Temple Tower Read online

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  Temple Tower

  First published in 1929

  © Trustees of the Estate of H.C. McNeile; House of Stratus 1929-2010

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of H.C. McNeile (Sapper) to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2010 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., 21 Beeching Park, Kelly Bray,

  Cornwall, PL17 8QS, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  EAN ISBN Edition

  1842325590 9781842325599 Print

  0755116879 9780755116874 Print (Alt)

  075512300X 9780755123001 Pdf

  0755123190 9780755123193 Mobi

  0755123379 9780755123377 Epub

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  Herman Cyril McNeile, who wrote under the pseudonym Sapper, was born in Bodmin, Cornwall, on 28 September 1888 to Captain Malcolm McNeile RN and his wife, Christiana Mary. He was educated at Cheltenham College, and then went on to the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, before joining the Royal Engineers in 1907, from which he derived his pseudonym – ‘sappers’ being the nickname of the Engineers.

  During World War One he served first as a Captain, seeing action at both the First and the Second Battle of Ypres, and won the Military Cross before retiring from the army as a Lieutenant-Colonel in 1919. Prior to this, in 1914 he met and married Violet Baird, daughter of a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Cameron Highlanders. They eventually had two sons.

  Somewhat remarkably, he managed to publish a number of books during the war and whilst still serving, (serving officers were not permitted to publish under their own names – hence the need for a pseudonym), commencing with The Lieutenant and Others and Sergeant Michael Cassidy, R.E. in 1915. Lord Northcliff, the owner of the Daily Mail, was so impressed by this writing that he attempted, but failed, to have McNeile released from the army so he could work as a war correspondent.

  McNeile's first full length novel, Mufti, was published in 1919, but it was in 1920 that his greatest hit Bulldog Drummond, was published. This concerned the exploits of a demobilised officer, Captain Hugh ‘Bulldog’ Drummond, ‘who found peace dull’. This was an immediate and enduring success and has been filmed and performed on stage both in the UK and USA. Further Drummond adventures were to follow, along with other novels, notably those featuring the private detective Ronald Standish.

  Much of his writing is based upon the atmosphere, rather than experiences, he absorbed from public school and London Gentleman’s Clubs. His heroes are most decidedly ‘English’ in character and ‘do the right thing’, whilst his villains are foreign and ‘do not play by the rules’. Ian Fleming once noted that his own hero James Bond was ‘Sapper’ from the waist up.

  McNeile died in 1937 at his home in Sussex, having lived a relatively quiet and content life, in sharp contrast to the characters in his books. His friend Gerard Fairlie, thought to be the model for Drummond, went on to write seven more adventures. Many of his books are collections of short stories, with most having a twist in the tail, usually surprising the reader by totally flawing anticipations with regard to their ending within the last few sentences. They are as popular today as ever and eagerly adopted by succeeding generations as amongst the best of their genre.

  House of Stratus was pleased to gain the right to publish from McNeile’s estate in 1999 and has since continually held his major works in print.

  CHAPTER 1

  In which the Maid of Orleans leaves for Boulogne

  The Maid of Orleans drew slowly away from the side. Leaning over the rail was the usual row of cross-Channel passengers calling out final goodbyes to their friends on the quay. An odd Customs man or two drifted back to their respective offices: the RAC representative raised protesting hands to High Heaven because one of his charges had departed without his triptyque. In fact, the usual scene on the departure of the Boulogne boat, and mentioned only because you must start a story somewhere, and Folkestone harbour is as good a locality as any.

  Standing side by side on the quay were two men, who had been waving their hands in that shamefaced manner which immediately descends on the male sex when it indulges in that fatuous pursuit. The targets of their innocent pastime were two women, whose handkerchiefs had fluttered in response from the upper deck. And since these two charming ladies do not come into the matter again it might be as well to dispose of them forthwith. They were, in short, the wives of the two men, departing on their lawful occasions to Le Touquet, there to play a little golf and lose some money in the Casino. Which is really all that needs to be said about them, except possibly their last remark chanted in unison as the ship began to move:

  “Now mind you’re both good while we’re away.”

  “Of course,” answered the two men, also in unison.

  And here and now let us be quite clear about this matter. Before ordering a dinner the average man consults the menu. If his mouth is set for underdone beef with horseradish sauce it is as gall and wormwood to him to be given mutton and redcurrant jelly. Similarly, before reading a book the average reader likes to have a pointer as to what it is about. Does it concern the Sheik of Fiction carrying off a beautiful white woman on his thoroughbred Arab; or does it concern the Sheik of Reality riding a donkey and picking fleas out of his burnous? Does it concern a Bolshevist plot to blow up the policeman on point duty at Dover Street; or does it concern the meditations of an evangelical Bishop on the revised Prayer Book? And honesty compels me to state that it concerns none of these things, which is just as well for all concerned.

  But it occurred to me that the parting admonition of those two charming ladies might possibly be construed to mean that they feared their husbands would not be good during their absence. Far from it: such a thought never even entered their heads. It was just a confirmatory statement of a fact as certain as the presence of Nelson in Trafalgar Square.

  “Dear lambs,” they remarked to one another as the boat cleared the harbour, “it will do them good to have a few days’ golf all by themselves.”

  However, I still haven’t given this pointer. And with it the last hopes of those who insist on a love story will be dashed to the ground. They must have received a pretty severe jolt when this matter of husband and wife was alluded to, though a few of the more optimistic ones may have had visions of a divorce looming somewhere, or even a bit of slap and tickle. Sorry: nothing doing. So if this is the mutton of my restaurant analogy you know what to do. But don’t forget this book weighs as much as Pansy, or the Girl who Lost All for Love, and will do just as much damage to the aspidistra if you hit it. Another thing, too, which it does not concern is golf. On that fact, I must admit with shame and sorrow that these two miserable men had deceived their trusting wives. The larger and more nefarious of the two had actually addressed his partner in crime at breakfast that morning on the subjects of handicaps and niblicks and things, and what they were going to do during their few days at Rye. His eye had not twitched:
his hand when he helped himself to marmalade had been steady. And yet he lied – the dirty dog – he lied.

  And his companion in vice knew he had lied, though, to his everlasting shame, he said no word. Both of these scoundrels allowed their wives to leave them for a perilous sea voyage with a falsehood ringing in their ears. Which shows you the type of men you’re dealing with. However – that’s that: I’ll get on with it. Still not given the pointer? Oh! read the darned book and find out for yourself.

  I will take the larger one first. His height was a shade over six feet in his socks: his breadth and depth were in proportion. Which, in boxing parlance, entitles him to be placed among the big men. And big he was in every sense of the word. His face was nothing to write home about, and even his wife admitted that she only used it to amuse the baby. Anyway, looks don’t matter in a man. What does matter is his condition, and, reverting once more to boxing parlance, this man looked what he was – trained to the last ounce.

  It has always been a bit of a marvel to me how Hugh Drummond kept as fit as he did, in view of his incredible capacity for lowering ale. Nevertheless, the bald fact remains that in the matter of fitness he had all of us beat to a frazzle. I particularly wish to emphasise that fact, because I believe that this is the first occasion that one of his really intimate friends has written about him. Take, for instance, the extraordinary adventure with that crazy woman, Irma, on Salisbury Plain. Joe Dixon wrote that, and Joe, good fellow though he is, hardly knew Hugh at all. But fourteen years have gone by since I first met him, in the front line near Arras, and in fourteen years one gets to know a man. From which it will be inferred that I was the other of the two nefarious scoundrels who had stood waving to their trusting wives from the quay.

  Now, as will perhaps be remembered by those who have followed some of our adventures in the past, we got mixed up with a bunch of criminals shortly after the war. Their leader was a man named Carl Peterson, who was killed by Drummond in Wilmot’s giant airship just before it crashed in flames. And that led up to the amazing happenings on Salisbury Plain that I have already alluded to, when Peterson’s mistress kidnapped Drummond’s wife and nearly got the lot of us. But she escaped, and the first thought that had sprung to my mind on getting Hugh’s letter was that she had reappeared again. Up till now I had had no chance of speaking to him privately, but as the boat disappeared round the end of the jetty, I turned to him eagerly:

  “What’s the game, Hugh? Is it Irma on the scene again?”

  He held up a protesting hand.

  “My dear Peter,” he remarked, “have you noticed that the sun is in the position technically known as over the yardarm?”

  “And as the Governor of North Carolina said to his pal, let’s get to it,” I answered. “What about the Pavilion Hotel?”

  “It is a wonderful thing being married, Peter,” he said thoughtfully as we strolled along the platform.

  “Marvellous,” I agreed, and glanced at him sideways: there was a certain note in his voice that confirmed my suspicions.

  “And,” he continued, “it is good for all of us to sacrifice something in Lent.”

  “It is June,” I answered, “but the principle holds good.”

  “Peter,” he said, as we fell into two easy chairs in the lounge, “your brain has probably jumped to the fact that it was not entirely due to a desire to beat your head off on Rye golf links that I engineered this little affair at Le Touquet. Waiter – two large tankards of ale.”

  “Some such idea had dawned on me,” I agreed. “It seemed so remarkably sudden.”

  “My dear old lad,” he said with a grin, “you can’t imagine the diplomacy I had to use. I first of all suggested that we all four should go to Le Touquet – a proposal which was jumped at by my devoted spouse. I then wrote you that masterpiece of duplicity.”

  “Masterpiece it may have been,” I laughed, “but it gave me brain fever trying to think of an excuse that would hold water.”

  “What did you cough up finally?” he asked.

  “I wrote to my lawyer,” I said, “and told him to write to me and say he’d got some urgent business on my dear old grandmother’s will. Sounded a bit thin to me, I confess, but, by the mercy of Allah, it went down. And Molly was deuced keen to go.”

  “So, bless her, was Phyllis,” answered Hugh. “Thin or not, Peter, it worked. For a few days we are going to be bachelors. And much may happen in a few days.”

  “As you say,” I agreed, “much may happen in a few days. At the same time, you haven’t answered my first question. Is it Irma?”

  “It is not, bless her. Maybe another time, for I should hate to lose her. But this time it’s something quite, quite new.”

  He drained his tankard and pressed the bell.

  “We will have the other half section, while I put you wise. Mark you, Peter, it may be the most hopeless mare’s nest, and if it is we can always play golf. But somehow or other I don’t think it is. In fact, in my own mind, I’m quite certain it isn’t. You don’t know this part of the world at all, do you?”

  “Not a bit,” I said.

  “Well, the first thing to do is to give you a rough idea of the lie of the land. Once we leave Hythe we come to a large stretch of absolutely flat country which is known as Romney Marsh. The word ‘marsh’ is a misnomer, as the soil itself is quite hard and gives very good grazing. There are a few small villages dotted about, and an odd farmhouse or two, but the prevailing note is solitude. Motor charabancs cross it daily from Hastings and Folkestone, and the roads are good but a bit narrow. But it is a solitary sort of place for all that; you feel that anything might happen on it.

  “A few centuries ago it was covered by the sea, which came right up to the foothills, so that all of Romney Marsh is reclaimed land. And from those hills you get the most marvellous view away towards Dungeness and Lydd – if you like that type of view, that’s to say. Open, free, with the tang of the sea in the wind. I love it; which was one of the deciding factors that led me to take our present house. It has a clear sweep for miles right out to sea, and I’ve installed a powerful telescope on the terrace – a telescope, Peter, which has been and is going to be of assistance. However, to return to our muttons. As I’ve told you, the Marsh itself is sparsely populated. The only considerable towns are Rye and Winchelsea – which can hardly be said to be on Romney Marsh at all. Rye is set on a sort of conical hill, and must in the olden days have been almost completely surrounded by water. But except for them, and Lydd, where the artillery range is, and New Romney, there’s not much in the house line, and those that are there belong principally to small farmers.

  “About a week ago – to be exact, the day before I wrote to you – I was undressing to go to bed. It was fairly early – not more than eleven or a quarter past – and after I had got into pyjamas I sat by the open window having a final cigarette. My dressing room faces over the Marsh, and I could see the lights of a passing steamer going West. Suddenly, from the very middle of the Marsh itself, there came a red flash lasting about a second; then a pause, and a moment afterwards it was blue. They were repeated half a dozen times – red, blue, red, blue – then they ceased altogether.

  “For a while I sat there staring out, wondering what on earth they could mean. By putting a couple of matches on my dressing-table I got the rough alignment so that I could get the direction in the morning – but I was sorely tempted to go out and investigate then and there. However, I decided not to; Phyllis was in bed, and I was undressed. And if the truth be told, Peter, even at that early hour the possibility of a little fun had struck me, and I didn’t want to run the risk of cramping our style. So I didn’t mention anything about it to the dear soul. That it was a signal of some sort seemed fairly obvious, but for what and to whom? The first thought that flitted across my mind was that smugglers were at work. For if rumour speaks the truth there is the devil of a lot of smuggli
ng going on since these new silk duties were put on. There are stories told of fast motorboats, and mysterious motorcars that go careering about in the middle of the night. However, when I began to think things over a bit, I dismissed the smuggling theory. To put it mildly, it seemed unlikely that men engaged in such an extremely secret and risky business would take the trouble to advertise themselves by flashing red and blue lights all over the place. Besides, one would have expected the signal – if such it was – to be given towards the sea, and this was given towards the land. So I washed out smugglers.

  “The next solution that presented itself was that it wasn’t a genuine signal at all, but the work of some boy with a developed film sense. A joke inspired by ‘Dandy Dick – the Cowboy’s Terror,’ or something of that sort. And leaving it at that, I fell asleep.

  “The next morning I was up early. A mist was lying over the Marsh which lifted after a while, and I took a squint over my two matches. They, of course, gave me the right direction, but not elevation. That I had to guess. As I’ve told you, there are very few houses about, and there was only one through which the line of my matches passed. Moreover, as far as I could judge, though things look very different by day to what they do at night, that house gave me approximately the right elevation. So I went downstairs and focussed my telescope on it.

  “It was, as I expected, an ordinary farmhouse. There seemed to be a couple of outhouses and four or five biggish trees. Moreover, the whole property stood isolated by itself, like a little island rising out of a lake. As far as I could judge, it stood about a quarter of a mile from the main road between Rye and New Romney, and was connected to it by a rough track. I could see no sign of life, until the front door opened and a woman with a pail in her hand came out and went into one of the outhouses. In every respect a peaceful country scene.