by John Creasey
“A score for Rogerson,” chuckled Beresford. “Who was the call to?”
“A Mr. Josiah Long, of Cheyne Gardens. Number fifteen.”
“I think,” said Beresford, “that I’ll go there, son. All right with you?”
“Yes,” said Miller, who did not add that he had received instructions from his Commissioner to give Craigie and Beresford every facility, even though they appeared to usurp some of the duties of the regular police.
“Fine,” said Tony Beresford. “Listen ...”
He made a selection from his ‘gathering of friends’ when he had finished talking, told Tricker that if anyone called he would not be back for some time, and walked quickly to his garage. This time he left the Hispano standing in its glory, and borrowed a Lancia belonging to a certain Dodo Trale, who at that moment was entertaining Adele Fayne. The Hispano would have been easily recognized.
Twenty minutes later he was knocking on the door of Josiah Long’s flat at 15, Cheyne Gardens, Chelsea. He wondered, as he fingered the cold steel of the automatic in his pocket, what kind of greeting he would get, and what manner of man Josiah Long would be.
And then the door opened, and Tony Beresford started back into the hall, completely knocked off his mental equilibrium by the sight of Valerie Lester, dressed just as she had been when she had left his flat that morning!
“Well, well, well!” drawled Beresford at last. “If this doesn’t beat cock-fighting, whether I’ve seen it or not. You look surprised, my Valerie!”
Valerie Lester stood like a stone image in the doorway. Her eyes were wide open, her lips parted a little to show her glistening teeth, and she was breathing heavily, as dumbfounded as Beresford had been but lacking his power of recovery.
“No welcome?” asked Beresford, after a pause.
A nasal voice from inside the room answered him.
“Sho’ yo’ welcome. Beresford, ain’t it? I thought I reckernized the voice. Come right in, buddy!”
Beresford went in, to meet Mr. Josiah Long—alias Ruddy Face, alias the policeman, alias Nicholas Williams! Those weak, nervous blue eyes had hovered in front of Beresford’s mental vision too often for any mistake.
He stepped into the room, but his right hand was in his pocket, round the handle of his gun. At that moment he had nothing but distrust for Mr. Josiah Long.
CHAPTER XIII
MR. JOSIAH LONG EXPLAINS
THE American, as befitting his guise of a real old English pillar of the middle classes, was standing in front of the fireplace in that Victorian-furnished room, his hands behind his back, his stomach gently protruding, his greying hair and fresh-complexioned face typifying the part he was playing. Even his blue eyes were part of it; only his voice, harsh and twangy, revealed him for what he was.
Beresford was more than surprised; he was dumb-founded. The appearance of Valerie Lester in that room, where he had expected to find things which would explain the murder of Nosey Dean and Nicholas Williams, kicked him harder even than he admitted to himself. Since he had seen Craigie and had been convinced that the girl from America was playing a part in the affair very different from what Beresford had imagined, he had spent his spare moments in trying to convince himself that she was being forced into her part, that the deception which she had practised had been made under strong compulsion. Yet her appearance in the doorway seemed to knock his carefully built defence of her into thousands of small pieces. Mentally on edge, it needed little to send him into a frame of mind which would make him believe that she was, deliberately and without compulsion, playing against him.
Never before in his life had the big man felt so tempted to express his opinions in words both uncomplimentary and biting. But the sight of the mild-looking Mr. Long, the upward curve of the man’s rather full lips, and the attitude of complete self-confidence, made Beresford bite on his words, helped him to grin, and incidentally helped him to regain his mental balance.
The American looked the big man up and down, and his weak eyes addressed themselves, finally, to Beresford’s right hand, which was still in his pocket.
“Dat’s de style,” he said cheerfully. “Alius keep yo’ gun handy—yuh never knows when yuh might need it. But yuh don’t need it now, buddy. Let’s all be friendly.”
Beresford grinned, but kept his hands in his pocket.
“You know what to look for, in your home town,” he said.
“Why, sho’ we do,” said Josiah Long, and for the life of him Beresford could not imagine the mild-mannered little man working hand in hand with Leopold Gorman. “But how’d yuh find us, Beresford. I thought we’d covered ourselves dandy.”
Beresford shrugged his shoulders.
“There is a doss-house,” he said, “and there was a Nosey Dean, and there is a woman called Higson—she said.”
Josiah Long’s eyes widened.
“Dat’s how you got us, eh? Sit down, buddy, sit down. She didn’t talk, did she?”
“Of many things and bitter,” said Beresford, who for some reason felt in lyrical mood. “Sit down yourself, Mr. Long, and I’ll join you. No, she didn’t give you away, but her hands did.”
“Ah!” Josiah Long looked relieved. “I thought I could trust her. Who spotted her hands? You?”
“Near enough.”
“I was told yuh were smart,” said Long, dropping into a chair, “and it looks like I was told right. But how’d yuh find dis place?”
“A telephone-call and a bright policeman,” said Beresford.
“They sho’ got some brains in dis country,” said Mr. Long admiringly. “What’ll you drink, buddy?”
A gentle smile hovered on Beresford’s lips.
“Some other time, when I know you better,” he said mildly.
Long eyed him reproachfully.
“Dat means yuh don’t trust me?”
“Not by a long, long way I don’t,” said Beresford, unconscious of the pun. “Is there anything else you’d like to ask before I start, Mister Long?”
“Plenty. But maybe there isn’t time, so shoot.”
Beresford lit a cigarette, after offering one to Josiah Long, who said he preferred his Camel.
“Well,” he said gently, “first—there are six good and hearty cops within call, and I’ve allowed myself an hour for this visit before they start inquiries.”
“O.K. wid me,” said the American.
“Second,” said Beresford, eyeing the man steadily, “those same cops will be only too willing to arrest a man with weak blue eyes—like yours—on a charge of murder in the first degree. Do you follow, Mr. Long?”
Josiah Long blinked.
“Well, now, dat’s jus’ too bad,” he said. “I’d ha’ given a lot to be held on a moider charge, Big Boy, but I jus’ ain’t got de time. Who’s been bumped off, did yuh say?”
“One Williams and one Dean.”
“Ah!” Long surveyed the lighted end of his cigarette thoughtfully. He leaned forward suddenly. “Say, listen! Yuh an’ me oughta woik togedda. What say you spill your story an’ I spill mine an’ we match up?”
Beresford grinned. And for the first time he trusted himself to look round the room to Valerie Lester, who was sitting on a stiff-backed chair watching and listening, and looking, despite the shock from which she was recovering, very lovely. Beresford was not, normally, a man who took things or people on their face value; but he had an inward conviction that before he left the flat he would understand many things which had previously mystified him, and that with them he would be able to retain his earlier faith in Valerie Lester. So:
“I don’t know much about your friend,” he assured Valerie lightly, “but he’s got a nerve.”
In the big man’s eyes there was a smile which seemed to challenge Valerie Lester’s worry, and disperse it. She laughed lightly, and felt hot round the eyes.
“Wait till you know him better,” she said.
“Dat’s what I call a pal!” enthused Josiah Long. “I——”
“Wait
a minute,” said Beresford. “Let’s get this straight, Mister Long. I want a story from you, and I want it inside an hour. Otherwise my friends the cops——”
Long grimaced.
“Meanin’ I gotta talk first?”
“And fast,” said Beresford grimly. “You’ve got a lot to explain.”
“What’s weighing most on yo’ mind?”
“The policeman at Auveley Street,” said Beresford, “and your bright show as Nicholas Williams.”
Josiah Long drew a deep breath, cocked an eye at Valerie Lester, tossed the stub of his cigarette into the empty fireplace, and leaned back in his chair.
“Listen . . .” he said.
Just twenty minutes later, Tony Beresford pushed his hand through his crisp hair and agreed to join his host in a drink. For he no longer questioned the complicity of Josiah Long in the schemes of Leopold Gorman, but he understood many things which had puzzled him during the past two or three days, including the water-weapon and the radio trick; and he had a shrewd idea as to why Nosey Dean, Nicholas Williams and Corinne the dancer had died.
Mr. Josiah Long, alias Ruddy Face, alias the policeman, alias (although only after his death) Mr. Nicholas Williams, was, as Beresford needed no telling, a gentleman from America. The voice which he used that evening was as near his own as he could remember, although he told the big man that he used it more for the sake of practice than because it came natural to him. He had aped others so often, and spoken in so many languages, dialects and the argot of a dozen underworlds that he could say with truth that he hardly knew which voice to call his own. He was a man who lived by his wits, but that did not mean that he lived dishonestly. It meant, as Valerie Lester knew, that he gained his livelihood by the same means as Tony Beresford, she suspected, earned his fun.
Josiah Long had experienced more ups and down in his forty-odd years than most people would have experienced in as many decades, if they had lived long enough. He had started life on a Kentucky farm, migrated at the early age of three to Chicago, where his only remaining parent, a small-part actor with consumption, had tried to drink his illness away. Instead, drink had combined with a ruined constitution to make Josiah an orphan what time he was eleven.
Child-acting kept him going until he was fifteen, but he was controlled by an avaricious foster-father who gave him what fiction calls a bad break. Josiah Long had walked out on his foster-father and walked by degrees to Boston. He pecked at journalism, and became a crime-reporter, sandwiching an occasional small part on the stage to help his income.
In 1915, when America had realized that there was a war in Europe likely to last, Josiah had crossed the Big Pond and offered himself to the Foreign Battalion. Unfortunately he was half blind in the left eye, and he was turned down. He joined the staff of the Echo, for able-bodied men were already scarce in England, and a ready-made reporter was a godsend. When the ban on war correspondents was lifted, Josiah Long was amongst the first to go to France. His despatches earned him fame, but gave him no kick. To imbibe the kick, he. borrowed the uniform of a British non-com., and allowed himself to be interned in Germany. At the prison camp he had learned French and Belgian in a dozen varieties, and had managed to pick up a working knowledge of German.
Things still galled him, and he made a spirited protest as an American subject against his captivity, and was allowed to go to the American colony in Berlin. 1917 saw the coming of America into the War. He squeezed out of Berlin before the declaration, and suggested to the American Embassy in London, where he arrived after a circuitous journey through Holland and Belgium, that he was a perfect and ready-made spy.
He was. Josiah Long was the brightest star in the American espionage system during and after the War. But he tired of risking life and limb for the equivalent of a hundred bucks a week. He cared nothing for either; but he liked luxury, and the Secret Service is one of the worst-paid institutions in the world. Under the name of Lambert Hurst he starred in two Hollywood films, and extra’d in a dozen others. That meant money but boredom. He left the City of Broken Hearts and set up a detective agency in New York to rival Pinkertons.
It did not rival Pinkertons, but it made money, and it led Josiah Long on the biggest gamble of his life. The American Service had a long memory, and, being faced at that time with a problem similar to that which faced Craigie and Department Z, it sent for Josiah Long and offered him big money if he would return to the fold.
“What and where’s the job?” Long had asked.
“We don’t know where, but England probably. We’re losing a lot of big men—money-merchants—and there are several of them gone from the Wheat Pool.”
(To an Englishman the Wheat Pool was a name. To an American it was the biggest ring of financiers in North America.)
“What do you mean by ‘losing’?” Josiah had demanded.
“Some are going out of the Pool—selling out to a syndicate—and others are being bumped off because they won’t sell out.”
Josiah Long had grunted, because he had made a practice all his life of saying what he thought.
“Dat ain’t an English complex. Dat sounds like someone on our side.”
“That’s what we thought two years ago, but we haven’t traced who’s backing the syndicate yet, although we’ve sent two big shots to the chair for snuffing Wheat Pool members. They’d have talked if they could have done to save their skins, but the only thing they knew was that the money was coming from England to pay them.”
“Got anyone in mind?” Long had asked.
And then he had first heard of Leopold Gorman.
“Gorman’s the only man capable of it, Long, and we know the English Service is watching him. We want you to watch him, and to make sure that he’s our man. Because we don’t want the Wheat Pool to get out of American control. Will you take the job?”
“Sho’ thing I will,” Josiah Long had said. “I shall want some helpers—coupla dames and a coupla buddies.”
“We’ll fix it,” he had been assured. “There’s one girl in particular—Miss Lester. She’s done several jobs for us before, and she’s going over to England with the Chester couple. You know them?”
“Sho’,” Long had agreed. “Chester’s de tennis guy, and his wife useter be at de Emblem Theatre. How’s she know them?”
“Cousins,” he had been told, and he had whistled.
“Say—is dis de Valerie Lester, de goil dat useter hang around wid young Lavering?”
“Yes. She threw him over because he changed his mind so often. When can you start, Long?”
“When are the Chesters and the Lester girl going?”
“On the Hoveric, next week—Wednesday.”
“O.K.,” Josiah Long had assured the august gentlemen of the American Intelligence. “I’ll go on de New Star, to-morrow. Dat’ll give me five days’ start of her.”
“An’ dat, Beresford,” said Josiah Long, getting out of his chair and walking across the room to the sideboard, from which he took a decanter and two glasses, “is how I got to yo’ li’l country. Someone was buying big in de U.S.A., and dat someone wasn’t stoppin’ at bumpin’ off when dey thought it was necessary. An’ de only line I had was—Leopold Gorman.”
The American stopped as he filled two glasses, and carried them across to the hearth, near which Beresford was sitting. Valerie Lester was on a couch by the window. She had said nothing during Long’s story, and even now she kept silent.
Beresford looked across the room at her, and smiled. Her answering smile held something which the big man couldn’t fathom, but there was a warmth in it which made him turn a shade darker beneath his tan.
“Will yuh drink now?” asked Long, with a grin.
Beresford nodded. It was not so much that he was certain that Long was all he said he was that made him take a chance of drinking doped liquor. It was more the thought of the police who would be calling soon, unless he made an appearance, and the knowledge that Long would not take chances while his flat was, in effect,
surrounded. The life of a secret agent was perilous enough at all times, and Long would realize that if he ‘got in bad’ with the English authorities he would have a lean time.
The American tossed neat whisky down his throat without a gasp, and dropped into his chair again.
“Well, buddy, yuh can take it from me I wasn’t jus’ goin’ to walk up to Mr. Gorman an’ take his number. Nope. I had a lot o’ papers signed up that I was representing de Mid-American Timber Corporation. The Mid-American Corp.,” Long added, “is the biggest timber shout on the odder side. I went an’ saw Gorman, an’ told him we wass tryin’ to get rid o’ a big interest—we wanted money.
“Gorman seemed to bite, and promised to write me. He did. He wrote his name on a point-three-two bullet an’ sent it through my hat.” The American jumped from his chair again, and fetched a hat from the sideboard cupboard, handing it to Beresford. There were two holes neatly drilled by that .32 on either side of the cady. “Howso, buddy,” Long went on, “I taped up on a guy who wass behind dat bullet—a guy called Dean.”
“Nosey Dean!” Beresford grunted the words, and his eyes narrowed. Long was getting to the vital part of his story now.
“Sho’—Nosey Dean. Nosey an’ me wass great friends. I offered him a hundred dollars fer every word he slipped me about Gorman, and did he earn some dough! Beresford, dat guy musta thought I was Rockefeller hisself. He told me so much about Gorman dat I began to wonder whether Gorman was just anudder name for de devil, but it didn’t help me much until he told me that Gorman was going to bump you off, buddy—an’ goin’ to get dat Williams cuss out of de way while he did it. Well, I tried to keep on yo’ tail, buddy, but yo’ tail ain’t so easy to sit on. So I started on Williams.”
Beresford grunted. He was beginning to see light—and to realize that Josiah Long’s story was probably true.
“De day Williams got dat cable I was after him, an’ I followed him to Oxford. He went by coach, an’ I went on de same one. I waited outside Trinity while he wass inside, an’ I followed him when he walked back for his buggy. Do you know Oxford, big boy?”