The Extortioners

by John Creasey

  “As they were in Australia he arranged to see them,” she cried. “He had discovered some of the most astounding fossils and bones of early man, he had reason to believe he might have found the missing link. And—and they were in caves where those heathens were working for diamonds and gold. They wanted to blast the caves open, and that would have destroyed everything he was doing, would have destroyed vital clues to the origins of the human race. So he went to see them and told them he would tell the world if they did use dynamite in the caves. They were working secretly, you see, they didn’t want any competitors to know, so—so they promised to use pick and shovel. He met them all right – he routed them!” There was the light of battle and the glow of triumph in her eyes.

  “Mrs. Spray,” Roger asked gently, “did he tell anyone other than you about this?”

  “No! He wouldn’t, he’d given his word.”

  “Did you tell anyone?”

  She flushed to the roots of her hair, and it was a noticeable time before she shook her head and uttered her denials. But he did not believe her, and she knew it; and when she left, she was very frightened.

  She accepted the offer of a police car to take her home. By then it was ten minutes past ten. Roger called Venables, to check whether Mrs. Clayton had made any movement from her house; she had not, none of the watching policemen had seen her leave. And there was no message from the Commander. Roger went down one flight of stairs, found his own car just outside, and drove off. The quickest way to Hampstead was by side streets to Hyde Park and then Regent’s Park: it could be one of the longest and most exasperating drives in London. This morning the fates were with him, and he pulled up outside the Clayton house in Beacon Drive, Hampstead Heath, in half an hour.

  Three minutes later, he was admitted to Professor Clayton’s study, by Mrs. Clayton, who was dressed in dark grey, whose lovely face was pale, but who spoke with great self-confidence. The study was a bower of daffodils and jonquils; beautiful.

  “I shall be glad to give you all the help I can this afternoon, Superintendent, but I can spare you only a few minutes this morning. It is ten to eleven and at eleven I must leave for a most important appointment.”

  “At the Museum Conference Halls?” asked Roger quietly. She looked startled. “Yes, but I had no idea that anyone but the Chairman of the Conference and one or two members of the committee knew that. I am going to read a paper which my husband prepared before he was attacked. It was in the safe. It has not yet been opened by anyone but my husband, and I shall have no chance to study it before reading it to the delegates. So I am sure you will understand that I am very nervous. Please do forgive me this morning.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The Old Fossils

  The one thing above all that Roger needed was to find out the contents of the paper which Clayton had prepared which she was to present to the Conference. It might be little more than Ida had already told him, and it might be of vital significance, but could it make much difference whether he saw the document before she read the whole lecture, or even whether he was present during the reading? There was no way of being sure but it seemed unbelievable that an hour could make a vital difference.

  So he smiled, easily, and said: “Of course, Mrs. Clayton.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I want to ask you if you can help the inquiry by telling me of your husband’s movements while in the Far East and Australia earlier in the year.”

  “I will do all I can,” she promised.

  “Thank you,” he said in turn. “May I give you a lift to the Conference Halls?”

  “No, thank you. My daughters are taking me,” she answered, and almost on the instant a tall young woman appeared in the doorway. “Bertha, dear, see Mr. West to the door for me, will you?”

  The young woman led him past the window where the sun shone vividly on the grass and the herbaceous border. At the door, which was on one side, he paused long enough to look into her young face and clear grey eyes; worried eyes.

  “Will you be driving?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “We don’t expect any trouble, but we shall have you followed, to make sure,” he told her. “Don’t be surprised if you are followed very closely.”

  There was no doubt of the relief in her eyes. “I won’t,” she promised. “It’s a great help.”

  It was then two minutes to eleven, and Roger hurried to his car, where a detective officer stood by for instructions.

  “Watch them closely,” Roger ordered. “Follow close on their heels.”

  “We’ve two cars, sir, and every officer en route has been alerted.”

  “Have the grounds and approaches been searched?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.” Roger climbed into his car and started the engine. There was no message from the Yard, or he would have heard from the detective officer. He saw the two police cars and several detectives as he drove away. It was a five-minute drive to the pond, which meant he would be five minutes late for Lady Fellowes. Almost for the first time, he allowed himself to think about her and to wonder what she wanted. He saw uniformed policemen along this road, the one which Mrs. Clayton would take; if the precautions were wasted, at least he would have nothing with which to blame himself.

  He reached the pond and saw Lady Fellowes, standing and watching a small boy pushing a tiny sailing yacht with a stick. A few cars were parked, a few people were about; he recognised two detective officers from the Yard, and a woman detective sergeant. He pulled up as close to Lady Fellowes as he could, and as if she sensed his arrival, she turned round.

  Of all the women involved in this case, she was by far the most striking; the most unusual. In conventional terms Rosamund Clayton was more beautiful, but this woman had some kind of magnetic attraction; Roger had felt it when he had first seen her and was keenly aware of it now.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  She smiled, very faintly.

  “Thank you for coming, I simply had to see you where we couldn’t be overheard and without Helen knowing.” They fell into step and began to walk on the grass near the pond; none of the detectives present showed the slightest interest; they were doing a first-class job. “I was really in a dreadful quandary of divided loyalty,” Lady Fellowes went on. “Between my family and – will it sound terribly smug if I say ‘society’?”

  “It will tell me exactly what you mean,” Roger assured her.

  “I hoped it would. Mr. West, we both know why my husband is supposed to have committed suicide. To me, the thought that he would rather die than tell me that he shared part of his life with another woman was ludicrous; his death was tragic and a cause of deep grief, but the reason – I simply did not believe it.”

  “Do you know what the real reason is?” asked Roger.

  “Do you know there is an alternative?”

  “Yes. In this day and age a man of your husband’s maturity and experience would be most unlikely to take such extreme action,” Roger replied. “Lady Fellowes, I’ve very little time.”

  “I will come straight to the heart of the matter,” she said quietly. “My daughter-in-law tells me that both my husband and my son were involved in some major – Helen used the word mammoth – plan which had to do with my husband’s visit to Australia earlier this year. Hubert, apparently, was going to tell you about it, and Helen believes that once the police were involved he was attacked to make sure he could tell no one. It had to do with some discovery of minerals in Australia. Helen is afraid that if she or I were to tell you, then Hubert might become involved in some scandal and – she is deeply in love with him, but has just been through a period of great strain.” She was pleading with him not to blame Helen too much. “I have written this down for you in case – in case anything should happen to me and prevent me from testifying whenever necessary.”

  He stopped walking, took a sealed envelope, and stood face to face with her for a few moments; and then he said, to ease her sense of guilt:
“I am sure we would have discovered this by our own efforts. It doesn’t lessen my gratitude.”

  “You’re very kind,” she said.

  “You are very—” he began, and checked himself; hesitated; and then left the sentence in mid-air. “I must go,” he said. “You will be followed home by Yard men and carefully watched and looked after until this affair is over. It shouldn’t be long.”

  When he drove off, she was standing and watching the small boy again.

  He was only just on the move, and had not yet started down the hill to Swiss Cottage, when his radio-telephone crackled, and Information came on the air.

  “This is Scotland Yard calling Superintendent West with an urgent message … This is Scotland Yard calling Superintendent West with an urgent message … Will Superintendent West please return as quickly as possible to his office for discussions with Commander Coppell … Will Superintendent West …”

  Roger stretched out his left arm and switched the radio off.

  Fifteen minutes later, envelope unopened, he pulled up close to the Conference Hall, in Euston Street; there was no room at all to park so he called a uniformed constable over, gave him an ignition key and said: “Move this if you have to.” The constable took the key, uncomprehendingly: his astonished: “Superintendent West!” followed Roger down the street.

  It was twenty minutes to twelve.

  Security officers and police were in the entrance and in the passages leading to the main conference rooms. As he turned a corner, Roger heard Rosamund Clayton’s voice quite clearly. Across a wide passage were several swing doors, one of them open, with a security man and a uniformed policeman standing just inside.

  They waved him through.

  The doors were on the side, so newcomers could not easily distract speakers on the rostrum, yet Roger could get a good view, sideways on. Only two people were on the rostrum – an elderly, grey-bearded man, and Professor Clayton’s wife. She stood at a lectern and read in a clear voice which was given body by microphones set on either side. She looked in her way as remarkable as Lady Fellowes.

  In the body of the auditorium were perhaps six or seven hundred men and a few dozen women; if Roger had a surprise it was that so many of these ‘old fossils’ were in their twenties and thirties, the number of white and bald heads was comparatively small.

  Each one in the audience was listening, enthralled.

  “… of the significance of what I have found I have no doubt at all; it is indeed possible that we have found the origins of man on the Australian continent which in the past has been so comparatively barren for our purposes. It is indeed possible that we have found what vox populi calls ‘the missing link’ – the missing link, that is, in the evolution of homo sapiens.”

  Rosamund Clayton paused.

  Roger saw a battery of men and a few women in a section of the auditorium with a huge PRESS sign hanging over it; they were writing furiously. Every newspaper would carry this as a headline, many tonight, the rest tomorrow. He picked out plump Tweed, of the Globe. Well, that was hardly surprising.

  Rosamund Clayton took a sip of water from a glass by her side, and then began to read her husband’s paper again: “Many of you will wonder why, since I was convinced that I had made a discovery of such importance, I did not immediately inform my colleagues – your good selves – and why I did not ask that a full-scale exploration be put in hand; one of the greatest, if not the greatest, anthropological excavations in history. For if I am right, and I am convinced that I am, then an area some five miles by eleven miles, fifty-five square miles, will have to be exhaustively examined. It is my belief that within this area there appears to lie, buried deep beneath the red earth, a city many millions of years old, in which are the remains of a civilisation created by the first fully developed man.

  “But I was not the first to light upon this – to me – sacred spot,” Rosamund read; and for the first time, her voice faltered; she sipped more water before going on, still in a husky voice: “Another kind of exploration had taken place in a series of caves on the site. There was, it appears, an enormous discovery of diamonds. There was, also, uranium ore of greatest purity. There was gold, one of the most extensive discoveries in the history of Australia, one of the great gold-producing lands of the world. And I discovered that this land had been acquired – bought – by a syndicate which was about to exploit it commercially, first by blasting operations which would destroy the evidence of the pre historic past so precious to those who love mankind.”

  It seemed that every man and woman in the audience drew a deep breath; of horror or dismay. And, sensing this, Rosamund Clayton paused, looking up at the assembled faces before her; the young and the old; the white and the black; the red and the yellow. Into the pause a man called in a high-pitched voice: “No! It is a crime! It must never happen!”

  “No!” another yelled.

  “No! No! No! No!” came from all corners of the great room.

  Slowly, Rosamund held up her hands, palms outwards; and the protests died away, so she began to read again with even greater clarity, as if she knew that each word would matter to all those who listened.

  “First,” she repeated, “by blasting operations which would destroy the precious evidence, and next by mining and drilling for the diamonds and the precious metals without regard for the past.”

  “It is a crime!” a man burst out.

  “So, I came to an understanding with the members of the syndicate, whose names are listed as an appendix to this paper. I agreed to give them twelve months, which expires today, in which to make alternative plans; to mine from other directions and not to blast; to protect man’s heritage while permitting the benefits for today’s civilisations. They agreed to this. I made it clear to them that I would, in this paper to you, my honoured colleagues, reveal all the facts, including the exact site of the discoveries. I told them I was certain that you would also agree to what I had agreed – to share this great discovery, which may well prove the most important in mankind’s history.”

  Rosamund paused again. This time there was no interruption; only what appeared to be a great sigh from all parts of the room. A moment later Roger saw the plump reporter from the Globe get up and move away from the Press section. He was apologising as he moved, reached a gangway and headed quickly for the main doors. As he approached he saw Roger, and said in a whisper: “Must catch the next edition. I’ll be back.” He put his right hand to his pocket and pulled at a handkerchief, but before he got it free Roger’s fingers tightened like a clamp round his wrist. He tugged. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Stopping you,” Roger said.

  Tweed swung his free arm in a vicious blow, and kicked at the same time. Roger held on to the wrist, keeping the man’s hand in his own pocket. The security man and the policeman came hurrying, and Roger whispered: “Get him out!”

  The security man grabbed the other’s free arm and pushed it up behind his back in a hammerlock, Roger twisted the wrist in his grip until Tweed gasped with pain and let Roger pull the hand free of the pocket. Roger dipped into the pocket and found what looked like a tennis ball, but made of cement.

  “Be careful with that!” gasped Tweed. “Be careful! It will blow the whole place to pieces!”

  “Whereas you wanted to blow the crowd in there to pieces,” Roger said, savagely. He left Tweed to the others, and held the ‘ball’ gingerly as they went out into the street. More police were there and his car was still double-parked; but everything was quiet. Tweed looked desperately up and down; he was trembling all over.

  “Expecting someone?” asked Roger. “Expecting a bodyguard of Hokki Braves to get you away safely?” Tweed looked dumbfounded, as Roger went on: “Most Hokkis which appeared on the streets today were picked up, and their drivers held; certainly none was allowed near here. You’ve been on your own all the time, Tweed. Or should I call you by the name your partner in all this calls you: Higginbottom.”

  “My God!” gasped T
weed. “Kevin’s talked!”

  “Kevin didn’t get far away, but he hasn’t talked yet,” Roger said. “Both of you will before you’re through.”

  He was standing with the ‘ball’ in his hand and Tweed looking at him helplessly when one of the detectives from the street came up, and said: “Excuse me, Mr. West, but there’s an urgent call for you, from the Yard.”

  “Tell Information I’m on my way,” Roger said. “And tell them to send a bomb disposal unit to this place, quickly. They’ll find this little beauty contains enough explosive to wreck the whole building and probably set it on fire. Better make a nest for it,” he added. “Somewhere it can’t fall.”

  One of the detectives took off his jacket and folded it with great care, putting it on the ground close to the wall before Roger placed the ‘ball’ on it.

  Then he stood back.

  “One of you handcuff yourself to this man,” he ordered, “and ride in the back of my car.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Confession

  “You mean, you deliberately stayed away despite the call out for you?” Frobisher demanded in a harsh, angry voice. “This really is going too far even for a senior officer.”

  Coppell growled: “I agree. Did you, West?”

  “Yes,” admitted Roger. “I saw no alternative.”

  “Why the hell—” began Coppell.

  “Explanations can hardly justify such defiance,” Frobisher said coldly.

  “I think they can, sir,” Roger replied. “I think saving the lives of over seven hundred men and women has priority over obedience to instructions or regulations.”

  “What do you mean?” growled Coppell.

  “Yes indeed: what do you mean?” demanded Frobisher, with less iciness in his voice. “I find it hard to believe you can justify such an extravagant statement.”

  Roger, standing in Coppell’s room, while the other two sat and looked challengingly up at him, held himself very still for a moment, then moved to a chair and sat down. Perhaps the pallor which suddenly spread over his face stopped the others from making immediate comment. Coppell moved downwards to the right of his desk, took out a bottle of whisky and a glass, splashed in a little whisky and held it out to Roger, who took it with unsteady fingers.