by John Creasey
“The warden’s name was Nat.”
“Why Brutus?”
“The warden knew all about things like the Roman Empire and Shakespeare and eh too.”
Mannering was almost lured into exclaiming, “eh what?” Brutus’s eyes were sparkling with silent laughter, and he took his finger away from his nose. “Eh too,” he repeated. “Et tu, Brutus.”
Mannering gave a little spontaneous chuckle.
“The warden obviously taught you well.”
“Too right he taught me. He was a beaut of a man, that warden. Him and his missus, both. They only had one problem, Mr. Mannering, and that was money. The lolly. The dough. They never had enough but no one spread soup and bread further than they did. They were both beauts. Do you mind if I remind you of something?”
“What?”
“You were going to tell me why I ought to hold onto my money and not buy the insignia in the window.”
“Insignia,” Mannering echoed. He recovered quickly, and went on: “You’ve just answered your own question.”
“How’s that?” Brutus looked puzzled again, and his eyes opened wide.
“Because it is insignia,” Mannering said.
“So that’s a reason for me not to buy?”
“The insignia’s worth the half-million pounds or so because of its history, the tradition attached to each piece of the collection, the way in which it was gathered, over a period of ten centuries.” When Brutus made no comment, Mannering went on: “It’s worth the money to a collector but if the jewels were taken out of their settings and sold as individual stones they would be lucky to fetch two hundred and fifty thousand. Possession of it, the very fact of ownership is the reason for its selling value. There will be multimillionaires from the United States, South America, South Africa and several parts of Europe at Catesby’s tomorrow. Money doesn’t really matter to such people, and they might easily spend three hundred thousand pounds simply for the privilege of possessing something unique.”
Mannering stopped, determined to wait until Brutus answered this. He waited for a long time, and began to wonder whether he was simply allowing the man to lead him up the garden path. Half-a-million pounds? He might not have five hundred to bless himself with.
Brutus said: “How do you know I wouldn’t want to buy some tradition, too?”
Mannering shrugged, but said nothing. Brutus gave his bright yet slightly undefinable smile, and went on without a change of tone.
“I haven’t got half-a-million pounds, sport.” He paused again, as if inviting a sharp retort from Mannering, but when it wasn’t forthcoming, he went on: “But I’ve got a million sheep.”
Mannering looked up sharply.
“That’s a lot of sheep.”
“You can say that again. It’s a million sheep.”
“Then you must have land to go with them.”
“Yes, sir, I have half-a-million acres of land in New South Wales and Queensland. It’s no good for big herds of cattle and, allowing for a few roos and dingoes, all you can find on that land is sheep. Two years ago . . .” Brutus leaned forward, placing both lean golden-tanned hands on the desk - “two years ago we had rain. Yes, sir, we had rain. And I had me some ideas about catchments and water-preservation. So when I want it I’ve got water. So how about a fair exchange, sport? Half my land and sheep for all of the insignia?”
Mannering laughed.
“I almost wish I could close a deal with you.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Executors have their rights. I’m simply displaying the jewels and handling some of the smaller pieces of furniture - those with a fairly predictable value. By five o’clock tonight the window will be empty, by ten o’clock tomorrow the jewels will be in Catesby’s showrooms. I’m afraid it’s as simple as that.”
After twenty seconds, Brutus asked: “Will you be at the sale?”
“Yes.”
“Buying for yourself?”
“Yes.”
“How about buying for me?” asked Brutus.
Mannering was glad there was a tap at the door at that moment, for Brutus took his breath away. He called, “Come in” and the door was opened by one of the younger assistants who brought in a tea-tray with a dish of French pastries fetched from a shop behind Hart Row where the pastry-cook was still an artist. Mannering poured out, Brutus ate with gusto; no starving man could have given more rapt attention to his food.
Was he a millionaire in sheep? Was he a wind-bag? Or was he a mental case, after all?
Mannering finished his second cup of tea as Brutus finished his fourth cake.
“Nearly as good as they make in Sydney,” he declared with reverence. “How about it?”
“Buying for you?” asked Mannering slowly.
“Yes.”
Mannering now knew exactly what he wanted to say.
“Be at Catesby’s at ten-thirty tomorrow morning, with a banker’s credit for as much as you are prepared to spend, and I will bid for you without fee. Will that do?”
“Sport,” said Nathaniel Brutus, “you’re a beaut of a man. I’ll be right there at ten-thirty.” He stood up, made no attempt to shake hands, reached the door and promptly turned away from it. “Just one other thing.”
“What is it?” demanded Mannering.
“Will you give me the name of that pastry-cook?”
Mannering laughed with a deep enjoyment, a kind of laughter that came too seldom, and only when he was on the best of terms with the world and with himself. Nathaniel Brutus had done him a great deal of good; even if he never saw the man again, that would be true. It was like a visit to those wide open spaces, where words were used sparingly, and for a simple purpose.
He did not expect to see Brutus next morning, but he would not be surprised if he turned up.
Could such a man own a million sheep?
The question was hardly in his mind before he picked up a telephone and dialled a friend who served as London Editor on a chain of Australian newspapers. He had to hold on. Larraby came in to report that Lady Bannington-Evans had asked that the Westphalian silver be reserved for her until the next afternoon, by which time she would have decided one way or the other.
“So of course I agreed,” Larraby said.
“If she asks for another day’s option tomorrow, say how sorry you are that it can’t be done,” Mannering said. As he finished, a man’s voice spoke through the telephone. “Hallo, Harry! How much do you know about sheep in your home country?” . . . Mannering signalled to Larraby to sit down. “That’s good. How common are stations with a million head of sheep? . . . What?” He almost laughed with relief. “How many? . . . You wouldn’t know them all, would you? . . . A man named Brutus, Nathaniel Brutus . . . Northern New South Wales and Southern Queensland . . . Yes, if you will, by half-past ten . . . No, not here, at Catesby’s. Thanks Harry . . . Yes, we must.”
Larraby echoed: “A million sheep?”
“That is what your Brutus said.”
“Do you know,” said Larraby feelingly, “I wouldn’t like to say whether I think the man is a liar. On the whole, sir, I think not.”
At half-past six that night, in the small study of his Chelsea flat at the top of an old house not far from the Thames, Mannering told his wife about Nathaniel Brutus. Lorna Mannering, sitting in her favourite position on a leather pouffe, one knee bent, upright as a young girl, was obviously intrigued by his reactions. She was a strikingly handsome woman, finely built and full-bosomed, with rather heavy eyebrows and a mass of dark hair only now beginning to show flecks of grey.
“. . . And I can hardly wait until I know whether he’ll be at Catesby’s,” Mannering said.
“I can hardly wait either,” said Lorna.
“You? At Catesby’s?”
“I have been before,” Lorna remarked drily. “And a man who can make you more animated than you’ve been for months, I must see. A course of Nathaniel Brutus might be good for you, darling.”
They
had another drink, Mannering whisky and soda, Lorna Dubonnet, then a modest dinner cooked by a pleasant little woman who came in three times a week to prepare an evening meal. They looked at one good and two indifferent television programmes, and then Lorna went to bed. Mannering took down the volume Anno to Baltic of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and turned to ‘Australia’, then volume ‘Sars to Sore’ and thumbed the pages to ‘Sheep’. It was not until he was yawning over the articles and wondering whether he had really learned much that the significance of one of Lorna’s remarks struck home. He had noticed it, and at the time felt a trifle peeved; now he found that he was almost resentful.
“And a man who can make you more animated than you’ve been for months I must see,” Lorna had said. “A course of Nathaniel Brutus might be good for you, darling.”
The opposite to being animated was surely to be dull.
Was he dull?
Still pondering the unpalatable aspects of the implication, Mannering went into the bathroom, studied his face for a few minutes, frowned, and then strolled to the drawing-room, long and narrow and beautiful in Regency and Louis Quinze. On one wall was a portrait which Lorna had painted of him, ten years or so ago. It was her favourite picture and in some moods, when nostalgia lay heavily and helped them to relive the earlier days of their love for each other, she would say that it pleased her above all else that she had caught the vitality and animation in him, and made it live in paint.
Was there something of the vitality of Nathaniel Brutus in that portrait? And had his vitality become so subdued? He wished he could say ‘Nonsense’ but in fairness he could not be sure.
Not until next morning did he wring some consolation out of the situation. He had slept like a top; the memory of an Australian mystery man who might own a million sheep had neither obsessed nor depressed him.
Lorna was still asleep, in the bed which touched his own. She was facing him, one shoulder and arm over the sheet, her face tucked down. She looked as peaceful as a child. After a few moments he recalled his mood of the previous night, and thought: No animation? No vitality? His manhood challenged, he pushed back the bedclothes, and slid in beside her.
She stirred ...
“Lorna my sweet,” Mannering said just after ten o’clock. “You look wonderful this morning.”
“So I should hope!”
“I’ve never meant that more seriously,” said Mannering.
She pressed his fingers, and for a moment their bodies touched.
“I know,” she said. “Bless you.”
They watched three dealers from America coming into Catesby’s, where the jewels were now in locked show-cases. Two guards stood at each door, while others moved unobtrusively about the auction rooms, renowned throughout the world of art and antiques. From a point of vantage, Mannering counted the heads and studied the faces, then whispered: “Even if Brutus isn’t here, everyone else is. I should think that every capital city and most of the big collectors are represented.”
There was the inevitable buzz of anticipation, most of those present speaking English but in a dozen accents. Catalogues flapped, officials bustled, but the auctioneer’s dais remained empty, the hands of a big-faced clock moving slowly forward, until it was half-past ten. Mannering looked at the door, faintly disappointed yet telling himself that he wasn’t really surprised.
The chief auctioneer took his position, and there followed the conventional courtesies, the brief pleasantries. Mannering reflected idly that the fortunes of the men assembled here, when put together, could have paid off Britain’s national debt.
“You didn’t really expect him,” Lorna said, and squeezed Mannering’s arm.
“My Lords, my ladies and gentlemen ...”
Above the chief auctioneer’s voice another sounded in Mannering’s ear.
“There’s a Mr. Brutus to see you, sir,” one of the attendants reported. “I thought I had better make sure you wished to see him.”
Mannering turned his head.
Nathaniel Brutus, dressed in the shrunken grey suit he had worn yesterday, so painfully unsuitable for Catesby’s, was standing in the door. In his right hand, raised high, was a large envelope. As Mannering caught sight of him he placed one finger by the side of his nose.
3: THE DISAPPOINTED BIDDER
Mannering shifted to one side, Lorna drew closer to the wall, and Brutus sat between them, glancing at Lorna yet obviously without really seeing her. He placed the envelope in Mannering’s hand, and whispered: “Open it.” Mannering was aware of his intent gaze, as well as his voice, carrying an authority which made the words a command. The chief auctioneer, looking and speaking rather like a self-conscious bishop, was already offering the first item in the catalogue.
“I need not elaborate on the rarity or the flawless beauty of the first number,” he was saying.
Mannering opened the letter and slid out two documents, both on the letter-heading of one of the Big Five among Britain’s banks. He glanced at the signature of the first; it was like being kicked by a horse, he was so surprised, for the signature was Renton of Way, and beneath this was the single word: “Chairman”. Mannering glanced at the other letter, which was from the manager of the bank’s head office in Mayfair. Each said the same thing: Nathaniel Brutus’s standing at the bank enable them to extend him credit to a limit of one million pounds sterling.
Attached to the manager’s letter was a passport photograph and a physical description of the Australian.
Lorna was leaning forward, trying to read the letters. Mannering handed them to her, in front of Brutus, who took notice of her for the first time. Mannering was by now so accustomed to his long, deliberate stare that he did not particularly notice Brutus’s gaze fixed immovably on Lorna. She looked quite startled as she handed the bank letters back to him.
“This quite distinctive pair of Georgian inkstands . . .” the auctioneer was saying.
Mannering whispered to Brutus: “What’s your limit for the insignia?”
“Six hundred thousand quid sterling.”
Lorna almost choked.
“Shhh!” a man reproved.
Brutus sat back, staring at Lorna. He was sitting in the midst of this remarkable assembly, ludicrously out-of-place, yet absolutely free from self-consciousness or embarrassment. The auctioneer went on and on, the bids came thick and fast, pieces were held up or put on cabinets for display, the ritual seemed unending . . . and Brutus continued to stare at Lorna. Now and again, touched with embarrassment, she turned to give him a mechanical smile, and then caught Mannering’s eye with pleading in her expression.
“Now we have the ducal insignia of the Alda family . . .”
“This is us,” Mannering whispered.
At last, Brutus looked away from Lorna.
“. . . You will not need me to elaborate upon the uniqueness or the beauty of this insignia,” the auctioneer went on. “I would like your bids, ladies and gentlemen, if you please.”
There was silence, tense and prolonged, before a little man with a bald head said in heavily-accented English: “One hundred thousand pounds.”
Without a pause a plump, red-faced man called quietly: “Two hundred thousand.”
“Two ten.”
“Two twenty.”
“Two fifty.”
Brutus whispered into Lorna’s ear. “It’s just like the wool sales.”
Lorna was jolted out of her mood to a laugh which she quickly stifled. A man shushed them again. Mannering watched the bidders, and made his guess as to the most likely men to stay the pace.
“Three fifty.”
“Sixty.”
“Seventy.”
Mannering came in for the first time.
“Four hundred.”
The auctioneer actually smiled at him.
“Thank you. I will now take bids of five thousand pounds, if you please. Four hundred thousand pounds has been bid for the Alda insignia.”
“Four hundred and five-ten-fifteen. . .”
As the figure drew closer to the half-million, the bids slackened. Tall, grey-haired Sorenson from Dallas, Texas, was still bidding; so was tiny Hondoni from Tokyo, with his expansive smile and his shiny death’s-head face. The English bidders had dropped out-so had those from the Commonwealth. Gradually, Mannering began to realize that he wanted those jewels-wanted them to stay at ‘home’ or as near home as he could find. For a while he had been bidding almost against his will, driven by a compulsion stemming from the vitality of the man by his side. Suddenly he realized that the insignia mattered.
“Five hundred and fifty thousand,” echoed the auctioneer.
“Five seventy-five.” That was Sorenson, deliberately laconic. Mannering paused.
“Five hundred-eighty-five.” Hondoni’s sounded rather like a tape-recorded voice. “Ninety,” said Sorenson.
“Six hundred,” Mannering bid. He waited, very tense, as if he were bidding not for the Australian but for himself. There was a longer pause; he began to wonder, almost to hope, that the others had reached their limit. Hondoni whispered to a man next to him, then leaned back and closed his eyes. Mannering fought against a lump in his throat. Six hundred thousand pounds, a million sheep, a million acres. Pounds, sheep, acres, pounds, sheep, acres.
Sorenson said: “Six hundred and five.”
Mannering felt as if someone had dealt him a severe blow on the head-but as the American spoke, as all eyes were turned towards him, Brutus gripped his hand, and said: “Six-fifty.”
“Are you sure?”
“Are you bidding, Mr. Mannering?”
“Yes, get on with it,” Brutus muttered.
“Six hundred and ten,” Mannering said.
Somewhere, someone let out a long, slow breath. After that there was a silence so acute that it seemed impossible to realize that so many people were in this room.
Brutus’s fingers were like claws round Mannering’s wrist. Mannering did not notice it, but he was gripping Lorna’s wrist as tightly. The hush over the room was like a physical thing.
“Twenty,” Sorenson said laconically.