Frontier Passage Read online

  The only thing was the Condesa. She would not for the world do anything which would hurt the Condesa. And if the Duquesa was in the racket, as they all seemed to think, was it not possible that the Condesa was in it too? No one had suggested it, and it didn’t seem like her; but it was possible that she might be in some way involved. But even if she were, would the fact that Mr. Crumpet knew about the photo business do her any particular harm? Even if it led his suspicions, as it had led hers, Rosemary’s, to the Parrot? The French couldn’t do much even to proved spies, she supposed, since they weren’t spying against France—and she was sure the Condesa wasn’t a spy. They might try to put a stop to it, she imagined, if they really found anything out—but would they? All she proposed to do at present was to tell the Crumpet what she had seen, and to see if he agreed with her conclusions. And anyhow, she didn’t care how many spokes were put in the Duquesa’s wheel, the stout busybody! (Rosemary had taken a hearty dislike to the Duquesa.) Yes, she would tell him. Then when, and where?

  Since they were staying in the same hotel, this might seem an easy matter to arrange; but in fact it is not so easy to manage a tête-à-tête in a hotel with only two sitting-rooms, one of which is commanded by the front door—nor is it perfectly easy for young ladies of under seventeen, staying with two watchful parents abroad, to make assignations unobserved, even with someone of Mr. Crumpaun’s highly respectable age. In the Hôtel Grande Bretagne there was the further difficulty of getting a message conveyed to anyone. The servants were all Basques, and their knowledge of the French language correspondingly limited. They put up a façade of “Bonjour Madame”s and phrases connected with “petits déjeuners” and baths; but it was a fake façade, behind which lay an almost total incapacity to understand, remember or reproduce anything said to them in French, let alone a foreign name. Jean-Louis, the lanky valet-de-chambre on Rosemary’s floor was worse than any of them in this respect. (It need hardly be said that the Grande Bretagne had not yet risen to room telephones.) The only person who could be relied on to give or take a message was Rex, the concierge—and Rex always had two hours off in the afternoon.

  But fortune was on Rosemary’s side to-day. Flying downstairs to try and catch Rex before he went off duty, in the glass-walled outer lobby she caught sight, through the front door, of Mr. Crumpaun’s broad grey back disappearing into the Rue Garat. Out she darted after him. “Mr. Crumpet! Mr. Crumpet!”

  “Now what do you want, the Sweetheart? You’ll catch cold, rushing out without a coat like that,” Crumpaun said.

  “Crumpet dear, I want to talk to you some time,” the girl panted. “Oh, not now”—as she saw him beginning to tug at his watch-chain. “Go and get you hora español lunch! But will you come for a tiny tiny walk later on?”

  “Where to? I’m not a great walker, you know,” said Crumpaun warily.

  “Could you totter as far as the end of the Front, do you think?” she asked, tilting her chin at him. “There are lots of nice seats!”

  “Now I wonder what you’re up to, you little baggage,” the journalist said, looking at her attentively.

  “Got a tiny tiny scoop for you!” she said, making her hands into a trumpet, and hissing the words into his ear.

  “More likely making a fool of me! O.K.—what time?”

  “Quarter to five—if you’ll have slept it off by then?” she said impertinently.

  He made a gesture as if to box her ear, but she danced out of reach.

  “Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  On which she ran back into the hotel, and he lumbered off to the Grill Basque, to eat fresh sardines, fried in batter, with Tom Hever.

  Rosemary had fixed the hour of a quarter to five because with any luck her parents would then either be out walking, or having tea. Luck was still on her side, and she and Mr. Crumpaun got out of the hotel and clear away along the front without any hindrance. At the far end, sitting on a seat under some tamarisks, Crumpaun turned to her and said “Now what is all this?”

  “Mr. Crumpet dear, probably nothing. I expect you’ll think it too trivial, only I thought I’d tell you. Do you remember those photographs that Carrow showed us one morning at the Bar Basque, ages ago, that he bought at the photographer’s?”

  “And wanted to pass off as illustrations of the frontier? Yes, I remember it happening. Good pictures, too,” said Crumpaun. “What about them?”

  “They were Daddy’s pictures.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that. They were some Daddy took up on La Rhune, two days before. That lousy Durand at the Lune told me they weren’t ready, that very morning—and when I got to the Bar Basque, there was that unutterable Carrow with a whole set!”

  “Didn’t you recognise them?”

  “Yes, of course I recognised them. But, Mr. Crumpet, the point is—”

  “Hold on,” Crumpaun said. “Do you mean to say you knew they were your father’s photographs all the time, and never said a word?”

  “Yes. I—well, I thought I’d wait and see. You see, it seemed a bit funny, to me.”

  “Funny enough. You’re a cool customer, though,” Crumpaun observed, looking at her with a sort of amused respect. “Well, go on.”

  “Well, did you ever meet Daddy’s Old Parrot?”

  “Daddy’s what?”

  Rosemary giggled.

  “No, I daresay you didn’t. Well, there was an old Spaniard that Daddy met up at the Phare one day, when he was photographing, who looked like a parrot—’ence the word ‘orse-’air,” pursued Rosemary obliquely. “And they got talking, and Daddy happened to mention that he was going up La Rhune, and this old beano told him that if he went down in a particular direction, he’d find some lovely rocks and things to photograph—and we went, and he did. And those were the pictures.”

  “Go on,” Crumpaun said choosing a cigar. “I don’t see light yet, but I daresay I shall.”

  “P’raps it’s nothing. Anyhow I’ll tell you. Well, Daddy’d told us about the Parrot, and one day—before that day that Carrow had the photos—he pointed him out to me at the Café de Paris, so I knew him by sight. And later that same day, I went to Jacques—you known, the dope-den coiffeur—with the Jones; just to talk to her. And while I was there, the Duquesa came out.”

  “That needn’t mean anything—I should think coiffeurs with dope-dens were right up her street,” Crumpaun said judgematically.

  “I know—it may have been just chance. But she went out without paying. Anyhow, a little while after that I went over to get a book for the Jones, where I could see up the stairs, and there half-way up was the Parrot talking to old Jacques, and I heard what they said. Old Jacques had some photographs in his hand, and the Parrot said—’Then you’ll get me four copies of each, in this size’—and he tapped them. In French, of course.”

  “But you couldn’t see them?” Crumpaun asked.

  “No, Crumpet, no—of course not—not then. But—I don’t even know if the affaire Carrow had made me suspicious or something, but anyhow I stayed at that end of the shop, and the Parrot came down and went out—without paying anything either, come to think of it! And old Jacques went to open the door for him, and put down the photos on the table, by me—and when he opened the door, the wind puffed in and blew them all over the floor. So I picked them up, naturally—and there they were, Daddy’s photos again!”

  “Holy Moses! You don’t say so!” Crumpaun was really startled this time. “Are you sure of that?” he asked, turning to stare at her from under his bushy grey brows.

  “But of course! I had them in my hand and looked at them. There were the rocks, and the little col, and the trees in the two glens going down——”

  “Hold on,” Crumpaun interrupted her—“Where exactly is this place? Could you find it again?”

  “Of course,” Rosemary repeated. “You go up La Rhune, and then you go down, sort of away from the Bidassoa—oh well, I can’t explain, but I could go there.”

  “And you
say the place was a col, with valleys going down on two sides? Could it have been part of the frontier?”

  “Well that’s what we thought it was, when we were there. And after this business at Jacques’, it struck me as a bit funny that the Old Parrot should have put Daddy up to going there, and then be buying up his pictures, unless he had some rather good reason for wanting to make it easy for someone else to identify that particular place. But if it was somewhere for someone to cross, who didn’t know the place, the photos would be quite useful.”

  “Useful! I’ll say they would! Here, what did your Father say to all this?”

  “Oh, Daddy doesn’t know,” said Rosemary blithely. “I didn’t tell him.”

  “Who did you tell then?”

  “No one—no one till you now, Mr. Crumpet.”

  Crumpaun fairly gaped at her.

  “Do you tell me you’ve kept all this under your hat for the better part of a month?” And suddenly he broke into a great roar of laughter. “You little card!” he cried, slapping his knee and shouting with mirth—“you doggoned little card!”

  “Hush up, Mr. Crumpet—people are staring at you,” Rosemary said repressively. (They were, indeed.) “I didn’t see that there was any need to tell Daddy,” she went on, a little defensively—“I thought I’d wait and see if anything else funny happened. But nothing did. And then this morning, when Hever and Crossman and you were all talking, it struck me that this might be one of the places where they come over, Number 17 or whoever it is.”

  “It may be the place,” Crumpaun said, serious again now. “Look here, Sweetheart, I want to see these photographs. Think I can get a set, like all these other guys?”

  “You could see Daddy’s, anyhow—they’re all in his album.”

  “Oke. Now tell me something else. Who is this bird you call the Parrot?”

  “That’s just what I don’t know. It’s just like Daddy’s sort of pottiness that he never asked, or found out, or anything.”

  “Would you know him again?”

  “Oh, of course.”

  “And where do you say you saw him? Besides Jacques’?”

  “At the Café de Paris. But ages ago. In fact he hasn’t seemed to be about for ages,” said Rosemary, rather gloomily.

  “Ar-rum. Well, it’s no good asking about him at Jacques’, obviously. But we might try George at the Paris—he’s pretty smart,” said Crumpaun hopefully. “Come along, Sweetheart—we might as well breeze in there on the way home. I could do with a drink after all this—and you can get your nauseous fluid there, I don’t doubt.”

  But George, the urbane and skilful barman at the Café de Paris, disclaimed all knowledge of an elderly Spaniard of distinguished appearance, who resembled a grey parrot. He pointed out, as Mr. Oldhead had done before him, that many elderly Spanish men “ressemblent plutôt à des perroquets gris.” And that was that. “Oh well, we’ll find him somehow,” Crumpaun said, as they walked through the echoing Casino arcades towards the hotel.

  “Mr. Crumpet, do you think this is—well, at all important?” Rosemary asked, with a note almost of anxiety in her voice.

  “It might be—very important. Or not. Can’t tell yet,” Crumpaun answered.

  “Do we have to tell Daddy? I’d rather not. I’d rather keep it to ourselves, for a bit anyhow,” the girl said.

  “You would!” he laughed at her. “All right, Sweetheart. We’ll keep it to ourselves for the present,” he promised, wondering why she wished just that. “But you get me those pictures, there’s a good girl—as soon as you can.”

  Later that evening—“Daddy, can I have your photo-book?” Rosemary asked her parent.

  “What for?”

  “To show Mr. Crumpet.”

  “All right—but take care of it.”

  Rosemary bore away the book to show to Crumpaun in the lounge—it was dressing-time, and there was hardly anyone about. Crumpaun examined the photos carefully, along with a large-scale map which he had brought, asking Rosemary question all the time. “It took you an hour to go down, you say, and over an hour and a half to go up? Ar-rum.” At last he put his stubby finger on the map at a certain point.

  “That looks like the place,” he said. “Well, we’ll go and see it.”

  “But there are no trains up La Rhune any more,” Rosemary objected. “The La Rhune railway’s closed for the winter.”

  “I know. We’ll have to find it from below—I can’t go prancing up mountains at my age,” said Crumpaun cheerfully. “But if we take that little road”—he indicated a thread on the map—“And then go up that little hill—see, where the contours go round in a circle—we ought to be able to look across at it.”

  “When shall we go?” Rosemary asked, her eyes shining.

  “To-morrow—if I can get what I want in time. Did you see any soldiers, or gendarmes, when you were there?” he asked her finally.

  “Only the two gendarmes up at the top of the railway. We thought it funny that they were so vague, when the frontier goes right over La Rhune.”

  “Ah—no roads go near it there. The roads’ll be stopped all right. Never mind—I daresay I can fix it. Now, Sweetheart, can you keep hold of that book and bring it along when we go?”

  “I’ll try,” the girl said.

  What Crumpaun wanted was a special permis de circulation near the frontier, over and above his usual Press passes—and thanks to his good relations with the French authorities he got it within twenty-four hours. So not the following day, but the day after he and Rosemary set off in the hired car, Crumpaun armed with his map, Rosemary with her Father’s album, which she had purloined afresh for the purpose, wrapped in brown paper. They drove for some distance along the Sare road, but presently turned off to the right, and plunged into the network of little lanes and by-roads which covers the rolling country round the foot of La Rhune. At length, after many wrong turnings, checks, and retreats in reverse down lanes too narrow for the car to pass further, between the autumn hedges gay with rose-hips, yellow and purple leaves, and scarlet festoons of briony-berries, they did in fact find themselves near the foot of a small round hill. Short of this they had met a couple of gardes mobiles, in their belted black overcoats and neat gaiters, but Crumpaun’s permit enabled the car to pass their stop-point on the minute road.

  Rosemary was enjoying herself. The sleuthing instinct, strong in the Anglo-Saxon section of humanity, had got the upper hand in her, and she thought it all the greatest fun. It was a nice day, too—a regular Atlantic coastal day, damp, blue and soft, with rain so near that the air was moist on the cheek, and the distances were clear and blue; yet the rain never quite fell, and there were even watery gleams of sun here and there on the blue landscape. Their hill, after the manner of the Basque countryside in autumn, was soaking wet—the ditches and brooks were running full, and they splashed and squelched upwards over the sodden turf, Rosemary prancing ahead, Mr. Crumpaun puffing and blowing behind her. At last they reached the top. From here they looked out across the tangled uneven green country towards the blue tangle of the hills, rising to La Rhune, whose top was swathed in white cloud. Into this tangle Rosemary peered, screwing up her eyes, while Mr. Crumpaun got his breath, pulled his binoculars out of their leather case and adjusted them. It was difficult at first for the girl, unaccustomed to map-reading or to recognising from below places seen from above, to make out where to look for her valley with little trees; Mr. Crumpaun muttered and grumbled, and wished he had got a prismatic compass. But at last, with the help of one of those travelling watery patches of sunshine, Rosemary squeaked that there it was, there it was!—Mr. Crumpaun focussed his Zeiss glasses on the spot, and then bade her take them and study it to make sure, while he took the album and looked again at the photographs. There was no doubt about it—away across the interfolding slopes of a long winding valley lay the little combe, trees and all; even the oddly-shaped projecting rocks were visible through the powerful lenses. Mr. Crumpaun then studied the valley. It appeared to be
quite empty; there was not a house to be seen, and only a faint path or woodcutters’ track wound up the bottom of it, where that was visible. He made some notes in his pocket-book, replaced his binoculars, and they started down the hill again in triumph.

  And then, when they were nearly back at the car, the disaster happened. Rosemary, bounding ahead, made to leap the brimming ditch beside the road; landing, she caught her foot in a root, stumbled, and fell forward—the album flew out of her hand and landed in one of those small cuttings which led surface-water from the road to the ditch; the ditch being bank-high, the cutting was several inches deep in muddy water. With a cry, she snatched the book out as soon as she had picked herself up; but in those few seconds the water had penetrated the wrapping, and the back of it and the two front pages were stained and soaking wet. They wiped them with handkerchiefs, and did all they could, but there was no disguising the fact that the album was spoilt.

  “Gosh! What will Daddy say?” Rosemary exclaimed, examining the wrinkling cover with doleful eyes.

  “I’ll tell him,” Crumpaun volunteered.

  “No—I’ll tell him myself,” said Rosemary. “But I can’t think what he’ll say.”

  Mr. Oldhead had in fact a great deal to say when the injured photograph album was shown to him. “I took it out with Mr. Crumpet, to look at something, and like an utter owl I dropped it in a puddle,” was all that Rosemary would say. “I’m terribly sorry, Daddy. I’m quite willing to buy you another—and you’ve got all your negatives, so you can have more copies made.” But Mr. Oldhead, parent-like, was determined to know why she had taken it, and at length applied to Mr. Crumpaun. Crumpaun, who did not in the least realise the strength of Mr. Oldhead’s pro-Republican feelings, and was of course entirely ignorant of Rosemary’s secret wish to avoid any publicity for fear of getting her beloved Condesa into trouble, came out with the whole story of the photographs, the Old Parrot, and the episode at the coiffeur’s—a story which he felt was amusing in itself, and rather creditable to Rosemary. But Mr. Oldhead did not see it in that light at all. Parents dislike nothing more than that children should keep their own counsel, and in this case Rosemary had kept hers in a way that seemed to her Father positively disloyal. She had known that the photographer was selling prints from his negatives; she had found out that he had been tricked into taking pictures by a stranger, for a purpose almost certainly nefarious—and she had said nothing! Worse, when she had spoken, it had been to an other stranger, and not to him. He was hurt and indignant. His wife tried to soothe him. “She loves keeping things to herself—she always did, from a tiny thing,” she said; “it isn’t any lack of affection for you. No, it isn’t disloyal, and you ought not to say that it is—that’s being silly.”