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

by John Creasey

  “I’d asked Nevillson to keep me in touch with anything that he couldn’t fathom,” said Craigie, “because I don’t like the way Gorman’s interests are spreading. He’s just bought up the Mid-Country Playhouse Circuit, and he bought Rundle’s Chain Stores less than a fortnight ago.”

  Beresford pursed his lips.

  “After all,” he said, “Gorman’s a big-money man, and he’s not the first money-merchant to grab all he can get.”

  “I know,” said Craigie. “But Gorman’s not the type to have too much say in public services—and if he goes on as he’s been doing over the past month, he’ll have ten per cent. of the country’s food stores in his pocket, a third of the amusement houses, and a substantial part of transport services before the end of the year. And that,” said Gordon Craigie grimly, “means that he’ll have a lot of power and even more influence than he has now.”

  “He’ll be big enough to be dangerous, will he?”

  “Yes, more than big enough. And he’s exploited the stock markets in a way that we don’t want him to start in other things, Tony. Imagine what will happen if we have a really severe winter, say, and Gorman’s controlling a large percentage of available foodstuffs——”

  “The chain stores only sell it to the public,” Beresford pointed out. “He’s got to buy his stuff from abroad, and if he can, others can.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” said Craigie. “Gorman’s clever, and he’s getting this monopoly in different parts of the country for foods, transport and amusements. That’s definite. But he’s not the man to work from the wrong end. If he’s got a monopoly for selling—like he’s bought with Rundle’s Stores—you can be pretty sure that he’s got a monopoly for buying too.”

  Beresford lit another cigarette from the butt of his first. Watching Craigie, and hearing the Chief’s quiet statement of Gorman’s recent activities, he not only sensed Craigie’s concern, but he felt the stirring of anxiety himself. Gorman had virtually controlled the stock markets for years. He had widespread interests in shipping, and his companies owned a good third of the merchant services of England. So much was known. How much more, Craigie was wondering, did Gorman control?

  Craigie snapped his fingers suddenly.

  “It’s worrying me,” he said unnecessarily. “I don’t like it a bit, Tony. It’s not as if everything was split up among a thousand or so individual firms. Everything’s run—food, clothes, shipping, coal and petrol, to mention a few of them—by syndicates. The petrol ring’s as tight as an oyster; four firms control petrol supplies in England, and there aren’t more than two dozen big combines in the world. You can imagine what would happen if a man like Gorman, concerned solely with making money, gets control of petrol.”

  “Up goes the price,” muttered Beresford grimly.

  “And up goes everything,” said Craigie. “Prices are controlled by expenses, and the petrol expense is a big one. The general increase wouldn’t be big, of course, but it might not stop at petrol. Well”—the Scot looked at Beresford with a sudden smile, that smile which made Gordon Craigie a man loved by all who worked for him—“how do you feel about it, Tony? I must find out what Gorman’s doing, and I’d like you to tackle the job. It might not give you much of a thrill,” he added, with a chuckle.

  Beresford thought suddenly of the events of the past three hours, and there was a gleam in his eyes as he answered.

  “If to-night’s any criterion, it’ll give me a long box, old son. I’ll tell you what, Gordon.”

  “All right. What?”

  “I’ll wager you a month’s supply of my Virginias to a year’s supply of your black twist that Gorman was behind the porch trick and the shooting.”

  “No, you won’t,” said Craigie decidedly.

  And each man knew, as the Chief of Department Z picked up his hat and coat, that the other believed Gorman was trying to make sure that the tentative inquiries from Department Z stopped; and they knew, too, that the world would stop before that happened.

  Two days went by, dull days to Tony Beresford, save for a spin into Surrey with Valerie Lester as a companion and a tête-à-tête lunch with that refreshing young woman of the New World. The vitality of Valerie Lester made Beresford admire her, and her vivacity made him laugh. It did not occur to him then, but twice Diane Chester laughed at him, and he wondered why, not knowing that the ways of fate with a man and a maid were like an open book to Diane, who above all things was a woman, beautiful by accident.

  The Arran—or the Unholy—Twins had spent one riotous hour in Beresford’s flat, demanding to know what had happened and what was going to happen and whether they couldn’t have a share in it. Beresford was tempted to rough-house them, but Tricker’s nurse, christened Maria by the exuberant Twins, sent them packing. Maria looked, Beresford said, like becoming a fixture. Samuel Tricker had overcome his early repugnance to womanly care, and seemed reluctant to admit that he need not be bedridden. Beresford grinned, and persuaded Doc Little to certify that Tricker was suffering from nervous shock and light concussion. After that one mad night, the Auveley Street flat was becalmed.

  Beresford arranged with Craigie for the Arran Twins to be detailed on the Gorman job, and then visited the Twins’ flat. This was towards the evening of the second day after the attacks, a Wednesday of bright May sun and cool winds.

  “Work, boys,” he said simply as he dropped into a chair.

  The Arrans looked at him with disfavour.

  “We can’t work to-night,” drawled Timothy, smoothing his shiny hair. “We are engaged.”

  “Got a friend of a cousin from America,” jerked Toby, “and we’ve——”

  “Promised to entertain her, Tonee-ee,” drawled Tim.

  For the first time that he could remember, Tony Beresford went red.

  “Work, I said,” he insisted, “and lay off the funny stuff, darn your eyes, or I’ll get Craigie to cut you out of the Service.”

  Timothy looked at Tobias and Tobias looked at Tim, and they nodded, their faces masked with mock-seriousness and their right hands on their chests.

  “He’s got it—got it bad,” said Tobias.

  “And so that he may entertain the wench,” drawled Timothy, “he’s pushing his job on us. We won’t stand for it, old son, we won’t stand for it.”

  Beresford eyed them in silence, and his refusal to rise to the bait took the edge off their so-called wit.

  Tobias, the dark one, took three glasses from the sideboard, while Timothy, the fair one, opened a bottle of Shortt’s. The Twins did most things together, and despite their physical dissimilarity held the same views on sport, politics and women. When they were not being offensive by trying to be funny they contrived to be amusing.

  “Whisky before dinner,” said Beresford, “means drunk before midnight. Here’s how, sons, and now listen.”

  The Arrans grew serious and attentive.

  “You, Tim,” said Beresford, “had better get over to Paris and see what you can find about Bob Lavering. He went over there five days ago, and his man’s heard nothing from him since.”

  “That’s a police job,” protested Timothy.

  “I don’t want it to be a police job,” said Beresford. “The Sûreté isn’t all it could be these days, and I want to learn something quick, without letting anyone know we’re inquiring.”

  “What’s Lavering done to deserve the interest?” asked Toby, lighting an inevitable cigarette.

  “Nothing yet,” said Beresford. “But he’s engaged to Adele Fayne, and Adele’s been seen several times with Leopold Gorman lately, and——”

  “Gorman, is it?” muttered the Twins in unison.

  “Gorman it is, so be careful. How are the ’planes running from Croydon, Tim?”

  “There’s a Paris ‘bus at seven-thirty or thereabouts.”

  “You’d better catch it,” said Beresford. “You’ve two hours or more to pack a brush and get to Croydon. Toby——”

  “Sir,” said Toby Arran.
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  “Do you know Oxford?”

  “I know how to avoid being sent down from,” grinned Toby.

  “Know Mieklejohn, the Trinity don?”

  “You forget,” said Toby gently, “that Trinity was once my home from home, and Mieklejohn my foster-mother.”

  “I don’t,” said Beresford, whose cricket blue was a light one. “I wanted to make sure there is a Mieklejohn at Oxford. Do you know him well enough to visit him?”

  “Well enough not to want to,” grimaced Toby.

  “Swallow your pride and look him up to-night,” said Beresford. “Don’t ask him point blank, but find out whether he had a visit from a Nicholas Williams on Monday afternoon. Telephone me what he says, and then follow Tim to Paris, and check back on Major Odell’s visit last week.”

  “The Gulliver Odell?”

  “Yes. Do you know him?”

  “Not well. I heard this morning that he’s been hanging round Adele Fayne’s skirts for the last couple of days.”

  “Has he, then!” Beresford reflected on this item of social chatter, and passed on. “Well, I want to know just how much Odell saw of Leopold Gorman last week—they were in Paris together. Both of you can telephone me from Paris, and if I’m not in, get through to the office. All set?”

  The Arrans said that they would be, in a brace of shakes, and Beresford left them, very thoughtful as to Odell’s devotion to Adele Fayne. Was there anything behind it? Was Gorman watching Odell because the Major had let slip the word that he had been asked to keep a careful eye open?

  He didn’t know, but he hoped that the Arrans’ investigations would lead towards knowledge, not only on the subject of Major Gulliver Odell, but on the matter of Bob Lavering’s absence from London.

  There was nothing, of course, to suggest that Lavering was being forcibly kept away, but Beresford sensed that things were a long way from being straightforward where the son of America’s foremost landowner was concerned. For a month, Bob Lavering—who had been at Cambridge with the big man, and who was one of the few Americans who could hold a cricket-bat as though born to it—had been at Adele Fayne’s beck and call. He thought he was in love, and Beresford, while hoping that he would get over it, had admitted to himself that Lavering had been thoroughly smitten. Yet, without warning, Lavering had gone to Paris, and stayed there for the best part of a week, while Major Odell and Leopold Gorman—which latter gentleman was appearing in public much more often than was his wont—played ducks and drakes with Adele Fayne. Or so it seemed.

  Yes, Beresford told himself, the Lavering business was funny. And his theory was confirmed at half past ten on the following morning, when Timothy Arran telephoned him from Paris.

  “I’ve found Lavering,” said Timothy. “He’s staying at a third-rate hotel near Montmartre, and he’s in a darned bad way, Tony. Ptomaine poisoning, according to the doctor bloke.”

  “I’ll be right over,” said Beresford swiftly.

  “Half a mo’,” said Timothy Arran. “There’s more in it than that, but I can’t say too much, because I fancy I’m being overheard. Only be ready——”

  “What for?”

  “Anything, any time, anywhere,” said Timothy. “I’m staying at the Royale, but you’ll find me with Lavering at a place called the Hôtel Divante.”

  CHAPTER VI

  OF AN ADVENTURE IN PARIS

  BERESFORD reached Croydon in time to catch the twelve-o’clock ‘Air France’ liner. He squeezed in a two-minute telephone conversation with Gordon Craigie while the great engine was warming up, filling the air with a deep-toned roaring, and while the last of the mails were being put on board.

  “Yes, go over to Paris,” said Craigie, “and keep me in touch. If you can find the slightest thing to catch Gorman on, grab it. I’d like to feel that he’s under my eyes for a day or two.”

  “Any developments?” asked Beresford.

  “He’s bought Harridges,” said Craigie simply, “and he’s bought a controlling interest in the Orient-Western Oil Company.”

  Beresford whistled over the telephone, and Craigie’s next comment was terse and unlike that gentleman’s usual idiom. The big man grinned and said good-bye as he replaced the receiver, but as he sprinted for the quivering air-liner there was a grim expression in his grey eyes.

  Harridges, he knew, was the biggest departmental store in London, with a chain of lesser brethren throughout England. The Orient-Western was the biggest petrol combine by a long chalk. Gorman was buying big, as Craigie had expected. Why? Was he trying to corner the commodity markets just as he had cornered stocks, to sell at an abnormal profit when the opportunity presented itself? Was he playing a lone hand, or was he being backed by a powerful syndicate?

  Beresford couldn’t know. But he shared, with Craigie, an overwhelming conviction that if Gorman’s interests spread much further, the financier would be in a position similar to that held by the bankers in a previous era, when the banks held and owned the money and dictated policy far more effectively than the Government. And with Craigie, he knew that Gorman was not only crooked; he was bad, through and through. He could do an incalculable amount of damage by wielding his influence—damage which would increase as his holdings grew stronger and more varied.

  So, as Craigie said, there was only one thing to do. They must prove that Gorman’s activities in some quarters were illegal, then hold him on a charge which would enable thorough investigations to be made. Once contrive that, thought Beresford, and the job was done—or his part of it.

  Being of a philosophical nature, he told himself, when he was inclined to chafe at the hundred-odd miles between the air-liner and Paris, that a year or two back he would have been forced to travel by steamer. A good airman, although he had never handled a ’plane of his own, Beresford suffered not at all by the bucketing of the giant of the air. Several of his fellow-passengers looked, felt, and said, however, that they wished they were dead. Airsickness being more violent, but also more brief, than mal-de-mer, Beresford cheered them, and tried to point out that the gale which had sprung up, accompanied by distant rumbles of thunder and an occasional flash of lightning, unusual in May, created a sky panorama which would probably be unsurpassed in their naturals. While he talked, he wished that he was in the third-rate hotel which was sheltering the sick person of Robert Lavering. While he talked, also, he was manoeuvring to converse with a ruddy-complexioned man at the far end of the cabin.

  Beresford, who was interested in gadgets of all kinds, was as near the controls as he could be, and the ruddy-faced man was as far away from them as possible. That, Beresford told himself thoughtfully, just about agreed with the relative position of himself and Ruddy Face for the past two hours.

  The big man had noticed a closed Daimler saloon as it had followed his own touring Hispano into the Croydon airfield, and he had seen Ruddy Face climb out. Then his mind had kicked back to the pseudo policeman’s statement, two days before, that he had seen a Daimler saloon moving rapidly from Auveley Street.

  Daimlers were popular, Beresford reminded himself, and were struck as frequently as coincidences, while the policeman’s word was not reliable. It was not, in fact, until Beresford had fancied the man was surveying him covertly that the closeness of Ruddy Face’s arrival at Croydon on his own heels was properly noted.

  Beresford stood up eventually and sauntered to the rear of the saloon, ostensibly to look back across the Channel to the vague mass which was England. He turned away, and opened his cigarette-case, proffering it casually to Ruddy Face. The little man looked surprised, but accepted a Virginia 3 very much as a rabbit would take a present from a genial fox; he looked, Beresford told himself, frightened out of his life!

  “Rough journey,” said Beresford pleasantly, striking a match.

  Ruddy Face agreed, in a high-pitched voice which reminded Beresford of Nicholas Williams, the tenant of the ground-floor flat at Number 7, Auveley Street. It was just one word ‘yes’ which was similar; when Ruddy Face spoke again hi
s voice was lower-pitched. “Isn’t it?” he added nervously.

  Beresford looked out of the window.

  “Funny time of the year for thunder,” he added, still casually.

  “Isn’t it?” repeated the red-faced man, parrot-like.

  And then Beresford said a strange thing.

  “Thunder and lightning rather interferes with your transmitter, doesn’t it?”

  Just for a moment he thought that Ruddy Face was going to strike him. And then the little man sank back in his seat, his complexion tinted a pale green, his blue eyes blinking fast.

  Beresford, smiling as if in gentle amusement, sat next to him, and surreptitiously touched the small suitcase which Ruddy Face had insisted on taking with him in the cabin.

  “Neat little contraption,” he said. “I just caught sight of the wires leading from your coat to the ear-gadgets, my son, otherwise I wouldn’t have noticed it. You’ve got the transmitter in there, haven’t you?”

  Ruddy Face said nothing; he seemed paralysed. Beresford grinned.

  “It’s highly irregular,” he pointed out, still touching the case, “for a man to come on an ‘Air France’ machine with a private wireless. It’s even more irregular to operate it. Who or what,” he added, with a hardening of his voice, “are you communicating with? Faraday House?”

  The little man’s colour had returned to normal, but he was still staring at Beresford with frightened eyes. Those eyes intrigued Beresford. They were a very bright blue, and they blinked a lot; rather like, the big man told himself, a man who was accustomed to wearing glasses, but had been caught short. Altogether, Ruddy Face seemed a weak-livered customer—the last man in the world to be trailing Beresford. Yet that, Beresford assured himself, was what was happening.

  The man with the red face had followed him from Auveley Street to Croydon, had succeeded in smuggling a wireless-transmitter of the portable variety into the liner’s cabin, and had been sending messages to someone unknown!

  “What—what are you going to do?” asked the little man, shrinking still further into his corner. “I—I——”