by John Creasey
Hotel Tragedy
It was as quick as that, and as unexpected.
Loftus heard Craigie come out of the room behind him. Then he saw Farrow’s gun rise a matter of an inch, and he flung himself forward.
It was the only thing to do.
If he stood where he was he would be shot, and there was at least a chance of spoiling their aim if he moved. He went with a queerly detached frame of mind, diving low as he would in a tackle. He heard the sharp reports of two guns, and an exclamation from Craigie.
He was helped because he was on a patch of polished parquet, and he slithered along for a foot or more, and was able to grasp the ankle of one of the men. He heard a bullet stab into the floor close to his head, but he tightened his grip and pulled. He felt the man falling, and he swept out his other arm, catching the second man about the knees.
A bullet cut through the shoulder of his coat.
He felt a sharp pain, but it was of little importance. He tried to get up, but where the polish had helped him before it was against him then, and he slipped. But he saw that Leroux was lying on his back, dazed and without his gun. The danger came from Farrow, who was on one knee and pointing the gun towards him.
Loftus flattened right out.
A bullet went over his head, but he knew that if a second one came he would be finished. He was surprised that it did not come, and more surprised when he saw Farrow stagger, a strained expression on the waiter’s face. The gun dropped slowly from his hand, and Farrow hit the floor.
Loftus stood up slowly, and as he did so a voice came along the passage.
“All right, Bill?”
It was Thornton. He had a gun in his hand and his face was grave. Loftus leaned for a moment against the wall.
“Thanks to you, yes. Gordon isn’t. Where did you spring from?”
“I was watching the Mortimer crowd, when the shooting started in the foyer. The Errols are holding them up.”
“Them?”
“See for yourself. I was trying to get round at the back of them.”
“Let’s have your gun, and see what you can do for him,” said Loftus with a motion towards Craigie. As he took the gun he saw Leroux open his eyes, and he did not wait long to decide what to do with him. He bent down and hit the manager on the back of his neck with the butt of the gun.
“Weapon for you on the floor,” Loftus said briefly.
Thornton had already seen the gun which Farrow had dropped, and he pocketed it. Loftus stepped quickly towards the foyer, keeping close to the wall.
He was prepared for a shock, but not on the scale he witnessed. At least a dozen people, dead or injured, lay on either side of the foyer, the doors blocked by the bodies of men.
He saw Mike and Mark Errol standing there, one on each side. He saw Carruthers, also; Carruthers was stretched out, unconscious.
Opposite the doors; and at the entrance of the main lounge, were four or five men—he could not be sure how many, for he could not see them clearly. He did recognise Maximilian Golt, who was on one knee behind a heavy chair. He saw an armed dwarf, also, and another man standing behind a pillar which saved him from the Errols, and in his hand was a tommy-gun. The man was reloading, and Loftus took his chance then. He stepped forward into sight, and fired three times. He hit the tommy-gun merchant in the side of the head, Golt in the shoulder and a third man in the thigh. As they fell, the dwarf turned like lightning, and fired. But he fired too soon for the bullet went wide, and by then Loftus had his other gun out; the dwarf went down.
One remained, a thin-faced man. Loftus did not remember having seen him before; but there was no time for worrying about that. He also had a gun, and for the moment it seemed as if he would beat Loftus to the trigger. For the second time that day someone else came to Loftus’s rescue, for a bullet snapped from Mike Errol’s gun, and the thin-faced man’s automatic dropped.
It happened like that.
It was over almost before it had started, and there had been no measurable time for Loftus. From the moment he had heard the screaming and the shouting and the deadly tapping of the machine-gun to the moment when he saw the last man’s gun fall, time seemed to have been crowded into an eternity.
The Errols straightened up and stepped forward.
Some people on either side of the foyer also moved, and a woman began to shriek, high-pitched piercing screams which began to get on his nerves. But he had not spoken before the doors opened on either side of the foyer to admit uniformed policemen, and quite suddenly Loftus knew that for the moment he had nothing to worry about except Golt and his followers. He spoke crisply, and as if nothing untoward had happened.
“We’ll get these four into Leroux’s office. The tommy-gun merchant won’t be talking again.”
As the injured men were moved, Mike and Mark told the story piecemeal. They had been by the front doors when the thin-faced man had tried to force his way out. He had been referred to Miller, who had been about to speak to him when the dwarf had appeared in the doorway, and Miller had been shot in the chest.
“Miller too?” said Loftus grimly.
“It’s a marvel any of us are left,” Mark said laconically. “The tommy-gun merchant just started to open up, intending to carve a way through. Mike and I had gone to one side to see Miller, and to try to get the dwarf. Police and S.B. men crowded in from outside, and were mown down as they came. People at the sides moved and the little swine turned the gun on them. It was a massacre.”
Loftus nodded.
“Mike and I dodged to the cover of the doors,” said Mark, “And the others were piled up so high we had protection. Spats squeezed away somewhere . . .”
“I’ve seen him. He got me here.”
“Good work. Carruthers took a packet—but a slight head-wound is the limit, I think.”
“Well, that’s something,” said Loftus.
“So your idea worked,” said Mike slowly.
Loftus said: “I half wish it hadn’t.”
But despite the tragedy of those few minutes at the Landon, when in all eleven people were killed and twenty-three seriously injured, he did not wish that the idea had not worked. He had believed that the attackers of Whittaker were in the hotel, and his belief had been vindicated. For under interrogation, and he was not gentle, Golt, the dwarf and the third gunman admitted that they had “questioned” the regional director, but they did not say what it had been about.
That did not matter; Whittaker would talk.
The fourth man whom Mike Errol had wounded was named Letaxa, and he was officially in London collecting subscriptions for Greek relief funds. He cracked completely under Loftus’s questioning. Yes, he had official connections in Greece, and his mission was a genuine one, but he was also working under cover with Golt. They had wanted to get the full details of the food storage in England—he could not say for whom, and Loftus believed him. Golt had also wanted to get that information, and Letaxa believed that he had succeeded in getting at least some of it. He had not known of the questioning of Whittaker, but he did know that the dwarf—named Dak—had shot the thirty-ninth area commissioner in his, Letaxa’s, room. The body had been taken to Arkeld’s room to create the impression that he had been shot there. Farrow had helped to carry the body in, and Farrow—Loftus realised—had lied deliberately about the time of the shot, and what he had been doing; Arkeld had been killed just before two o’clock.
The hotel had been quickly emptied of residents and guests. As the search begun, various details came to light. It became clear that Leroux and Farrow had been working with Golt for a long time, that other servants were also working with them, and that the members of the circus had stayed at the hotel—without registering—for some time past. Topsy and the very fat man with the grey bowler, however, had not been there, although the deep-voiced Skippy had, from time to time.
The only servants who had waited on them had been the men and women in the confidence of Leroux. It was easy to understand when the full truth was
known how easily the explosion had been arranged, and how convenient it had been for the murder of Arkeld and for the torture of Whittaker.
Loftus heard reports from time to time at his flat.
There was a small room there which had been prepared for such emergencies as interrogation of the nature then demanded. It was without windows, and its walls and door were sound-proof. It was rarely used, but Loftus proposed to shrink from nothing that day. He left Golt there for a while, and he was about to go into the man when a car drew up outside.
Thornton, watching from the window, reported that Whittaker had arrived, with Sir Bruce Mortimer.
“We’ll see ’em first,” said Loftus.
One of the first things they learned from Mortimer was that Craigie was out of danger, and that did a great deal to ease the minds of the Department Z men; Craigie was more than a leader, he was a legend. Loftus lit a cigarette as he digested the news, and regarded the regional director of food conservation for Scotland.
Nothing about Whittaker’s face had improved. The cold, fish-like eyes, the long curved nose and small mouth with the receding chin all combined to make a bad impression. There were patches under his eyes, and he looked tired, but otherwise he showed no signs of his ordeal.
Loftus was torn between admiration for, and dislike of, the man.
Mortimer cleared his throat.
“The Prime Minister suggested that we came to you, Loftus—as Craigie is unfortunately unable to work. Er . . .” he broke off and looked at Whittaker, whose sharp and unpleasant voice jarred on Loftus’s ears.
“This is the position, Loftus. I have for a long time been victimised by blackmailers. Legally all that I have done in the way of business is irreproachable. There is no room for morals or sentiment in such a sphere. I have enemies, and I have always dealt with them myself. For some time after I took up my present position I was not approached, then I was threatened with many dire penalties—unless I resigned. Naturally I refused. Immediately prior to the convening of this conference, I was asked to hand over a copy of the food distribution and storage plan. I refused to do that also. Last night I was visited, and you know what happened. They wanted the plan. I continued to refuse it. That is all I can tell you.”
“Thanks,” said Loftus quietly. “It may interest you to know that the men who maltreated you aren’t precisely enjoying themselves now.”
“That doesn’t matter.” Whittaker waved a hand impatiently. “What matters is a prevention of another affair like last night’s.”
“Ye-es. Did they give you the impression that they already had one copy?”
“They did not.”
“Yet last night’s work suggested that they had,” said Loftus. “Do either of you know whether Fortescue was also worried by threats and menaces?”
“He gave no one that impression,” said Mortimer.
“He’s missing, isn’t he?” said Whittaker. “They’re probably working on him now.”
“It could be,” said Loftus. He had not yet told any of the directors that Fortescue had been seen with Golt, although he hardly knew why he kept so silent on that point. “Well, gentlemen, as I see it there is only one thing for you to do—that is to get the locations of the storage dumps changed as quickly as possible.”
“It will take a month to change them,” said Mortimer. “I have of course made sure that all copies of the plan have been collected—there were twenty, and nineteen are now at Number 10. The one which is missing was one of those which Fortescue had.”
Both men rose. They were in a hurry, they said, to get back to Whitehall. Sanderson and Gray were already there, and Loftus gathered that there was some argument now as to whether they should have met at the Landon. Loftus knew one thing; they were quite out of their depth in the new developments. None of them seemed to realise the urgency of finding who had the copy of the distribution plan.
It was more than worrying, it was puzzling. A copy was missing, and had, apparently, been acted on. Yet Whittaker had been tortured to get another. “Why? A thousand times why?” Loftus said, aloud as he returned to the Errols and Spats Thornton.
“Answer me that, and we’ll know most of it. Now let’s get down to questioning Golt.”
But they did not question Maximilian Golt after all.
They found him lying on a single bed which was fitted into the small room. He was unconscious, and at first sight he seemed to be dead, but Doc Little, hurriedly summoned, pronounced him to be suffering from acute morphine poisoning.
“I saw him swallow something at the hotel,” Mike said. “Or I thought I did.”
Loftus drew a deep breath. He said bitterly:
“It doesn’t seem to matter a damn what we do or try, we lose out by minutes every time. We’ve got just two possibilities left—the grey-bowler gentleman whom Golt called Barker, and the woman midget, Topsy. Just those two. I . . .”
He stopped suddenly.
He appeared to be staring at Mike Errol, but he was actually seeing an idea, and it was growing apace.
He said slowly:
“Add this up, if you can. They’ve acted on a copy of the plan, but they want one. They planted wireless sets on Golt, and then he ran to the Landon, where it was obvious our attention would be concentrated. I was telephoned by the deep voiced gent—I thought it was a warning to Whittaker’s mob, but in fact it was intended that I should take the message, it made me concentrate on the hotel.” He paused. “Has a penny dropped anywhere?”
The three shook their heads.
“Oh, but it makes sense,” said Loftus excitedly. “Can’t you see? We were deliberately encouraged to maintain a close watch on the hotel—the Whittaker business fits in well. They—whoever they are—have the plan but wanted to create the impression that they haven’t. They knew that Golt and Letaxa’s sphere of usefulness was over, and so they arranged for Golt and Letaxa to be put on the spot. They kept me hunting at the Landon—my God, it’s the biggest red-herring I’ve ever smelt.”
Mike said dazedly: “Red-herring?”
“Certainly a red-herring. In other words, a pretty trick to get us on the wrong trail. Even Myra helped—she concentrated our ideas on Golt. I couldn’t understand why he had been careless enough to leave those radios where they could be found. All the evidence pointed towards Golt as a leading agent of German espionage, and we’ve believed it. But actually there isn’t a single piece of real evidence to suggest that it’s German-inspired.”
Mike said slowly:
“It must be, man! Who else would want to destroy our food supplies?”
Loftus said: “Who said they want to? They’ve got a copy of this plan, they’ve worked a little on it, but if they’d wished they could have blown the whole works up by now. I’ll give you a thousand-to-one that there’s no serious trouble tonight.”
“I can’t see what you’re driving at,” said Mark helplessly.
“Work it out,” said Loftus. “Who except the Bosche would have all this interest in our food? Who else would like to hold a gun at the Government’s head? Someone who can supply food to replace that which has been lost.” He paused, and then said again: “Work it out. I’m going to see Hershall.”
19
Carte Blanche
There was nothing in Hershall’s manner to suggest that he was facing one of the great crises of the war. He was alone in his private room at Number 10, and he was sitting at his desk with the inevitable cheroot sticking out from his lips. Loftus thought he looked a little paler than he had that morning, and perhaps more tired. But his voice had the same mellow, unhurried ring, as he motioned casually to a chair.
“I’ve been hoping you would come, Loftus.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Loftus. “I’m afraid it’s only with ideas again. In fact what I really want is an absolute carte blanche to act as seems necessary.”
“It seems to me you’ve got it,” said Hershall drily. “Still, go ahead.”
“I’ve had all the assistance
I could hope for,” said Loftus with appreciation, “but this—well, sir, if I asked the Home Secretary to sign an order for the detention of, say, Sir Bruce Mortimer, it wouldn’t be easy. I might get it, after a delay—and a delay might well prove fatal.”
“Is Mortimer involved?” Hershall gave no indication that he would be surprised if that was the case.
“I’ve no evidence—he could be.” Loftus began to talk, and continued to do so for ten minutes. The submission on which his argument rested was that the trouble was not Berlin-inspired, but organised and operated from inside the country, and by inside interests. Hershall heard him out, and then said:
“All right, Loftus—but these leaflets.” There were several on his desk. “Who would have any purpose served by their distribution outside of Germany?”
Loftus said: “Anyone who wanted to force the Government’s hand, sir.”
“In what way?”
“Large orders for different foods, at decontrolled prices.”
Hershall sat very still, and the room seemed to be still and silent with him. And then he pushed his chair back, and stood up. He walked to the door and back again, his hands behind him, his head lowered so that his chin was almost on his chest. At last he spoke.
“All right, Loftus. Have your carte blanche—I’ll sign it now.” He sat down at his desk, pulled paper and pen towards him and wrote quickly, in a clear bold hand. He handed the order to Loftus. “That will see you through. Now—have you anyone in mind?”
Loftus shook his head.
“What is your opinion of the reason for the series of blackmail and threats?”
“That it’s the biggest red-herring of them all,” said Loftus. “It has been deliberately conceived to get our minds off the truth. It has weakened the Food Organisation at the top, and the perpetrators can do what they like with it at the bottom. These fires and explosions—only men actually concerned in the work itself can start them. Only men actually up and down the country can have distributed these leaflets. I would estimate that at least a thousand men have done that.”
“Communist?” snapped Hershall.