by John Creasey
The five Gideon children in the house were asleep.
Ruby Benson wasn’t yet in bed, for the night held terrors for her. By the side of her bed, placed there with unexpected and touching solicitude by her son, were two white tablets. Soon, she would make herself take a milk drink, and take them.
Benson and Tisdale were awake.
Freddy Tisdale stood at the side of the window of the little office, looking sideways along the narrow alley toward a road which led to the docks. He had been there several times in the past hour, and when he wasn’t standing there, Benson was. There had been no message of any kind for the past two hours; then, Charlie Mulliver had placed a lighted candle in the window opposite, a sign that the police had searched there and gone away.
In other words, all clear.
But it wasn’t all clear.
Benson and Tisdale knew that, although they had not spoken of it. There were too many noises. Cars coming and going, men walking, the st-st-st-st-st of motorcycles which were being increasingly used by the police in London. It was possible to sense when the police were out in strength, and, without stepping outside the warehouse, these two knew it. Benson had seen one little group of police move in a body past the end of the street in one direction; Tisdale had seen another group at the other end of the street.
And they had heard men walking about in a warehouse adjacent to this.
Benson went out, suddenly, crept down the stairs, and reached the barrels of petrol. The screw cap of one filler hole was loose. He took it off, then rolled the barrel over until petrol spilled out, the smell almost choking him.
He went back to the office.
Tisdale moved away from the window, and spoke in a hoarse, spluttering whisper: “How do we know they’re looking for us?”
“That’s right,” said Benson.
“Don’t just sit there, what are we going to do?”
Benson said, “We’re just going to sit here until they come. The streets are lousy with them, we wouldn’t have a chance out there. When they start coming in, we go up to the roof. Then —”
“They’ll search the roof!”
“Listen, Freddy,” Benson said, “you wouldn’t be losing your nerve, would you?” When Freddy Tisdale didn’t answer, he went on: “If we run for it now we’ll be seen, and we’ll never get on board that ship. Now —”
“We ought to have gone earlier, we stayed too long.”
Benson said coldly, “We stayed because I arranged it, and because the ship doesn’t sail until the morning tide. We go aboard at the last minute, see, we don’t hang around. One of the crew might recognize us, or there might be some river police taking a peek. They don’t leave anything to chance, and you know it.” In his harsh, clipped voice, Benson seemed to be talking sense; and to be steadying Freddy. “Now listen. We go up to the roof. We jump across to the roof next door. It’s a three-yard gap, and we could do it blindfolded. They’ve been there, haven’t they?”
Freddy muttered, “Yes. But if they leave a man outside, watching...”
“And what if they don’t?” asked Benson. “Can you tell me any way we can do it without taking risks?”
“If you hadn’t seen your kid they might not have known we were in London, they —”
Benson moved, swiftly, savagely. Freddy gave a startled squeak of alarm. Benson gripped his wrist, so tightly that Freddy couldn’t move his arm without risking a broken bone. In that moment they were at the level of beasts; and Benson was deadly.
“That kid didn’t squeal, understand? If you say that kid squealed —”
“I didn’t say it! I meant if we’d left here last night instead of tonight...”
“The cops can get a warrant to search a ship any time they like, or they can send the customs men on board,” Benson growled. He still gripped Freddy’s wrist” hurtfully. “If we’d gone aboard, we’d be caught ‘ by now, every ship in the docks has been searched tonight. If you used your brains you’d know that. You going to listen to me?”
“Ye-es,” Tisdale muttered.
“Okay.” Benson let the man’s arm fall. “If they come in here, we go up to the roof and jump. We wait until they leave here, and then we jump back. They’ll know we’ve been here, and they’ll search everywhere else, understand? They won’t expect us back.”
Freddy muttered, “We haven’t got a chance, and you know it.”
“We’ve got a chance if you keep your nerve,” said Benson. “Okay, let’s ...”
Then they heard footsteps coming along the alley. They stood quite still. The footsteps were slow and deliberate, of policemen. They could tell that there were five or six men out there, walking in single file, going toward the main doors of the warehouse.
Freddy began to shiver.
Benson said, “Okay, Freddy, let’s go,” in a soft voice, and he took Freddy’s arm and led the way toward the stairs. It wasn’t the first time he had known a thing like this: some men were as brave as men could be when they were on the run, but once they were cornered, they lost their nerve. Like Freddy. In these past few minutes, Benson had realized that Freddy’s nerve was cracking, and that he would be a passenger from now on.
Benson couldn’t afford a passenger.
But he did nothing yet.
They went slowly, stealthily, up the wooden stairs. They heard muffled sounds below. They opened the hatch which led to the roof, and looked about them. They saw the gaunt outline of the roof of the adjoining warehouse, shown up clearly by the glow from the docks, where a ship was taking on the last of its cargo before closing the hatches and setting off across the Atlantic for Buenos Aires.
No policemen were on the roof.
Benson said, “You go first.” They had studied the spot, and knew exactly what to do. There were a few yards to spare, so that they could get in a short run before they leaped. Freddy, his teeth chattering now, made ready to run. Benson watched him, quite coldly, knowing exactly what he was going to do. Once on the other side, he would use his knife to silence Freddy.
He also had a gun, which Charlie had obtained for him; if he were cornered, he would use the seven bullets in it for the police.
He knew, deep down, that he had always intended to go away alone.
But he didn’t want Freddy’s body found on this roof; better leave it on the other, which had already been searched.
Freddy started to run. Benson could hear his hissing breath, knew that he was really frightened, his nerve quite gone. There was one good thing, he couldn’t miss the opposite roof - anyone could clear ten feet even from a standing start.
He saw Freddy falter, at the last split second.
He realized that Freddy just hadn’t the nerve to jump, and that was all about it.
He rushed forward, but he was seconds too late. On the roof of the other warehouse, two policemen had suddenly appeared. Freddy had seen them first, and Benson had been so busy watching him that he hadn’t noticed. Now they were clambering toward the edge, and suddenly a whistle shrilled out in warning to the police below.
And Freddy Tisdale, trying to check himself, was so close to the edge that he slipped.
He screamed as he crashed down.
Benson swung round, as the scream rose to the night sky.
The glow of light showed the roofs of the warehouses clearly, and revealed policemen springing up on several of them, men who had stayed on the roofs of the warehouses which had been searched, so as to watch the street and to give warning.
Benson’s only chance was to go down the stairs. It wasn’t really a chance, probably no one else would have tried to take it. But he ran, drawing the gun from his pocket as he went.
In the room at the Divisional H.Q. Gideon saw the glitter in the eyes of a radio operator who was receiving a message from a Squad outside, and heard the shrillness
of his voice: “Tisdale’s fallen off a roof! Benson’s at the old Subra Warehouse.”
“Come on,” said Gideon.
Ruby Benson was standing in front of the gas stove, in a dressing gown which Art Small had given her, small feet in heel-less slippers. She was watching the milk as it heated. The two white tablets hadn’t been touched.
21. Last Throw
Benson reached the landing of the second floor of the warehouse as the police reached it from below. There were three of them, and he had a split second’s advantage, because he was sidling close to the wall and they were rushing up, two men level with each other and the third just behind. Others were below. Whistles were shrilling, men shouting, someone fell over an empty barrel and the booming sound echoed clearly.
Benson jumped forward.
He fired three times, and scored two hits, wounding the same startled policeman in the leg and the waist. This man lost his balance and fell against the others, and as they were pushed to one side Benson leaped past them. He reached the half-landing, turned, and fired again as one of the men picked himself up and prepared to leap down the stairs. He didn’t know whether he had scored a hit, but the man stopped. He went rushing toward the ground floor, and another policeman, clearly visible in the lights that were flashing from side to side, blocked his path. The man saw the gun and, without hesitation, flung himself to safety. Benson passed him, and then reached the big storage room, near the barrel that he’d partly emptied earlier, the reek of petrol still in his nostrils. He struck a match, and flung it at the pool of petrol.
The match went out.
Benson saw it go out, and knew that he hadn’t a chance even of the vengeance he had wanted. So he stood close to the wall, watching the men who were momentarily wary of him, able to see those on the ground floor and anyone coming down the stairs. He slid his right hand into his pocket and took out a matchbox, opened the matchbox with one hand, then put it to his lips and tossed three tablets into his mouth. There were like the tablets he had sent to his wife.
That was the moment when the policeman who had lost his nerve found it again and leaped at the killer. He judged the moment to perfection and clutched Benson round the legs, clawing him down. The tablets spilled from Benson’s lips, the gun went off and a bullet wasted itself.
Next moment, the cold steel handcuffs were on those sinewy wrists.
Gideon entered the warehouse about five minutes later, and already a lot had been done. Emergency lights had been rigged up from a car battery, the big ground floor was lit, not brightly but enough for everyone to be seen. A dozen uniformed and three plain-clothes police were standing about, and there was a stir as Gideon came in, with Trabert and Simpson close behind him; Simpson was a tall, bony man, and in this light he looked almost skeleton thin.
Benson was handcuffed to a burly detective- sergeant, and standing as erect as a man could be, feet firmly planted, shoulders back, eyes narrowed but glittering, mouth set tightly.
He didn’t speak as Gideon came up.
Gideon said, “This was the way it had to end, Benson; why the hell didn’t you have some sense?” His voice sounded tired; he wasn’t tired, but fighting against showing his hatred for this man, determined to appear impartial instead of bitterly hostile. He paused, and looked at the killer for what seemed a long time, watched intently by all the rest. Then: “What did you say to your son this morning?”
He saw Benson start, and then begin to look incredulous.
Gideon went on: “The kid’s young. If he goes on the way you’ve started him, he’ll end up on the same place. Give him a break, Benson. What did you say to him?”
Benson said in a grating voice, “Did the kid squeal?”
It would have been so easy to say yes; to make him suffer this awful disappointment; to send him on his slow, laborious journey to the gallows with a new hate in his heart. Gideon knew all that, and could not bring himself to do it.
“No,” he said, “he didn’t squeal, but I happen to know children. What did you say to him?”
Benson didn’t answer.
The light in his eyes was radiant.
Only a few hundred yards away, in the house in Muskett Street, Ruby Benson put the tablets into her mouth, and then sipped the hot milk.
When it was obvious that Benson wouldn’t talk, and that Gideon had nothing more to say, the sergeant in charge started talking: How Benson had tried to take the tablets, two of which they had salvaged, one of which had been trodden under foot. How one wounded man was on the way to hospital, but not likely to be on the danger list. How a constable had defied Benson’s gun, and collared him. All this, while Gideon looked about him, nodded at the policeman who had brought Benson down, in a way that he was likely to remember all his life, and looked at the tablets.
“Trying to kill himself, was he?” he asked. “What’s in them, Benson?”
Benson’s eyes still held that glow, that new precious pride in the son who had not failed him. It was a form of exaltation. Gideon realized it and felt a kind of nausea because it could come to this man and in this way.
“Come on, what’s in them?” Gideon demanded.
Then Benson made his one mistake.
“Why don’t you ask my wife?” he sneered.
Ruby Benson had been in bed for ten minutes, and was feeling a little queasy, when she heard the tires screech outside the house. She started up, staring toward the passage. A policeman was on duty in the front room, and she heard the door open, and heard his heavy footsteps. Next moment, a man strode in from the street, and spoke in a voice which she would never forget: Gideon’s.
“Where’s Mrs. Benson?”
“She – she’s upstairs, sir, just gone to bed, she ...”
Gideon didn’t respond, except to start pounding along the passage and toward the stairs. Ruby clutched her silk nightdress tightly at the neck, and sat there, bewildered, feeling her heart race with heavy throbbing beats. Gideon’s footsteps thundered, the house shook, Liz and young Syd would be bound to wake. Her door burst open.
Gideon drew up, at sight of her, gasping for breath. Then, more steadily, he moved toward her, and answered the question that was in her eyes.
“Yes, we’ve got him, it’s all right. Did young Syd give you any tablets tonight? Aspirins, or...”
She raised her hands in sharp, stabbing alarm; and in that moment she told Gideon “yes” without having to utter the word. She saw the panic in his eyes as he went on urgently: “They were aspirins! I’ve just taken —” Gideon swung around toward the policeman behind him.
“Get some salt, mustard, make a strong emetic - and get a move on!” Now, his voice was controlled and calm, although it was obvious that he imposed the self-control with great difficulty. He was so big, so frightening, so full of menace. “It’s all right,” he told Ruby, “you’ll bring them up and they won’t do you any harm. Just a few unpleasant minutes. Benson gave them to young Syd—”
“Oh, no,” she cried, “no, not young Syd, no!”
Gideon walked into his office, at ten o’clock next morning, and found Lemaitre and the Assistant Commissioner, Jefferson, Wrexall and two other superintendents all waiting for him. The morning report looked thick enough for a week instead of a day; Lemaitre had spread himself. Gideon grinned round, for a welcome like this could lift him out of depression, help him to forget the wounding of the evil things he fought.
Question and answer took twenty minutes until gradually the men left the office; and finally only Lemaitre, Gideon and the A.C. were there.
“There are about thirty newspapermen after you,” the A.C. said; “I told them you’d hold a Press Conference!”
Gideon shrugged.
“Why don’t we just give them a list of men on the Force? Then we’d all get some limelight.” He loosened his collar as he rounded the desk, but he didn’
t sit down. “Benson won’t say a word, of course; I don’t think we’ll get anything out of him now or later. Thank God his wife’s all right, though.”
“You say the tablets contained one of the opiates?”
“Yes. Mulliver says he got them from a ship’s captain who sailed out yesterday morning. He’ll be held when he reaches port. Mulliver supplied Benson with the gun, too. Still, Mrs. Benson’s been lucky. She’ll get over it all, of course; but she’ll be a sight happier if we could prove that young Syd didn’t know what was in them.”
“Think he did?” asked the A.C. quietly.
“I don’t know,” said Gideon, “I just don’t know. I don’t want to think that he did; the thought that a kid of twelve would give his own mother - well, we’ll have to work on him, that’s all. Through the family doctor or his school teacher, or - “ Gideon broke off, and shrugged.
“Main thing is that Arthur Small will definitely be all right except for a scar which won’t be too prominent.”
“Good,” said the A.C. “Good.”
He went out, soon afterward; and Lemaitre, who was usually very subdued during the great man’s presence, relaxed at once and jumped up. He squashed out a cigarette and started to take out another.
“Wish to hell I’d been able to get there, but you know what it’s like with Fifi.” Gideon not only knew what it was like, but realized that they must have patched up their latest quarrel, for Lemaitre showed none of the sourness that was too often in his voice when he talked of his wife. “Well, we can sit back and take it easy, now the whole bunch is caught.”
Gideon looked at the report.
“Who’s been kidding you?” he asked dryly.
“Oh, that’s only routine,” said Lemaitre. “Every man who can force a door must have been busy last night, but there was no big stuff taken. They picked up Jim Ree again, had his rope ladder ready at a place in Grosvenor Square. It’s all there in the report, anyway. Three of those notes from the Kelly’s Bank job turned up this morning from a restaurant in Soho; better get over there pretty quick, might be able to find out who passed them. Arkwright says will you spare him ten minutes, he wants to check a couple of points on the case coming up at the Old Bailey on Monday. Cummings has found out that Mrs. Edmundsun’s been getting a lot of travel literature, and Elliott bought a pair of diamond earrings recently. Cummings is a sticker; if we ever pin anything on Elliott, we’ll have to thank Cummings. Well, that’s about the lot, and it’s all there - oh, no, it isn’t!”