Waiting for Orders by Eric Ambler Read Free Book Online

living in. He must be a refugee.
    Dr Czissar, my refugee Czech detective, was based on two real refugees from Nazi persecution. I had known them both before the war; one a Prague newspaper editor, the other a German historian deprived of his academic post for being part Jewish. The flapping raincoat and the umbrella carried like a rifle were stage props added when I began to write. The historian was the author of a highly praised history of the German army, so it seemed to me right that Czissar should have a soldierly Prussian manner.
    The Intrusions of Dr Czissar
passed the time between the refusal of my services by the Admiralty and their curt rejection by the RAF – ‘What the hell do you expect us to have for a thirty-year-old writer? Try the army.’ Louise Crombie and I were married in the local town hall, a civil ceremony conducted by the Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths. A certain piquancy was added to the occasion by our being in possession of inside information. In that London suburb the deaths expected in the first serious air-raid would number about five thousand, and collapsible utility coffins to contain the corpseshad been ordered by the man who married us. They were already stored in the town hall cellars below us.
    I took a course in First Aid for stretcher-bearers.

The Intrusions of Dr Czissar:
The Case of the Pinchbeck Locket
    T HE winter afternoon on which Dr Jan Czissar chose to introduce his peculiar personality into the life of Assistant-Commissioner Mercer of Scotland Yard was cold and depressing. And Mercer, besides having a cold and being depressed, was also busy. Had Dr Czissar not been in possession of a letter of introduction from, as Sergeant Flecker put it, ‘one of the ’Ome Office brass ’ats,’ he would not have seen the Assistant-Commissioner at all.
    The letter was brief. Having presented his compliments, the writer said that Dr Jan Czissar had been, until the September of 1938, a distinguished member of the Czech police organization, that he was a welcome guest in this country, and that any courtesy which could be extended to him by the Assistant-Commissioner would be very much appreciated. It was not until it was too late to save himself that Mercer found that the letter, though brief, was by no means to the point.
    Mercer had dealt with distinguished visitors to Scotland Yard before. There would be the preliminary exchange of courtesies, then a tour of the buildings, conducted by Inspector Denton, who would appear, as if by accident, a few moments after the visitor had entered Mercer’s room, and, finally, the farewell handshake and a safe conduct to the Embankment entrance and a taxi.
    In spite, therefore, of his cold and his depression and his interrupted work, it was with a smile that Mercer greeted Dr Czissar’s entry into his room.
    Dr Czissar was a plump, middle-aged man of rather more than medium height, with a round, pale face and a pair of sad, brown eyes, magnified to cow-like proportions by a pair of thick pebble glasses. He wore a long grey raincoat, which reachednearly to his ankles, and carried an unfurled umbrella. As he came into the room he stopped, clicked his heels, clapped the umbrella to his side as if it were a rifle, bowed, and said loudly and distinctly: ‘Doctor Jan Czissar. Late Prague police. At your service.’
    ‘Delighted, Doctor. Won’t you take a seat?’
    Dr Czissar took a seat. His cow-like eyes blinked round the room and came to rest once more on Mercer.
    ‘It is good of you,’ said the Doctor suddenly, ‘to see me so promptly. It is an honour to be received at Scotland Yard. In common with my colleagues’ – the cow-like eyes narrowed slightly – ‘my
late
colleagues of the Czech police, I have always admired your institution.’
    Mercer was used to dealing with this sort of thing. He smiled deprecatingly. ‘We do our best. Ours is a law-abiding country.’ And then his ears caught the sound they had been waiting for – the