by John Creasey
This door was a much stiffer problem than those at Barnes, and his shoulder was aching from the effort. But at last he heard a splintering of wood, and the door crashed open.
He just prevented himself from falling into the room.
It was a bedroom, and pleasantly-furnished, although he saw that only subconsciously. He had eyes only for the girl.
The last time he had found her she had been tied to a camp bed, but was conscious. This time she was lying, fully clad and in the frock which she had borrowed from Diana’s flat; sight of it again made him tighten his lips. She was neither gagged nor bound; but she lay limp and apparently lifeless, and he remembered Dunster’s words about her pallor.
He went forward, and lifted her from the bed, then turned back to the door, acutely conscious of the danger which still confronted him. He would have felt ten times safer with a gun, but there had been no time to get one in Lewis’s room; time spent groping for it might have proved fatal.
The passage was empty.
He reached the head of the stairs, and the thudding against the other door increased, grew frenized. There was a louder, sharper note, suggesting that something hard was being used as a battering ram. The fact that no one else had appeared suggested the house was otherwise empty—Stocker always excepted.
He hurried down the stairs.
He did nothing to try to muffle his footsteps; caution and speed would not go together, and the first essential was certainly speed. But to a degree at least that proved a mistake, for as he reached the foot of the stairs he saw a leg shoot out, level with the bottom step. He had no time to evade it. He went sprawling, and he had all his work cut out to prevent Christine’s head thudding against the floor. He banged his own head, but lightly, and when he was able to see past Christine, he saw Stocker.
The man’s eyes were glittering viciously. He had a gun, butt foremost, in his hand, and he was no more than two yards away. Loftus was on his back, the girl lying across him. Stocker kicked at his waist, making him grunt, but Loftus put up a hand and forced the man’s wrist away as it began to descend for the first blow.
Stocker drew back, and hesitated. Perhaps he was naturally slow-witted, perhaps the earlier blow still affected him. At all events, he paused, standing within reach of Loftus’s foot, and Loftus hooked his legs from under him.
Stocker fell heavily.
Loftus pushed the girl aside, and struggled up. There was desperation in his mind—he must finish Stocker for the time being. The man was trying to get at the gun, which had fallen from his grasp, but Loftus pushed him aside, stooped down and picked up the automatic.
As he reached it Stocker got to his feet, kicked again at Loftus, and gained a momentary respite. Had the man decided to stay and fight, Loftus doubted whether he could have won through, but Stocker took to his heels, pushing open a door leading, presumably, to the kitchen quarters. The door swung behind him, while Loftus brushed his hair back from his forehead and, retaining a grip on the gun, lifted the girl and slung her, fireman-fashion, over his left shoulder.
He pulled aside the curtains at the front door. It was bolted, and he drew the bolts, then slid back the latch. Gun poking forward, he reached the porch.
As he stepped outside it he saw something strike at his out-stretched hand—then felt excruciating pain in his wrist, forcing him to let the gun drop. As it fell, he saw Lewis—the real, the second Lewis—and Pierre, on either side of the porch.
Pierre retained his gun.
13
Developments of importance
Loftus stood quite still, with the girl over his shoulder. His own shadow was thrown clearly to the drive immediately outside the front door, and that of the girl made him look hunched and mis-shapen. The light streamed into the grounds.
His wrist was numb, and he knew it was quite useless to try to get away. He had learned enough of Pierre and Lewis to be sure that they would not take kindly to the earlier rebuff; their thoughts would turn immediately to revenge in kind.
He waited for the bullet.
It did not come.
Lewis spoke very softly. ‘Turn round, Loftus.’
Loftus half-turned.
Then, from somewhere in the grounds, there came a high-pitched cry. It had the eeriness of an owl’s call, sudden and sharp and uttered three times, then fading into the silence and the darkness. It made Pierre start and turn sharply, while Lewis said:
‘Hurry, damn you!’
Loftus quickened his pace, but kicked against the step leading into the hall, and stumbled. As he did so he heard a gasp from Pierre, then the sharp sneezing sound of the Frenchman’s effectively silenced automatic. He heard movements in the grounds, and straightened up, getting into the hall although handicapped by the girl.
Lewis moved past him.
Just for that moment Loftus thought that it was the end, for Lewis also had an automatic, and although he was moving fast he delayed long enough to turn and point the gun towards him. Loftus did the only thing he could; he sat down abruptly, letting the girl fall with him. The bullet went over his head, while the sounds of movement outside increased, and Lewis turned, racing towards the kitchen quarters.
Pierre was backing into the house, firing from time to time. Whatever his looks, the man was no coward. Loftus could see moving figures on the drive, and knew—as he had known when the call had first come—that Department men were in the grounds.
Pierre, still backing, reached the hall. The yellow flame from his gun was almost lost in the bright hall light. Loftus, still in a sitting position, hitched himself forward and pushed a leg out, so that Pierre struck against it and stumbled. Trip-ups, thought Loftus, were two-a-penny.
The sight of Pierre stumbling brought two of Craigie’s men into the hall at the double; clearly they had been waiting for that chance, as clearly they had not used their guns for fear of hitting Loftus. Reaching Pierre before the man could recover his balance, they wrenched the gun from his hand.
Loftus stood up.
Mike and Mark Errol, Dunster and Carruthers, were crowding into the hall. Dunster was the first to speak.
‘We managed it, Bill. Are you sitting pretty?’
Loftus smiled.
‘I was. There’s a big fellow gone towards the kitchen—are the side and back doors being watched?’
‘Yes,’ said Mike and Mark Errol simultaneously.
‘Good work,’ said Loftus. ‘How many men have we on the premises?’
‘A dozen,’ said Ned Oundle from the open door.
He came into the hall, and after satisfying himself that Loftus was not badly hurt, turned towards the girl. He frowned, and bent down near her. Loftus was gently massaging his wrist while giving instructions. Three other Department men had followed Ned into the hall; the rest were watching the side and back doors, and the drive gates.
Loftus led the way upstairs.
The banging had stopped, but when he opened the door which he had blocked half-an-hour before, he found Blake and Jackson by the wall. Neither showed any signs of making a struggle, and it was not long before they were talking viciously of Lewis who, with Pierre, had gone out of a door in the wall, next to the screen and mirror, promising to leave the passage free, but locking the door behind them.
Loftus heard the story, and shrugged his shoulders.
‘Lewis is a mile ahead of any double-crosser I’ve met,’ he said.
He paid little attention to Blake and Jackson, who were hustled downstairs, but continued the search of the house. All he discovered, in the course of the next hour, was that everything which might conceivably harbour letters or papers appeared to be empty.
There was no sign of Lewis.
No one had seen him, and no one—except perhaps Pierre—knew of any other exit from the house. That there was one Loftus did not doubt.
Pierre maintained a tight-lipped silence.
Loftus spent little time talking to him. He wanted to complete a thorough search of the house, and of the
place ‘next door’. That proved to be a smaller property, and the man-servant Blake talked freely about it. It had been rented furnished, and there were times when Lewis had a dozen or more men staying there, all of the Stocker and Jackson variety.
That was not surprising.
Blake, moreover, knew that a charge of nitroglycerine was deposited in the cellar of the rented house, and could be fired at any given time by electric control from Conway. After the charges had been discovered, and removed with great care, the second house was searched as thoroughly as the first, but the results were no more encouraging. There was, however, plenty of evidence of occupation. One room had been turned into a clubroom; there were two small billiard-tables, dart boards, cards, dominoes, chess—a diversity of games, in fact which suggested that Lewis had taken great trouble to make sure that the men he commanded were not bored.
But of documents there was none.
In three of the bedrooms at the smaller house, however, the book-cases were illuminating. There were illustrated magazines from Eastern Germany; and there were three- and four-week-old Russian newspapers.
Ned Oundle and the Errols accompanied Loftus on his search. Dunster and one of the other men were looking after Christine Weston, although it was clear that she was likely to remain unconscious for some time. The transparent whiteness of her complexion was disturbing, but there was nothing Loftus could do immediately, although he arranged for her to be taken with the first car-load of Department men.
Local police were summoned and, at four o’clock in the morning, Loftus, the Errols and Ned Oundle climbed into a second car, a third car-load starting after them. Three Department men were left at the house, but the local police were now in charge.
Blake, Jackson and Stocker were also taken over by the police, but Pierre was in the car with Loftus. For safety’s sake the man was bound at the wrists. He sat in a corner, saying nothing, refusing a cigarette when offered one.
Pierre, thought Loftus, would certainly not be persuaded to talk by normal means, and certainly not by measures which the police would approve.
After an uneventful journey, the others, except Ned Oundle, piled out of the car in Brook Street, taking Pierre with them to Loftus’s flat. Loftus and Ned, with Ned driving, went to Whitehall, but there was no response to a ring at Craigie’s office. Loftus was one of the few men who could get into the office when it was unoccupied, but there was no one inside when he did step through.
There was, however, a note on the desk. Craigie had written cryptically:
Come to Number 10.
Oundle widened his eyes.
‘Hallo, hallo! Developments of importance, it seems.’
‘It could be,’ said Loftus. ‘What happened at Lester Drive, precisely?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Oundle. ‘Three of the blokes were caught, but who they were Craigie didn’t vouchsafe. We ransacked the house, but didn’t find anything of importance, and we were still working there when Craigie ’phoned us to get after you.’
‘H-mm,’ said Loftus thoughtfully. ‘Well, I’d better go over to No. 10. Are you coming?’
‘I am not,’ said Oundle decisively. He had a horror, none knew why, of being interviewed by celebrities, and had been known to declare that Cabinet Ministers were the only people in the world who could scare him. Knowing that trait in his character, Loftus did not try persuasion.
Oundle was lucky in finding a night duty taxi to take him to Brook Street, while Loftus, after much trouble with the police and sentries on duty, was ushered into Number 10.
It was not his first visit to that house of tradition, but he always felt an odd sense of quiet when he stepped over the threshold. Usually, that went immediately he saw Hershall, and it was so again.
The Prime Minister was in a small study, and Craigie was sitting in an easy chair. Hershall stood with his back to an electric fire, for the night was chilly. He had a dark blue silk dressing-gown wrapped tightly about him, and the first impression Loftus had of him was a man in a monk’s habit, for the hunched shoulders made the dressing-gown droop from him, almost to the floor.
A cheroot poked characteristically from the Premier’s mouth.
As well as Hershall and Craigie there were two other men in the room. Loftus recognized them both. One was Whitterly, the head of Intelligence, of which Department Z was a small but autonomous branch.
A man of medium height, square-shouldered, brisk speaking and brisk moving. Lt.-Colonel Bruce Whitterly had been a fine soldier, and made a good job of his present appointment.
The fourth man was the Rt. Hon. Jonathan Scott, the Foreign Secretary, short, bulky, aggressive. Both he and Whitterly, although fully-dressed, were unshaven.
The door closed behind Loftus.
Hershall took the cheroot from his lips and said abruptly:
‘We’ve been waiting for you.’
Loftus smiled. ‘I’m sorry I’m late, but things have been somewhat hectic.’ He put a small attaché case on the table, one which contained the magazines and the newspapers found in the house next door to Conway, then made a quick statement of what had happened.
When he had finished, Scott said:
‘Pity you went in, Loftus. If you’d waited outside you could have caught this fellow, what’s-his-name.’
Loftus shrugged. ‘It’s just possible. But I wanted to try to make sure that Hoppermann’s daughter was safe.’
Craigie uncrossed his thin legs.
‘The men arrested at the Putney house, Bill, were Lord Manfrey, Sir Geoffrey Gott, and Gabriel Pellisser. None of them was ever suspected of Communist or Fascist sympathies, but all have admitted to conspiracy against the State. They make it clear—’ Craigie’s voice was very dry and crisp, he might have been discussing some triviality—‘that there is a widespread subversive organisation in the country, built up over a long period, and aiming at the destruction of key factories. Gott has been more talkative than any of the others. He says that Lewis had promised them action this week—this Friday, in fact—and that the trouble in this country will coincide with a wave of strong anti-British sentiment in the United States.’
Loftus kept quite still.
‘Does he specify what damage and what factories?’
‘No. He claims that only Lewis knew.’
‘Does anything that Lewis told you bear out that probability?’ asked Whitterly.
Loftus said slowly: ‘Ye-es. He said that all preparations were made, and that we had no idea of them. I thought he was boasting or bluffing, but it could be true.’
‘Damn it!’ exploded Scott, ‘if that’s happened under our eyes, with none of you people having the faintest suspicion, it’s criminal negligence. We should know what’s happening here, even if we can’t get details of what’s happening abroad. What is the matter with our Intelligence?’
Hershall broke in.
‘Let’s keep to the point. You obtained no details from Lewis, Loftus?’
‘No.’
‘Manfrey, Gott or Pellisser must know something,’ interjected Scott. He was quick-tempered, but a man for whom Loftus had considerable respect.
Loftus shook his head.
‘That isn’t likely, sir. In fact it’s obvious that Lewis wanted to get rid of the trio. If they were likely to know anything of particular value he would surely have shot them before he left.’
‘It sounds absurd,’ said Scott. ‘How could he use them if they knew nothing?’
Craigie broke in.
‘They’re directors of a big distributing company, and Lewis told them their organisation would be invaluable when the time came to strike. They have received big sums from Argentina.’
‘Argentina or Lewis?’ asked Loftus.
‘It amounts to the same thing,’ said Whitterly.
‘Ye-es. It could be,’ said Loftus; but he sounded sceptical.
‘Only could be?’ Hershall flashed.
Loftus said: ‘I don’t think we should take anything for granted yet
.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Scott. ‘These damned traitors have admitted what they were doing. We now know we’ve a powerful Neo-Nazi organisation in the country, with a sprinkling of quislings. Manfrey, Gott and Pellisser are all well-known business men. If they’d link up with this blasted ring, so would others. Who are the others?—they must know, and it’s the crucial problem.’
‘They say they know only Lewis,’ said Craigie.
‘Give me five minutes alone with them,’ snapped Scott, ‘and I’d beat the truth out of their hides.’
‘As far as I can see,’ said Hershall, raising a deprecating hand in Scott’s direction, ‘Loftus isn’t yet convinced that there is any such widespread organisation—isn’t that so, Loftus?’
‘It is,’ said Loftus firmly. ‘I don’t believe that one could be so widespread without some suspicion of it reaching Whitterly’s men, or ours. But some sort of lesser organisation there must be—and Lewis is in it. He’s served a clever trick on us by handing over Manfrey and Company, but we should be able to see round it. We’ve one or two fairly obvious pointers. Lewis has made it clear that the girl is dangerous, and stated that Hoppermann could delay him for a short time. So we may get a lead from Hoppermann or his daughter.’
‘May get a lead,’ snorted Scott. ‘We must get one.’
Hershall took his cheroot out of his mouth.
‘Loftus, I want you to interrogate Manfrey and Company, as you call them. Craigie, you and Whitterly will do everything possible to find whether there is danger of anything happening in the country on Friday. To-morrow, that is, since it’s Thursday morning now,’ he added crisply. ‘You haven’t much time.’
14
Talk with Christine
Bill Loftus was tired.
It was two o’clock on that Thursday afternoon, and he had not seen bed for forty-odd hours. He had been more than ordinarily busy, and he had felt an overwhelming need for sleep even before seeing Hershall, Scott and Whitterly, but it had not been possible.
He had spent several hours interrogating Gott, Pellisser and Manfrey. They knew, they said, that Lewis had many others with him, but they did not know their names. They could give details of nothing. Their task had been to maintain their own organisation, one specialising in the distribution of retail goods, and possessing one of the biggest fleets of lorries in the country, in perfect condition, ready for immediate action.