Four
He counted his francs. He had enough for lunch, a taxi fare, and all foreseeable incidentals. Down in the foyer again, he consulted a plan of the city and decided to take a walk. He had time to kill and he did not know Brussels. He took his bearings from the position of the Risler-Moircy and mapped a short tour.
The morning was sunny, the air mild, and there were interesting things to observe in the unfamiliar streets. He found the Grande Place and inspected the Hotel de Ville and the Maison du Roi. He was just beginning to enjoy himself when something odd happened.
He had the impression that he was being followed.
It was absurd, of course; a hangover from Mr. Kusitch! Yet he could not quite dispel the impression. There was a man who loitered at one corner of the Maison du Roi when he stepped out into the square to get a perspective view of the facade. He was sure he had seen the same man a few minutes earlier in the Place de Brouckere. But was there anything strange in that? Any citizen in good standing was at liberty to take a stroll along the Boulevard Anspach and around to the Grande Place on a sunny morning. Or at any time and in any weather for that matter.
Andrew blamed himself for a fool. It was time he relaxed and forgot Kusitch, or before you could say “dementia praecox” he’d have the disagreeable Herr Schlegel waiting for him in a dark alley. Why on earth should anyone follow him, unless it was to get him alone on some quiet corner and try to sell him a set of art postcards?
He made his way back to the Rue de la Madeleine. So did the man. He turned to the left, walked a few yards, wheeled about and proceeded in the direction of the Place Royale. So did the man. He was a thickset fellow in a drab green raincoat with part of a plump florid face visible below the wide brim of a green soft hat.
It was no longer easy to laugh off the thing as mere coincidence. Andrew made further tests. Whenever he stopped to look in a shop window, the green soft hat also became interested in a shop window. The fellow was a fool at the game, or he did not care if he was observed. The one certain thing about him was his persistence.
Andrew was no longer intrigued by the sights of Brussels. Turning from the Place Royale into the street of the same name, he was refitting his former fears to the case of Mr. Kusitch and seeking new explanations for the things he had dismissed as the fantasies of a psychotic. Even the Green Line Coach Guide could be explained if you exercised a little ingenuity.
Once more Andrew saw Kusitch as the victim, a man who had been snatched away in the night. Instead of dawdling round Brussels, he should have gone to the police, should have seen at once that the Coach Guide was a blind, a nose-to-thumb gesture.
He looked back and saw the green soft hat about twenty yards away, and now he had the taste of fear in his own mouth. That shadow was the agent of those who had kidnapped Kusitch. It was a sinister shadow, full of evil.
Andrew turned the corner of the Rue de la Loi. He saw a taxi, called to the driver, and ran for it. He was in the cab before it could come to a standstill and at once he urged the driver to accelerate. Instead the man stopped and turned to glare doubtfully at his fare.
“Where do you wish to go?” he asked.
“Commissariat de Police. Vite!”
The driver was surprised. His look said plainly that he had been entirely mistaken. He muttered something that might have been an apology. The cab shot forward, but the moment of advantage had been lost. The green soft hat was stepping into another taxi, and the chase was still on.
At the Commissariat everybody was very calm and polite. They were obviously quite accustomed to visits from foreigners who wished to report suspected cases of kidnapping, or perhaps they did not quite understand Andrew’s French. He had to wait for a while. Then a detective who could speak English came along. By this time Andrew’s fears had grown and to his explanation he added his belief that Kusitch might have been murdered. The English-speaking detective appeared to be impressed. There was another slight delay, and then Andrew was taken along a corridor to meet Inspector Jordaens.
A dry, impassive man, Inspector Jordaens, with dry, impassive English.
“Dr. Maclaren,” he said, “we have checked with the airport officials concerning this man Kusitch. Pyotr Grigorievitch Kusitch, a servant of the Yugoslav Government in transit to London. His passport was quite in order. Can you tell me why he elected to travel from Dubrovnik via Athens?”
“I can’t,” Andrew answered. “I did think it peculiar.”
“Why?”
“For the same reason that you do, I suppose. I would have been inclined to take a shorter route.”
“Exactly. Unless, perhaps, you wished to see the Acropolis?”
“What has that to do with it?”
“Exactly. Dr. Maclaren, I will listen to your story. Be brief, if you please. Just give me the facts.”
Andrew was brief. A stenographer took notes. On the whole, Inspector Jordaens was a good listener, but occasionally he would interrupt with comments or questions that had a disturbing effect upon Andrew.
“So you stayed at the Risler-Moircy? You are aware, of course, that it is a hotel of unimpeachable reputation?”
And: “Do you really suggest that kidnappers could enter such a place and remove a guest during the night?” After each sentence he pursed his lips.
When he came to a general examination of Andrew’s statement his tone expressed open incredulity. He suggested that Kusitch had voluntarily left the hotel; that the decision might have come as a result of the man’s talk about his former business as an art dealer. Kusitch was, on Dr. Maclaren’s own evidence, a whimsical fellow, a little curious, perhaps, and, being stimulated by cognac, an impulse had come to him, an irresistible impulse. The grounding of the London plane was an opportunity out of the sky. He would disappear in Brussels. He would abandon his mission, desert, and no one in Yugoslavia would ever hear of him again, not even his wife and child. The alternative was to suppose that the man was mad, quite irresponsible.
Andrew said: “You do not explain the telephone call cancelling his seat on the ten o’clock plane. That call did not come from Kusitch.”
“You are very positive, Dr. Maclaren.” Inspector Jordaens smiled tolerantly. “I have had a lifetime of experience with witnesses, and I have frequently observed that when they are most positive it is then that they are deceiving themselves.” He held up a hand to arrest an interruption. “Wait a moment! I am not referring solely to you. I have first in mind the telephonist at the air terminal who took the message. You were informed that it came in at twenty-two hours thirty-three, but let us suppose that there was a mistake in the recording, that it actually came in at two hours thirty-three. Remember, it was the day telephonist from whom the information came. He may have misread the record.”
“You could check that up with the man who was on night duty.”
“Assuredly. I am merely putting to you the hypothesis of error. When I come to your evidence, I must raise another question. You say you were with Kusitch from the time you left the hotel until you returned?”
“Yes.”
“You dined and drank wine, you went to a cafe and drank coffee and cognac. You were in this cafe at twenty-two hours thirty-three?”
“Positively.”
“And do you still say positively that Kusitch was never out of your sight?”
“Why? What do you mean?”
“I mean, Dr. Maclaren, that when we are called on to give evidence, the commonplace acts, the routine calls, like the postman in the story by your Chesterton, escape our notice. The most familiar things are the most easily forgotten. Do you agree?”
“But this is not merely an academic question, Inspector.”
“It is not.” Jordaens’ dry voice crackled like brown paper. “I put it to you, Dr. Maclaren, that at some time or other during the evening you or Kusitch might possibly have gone to the lavabos alone.”
