by John Creasey
Devenish widened his eyes.
‘Who by?’
Craigie gave a slow smile.
‘By one of the men he thought he had with him,’ the Chief went on. ‘Honeybaum . . .’
Devenish whistled.
‘Then Honeybaum was…’
‘An agent of “Z”,’ broke in Craigie quietly. ‘I needed someone who was in touch with Riordon, and Honeybaum was easily bought over—he had an old grudge against Sir Basil, and wanted his own back.’
‘From what I can gather, Marcus realised the game in time, and killed Honeybaum. If that hadn’t happened, I should have known exactly what was going on, and would have stopped Marcus getting out of London. But I relied too much on Honeybaum.’
Devenish laughed ruefully, and crossed his legs.
‘So Honeybaum was the real spy, and I was only keeping Riordon off the scent. Is that it?’
Craigie nodded.
‘In a way,’ he admitted. ‘On the other hand, you discovered a lot of things that even Honeybaum didn’t know. He didn’t know who Marcus’s chief men were, for instance. You found Rickett and Martin—Honeybaum couldn’t help there.’
Devenish chuckled.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll take it lying down. Next please!’
Craigie tapped the bowl of his pipe on the hearth.
‘There isn’t a great deal more,’ he said. ‘Marcus blew up “Fourways” more for effect than with any purpose—it kept us busy while he was working his gold rush. The same with Madame X—she was refuelled and provisioned as a blind.’
‘I don’t know where Marcus was making for on the Mario. Nobody does, and it doesn’t matter a hang. He bought the ship, and paid Lorenson well to do just as he was told, and that’s all we know.’
Craigie stopped for a minute and poured out two large whiskies. Devenish stretched out a hand.
‘Thanks. I needed that. You know, Gordon, we really got out of it darned well. Ninety per cent luck, and ...’
‘I know all about that,’ interjected Craigie, with a dry grin. ‘Ninety per cent Devenish and ten per cent luck is more the way I reckon it, Hugh.’
Devenish waved his hand airily.
‘Don’t forget the other boys,’ he chided. ‘Dodo Trale caught a whale of a cold after his second dip. He’s confined to his flat, and I left the Arrans and Bob Bruce with him a couple of hours ago.’
‘Making merry?’ grinned Craigie.
‘I think they called it beer,’ said Devenish innocently.
‘However…’
He moved his great frame out of his chair and looked thoughtfully at a clock on the mantelpiece. It was nearing three o’clock, and Devenish had a date.
‘Talking of Marion,’ said Craigie, with a sudden twinkle in his eyes, ‘I…’
‘Were we?’ murmured Hugh blandly.
‘Near enough,’ said Craigie. ‘Well—you’ll hardly need telling, Hugh, that the theft that sent her to gaol for a year was a put-up job. She happened to work for the Marritiband Development Company, and knew something of Marcus’s activities. He wanted—or his father wanted—a capable secretary who could be forced to keep quiet, and the robbery was staged. Tough on her, old son.’
Devenish nodded, but there was a grin at the corners of his lips.
‘I knew there was something you could give us for a present,’ he murmured. ‘Fix that darned silly thing called a free pardon without a stain on her character, will you?’
Craigie cocked an inquiring eye.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘When do you want it?’
‘Please yourself,’ beamed Devenish. ‘We’re getting married at ten o’clock tomorrow morning, so I don’t suppose it’ll be ready by then. However . . .’
‘That’s good hearing,’ said Craigie, with sincerity. ‘Here’s luck, Hugh…’
‘Thanks,’ grinned Devenish, reaching for his coat. ‘Keep the good work going while I’m gone.’
The two men shook hands, and Craigie walked to the door with Devenish. After he had left, Craigie sat for a while in his chair, staring into the embers of the fire.
The thing was finished now. Riordon had killed himself. Rickett would almost certainly be hanged—unless he had earned a reprieve by stopping Riordon’s shooting on the Mario—and Lydia Crane would get a comparatively light sentence for her part in the swindle. A dozen or more of Riordon’s hirelings had been caught fleeing the country, and some of them would hang for Macauly’s murder and Sir Basil’s. Yes, it was over.
Craigie smiled, a little wearily, to himself. It was hard work, the running of ‘Z’ Department, and now Devenish was out of it—no married men were used by Craigie. One by one his best men had gone.
Craigie sighed, and leaned back in his chair. His mind began to work, slowly, on other, lesser activities of ‘Z’.
• • • • •
‘No, I don’t,’ said Hugh Devenish emphatically. ‘Nor does Marion. We don’t want anyone to see us off, Aubrey, my son. You go and say pretty things to Diane.’
Aubrey Chester smiled. His wife hugged Marion for a moment, and wished her God-speed.
And then Pincher, late for the first time in his life, drove up at the kerb outside the registry office, and made a dignified exit from the Aston Martin, a fresh painted, resplendent Aston Martin. Equally dignified, he ushered Marion into her seat, and closed the door after Devenish.
Together, he, Aubrey and Diane watched the car merging into the stream of traffic.
They gazed after it long after it had disappeared. And then Aubrey linked his arm fraternally in Pincher’s.
‘C-come and h-have a d-drink,’ he stammered. ‘Y-you’ll n-need it, now y-you’ve got a f-family.’
This edition published in 2015 by Ipso Books
Ipso Books is a division of Peters Fraser + Dunlop Ltd
Drury House, 34-43 Russell Street, London WC2B 5HA
Copyright © John Creasey, 1934, revised edition, 1967
All rights reserved
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PROLOGUE
1930–1935
IN the Spring of 1930 the hotels of London were full to overflowing, peopled by a host of distinguished gentlemen from all corners of the world, with their secretaries, legal advisers, personal servants and, with a few exceptions, their wives. Those people whose memories take them back to that year will remember the influx, and will remember the cause of it. The World Economic Conference was widely reported in the daily papers, some organs of which poured ridicule and derision over the object of the Conference, while other and more sober journals helped with encouragement and a good Press.
No sane man could have failed to support the object, but many, while regretting the biting leaders in some of the yellowest of the Yellow Press, could only foresee failure. Failure came, for in 1930 the world was not ready for a united effort to combat the problems confronting it. The prosperity of some countries compared with the poverty of others so favourably that idealists claimed the prosperity should be and could be shared equally, but only the unhappy and parlous Powers agreed. The failure, foreseen by many, regretted by most but heralded as a triumph for common sense (or insularity) by those papers which had viewed the Conference as impracticable, and which had launched a vitriolic campaign against it from its inception, was hidden in a smoke-screen of words; a month after their descent on the Metropolis, the economists and their advisers made their way back to their own countries wiser but sadder men. Prosperity was still a national, not an international, consideration. War was too costly, but Power would still fight Power on economic grounds, and fight until the w
eakest nations were no more than semi-independent.
No one had watched the Conference more eagerly than a gentleman who for some time had been increasing his monetary power in England and overseas. Mr. Leopold Gorman was a shrewd man. Some years before he had become obsessed with an idea, the fruition of which could not be contrived by himself alone, but which was possible if he had the help which he needed from powerful enough sources. In the World Economic Conference Leopold Gorman saw a way of finding this support. He spent a great deal of time at the meetings, suffering the rendering of each and every speech in five different languages, intent only on picking his men.
The first qualification in such men was strong antipathy towards the subject under discussion—the more equal distribution of wealth throughout the world. Secondly, their standard of economic morals must be low. Thirdly, they must be content to leave the managing of the scheme which Gorman had in mind to him, without question. It was in his search for the third qualification where Gorman found most difficulty, but one evening in May, ten days after the wind-up of the Conference, he met five men, all of different nationalities, all powerful financiers or industrialists, whom he considered would meet his requirements. He did not say so, but if any one of them had shown reluctance to fall in with his scheme, that one would have been dead within an hour of leaving his Park Place house. Having once broached his idea, Gorman dared not risk the chance of it becoming public knowledge.
But Leopold Gorman had chosen his men well. None of them turned a hair after they had heard him talk. Holstein, the German iron and steel magnate, and Yushimuro, the Japanese cotton dictator, were only lukewarm in their reception of the proposition, but it was more native caution and doubt as to the eventual success which would be met than moral reluctance which prevented them from being enthusiastic. Higson, the American motor and aeroplane king, was openly jubilant, and Miccowiski the Russian was as keen (although Gorman had not doubted his ability to persuade the Soviet of the advantages of working with him). Leugens the Dane, whom Gorman had selected because of his world-wide shipping influence and his virtual control of food exports from Europe to tropical countries, spoke first after Gorman had stopped talking and while the other four magnates were mentally digesting the Englishman’s strong meat.
“Five of us are not enough,” said Leugens. “We want five—even more—in every country.”
“We shall get them,” said Gorman, “or, what is better, we shall buy their interests in their own countries.”
“That will mean big money,” grunted Holstein.
“That,” said Leopold Gorman blandly, “is why I did not attempt to handle the proposition entirely by myself, gentlemen. We six together are rich enough to make the scheme successful—providing, once we have started, we do not back out.”
“How long will you give us to make a decision?” demanded Yushimuro.
Gorman eyed the Japanese thoughtfully.
“Will twenty-four hours be enough?” he asked.
“More than enough,” grunted Higson. “I say yes, and I don’t need to think about it.”
“Me too,” said Miccowiski.
“You?” Gorman looked at Holstein.
The German hesitated.
“How are we to know,” he demanded, “that we can rely on you, Mr. Gorman?”
“That is not important.” Gorman shrugged his shoulders impatiently. “We can discuss ways and means of making each one of us secure against any possible neglect on my part or yours. In principle you are with us?”
“Ja.” Holstein lapsed into his native tongue unconsciously.
“Leugens?” Gorman looked at the Dane.
“Yes,” said Leugens slowly.
Gorman turned again to Yushimuro.
“Do you still want twenty-four hours?” he asked.
The Jap shook his head suddenly.
“No. I will be with you,” he said.
The smile on Leopold Gorman’s face betrayed little of the triumph which he felt.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “we shall do what the Economic Conference failed to do. We shall secure the more equal distribution of prosperity—amongst ourselves. Shall we dine, gentlemen?”
His five visitors laughed at his joke, and said that they would dine.
In the early Spring of 1935, Leopold Gorman told himself that the plans which he and his five backers had made were near maturity. By the end of the year he anticipated complete success, and that without creating a suspicion of his plans in the mind of any member of the English Government, or, for that matter, of anyone but those who were directly interested.
There had been throughout those five years only one man who had caused Leopold Gorman anxiety. That one man was the Chief of the British Intelligence, Gordon Craigie. Craigie numbered some of the most brilliant Intelligence men in the world amongst his agents, and Leopold Gorman told himself that his safest policy to draw Craigie’s teeth was to kill his men. One by one, Gordon Craigie’s best agents “disappeared”, but that was the way of things in the Intelligence, and the Chief knew no more than that more men than usual failed to return after he had sent them on various missions.
It was in the May of 1935 that Leopold Gorman, completely satisfied with the way his plans had worked, decided that the next man on his list would be one Tony Beresford. It was about the same time that Gordon Craigie decided that Leopold Gorman needed even closer watching than he had had in the past, and that the only man he could trust with the job was the same Beresford. The Devil and Destiny laughed at their joke.
CHAPTER I
SOME PEOPLE AND THEIR PLEASURES
MAJOR GULLIVER ODELL, D.S.O., M.C., O.B.E., sat in the fourth row of the stalls of the Emblem Theatre one night in May, staring and grunting with unbridled enthusiasm at the stage. Major Odell was a man of medium height who looked short because he was fat. That evening, his clothes stretched tightly across his shoulders, under his arms and at other places; his butterfly-collar—for he was in evening-dress—gripped his red neck so that a bulge of flesh hovered about the edge, and both coat and collar looked likely to give way under the excitement which possessed him. His straw-coloured moustache bristled, his full lips pursed or gaped to show immaculate dentures, his clean-shaven face shone multi-coloured from the reflection of the spotlights on the stage. Major Odell, in fact, looked and was obsessed by what he saw, by what he had visited the Emblem Theatre to see.
In justice to the Major it must be said that seven hundred others gazed with the same rapture, and shared similar emotions.
They stared at a shimmering black curtain made, if the truth was known, by row upon row of black-painted shells, and at the one superb woman in front of it. They watched breathlessly as she twisted and turned, vivid white against the background so cunningly chosen: they saw the great white fans which she held in each hand, fans which were never still, were always covering or revealing, suggesting, exciting; and subconsciously they heard the low, haunting music to which she danced, little knowing that it was as much part of the display as was Adele Fayne herself.
They saw the dance grow faster, fiercer; they heard the music quicken, throbbing like the blood in their veins; they saw the flurry of those white fans and then, with a suddenness which startled them, they heard the orchestra crash out its finale and saw Adele Fayne motionless in the centre of the stage, alabaster against the shimmering black curtains, fans held high above her head, superb body poised, small head rigid between her slender, lovely arms.
And then the curtain dropped. For a moment there was a complete silence; then came the murmur of seven hundred people taking breath, a sudden, low-voiced thunder of applause.
“Gad, sir!” Major Gulliver Odell turned excitedly to his companion, his bright blue eyes starting from his head. “Did you ever see anything like it? Did you ever, Craigie? Damme, the woman’s superb! She’s—she’s wonderful, Craigie! And you say she’s going to marry that young pup Lavering—lucky young devil, that’s all I can say. Damme, if I were half my age I�
�d cut him out, devil me if I wouldn’t!”
The rather gaunt face of the Major’s companion was twisted in a smile which could only be called sardonic. Gordon Craigie was taciturn by nature and observant by practice, while he possessed that rare thing, a sense of the ludicrous. The thought of fiery, portly Major Odell clamouring for the hand of Adele Fayne, that sensation in London in 1935, had its fair share of the absurd, but that evening Craigie’s appreciation of the joke was marred by his disgust at Major Odell’s general level of intelligence.
“Why not have a shot now?” demanded Craigie.
Odell looked at him suspiciously, and was about to remark that some comments were uncalled for when Adele Fayne reappeared to take her curtain. The thunder of applause increased, helped in no small measure by the handclapping of the Major, while Gordon Craigie stared at the dancer, completely unmoved by her beauty or her figure. It was his business to know things, and he knew that Adele Fayne’s success was due almost entirely to the genius of her manager-producer, Solly Lewistein. Take Solly away from her, Craigie thought, and she would have dropped into the second row of the chorus. But while Lewistein continued to hoodwink the censor, Adele Fayne would go from height to giddy height.
Perhaps Craigie was unwontedly bitter that night. He had cause to be, for he had hoped to get information from the Major, and Odell was as barren of information—and ideas—as Adele Fayne had been innocent of clothes; both had just enough to get them through.
Craigie went through that evening in his mind.
At six o’clock he had met Odell, recently arrived from the British Embassy in Paris, where the Major was Military Attaché. He had put to Odell a question which he considered of considerable importance, while the soldier had shown his deftness in shaking a cocktail. The place of their meeting had been Odell’s temporary apartment at the Hotel Éclat.
“What do you think,” Craigie had asked, “that Leopold Gorman was doing in Paris, Major?”