THE PENAL CLUSTER (1957)
The clipped British voice said, in David Houston’s ear, I’m quite sure he’s one. He’s cashing a check for a thousand pounds. Keep him under surveillance.
Houston didn’t look up immediately. He simply stood there in the lobby of the big London bank, filling out a deposit slip at one of the long, high desks. When he had finished, he picked up the slip and headed towards the teller’s cage.
Ahead of him, standing at the window, was a tall, impeccably dressed, aristocratic-looking man with graying hair.
“The man in the tweeds?” Houston whispered. His voice was so low that it was inaudible a foot away, and his lips scarcely moved. But the sensitive microphone in his collar picked up the voice and relayed it to the man behind the teller’s wicket.
That’s him, said the tiny speaker hidden in Houston’s ear. The fine-looking chap in the tweeds and bowler.
“Got him,” whispered Houston.
* * * *
He didn’t go anywhere near the man in the bowler and tweeds; instead, he went to a window several feet away.
“Deposit,” he said, handing the slip to the man on the other side of the partition. While the teller went through the motions of putting the deposit through the robot accounting machine, David Houston kept his ears open.
“How did you want the thousand, sir?” asked the teller in the next wicket.
“Ten pound notes, if you please,” said the graying man. “I think a hundred notes will go into my brief case easily enough.” He chuckled, as though he’d made a clever witticism.
“Yes, sir,” said the clerk, smiling.
Houston whispered into his microphone again. “Who is the guy?”
On the other side of the partition, George Meredith, a small, unimposing-looking man, sat at a desk marked: MR. MEREDITH—ACCOUNTING DEPT. He looked as though he were paying no attention whatever to anything going on at the various windows, but he, too, had a microphone at his throat and a hidden pickup in his ear.
At Houston’s question, he whispered: “That’s Sir Lewis Huntley. The check’s good, of course. Poor fellow.”
“Yeah,” whispered Houston, “if he is what we think he is.”
“I’m fairly certain,” Meredith replied. “Sir Lewis isn’t the type of fellow to draw that much in cash. At the present rate of exchange, that’s worth three thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars American. Sir Lewis might carry a hundred pounds as pocket-money, but never a thousand.”
Houston and Meredith were a good thirty feet from each other, and neither looked at the other. Unless a bystander had equipment to tune in on the special scrambled wavelength they were using, that bystander would never know they were holding a conversation.
“…nine-fifty, nine-sixty, nine-seventy, nine-eighty, nine-ninety, a thousand pounds,” said the clerk who was taking care of Sir Lewis’s check. “Would you count that to make sure, sir?”
“Certainly. Ten, twenty, thirty,…”
While the baronet was double-checking the amount, David Houston glanced at him. Sir Lewis looked perfectly calm and unhurried, as though he were doing something perfectly legal—which, in a way, he was. And, in another way, he most definitely was not, if George Meredith’s suspicions were correct.
“Your receipt, sir.” It was the teller at Houston’s own window.
Houston took the receipt, thanked the teller, and walked toward the broad front doors of the bank.
“George,” he whispered into the throat mike, “has Sir Lewis noticed me?”
“Hasn’t so much as looked at you,” Meredith answered. “Good hunting.”
“Thanks.”
* * * *
As Houston stepped outside the bank, he casually dropped one hand into a coat pocket and turned a small knob on his radio control box. “Houston to HQ,” he whispered.
“London HQ; what is it, Houston?” asked the earpiece.
“Leadenhall Street Post. Meredith thinks he’s spotted one. Sir Lewis Huntley.”
“Righto. We’ve got men in that part of the city now. We’ll have a network posted within five minutes. Can you hold onto him that long?”
Houston looked around. Leadenhall Street was full of people, and the visibility was low. “I’ll have to tail him pretty closely,” Houston said. “Your damned English fogs don’t give a man much chance to see anything.”
There was a chuckle from the earphone. “Cheer up, Yank; you should have seen it back before 1968. When atomic power replaced coal and oil, our fogs became a devil of a lot cleaner.”
The voice was quite clear; at the London headquarters of the UN Psychodeviant Police, there was no need to wear a throat mike, which had a tendency to make the voice sound muffled in spite of the Statistical Information-Bit Samplers which were supposed to clarify the speech coming through them.
“What do you know about 1968?” Houston asked sardonically. “Your mother was still pushing you around in a baby-carriage then.”
“In a pram,” corrected the Headquarters operator. “That is true, but my dear Aunt Jennifer told me all about it. She was—”
“The hell with your Aunt Jennifer,” Houston interrupted suddenly. “Here comes Sir Lewis. Get me cover—fast!”
“Right. Keep us posted.”
Sir Lewis Huntley stepped out of the broad door of the bank and turned left. He took a couple of steps and stopped. He didn’t look around; he simply took a cigarette out of a silver case, put it in his mouth, and lit it. The glow of the lighter shone yellowly on the brass plate near the door which said: An Affiliate of Westminster Bank, Ltd.
Sir Lewis snapped the light out, drew on the cigarette, and strode on down the street, swinging a blue plastex brief case which contained a thousand pounds in United Nations Bank of England notes.
Houston decided the baronet had not been looking for a tail; he wished he could probe the man’s mind to make sure, but he knew that would be fatal. He’d have to play the game and hope for the best.
“He’s heading east,” Houston whispered. “Doesn’t look as if he’s going to get a cab.”
“Check,” said the earphone.
Sir Lewis seemed in no great hurry, but he walked briskly, as though he had a definite destination in mind.
After a little way, he crossed to the south side of Leadenhall Street and kept going east. Houston stayed far enough behind to be above suspicion, but not so far that he ran a chance of losing his man.
“He’s turning south on Fenchurch,” Houston said a little later. “I wonder where he’s going.”
“Keep after him,” said Headquarters. “Our net men haven’t spotted either of you yet. They can hardly see across the street in this damned fog.”
Houston kept going.
“What the hell?” he whispered a few minutes later. “He’s still following Fenchurch Street! He’s doubling back!”
Leadenhall Street, the banking center of the City of London, runs almost due east-and-west; Fenchurch Street makes a forty-five degree angle with it at the western end, running southwest for a bit and then curving toward the west, toward Lombard.
“Houston,”