by John Creasey
He was lying in a strange bed, in a small, green and white walled room, which smelt faintly of disinfectants. He frowned, grew aware that he had a headache and, putting a hand to his forehead, found that his head was bandaged.
Memory flowed back.
A few minutes afterwards a nurse came in, and he was told that he was in a nursing-home in South Audley Street. Hot on the nurse’s heels came Doc Little.
‘Hallo, Bill,’ he said. ‘When are you going to grow up?’
Loftus smiled.
‘I’ve been asking myself that, old son. However, I’m still in the land of the living, and between you and me I feel pretty good, a mild headache excepted, and I think some tea and toast would send that away. I’m all right, aren’t I? No bones broken and whatnot? I must be up and doing in an hour or two.’
Little smoothed the back of his head.
‘If I had my way you’d stay where you are for a couple of days, but I know you won’t. Craigie sent word that everything’s being done that can be, and the others are all right.’
‘What time is it?’
‘About nine o’clock,’ said Little airily.
‘And how much more?’ demanded Loftus suspiciously. He squinted down at Little’s wrist-watch. ‘It’s half past ten, you congenital liar. I must be up at twelve; no later.’
‘All right, all right,’ said Little. ‘I didn’t expect you’d grown sensible over-night. I’ll have some food sent in,’ he added. ‘And Dunster is waiting to see you—Craigie sent him over with a report.’
‘Good man. I’ll see him now.’
‘And when you’ve finished and get on those two fool feet of yours, look in next door but one,’ said Little. ‘On the right. Young Jimmy Mayo is there, and I’ve an idea he’ll be glad to see you.’
‘I won’t forget,’ promised Loftus.
He leaned back on his pillows, and greeted Dunster with a grin.
Dunster pulled up a chair.
‘What have you got for me?’ asked Loftus.
Dunster leaned back and closed his eyes, then began a comprehensive and detailed statement, including the fact that Lewis himself had escaped, but that the two gunmen had been hit; it would happen that way, thought Loftus a little bitterly. The story of the car which had driven at speed along the Strand, and from which a Mills bomb or its equivalent had been thrown at the fire-escape, was also told; the car had crashed, and its two occupants had been killed.
‘That’s good,’ Loftus said slowly; but the news that Lewis had evaded capture filled him with disquiet.
‘Good indeed,’ said Dunster. ‘Well, Miss—sorry, Mrs.—Weston is still at your flat. Craigie interviewed her, but she hasn’t much more to say. Craigie says that he’s following the angle suggested by the shares—we found some tucked in your trousers, and that apparently gave him an idea.’
Loftus frowned. ‘We must get Lewis.’
Dunster grinned.
‘That the shaggy customer who was in the window when we put the searchlight on last night?’
‘Yes—did you see him?’
‘I not only saw him, Bill, but I took a photograph. I usually carry a small Leica, y’know. How’s that for a likeness?’
He took a print from his brief-case, and Loftus stared with increasing excitement at an excellent likeness of the ‘second’ Lewis.
‘Craigie’s getting the police to circulate it up and down the country,’ Dunster said casually.
‘Nice work. That makes it very much better all round,’ said Loftus. ‘I’d like to think we were going to get him inside twenty-four hours, but I suppose I mustn’t ask for too much? I—Come in,’ he called.
A tap on the door was followed by its slow opening, and then a nurse appeared, pushing a wheelchair. In the chair, his head raised and excitement in his eyes, his ginger hair fluffy and sticking well out from his head, was Jimmy Mayo.
‘Hallo, hallo!’ said Loftus heartily. ‘Someone told you I was here, did they?’
‘The doctor,’ said Jimmy with a vast grin. ‘Fancy us being in the same hospital, Mr. Loftus! Are you getting better?’
‘Nearly as fast as you, I hope,’ said Loftus. ‘And you seem to be making first-class progress, old son. Have you had any more ideas?’
Jimmy grinned engagingly.
‘Hang it, I’m on the sick-list!’ His grin faded, and he looked a trifle wistful. ‘I wish I could do something to help,’ he said. ‘It’s a spy-ring, isn’t it?’
‘It looks very much like it,’ said Loftus with the necessary gravity.
‘I know a man who doesnt believe in spies,’ said Jimmy. ‘I’ve always told him different.’
‘So I should think. Who is he?’
‘Oh, Mr. Makin. You wouldn’t know him. He’s often in the office with Mr. Sell.’
Loftus stiffened. ‘Is he, by Jove! How often?’
‘Most days,’ said Jimmy perfunctorily. ‘He works just along the passage, you see—he’s editor or something of the Leathercraft Journal. He’s not a bad sort, I suppose, although I’ve heard him and Mr. Sell quarrelling sometimes. If I was Sell, I wouldn’t stand for it.’
‘No-o,’ said Loftus slowly. He was in the grip of a fast increasing excitement as he went on: ‘I’d like to hear more of Mr. Makin, old son. What does he look like?’
Jimmy, who had glanced down on the photograph of the ‘second’ Lewis, was no longer smiling but staring akin to excitement. He drew a deep breath, pointed to the photograph, and cried:
‘Why, you know him. That’s Mr. Makin!’
19
‘That’s Mr. Makin’
Loftus was thinking:
‘Five minutes’ talk with Jimmy or any of the girls in Sell’s office would have told me about this, and I missed it. I missed it!’ He leaned back on his pillows, and Jimmy said in a thinner voice, perhaps a little defiantly:
‘It is, I know it is. You couldn’t mistake him.’
Loftus pulled himself together.
‘I don’t doubt you for a moment, Jimmy, and you’ve helped us a lot more than you realise. You’ll qualify for the Special Branch before you’re much older! Wait half-a-mo’, will you, while we get things done?’ He turned to Dunster.
‘Hurry along to Craigie’s office, old man, and have several fellows go to the Leathercraft office, on the same floor as Hoppermann’s. If there’s any of it left, that is. Get all records, and go through them, particularly for names and addresses of subscribers. If the office is destroyed, try to get a list of subscribers, and any information that’s possible about the place. All clear?’
‘I’m nearly there,’ said Dunster, pushing his chair back. ‘Nice work, Jimmy! They told me you were hot, but I didn’t think you’d be as hot as this.’
Jimmy’s eyes were staring almost out of his head.
‘Is—is this important?’
‘This is nearly the most important thing there could be,’ said Loftus, as Dunster went out. ‘I think—’ he stopped, for Dunster collided with something, and apologised; a feminine voice answered him, and immediately afterwards a nurse came in, pushing a small trolley. There was coffee, toast, bread-and-butter, and boiled eggs. He asked for another cup for Jimmy, and began to tell the boy as much as he could safely divulge—at the same time getting the story of ‘Makin’ and his frequent visits to Sell, not excluding the quarrels.
It seemed that Makin and Sell did some private business together; Jimmy had an idea it was to do with racing and betting, and he knew that Makin took some Football Pool coupons into Sells’ office every week. The quarrels had been audible, but no one in the office knew anything about them beyond the fact that they frequently occurred.
Sell, it seemed, shouted the louder.
That was easily understandable, thought Loftus. Lewis would make demands which Sell disliked, and tried to avoid; Lewis would be quiet and dangerous, Sell would bluster with the raised, over-excited tones of a man who knows he has already lost the battle. Sell had been working with Lewis, mused Loftus,
of that there was not the remotest doubt.
Sell had been eager to buy Christine’s shares. And in his office Sell had shares of several of the other important American combines. In themselves these shares had been no more than a pointer, but Loftus now believed he saw beyond the pointer. Lewis and his principals—for there must be principals, were aiming to get as much control of the big American industrial corporations as possible. Leading members of some of those corporations were in fear of their lives, and Lewis and his principals had cleverly twisted the situation to make it look as if British agents were working on them to enforce their support for British aims.
It was taking shape.
And under the innocuous guise of Editor and Manager of the Leathercraft Journal, Lewis had kept in close and constant touch with Sell, who could doubtless influence a great number of the Nu-Steel shares.
Loftus prayed that the Leathercraft office had not been totally destroyed by the fire.
At half-past eleven the nurse came in to take Jimmy Mayo away; she brought with her a suit and other clothes for Loftus, all sent from his flat by Mrs. Weston, she told him.
An hour or so later, Loftus pulled up beside the damaged building, showed his private card to a sergeant on duty who had been told to allow a Mr. Loftus through, and then went in.
There was little to see from the outside, except the one gap from which the masonry had tumbled the previous night, and the harm done to the lower floors was negligible; but as he neared the fifth and top floor, Loftus could smell charred wood and rubber. When he arrived at the Leathercraft Journal office, he found that the outer door had been broken down.
But the floor was sound.
The passage further along was nothing but a mass of charred ruins, but the firemen had done a wonderful job, keeping the fire almost wholly to one side of the passage. Loftus went into the Leathercraft office; the office where, on the first day of the affair, Mark Errol had waited to watch Hoppermann; there was an ironic twist to that fact.
Dunster, Grey, Wally Davidson, Best and the Errols were there before him.
Files were open, the contents strewn about the office. The men worked earnestly, and were putting certain papers—small cards, Loftus noticed—on one side.
They did not see him enter, and did not know he was there until he spoke.
‘We’ve had a break, then?’
Dunster, nearest to him, looked up with a start.
‘Why, hallo! Yes, we’ve had a break all right. Everything seems to be here, and it wouldn’t have been discovered at all had the firemen not broken in.’
‘Nice work,’ said Loftus. ‘And what have we found?’
‘Well,’ said Martin, ‘the safe was crammed with shares of Nu-Steel, Atlantic Coast Shipping, Mid-West Electric—all the companies you’d thought about. Some of the shares were in Sell’s safe, remember, and there are masses of them here.’
Loftus half sat on the corner of a desk.
‘So we go on,’ he said. ‘And the subscribers?’
‘They’re filed in sections,’ said Dunster quickly. ‘One section is marked “A” and I fancy they’re the gentlemen we want. There are more particulars about them, and—’
‘They include a Mr. Guggleheim,’ said Mike Errol.
‘Not to mention A. J. Sell,’ said Mark.
Loftus took a cigarette from his case slowly.
‘Guggleheim and Sell, eh? I think we can safely tell the police to watch that list of subscribers.’
He felt a tremendous sense of contentment. It was working out the way he had expected. There was much that had to be settled, but he believed it would not take long. The germ of the plot was already in his hands, he had now to check and counter its ramifications. He saw the eager and satisfied faces of the others as they went on with the job of sorting and selecting, and he was filled with a warm feeling of kinship. Young Dunster and Grey, and the older men, had the same feeling; he knew that.
‘Why not do something?’ demanded Wally Davidson. ‘We don’t mind starting, but I don’t see why you should sit and watch.’
‘Hush?’ said Best. ‘He’s thinking.’
‘Dolts,’ said Loftus. ‘If you can’t get through a simple job like that, I’ll—’
He stopped abruptly, for he heard footsteps outside, and the protesting voice of a policeman. He thought for a moment that it meant interference; he would not have been surprised at another attempt to put the Department out of action. Instead, he saw Ned Oundle, and a policeman hurrying behind him. Ned’s eyes were wide with more than ordinary excitement, and he snapped:
‘Leave this and make it snappy, Bill. The Embassy trouble’s started.’
20
Hostile demonstrations
It transpired that Oundle had been one of the Department men on duty outside the American Embassy, and that fact told Loftus that the trouble could not have been prevented no matter who had been there.
On the way in three cabs, with Oundle, Loftus and the Errols in the first, Oundle said what he could about it. The Leathercraft office had been cordoned off, and a strong guard of police left there, although the ‘A’ subscriber cards were tucked in the pockets of Loftus and the others.
‘There was the usual crowd of passers-by, Bill, nothing more. Then, before I knew where I was, a couple of dozen men started throwing stones, and rushed the doors. The dozens grew into hundreds pretty quickly.’
Loftus snapped: ‘Did they get through?’
‘Some of them, yes.’
‘How many men did we have?’
‘Twenty of our fellows, and twenty policemen. There’s a call out for the military, too.’
‘So it’s as bad as that,’ said Loftus grimly.
‘It was hotting up pretty fast when I left,’ said Oundle.
Loftus nodded, and they were silent for the rest of the short journey.
The square was crowded.
Loftus’s cabby went on as far as he could, blowing his horn freely, but it was clear that he could not approach the Embassy. Around the building, above which the Stars and Stripes was flying in a light breeze, was a dense mass of people, and from their throats was coming a deep roar.
Loftus heard loud voices roaring through megaphones.
‘Where’s Hoppermann? Where’s Hoppermann?’
‘Yanks go home!’
He wondered how many of these demented people were genuine fanatics, believing that America had failed in its duty. Fanatics and fools they might be, but they would never have been dangerous but for the way Lewis and his organisation had preyed on their minds.
Amongst the crowd was a more than liberal sprinkling of paid agents. He could tell some of them, wild-looking men, yelling and shouting and cursing. He heard screaming, too, from the few women in the crowd, women who were being trampled under foot. He saw policemen struggling to reach the Embassy, but from time to time a helmet disappeared, a man in blue was pushed under the horde of trampling feet. He saw a few soldiers with fixed bayonets, but they were not using the steel; they had not had orders, but unless this soon stopped, orders would surely have to be given. The crowd would be fired on, and a charge with fixed bayonets would become essential.
For the moment the mob had it.
Loftus and the others forced their way through towards the Embassy. They could see police holding the building itself, with some men in khaki, keeping back the surging crowd with truncheons and batons. Now and again a few people pushed their way through, but for the most part the thin line of police and soldiers kept the mob at bay.
Strained, white faces, glaring eyes, vicious oaths from innocent-looking men, unceasing parrot-cries, with one rising above all the others:
‘Where’s Hoppermann—kill Hoppermann!’
Loftus was at the head of his party. They had formed in a little group, and let nothing stand in their way. Men cursed as they were pushed aside, and a few stones and pieces of wood fell among them, but Loftus ignored the missiles.
He had a hand in his p
ocket about his gun—Oundle had given him one, Christine had not managed that—and he knew the others were doing the same. They could have drawn their weapons, but to start shooting then would be the height of folly, although it might become necessary to use them as clubs. He fingered the barrel of the automatic as, grimly and ruthlessly, he forced his way through.
‘Kill Hoppermann, kill Hoppermann!’
‘Yanks go home!’
A strong body of men grouped together, drawn back for a rush. A tall man whom Loftus thought he recognised had a megaphone.
‘Now, then, altogether, we can get through. Find that bastard, that’s all, find Hoppermann!’
No more than a dozen men were holding the gates, policemen, soldiers, three of the Deparment men. Most of them looked as if they had been hurt, three were bleeding from face wounds. The soldiers had lost their rifles, two of which were being raised by the crowd about to rush the gates.
Loftus, just behind them, led his party on their heels. He saw one of the men with a gun raise it, then bring it heavily down on a policeman’s head, the ranks of the cordon broke; it could not resist that avalanche of crazed human beings.
Loftus fought his way to the man with the gun, then brought out his automatic. He clubbed good and hard. He heard the man gasp, saw him fall. He wrenched the rifle from his hand, then cleared a wider space about him with it. He saw men struggling back towards the gates—but in that brief moment of respite the cordon had regained its control. It reformed, strengthened by the Errols, Davidson, Best, Dunster and Grey.
The roaring grew deafening.
But through it filtered another sound, and suddenly there was a shrieking from the crowd. The deep growl of heavy vehicles followed, and Loftus saw at the far end of the Mall, a little column of armoured cars approaching very slowly.
There was no shooting; no bare steel.
The fight near the Embassy was getting more violent, yet he knew that it was the last effort, the final spurt of the dying candle of revolt. Against the threat of armoured cars the crowd must clear quickly.
He reached the steps of the building, saw men running. The crowd began to fall back, screaming, forgetful of its first purpose.