The Tiger In the Smoke by Margery Allingham Read Free Book Online

one could possibly have followed him, Avril had clasped his arm and chuckled contentedly, ‘Of course not, my dear fellow. But how wonderful for him if by chance one of them did!’
    He believed in miracles and frequently observed them, and nothing astonished him. His imagination was as wild as a small boy’s and his faith ultimate. In ordinary life he was, quite frankly. hardly safe out.
    He was a big man with a great frame, untidy white hair, and the ease of manner of one to whom every stranger is probably due to become an old friend. His distress just now was all the more poignant.
    â€˜She
saw
him,’ he repeated, his voice urgent. ‘She saw and recognized him and ran to him across the station. You heard her say that, Amanda.’
    The only other person in the room, the Lady Amanda, sister to the Earl of Pontisbright, wife to Albert Campion, director of the key firm of Alandel Aircraft Limited and white hope among Britain’s back-room boys, sat in the high chair. She was embroidering the word ‘Sheriff’ in very large letters on a small green shirt. The red hair of the Pontisbrights, which in medieval legend is said to swallow the fire of rubies, was cut neatly round her small head and under it her brown eyes were thoughtful in her heart-shaped face.
    She had explained the business very carefully to him twice already, but the cream of her forehead remained unruffled and her clear voice preserved that quality of adventurous common sense which was her chief characteristic.
    â€˜But when they caught up with him he wasn’t Martin at all. I’ve done that, haven’t you, Uncle Hubert? Especially on railway stations. It’s the noise. You can’t hear at all, so you don’t see too well either.’
    The old man shook his head uneasily. ‘But when she first saw him she was sure,’ he insisted. ‘She says so. I’m so frightened of this, Amanda, that I’m clinging to it like a drowning man to handfuls of sea.’
    Amanda’s thin brown fingers turned the wool deftly.
    â€˜I don’t think the man they caught changed clothes with Martin in a train full of people in a few seconds, do you?’ she remarked.
    He laughed. It was an abrupt crow directed at himself.
    â€˜Check,’ he said. ‘No. No, perhaps not. Although, you know, Amanda, people do do the most extraordinary things. But you’re right. That’s wild. That really is absurd. Unless by chance there were two men.’
    â€˜No, Uncle.’ She led him away from that loophole with an experienced hand. ‘No. There was only one man and he was not Martin, but he looked like Martin from a distance, and he wore clothes like Martin and he must have moved and walked exactly like Martin, or Meg would not have been deceived. Therefore he is someone who knew Martin, and …’
    â€˜Good heavens!’ He was looking at her in horror, pain and dismay on his fine face. ‘You don’t mean that poor boy is in the background somewhere, in some institution, perhaps? Perhaps unrecognizable himself, but teaching someone else, instructing someone?’
    â€˜No, my dear.’ Amanda’s tenacity could match his own. ‘Martin is dead. He was killed in the war. This man who is impersonating him must have known him before. Do you remember how you showed me how Henry Irving walked? You could do that now, but you can’t have seen him for forty or fifty years. When Albert comes in I think we’ll find that this man knew Martin long ago, perhaps in France before the war.’
    The old man sighed. His own imaginings had shaken him and he was only half comforted.
    â€˜Perhaps so. Yes, perhaps so. And what about this photograph in here? This is the same man in the same masquerade, is it?’
    His eye had caught the new copy of the
Tatler
lying open on the couch before him and he bent down to retrieve it. For the first time Amanda frowned.
    â€˜That really is