The Case of the Dead Man Gone by Christopher Bush

Author:Christopher Bush
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dean Street Press
Published: 2022-03-12T16:00:00+00:00

I took a taxi. It’s no use keeping a dog and barking yourself, so it was for the driver to find 103 Gardener Road. It turned out to be a smallish detached house that had been wholly taken over by the organisation.

I paid off the taxi and walked along the short path to the front door. By the side was a white plate, lettered in black.

OFFICE OF

THE GOOD SAMARITANS

Please come in.

I accepted the invitation. In the small entrance hall was an enquiry room. To the young woman in charge who was almost certainly English, I gave a card which told her I was a free-lance journalist named P. L. French. She was a very pleasant, well-spoken young woman. She asked me whom I would like to see.

“Anybody who can give me the necessary information. I’ve written one or two articles on work for refugees and displaced persons, and a friend, who’s a great admirer of your Mr. Hayhill, suggested you people might be willing to help.”

“I’m sure we would,” she told me. “Mr. Hayhill isn’t available at the moment. And he doesn’t like giving interviews. He’s very self-effacing, you know. There are people who don’t seem to believe that he’s always avoiding personal publicity, but I do assure you that it’s true.”

“I’m sure it is. But who else can I see?”

She smiled charmingly. “Mr. Carnwell. The Reverend Herbert Carnwell. He’s our secretary. If you’ll wait outside just a moment, I’ll give him a ring.”

A couple of minutes and she was telling me, just as smilingly, to go upstairs and take the first door on the right. I went up. Both on the ground floor and then on the landing there’d been the clacking of typewriters. No 103 was a busy place. I was rather like a worm that’s sneaked its way into an ant-hill.

The quite large room—a former bedroom—had been made into a well-fitted but strictly business-like office. The man who rose from behind the table to greet me was one of the most striking I’d ever seen. He was as tall as I was and even more spare in build. His white hair was swept across his high-domed head but failed to hide the baldness. The deeply sunk eyes were uncannily dark and dominated the thin, ascetic face. El Greco would have loved him. He glanced at the card I gave him.

“Glad to see you, Mr. French.”

The smile transformed the face. Maybe Latimer had looked like that when he’d told Master Ridley to be of good cheer. The huge bony hand enveloped my own.

“Do sit down,” he told me. The voice was very English with undertones of Oxford. “You’d like to join me in a cup of tea?”

I said I’d be very pleased and, while we waited, I went over my spiel again. He welcomed the idea of an article, provided, as he said smilingly, I’d be so good as to let him see the proofs. He also handed me that line about Hayhill and self-effacement.

A quite pretty girl brought in the tea.

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