by John Creasey
“Ah, Mr. Brown,” said Mannering affably, in his normal voice. “I believe you wanted to have a word with me.”
“Mannering?”
“Yes, this is Mannering,” Mannering said pleasantly.
He heard a guttural noise as if Yenn were clearing his throat. Then he spoke: “I’ve warned you what will happen if Bruce Danizon isn’t released at once.”
“And so you have. You are going to ruin me, injure or kidnap my wife, and make me do exactly what I am told. You have cold-bloodedly killed a young woman in front of my eyes to make sure that I will obey. Do I understand you fully?”
“Mannering, if you don’t release Bruce Danizon you will never forgive yourself!”
Mannering laughed.
At first it was assumed laughter, calculated to show Yenn just how little he, Mannering, was affected by his threats, but quite suddenly it grew into the kind of laughter which had become so familiar – the laughter this man had used as a weapon with which to frighten his victims. It went on and on. Mannering could hardly control himself. But slowly the vigour slackened and the laughter faded; and he wondered whether he had driven Bernard Yenn alias Brown away.
“My God, I’ll kill you,” Yenn said in a grating voice. “I’ll kill you with my own hands.”
Then he slammed down the receiver, so that it echoed deafeningly in Mannering’s ear.
Mannering turned to Larraby, who was looking at him with excitement, obviously delighted with the way the tables had been turned. Mannering mentally reviewed everything Yenn had said. Why had he lost control of his temper so suddenly? There was something in Bernard Yenn which he simply did not understand.
“What is troubling you?” asked Larraby, his excitement quietening.
“I don’t really know,” Mannering answered slowly. “I can’t say that Yenn or Brown, or whatever his name is, is acting out of character, because I don’t know what his character is. But when we first became involved with the gentleman he behaved as if he had all the confidence in the world. Now, he doesn’t seem to know which way to turn. In fact he sounds like a very frightened man.”
Larraby smiled.
“I don’t find that difficult to understand, sir. In your present mood you are frightening. Quite suddenly this man, obviously so used to having his own way, has found every path blocked and the ground falling away beneath his feet.”
Mannering didn’t respond.
“When were you first aware of the change?” asked Larraby.
“I’ve been trying to place it,” answered Mannering. “After I took Bruce Danizon away, I suppose.”
“Ah!” ejaculated Larraby.
“Meaning, he could be afraid of what Bruce Danizon could tell me,” Mannering reasoned. “I wonder.”
“Should you talk to him?” Larraby made that more a suggestion than a question.
“Soon,” agreed Mannering. “Soon, but not just yet. I have to get out of here without being seen, Josh, and there’s only one way.” He was more relaxed again at the thought of matching his wits against the watchers. “A very simple way, too.”
“I don’t understand, sir.” Larraby seemed genuinely puzzled.
“By the roof,” Mannering said. “I know I’m not as young as I used to be but these roofs shouldn’t be much of a problem.”
It was easy to see that Larraby had to check himself from saying: “Be extremely careful, sir.”
The stars were very bright, and the first glow of the rising moon made beauty in darkness and shadow over the rooftops. The roof-light of Quinns was now closed behind him, and Larraby, making it secure against any possible attempt to force entry, had disappeared. Mannering felt a tremendous sense of exhilaration, for the night air was crisp, innocent of petrol fumes and smoke. He could see the lights of Knightsbridge and those of Piccadilly; at other points the floodlit dome of St. Paul’s reared to the sky alongside the yellow dial of Big Ben and the twin towers of Westminster Abbey.
There was little noise apart from the occasional hum of car or taxi; and only once did Mannering hear the echo of solitary footsteps.
At last, and reluctantly, he moved towards a chimney stack. The brick crumbled slightly on his gloved fingers, a sign of its great age. The roof was conical, and he had to go very carefully to avoid slipping or dislodging a tile; but in a few moments he had crossed the roof of Quinns, and was moving gingerly across the next roof and the next. Soon, hidden by a squat chimney stack, he was on the corner house of Hart Row and New Bond Street.
There were more people about than he had expected, and several policemen. Gordon must be watching the shop as well as the flat, thought Mannering. The lights here were too bright for him to climb down without being seen, but soon he came to a smaller house with a tiny yard behind it, recognising it as an exclusive picture gallery. Lowering himself to the edge of the roof, he went down on one knee, and gradually eased the other leg over the gutter.
Time seemed to recede.
Suddenly he was back in those days, at once so near and yet so far away, when he might be climbing across the roof of a house or shop he planned to burgle. Or he might, now, be on the run from the police, with men and cars stationed at every corner, searchlights combing the roofs, Bristow in charge of a force of police absolutely determined to catch the Baron.
He had always got away.
Gripping the guttering close to a stackpipe, where it would be firmer than in the middle of a long run, he groped with his foot for a ledge below a small window, tested his weight on it, was satisfied, then eased his other leg over the edge of the roof until both feet were on the ledge. Looking down, he saw another ledge, this one above a door; once he was standing on that he had only to lower himself to the ground.
Holding tightly to the guttering, he edged towards it – and the guttering cracked and sagged.
His heart gave a wild leap, but he flattened himself against the window, clutching the narrow pane in an endeavour to take some of the strain off the guttering.
The difficult thing now was to lower his hands to the ledge on which he was standing. Gradually, allowing them to slide downward as he sank to a half kneeling position, he managed to do this. The rest was easy.
In a few seconds he was on the ground, dusting down his knees and elbows and the front of his jacket. His heart was still thumping and he had broken out into a cold sweat; he had not enjoyed that moment when the guttering had sagged.
Looking swiftly round, Mannering saw that the yard was enclosed by a high wall, covered with broken bottle glass. Seizing some old canvas, which was piled against the house, he flung this over the glass, and within seconds was over the wall. Slipping through a gateway, he found himself in a narrow alley, which led him into New Bond Street.
A policeman, testing the door of a record and music shop, glanced at him incuriously, so did a taxi driver obviously on the lookout for a fare. Mannering quickened his step, and a few moments later, found himself in Hart Row. There was Quinns, in darkness, except that a faint light showed at Larraby’s window. And there, opposite Quinns, was a lighted window above Pandit’s carpet shop.
Reaching the side door next to the carpet shop, he slipped into the shallow porch; it was certainly not deep enough to hide him if anyone noticed a shadow or a movement. Taking a penknife from his pocket, one with special tool-blades, he began to work on the lock of the door. The scraping of metal on metal seemed very loud, but he knew that it did not carry far.
For the second time that night his thoughts went back in time – back to the days when he had been a beginner at picking locks, forcing windows, breaking into anything from a suburban house to a bank strong-room. Back to the days when he had learned his ‘trade’ with his heart beating like a trip-hammer. Then, not so far back, when he had become an expert of experts, so practised that he felt no fear, no pulsing blood, even though discovery
seemed imminent. The remarkable thing was that all his skill and dexterity remained, that he had not hesitated for a moment to work on this door.
The lock clicked back, sharply, loudly. He stood close to the wall, listening intently, but there was no sound from within, and none from New Bond Street. He pushed open the door very slowly. There was not even a squeak. Beyond was a narrow staircase which, unlike the one at Quinns, led straight upwards to a lighted landing.
The key hung from a chain behind the door.
Mannering closed the door and locked it, then without hesitation started up the stairs. They were carpeted, and they creaked. He pressed against the wall so that he could tread close to it and so lessen the creaking; and for the rest of the way the only sound was the slight movement of his clothes as they slid against the wall.
He reached the landing.
There was an uncanny silence, which he did not understand.
Three doors led off the landing; one, slightly open, to a bathroom, the next to a room which must overlook Hart Row, the other the back of the shops on this side. At last, listening at the doorway of the room overlooking Hart Row, Mannering heard a rustle of sound. The door was ajar, not wide enough for him to squeeze inside but wide enough for him to look through.
He saw Belle Danizon, profile half-turned towards him, looking out of the window and he had no doubt that she was watching Quinns – watching for him. He smiled wryly to himself, and turned to the second room.
This door was also ajar, and wider open.
He judged from the position of it and the window beyond that in fact this also overlooked Hart Row as well as in the opposite direction. It was very long and narrow, obviously two small rooms knocked into one. He peered inside, and saw the man he had seen only once before, the man who had been at the Charity Ball with Belle and Bruce Danizon – Bernard Yenn. He was sitting in front of a small machine which looked like a miniature tape recorder, and he was whispering into it.
Mannering could not hear the words.
He strained his ears, but without success. Unless he could get nearer he would not be able to hear, and he was suddenly very anxious to do so, for Yenn was very intent on his task; what he was saying was obviously of great importance. Slowly, cautiously, Mannering pushed the door further open and inched into the room.
At last he could hear what Yenn was saying.
“It will not harm you, you will be safe. When you see Mannering, kill him. If you do not kill him, he will kill you.” There was a pause before he went on again in that intense whisper: “It will not harm you, you will be safe. When you see Mannering, kill him. If you do not kill him, he will kill you.”
He stopped, and for the first time sat back and relaxed, as if his task was now done. But his movement changed his position slightly, and suddenly he went tense again, his whole body stiffening.
Mannering knew that he had been seen.
15
GAUNTLET
“Don’t move,” Mannering said in a very soft voice. “Don’t move an inch – and keep your hands on the table.”
Yenn sat as if he were carved from stone. Sitting, he was a powerfully-built, thickset man, with bull-like shoulders and a short neck. His head was big; his hair, which was turning grey, wavy and attractive. He was both handsome and strong looking, with the kind of strength which would make him capable of heaving the table over and leaping at Mannering.
But had he the courage?
After a long pause, Mannering said: “Now play that tape back.”
The man made no move.
“Play it back,” Mannering ordered, only to see the shoulders hunch, the biceps swell beneath the shirtsleeves. He was prepared for the bull-like rush that followed, the crash as the table went over and the tape-recorder fell, so prepared that he went forward at the same time, side-stepped, and brought the hard side of his right hand mercilessly down on the thick neck. Yenn moved in a curious lurch, then crashed downward, head first. With part of his mind tuned in to sounds from the other room, Mannering heard a sudden gasp behind him, spun round towards the passage, and saw Belle Danizon standing on the threshold. She darted back to the room in which she had been sitting, but Mannering had a foot in the door before she could close it.
As he bore down on her, she put up her hands as if to fend him off, but he slid one arm under her knees and the other round her waist, ignoring her attempts to push him away. Holding her so tightly that she had to fight for breath, he carried her into the other room, where Yenn was now struggling to pick himself up, and dumped her in an armchair.
“I don’t want to hurt you, my dear, so don’t try any tricks,” he warned her.
Crossing to Yenn, wary in case he was pretending to be worse than he was, he yanked him to his feet and pushed him towards a bed on one side of the room. As the back of his knees struck the edge of the bed, Yenn dropped on to it.
“Stay there and don’t move,” Mannering ordered, and turned back towards Belle Danizon.
“No!” she gasped.
Without speaking, he pushed her chair against the bed so that he could see both her and Yenn at the same time, the chair back making it impossible for Yenn to get to his feet too quickly. Then he straightened the table and picked up the tape-recorder. It was identical with the one which had been left in his study, and the one left outside the window at Quinns. Sitting on a corner of the table, his prisoners facing him, he studied the machine, which was quite conventional and ran off a tiny dry cell battery. He wound the tape back on the spool, then played it.
The man’s whispering voice sounded.
“When you see Mannering, kill him. If you do not kill him, he will kill you.”
There was a pause, broken only by heavy breathing; and then the voice sounded again, still whispering, baneful and insidious.
“When you see Mannering, kill him. If you do not kill him, he will kill you.”
He listened to it several times, and was aware of two things. First, the way the man and the girl stared at him; second, the almost hypnotic effect of those whispered words, of the injunction to kill. Gradually, the intentness of the others increased. Yenn eased himself up on one elbow and peered towards Mannering, while Belle gripped the arms of her chair. The hypnotic effect seemed to grow and grow, and two words began to echo and echo in his mind.
“Kill Mannering . . . Kill Mannering . . . Kill Mannering . . .”
He began to realise something of the truth, and fought against the influence of that insidious, whispering voice. Once he realised its effect on him, resistance wasn’t difficult, but he showed no sign of this, just stared down at the tiny tape-recorder.
“Kill Mannering . . . If you do not kill him, he will kill you.”
Yenn was getting very slowly off the bed, giving the impression that he had to avoid startling Mannering. Even when Mannering raised his eyes, Yenn continued to move. Now his feet were touching the floor; in a moment he would begin to move towards Mannering.
Belle eased herself up in her chair, too, and they were both standing.
The voice stopped as the tape ran out and there was intense silence. The other man stood still for a moment but soon began to move again. Mannering let him come halfway across the gap between them, then put his hand to his jacket pocket. Yenn stopped abruptly. Mannering took out an automatic pistol.
“What have you got against Mannering?” he demanded.
The girl gasped. The man muttered: “If—if you put that gun away we can talk.”
“We can talk whether I put it away or not,” Mannering growled. “Go back to the bed and sit down.”
Belle was muttering something to herself; it sounded like: “It didn’t work, it didn’t work.” Yenn hesitated for a few seconds, then backed slowly towards the bed, sitting down obediently.
“What have you got against Mannering?” Manne
ring demanded, and then added in a bitter tone: “We might have something in common.”
“Aren’t you working for Mannering?” Yenn asked, as if he could not believe his ears.
“I’m working for myself,” Mannering growled.
“Who—who are you?”
“Never mind who I am. I asked you why you’ve got it in for Mannering.”
“He—he’s breaking up my organisation. He—but you know. You took some of my disci—” Yenn broke off, but Mannering pretended not to notice the significance of the truncated word—”my assistants, to Quinns.”
“You mean the Rocco girl, Esmeralda Devon and young Clawson?”
“Of course that’s who I mean! You—you took them to Quinns. Didn’t Mannering pay you to do that?”
“I did it for Mannering—yes.”
“Then—then I don’t understand you. I just don’t understand.” Yenn sounded baffled.
“Sometimes Mannering needs a strong-arm man who will do what he wants and ask no questions. I’m a strong-arm man. It’s not the first time I’ve worked for Mannering. His money is good and he asks no questions.” Mannering managed to give the pause which followed a positively sinister significance before going on: “He doesn’t tell me much, either. I know he wants to put paid to your account, but I don’t know why.”
“So you don’t,” breathed Yenn.
“Care to tell me?” Mannering asked.
“He—he knows I’m on to one of the biggest . . .” Yenn gulped, and broke off.
“One of the biggest—go on.”
“He knows that I’m on to one of the biggest and easiest—” There was another awkward pause.
“Go on—say it. Racket?”
“I—I can make millions!”
“A lot of people say they can.”
“I assure you that I can,” Yenn insisted, and there was no doubt at all, he believed it. His manner was beginning to change, as if the effect of the shock was over and he was able to fight back.