Love for the Baron

by John Creasey

  The car did not reappear.

  No one appeared to be watching him from cars or houses nearby; there was no way of being sure of this, but one had a sense of being watched and he didn’t have it now. He walked past the entrance to his house, which was one of three standing tall and dignified, survivors from the Nash period, whereas everything else in Green Street, contemporary or post-war, was either imitation Georgian or small apartments starkly and unashamedly new.

  There was a haze of doubt in his mind and it did not entirely concern the girl. In fact he could not put it in form or words until he was halfway up in the lift, which smelt of a strong perfume used, he knew, by a recent tenant of one of the other flats. The doubt became a positive question: should he tell Lorna?

  Aloud he asked: “Why on earth not?” and the doors slid open.

  His mental picture of Lorna was so strong that he expected to find her on the landing, smiling, eager, as she had been that morning. The landing was empty. It served only their flat and the door was on the right. He stepped over the carpeted floor, hand in his pocket for his keys. His expectation of seeing his wife faded into puzzlement; there was no light shining through from the hall, the light which was always left on.

  Was Lorna out?

  If so, why hadn’t she telephoned? Usually she did, so that he could have a chance to eat at his club or stay late at the office: it was a rare thing to come back in the evening without advance warning that she wouldn’t be here.

  She must have gone out and been delayed.

  The more he thought of it as he selected the front door key the more he marvelled that a woman who had a career, especially such a brilliant career as hers, so often managed to be home when he was, allowed her own painting and all the business and social activity which went with it to interfere hardly at all with his.

  Should he tell her about the second and third appearance of the girl?

  What a question to ask!

  He inserted his key in the lock, and pushed the door open a fraction – and on that instant knew there was something wrong. The strong perfume, faded since he had been in the lift, was very noticeable here in this dark hallway. Neither he nor Lorna knew the neighbour, but for the perfume to be so noticeable meant that she must have been here in the flat for some time – or that she was in the hall at this moment.

  He hesitated – and then closed the door without going inside. Now his heart was beginning to race, partly from alarm and fear for Lorna, partly because of the situation. Was he being a fool? Why should anyone—he cut the question off almost before he asked it. All his life he had been involved in dangerous affairs; all his life he had learned to notice the unusual. All his life his mind had worked quickly and incisively.

  He believed someone was in his flat, waiting for him.

  He believed Lorna was there, too, and since Lorna hadn’t shouted out in warning then she was either gagged or shut in a room where she could not hear.

  There was only one way of making sure.

  True, he could go down to one of the other neighbours and telephone Bristow to come; or even telephone the police, but there was no certainty that his suspicions were right, and even if he felt that certainty as strongly as he had smelt the perfume, it wasn’t enough to justify calling for help.

  He slid his right hand into a small pocket in the lining of his jacket and drew out a cigarette lighter, or what looked like one; it was a miniature pistol and years ago he had adapted it to fire tear-gas pellets, in the place of bullets. When one lived dangerously, the bizarre and the melodramatic became the normal. He pressed the button of the lift and the car went down making a humming noise audible to anyone close to the door of his hall. Next he stepped very swiftly to the wall alongside the front door, on the side which would conceal him from anyone who opened the door an inch or two so as to peep outside.

  He saw the heavy brass handle of the door turn, and held his breath. A moment later the door opened with great stealth, and he thought he heard heavy breathing: the breathing of someone with asthma or bronchitis. He was quite sure that a strong whiff of the neighbour’s perfume stung his nostrils.

  Then a woman’s wheezy voice said: “He’s gone.”

  “Gone? What on earth for?” asked a man whose voice was rough-edged but cultured.

  “He must have noticed something.”

  “What the hell could he have noticed?” There was a pause before the man went on: “He must have forgotten something.”

  The woman said: “Hugo, I’m scared. I think we ought to go.”

  “And miss this chance? Don’t be a fool!”

  “Something’s wrong, I tell you, and if we go now—”

  “We’ll go empty-handed and I didn’t go to all the trouble we’ve gone to for nothing. Close that door and wait until he gets back.”

  “But Hugo—” The woman’s voice rose in protest, and there was a scuffle of sound, as if the man was pulling the woman away from the door.

  Mannering slipped the ‘cigarette lighter’ back into his pocket and stepped towards the door. The couple were too involved in their quarrel even to notice him, the woman clutching the door to keep it open, the man pushing her away with one hand and trying to slam the door with the other. Mannering sidled through, then gripped the man’s wrist and twisted – it was the first intimation the other had had, and he gasped and turned his head. Mannering thrust his arm up behind him in a hammerlock as the woman backed away.

  “If you struggle you’ll break your arm,” Mannering said mildly. He flicked on the hall light which was bright enough to show the woman’s over-hennaed hair, her lavish make-up, false eyelashes and bright red lips. She backed towards a William and Mary slung leather chair, banged the back of her legs against it and collapsed; the leather seat groaned. “And if you don’t answer this question quickly, I’ll break your arm,” Mannering went on. “Where is my wife?”

  The woman’s mouth opened and closed but no sound came.

  The man said in a gravelly voice: “I locked her in a cupboard.”

  “Which cupboard?” Before the man could answer Mannering went on: “Lead me to it.”

  “Let—let me go.”

  “After you’ve unlocked the cupboard.” Mannering gave the man a sharp push, deciding, after a quick glance, that the woman seemed to be in a state of collapse, and was unlikely to present any threat. The only cupboard large enough to hold Lorna was in the passage outside the bathroom, and to reach it they would have to leave the woman here. “Stay where you are,” he ordered her tersely, “if you so much as move I’ll have you both in jail within half-an-hour.”

  He pushed the man again.

  Now his anxiety for Lorna was easing and his curiosity about the new neighbours was increasing. He had only seen the man once or twice in passing. From behind, he was thickset and broad-shouldered, had a reddish, fleshy neck and bristly greying hair, thinning into a small bald patch.

  Mannering sensed a change in the man’s movement, glanced down, realised he was going to back heel. Sharply, suddenly, he thrust the arm further up and the man cried out in anguish.

  “Next time I’ll break it,” Mannering threatened.

  They turned into the passage, and there was the bathroom door, ajar, a spare room door wide open, a loft ladder which disappeared into the attic, now Lorna’s studio, and a cupboard next to the bathroom.

  “Open it,” Mannering ordered.

  As the man fumbled for the key with his free hand fear for Lorna swept back over Mannering; he clenched his teeth as the door opened. On the instant he knew there was no need to worry but need for fierce anger, for Lorna had been gagged with a scarf pulled tightly round her mouth and knotted at the back of her head. Her wrists were tied together and tied in turn to a waterpipe which ran from floor to ceiling.

  Mannering dropped the man’s arm, pulled him round and struck him, once beneath the jaw, once in the solar plexus. Then, shifting his collapsed body out of the doorway, Mannering turned to Lorna, drawing her cl
ose to him.

  He was acutely aware of her, and could feel her trembling.

  He plucked at the knot and soon had it loose; he drew it away gently, seeing with relief that the marks at the corners of her lips were not too deeply embedded. Her incarceration, then, had not been for long. He cut the cord at her wrists and then supported her away from the cupboard, her movements stiff and wavering. He took her into the hallway, where the woman still sat in exactly the same position in which he had left her, the only difference now being that her mouth was closed and the breath whistled through her nostrils.

  Gently, Mannering led Lorna into the kitchen, where there was a comfortable armchair. He fetched salve from the bathroom, poured out a weak whisky and soda and held the glass as she sipped, coughed, sipped again and then pushed the glass away.

  “Thank God you’re all right,” she said huskily.

  “Thank God I’m all right?”

  “I didn’t know what they were going to do to you.”

  “I have a feeling one or the other of them will soon talk,” Mannering said. He kissed her forehead. “All right here for a few moments?”

  “Of course.”

  He touched her cheek with his forefinger and went out, thinking: she is, she really is, the most remarkable woman. He stood in the passage outside the bathroom, looking down at the man, who was beginning to stir. There was no sign of feigning; it was more than probable that all the light had been knocked out of him.

  Now the problem was what to do.

  The obvious thing was to send for the police, but before he did that he wanted to know what the pair had come for, and the woman would undoubtedly talk more freely. So he bent down, straightened the man out, and dragged him along the floor into the hall. The woman cried: “Don’t hurt him!”

  Mannering dragged her husband into a room where the door stood wide open; this was a study, library, and general purpose room. Along one wall was an oak settle, carved by master craftsmen at least four centuries before. There was an arm at each end, and he used the scarf with which Lorna had been gagged to tie the man’s wrist to one of them. Mannering ran through his pockets – and in the hip pocket on the right hand side he found a small, flat, automatic pistol.

  He looked at this and then at the man, murmuring: “Well, well,” then moved to a telephone and dialled Bill Bristow’s home number. Bristow’s wife answered. “I’m sorry it’s so close to dinner time, Mrs. Bristow, but could Bill come to my flat at once?” he asked apologetically.

  The answer came promptly. “I’m sure he will. And we’ve finished supper anyway, so there’s no need to worry.”

  Mannering rang oil, and went to the hall, where the woman was now standing up, but obviously as frightened as ever. She put out a hand diffidently.

  “Don’t—please don’t send for the police.”

  “Why were you here?” demanded Mannering. He was aware of Lorna at the kitchen doorway, standing, he noticed with relief, without support. She did not interrupt, and the other woman didn’t seem to notice her.

  “My—my husband thought—thought you always kept a lot of jewels here, so he—he—” She hesitated for a long time but Mannering did nothing to help her and Lorna did not move. At last, the other woman went on: “He wouldn’t have hurt anyone, not really hurt, he—”

  “What does he do for a living?” demanded Mannering.

  “He—he’s a commission agent, he does anything. If you’ll let us go I swear we won’t do anything like this again. I swear it.”

  “Why did you move in downstairs? Did your husband think it would be a good jumping off ground for trying to rob me?”

  “He—he—he – oh, my goodness, oh God help me, yes, that’s the truth, he—he lost a lot of money lately, he’s not a bad man really, he—”

  Bristow looked down at Mannering’s prisoner and said without the slightest hesitation: “His name is Hugo Carter. He has a record as long as your arm, and he’ll steal anything he can lay his hands on. Why his wife stays with him no one will ever know – she’s a prison-widow most of the time.” He looked up at Mannering and went on: “You weren’t thinking of letting him go, were you?”

  “No,” Mannering said slowly. “All I want to be sure of is, whether he came to steal for himself, or whether he’s working for someone else.”

  “He’s always been a loner and I don’t believe he’ll ever change. Any special reason for asking?”

  Again Mannering said: “No.” But it was not strictly true. He had wondered fleetingly whether these two people could have anything to do with the girl with the dark glasses. He did not want to suggest it now, with Lorna present: it might only alarm her unnecessarily and she had had more than enough alarm for one day. “Will you call the Division, Bill?”

  Bristow nodded, and sprang to the telephone.

  As he called the police, Hugo Carter’s wife began to cry, quietly, helplessly, while Mannering went to the kitchen with Lorna, had a stronger whisky and soda than he had given her, feeling a tremendous relief that she had escaped so lightly.

  There wasn’t really the slightest reason why he should not tell her about the girl with the dark glasses.

  But he didn’t.

  3

  True Value

  John Mannering sat at his desk at Quinn’s, a month to the day after the attempted robbery; a month to the day after he had first seen the girl with the dark glasses; a month to the day after he had told Messrs. Harcourt, Pace and Pace that it would be five weeks before he could complete the valuation of the Peek Collection; and a month to the day after the emerald tiara had so affected him.

  In that month the Peek Collection had become almost an obsession, it was so varied in kind, in origin, in beauty. The girl with the dark glasses had become almost a part of existence. For a reason he could not fully understand he pretended never to notice her; and in all of that time she had made no attempt to speak, write or contact him in any way. She was simply liable to be anywhere he happened to be. It was almost uncanny, for she seemed able to anticipate his movements and be at places ahead of him when he had gone there at very short notice.

  But a pattern emerged, slowly.

  She appeared only at places where he frequented; and so, where he was likely to be. Several times he changed his first choice of a restaurant, when lunching with a customer or a friend, at the last moment, taking them to a place with which he was unfamiliar. The girl was never at any of these. By now he had seen her in many different outfits, but never without dark glasses. Some things had become clearly apparent: all her clothes were of excellent quality and cut, implying that she was at least wealthy enough to afford good, expensive clothes. She never changed her hair style, however.

  She wore little jewellery; a brooch now and again, or a simple necklace, all of which he judged to be of high quality.

  And she wore no rings.

  On this day – four weeks after their first meeting – he had seen her again when he had parked his car. Unaccountably he had not been able to forget her, despite Larraby’s glowing face as he had said triumphantly: “This should be our very last day on the Peek Collection, sir.”

  “Yes, Josh, with luck. We have to check the typewritten valuation sheets. Otherwise—”

  “I have checked them, sir.”

  “You mean you stayed up all night?”

  “Not actually. I was up rather early this morning, sir – excited, I do believe. And I have also made a total valuation.”

  “Keep it to yourself until I’ve totalled everything too,” Mannering said. “If we tally we won’t need an accountant to check.”

  “I will indeed, sir!”

  Larraby went out, leaving on Mannering’s desk a large pile of typewritten reports, or valuation sheets: there were nineteen in all, divided into categories, such as: Gold: Silver: Porcelain: Ivory: Precious Stones: Semi-Precious Stones: Carvings: Paintings: Engravings: Enamelled Work. Alongside each entry was the country of origin, the known or estimated date of its first app
earance and a short two or three line description. One entry read:

  Ivory carving, Buddha, seven inches tall, six inches at base, darkened, ascribed to Wun Ching, Tapu, Ming Dynasty. Comparable carving sold at Christies, London, in 1954 for £10,525. Today’s estimated value: £20,000.

  Mannering buried himself in the task of adding up the figures; a computer or a machine could have done this in a tenth of the time, but he preferred to read each piece himself, then check his own and Larraby’s assessment of value; there was much more to them both than a row of figures or a total, but when finally he made the final figure he sat back, amazed, almost appalled at his first error of judgment. He had guessed about one million pounds. The total was three million, four hundred and twenty-three thousand, one hundred pounds. He pushed his chair further back, and studied his own figures, then closed his eyes for a moment as if he could not believe what he had read.

  When he opened them again the top sheet seemed to have a shadowy picture on it: of a young woman, wearing dark glasses. He sat absolutely rigid for several minutes, then, at long last, he stretched out a hand and pressed the button which would ring a bell in Larraby’s apartment. The old man tapped at the door so quickly that he must have been waiting at the top of the old oak staircase.

  He carried a slip of paper, and handed it to Mannering. It read: £3,423,100

  His expression must have told Larraby what had happened, and delight showed in the old man’s eyes. Mannering handed him the sheet on which he had made his tally, and said lightly but with underlying seriousness: “I mustn’t make any more guesses, Josh.”

  “I don’t see that it matters provided you check before you put on a price tag,” Larraby said reassuringly. He took an old-fashioned gold hunter watch from his waistcoat pocket and ran his finger over the surface. “Will you call the solicitors before or after lunch, sir?”