it did seem the most wonderful coincidence..."

Mrs Sprot sprang forward. She seized him by the arm.

"You've seen her? You've seen my little girl?"

"Oh, really, your little girl, you say? Now fancy that -"

Mrs Sprot cried: "Tell me." And her fingers bit into the little man's arm so that he winced.

Tuppence said quickly:

"Please tell us anything you have seen as quickly as you can. We shall be most grateful if you will."

"Oh, well, really, of course, it may be nothing at all. But the description fitted so well -"

Tuppence felt the woman beside her trembling, but she herself strove to keep her manner calm and unhurried. She knew the type with which they were dealing - fussy, muddle-headed, diffident, incapable of going straight to the point and worse if hurried. She said:

"Please tell us."

"It was only - my name is Robbins, by the way, Edward Robbins -"

"Yes, Mr Robbins."

"I live at Whiteways, in Ernes Cliff Road, one of those new houses on the new road - most labour saving, and really every convenience, and a beautiful view and the downs only a stone's throw away."

With a glance Tuppence quelled Major Bletchley, who she saw was about to break out, and she said:

"And you saw the little girl we are looking for?"

"Yes, I really think it must be. A little girl with a foreign looking woman, you said? It was really the woman I noticed. Because, of course, we are all on the lookout nowadays for Fifth Columnists, aren't we? A sharp lookout, that is what they say, and I always try to do so, and so, as I say, I noticed the woman. A nurse, I thought, or a maid - a lot of spies came over here in that capacity, and this woman was most unusual looking and walking up the road and on to the downs - with a little girl - and the little girl seemed tired and rather lagging, and half past seven, well, most children go to bed then, so I looked at the woman pretty sharply. I think it flustered her. She hurried to the road, pulling the child after her, and finally picked her up and went on up the path out on to the cliff, which I thought strange, you know, because there are no houses there at all - nothing - not until you get to Whitehaven - about five miles over the downs - a favourite walk for hikers. But in this case I thought it odd. I wondered if the woman was going to signal, perhaps. One hears of so much enemy activity and she certainly looked uneasy when she saw me staring at her."

Commander Haydock was back in the car and had started the engine. He said:

"Ernes Cliff Road, you say? That's right the other side of the town, isn't it?"

"Yes, you go along the esplanade and past the old town and then up - "

The others had jumped

in, not listening further to Mr Robbins.

Tuppence called out:

---