John Creasey Box Set 1: First Came a Murder, Death Round the Corner, The Mark of the Crescent (Department Z)

by John Creasey

  As Beresford tossed his drink down, he saw the scowl on Tricker’s face, and spluttered, for even he could not laugh and drink at the same time with success.

  “Worried, Sam?” he demanded, as he recovered.

  Sam sniffed.

  “Not so worritted as them vermin ’ud be if I got me ’ands rarnd their froats, Mr. B. Any idee ’oo it was?”

  Beresford nodded.

  “The vaguest of vague ideas, Sam. Er—hop down into the front hall, will you, and squint round for that telegram. Williams might have left it about.”

  “O.K.,” Tricker said, and departed.

  Beresford grinned as the door closed behind his servant. Tricker was—or had been—a champion light-heavy in the pre-war period. The holocaust of hell in Flanders had put the prizefighter out of fighting action, but Sam had started, and for some time had prospered with, an Academy of the Boxing Art. At that school, and from Sam’s shrewd tuition, Tony Beresford had learned nearly all that there was to learn about using his fists. The University and All-England Amateur Championship titles had been his, and Sam’s, reward. Soon afterwards, pneumonia had put Sam in the ring for the biggest fight of all. He had won, but only on points. The Academy had suffered while he was ill, and he had not the strength to put it on its feet again. Sam had been perilously near to down-and-out.

  Beresford had discovered his plight and remedied it. For five years prior to the affair of the dislodged porch-stone Sam Tricker had been what was loosely termed ‘Beresford’s man’. There had been times, early on, when Tony had despaired of making the boxer a valet, but perseverance and patience had gained its reward. To Beresford, life without Sam Tricker would have been dull. To Tricker, although he could not have put the thought into words, for speech was not his medium of expression, life without Beresford would have been impossible.

  That might sound like sentiment, but it is—and was then—true.

  There were things, however, which Beresford kept from Sam; his association with Department Z was one of them. Sam knew that the big man went at times on mysterious missions, but he knew not where nor why. Nor was he ever present when Beresford put one of his rare calls through to Whitehall six threes, the then number of Department Z’s office. As the ex-fighter went downstairs, Beresford climbed to his feet and hurried to the telephone in the corner of his room. It was late for a call, but not necessarily too late for Gordon Craigie.

  The Chief’s dry voice greeted the big man after a brief pause.

  “Still at it?” asked Beresford, grinning into the mouthpiece.

  “Always at it,” said Craigie, with truth. “What’s your trouble, Tony?”

  “You’d be surprised,” said Beresford. “Can I come over?”

  “Yes. I was going to call you in the morning, anyway.”

  Beresford’s brows arched. For some weeks past he had been ‘off duty’; Craigie’s words suggested that things were beginning to stir, somewhere between London and Timbuctoo, and that Craigie was going to find the whys and wherefores of them.

  “I’ll be over in twenty minutes,” said the big man. “Which entrance?”

  Craigie hesitated. His office was walled by steel-lined partitions, any one of which could open to serve as a door, and it could be approached by a dozen different routes.

  “Use Number Three,” he said at last.

  Beresford said, “Oke”—an expression which he only used when talking to the Chief, because Craigie detested it, and replaced the receiver. With a thoughtful grin on his face, he moved across the living-room, which was furnished with an eye to comfort and usefulness. There were three large armchairs, a small sideboard, two revolving bookcases, an oak bureau which was Beresford’s especial pride because of the number of pigeon-holes and drawers which were covertly or openly built in it, and a sizeable oak dining-table with its complement of four stiff-backed chairs. He went into his bedroom, which was furnished with the same purpose, possessing a suite of magnificently carved walnut, an outsize in beds, a third bookcase filled with a motley of yellow-backs and classics, the latter well-thumbed, and a cupboard-cum-table by the bed.

  Beresford went to the wardrobe, and pressed a slight protuberance in the carving of the bottom drawer. The drawer itself did not move, but a false bottom slid silently out of the wardrobe, revealing an apparently solid block of wood, its area akin to the wardrobe’s base, and some three inches in depth.

  The big man ran his thumb along the edge of this uninteresting piece of work, and a soft whirring sound revealed the seemingly solid surface to be a lid operated on the roll-top principle. The things that rested on the green baize lining of the hidden drawer would have astonished anyone in the world with the exception of Tony Beresford.

  It was a veritable armoury! Two Webley .32’s, fitted with Maxim silencers, were cheek-by-jowl with two small grey automatics. Three sheathed knives of varying sizes were thrust through two pairs of up-to-date handcuffs. Two gas pistols were packed, with grim humour, in two gas masks of the latest Siebe pattern, and round the sides of the drawer were packets of ammunition, for both guns. To himself, Beresford called it his ‘gathering of friends’. There were times when he had used them all, to kill to save being killed; and he hoped that there would be many times again.

  Memories of a hundred tight corners flashed through the big man’s mind as he opened the drawer, but he had no time to dwell on them. He took one of the automatics, loaded it, and slipped it, with a spare box of cartridges, in his coat pocket. One of the knives, still sheathed, he slid into a place made for it on the inside of his waist-band—Blunt, his tailor, thought that the slots were made to hold a stiffening for relaxing stomach muscles, but Blunt didn’t know everything. In faith rather than hope Beresford dropped a pair of handcuffs into his other coat pocket, and then he stood up, replaced the shutter, pushed the secret drawer into position, and left the room.

  Tricker was still downstairs. Beresford wondered absently why his man had been so long on the search for the telegram, which would almost certainly be futile, and slipped into his overcoat, for that May morning was cold. This time, scorning his hat, he fortified himself with a tot of whisky, and went downstairs to tell Sammivel what he thought of him.

  But he told Samuel Tricker nothing of the kind.

  The ex-fighter was sprawling on the hall floor, his legs doubled queerly beneath him, his grizzled hair showing very grey in the dim light of a street lamp which filtered through the frosted-glass panels of the door; and on his forehead, spreading to the hair on his head, was a dark, ominous patch which Beresford knew instinctively was blood!

  CHAPTER IV

  HELP FROM THE UNHOLY TWINS

  AT a crisis some men swear, others are speechless, and some simply act. Beresford belonged to the last category. For a split second he stood on mid-stairs, staring down at the inert body of his man, and then, his mind numb and cold, he raced towards the hall, on his toes and noiselessly. That instinct which made him Department Z’s safest agent also made him duck his head, and he bent almost double as he reached the level of the floor. He stepped over Tricker, and reached the door, keeping close to the wall as he flung it open.

  Nothing happened. Beresford waited for an ever-lasting second, and then looked into Auveley Street. Nothing was there, but from some distance off the sound of a heavy tread echoed dully through the silence of London’s night. It was a comforting sound, the thud of a policeman’s reputed nines. Beresford’s expression eased. The sound grew nearer, and he knew that the man was approaching Number 7, which was just what he wanted.

  Beresford turned to the unconscious Tricker, satisfied himself that his man was alive, and moved his legs into a more natural position. The policeman’s shadow loomed in the doorway, and Beresford called out softly:

  “Don’t look this way, constable, and don’t stop. Tell me if there’s anything or anyone in the street.”

  The policeman seemed intelligent. He walked past the open door of Number 7, and spoke softly but clearly.

&
nbsp; “There’s a couple of gents getting out of a car twenty yards along, sir. What’s the trouble?”

  “Getting out or getting in?” insisted Beresford.

  “Out I said and out I meant. They passed me as I came out of Bond Street. You know ’em, Mr. Beresford—they’re the Arrans.”

  Beresford thought rapidly that here was a constable who knew him by his voice and the Arrans by sight, and who kept his head in trying circumstances. He made a mental note to say as much to Superintendent Miller when he saw him next—Superintendent Miller will play a prominent part in this narrative—and stood up from Tricker’s body.

  “All right,” he said; “you can come in and give me a hand now, Robert. My man’s been laid out.”

  “Laid out?” The policeman echoed the words incredulously.

  “With a gun, or the bullet from one,” said Beresford grimly.

  The policeman said something not allowed for in police regulations, and bustled into the hall. He grunted as he saw Tricker, and pushed his thick woollen gloves under the unconscious man’s head.

  “Lucky it’s you, sir,” he said grimly, “or I’d want to ask some questions.”

  “Meanwhile I will,” said Beresford.

  He took a thin flask from his hip-pocket—emergencies were made to prepare for, Beresford always told himself—and while the policeman held Tricker’s head, he forced a trickle of spirit between the clenched lips. As he acted he asked:

  “Did you see any other car, or anyone walking?”

  “No one walking,” said the policeman. “A Daimler passed me just before the Talbot with the Arrans. It came out of Auveley Street, going pretty fast.”

  “Did you take its number?” asked Beresford.

  “Can’t say I did,” said the patrolman.

  “Can’t say I blame you,” said Beresford.

  Tricker groaned suddenly, and turned his head. In the better light, for the door was open and the street lamp shone more fully, the wound could be plainly seen. Beresford pushed back a lock of blood-sticky hair, and peered at the wound, a two-inch long score starting over the left eye and reaching to the centre of the forehead.

  “It’s not deep,” he said thankfully, “and I don’t think the bone’s broken.”

  “He’s stunned,” said the policeman, “but he’s lucky to be alive. There’s a doctor at Number Fifty, Mr. Beresford. I’d better knock him up.”

  “I’ll go,” said Beresford, getting up and starting for the door. “I know him well enough to wake him from his beauty sleep, and I’d like a word with the Arrans.”

  “Please yourself,” said the man in blue, still intent on Tricker’s broken head.

  The Arran Twins—sometimes called the Unholy*—were at that time Number Six and Seven of Department Z. Beresford knew it, and was thankful. He felt that to work single-handed for that mad night was beyond him. Too many things were happening with a rush, and more were likely.

  “You’ll get the doctor first?” asked the policeman.

  “Of course,” said Beresford over his shoulder.

  But as he spoke he experienced a sudden revulsion of feeling towards the policeman. The man was too cool, too matter-of-fact, Beresford thought. He should, intelligent or not, have reacted differently to the discovery of an unconscious man, knocked out by a bullet. He should have shown more surprise; he should have asked questions; he had not, in fact, acted like a policeman.

  And then Beresford had a mental shock, as a forgotten fact dropped into his mind. A quarter of an hour before he had seen a policeman walking along Auveley Street, manifestly curious about himself, Tricker and the fallen slab of stone. The policeman had been stout and red-faced; the man at Number 7 was lean and pallid. Two different policemen would not, normally, be patrolling the street at the same—in effect—time!

  Beresford felt a clammy sensation at the pit of his stomach. He was not easily scared, but he had known fear, the fear which comes less from the grin of approaching death than from uncertainty—the knowledge that death might come out of the blue. And as he strode along Auveley Street he had the peculiar fancy, which comes to all men at times, that he was being watched by unseen eyes. The stillness of the night added to the mystery of it. The street lamps and the twin orbs of the sidelights of the Arrans’ Talbot outside their door heightened it. There was more shadow than light, and nothing moved, only the wind which his body stirred as he hurried. His right hand was in his coat pocket, gripping the automatic, and he kept his head half turned, so that he could see behind him.

  Suddenly something moved in front of him, and Beresford breathed with real relief. A man walked out of a house opposite the Talbot; Tony recognized the lean figure of Timothy or Tobias Arran—the twins were of a height with each other, distinguishable only by their faces, one of which was classic and the other reputedly the ugliest in London. Beresford was twenty yards from the twin when he called out quietly, throwing his voice with a trick he had learned years ago.

  “Oi, there, Timothy!”

  The man in front stopped and stared along the street.

  “Oi yourself,” he called, in a whisper which carried as far as Beresford’s. “Toby is my name——”

  “Hop over to Doc Little,” said Beresford, “and send him to my place. Where’s Tim?”

  “Laughing because he won the toss,” muttered Tobias Arran tartly. He spoke and acted in a series of assumed jerks, just as his brother affected to linger in his movements and drawl his words. “Third time I’ve garaged the bus this week.”

  Beresford grinned; the tension of the night eased. He turned into the doorway of Number 57—the Arrans’ house—as Toby Arran obeyed him unquestioningly and hurried across the road to Number 50 and one Doc Little. It was part and parcel of a Department Z agent that he acted without thinking first but thought hard while he acted.

  The Arrans had the ground-floor flat. Timothy, the other twin, stepped into the hall as Beresford crossed the threshold.

  “Did I, or didn’t I, hear you calling?” he demanded softly.

  “You did,” said Beresford. “Listen, Tim. You can get round to the courtyard back of my place from yours, can’t you?”

  “Sure I can,” drawled Timothy, turning as he spoke. Beresford obviously meant business.

  “Take a gun,” said Beresford, “and look for a policeman.”

  Timothy Arran grunted and dived into his rooms for a gun. Beresford swung round towards the street, and saw Tobias Arran silhouetted against the red lamp of the doctor’s house. He jerked his thumb towards his own flat, and Toby’s low-voiced “I’ll be there” came softly across the street. Then Beresford turned grimly towards Number 7. That strangely unemotional policeman, he told himself, was going to have a shock before he was much older. If he was a genuine Robert, Beresford thought, with a grin, he would have something to say about the Arran Twins, who at times were unreasonable. If he wasn’t . . .

  Beresford’s thoughts were broken suddenly as he reached the still open door of Number 7 Auveley Street. The one thing which he had not expected was to see the policeman walking down the stairs from his—Beresford’s—own flat, carrying a towel over his arm and a bowl of water in his two hands. But that was happening.

  “Well, well, well!” said Beresford to himself. “This is what the Arrans will call a disappointment.” Aloud: “Well, Robert, how’s the patient?”

  The policeman looked first at Beresford and then at the bowl of water.

  “He’ll be all right,” he said in that voice which might have belonged to anyone but a London bobby. “And so will you—if you don’t catch a cold.”

  Beresford gaped.

  “If I don’t——” he started incredulously.

  And then the policeman’s sense of humour was displayed at its best. For as Beresford stared at him, the man heaved the bowl, water and all, into the big man’s face. Beresford staggered back, stupefied by the cold douche, and as he hit against the wall the policeman pushed past him and, in the words of Toby Arran who sa
w him, “greased along the street towards Park Lane like the devil dodging his conscience”. Toby Arran had been too startled to swing in pursuit until the man had reached Park Lane; after that, pursuit was useless. The man in the blue uniform might have taken any one of three different directions—right, left, or through Hyde Park.

  Beresford spent those few minutes which he had to spare during the next half-hour in wondering whether, and if so where, he had seen the pseudo-policeman before.

  “And that’s that,” said Beresford, looking ruefully at the lean face of Gordon Craigie in the Chief’s office at Whitehall. “It stands to reason, Gordon, that the man who shot Tricker, probably in the assumption that he was shooting me, wouldn’t have gone so far down the scale as to drench me with water. Don’t it?”

  Craigie nodded, and drew at his meerschaum—a massive-bowled creation filled with black twist.

  “You mean your bogus policeman didn’t shoot Tricker.”

  “How bright you are!” said Beresford, who was in no very good humour that night. He had changed his coat for a loose jacket before journeying to Whitehall, but he had not changed his shirt and he was damp and uncomfortable.

  Craigie grinned. Clad in an open-necked shirt, a once brilliant but now drab dressing-gown and a pair of new carpet slippers, his face looked positively gaunt—‘hatched-faced’, men had called him—and his grey eyes gleamed with a humour occasioned by Beresford’s story of his drenching.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll grant you that the man who shot Tricker wasn’t your policeman. Then who was he?”

  Beresford growled.

  “If you’re going to ask questions like that, I’m going to resign, drat you. How the blazes do I know who he was? What the devil’s gone wrong to-night, anyhow? And——”

  “Let’s analyse it,” suggested Craigie mildly.

  Beresford’s face split in a grin.

  “Carry on,” he said.

  Craigie tapped the stem of his pipe against his firm teeth.

  “To start at the beginning,” he said; “the first idea you had that things were—getting warm, shall we say?—was when Lady Chester told you about Gorman’s interest. Yes?”