The Man in the Green Hat Read online

  The Man In The Green Hat

  Manning Coles

  1955

  A British diplomat on vacation in Italy some years after World War II walks into the hills above Lake Como wearing a green sports hat—and disappears. British Intelligence sends out crack agent Tommy Hambledon to find him, and Hambledon rapidly becomes involved in a situatin as dangerous as his wartime assignments in Nazi Germany. Manning Coles’ books have won a reputation for the authenticity with which they present the exploits of a modem Intelligence agent. In The Man In The Green Hat Tommy Hambledon once again wears his cloak and dagger with a difference.

  By Manning Coles

  Novels:

  Come and Go

  The Far Traveller

  Happy Returns

  Brief Candles

  This Fortress

  Intrigue and Adventure:

  Concrete Crime

  The Exploits of Tommy Hambledon

  Duty Free

  No Entry

  Death of an Ambassador

  Birdwatcher’s Quarry

  The Basle Express

  The Man In The Green Hat

  All That Glitters

  Alias Uncle Hugo

  Night Train To Paris

  Now Or Never

  Dangerous By Nature

  Diamonds To Amsterdam

  Not Negotiable

  Among Those Absent

  Let The Tiger Die

  With Intent To Deceive

  The Fifth Man

  Green Hazard

  Without Lawful Authority

  They Tell No Tales

  Toast To Tomorrow

  Drink To Yesterday

  Books for Boys:

  Great Caesar’s Ghost

  Dedicated with deepest sympathy to all Couriers of Continental Tours

  Contents

  Cast

  I. Missing

  II. A Set Of Prints

  III. That Hat

  IV. Two Gentlemen Of Milan

  V. The Convoy

  VI. Mountain Air

  VII. Death Of Two Lovers

  VIII. Rodrigo Algani

  IX. Well-Known Author

  X. Number Plate

  XI. Rosario

  XII. The Three Bullets

  XIII. The Blind Man

  XIV. Innocent English Tourists

  XV. Point Three-Two

  XVI. Kill And Kill Again

  XVII. Found Drowned

  XVIII. Villa Garofana

  XIX. Storm

  XX. Beyond The Gate

  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 sub-machine 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 stiffl
y 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.”

  He went along to his chief’s room and found him alone.

  “Come in, Hambledon, and sit down. I’ve got something here which I think might interest you. Do you know the Italian lakes?”

  “I’ve been round and about there,” said Hambledon, “but it’s long ago before the war. Charles Denton and I went on a motoring tour there. I don’t know the country at all well.”

  “Lake Como. Como itself. A place called Bellagio.”

  “We stayed a night at Como,” said Tommy. “I’ve never been to Bellagio.”

  “Do you know a fellow in the Diplomatic called Adair? Leonard Montagu Adair. He’s a first secretary.”

  Hambledon nodded and said that he did know the man but not intimately. “He used to come into the cocktail bar at Scott’s. Quite a nice fellow but not exactly my type. He has smooth hair and an orderly mind. What’s happened to him?”

  “He’s been on holiday at Bellagio and he seems to have gone missing.”

  “He went to spend the night with a friend and when he woke up in the morning he was all over measles.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Hambledon told him.

  “Well, it’s a possible explanation but I don’t think it’s very likely with Adair, He is so very correct.”

  “Married?” asked Tommy.

  “Oh no. A confirmed bachelor. He doesn’t like women.”

  “That wouldn’t prevent his having measles. What, actually, has happened?”

  Adair had had a worrying time in the matter of Trieste. He was a very conscientious man and had been seriously overworking for months; he refused to take his leave before it was due, but by the time it came due he was greatly in need of it. It was considered quite possible that he had lost his memory. He usually went to small, quiet places for his leave and stayed in good but small hotels. His hobby was walking and he was something of au authority upon Alpine plants. He had said that he was going to Lake Como this time; he wanted to revisit a part of the country he had wandered over when he was a prisoner of war on the run. Someone had recommended an hotel at Bellagio; Adair had been there for ten or eleven days out of an intended fortnight and had arranged to return to England for the rest of his leave.

  “Can he speak Italian?” asked Tommy.

  “Dear me, yes, very well. When he was a junior secretary, he spent some years at Rome and took a liking to the country and the people. He usually spends his vacations in Italy. Well, now, Hambledon, this is all rather worrying. The Diplomatic don’t like losing its members; there were two who went missing when on a Continental holiday not so long ago and they are said to have turned up again in Russia. They were not such big noises as Adair—”

  “But the uproar raised by their departure is still clearly audible,” said Tommy. “But I rather gathered that in their case men who knew them well were not entirely surprised. In Adair’s case—”

  “Adair is quite above any such suspicion, I can assure you of that. He is completely trustworthy. All the same, after the last explosion everyone is naturally anxious to avoid another and we have succeeded in keeping it out of the papers so far. The proprietor of Adair’s hotel at Bellagio is equally anxious not to let it be known that visitors to his hotel are liable to disappear without trace and he has kept it out of the local papers too.”

  “All right so far,” commented Tommy. “How did the news reach you?”

  “Adair left the hotel in the morning of Wednesday last week, saying that he would be out all day until late in the evening. He did not return. The proprietor left things alone for two whole days and then informed the police, who spent another couple of days making enquiries and then informed Milan, who told the British Consul, who told us. You see, the British Consul knew who Adair was; no one else did.”

  “Was he travelling under another name?”

  “Oh no, but he was carrying an ordinary passport, not his official diplomatic one, and who knows even first secretaries by name? It is not even as if he were in Rome now; that was twenty years ago and he was very small fry then.”

  “Which embassy is he at now?” asked Tommy.

  “He is in London. It is really urgent, Hambledon. I said he was completely trustworthy and he is, but he does know a lot, especially about the Trieste problem, and I need not remind you of all people that there are ways of making men tall, however reliable they may be.”

  Hambledon nodded. “You said just now that his hobby was walking and that he was interested in Alpine plants. Doesn’t it seem most likely that he has met with an accident on those mountains? He may be lying somewhere with a broken leg, in which case—it’s days ago now—he is probably dead by now, or he may have died more suddenly and mercifully by falling into a ravine somewhere where his mouldering bones won’t be found for years, if ever.”

  “Of course, that is what the police think, and the mountain section of the Finance Police—they are the men who chase the smugglers—have made a prolonged search for him. In fact, they are still looking.”

  “But a human body is a small object on a mountainside, especially as dead men lie still, and he may have fallen into a crevice.”

  “I know, I know. I also have seen the mountains round Lake Como. But it is imperatively necessary, Hambledon, to find out whether he is alive or dead and, if alive, where he is.”

  “It almost sounds to me,” said Hambledon thoughtfully, “as though it would be much simpler if he were found dead.”

  “If he’s in the lake,” said the other man, “he won’t even be found dead. However, let us not be defeatist. Will you go and look for him, Hambledon?”

  “Certainly I will and I hope I find him.”

  “You will need some assistants; this might be quite a big job.”

  “Will you leave that to me? I know two men who might be useful there.”