The Man in the Green Hat

Manning Coles

Description

A British diplomat, looking natty in a green hat, walks into the brooding hills above Lake Como and disappears. The police investigate but can uncover no clues or evidence. This is a job for British Intelligence in the person of none other than the intrepid Tommy Hambledon.
Hambledon takes on Italy's vicious underworld, is diverted by some society types, and side-steps some unrepentant fascists in this rapid-transit chase for a mastermind and a hidden treasure.

Sujets

• Policier & Thriller
• Thriller
• Thrillers
• Espionage
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Rare Treasure Editions
• Date de parution: 12 avril 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781774641040
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Man in the Green Hat
by Manning Coles

First published in 1955
This edition published by Rare Treasures
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

























THE MAN IN THE GREEN HAT

by Manning Coles

Dedicated with deepest sympathy to all Couriers of Continental Tours

Cast
thomas elphinstone hambledon, of Foreign Office Intelligence
William Forgan
his assistants
alexander campbell
leonard montagu adair, of the Diplomatic Service
faresi, manager of an hotel at Bellagio
giorgio mandoli, a forger
acostino and cian grisoni, brothers
rodrigo algani, a retired manufacturer from Naples
ettore stefani, servant to the Grisonis
mr. bunce, of the Canadian book trade
rosario rossini, ex-Partisan, a smuggler
antonio mobra, a blind man
Members of the Italian Police Force, Soldiers, Innkeepers, Waiters, Smugglers, etc.





I. Missing
In the back seat of the car there sat a stout, elderly man with a black Fascist cap pulled low over his forehead to hide his conspicuous bald head. As the car moved off he leaned forward, and spoke to a man who was perched on the running-board outside, level with him.
“If this comes off, Colonel Valerio, I will offer you an empire!”
“A thousand thanks,” said Valerio politely. He could not spare a hand to salute since he was using one to hold on with and the other to carry a submachine gun.
In the rear seat beside the bald man there was also a young woman, young enough to be his daughter. She spoke to him, but he did not answer; he had other things to think about at the moment. Women, he had always thought, were for a man’s leisure hours, not when he was busy or worried and anxious.
The car, a black saloon with Rome number plates, was proceeding very slowly up a steep road and the driver slowed still more for a sharp bend. The man sitting beside the driver shifted his position and the Sten gun he was nursing came more plainly into view. There was yet a third armed man in the party; he was on the running-board on the other side, beyond the girl. There had been two more; the elderly man turned his head and glanced out of the rear window. They were still there, trotting behind and keeping up easily, for they were young and active. He glanced at the girl; tears were running steadily down her face and she made no move to wipe them away; one would have said that she was unaware that she was weeping. She had been carrying a fur coat over her arm when they entered the car, the fur still damp and streaked with the rain of the night before, but the coat had fallen unnoticed to the floor and lay disregarded about their feet. She had no handbag; she had left it in the room where they had spent the night; those who opened it later found that the small mirror was broken.
The weather had been bad for days and it had rained pitilessly in the night, so that every little stream down the mountainside was spouting white and the roadside gutters were running, but the afternoon was warm and fair, for it was April. The road was narrow and bounded on either hand by garden walls over which hung the branches of flowering trees in their early spring leaf. The road bent to the left and almost at once bent again; as it happened the short stretch between the two corners was not overlooked from any of the houses along the road. It had been selected for that purpose.
About halfway along the boundary wall curved in on one side to a pair of tall gates backed with sheet-iron for privacy. They were shut. Valerio spoke to the driver.
“Stop here, by those gates.”
The car stopped and the bald-headed man leaned forward anxiously.
“Keep quiet,” whispered Valerio. “I thought I heard something. I will go and see. Gatti!”
The man on the other running-board stepped into the road and came round the car.
“Go to that corner,” said Valerio, “and see if there is anything corning. You”—to the driver—“go to the other corner.” They ran off in opposite directions. “Guido!”
The man with the Sten gun, who had been sitting beside the driver, got out of the car.
“Stay here and keep watch,”
Valerio walked away from the car, stopped in an attitude of listening, and peered mysteriously about him. The elderly man in the back seat was leaning eagerly forward, for he had been told that this was a rescue and he thought it might yet succeed.
Guido put his head into the car and the bald-headed man bent towards him.
“The game is up,” said Guido in a menacing voice, and withdrew his head again.
The elderly man fell back in his seat and the girl tool: hold of his hand. Valerio came running back to the car.
“Get out,” he said, opening one of the rear doors; “get out quickly, both of you. Go and stand in that corner of the wall by the gate.”
They obeyed him, nervously and in haste. As they walked the few steps to the corner the girl spoke to her elderly companion.
“Aren’t you glad,” she said, “that I followed you to the end?”
As they reached the corner Colonel Valerio levelled his submachine gun at them, they turned and saw it and the girl screamed.
“No, no! You must not kill him!”
She sprang forward, but Valerio fired and they both fell. After five shots the gun jammed and they were still alive. Valerio took his pistol from his pocket, but that also refused to fire. He seized Guide’s Sten gun and killed them both with that.
Valerio called up the two young men who had followed the car.
“Lino. Sandrino. You will guard these bodies; let no one touch them. I will send for the carrion later.”
Gatti and the driver were recalled from their posts at the bends of the road; they, with Guido and Valerio, got into the car and drove hastily away, for there was more work waiting for them elsewhere. The sun went in, the rain came down as heavily as before, and there was silence outside the gate except for the sound of raindrops pattering on the leaves.
Mussolini, Dictator of Italy, had ended his days on earth.
Tommy Hambledon, at his desk in the Foreign Office, was reading with enthralled attention three separate eyewitness accounts from Berlin of how a certain German politician had been persuaded to cross the interzonal frontier into Soviet territory. One said that the politician had been strolling along near the sector boundary apparently looking for someone on the other side. When the someone did appear, the politician’s face lit up with visible joy. With rapturous gestures he rushed across the road and warmly embraced the someone who as warmly reciprocated these touching evidences of fraternal-in-the-cause affection. When these delightful transports had abated the two men walked away arm-in-arm into the Soviet sector together, chatting animatedly.
“One of these days,” said Tommy half aloud, “my eyebrows will go up so far that they’ll stick and I shall have to choose between having a facial operation or going about looking like George Robey for the rest of my life,” He threw down that sheet and took up another.
“I was sitting in a café,” began the second statement, “at the next table to the Subject of this Enquiry, who was placidly sipping coffee and appeared to be perfectly at ease. Suddenly he set down his cup, rose abruptly from his seat, and walked stiffly out of the café. Fearing lest he might have been taken ill, I followed him. He made straight for the Soviet boundary and I observed that the nearer he approached it the faster he walked although it was evident to me that he did so unwillingly, as under the influence of some strong compulsion. I have seen a rabbit fascinated by a snake and it was like that. Just beyond the sector boundary, on the Russian side, there stood a tall man with prominent facial bones and dark, flashing, magnetic eyes. He had these fixed upon the Subject of this Enquiry, who continued to proceed towards him with the inevitability of a steel filing drawn by a magnet—”
“Or a soap bubble going down the bath waste,” said Tommy.
“When they met, the Subject’s knees appeared to give way and he fell upon his face, not moving. Whereupon the tall man picked him up with terrifying ease, slung him over his shoulder, and walked away unhindered by any. In my opinion, the Eastern cults which develop personal magnetism—”
“What we want in Berlin,” said Tommy, discarding this sheet also, “are a few trained octopuses to crawl through the drains into the eastern sector by night and bring us back any man whose photograph has been shown to them. Personal magnetism, huh!”
The third account said simply that the politician had been walking near the sector boundary when a tank roared out from the Russian side towards him, men leapt out and dragged him in, and the tank spun round and went back, firing all its armament indiscriminately in all directions, but fortunately without hitting anybody.
Tommy would have liked to believe this one if only to reward it for being brief and credible, except that there had been no case of shooting anywhere on the sector boundary the day the German politician disappeared. He weighed the possibility of shooting affrays in Berlin being so frequent that they were not reported unless somebody was killed, and then his telephone rang.
“Hambledon speaking.”
“That fellow who vanished in Berlin and was said to have crossed the sector boundary—”
“I’m just reading the reports,”
“Well, he didn’t. He went to spend the night with a friend and when he woke up in the morning he’d got measles.”
“And didn’t report—”
“Well, no. There were reasons.”
Tommy snorted loudly, put down the receiver, and began to tear up the reports when his telephone rang again.
“Hambledon speaking.”
“Could you come along to my room? Yes, at once if you could. Thank you, Hambledon.