by John Creasey
“Okay,” the man said again.
He picked out three of the Home Guard, and his companion on the other side of the landing picked out three more. As they opened fire the tap-tap-tap of guns came from downstairs as well. One Guard staggered and fell forward—but only one. The rest of them seemed well trained in the art of defence.
Some fell flat, others dodged swiftly to trees which gave them cover, and the hail of bullets did little more than peck at the long grass of the grounds. The movement had been so well considered that it told Myra that the attack had been expected.
She was sure now that the wipe-out which had seemed the only way to secure their escape would not be possible. They would have to fight their way out. And that, she knew, was not going to be easy, for from behind the first line of Home Guards, now all completely invisible, there came the shattering bark of Lewis guns. Not one or two, but several.
The first line had been flung out to attract the fire, and the Home Guards were prepared to lay siege.
She knew why.
She knew that the trouble with her car had made it possible for a policeman to recognise her, and that she had been followed, despite her confidence that she had eluded pursuit by a long detour. She had then some idea of the immensity of the forces against which she was working.
The gunmen had moved swiftly away from the windows. They did not speak, but it was clear that they were facing far more than they had expected.
Myra said quietly:
“One of you had better try to get through, Luke.”
“Okay. Which one do you reckon?” He was sneering at her, as if telling her without words that it would be suicide for anyone to leave the house, and that she should know it.
Topsy said simply: “I’ll do it. It will be easier for me.”
In less than two minutes, and before any further shooting had taken place, the midget appeared by the back door. There was no need for her to open it. There was a small window alongside, and this she squeezed through, hidden by an eave, built to protect the door against rain and wind.
Myra went back to the landing, and waited. The Lewis guns were silent, and there was no sign of movement. Except for the trees the only thing she could see was the outstretched figure of the first Home Guard; he was not moving, and she thought dispassionately that he was dead.
Topsy slipped across a vegetable patch filled with cabbages which had gone to seed. She stood scarcely higher than the tops of them. Farther along the garden were other patches of tall growth, and farther down still there were bushes and shrubs. She glided through them, making no sound, disturbing nothing.
She knew that if she could get through the first line of guards she had an even chance of getting through completely. She went quickly, and suddenly she saw the still, khaki-clad figure of a Home Guard not three yards away from her. He was sprawled forward on his stomach, his rifle held in front of him ready for immediate action. She wriggled forward, very slowly, passing unobserved.
A machine-gun loomed before her, the men manning it clearly unaware that anyone had left the house. She passed this also, and then began to work her way towards the road.
She struck it fifty yards from the drive entrance, and scrambled through the hedge. That was the most dangerous moment, for if anyone was watching from the road he would know where she had come from. There was a guard, but his back was towards her, and she walked hurriedly and without a sound in the opposite direction.
She knew that in five minutes she would reach a road which led to Guildford on the one side and Farnham on the other; it made no difference to her which way she went provided she reached a town so that she could get word through to the St. John’s Wood house.
When at last she reached the main road, she felt it safe to start appealing for a lift. Three cars passed her, unheeding, and then, at last, one slowed down. A large man sat at the wheel, a fair-haired man next to him.
“Hallo, Topsy,” said Bill Loftus. Carruthers stretched out a hand and gripped her arm before she could slip away. She did not speak because she could not; she felt frozen into immobility and speechlessness, for there was something in Loftus’s eyes which frightened her.
Carruthers kept his grip on the midget but contrived to open the door and pull her through. Another car had slowed down behind them but quickened its pace as the Talbot accelerated. At the wheel of the second car was Mike Errol, and with him were his cousin, Thornton, and the exuberant Martin Best.
“What was that?” asked Mike.
“Didn’t see,” Mark answered.
In the first car, Loftus slowed down at a road junction where a Home Guard was standing. The man saluted and jumped to the side of the Talbot, staring in surprise when he saw a child.
“Appearances are deceptive,” said Loftus grimly. “I’m Loftus—which way do I go?”
“Turn right along here, sir, and the first lot of drive gates will be the ones to Larch House. Careful, there’s been some shooting.”
“Has there,” said Loftus grimly.
As he turned into the drive of the house, he heard another burst of machine-gun fire. His lips tightened as he drew up beside a group of Home Guards.
The captain, grey-haired, fresh-faced, began to say:
“Mr. Loftus? I . . .”
And then he too saw Topsy.
Loftus smiled.
“She slipped under your noses, Captain, but that’s not surprising. How are things going?”
“They’re armed with tommy-guns,” said the captain gruffly. “I’ve lost one man, and I don’t want to take too many risks—they’ll have to give in quickly enough.”
“That’s just the trouble,” said Loftus. “Will it be quickly enough?” He paused and then went on: “I’m leaving this little creature in your care. Better tie her up, she’s as slippery as an eel, and has done quite enough damage. I’m going up to the house, and when I’ve got in there’ll be a way for you people.”
“But . . .”
“No buts,” said Loftus. “It’s vitally urgent, and we’ve taken chances like this before. I’d like you to have a Lewis gun placed behind us and so that it covers the front door. Fire if I shoot for it. Will you do that?”
The captain hesitated, and then said: “Very good.” He thought that the large man was proposing to commit suicide, but he had received strict orders to do exactly what Loftus told him. He made his arrangements—including the tying up of Topsy—while Loftus had a word with the other five Department men. They had their instructions and he knew they would obey them implicitly no matter what the risk.
“Right,” he said. “I’m driving up with Carry, then. You follow on foot.”
He slipped into the Talbot, and Carruthers slid in after him. The car leapt forward, but it was more than thirty yards from the front door of Larch House when the tommy-guns started, and bullets spattered about them in a hail which it seemed impossible to avoid.
21
Says Braddon
Loftus did not stop driving, although he heard the dull thud of bullets in the roof and saw three white marks appear in the bullet-proof glass of the windscreen. Bullets went through the roof itself and buried themselves in the upholstery, but the Talbot went on.
He braked a yard or so from the front porch.
The tyres squealed and slithered on the weedy drive. For a moment it seemed that there was no chance of the bullet-proof glass withstanding the fusilade directed against it. If he or Carruthers climbed out they would be mown down at once.
And then the tommy-gun stopped firing.
Out of the corner of his eye Loftus saw Mike Errol almost on a level with the front of the car, firing through the doorway. One of his bullets had knocked the machinegunner out, and in the brief respite afforded them, he and Mark launched themselves at the porch. From the other side Thornton and Best followed. Behind them the Home Guard rushed in support, but as Mike Errol reached the hall he saw that the machine-gun had already been remanned.
Mike fell forward on hi
s stomach.
From behind him his cousin lobbed a hand-grenade, as coolly as if it were a cricket ball, and then he too went flat. Best and Thornton did the same, while from the foot of the stairs there came a blinding flash, as the grenade went off.
The tommy-gun broke into a dozen pieces, and the hastily-piled barricade of chairs and cushions disappeared as if blown aside by a giant puff of wind.
Loftus was the first to reach the landing. He had an automatic in one hand and a hand-grenade in the other. He saw Myra running up the stairs, and yet another olive-skinned man manning a tommy-gun.
Mark Errol shot him from the banisters. Loftus went on, without a glance behind him, the Department men following. As the Home Guard rushed the ground floor there were spasmodic bursts of firing, and the louder crack of rifles.
Down in the cellar rooms Barker had been deliberately shot by one of his own men as he slept.
The dago who had fired the shot turned and emptied his gun at the Home Guards. He wounded one, but the other fired and a bullet went through the gunman’s chest.
There was silence but for heavy breathing in the underground chambers of Larch House.
There were footsteps on the first floor and the ground floor, and louder ones at the top of the house. Loftus and Mike Errol were going neck-and-neck along the passages, and twice they glimpsed Myra Berne running before them. They heard her footsteps loud on the bare boards, and their own thundered in her wake.
She reached the door of the rooms where Braddon and Pam were imprisoned. She had a key in her hand, and she found the keyhole with her first lunge. She heard the thundering footsteps behind her, but she did not turn. There was an automatic in her left hand as she threw the door open.
Braddon faced her, Pam just behind him. Both were completely at her mercy. They read death in her eyes, and in the gun which she raised. Braddon uttered a low-pitched cry and jumped forward.
Her two bullets went wide. Before she could level her gun a third time, Loftus reached the doorway.
He fired.
She lost her balance and fell, twisting round as she did so, so that Mike could see her face filled with viciousness and hate.
He was appalled.
To Mike Errol it seemed then as if he were alone in the room with her, just as he had been alone in the lounge at Byng Court. He could remember her loveliness, and the lambent beauty of her eyes. He could remember her low-pitched voice and her red, smiling lips.
Now he saw eyes in which hate and pain mingled and fought for supremacy, and he heard her voice harsh and low-pitched—so low-pitched that it might have been Skippy’s.
“You . . .” she swore at them, and her left hand with the gun moved a little. “You won’t get him, you won’t get him, he’s beaten the lot of you, he . . .”
And then she turned the gun on herself, and what there had been left of the loveliness of her face went quickly away.
Loftus finished a quick inspection of Larch House, and then joined the Home Guard captain who had set up “field-headquarters” in one of the rooms. On an old saddle-back sofa Pam was stretched out, quite unconscious. She had fainted when Myra had shot herself.
Braddon was standing by her. His face was pale, but his eyes showed intelligence and a complete lack of fear. Loftus nodded to him, and addressed the captain.
“Those we didn’t kill killed themselves,” he said. “There isn’t one of them alive.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“They didn’t lack guts,” Loftus said, and there was tension in his voice. “But we’ve got to find out a little more before we can get the results we were after.” He looked across at Braddon. “Can we hear something about you?” he asked.
Braddon hesitated.
“Who are you?”
“Now, please,” said Loftus. “Don’t start asking for official definitions—isn’t the uniform good enough for you?” He stared coldly at Braddon, but then laughed and dipped his hand into his breast-pocket. “Read that,” he said.
Jim Braddon held a note in his hands, one signed by the Prime Minister conferring on Loftus power which could not be rivalled up and down the country. Braddon stared at it, drew a deep breath, and pushed his hand through his hair.
“Well I’m damned,” he said. “I haven’t the foggiest notion of what it’s all about, but . . .” He looked at Pam’s white face, cleared his throat and then told his story, simply and without exaggeration.
Loftus was speaking into a telephone from Home Guard Headquarters, Guildford. As he did so, Spats Thornton was writing a record of what had happened, and the Home Guard captain was making out his report. It said simply that they had received a description of the woman who had been seen in Guildford, and her car. The on-duty patrols of the Home Guard had kept a constant watch, and the girl and car had been seen to go to a house believed to be empty. The captain had given instructions for approach after talking to London. A telephone wire had been found leading to the house, and cut. They had been prepared for opposition and protected themselves as much as possible, and their full casualties were two dead and three injured, one of them seriously.
Thornton went into rather more detail.
Loftus said into the telephone:
“No, sir, I don’t think there is any chance that word reached the man in London . . . we caught the midget who might have got through. In any case I’ve telephoned for a cordon to be flung round the house immediately, and no one’s to go in or out of the area.”
“That sounds all right,” said Hershall. “You’re coming up yourself?”
“I’d like to be on the spot,” said Loftus. “If what I’ve been told is true, the owner is an eccentric cripple with an interest in art. It doesn’t sound as if it could be our man, but the young couple I found here apparently thought that some of his activities were of a dubious nature, and were foolish enough to say so. He sent them here . . . I won’t worry you with a full report of that. It’s a queer story, and the house should show us something interesting all right.”
Hershall said:
“No one else was mentioned?”
“Not yet,” said Loftus.
“All right, get it over quickly,” said Hershall, and he rang down abruptly.
Loftus turned from the telephone, and took a drink of coffee from a cup which had been left at his side. He nodded his thanks to the Home Guard captain, and promised to look him up in the near future.
The thing which worried him most was the deliberation with which the gunmen and the actress had made sure of death.
The explanation he believed was the simple one; they knew that they were doomed, and they had preferred to kill themselves rather than face the extreme penalty of the law. Myra’s suicide had been inspired by similar motives, but . . .
She had hated him.
In that there could have been nothing personal; he had not known her. He could assume only that she had hated him for what he stood for, and in the present instant he stood for England. If she hated the country of her birth—he had to prove yet that she was an English national—it could surely be only because she had been tainted with Nazi philosophy. Yet he had come to the conclusion that the Nazis were not in this business.
He shrugged his shoulders as he climbed into the Talbot. The Department men followed him. Carruthers rode next to him, and the others were in the Bentley behind. Three had been slightly hurt, and Carruthers was still bandaged from his wound at the Landon Hotel, although he had suffered little after effects.
He drove fast but with due regard for fellow travellers, his mind working with the cool precision of a fine mechanical tool.
Myra’s suicide was the most puzzling factor, but what mattered was to find the connection between an eccentric art lover and the sabotage.
Why had the man changed his secretaries so often?
Was it to make sure that no one knew too much about the records? But it was absurd to think that the man kept a careful record of antiques and record prices as well as the pri
ces at current sales. Yet Braddon said that he did.
The girl said that her guardian rarely bought pieces, and yet he kept his records going at all costs.
The truth was simmering in Loftus’s mind, although he had not worked it out in full detail. He was worried in case the man should learn of the disaster, and destroy the records. They covered the whole secret, of course, they must do.
“His” name, Pam had said, was Llewellyn. Owen Llewellyn.
The Talbot was no more than twenty yards ahead of the Bentley when it turned into a road off the Marylebone Road, and was stopped by a policeman. He was one of the cordon flung about the house of Owen Llewellyn.
Loftus was surprised to see Miller among them. The Superintendent was pale, and obviously incapable of exertion, but staunchly insistent on being in at what he hoped was the kill.
“Hallo,” smiled Loftus. “A bad omen for the wicked men. How are things?”
“No one’s come out of Llewellyn’s house,” said Miller, “and his two cars are in his garage—the doors are open and they can be seen from the street. I’ve had inquiries made, and he should have two menservants on the premises, as well as his chauffeur. There are usually three maids, but they went out earlier today—they have their afternoon off regularly on the same day. Nothing unusual in that.”
“Nothing unusual for Llewellyn, perhaps,” said Loftus, “but it isn’t the normal practice to let the staff go off together. However, it’s a small point, and suggests that he likes an afternoon and evening when he can do what he likes. He’s not been alarmed in any way?”
Miller shook his head.
“Good work. Now Thornton and I are going up to the house together, and fifteen minutes afterwards your men should close in. The Errols, Carry and Best will start the rush. Whether I show up or not, carry that out, will you?”
“It gives me good time to get all the posts instructed,” said Miller. “Anything else?”
“No, just that,” said Loftus.