Dark Interlude

2: Tanga-2

IT WAS HALF-PAST three in the afternoon.

Mr. Quayle—whose business was nobody's business—who was just past fifty; inclined to be bald—sat at his desk in his room in the offices of the International Refrigeration Company, in Pall Mall, and considered that life was just as tragically ridiculous as it had been during the war years. If, he thought, the tragedies were not so numerous, the effects were much the same. The effects were possibly more serious because human life in peace-time is held, for some odd and quite unaccountable reason, to be more precious than in time of war.

This foible—for Mr. Quayle considered it to be a foible—was not helpful to him in his rather peculiar business—a business which specialised in the lives of many people and was, therefore, concerned, on occasion, with the sudden departure from this earth of individuals whose raison d'être would seem to have disappeared.

He considered two lists which lay on the desk before him. They were lists of names. A long list and a short one. The long list represented the number of operatives in Mr. Quayle's rather peculiar organisation who had died or been reported missing in the war years; the shorter list represented those who had merely "disappeared" since.

The desk telephone buzzed. He picked up the receiver. A dulcet voice said: "Mr. Quayle, there are four furniture vans from the Office of Works outside. They seem to have an idea that we're going to move?"

Quayle said: "They're perfectly right, Myra. We are going to move. Tell the man in charge that they will begin to clear the Company's offices at five-thirty. The vans must be loaded by six. They will then go to Golden Square and park on the west side of the square. A foreman from the Office of Works will meet them there with a new driver for each van. He will have his instructions."

She said: "Very well, Mr. Quayle."

He asked: "Where is Ernest Guelvada?"

"At home," she said. "I telephoned him this morning. I told him that I should probably be ringing him again."

Quayle said: "Tell him to be here at a quarter past four." He hung up the receiver.

He picked up the long list. Behind the formal typescript he saw the faces represented by the names. There was Eversley—the young man with the fondness for music. Eversley had been unlucky. He hadn't lasted long. The Nazis had got him in 1944. But he was lucky in a way. He had been shot. And there was Mrs. Gwendoline Ermine—a plump good-figured woman who had spoken German so well, who looked so like a certain type of German woman and who was so pretty and gentle.

Quayle had heard that Mrs. Ermine hadn't died quite so quickly. They'd been rather unkind to her. And there was the clever French girl, Mavrique. They'd got Mavrique in Paris and put her through it and she'd talked quite a lot—because she had to talk—everyone had a breaking point—and they'd got on to Michaelson and Duborg through her. He'd lost them too. Good types those two.

He produced a cigarette lighter. He burned the long list; watched the grey ashes settle in the glass ash-tray. And that was that. Mr. Quayle sighed. It seemed a great pity to him that all those people—some of them very nice people—should finish like that. He thought that most of them had finished like that. He remembered some of them....

He picked up the short list; regarded it carefully. Then he burned it and put it in the ash-tray with the other ashes. He wasn't at all pleased about the short list. The long one represented the fortunes of war but the short one was different.

Mr. Quayle thought he was going to do something about that.

He began to arrange a chessboard in his mind. But the pieces were not Kings and Queens and Knights and Castles and Pawns. The pieces were men and women, and you could call them just what you liked. He began to arrange the new set-up for the next "game," picking his people in his mind; arranging what was to happen as a result of what had happened.

He thought for a long time. He smoked a lot of cigarettes and started many fresh series of thoughts, working away from different theoretic bases; trying out new combinations of ideas but always thinking ahead of the situation which he had already created; which should now be arriving almost at its crucial point. A situation which had already arrived at the point where the not-so-good, the drunken, Philippe Garenne was engaged in finding a puncture in an inner tube at a small and somewhat dilapidated garage on the estuary at Saint Brieuc.

After a while he turned his mind to the present. He was certain of one thing. There was only one man who could function in the little set piece that Mr. Quayle had in his mind. A man who was clever enough, single-minded enough, to function in a manner that might be considered adequate.

Guelvada... that was the man. Ernest Guelvada—otherwise known as Ernie—the man who had been a Free Belgian during the war; who was now an Englishman by virtue of his services. Guelvada, who seemed so happy, and whose heart was filled with an unutterable bitterness against everything Nazi... with a bitterness that occasionally overflowed into his guts with results that were sometimes overpowering for the subject of his acerbity.

Guelvada, thought Quayle, had a sufficiency of hatred to make him quite merciless if and when an entire lack of mercy was necessary; enough brains to be opportunist when the situation required a quick change of front; enough virility and manliness to simulate—at least to simulate if not actually to experience—a certain weakness where a woman was concerned—if the woman was attractive enough and if the "weakness" did not interfere—or seemed not to interfere—with the business immediately at hand.

The man, thought Quayle, must be Guelvada.

THE SUBJECT of Mr. Quayle's deliberations turned from a sunlit Piccadilly into St. James's Street. Guelvada was short, very well dressed after the fashion of those good-class tailoring designs which one sees in tailors' shops but of which nobody—except Mr. Guelvada—ever takes the slightest notice. His face was round. His attitude was one of complacent good humour—an attitude which belied his feelings. Within he was not particularly happy. During the war years he had lived in atmospheres so peculiar, so varied and, even for him, so exciting, that the anti-climax of peace—even if that anti-climax were not quite so decided as a lot of people would wish—was inclined to be boring.

He was half-way down St. James's Street before he began to think about Mr. Quayle. This, thought Ernest, would be the pay-off.

Everything was over and finished. Ministers, diplomats and "experts" were meeting in all sorts of places to decide the fate of the world. There would be no more shooting in dark corners; no more sombre and slowly flowing rivers carrying on their bosoms a quiescent corpse. No more knives in dark alleyways; no more tense quiet inquisitions where somebody was made to talk because their talking was necessary to the safety of many others. All these things, thought Guelvada, were passing slowly—if they had not already passed.

He did not like that—not at all. It was as if someone was removing a well-loved woman from his arms, and he powerless to stop the process. Guelvada carried his mind back for a few years—to 1940—to the not very pleasant picture which the body of the young woman whom he then adored had presented after the enemy had finished with her. He licked his lips. Since then he had been settling old scores, delighting in the process. Now it seemed that there would be more scores to settle. He considered this to be unfortunate.

He turned into Pall Mall. A little way down the street outside the offices—Quayle's offices—the International Refrigeration Company—stood two large furniture vans. Guelvada sighed. His guess had been right. This was the pay-off. He turned into the entrance to the offices; went up in the lift to the first floor. He pushed open the door of the main office; walked in. The girl at the switchboard—a demure blonde—said: "Good afternoon...?"

Guelvada said in perfect English: "Good afternoon. My name is Ernest Guelvada. To see Mr. Quayle."

She said: "Will you go straight in, Mr. Guelvada, please."

Guelvada crossed the office; pushed open the oak door on the far side; closed it behind him. On the other side of the room, behind the large desk set at an angle to the corner, Quayle was sitting, smoking a cigarette. He looked up.

He said: "Hello, Ernie."

Guelvada said: "Hello—or possibly farewell. Mr. Quayle, I see the furniture vans are outside."

Quayle said: "You're disappointed, are you?"

Guelvada shrugged his shoulders. "Why not?" he said. "Now what is there left for me?"

Quayle smiled. His large round face, beneath the almost bald head, was benign. He said: "I shouldn't worry too much about that if I were you."

Guelvada said: "Well, I'm glad to hear it. I was only guessing. When I saw the furniture vans outside..."

Quayle interrupted: "The deduction doesn't follow. Anybody can hire furniture vans. Sit down."

Guelvada sat down. Quayle got up, stubbed out his cigarette; began to walk up and down the office. Guelvada sat quietly. He was wondering.

After a little while Quayle said: "The thing you've got to understand, Ernest, is this. The war is officially over. I said officially. Unofficially, all sorts of strange things are happening in a world which is still sitting on a keg of dynamite. The world wants peace badly, but there are quite a lot of people in it who don't think like that. There are lots of opportunities for them to-day. You understand?"

Guelvada said: "You're telling me. I understand perfectly."

"Very well," said Quayle. "It will be obvious to you that the fact that the war is over must affect the technique of rather peculiar organisations like our own—organisations which were able to function in one way whilst the war was on. Now it's got to be in another way. We've got to be a great deal more careful. That means that operatives will have to take more chances."

Guelvada said softly: "One has always taken chances."

"I know," said Quayle. "But there are chances and chances." He smiled at Guelvada. "I'd hate to see you hanged," he said casually.

There was a silence; then Guelvada said: "I get it. Before, one had a chance of a bullet or a knife in the back or something perhaps not so pleasant, but one was never officially hanged. Now there's even a chance of that."

Quayle said: "Exactly."

Guelvada drew a breath of cigarette smoke into his lungs. He said: "A new experience in any event—possibly amusing. I've been shot and stabbed before. I have never yet been hanged."

Quayle sat down behind the desk. He said: "It will be quite obvious to you that there are organisations, similar to the one I control, working for our late enemies. No one has ever put their finger on those organisations. We might have known of their existence; found counter-measures. But when the war was finished they went underground. There are few clues as to what happened to them. One can only see them by the things they do. One set of war criminals has been tried and executed, but the people I'm talking about are probably the best types of our original enemies. They took all the chances we took. Not very nice people possibly, but very brave and now inclined, possibly, to be more desperate than ever."