Traitor's Purse by Margery Allingham

Author:Margery Allingham [Allingham, Margery]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780786704477
Publisher: Carroll & Graf
Published: 2009-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER TWELVE

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It was quiet, insistent tapping on the french windows. The gentle summons was very near and very intimate. It sped through the weeping of the storm and stood close to them.

They waited in silence and let it come again, still discreet but a fraction sharper, determined, inexorable.

Lugg glanced over his shoulder. Campion was well in the shadow, so he picked up his gun and advanced towards the window with all the easy confidence of an innocent householder expecting a visit from the police.

He drew back the curtains cautiously, as a good citizen should, allowing only the minimum of light to escape. For some seconds he stood peering into the darkness, alert as a dog at a rat-hole. Finally he unlatched the doors and pushed one of them open a few inches.

“ ’Ullo?” he demanded suspiciously.

There was no direct reply but there was a new movement out in the storm and Lugg became tense, his bald head with its fringe of greyish hair held oddly on one side.

Standing just below him in the driving rain was the figure he expected. The drab mackintosh and slouch hat of the plain-clothes man were there, but the stranger was not looking at him squarely. He peered up slyly out of the dark and from his white hand hung a large white handkerchief which fluttered significantly in the downpour. It was impossible to mistake its meaning.

Lugg backed slowly into the room and the newcomer came in after, holding the white rag ostentatiously before him.

He took up a position some little distance from the table and the heavy shade over the lights cut him off from the breast upwards as far as Campion was concerned. As soon as the window was closed behind him he held up his hands.

“You can take my gun,” he said distinctly.

Lugg searched him promptly and efficiently, setting down the man’s heavy Webley on the table well within the circle of light. Then with a glance at his visitor he produced his own gun and put it down beside the first. There was a long pause and then Campion also stretched out a hand in the darkness and added his weapon to the other two. He kept his face out of the light, however, as did the newcomer.

They made a curious headless group standing round the three guns, since all the light in the room focused on the weapons and on their three pairs of hands. Lugg and Campion maintained their advantage and waited for the visitor to make the first move.

“I’ve got a message for the man calling himself Campion,” he announced at last. “That’s you, isn’t it?”

“Never mind which of us it is,” corrected Lugg sharply. “What’s the dope?”

“He knows.” The stranger spoke meaningly, jerking a hand towards Campion. “It’s up to him, that’s all.”

This was an unforeseen impasse. Campion’s thin hands remained expressionless and Lugg’s great ham-fists did not stir. The silence persisted. The room was hot and its very quiet was ominous and uncomfortable amid the bellowing of the storm which raged round the house.

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