Help From The Baron

by John Creasey

  “It could be that,” Mannering conceded, grudgingly.

  “And when the gang was sure Lisle hadn’t got them and didn’t know where they were, they killed him. And telephoned us to report that he was dead? Why do that? It was a man’s voice - he just dialled 999 and reported. I happened to be in the Information Room at the time, I’d just got back. So we went there like rockets.” Bristow began the inevitable business with cigarettes. “Well, we’ve worked up a pretty theory.”

  “Couldn’t be prettier,” Mannering agreed. “How much attention have you given Simon Lessing and Susan Pengelly?”

  “The usual check.”

  “Found anything?”

  “Simon runs a genuine architect’s business, he has some money and has a reliable assistant. The girl’s a genuine art student, reckoned to be one of the most brilliant at the Slade. Brilliant but uncontrolled. They spent most of the summer and all of their winter vacation in Paris - with two or three others from the school.”

  “Paris?” echoed Mannering. “Who else went? Francesca?”

  “No. Joy Lessing and a couple of other girls. What’s on your mind?”

  “There’s a vague French association already,” Mannering said. “I heard two men speaking French in a way which suggests that the people speak it a lot, and where would they do that except in Paris, France? The original owner of the jewels was le Marquis de Cironde et Bles, whose chateau was burned down over his head and who had to sell a lot of heirlooms and family treasures because he’d forgotten the little matter of insurance. Or it had been forgotten for him by a careless secretary. Now these girls study painting in France. Bernard Lisle - have you a photograph of him?”

  “Here.” Bristow ferretted among the papers on the desk and produced one; a good one. “Handsome beggar,” he commented.

  “He said the jewelled cross once belonged to Francesca’s mother,” Mannering said. “Francesca’s mother would have been somewhere about the age of forty-seven to fifty, if she’d lived. The cross might have been hers a long time ago. Bill, I think we want to find out how many daughters the Marquis de Cironde et Bles had, and whom they married. That might help us to identify Bernard Lisle. Can you get that from the Sûreté Générale?”

  “Yes.” Bristow moved to the telephone. “And I’ll ask for a photograph, too. You get ideas sometimes. Where are you going now?”

  “To see Simon Lessing and Susan Pengelly,” Mannering said. “The girl might have met Lisle in Paris, mightn’t she? Or met someone who’s involved in this from across the Channel.”

  “You’ll probably find the pair at Lessing’s flat,” Bristow told him. “I’m keeping it watched, and my man reported half an hour ago.” He touched a note on his desk.

  “Thanks,” said Mannering. “Don’t lose ‘em, Bill.”

  He used the lift to go downstairs, nodded absently to familiars at the Yard, reached the courtyard and realised that his car was still outside the nursing home. It was only ten minutes’ walk away. He decided to walk, for a taxi would probably take longer in the midday traffic. It was so warm that some typists were carrying their suit coats as they walked along the embankment. Mannering kept on the river side, which was emptier. On the gardens just beyond the Houses of Parliament it looked like a summer day. Every seat and every inch of grass was covered with sitting or sprawling bodies, a thousand jaws were chewing on a thousand sandwiches, and a thousand apples were waiting for the onslaught of sharp teeth.

  He crossed the road to the side street and his car.

  A man, lounging against the wall, moved as he came up, and deliberately blocked his path.

  19: MANNERING RECEIVES INSTRUCTIONS

  The man wasn’t ill-favoured so much as rugged. He was dressed in a baggy suit of grey tweeds, had a big moustache which looked as if it might come off when pulled hard; and shaggy eyebrows which were probably false, too. He had an easy smile. His movements were lazy but considered, and he gave the impression that he could pack a useful punch.

  “Fancy meeting you,” he greeted.

  Mannering stopped. “You have the advantage of me,” he said solemnly.

  The other’s grin broadened.

  “Scoby said you’d see it his way, sooner or later! Now you’ve seen the kind of thing that happens to people who play fast and loose with us, and we hope it’s a lesson you’ve learnt. You remember there was some talk about those little bits of glass.”

  Mannering moved, to allow a young girl and an elderly woman to pass.

  “Vaguely.”

  “Better not be vague,” the man said. “Scoby wants them tonight. Take them with you to Lessing’s flat. Fair exchange - the bits of glass for the bit of fluff.” He grinned. “You wouldn’t like little Joy to stay with her new friends any longer, so that she could learn a bit more about life, would you?”

  The grin was a leer.

  “I told Scoby one thing,” Mannering said, “don’t hurt Joy. Don’t hurt her and don’t teach her anything.” He moved on.

  The man took his wrist and held it very tightly, with the pressure of a man who had great physical strength.

  “Tonight, Lessing’s flat, no police, no pals,” he said.

  Mannering flicked his wrist. Strength was one thing, judo another, and in days long past it had been necessary for him to fling a sixteen-stone policeman over his shoulder. This man was not sixteen stone. He winced, gasped, felt as if his arm were going to break, and then smacked back against the wall, propelled by what appeared to be no more than a wave of Mannering’s hand. Two lads gaped, a nicely-turned out young woman in a veil and pipe-line skirt missed a step.

  “I’ll be seeing you,” Mannering said, and smiled at the man who, remarkably, had ceased to grin.

  Mannering didn’t quicken his pace. He wasn’t followed. He wasn’t fooled. Simon Lessing’s place was named as a rendezvous, but if he started out for it he would be held up long before he got there. He was beginning to have deep if reluctant admiration for the tactics of Scoby and his men.

  His car was still there.

  It hadn’t been touched, as far as he could judge. He drove straight to Lessing’s flat, which was on the second floor, and immediately there was a movement inside.

  Simon Lessing didn’t open the door; Susan Pengelly did. She looked surprised but not displeased. She opened her loose red mouth and showed those oddly small and wide-spaced teeth. The light from a window behind Mannering put a glint into the green of her eyes. She wore a smock, gay with colour and much too tight for her. It seemed to extend her massive figure almost to her knees.

  “Hallo,” she said, “come in.” She stood aside. “Si, it’s the amateur detective genius.”

  “Who?” Simon came hurrying from one of the three rooms in sight. He stopped abruptly. “So it’s you!”

  “Honey,” Susan said, “the obvious may be left unsaid.”

  “What do you want, Mannering?” Simon demanded.

  The evidence of strain was in his glittering eyes. His hands weren’t as steady as they should have been, and as if to point to that, he had cut himself on the right cheek while shaving; there was a hair-thin red line. His lips were set tightly, and moved almost as a puppet’s; he wasn’t so good-looking this way.

  “Well?” he snapped. “Are you going to play ball, or are you . . .?” Simon broke off. He lunged across the room to a baby grand piano, where several photographs stood in ebony frames. He grabbed one, swung round, and thrust it in front of Mannering’s eyes. “See that. That’s Joy. That’s the girl you’re sacrificing for those damnable jewels.”

  It was an effective move. The photographer had caught Joy Lessing when she was beginning to smile, and when her eyes held a dawning light. Mannering remembered her very well indeed. Lovely; Kissable; crushable; kill-able.

  “Well? You going to stand by and let her suffer?”

  “No one should be judged too soon, Mr. Mannering might be an honest man,” Susan cooed.

  “Honest my foot! He . . .”

&n
bsp; “I know that you must be as worried as a man can be about Joy, but spluttering like a firework display’ won’t help you or Joy,” Mannering said mildly. “Do you want to try to find her, or don’t you?”

  “He comes with the words of a cooing dove and adorns himself in the white petals of deception. Original.” Susan started a move into one of the rooms, a nicely-furnished living-room.

  “Of course I want to find her,” Simon rasped. “And you are the one man who can . . .”

  “No, I’m not,” said Mannering. “I haven’t the Fioras. But I know now that someone has been fooled into believing that I have. I am instructed to bring them here, tonight. That doesn’t give me long to look for them.”

  Simon ejaculated: “What?”

  Susan Pengelly slipped off the smock. Underneath, she wore a woollen jumper, obviously self-knitted, with big stitches and several knots where the wool had been badly joined. Incredibly, it fitted loosely.

  “Who’d like a drink?” she asked.

  “Have they been after you again?” Mannering asked.

  Simon didn’t answer.

  “Yes,” said Susan. “Blood-curdling threats uttered in the same kind of disarming voice as yours. It was a man he met in the street. What were the exact words, Si? And when you’ve time, tell me if you’d like a drink. We can offer,” she added, “whisky or gin, gin or whisky, and if you’re really particular, a little whisky or gin. No It, but there might be a spot of Noilly Praat.”

  “The exact words,” said Simon speaking as if each breath were being dragged out of him, “were these, as nearly as I can remember them: ‘Make sure Mannering plays ball. If he doesn’t, your kid sister will be grown up all of a sudden.’ ” For a moment he was silent, then he blurted out: “The ruddy swine!”

  Susan murmured: “Does anyone know which is better for blood-pressure - whisky or gin?”

  Simon swung round on her. “Why don’t you shut up? You’ve been making cracks like that all the morning. If you can’t keep quiet, get to hell out of here.”

  Susan Pengelly smiled . . .

  But she wasn’t laughing with her eyes at all. His savage manner hurt her. It was impossible to tell whether he knew it, or whether he cared. She didn’t turn away, but watched him very closely. Then she spoke.

  “What do you really want from us, Mr. Mannering?” She was almost subdued.

  “I want to find out how anxious Lessing really is to get his sister back,” Mannering said, “and I want to know more about her. There hasn’t been time to probe. I know . . .” He told them what Bristow had told him. During the telling, Susan brought him a gin-and-French, and put a different-shaped glass with a different-coloured liquid into Simon’s hand. “How well did Joy know the Lisles?”

  “The two Lisles?” Simon looked at his drink. “I don’t think she knew Bernard Lisle very well. She met him at Francesca’s place once or twice, and once in France, I believe. But it was Francesca she was interested in. They are inseparable. What Franky will say . . .”

  “We’ll look after Francesca,” Mannering said. “Did Francesca often confide in Joy?”

  “Suppose you tell us what you’re getting at,” Simon demanded.

  “I want to know why these people kidnapped Joy.”

  “You know why. So that I could be forced to make you . . .”

  “Simple Simon,” Susan gurgled. She did not remain subdued for long. “Even I knew that was phoney. They had Joy and they used her that way, but no one in their senses would ever believe that you, Simon Lessing Esquire, could bring pressure to bear on Mannering. Phoney as they come. I wondered when Mannering would get round to this particular question, even I can see that it may be important. I could venture an opinion, of course, but I’m not sure that it would be welcome.”

  “May we have it?” Mannering invited.

  “Will you protect me?” asked Susan mockingly. “From the wrath to come, I mean. I think that Francesca told Joy something in confidence, and that as a result it wasn’t safe for these hoodlums to let Joy run round loose. I think that Francesca’s father was a crook. Spelt C-R-O-O-K. That he had these diamonds, and that thief is trying to rob thief. I also think that Francesca knew all this, and . . .”

  “I told you to shut up.” Simon rounded on her savagely, eyes glittering. “Now you’ve gone a damned sight too far. All I ever get from you are foul innuendoes about Francesca and her father. The trouble with you is a mind like a sewer, you can’t imagine anyone being decent and straightforward. You - you ought to have been born in the gutter five hundred years ago. Now get out, and don’t come back.”

  She was startled enough to plead.

  “Si, don’t be . . .”

  “Get out!”

  She closed her mouth tightly; there was just a bright red slash beneath her nose. She looked at Simon from narrowed eyes, and the green in them seemed to be shimmering in the light of an emotion which it was hard to understand.

  Then she went to the sideboard, poured herself out a finger of neat whisky, drank it as if she were pouring medicine down her throat and, without another look at Simon or at Mannering, went out.

  The room door and the outer door closed quietly.

  Simon said: “There are times when I hate the sight of her!” He snatched out his pipe and stuck it, empty, between his fine teeth. “Oh, forget her. What do you really want to know?”

  “Whether Francesca could have told Joy anything which made Joy dangerous to these people,” Mannering said mildly. “Or whether Joy found anything out, unknowingly. Did she hint of anything like that to you?”

  “That Lisle was a fence, you mean? No, she didn’t. Susan’s hinted at it for weeks. But then, anything Susan could do to discredit Francesca was as good as done. Sometimes she scares me.”

  Mannering murmured: “If she could hate as well as she can love you’d be in hell, my son.”

  Simon looked startled, but went on quickly: “That’s exactly what I mean. The devil of it is that I’m never myself when Sue’s around. She makes me feel vicious. I don’t know what it is. She’s always needling me in some way or other, and since I’ve - I’ve become so fond of Francesca, it’s got much worse.”

  “How long is that?”

  “Oh, the better part of a year.”

  Simon began to fill his pipe. He smoked a broad-cut mixture with a sweet smell. He looked as if he had a blinding headache; there was a tell-tale shiny kind of brightness in his eyes. Like Bristow, he hadn’t slept much; and to a degree much more than Bristow’s he was living on his nerves.

  “If you haven’t got the jewels, what the devil are we going to do?” he asked abruptly.

  Mannering said: “I could pretend that I have. They’ll probably be in touch with you again, soon, and may make even uglier threats about Joy. Do you think your nerve can stand up to more strain?”

  “Oh, I can take the strain, it’s being so helpless that gives me hell.”

  “When they ask again, give them a message. Say I told you that I’d been ordered to bring the jewels here. Say that I told you their offer was chicken-feed, and that in any case I wouldn’t go to them, they’d have to come to me. In other words, let them feel more sure than ever that I have the jewels.”

  Simon said: “I don’t get it.”

  “Above everything else, they want the diamonds. While they think I have them, there’s a hope that they’ll string along. And they’ll probably go easy on Joy.”

  Simon said in a strangled voice: “Probably!”

  “That’s right,” Mannering said, “and I think they will. If you can fool them.”

  “I’ll fool them,” Simon said.

  The trouble for the time being was that Mannering knew that he couldn’t take the offensive. Now Scoby had just vanished, it was as simple as that.

  They were up to all the tricks.

  Mannering drove to Quinns, where Larraby reported a blank day of inquiries, too.

  “All right, Josh,” Mannering said. “Give up the shop for the
day, and keep an eye on young Lessing. He’ll be approached again, and might be told to go and see Scoby and company. Try to trail Lessing. The police are doing it, but he probably knows that, and it’s easy to dodge a man you know about.”

  “He won’t dodge me,” Larraby said, as if he had turned from cherub to avenging angel.

  Mannering drove to Green Street, with the windows of the car right down. The wind off the river was almost balmy. He turned the corner, and wasn’t altogether surprised to see Susan Pengelly standing on the pavement, outside his house. She didn’t smile at him, but waited until he got out and approached. Then she said smoothly “I’m sorry you were inflicted with Simon’s tantrums, but I suppose I had it coming to me. He is evidently not for me.” Her eyes brooded. “All the same, I don’t want him to get into more trouble. I think Francesca spells trouble for him and for anyone she touches. Including you.”

  “She might,” Mannering said mildly. “I’ve known the angels be satanic and the ones born bad become angelic.” His eyes laughed at her. “Why do you hate Francesca so much, Sue? Because she’s taking Simon away from you?”

  “No,” she said. “Someone was going to do that, anyway, he’s not for me. I just don’t trust the goody-goods, and I didn’t like the effect Francesca had on Joy. Joy worshipped her. She was always with her. I didn’t think it was healthy. I think you’ve got something when you say that Francesca or her father said something in Joy’s hearing and put Joy in this spot. Do you think there’s any chance of saving her?”

  The question came very sharply; almost fearfully.

  Mannering said: “I don’t know. I simply don’t know.”

  20: NEWS FROM THE SÛRETÉ GÉNÉRALE

  Lorna was in Mannering’s study, looking through a book of beautifully coloured plates - all pictures of diamonds. She hadn’t heard him come in, and looked round with a start when he said: “You won’t find the Fioras in that, sweetheart!”