by John Creasey
He looked about him.
Straight ahead of them was a second door, securely fastened this time but showing a crack of light.
Storm put his eye to the keyhole. Muttering imprecations on the designer of the lock, he squinted upwards, downwards, left and right in an unavailing effort to see something more helpful than the leg of a table and the toe-cap of an unpolished shoe.
Straining his ears to the utmost he heard a soft, at first unintelligible mutter of voices.
He could not hear the words clearly, but the voice, suave, cool, confident and faintly derisive, was unmistakable; it was the voice of Zoeman.
Storm’s lips set in a grim line.
The second voice came more clearly. Not only did he recognise it, he heard the damning words.
‘I’ve got to have the money quickly, Zoeman. I kept a watch on Wenlock and sent messages through to you when it might have meant a bullet in my back at any minute. I’ve done my share – now I want the money!’
It was the voice of Frank Granville!
Chapter 17
Escapades and Disasters
Storm knew that he was in love with Letty Granville. It might prove to be dangerous or unwise, but the fact remained and he was glad of it. It would not be the first time in history that such a complication had arisen.
He could now have no doubt of Frank Granville’s part in the affair of Redhead. It had occurred to him before that if her brother was playing a double game and fell foul of the police, it would hit Letty harder than the man himself. In consequence he had lulled his fears, but now, hearing those damning words coming through the door he could doubt no longer.
Double-crossing, they called it. Even rogues black-balled a squealer.
Zoeman’s voice came again, slightly louder.
‘You’ll get your money as soon as we’ve finished.’
‘I’ve done all I promised to do.’
‘You didn’t get Storm away from the Grange. And you called him here!’
Granville laughed harshly.
‘You’ve got a lot to learn about Storm. I daren’t let him think that I wanted him to clear out – ’
‘But,’ repeated Zoeman, ‘you brought him here.’
‘I know I did. Damn it, Zoeman, I’m in the devil of a hole and I’ve got to get the money. I don’t care how. But you were here when Wenlock kidnapped my sister. I wanted to make quite sure that she was safe – ’
‘Conscience pricking you?’ sneered Zoeman.
Granville was silent. None knew better than he the danger into which he had drawn Letty, and it was the one point in his treacherous activities between Zoeman and Wenlock, the constant pitting of one man against the other, selling knowledge earned from one man to the next, which made him uneasy.
Zoeman went on quietly and Storm had difficulty in catching the words.
‘All right. We’ll let that go. But what was the letter Storm sent off this morning?’
There was uncertainty in his voice and Storm felt a lilt of relief. The letter had gone through. But he set his teeth as Granville gave the information without a pause.
‘He wrote to the Home Office – Sir William Divot. He didn’t say much, apart from reporting the murder of Harries and the death of Smithers.’
‘Smithers killed himself,’ said Zoeman. ‘He was too yellow to take what might come. Harries – that was Wenlock’s work, blast him!’ There was a pause, then: ‘So he wrote to Divot, did he? God! We’ll have to move!’
There was a scraping of chairs, and for a moment Storm thought the men were coming to the door; but the shuffling stopped suddenly.
‘He didn’t take it anywhere else but Ledsholm, did he?’
‘No. He must have caught the special morning post at ten-forty-five. A train only stops at Ledsholm Halt on market days.’
Zoeman’s voice was steely.
‘We’ll be lucky if we get out of this alive. I can’t leave yet. There are a dozen more men to come in before ten o’clock. Are you standing by? Or clearing out?’ There was a wealth of contempt in the words.
‘I’ll stay,’ muttered Granville.
He’s got guts, thought Storm, the courage of utter desperation.
‘I’m sending you down to the village,’ said Zoeman smoothly, ‘with two men. If you try any tricks you’ll get shot without a thought. Tell the man Cripps that you’re having a film company at Ledsholm Grange this evening, and that there might be a war scene taken. That,’ he added slowly, ‘is in case Redhead comes. We should have to fight. Anyhow – make sure that the whole village knows about it, and stress the possibility of danger. Tell Cripps that you will prosecute anyone trespassing on the grounds of the Grange. Got that?’
‘There are two public roads running through,’ said Granville.
‘We’ll have to chance that. And don’t forget that if we don’t get away with it tonight you’ll lose your money. You’ll go down in the Bugatti, and it shouldn’t take more than an hour.’
Storm heard Granville’s footsteps crossing the room and a door open and close. Mixed with rage at the treachery of Granville was a deep respect for the cleverness of Zoeman. That story of a film shooting was little short of genius. It would disarm local suspicion if there was any shooting, and no rumours would spread round to the authorities. What was more, as many cars as Zoeman wanted could go to and fro.
He was fairly sure of the position of affairs. Zoeman had sent his men out on a country-wide series of hold-ups and robberies. He would not desert his men, yet the leader of the English bandit organisation was on tenterhooks, deadly afraid of that letter to Sir William Divot.
But Storm’s fury towards Granville was strong and deep. Out of his own mouth he had been convicted of double-crossing from the start. Even on board the Hoveric he had known that Zoeman was at the Grange – and he remembered that Granville had been in consultation with Ralph Wenlock. Was he planning to sell out to both sides?
And how much did Letty know?
Swinging round to his two followers, he whispered tersely:
‘Granville’s ratted. Zoeman’s in there alone. If the door’s unlocked we’ll get him. If it’s not, we’ll wait until he goes and see what we can do with the keys.’
The others nodded grimly, feeling something of Storm’s fury at the treachery of Frank Granville. Scarcely daring to breathe, Storm put his fingers on the brass handle of the door and turned it gently.
A glint of satisfaction brightened the grimness of his eyes at the ease with which it was done. Motioning Grimm with his left arm he waited until that worthy was standing so that his gun was in position to cover the gang leader. Then:
‘Now!’ he muttered.
The door crashed open. Zoeman jerked to his feet in a trice, but the gun in Grimm’s hand spoke louder than words and he kept his hands away from his pockets. The expression on his usually suave features was not pleasant.
Storm stepped quickly to the further door and turned the key. Slipping it in his pocket he swung round.
‘So,’ he murmured.
Zoeman made a tremendous effort to regain his self-control. After that first moment of icy fury his features had relaxed. He stared coolly at the genial giant in front of him, not flinching as Storm took two steps towards him and gently slid his automatic from his hip pocket.
‘I’d hate to crack you one, Zoeman. Funny, isn’t it, the way things go? An hour ago you wouldn’t have believed this could happen.’
Zoeman swallowed.
‘I certainly wouldn’t,’ he admitted suavely. ‘You’re the most troublesome pest I’ve ever come across, Storm. How did you manage it?’
‘Trade secret,’ said Storm blandly. ‘You see us gassed, but workable.’
‘You asked for the gas,’ Zoeman said smoothly. ‘You had chances enough to get away. But’ – he smiled mockingly, and the smile gave Storm a qualm. Zoeman looked much less like a man who had been outwitted than he should have done – ‘as for the guards – you can take it from me, the rest of my little party won�
��t be too long.’
‘Just what we’re hoping,’ grinned Storm. ‘The boys are spoiling to knock somebody’s head off.’
Zoeman leaned across the table, and his fingers played with what looked to Storm like a knot in the wood. The expression in his eyes was half-cynical, half-derisive.
‘Is that so? Well – let me be explicit, Storm. A large number of my men are upstairs, keeping a look-out. They are watching a signal board set in the wall, and at a certain warning they will know that there is danger down here – ’
‘Good,’ said Storm, ‘but not good enough. I’m past the stage when bluff can get over me.’
The smaller man smiled mockingly.
‘Seeing should be believing. You may have noticed that all the doors are made of steel. They are electrically controlled. If you look round you will see that the door through which you came and which you left open is now shut.’
Storm was ready for a trap.
‘Have a look at it, Roger,’ he said sharply.
Grimm turned his head.
Zoeman was speaking the truth. The door was shut behind them.
‘So,’ murmured Zoeman, ‘unless it is opened from the outside it will stay shut – and every other door in the place as well!’
Storm swallowed. Like Best and Grimm he knew that Zoeman was not bluffing. They were trapped almost as certainly as if they had never escaped from their first prison.
‘Awkward, isn’t it?’ murmured Zoeman.
‘Deucedly,’ managed Storm, breaking through the coldness which had gripped him and forcing a breezy simulation of indifference. ‘The trouble is that you are here with us.’
‘That won’t help you. If anything should happen to me you would still be locked in. So would the other men outside this room. And unless they are extremely careful they will touch one of the doors incomplete ignorance. And the result would be extremely unpleasant.’
‘So you say.’
‘So you will too – if you’re alive to say it,’ said Zoeman with a dry smile. ‘You may remember that the unfortunate Smithers killed himself by electrocution. Every door in this place is alive with a current strong enough to kill a man at the slightest touch!’
Storm stared at him aghast. Suddenly, awfully, he caught a mental vision of the distorted, pain-wracked face of the under-gardener.
‘You – swine!’ he swore. ‘I’ll break every bone in your body!’
‘Heroics,’ mocked Zoeman. ‘I merely took precautions against men like Wenlock. You are unfortunate – and I warned you often enough to get out. Meanwhile your friends are in very grave danger.’
Storm made a last desperate effort to beat the other man’s resource.
‘You’re bluffing, damn you!’
With a chilling indifference to the threat of Grimm’s automatic Zoeman stood up easily.
‘Watch,’ he said.
A housefly was circling the room, then straight as a die it sped towards the steel. A prick of blue flame shot out. Storm watched, fascinated, as minute specks of charred powder wafted lazily to the floor.
‘I think,’ murmured Zoeman, ‘that I’d better have the guns, Storm. Otherwise – ’
It was the first time in his thirty exuberant years that Martin Storm handed over his weapons without a fight. The cleft stick into which Zoeman had forced him by the remorseless perfection of every detail of his plans threatened a disaster too horrible to countenance.
‘Let him have yours, Roger,’ he muttered to Grimm. ‘No use asking for it. It’s another trick to him.’
A gleam of admiration shone in Zoeman’s eyes. He could realise without effort the galling madness of Storm’s heart as he struck his flag.
‘The last trick,’ said Zoeman meaningly.
‘Maybe not,’ grinned Storm. ‘Very sound postal service we’ve got, Zoeman – especially on market days!’
The other’s steely grey eyes glinted.
‘There was,’ he said suavely, ‘an unreported raid on the post office this morning, Storm. But we must think of your friends.’
He moved slowly towards the table and pressed another seeming knot in the wood. Once – twice – thrice. A distant buzzer hummed out, and after a short pause there came a tap on the outer door.
‘Come in,’ said Zoeman, ‘but be careful. Our friends here are – ’
‘Zoeman,’ said Storm suddenly and with obvious annoyance, ‘I like you – at times. But I should hate to be friends. Nevertheless – ’
He was smiling, but there was a hard glint in his blue eyes, striking Zoeman as the sign of a sternly repressed fury, but telling Roger Grimm and Martin Best that he had been seized with an idea. Storm’s ideas were usually hairbrained and always risky, but any one of them would be better than complete surrender. They watched him as he strode towards the mocking Zoeman and the three armed men stepping into the room.
‘You’re talking too much,’ said Zoeman, but his eyes narrowed as Storm, standing immediately below the electric lamp stretched his arms upwards. Then:
‘Damnation!’ he rapped. ‘Get him!’
For Storm, with a well-feigned yawn, heaved his great body upwards and in the last split-second of light his fingers gripped the bulb of the lamp. Zoeman’s finger touched the trigger of his gun as the frail glass smashed. Three yellow stabs of light spat through the sudden, all-pervading darkness, and three ominous zutts! told the tale of humming bullets. Zoeman heard a heavy fall in front of him and a short, repressed gasp of pain. Storm was hit!
‘Crowd the door!’ shouted Zoeman, disturbed out of his usual calm. ‘Don’t fire!’
Best and Grimm heard the order and realised that Storm had foreseen it. In the darkness Zoeman dared not let his men shoot for fear of getting in the path of a death-dealing bullet. They knew, too, that Storm, no matter how badly injured, would have cursed if he thought they hesitated. Tightening their muscles they hurtled like rockets towards the three men at the door. Three white blurs of the men’s faces loomed out of the darkness. Best, a yard ahead of Grimm, crashed out his right fist and took his man amidships. The man went down with a cry of agony.
‘One!’ snapped Grimm, and let fly with his left.
He felt a man’s head jerk back with a sickening crack. Taken full on the point of the jaw with every ounce of fury-inspired strength Zoeman’s second henchman gasped one rattling gurgle and dropped back.
‘Two!’ growled Best. ‘No you don’t, drat you!’
The third man swung round, racing madly for the door, but Best’s six-feet-three of bone and muscle catapaulted through the air in a flying tackle. The third gunman felt his shins grabbed and he went jerking upwards, crashing his head against the ceiling. Best dodged aside, hearing the dull thud of the senseless body hitting the rubber-covered floor.
‘Three,’ grunted Best. ‘Here’s the door, Grimm. Turn right, old son.’
They could see nothing behind them but from the frantic buzzing of the electric bell ahead knew that Zoeman was pressing his warning buzzer. Somewhere ahead they heard a shout of alarm. They waited, crouching like tigers. A flood of light surged through the darkness but undaunted they leapt blindly into the small crowd of gunmen crushing towards Zoeman’s room.
Right and left they smashed out grimly, meeting flesh and bone with sickening force. Devastated by that bull rush the crowd split in two. A man’s heavily shod foot cracked against Best’s shin and with an elephantine bellow the infuriated Best let drive with his right foot. Someone shrieked and a loaded automatic dropped to the floor from nerveless fingers. In a flash Grimm was on it. Pushing ferociously ahead with Best a yard behind him, he fired point-blank beneath his arm at the shattered crowd.
Once – twice – thrice –
‘What about Windy?’ gasped Best. ‘Had we better – ’
Before he finished Storm’s voice burst furiously.
‘Get out, you lunatics! I’m all right!’
Like men possessed they rushed onwards. A fourth empty room still littered with the
remains of a meal led to a short flight of stairs, and again Zoeman’s precaution of making his underground headquarters soundproof reacted adversely for him. Two gunmen keeping guard over the open steel door leading to the kitchen knew nothing of the second outbreak until a bullet from Grimm’s gun sent one man down and Best’s great fist hurtled the second against the wall.
It was still daylight. Two men at the door of the powerhouse saw them and their hands darted towards their hip pockets, but the fifth shot from Grimm’s automatic took one in the chest, sending him staggering back. With lightning fury Best’s fist crashed his companion to the earth.
‘Only one more bullet,’ muttered Grimm. ‘If only we had a car! Tarnation, Best! The Bugatti!’
Timothy Arran’s racing monster was standing idly in the courtyard. In less than a second Grimm had swung into the driver’s seat, pressing the self-starter and stepping on the gas as Best clambered after him. The great car leapt forward.
From left and right bullets winged towards them, cracking ominously against the bodywork. Half-a-dozen of Zoeman’s gang of plunderers, guarding the Grange from concealed points of vantage, kept up a rattling hail of shots, but the Bugatti bore a charmed life. Neither the engine nor the tyres were touched as it swung on two wheels round the gateway of the drive, shaving Black Rock and heading for Ledsholm.
‘We’re away, boys!’ gasped Grimm, madly exultant.
Neither of them saw the Delage with its red-haired driver until it was too late. Then with a startled oath Grimm recognised the green-eyed Wenlock. Before Grimm realised the danger Wenlock pulled at his brakes, barking a word of command to the three gangsters with him.
Jerking out of their seats they dropped out of the car a fraction of a second behind Wenlock who, recognising the Bugatti and the battle-scarred occupants, pressed hard on his accelerator before jumping cleanly into the road.
Grimm fought like a demon to save the Bugatti, but the powerful Delage was too near. Twenty yards away Best accepted the inevitable.
‘Jump for it!’ he bellowed. ‘Out, Roger!’
Something seared redhot through his shoulder as he jumped for the road. He crashed downwards. Grimm, a split-second behind, dodged Wenlock’s first bullet but grunted with pain as a second thudded into his thigh. His gun went flying over the hedge as Wenlock leered triumphantly towards his victims a fraction of a second before the two cars crashed with a terrific roar.