by John Creasey
‘A brief report, but well worth making,’ said Chittering. ‘The young man’s name is Courtney. He has rooms in Linden Road, off Edgware Road. He followed Anne until she took a taxi. He took another and arrived ahead of her. When she arrived she nearly fainted at the sight of him. They went in together. I found out from a neighbour that her parents are away. Courtney only stayed for a quarter of an hour, and when he came out he was looking very pleased with himself. He is now having dinner at the Czech Restaurant in Edgware Road. I’m at a cafe nearly opposite.’
‘Thanks, Chitty, that sounds interesting. Have you a car with you?’
‘No.’
‘Mine will be near Linden Road in about forty minutes,’ said Mannering. ‘I won’t be any longer. Don’t drive off in it until I turn up, will you?’
‘Going to have a look-see?’
‘I’d better see you first,’ Mannering said.
He put down the receiver, conscious of Lorna’s gaze. He could guess what was passing through her mind, but couldn’t imagine what he himself looked like. She was seeing the gleam in his eyes which had first fascinated her so long ago; the gleam which seemed to invite danger and betray his readiness to go and meet it. She knew he would never alter, that this was part of him – and if it were to fade, he wouldn’t be the same man. It hurt because it was a mood she could never share.
‘So you’re going out,’ she said.
‘Coming?’
‘You don’t want me.’
‘I could tell you all about it on the way,’ said Mannering enticingly. ‘Then you could have a chat with Chitty while you’re waiting.’ He drank the last of his coffee. ‘Ready in ten minutes?’
He went into the bedroom, unlocked a drawer in the wardrobe, took out a small tool-kit, changed into a coat with a large pocket in the lining, and took a blue scarf out of the drawer. He put on an old hat and pulled it low over his eyes, then went into the bathroom and cut strips of Elastoplast, which he stuck on to the tips of his fingers and thumbs.
When he came out, Lorna was waiting for him in an old raincoat and headscarf.
They went to a set of lock-up garages in Victoria, where Mannering kept an old Austin, then drove to Linden Road. Number 79 was some distance from the main street, and Mannering driving past it, saw Chittering lurking at the corner which turned left. Mannering drew up.
‘Going in?’ Chittering asked hopefully.
‘I’m going to try. Is there a back entrance?’
‘No, only a garden wall, about seven feet high.’
‘Hmm. Encouraging. Will you two amuse each other for a while? I may not be more than twenty minutes. If our Mr. Courtney shows up, give me a shout. Do you know if he lives alone?’
‘I had a chat with a nice little thing who lives on the next floor,’ said Chittering. ‘Yes, he lives alone—second floor. What is more, he usually goes out to dinner and stays until eleven or twelve o’clock. I hope you know that what you’re planning is strictly illegal.’
Mannering smiled, squeezed Lorna’s hand, and walked off. It was dark and the nearest street lamp was thirty or forty yards away. There was a glass fanlight over the front door of Number 79, however, and the number of the house showed up clearly. Mannering went up four steps to the front door, which was closed and locked. Chittering and Lorna would give him warning if there was any danger of his being interrupted.
He took out a strip of mica.
It could be used for many purposes, one of them being that of forcing a Yale lock. To an expert, that was the simplest task, and he had become expert years ago. As he worked the mica between the side of the door and the doorframe, he could approve, dispassionately, the speed and dexterity with which he worked. Presently the lock clicked back.
Mannering pushed the door open, and stepped inside.
A dim light came from a landing, another from the end of a passage which ran from the front door. He went cautiously up the stairs. He reached the second floor, where there were four doors; all but the bathroom were locked.
There was no sound in the house.
Mannering slid a pick-lock from his pocket, and opened a blade. The cold metal slid through his fingers as he inserted it.
There was a sharp click as the lock went back.
He pushed the door open and stepped into the dark room. Taking out a pencil torch, he moved the bright streak across the floor. A cricket bag was propped up in one corner, the wall above it covered with photographs of girls in odd poses with bright artificial smiles.
Mannering took two opened letters off the mantelpiece, each addressed to William Courtney. One was typewritten. He opened it. It was from Holroyd and Green, Exporters and Importers, of Manchester, and regretted that there was no vacancy in any of their overseas branches for Mr. Courtney; it was dated a month earlier. The stiffness of the phrasing suggested that there never would be a vacancy. The second letter was a lot of slush from Tweeny.
Near the golf clubs was a tallboy, all the drawers of which were locked. Mannering used the pick-lock again, working in a silence only broken by the click of each lock as it opened. The first drawer was filled with papers, and two small, black bound books. One was filled with the names and addresses of girls; the other, of men.
Mannering slid this into his pocket, and searched on. Bank statements showed that Courtney was nearly two hundred pounds in the red; that made understandable a note from the bank manager, asking him to call at his earliest convenience. The letter was dated three weeks earlier. Mannering opened a file of applications for different jobs, both at home and overseas – all carbon copies. A small portable typewriter on the floor by the desk told that Courtney had typed them himself.
All the answers were curt and decided; there was no work for Mr. Courtney.
His reputation in business circles didn’t seem good; one letter actually referred to ‘past incidents which made it impossible to offer Mr. Courtney any kind of position’.
In the next drawer Mannering uncovered a revolver and a box of ammunition.
‘Well, well,’ he said softly.
He picked it up gingerly, and opened the chamber; it was fully loaded, a .32 Smith and Wesson. The bullet that had nearly killed him had been a .32.
Coincidence?
Courtney might have a licence for this gun, but that wasn’t likely; the police were chary with licences. He put the gun into his pocket, and closed and re-locked the drawers. If he stayed much longer it would be asking for trouble.
He went back to the landing. He might as well look round the bedroom.
It proved to be a fair-sized room with a curtained alcove.
The curtains were drawn.
As he moved forward, they were flung apart. A man leapt at him, smashing a blow at his head.
Chapter Nine
Safe
The blow caught Mannering on the side of his neck, but glanced off. He heard footsteps, and the slamming of a door; then there was silence.
He picked himself up, alarmed and bruised, but otherwise unhurt.
He switched on the light, glanced round and saw the safe.
‘So that’s what he was after,’ he muttered.
The safe was small, and partly covered by the flowered chintz drapes of the kidney-shaped dressing table.
Kneeling to examine it he saw that it was an old fashioned model, which, with the right tools, would cause little trouble to open. The difficulty was, that his tools were not the right ones.
He took out the small tool-kit he had brought. There was a special pick-lock which might do the trick. It needed great delicacy of touch and keen hearing.
Twice he felt the pick-lock grip, and twice it slipped; then it gripped for a third time. Heart in mouth, he twisted gently; it needed steady pressure, too much or too little would make the key slip again. He felt the barrel turning, there was a sharp click, and the lock was back.
The second lock took less than half the time, and he soon had the door open. Inside were papers, and a small heap of jewel cases.
He opened the top one, to find three diamond rings. They were worth, perhaps, a couple of hundred pounds or so. There were others. All of them had been recently set.
He examined the jewels with professional thoroughness before putting them back. Among the papers were two packets of letters, and a glance at the first told him that they were love-letters. He scanned one; it was a desperate kind of letter, obviously from a married man – frustration, un-happiness and anxiety all showed in it.
Mannering put both packets into his capacious inside pocket, and closed the safe. There were scratches on the outside of the lock – scratches he hadn’t made. The first burglar had been after something in here.
Jewels – or the letters?
Mannering moved to the front door, eager to be gone. As he did so, the telephone-bell rang.
Quickly he retraced his steps, groped for the telephone, lifted it, and said in a muffled voice: ‘Hallo.’
A girl said: ‘Bill, I can’t get it tonight. You must give me more time.’ She gave him no chance to answer, but went on in a tense voice: ‘I’ve tried every way, I just can’t get it, you must give me more time!’
Mannering said harshly: ‘You’ve had plenty of time.’
The girl said desperately: ‘I think I can get it in a day or two, some of it, anyhow. Just give me until Saturday.’
‘I want to talk to you,’ said Mannering, in the muffled voice.
‘Bill, it’s no use. I haven’t …’
‘Meet me at the foot of the Lower Regent Street subway to Piccadilly Circus station, in half an hour,’ said Mannering.
He rang off quickly, then closed and locked the door with the skeleton key, and hurried down the stairs. Chittering loomed up from a neighbouring doorway.
‘Okay?’ he breathed.
‘Fine. Be Interesting to know what Courtney does when he finds he’s been robbed,’ said Mannering, sardonically.
Lorna, waiting at the comer, got into the car and took the wheel. Mannering slid in beside her.
‘Mind if we go to Piccadilly Circus?’
‘I don’t mind where we go, as long as it’s away from here. Do you want me to die of fright?’
‘Well, you would come.’
‘That wound in the head must have turned your brain!’
‘I think you’ll think the risk was worth it,’ Mannering said soberly. ‘William Courtney is a blackmailer, and one of the girls he’s blackmailing is to meet me at Piccadilly Circus.’
Lorna didn’t answer.
‘He also deals in jewels,’ said Mannering, ‘and has a .32 Smith & Wesson. Do you think Anne Staffer has a skeleton in her cupboard, and is being blackmailed? I think it was her voice.’
‘Oh, no!’
‘A girl telephoned, begging for more time to pay,’ said Mannering. ‘Courtney saw Anne earlier tonight, and it would add up.’
Lorna drove in silence to Piccadilly Circus. She found a parking spot in a street leading off Shaftesbury Avenue, and soon they were walking briskly towards the station.
‘She’s to be at the Lower Regent Street subway,’ said Mannering. ‘We’ll watch from a distance, and if Anne turns up, we’ll meet as if by accident.’
They walked round the circular promenade to the ticket office, and stopped by a bookstall. Mannering judged that the half-hour was up.
Five more minutes passed.
‘No-one’s coming,’ Lorna said, and there was relief in her voice. ‘You must have been—’
She broke off, for she saw Anne.
She was approaching from the other side of the subway, walking quickly, staring towards the entrance.
When she reached it, she stood looking about her, frightened, defensive.
Lorna said: ‘I would rather anything had happened than this.’
‘It’s something positive to work on,’ said Mannering. ‘No progress can be made with mere suspicion.’
‘What has she done?’
‘If you talk to her, you ought to find out before the night’s over,’ said Mannering quietly. ‘You’re really fond of her, aren’t you?’
‘Do you want me to tell her what we know?’ Lorna asked.
‘No. You must look surprised at seeing her, notice that she seems worried, and offer help. We take her home, and I’m pretty sure she’ll confide in you. It wouldn’t surprise me to find that Courtney is making demands he knows she can’t meet, and will soon suggest that she can take something from Quinns, or else tell him all about the door locks.’
Lorna moved forward. ‘Why, Anne!’ she exclaimed.
Anne turned to Lorna; at close quarters, her pallor was alarming and her eyes were feverishly bright.
‘Anne, what’s wrong?’ Lorna asked. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’ She took Anne’s arm. ‘What on earth’s the matter?’
‘I—I’m all right,’ said Anne, but her lips were quivering, and she couldn’t keep it up. ‘I—oh, I’m in such a mess!’
Chapter Ten
A Lesson In Ballistics
Mannering put his wife and the girl in a taxi, then drove back to Linden Road.
Chittering was still there.
‘Oh, you remembered me, did you?’ he asked gruffly. ‘Next time you choose me for a job like this, make it midsummer. I’m chilled to the bone.’
Mannering said: ‘I had a feeling you’d think that way. Chitty, would you lose any sleep if you knew Anne Staffer were really in a jam?’
Chittering frowned; in the poor light, his face looked bleak.
‘Is she?’
‘Yes. Courtney’s blackmailing her. She’s with Lorna now, with any luck we’ll know the story in a couple of hours. In those two hours, Courtney will come back, find out that he’s been burgled, and possibly get in touch with someone else.’
Chittering said: ‘I’ll wait.’
‘We want to find where any accomplice lives.’
‘I wasn’t born yesterday,’ said Chittering.
‘There’s just time to have a quick one, I’ll take over for half an hour, if you like.’
‘Forget it, John.’
‘I’ll leave you the Austin. It’s parked just round the corner.’
‘Thanks,’ said Chittering. ‘Where shall I leave it?’
‘At any parking place near Victoria,’ Mannering said, and gripped his arm. ‘Good waiting!’
Mannering walked to Edgware Road, took a tube train to Sloane Square, fetched the Lagonda from the garage near Green Street, and drove to the C.I.D. building on the Embankment.
The officer on night-duty was Chief Inspector Pellew. He was fair, plump, ingenious, and a snare to unsuspecting crooks.
‘Well, well, you haven’t lost much time,’ he said, pleasantly. ‘Sit down, Mr. Mannering and tell me all your troubles!’
‘Troubles?’ echoed Mannering. ‘What are they?’
‘Now, now. You wouldn’t come here at half-past ten at night simply to say hallo.’
‘Want to find the gunman?’
‘I don’t mind telling you that we’ve been working pretty hard to do just that,’ declared Pellew fervently.
‘You know the bullet that was dug out of my head.’
‘Do I!’
‘Any pictures of it in Ballistics?’
‘Yes, plenty,’ replied Pellew. ‘I don’t see any harm in letting you see them, if that’s what you want.’
He lumbered out, leaving Mannering alone in the office.
Pellew could have telephoned Ballistics for the photographs, Mannering thought with a grin. Going himself was more than likely to be a ruse for telephoning Bristow.
One cigarette was finished, and another started before Pellew was back, with half a dozen glossy prints. He pretended that he’d had a hard job finding them, and spread them out on his desk.
‘If anyone uses that gun again we’ll be able to match up,’ Pellew said. ‘What do you want to see these for, Mr. Mannering?’
‘Can I have a souvenir of the bullet that nearly killed me
?’
‘Have ’em all,’ said Pellew generously. ‘And then make up your mind to tell us why you really want them.’ He must know that Mannering wanted to check a bullet against them, of course. Bristow must have told him to be helpful.
‘I certainly will,’ said Mannering. ‘No trace of the Fesina diamonds coming on the market, I suppose?’
‘Absolutely none.’
‘Is any collector known to be interested in them?’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Pellew. ‘Bristow might, that’s his cup of tea.’
‘I’ll have a chat with him in the morning,’ said Mannering. ‘Thank him for being so helpful, won’t you?’
‘What about thanking me?’ demanded Pellew, and they both laughed.
Mannering garaged the car near the flat and walked along Green Street. He went upstairs quietly using his latch key. Rummaging in a store cupboard, he took out an old car rug and a block of wood, left behind when some joists had been repaired. He stood the block of wood against the door to the larder, and wrapped the gun round with strips of the car rug.
The scene set, he carefully fired the gun: there was a muffled report as the bullet smacked into the block of wood.
He unwrapped the pieces of rug, and opened the window, to let out the smell of burning wood and cotton. Then he took out a small steel vice, fixed the wood block in it, and sawed in the line of the bullet, on each side. He took a hammer and tapped the wood between the lines sharply, and a piece fell out.
The bullet fell with it.
He tidied up the kitchen, and went into his study. He could hear Lorna and the girl talking as he passed the sitting-room door. He sat at his desk and switched on the special light above it, took out a magnifying glass, held the bullet with a pair of tweezers, and examined it. The lines of the rifling showed up clearly.
He spread the pictures out on the desk, and compared them with the magnified picture of the bullet from Courtney’s gun.
He could not be absolutely sure, but thought that Bristow would find that the bullet he had just fired, and the one taken from his head, would match up.
It looked as if Courtney had inherited Reginald Allen’s gun; if so, he might have inherited other things. Mannering examined the notes he had made about the jewellery at Courtney’s rooms, and compared them with recent lists of stolen jewels; none matched up.