Free Traitor's Purse by Margery Allingham Page A

he had been fingering. His wooden face was haggard and he looked tired and frustrated.
    ‘My God, I wonder if it is,’ he said.
    She gave the question serious consideration.
    ‘It seems a bit presumptuous, but it might be,’ she said.
    Campion felt the beads of sweat break out on the line where his forehead met his hair.
    ‘That’s the kind of damned silly premonition I’ve got,’ he said.
    Amanda smiled at him. ‘If it is, I’d rather it was in your hands than anybody’s,’ she said honestly. ‘You’ve got all the cards, Albert, and fundamentally you’re so …’
    ‘So what?’
    ‘So sort of sufficient at heart. So cold. You’ll get by.’
    After she had gone he sat very still in the silent room and the strong light beat down upon him with chilly clarity. The warmth had gone out of the dream again and he was back in the familiar nightmare. He knew what it was like now. It was like one of those trick films wherein familiar objects are photographed from an unfamiliar angle. The strange shadows thus cast made vast secret shapes, forming a horror where there is none and, worse still, concealing a horror where horror lies.
    Now that Amanda had gone he wondered why he had not confided in her. It was not only because of Lee and because he dreaded her pity as he dreaded insufferable pain. There was another reason. He reached down into the darkness in his mind and drew it out from its skulking place in all its hideousness. It was a fear. If she knew of his mental state, if she knew of that overheard conversation in the hospital, and had it presented to her with the facts as they both knew them about Anscombe’s death, then would she still regard him with that candid trust which was the most precious thing about her? Or would the gleam of a doubt come creeping into her brown eyes before her loyalty doused it? That was the risk he had not dared to take. He was the man involved and he would not entirely trust himself.
    The whistle cut into his thoughts. The low note, which was just sufficiently unlike a bird’s to be uncanny, sounded twice before it brought him to his feet. He switched out the light and stood listening. It sounded again just beneath the window.
    He pulled the heavy curtains aside, unlatched the old-fashioned shutters, and threw up the sash as quickly as he could.
    The whistle began and ended suddenly and there was a long silence. The house cast a deep shadow and the space below the window was black as the pit.
    ‘Is that you, sir?’ The voice was very quiet and almost directly beneath him. ‘Are you ready? I’ve been waiting round the other side. I must have mistook your meaning. We’ll have to get a move-on if we’re to get the job done tonight. Can you come at once?’
    ‘What? Yes, yes, all right, I’ll be with you in a moment.’ Campion drew in his head, closed the windows, and replaced its various shroudings. Then he went downstairs with the soft-footed tread of a professional burglar. In his mind was a single unqualified question-mark, for the voice had been the utterly unmistakable one of Superintendent Hutch.

VII
    CAMPION CAME OUT of the front doorway noiselessly. He picked his way over the gravel to the silent turf of the lawn and stood waiting. If this was arrest the whole world was as light-headed as he was.
    The Superintendent’s jaunty figure emerged from the black shadows round the house and dropped into step beside him. He did not speak, but, taking Campion’s arm, led him into the narrow line of darkness below the row of close-growing poplars which lined one side of the path. He walked very fast and did not open his mouth until they were a good two hundred yards from the window. Finally he sighed.
    ‘Very nicely done, sir,’ he said with approval. ‘I didn’t know you had come out until I set eyes on you. It’s as well to be careful. We don’t want to give a lot of fancy explanations. Once you start that game, it’s my experience that you have to go on remembering