by John Creasey
“Well enough,” grunted Beresford.
“Some o’ de streets there are jus’ made fer killing. I wass a coupla hunnerd yards behind Williams when he was put out wid a bullet from a passing car, an’ I wass looking when Nosey Dean an’ anudder guy dragged Williams into deir car an’ let her go. Well...” Josiah Long stopped again for refreshment, and Beresford took the opportunity of looking at Valerie Lester, whose cheeks were pale and whose breath was coming quickly. “Well,” went on the American, “dat kind o’ made me squint. Howso, I hired a bus an’ went to yo’ place. I broke into Williams’ flat, pinched some of his clothes, an’ den came back here. Things were goin’ ter hum, I reckoned, an’ dey wasn’t goin’ ter be so nice fer yuh. Howso, dat was yo’ boid. I wass after Gorman’s guys.”
“Dressed like a policeman?” interjected Beresford, grimly.
Josiah Long blinked nervously—or so it seemed.
“Sho’ thing—like a policeman. I was pretty sure buddy, dat a brace of Gorman’s pets went in yo’—I mean Williams’—flat, an’ I wanted to be handy. I wass. I missed de porch trick, though—a real cop wass round jus’ den—an’ I didn’t come on de scene until after yo’ vallee was knocked over. When yuh wass arter de Arrans ... I knew dey wass friends o’ yours,” Long added, with a grin, “becos dey had called at yo’ flat a bit earlier, an’ dey told each odder what dey thought of yuh, seein’ yuh were out.”
For once in a way Beresford’s sense of humour was not at its best, and he made no comment.
“When yuh went arter dem an’ yo’ Doc Little,” Long continued, “I called out so’s de guys in Williams’ flat could hear me, dat I reckoned dey wass in de flat. Did dey bite on dat, buddy? Dey was out o’ de back door before I was halfway up de stairs——”
“Why didn’t you stop ’em?” Beresford broke in.
“Why should I? Dey couldn’t ’ave told me a thing, an’ I was reckoning I’d be able to pay afterwards fer what I wanted to know from Nosey Dean. Howso”—there was a glint of humour in the little American’s eyes which made Beresford’s lips curve—“I poured dat water over yuh an’ skedaddled. Den I came back——”
“As Williams.”
“Sho’ thing. As Williams. I wanted to see yuh better, Beresford, an’ I wanted to size up the cop who’d be on de job. Who was de udder guy?” Long added ingenuously.
“You’ll learn,” said Beresford, thinking of Craigie’s likely reaction to this story.
“Canny, eh? Can’t say I blame yuh. Well, buddy, yuh know how dat night ended. I came back to Chelsea, when yuh an’ Tricker wass in bed, and fer the next coupla days nuthin’ happened——”
“Why the blazes didn’t you tackle me in the open, then?” Beresford demanded.
“Why should I?” asked Long blandly. “Would yuh, in de same trousis?”
“No-o,” admitted Beresford, thinking of the reluctance with which he had spoken even to Piquet in Paris, although he knew the Frenchman well.
“I’ll say yuh wouldn’t!” snapped Josiah Long. “No, buddy. I said, ‘Watch de big guy,’ an’ wass going to get Miss Lester woikin’ on yuh when yuh went to Paris.” The American’s lips were straight, but his eyes were laughing. “We sho’ put it over each udder on dat liner, buddy. I reckoned yuh’d bite for de wireless, an’ dat while I wass getting past de Customs’ whiskers I’d be in front of yuh, ready to pick up yo’ trail. I didn’t,” Long added, with a chuckle, “reckon yuh’d send me to Lyons.”
Beresford grinned.
“I’m glad I had a bite at that apple, anyhow.”
“How’d yuh get away?” asked Long.
“By the exercise of tact and patience,” said Beresford, winking at Valerie Lester.
“Sho’ yuh did,” grunted Long. “Howso—dat’s all I know, Beresford, take it or leave it.”
“No, it isn’t,” said Beresford, “not by a long way. What about the Wapping place?”
“Oh, dat bug-house!” The American blinked rapidly. “I reckoned Nosey Dean mighta’ stopped sellin’, an’ I reckoned if I noo where he wass, I could force him kinda.”
“Did you know he was dead?” snapped Beresford.
Long blinked still faster, but he was grinning.
“Sho’ I did. Wassn’t I telephoned before yuh came?”
“And that was the first you knew of it, eh?”
“Absolute,” affirmed the American. “How wass he killed?”
“He was found in the river,” said Beresford.
“Drowned, eh?” Long lit a Camel thoughtfully. “Well, buddy, I reckon we ain’t got much against Gorman yet, unless yuh found somepun in Paris.”
“Not a thing,” said Beresford, “excepting that Lavering was very nearly finished when I got there.”
“Young Lavering?” Long grunted, in genuine surprise. “I never . . . Say, what’s de trouble? I . . .”
But Beresford wasn’t listening. The big man had jumped to his feet and hurried to Valerie Lester, whose face was as white as wax as she sprawled back on the couch in a dead faint.
“Now why in hell,” muttered Josiah Long to himself, “did she throw Lavering up if she still feels like dat about him?”
But he did not pass this thought on to Beresford, who was moistening the girl’s lips with whisky from his ever-ready flask. For Beresford was looking at her in a way that few men would ever look at a woman, and Josiah Long told himself that there were more complications near at hand which would not be much help to Beresford’s peace of mind.
CHAPTER XIV
NEWS FROM PARIS
BERESFORD did not ask questions, probably because he was afraid of the answers. He took the girl to Regent’s Park, and Diane Chester upbraided him for dragging Valerie into a bad business.
“Not guilty,” said Beresford; but his grin was not genuine. “I wish I was.”
Diane, who knew of many things, said nothing, but promised to keep Valerie in the house until Beresford called again. The big man hurried away, pleased if not surprised to find Josiah Long still in the Lancia; he had left the American in the car while he arranged with Diane to be cautious and discreet with Valerie Lester.
“Think I’d taken a jump?” grinned Long, as Beresford slipped in the clutch.
“You’d be a fool if you tried it,” grunted Beresford. “We were followed from Chelsea, my son, and you’ll be followed anywhere you go, until we’ve passed you O.K.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” asked Long.
“The other ‘guy’ you met when you were Williams,” Beresford answered.
“De hatchet-faced one?” asked Long.
Beresford grunted again. That was a sound description of Gordon Craigie.
“Where are we going?” Long asked, as the Lancia turned into the Marylebone Road.
“My flat,” said Beresford. “Our man will come and see us.”
The American made no comment, and the short drive was completed in silence. Both men had plenty to think about, and Beresford himself was racking his brains for a way of tying the murders on to Leopold Gorman. Once they could get their hands on that elusive financier, they could move in other directions. But for the moment Gorman held the strings. He was making the pace, and making it a hot one. Williams, Nosey Dean, Corinne the dancer, were all dead; Bob Lavering, for some reason which the big man could not fathom, had been kept alive.
Beresford grew more certain in his mind as he swung the car into Auveley Street that the secret of the affair could be connected with Lavering without leading far from the truth. Gorman, while buying hard, wanted something from the young American, which would complete his plans. What it was Beresford could not even guess, but he told himself that unless something transpired quickly, he could fly over to Paris again to see if Lavering was recovering, and whether he could talk.
And with Bob Lavering, the fiancé of Adele Fayne, the dancer, Beresford was forced, like it or not, to connect Valerie Lester. What part was the Chesters’ cousin actually playing in the affair? How much did she know? And
why had she fainted when he had mentioned that Lavering had been at death’s door?
The big man’s train of thought was broken as he brought the car opposite Number 7. He braked and stopped the engine automatically, then stood up.
A split second later he heard Josiah Long bellow a warning, felt the American punch the back of his knees. His legs bent double and he dropped down, banging his elbows on the dashboard, cursing under his breath.
But he stopped cursing suddenly. A foot above his eyes he saw the windscreen of the Lancia riddled with holes! Bullets smashed through it, splitting the safety-glass without splintering it, and above the clatter he heard the grim rat-tat-tat of machine-gun fire!
Next to him, Josiah Long was crouching down in his seat, the lids of his weak eyes moving rapidly up and down, his rather full lips pressed tightly together. He was looking, not at the bullet-holes, but at the closed Daimler car which hummed along Auveley Street, spraying death as it went.
Above the hum of the Daimler’s engine, the whir of its wheels, and the wicked rat-tat-tat of the gun, came the agonized screams of two women and a man who had been walking along Auveley Street and unwittingly towards death.
“What made you guess what was coming?” asked Beresford.
Josiah Long, leaning back in one of the big man’s armchairs and smoking his inevitable Camel—which, for the sake of the uninitiated, is an American cigarette equivalent to “Player’s Please”, but seeming, to the English taste, as pungent as black twist—swallowed an appreciable portion of a bottle of Shortt’s XX before he answered.
“If you’d been in Chicago as long as I had,” he said, “you’d know that a closed car with drawn curtains was a thing to dodge. And we’re neither of us popular, just at the moment.”
“No-o.” Beresford eyed the smaller man thoughtfully but thankfully. It occurred to him as strange that Long should have lapsed, for a moment, into pure English, instead of maltreated American, but at that moment he was too grateful for that warning to force the point. Long might be—he was—a funny cuss. But Long had certainly saved him from being riddled with bullets from the gunman’s machine.
Long dropped back into his home tongue.
“Dose poor devils who caught it—are they . . .?”
“Gone right out,” muttered Beresford, pale-faced.
A quarter of an hour had passed since the outrage in Auveley Street. In that time, Beresford had telephoned for an ambulance, talked briefly with Horace Miller at Scotland Yard, and left a message with that gentleman, discreetly worded so that Josiah Long should not catch its drift, to ask Gordon Craigie to telephone or call in person at Number 7, Auveley Street. Beresford had no desire for the American agent to know that Gordon Craigie was the Chief of Department Z. In what little private life he led, Craigie was a plain Civil Servant, and as such he wanted to be known, not without cause.
Miller had caught the drift of the request, and hung up. By that time Beresford, looking out of the window of his flat, had seen the ambulance outside the house, and the half a dozen blue helmets amongst the hundred-odd heads which formed a crowd round the victims of the ‘accident’. He had gone downstairs to inspect the damage, leaving Josiah Long in charge of the simmering Tricker, and his first question, when he had returned, was to ask Long how he had guessed what the Daimler’s advent into Auveley Street had meant. Then Long had asked, and had learned, how the victims of the machine-gun outrage had fared.
“Dead, hey?” Long drew hard at his cigarette. “Hell! More Gorman——”
“If we could only prove it!” muttered Beresford.
“It don’t need much proof,” grunted Long. “I saw de guy, an’ half an hour after I’d left him I had a bullet through my cady——”
“But you can’t prove Gorman fired it, or was behind the job.”
“I know Nosey Dean fired it, buddy, an’ I know Nosey Dean wass woikin’ wid Gorman.”
“How?”
“I saw him go into Gorman’s place—Park Place, ain’t it?”
“Did anyone else see him go there?”
“Not so’s I know it. It wass late.” The American lit another cigarette, eyeing Beresford with his weak blue eyes. “Howso, Dean told me enough to——”
Beresford interrupted him with a grunt.
“Use your sense,” he snapped. “Nosey Dean’s dead. We’ve only got your word for anything he said or did; you might convince me, but you wouldn’t cut any ice with twelve good men and true.”
The American rounded his lips.
“Crown me fer a hobo!” he muttered. “Sho’ I wouldn’t.”
“Give us just one direct line on the man,” Beresford said half to himself, “and we’d tie him up. But without it——”
“Say!” Long jerked forward, his eyes blinking double time. “Dere’s one thing, Beresford. I got Nosey Dean’s gun——”
“The gun which shot Williams?”
“Sho’. And what shot my cady.” Long grimaced.
Beresford felt a shiver of excitement run through his limbs. He leaned forward eagerly.
“Where is it?” he snapped.
“At Cheyne Gardens.”
“Hidden away?”
“No-o. In the middle drawer of the sideboard in dat room, Beresford.”
“There are times,” said Beresford, with a flash of his real self, “when I wonder that the American Intelligence didn’t show some when they picked on you——”
“Easy goes,” protested Josiah Long.
Beresford grinned, getting up as he did so and reaching for the telephone.
“Sorry, son, but I ask you! If Gorman’s bright pals know you’ve got that gun, they’ll move heaven and earth to get it. Won’t they?”
“Maybe,” admitted Josiah Long. “What are yuh goin’ to do, buddy?”
“Just you listen,” grinned Beresford, as a gruff voice at the other end of the wire told him that he was speaking to Scotland Yard. He was switched on to Horace Miller, and gave that stalwart exact information as to where the gun which, Josiah Long believed, had killed Nicholas Williams would be found. “You’ll call me when you’ve got it?” Beresford asked.
“Yes,” said Miller, and hung up.
“I don’t think he thought he’d find it,” said Beresford, returning to his chair. “But if he does, we might trace it back to Gorman——”
“Or his big shots,” twanged Long.
“One of these fine days,” said Beresford, his chin jutting forward aggressively, “we’ll put irons round the wrists of his big shots, and then it won’t be long before we get irons on little Leopold.”
“Don’t yuh mean maybe?” Long grinned.
“I don’t,” said Beresford, and the American stopped grinning. There was an expression on the big man’s face which did not lend itself to humour, direct or reflected.
For five minutes both men were silent. Beresford was not sorry to have time to get his breath back after the lightning-like attack from the Daimler’s gunmen, and he let his thoughts run willy-nilly. Josiah Long had explained many things, but there were obvious flaws in his explanation, and Beresford, while admitting that Long seemed genuine, would not be satisfied on that point until he had received confirmation from the American authorities that they had actually sent Long to England. Beresford himself could not get that confirmation, but when Craigie arrived at the flat, and heard what Beresford had heard, he would immediately arrange to contact with America.
Tony looked at his watch. It was seven o’clock, less than four hours since he had visited the doss-house in Wapping and picked up the trail of Josiah Long. Many things had happened in that four hours; how much more would happen in the next twenty-four?
Beresford didn’t know, but he felt in his bones that it would be a mad drive now, until the end was reached. And for once in his life he did not feel secure about the end. Leopold Gorman, that sinister figure in the background of the affair, held many cards, some of them aces. The one possible weak link in the care with which the
financier had covered all his actions was that revolver which Josiah Long said was at his flat; that might, or might not, prove a valuable contact. The big man could only hope for the best.
There were other more unlikely things, of course. The Arrans might find something in Paris. Bob Lavering might at any time be sufficiently recovered to talk, and in talking he might reveal a reason for Gorman’s interest in him, especially the reason why Gorman had kept him alive. Beresford was still convinced, in his own mind, that through Bob Lavering the solution of the mystery would be reached, but he had not dwelt at any length on this subject with Josiah Long; Long was still suspect.
The big man looked at his watch again. Ten past seven. Craigie should arrive at any time, and Beresford was looking forward to his next talk with the Chief.
“When’s yo’ guy coming?” demanded Long, who was showing commendable patience.
“He’ll be here,” said Beresford.
Long shrugged his shoulders, and relapsed into silence. In the kitchen, Tricker was moving to and fro between his pots and pans, obviously anticipating sudden calls on his larder and preparing for them. Below the flat, in Auveley Street, the murmur of voices still hovered, floating through the partly open window, for the outrage would be the talk of the day for a long time to come. Beresford wondered grimly what kind of story the Press would run on it. Headlines had been sober-hued during the past few days, and a shooting in London’s most exclusive residential district would brighten them up a lot. He wondered, too, whether the Daimler had been traced. It had been driven from Auveley Street without any trouble, and in all probability had got clear away. Beresford was too experienced in the game to think that there was much chance of tracing back from the Daimler. It was probably a hired car, which would be found deserted in a suburban street before the night was out.
The telephone-bell clattered out suddenly. Josiah Long started in his chair. Beresford grinned and went to the instrument. Many a man had been startled out of a reverie by the harshness of that bell.