by John Creasey
“Diane saw a man with green eyes dancing with Adele Fayne and looking hard at me. So she dug me, metaphorically, in the ribs, and we came over to take a peek at the gent.” He grinned at Valerie. “I think she thinks he thinks I’m a rival.”
Aubrey Chester grunted suddenly.
“F-funny thing she’s over h-here so soon,” he said—Aubrey Chester had a stammer which one grew used to quickly; “the show at the Emblem doesn’t finish till el-leven, and it’s only a-about twelve now.”
Beresford winked at Valerie Lester.
“Proper soul-mates, these two,” he said. “Diane said the same thing just now.”
“If I’d thought you were going to be as bad as this,” said Diane, “I’d never have asked you to make the four.”
Aubrey looked indignant.
“S-steady,” he protested. “T-Tony was my idea.”
Beresford wagged a large forefinger.
“Now, friends, no quarrelling, or you’ll disillusion us. What I think is funny,” he added more seriously, “is that the great Fayne isn’t with Bob Lavering. Usually you can’t see ’em apart.”
Valerie Lester looked interested.
“Bob’s engaged to her, isn’t he?” she asked.
Beresford eyed the girl from Boston with fresh interest.
“Yes,” he answered. “Of course, you came from the same home town. D’you know Bob Lavering well?”
There was an expression in Valerie Lester’s eyes which might have meant anything. Beresford, whose sense of observation was abnormally keen, noticed it and told himself that the girl was not altogether happy when thinking of Bob Lavering of America. But his own eyes were smiling as he spoke.
Valerie nodded, without smiling, and Beresford told himself that the occasional gleam of her teeth as she talked was well worth looking at.
“I wouldn’t say I know him well,” she said, “but I do know him. I’ve had more to do with his father than with Bob himself.”
“Jonathan Lavering?” said Beresford. “What’s that man doing these days? Still piling up the oof?”
“For Bob to spend. Yes, he’s still working.”
Beresford grinned, but was thoughtful. He had told himself before that Lavering, Senior, was not likely to look on his son’s coming marriage with any favour. But that was a matter purely domestic. For his part, Beresford was sorry for the younger man. Anyone who married Adele Fayne needed a fortune all right, but he needed the patience of Job and a charity far above the human if he was to be happy when married. Adele Fayne was famous—or notorious—for the quantity, quality and brevity of her friendships. And Beresford liked Bob Lavering, although he knew nothing of his father beyond the fact that he was one of the biggest landowners in the U.S.A. and that his reputed fortune was comfortably past the seven-figure mark in sterling.
Aubrey Chester proffered cigarettes.
“D-didn’t I read in the T-Tatler that Bob’s been to P-Paris?” he asked as he struck a match.
Beresford chuckled.
“Paris, eh? That’s an original one, even for Bob, who’s got some funny habits. He’s disporting himself in Paris while his beloved enjoys herself in London. When are they getting married? Did the Tatler say that too?”
“It said sh-shortly,” said Aubrey. And then he thumped his hand on his thigh, his eyes gleaming. “I-I’ve g-got it! I knew I’d s-seen the c-cove before.”
Beresford’s eyes went up.
“You mean the lopsided customer?”
“Y-yep!” said Aubrey. “It’s G-Gorman—the m-money merchant. D-don’t see him about m-much.”
Beresford looked again, casually on the surface but with considerable interest, at the man whom Diane Chester had noticed viewing him with disfavour. It was true enough that Leopold Gorman was rarely seen in public, and his photograph never appeared in the papers. But Beresford, whose job it was to know things, just as it was Craigie’s, knew that the landowner-financier had more than one black mark against him.
“Gorman owns the ‘Emblem’, doesn’t he?” asked Diane.
Beresford nodded.
“Yes. He’s just bought it, with the whole mid-country Playhouse Circuit,” murmured Beresford thoughtfully. “That explains why he’s dancing with Adele Fayne, anyhow.”
As he spoke, Gorman and the dancer whirled nearer the table. Beresford, still appearing to interest himself solely in his three companions, thoughtfully surveyed the couple.
Adele Fayne was dressed in a startling creation of silver lamé, cut to a peak at the front and suspended by a buckle attachment to a skin-tight necklet of glittering diamonds. The back, Beresford afterwards said, was not; certainly there was little enough of it above the waist. The dancer’s raven-black hair and milk-white complexion made her the cynosure of many eyes, frank and covert. But the discriminating looked at the man, whom a few knew as Gorman.
Gorman was a man of more than medium height, but he looked shorter because of his enormous breadth of shoulders, a size exaggerated by the fact that the right shoulder was a full two inches higher than the left. The face was heavy—swarthy skin, dark with pregnant stubble, heavy jowls of solid flesh, his chin massive, nose prominent yet flattened at the bridge—and every feature had that peculiar lopsidedness which characterized the man. His deep-set, black-browed eyes were built curiously below his high forehead, the right well above the left, and the colour of them was green, jade-green. Beresford judged that Gorman wore a wig of black hair, although few people would have thought it unnatural. But all men must have thought that Leopold Gorman was a fish out of water amidst that glittering gathering of celebrities and monied nonentities.
Diane apparently sensed that Beresford was sizing the couple up. Not until they were hidden by the crowd of dancers swaying to the never-ceasing music—the band at each end of the room ensured that rhythm never stopped at the Two-Step Club—did she break the brief silence at the table.
“It may explain why he’s dancing with that woman,” said Diane, “but it doesn’t explain why he glared at you.”
“Glared now, is it?” Beresford wagged a large finger. “Say what you mean, my Ugly One, or . . .”.
Diane wrinkled her nose in a grimace.
“I hope he sticks a knife in your back,” she said with feeling. “If you want to be taken for a fool, try it with someone who doesn’t know you so well.”
Tony Beresford grinned his attractive grin, and winked at Valerie Lester.
“That’s her way of paying me a compliment without letting Aubrey know,” he said. “Let’s dance, Miss America, and give Gorman a chance to look at me again.”
Valerie stood up, laughing.
“Conditionally,” added Beresford suddenly.
“All right,” said the girl. “Name it.”
“Whatever you do,” warned Tony, “don’t say that green-eyed Gorman glowered. Diane’s got the copyright on that little word. I can see it hovering on the tip of her tongue.”
He grinned, and Valerie Lester, from America, told herself that she had rarely seen a more attractive grin. It illuminated Beresford’s already pleasant countenance and made him a man whom one instinctively liked, trusted, and guessed to be capable of many things. She knew, now, that when Diane had said, in effect, that Beresford was no fool, she had been right.
For the next ten minutes the big man and the girl from America danced easily and pleasantly together, talking of trivial things and liking it. But as he talked, Tony Beresford wondered whether Diane had been right when she had imagined Leopold Gorman had looked at him with something more than curiosity. Unlike Aubrey Chester, who knew Gorman to look at but not his reputation, Beresford thought chiefly that the financier and theatre-owner was a man of many parts, few of them reputable.
CHAPTER III
DEATH PASSES BY
LEOPOLD GORMAN, Beresford knew, was not viewed with any favour by the Intelligence Department—or Z—nor by the police. His financial interests in England were considerable, and it was well known that
he had other interests, on as great a scale, abroad. As with most men with fingers in the financial and economic pie, Gorman did most of his dealing through agents, and in person he was not a well-known figure. But his activities often ruled the markets. When he started to buy stock—any stock—buyers went mad and prices leapt up. When it was rumoured that he was selling, the market came down with a rush, and at times reached zero. Yet Leopold Gorman contrived to buy when others were selling low, and sell when others were buying high. In short, he rigged the market.
Rigging the market in itself is not a crime. It is the age-old game of making a fool of the other man and profiting by it. But the border-line between honest dealing and fraud which divided Gorman’s activities was so faint as to be decipherable only by those who knew the tortuous working of the Company Laws—and the evading of them; a fact which the police had known for a long time. The authorities believed that Gorman was crooked from top to bottom, and believed that he was riding for a fall. They knew, too, that if Gorman did crash, half financial London would go with him. In consequence, powerful influences guarded and sheltered him—influences which had always been formidable enough to prevent the police from taking action, but not strong enough to keep the financier away from the watchful and hopeful eyes of the Yard and the Intelligence, who at times worked hand-in-hand.
Beresford knew that Gordon Craigie was doubtful of Gorman. He reasoned, as he walked home that night from the Chesters’ Regent’s Park home, and when he had dispersed the pleasant thoughts of Valerie Lester which had at first filled his mind, that it was possible that Gorman guessed he was being watched, and as possible that he knew the identity of several of Department Z’s agents, including his humble self. It was conceivable, he thought, that if the financier was half-fearful of being tripped up by the police or Department Z, he would naturally look on the Department agents with keen disfavour; thus he might have looked, glared, or even glowered at the big man that night.
Tony Beresford, apart from being no fool, and something of a judge of character, had known Diane Chester for many years. She was not easily scared, and she was not unduly fanciful. She would not, in fact, have drawn attention to Leopold Gorman’s apparent interest in Beresford unless it had been there. The thing to learn, then, was whether Leopold Gorman knew that he was Number Two—or any old number—on Department Z’s list.
It was not a problem, Beresford told himself, which could be worked out by a process of heavy thinking. In the morning he could call on Gordon Craigie, and ways and means could be worked out. Meanwhile he was tired, and he turned into Auveley Street, at Number 7 of which he had a second-floor flat, with pleasant visions of his general factotum, one Tricker, being still up and awake and ready with coffee.
An old trick with a new variation nearly caught even him.
If he had been three inches shorter, and his line of vision consequently lower, his interest in Department Z and Leopold Gorman would have been brought to an abrupt close. But he saw the thing move that vital fraction of a second before it dropped, and he threw himself sideways, banging himself against the railings but unconscious of the sharp pain they caused.
As he moved, a block of stone dropped from the portico of the house, smashing against the doorstep into a hundred pieces!
Beresford stayed there, pressing against the railings, staring at the stone, possessed by a cold, intense anger. The squeak of a hurriedly opened window and a gruff voice broke the tension.
“Hey, there! Anything hup?” demanded Samuel Tricker.
Beresford found his voice, but it was harsh and unnatural.
“No, but there’s something down, Sam. Slip here quickly and bring a torch, will you?”
“I’m on me way,” said Samuel Tricker, who was a regular patron of the cinema.
The window squeaked again as Tricker closed it, and Beresford looked up and down Auveley Street, mildly surprised that no one else had heard the crash. The street was empty, however, and in the near vicinity of Number 7 no lights glowed.
“I suppose not,” Beresford murmured to himself, “seeing that it’s nearly two. Now I wonder . . .”
What he wondered was simply whether Leopold Gorman, who was very much in his mind that night, knew anything about the loosened stone which had crashed. He kept an open mind, and even told himself that the thing might have been accidental. When Tricker arrived, however, complete with a bull’s-eye lantern and a lead-weighted strip of leather called a cosh—Sam Tricker was always hoping for the worst—Beresford knew that it had been no accident. It was murder attempted; and it sent a peculiar quiver up and down Beresford’s spine.
The fallen stone had been the centre-piece in the roof of the porch. It had been carefully loosened, and kept in place by two wedges of chiselled stone. The wedges had been tied round with strong twine which ran down both sides of the porch and was stretched across the top step, on which Beresford had trodden. Now that the stone had crashed, the twine was lying on the ground, but it was still connected with the two wedges, which helped Beresford to reconstruct the affair without much trouble.
He had trodden on the cord, noticing nothing more than he would have done if he had trodden on a matchstick, and the leverage on the wedges had jerked them out of place, so that the slab had fallen. If, Beresford reminded himself with a sudden return of that cold rage which he had felt after the first shock, he had not noticed the slab move, because of his height, it must have crashed, fifty-six pounds or more of solid stone, on his bare head.
Beresford cursed suddenly. Sam Tricker, who was sound if slow in thought, was fingering the twine round one of the wedges, and the meaning of it came suddenly to his mind.
“Blimey!” he gasped, his rugged, honest face stiff with astonishment. “The dirty, murderin’ lot o’——”
“Have you been in the front room all the evening?” Beresford demanded abruptly.
“Fer the larst coupla hours, Mr. B.”
“Heard anything unusual?”
“Not ter say I noticed it.”
“Humph,” grunted Beresford. “Let’s see—the top flat’s empty, isn’t it?”
“Since Monday,” said Sam, moving pieces of the broken stone towards the side of the porch with his foot.
“Is Williams in downstairs?”
Tricker stopped his clearing-up to whistle. It came to him suddenly that the occupant of the ground floor flat—one Nicholas Williams, a middle-aged widower with an interest in fine art and highbrow literature—had left Number 7 Auveley Street that morning after receiving a wire. Sam said as much.
Beresford’s eyes widened.
“Are you sure about the wire, Sam?”
“Sure’s my name’s Tricker,” asserted Sam. “I ’eard a rat-tat abart ten this morning an’ I ’appened ter be looking art of the winder, Mr. B., when the boy wot brought it went orf. Mr. Williams went art abart an hour arterwards.”
“That means,” said Beresford thoughtfully, helping Tricker in a fresh assault on the débris in the porch, “that the house has been empty all day, except when you and I were in. I was out from ten to half past four, and you—”
“I went ter the Regal,” Tricker said, “just arter twelve, Mr. B., and got back ‘alf a nour afore you did.”
“So this,” said Beresford, jerking his head at the roof of the porch, “was worked between twelve and four o’clock. You haven’t been out this evening, have you?”
“Not even fer a quick one, Mr. B.”
“Humph,” grunted Beresford. “Well, it’s a funny business, Sammivel—but it’s time we went in. I can see a Robert coming this way, and somehow I don’t feel like talking until I’ve settled down a bit.”
Sam slipped rapidly into the hall of Number 7, and Beresford followed suit. The servant closed the door quietly as a red-faced beat-policeman looked curiously towards the debris at the sides of the porch, sniffed, reminded himself that the big man Beresford lived at Number 7, and that Beresford had been known to associate with gentlemen of importance at
Scotland Yard, and then passed on forgetfully.
Beresford, naturally, forgot nothing. The stark fact was that he had been within a split second of being brained, or as near brained as made little difference. The trap had been carefully rigged in the porch, obviously while the house had been empty, and it was a hundred per cent. certainty that the man who had rigged it had been waiting near by when the intended victim had turned into Auveley Street. In the few minutes which it had taken Beresford to walk the two hundred-odd yards (he had entered the street from the Bond Street end, and Number 7 was near the Park Lane end), the would-be murderer had slipped into the porch, set the twine so that Beresford would work the trap by treading on it, and, Beresford thought, had hovered near by, ready to dart forward and remove all traces of the wedges and twine before investigations started. The fact that Beresford had dodged the slab had urged the man to make himself scarce, quickly and certainly thoroughly. It would have been useless, Beresford told himself, to have started looking round the neighbourhood for a large or small specimen of vermin.
But there were other things to look for, and think about, concerning both the ground-floor tenant of Number 7 and Mr. Leopold Gorman.
Samuel Tricker took his employer’s hat and coat—Beresford bowed to convention by carrying a topper in his hand when clad in the full if ridiculous regalia of evening-dress—and hovered solicitously about the big man as he dropped into a chair and lit a cigarette.
“Feel like a black corfee, Mr. B.?”
“No,” said Beresford, “I feel like black murder. Whisky, Sam, in large glasses.”
“Soda, sir?”
Beresford said he would have a little soda, and that Sam could have a lot.
As he measured the drinks out, Sam Tricker’s face was twisted in frustrated anger. It was slowly dawning on him that tragedy had knocked on the door of Number 7 that night, and Sam loved Tony Beresford with that fierceness typical of a disciple and his master. To Samuel Tricker, Beresford was as near perfection as the world could show; to Sam, the most heinous crime in the world was an attempt to defraud, catch, or threaten bodily harm to his Mr. B.