by John Creasey
Fellowes took the instrument up quickly. The expression on his face told the other two men that it was the New York call. They waited, eager-eyed, for the conversation to finish. Beresford’s, “Well?” and Miller’s, “Is he all right?” were snapped out simultaneously, before the telephone was replaced.
Fellowes nodded, picked up another receiver and muttered, “Send Mr. Long up here,” into the mouthpiece. Then:
“Long’s story’s true,” he said. “He’s on a special commission to investigate the source of the Wheat Pool mystery, as well as some killings which New York reckons were planned in England. He’s got two men and two women with him—all regular agents. Valerie Lester,” he added, with a grin at Beresford, “is one of them. She’s been on the Wheat Pool job for some time.”
Beresford grinned back, relieved. Miller grunted.
“What Wheat Pool business is it, sir?”
“Someone in England’s buying up Wheat Pool interests,” said Beresford, “and America doesn’t want control of the Pool to leave the country. We’d feel the same,” he added.
Bill Fellowes grunted.
“It isn’t the financial part that’s the trouble,” he said. “If Gorman—and they think it’s Gorman, because he’s the only man big enough to tackle it—wants to buy, no one can stop him. But whoever is buying isn’t satisfied with ‘no’ for an answer. If a man won’t sell——”
“He kicks the bucket,” muttered Beresford, “and his holdings go to someone who will sell. That’s what Long told me. Is that what you got?”
“Yes,” said Fellowes, and paused as someone knocked on the door. “Come in,” he called.
Mr. Josiah Long, heralded by a uniformed constable, entered the office. He looked, at first, anxious and nervous, but Beresford had learned not to connect his weak, blinking eyes with nerves. A glance at Beresford’s face, however, satisfied the American special agent. He grinned, and went through his pockets for his Camels (Beresford guessed), and the big man grinned when he saw a packet of Player’s, familiar with their bearded sailor jacket.
“Run out of stock?” asked the big man, and Long grimaced and nodded. “Anyhow—we’re going to believe you, O Josiah.”
“Dat’s good hearing,” said Josiah Long cheerfully. “I thought maybe dey wouldn’t want to talk on de udder side. Howso—what are yuh buddies goner do?”
“Get Gorman,” said Beresford.
“Sho’ thing. But how?”
“Listen,” said Beresford, and for the next half an hour he talked, interrupted occasionally by Long’s nasal questions, or Fellowes’ dry, “Don’t forget this,” or Miller’s stolid, “You can try, but ...” Nevertheless, all three men were impressed, and Josiah Long made no bones about saying so.
There was one way, as Beresford had explained, by which Leopold Gorman might be tripped up and his connection with the murders and attacks proved. But before he put the method to the test, Tony Beresford wanted to see and talk with his Chief. Discipline was strong in Department Z, and Beresford had no desire to break the rules. On the other hand, unless Craigie turned up soon, Beresford would have to put his plan into motion.
It was nearly nine o’clock when the big man left Scotland Yard, unaccompanied by Josiah Long, who was still talking with the Police Commissioner and the Super. Craigie’s office had been telephoned several times, his Brook Street flat, as well as the eating-house in Villiers Street which he occasionally patronized for its grill. But there was no trace of Gordon Craigie, no message, no word of any kind.
Beresford was more worried than he had admitted to the policemen. More than they, he realized the extreme care with which Craigie always worked. It was a thousand to one against the possibility of the Chief having gone off on some obscure—or for that matter plain—trail without leaving a message behind for Beresford, who was keeping in constant touch. The big man wondered, not without a tightening of his lips, whether Craigie was safe. Gorman was probably fully aware that the Chief of Department Z was his most dangerous opponent. Craigie had influence, and if it came to a showdown between Gorman’s influence and the Chief’s, Gorman would probably lose; the financier would go to the absolute limit to clip Craigie’s wings—and Gorman’s limit was death.
As he walked to his flat, Beresford let his mind run again. The Paris development had been sizzling in his brain from the moment that he had heard from Timothy Arran, but he wanted to keep away from the subject of the nursing-home fire until he had talked with the Arrans, who would be in London before midnight. The incidents in Auveley Street and the remarkable affair of the Lancia demanded a hearing too. The machine-gun episode, while lurid, was understandable. The Lancia affair was not. Beresford tried to puzzle it out as he walked towards the Carilon Club, where he had it in mind to do many things.
The Lancia had been tampered with, almost for certain, while it had been standing outside the flat in Auveley Street. During the three-quarters of an hour that Beresford had been at Number 7, the asbestos container, with its nitro-glycerine contents, had been fastened to the radiator or inside the Lancia’s bonnet, and the trap had been rigged up to ensure that the container was opened while Beresford was in the car. All that time, Beresford told himself, there had been crowds outside Number 7, because of the machine-gun sensation, and there had been at least three policemen. Whoever had done the job had done it quickly, and without attracting attention.
Beresford walked along the Mall towards the Carilon Club, twice cursing himself for a fool when he fancied that two pedestrians seemed to show more interest in him than they should have done. Beresford was—or had been until then—a stranger to nerves. The affair which had started so innocently, so far as Beresford was directly concerned, that night at the Two-Step Club, was playing havoc with him. Things happened, out of the blue. He reminded himself, with a twisted smile, of his little harangue to Timothy Arran. Death was always round the corner ...
The two pedestrians, however, had no designs on him, and Beresford turned into the Carilon, relieved by its sobriety, the dozen or so men who ‘halloed’ him as he went towards the bar, and glad to see one Dodo Trale, Agent Seven of Department Z, whose job—happily, said Trale—was to follow up the Adele Fayne contact with Leopold Gorman. At that moment he was drinking beer, and he asked Beresford, cheerfully, to join him.
“Tankards—two,” said Dodo Trale, as Beresford nodded. “I’ve been expecting to see you, Tony. I——Now what the blazes is making you so green, drat you?”
That was an exaggeration, but Beresford, who was looking over a member’s shoulder at an Evening Echo, was certainly looking grim. For the Echo’s headline was:
TWOPENCE RISE IN PETROL PRICES
Beresford seemed to see the sloping shoulders, the uneven face of Leopold Gorman as he read the line. The price ramp had started!
CHAPTER XVI
VALERIE LESTER AND A MAJOR
WHEN Valerie Lester had heard of the illness which had all but killed Bob Lavering she had fainted, and both Josiah Long and Tony Beresford had wondered, with foreboding, why. The girl herself knew the real reason for her swoon; the Lavering incident was the culmination of many since she had first started on what the American Intelligence called ‘The Wheat Pool job’. It was true, as Long had told Beresford, that she had once been in close touch with Bob Lavering and—more than Long knew—she had known Lavering all her life, liking him more than a little but stopping at liking. The news that he had been—and still was—in a bad way, had been a shock which she had not been able to shake off, because of her mental perturbation.
These things she told to Diane Chester, slim, lovely Diane, who was as understanding as she was typically English, as typically English as she was beautiful, and who had been called, with truth, the most beautiful woman in London.
“If you’d tried to tell me,” Valerie said, as Diane poured out tea, despite the fact that it was after half past six, “that in less than a week I should be—be——”
“In love with Tony Beresford,”
said Diane calmly, “you’d have laughed at me. Sip it hot, Val—it does you more good.”
Valerie coloured but laughed.
“You’re taking it coolly,” she said, and Diane laughed with her.
“Tony’s a man in a thousand,” she said, as Valerie sipped tea hot. “Look after him.”
The laughter went out of Valerie Lester’s eyes.
“I doubt,” she said quietly, “whether I shall have the chance, Diane. And I don’t know whether I should take it, even if I did.”
“Don’t you?” Diane kept her voice cool with an effort, and kept her eyes away from Valerie’s, to hide the sudden gleam which had jumped into them. “Why?”
Valerie closed her eyes.
“I didn’t come over to England just for the trip,” she said. “I came over because I’m working—and I don’t know where my job’s going to end. That’s why.”
For a second time Diane Chester was hard put to it not to show surprise. It was the first intimation which Lord Aubrey’s wife had of the double motive of Valerie’s visit.
“You’re—working? The same kind of work as Tony?”
“Ye-es.”
Diane finished her tea, placed her cup and saucer deliberately on the waggon-tray, and leaned forward, holding the American girl’s chin in her white hand.
“You’re not working against Tony Beresford, are you?”
Valerie shook her head, but tears were very close to the surface of her eyes.
“No—at least, only as much as I’m American and you’re—he’s English. But we’re working against the same thing.”
“Hmmm.” Diane took her hand away, and smiled.
“Well, I’m sorry, Valerie. I don’t like Tony’s game, and the only thing to be glad about is that he’ll have to drop it if he does settle down. But that doesn’t help much now.”
She stopped, and lit a cigarette, which she rarely did. She knew enough of these things not to ask questions, for there had been an affair in which Aubrey Chester and a certain Hugh Devenish* had been concerned; Diane’s memory of it was not pleasant, and she knew that Devenish had been in the ‘game’ which was now Beresford’s. She did not even ask if Valerie could drop out, and Valerie was grateful.
At the same time, the girl from America was worried. She did not know whether others beside Beresford knew of her connection with Josiah Long’s work in England. If Gorman or his agents learned of it, she realized, the house at Regent’s Park would be a danger spot for her hosts as well as for herself.
“My dear girl,” said Diane, when Valerie unloaded this point of view, “if you’re with Tony—and in effect you are—I’m with you. You’ll be a lot safer here, too, than if you stayed at an hotel or a club.”
“I feel—” Valerie looked at the older woman, bright-eyed and flushed—“I feel that I’ve—taken advantage of you, Diane. You didn’t know, when you asked me if I’d come with you, that——”
Diane laughed encouragingly.
“Valerie,” she said, “in the ‘game’ you have to take advantage of every chance and anyone. I know enough of it to know that. Oh, you goose!”
Just one minute later, when Aubrey Chester blundered into the chintz-curtained room which made Diane’s boudoir a place of joy in that mausoleum of a house, he saw the two women with their arms round each other, half crying, half laughing. He attempted to make a discreet retreat, but a mat and the half-open door combined to stop him. The women turned round, startled.
“S-sorry,” stammered Aubrey Chester.
“Come in and listen,” said Diane.
“I-isn’t there something I can do to l-lend a h-hand?” demanded Aubrey five minutes afterwards.
Valerie Lester knew then why the Chesters—Diane lovely and Aubrey vacuous of aspect but shrewd—were two of the most popular people in town.
A liveried and dignified manservant brought Valerie a letter at about half past nine. Aubrey and his wife—for Chester was on the top of the tennis world at that time, having brought back several titles from America—had gone to a celebration party, and the American girl was alone. She slit open the envelope quickly. The message was brief, and, as she expected, from Josiah Long.
Get a line on a Major Gulliver Odell (the note read), and find out when he last saw Gorman. J.L.
Major Gulliver Odell. The name seemed familiar, and Valerie frowned as she burned the note, and tried to remember when she had last heard of the Major. She remembered suddenly. On the previous day the Chesters had commented on the increasing friendliness between the autocratic soldier and Adele Fayne, the dancer at the Emblem Theatre. That suggested, Valerie thought, with a frown, that Odell would not be easy to get at. Adele Fayne was ample occupation for one man.
A copy of Who’s Who gave the girl as much information about Major Odell as she would be likely to need.
She telephoned his flat, knowing that a frontal attack with a man of Odell’s nature (for the Chesters had commented very freely) was likely to succeed.
Odell was in. It also happened that he was, that night, in an expansive mood, for Adele Fayne had telephoned him to say that she was engaged for supper, and he had consequently dined alone and dined well. He did not, off-hand, remember Valerie Lester during the trip which he had made to America in the previous year, but he was more than ready to admit that his memory was short, for the voice of Valerie Lester over the telephone was low and husky.
“Delighted,” said the Major, “delighted you remember me, Miss—er—Miss...”
“Lester.”
“Lester. Let me see, weren’t you with the—er—the . . .”
“The Laverings, at the Manhattan,” said Valerie.
“Of course, of course!” Now that he was on safe ground, the Major felt that he could indulge in his conversational tricks, which were composed of short sentences of little meaning but considerable emphasis. “Remarkable place, the Manhattan, remarkable! But there are one or two places in London”—the Major chuckled meaningly—“which could show it a thing or two.”
“Are there?” asked Valerie Lester innocently.
“Astonishing places, astonishing!” asserted Odell. “I—ridiculous of me to imagine it, my dear Miss Lester —I suppose that you can’t—I mean you are engaged for to-night? . . . Most fortunate, Miss Lester! Where are you? I’ll send my car—yes, I insist! The Chesters’? Of course, of course, I remember reading in the Tatler. . . In twenty minutes...”
The Major, resplendent in evening dress and a white carnation, presented himself in person at the Regent’s Park house within the twenty minutes. The two detectives who were watching the house, and Valerie Lester, reported the event by means of the recently established wireless telephone service, and the Major’s car, an Austin Twenty, was picked up at Marble Arch and followed by a police car to the Silver Slipper, in Haymarket. The Austin was parked in a side street, and the police car parked near it while its occupants kept watch for the revelling Major and his unexpected companion.
* First came a Murder. By John Creasey. Melrose
CHAPTER XVII
THE MAN WHO SHOULD HAVE BEEN DEAD
TONY BERESFORD discussed many things with Dodo Trale at the Carilon, chiefly that gentleman’s success with Adele Fayne. Trale’s opinion of the dancer was not high.
“She hasn’t got even a suspicion of a brain, Tony. If it wasn’t for Solly Lewistein, that girl wouldn’t be on the Emblem at all, what about being the star piece. I’ll grant you she’s got the legs and——”
“We’re not concerned with what she’s got,” grinned Beresford, “but what she knows. Is there a line between her and Gorman?”
Dodo Trale examined the dry bottom of a tankard. He was a small man as men go and puny in comparison with Beresford, while his grey eyes and general bearing suggested indolence out of the ordinary. Certainly Dodo Trale looked lazy, but, Beresford liked to tell him, he also looked beautiful. That night his dress-suit was cut to the peak of fashion, for immaculacy was a religion with that agent of Dep
artment Z, and his dark hair was brushed well back from his forehead, revealing his classical profile and emphasizing the perfection of his features. Even as he demanded more beer and more tankards of Petitt, the head-waiter at the Carilon, Dodo Trale looked bored.
Petitt passed the request on to a lesser soul, wished Beresford a frigid good-evening, and passed on himself.
“Well?” demanded Beresford. “Is there?”
Trale deliberated.
“I don’t know, Tony. Somehow I think there is. Of course, Gorman’s been seen about with our Adele a lot. I don’t mean that. I mean I think she’s—— Ah, beer!”
“Before you drink that,” said Beresford, grabbing both tankards, “you’ll talk. She’s what?”
“I think she’s scared of him,” said Trale; “and pass that over quickly, drat you.”
Beresford complied for the sake of peace.
“So you think Adele Fayne’s scared of Leopold, do you?”
“Yes,” said Trale, from the mouth of his tankard. “She hedges like blazes when I start to talk about him. I can’t get a word out of her. Ah-h! But I’ll tell you one thing, Tony.”
“Go on while you’ve time,” said Beresford, who knew Dodo Trale’s propensities with beer.
“I think Solly Lewistein’s scared too. I happened to mention that I’d met Gorman in the passage outside Adele’s dressing-room last night, and Solly seemed to go cold.”
“Gorman’s money keeps ’em both, remember,” muttered Beresford.
“Not that kind of scared,” said Trale. “If they were frightened of losing a good billet, they might sulk, but when they had the chance they’d call Gorman everything they could think of—not that it’d be much with Adele, mind you—but they wouldn’t shy away when you mentioned his name, and look as if you were poison.”
Beresford drank deeply and thoughtfully.
“Who’d you think we could get most out of—the girl or Solly?”
“Solly. If you offered him enough money, I reckon he’d sell Gorman right out. I don’t think the girl knows enough. Gorman’s got sense if nothing else, and he wouldn’t try to put anything in that cold storage plant.”