by John Creasey
“Obviously,” said Beresford gently, “you don’t think much of Adele. Did she turn you down, or didn’t she think your motives were pure?”
“She hasn’t turned me down, and I haven’t got any motives. I’m suppering with her again to-night, at the expense of Gulliver Odell—you know that gentleman?”
“Ye-s.” Beresford in turn studied the dry bottom of a tankard. “Is there anything between Gorman and Odell, d’you think?”
“I kind of guess so,” said Trale. “Solly Lewistein think’s Odell’s punk, and Adele spits whenever he’s mentioned. But he’s got influence somewhere, so——”
“It’s probably with Gorman?”
“That’s my guess,” said Trale.
Beresford lit a cigarette and eyed Trale seriously.
“Do you know the size of this job, Dodo?”
“I’ve got an idea.”
“Humph! Well, it’s a lot bigger than your ideas. We might catch a packet any day, any time——”
“Anywhere!” crooned Dodo suddenly and to the surprise of many members of the Carilon who were telling funny stories and buying the best beer in London.
“Don’t be a ruddy ass,” grunted Beresford. “I don’t think Gorman knows you’re one of us—nothing’s happened yet, has it?”
“Not even a rough-house,” mourned Trale.
“Well, it will,” said Beresford. “Feel like taking a chance to-night?”
“Will it cancel that supper engagement?”
“No.” Beresford looked grim. “Unless you’re too dead to keep it.”
Dodo’s eyes widened, and he choked at his beer.
“So-ho! We’re really getting down to it. What’s the job, Tony?”
Beresford lowered his voice and spoke without moving his lips, so that only Trale knew he was speaking.
“See Solly Lewistein,” said Beresford, “and ask him how much he’ll take for the low-down on Gorman.”
For a moment Trale seemed too thunderstruck to speak. At last:
“And is that your idea,” he demanded, “of a really first-class lead for a spot of trouble? Because I——”
“Son,” said Beresford, and Dodo Trale was quietened by the expression in the big man’s eye, “if Lewistein doesn’t bite, and takes the story to Gorman, I wouldn’t give two pins for your chance of seeing morning.”
Trale swallowed hard, although his tankard was empty.
“Well, well, well!” he exclaimed at last. “Ain’t it lucky I wasn’t born rich, old son? When do I see Solly? While the show’s on?”
“Yes. It’s half past nine—no, ten o’clock, within a couple of minutes. You’ll catch him all right if you go now.”
Dodo Trale stood up, looking for all the world as if he would never be able to outlive the boredom of that evening.
“O.K. with me,” he said. “Have I got time to pop round to my place and collar a gun?”
“Better take mine,” said Beresford. “I’ll join you in the cloakroom in five minutes, and I’ll pass it over then. And, Dodo——”
“Sir,” said Dodo Trale.
“Watch your step. If Solly seems to jib, go straight round to Fellowes at Scotland Yard and get him to put a man on your tail——”
“The Yard?” Trale whistled under his breath. “What’s the matter with seeing Craigie and getting one of our men?”
Beresford looked grim.
“Can’t do,” he said. “Craigie’s not been in for some time, and he made a new list out yesterday. Until we find him I don’t know who’s with us nor who’s dropped out, if any. So——”
“Do you mean,” asked Dodo Trale, suddenly very still, “that Craigie’s missing?”
“I do,” said Beresford.
“My God!” breathed Trale, and his face was white.
If he had had time for musing, Tony Beresford would have reflected on the fact that Dodo Trale grinned when he talked of putting his head, figuratively, into Gorman’s noose, did not turn a hair when he was convinced that the consequences of his coming interview with Leopold Gorman’s theatrical manager were likely to be fatal, or next door to it, but went white when he heard that his Chief was missing. There was no man in the Service who would not willingly have given his life for Gordon Craigie. Craigie contrived to lend a human understanding to a job which was inhuman because of the certainty of death coming in the long run to its agents, and death by violence; by doing so he had made himself, literally, loved by those men, to whom the word ‘love’ between men was absurd.
Beresford, however, had many things to do. In effect he was O.C. of Department Z, a job which was no easy one, even if he had access to Craigie’s papers. But with Craigie missing—the problem of the Chief’s disappearance had already been passed on to Very High Officials—Beresford would be badly handicapped until those officials gave him signed permission to take charge.
The most serious handicap was his lack of knowledge as to who was still on Department Z’s list of agents. He needed more help, and he needed it badly. And then, suddenly, he cursed himself for a fool. There was help in plenty waiting for the asking; that the men he had in mind were not agents of Z was an advantage rather than a disadvantage; they would not be recognized by Leopold Gorman, or Gorman’s mysterious ‘big boys’.
Beresford felt cheered. To cheer himself still further, he hopped into the first telephone-booth and called up the Regent’s Park house, hoping for a word with Valerie Lester.
That same solemn-voiced servant answered him.
“Miss Lester left the house, sir, about thirty-five minutes ago.”
“Alone?” Beresford snapped the question.
“She was called for, sir, by a gentleman.”
“Do you know him?”
“No, sir. Reynolds, who received him, has gone out.”
Beresford replaced the receiver, after a muttered thanks. He was worried, although he realized the possibility that Valerie’s companion was one of Josiah Long’s associates. On the other hand, Gorman might have tricked her away from the Regent’s Park house.
Beresford cursed, audibly and to the disgust of a spinster who was passing him across the Trafalgar Square roundabout. He did not grin at the lady’s ‘tcha!’ a sure sign that he was worried much more than usual. The possibility of trouble developing with Valerie Lester made his blood chill. Yet, he reasoned, she was in the thick of it; just as Josiah Long had been singled out for special attention, so, probably, would the American girl be spotted.
Fighting back his anxiety, Beresford hurried to the Éclat Hotel, where he hoped to find several gentlemen of his acquaintance who would not shy at trouble. It was not his lucky night, for the only men who would serve his purpose—and who were indulging in a beer-battle at the Éclat’s bar—were Robert Montgomery Curtis and Wallace Davidson.
A beer-battle between those august gentlemen was a thing of humour for those in the mood for it. It consisted of a trial of repression on the part of the combatants, for the winner was the man who drank less beer over a prescribed period, throughout which period the beer, in tankards, must be hovering in front of the battlers’ nose, frothy with temptation.
“Why,” said Bob Curtis, a giant of a man whose ugly face was redeemed by a pair of the most humorous brown eyes in London—“why, here’s St. Anthony! Join us, soldier!”
“Beer—tankards, three, quick,” drawled Wally Davidson, a man of perpetual weariness, considerable size, although smaller than either Beresford or Curtis, of light-brown, curly hair and undistinguished features but immaculacy on a par with Dodo Trale’s. “You look peeved, Tony my son. Would you rather have something with more bite?”
“Bring that stuff to a table,” grunted Beresford, “and try to keep your wits clear. I’ve got a job for you.”
Davidson and Curtis* exchanged glances, instructed a waiter to transfer their beer from the bar to a table, and followed Beresford willingly. They did not know, but they guessed that Beresford was a man of strange missions, and they were possesse
d of a philosophy which proclaimed satisfaction only in action.
“Well?” demanded Bruce hopefully.
“Spill it!” drawled Davidson. “No, drat you, not the beer! Oi! What the blue hades is your trouble, Tony?”
Beresford, who had touched his lips with the tankard of beer, deposited it suddenly on the table, spilling a fair portion in close proximity to Davidson’s trousers. He stared for a fraction of a second towards the door of the bar-room, at a man who had just entered and who was looking round the room inquiringly. Davidson and Curtis looked, carefully, with Beresford. They saw the slim, well-dressed figure of a young man whom they knew moderately well, but for the life of them they could not conceive why his appearance had made Tony Beresford go temporarily mad.
They did not know that Robert Lavering was supposed to be dead!
* Seven Times Seven. By John Creasey. Melrose.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE REMARKABLE STORY OF BOB LAVERING
LAVERING saw the trio suddenly, and his eyes widened. He came towards the table, and the three men saw, as he grew nearer, the dark rings round his eyes and the general appearance of weariness which suggested an illness from which he had not fully recovered. Beresford stood up quickly and pushed a chair into position. Lavering dropped into it thankfully; the trio noticed that he was breathing hard.
A waiter hovered near. Beresford beckoned him and ordered brandy. Lavering, when he had let the spirit course through his veins, looked better.
“Nothing like a nip,” said Wally Davidson, who had a bad habit of improvising couplets, “to make you full of zip. Howdo, Lavering?”
“Drop it,” said Beresford. “These two are all right,” he added, as Lavering looked at his companions doubtfully. “How’d you manage to get here, Bob?”
Bob Lavering grimaced. He was a broad-shouldered man of five-feet-eleven, narrow-hipped, lean, and good-looking in a boyish way. Normally he had the American characteristic of not looking his age, which was twenty-six, although that evening he looked considerably older. His features were well moulded, if a little too sharp, and his blue eyes were normally gleaming with good-humour, wide-set beneath his well-developed forehead and flaxen hair.
“I flew over this afternoon,” he said. “I didn’t lose any time, when I got the chance, you can guess. Where are the Arrans?”
“On the way over,” said Beresford.
“I tried to get them on the telephone,” said Lavering, “but they weren’t at the Royale. How much do you know, Tony?”
“That the last I heard of you you were ill,” said Beresford. “More than ill, in fact—you were dead!”
Lavering’s eyes widened. Curtis and Davidson stared at him, trying patiently to sort out the situation.
“How did I——” Lavering began, and then stopped, with the ghost of a smile on his lips.
“The nursing-home you were in was burned down,” said Beresford, “and you were supposed to be in it. But half a mo’. Take a breather while I talk to these two. And go steady with that,” he added, as Lavering poured more Pol Roger into his brandy glass. “It won’t take much to make you roll, son, and I want your story first.”
Lavering grinned, and listened quietly while Beresford gave a brief résumé of the Arrans’ visit to Paris, and the fire at the nursing-home in which Bob Lavering was reputed to have been burned. He did not enlarge on the more important aspect of the case, for he had no desire to scare Lavering, who might or might not know what was happening.
“So that’s why you looked as if you’d seen a ghost,” muttered Curtis, when Beresford had finished. “All right, soldier.”
“Feel fit enough to carry on?” Beresford asked Lavering.
“Why, sure,” said the American. “Shall I start right at the beginning?”
“As far back as you can,” said Beresford.
Lavering lit a cigarette thoughtfully. There was an expression in his eyes which might have meant anything, but it held pain—mental pain—and Beresford felt awkward.
“All right,” began Lavering. “It started—well, you know when I first met Adele Fayne, don’t you?”
“Hm-hm.” Beresford’s eyes gleamed.
“I fell for her,” said the American steadily, “and you know I fell hard. But for a chance word that I got from Lewistein one night—her manager, I mean——”
“I know Solly. Carry on.”
“I’d never have realized there was anything behind it, and I’d have been well on the way to Reno.” Lavering laughed bitterly. “You see, Tony, Solly was talking with her, and he said in effect: ‘You’ve got to marry him; Gorman says so’.”
“The devil he did!” Beresford grunted. Davidson and Curtis whistled under their breath.
“Sure,” went on Lavering, “and you can fancy how I liked that. Howso, I didn’t feel like talking to ’Dele, and I was mighty interested in the Gorman guy who’d told her who to marry. I’d seen Gorman, and twice I tried to see him again, but he was always out. The day before I went over to Paris I heard that he was going over there, and that he was to stay at the Splendide. I parked my grip at the Royale, then waited outside the Splendide one morning, saw Gorman go in, and went right after him. I caught him in the lounge——”
“Did he jump?” asked Beresford.
“No. Gorman doesn’t show what he feels much. Anyhow, I asked him, without mooning, why he was interested in getting me married. He laughed it off, and told me that if I went to a little place called the Côte d’Or he’d meet me there and talk.”
“And you bit it?” snapped Beresford.
“Yes,” said Lavering wearily; “I bit it hard. I went to the place—it was a pretty good speakeasy, Tony—and I fell hard for a dancer there——”
“Corinne?”
“Sure.” Lavering looked hard at Beresford. “Know her?”
Beresford nodded, without enlarging on the snake-charmer’s fate. Bob Lavering had enough to carry that night.
“Well—you know Paris. I was on the loose, and—anyhow, that girl shied right away from me. All she would say was it was not safe for me. I tied that up,” Lavering went on with a wan smile, “with Gorman, and I told myself that Paris wasn’t healthy. So I made for the gate, but before I’d got a hundred yards away my legs went right under me, and I felt like a pleasure-cruiser on the first day at sea. Someone bent over me, and then I went right out.
“The next thing I can remember clearly,” went on the American, lighting another cigarette, “was waking up in the nursing-home and feeling a lot better than I had for a long time. I remembered Tim Arran coming to the first place I’d been parked in, and that uniformed doctor he had with him, but it’s all a haze until I got to the nursing-home. I had a room there with a window looking into the street, and this morning, when I was up for the first time, I looked out of the window and saw—well, you can guess.”
“Gorman?”
“Yes—Gorman.” Lavering’s voice hardened as he went on. “That man is poison, Beresford! You don’t have to look at him twice. Howso, he grinned up at me with that one-sided mouth of his, and tossed”—Lavering took a letter from his pocket as he went on—“this up. I—I read it, and then I made a break, Tony. I hopped to the Royale, collected my grip, and took the first ’plane over. That’s all—only I tried to get the Arrans, once while I was at the Royale and once by telephone, but they were out. So——”
“Here you are,” grunted Wally Davidson, his eyes agleam with unusual excitement. “Curtis, my son, does this sound——”
“Like something to keep us out of mischief,” said Bob Curtis, slapping his thigh with a vast hand. “Is this the job you were going to talk about, Tony?”
Beresford nodded.
“Then how soon,” demanded Davidson, “can we start?”
“Quicker than you expect,” grunted Beresford.
As he spoke, and while Davidson and Curtis had been talking, Beresford was watching Bob Lavering. The American was under the weather. His breath was coming qu
ickly, his eyes were unnaturally bright, and his hand, as he handed the letter to Beresford, was trembling.
The note was brief but emphatic, and it explained to Beresford one of the things that had been puzzling him—the reason why Lavering had sought him out immediately on his arrival in London. Davidson and Curtis looked at each other and grimaced as they read the letter over Beresford’s shoulder.
It read:
Tell Beresford to keep out of this. Remind him that Nosey Dean died, Williams died, a certain lady is dead. Craigie is going, your delightful friend Valerie Lester is going. Although if you are discreet I may arrange for only a temporary disappearance for that lady.
That was all. It was a blunt statement, cleverly calculated to be more unnerving than a violent tirade of threats. Beresford, as he read ‘Valerie Lester is going’, felt cold. The others kept silent, knowing that it was not a moment for speech. Suddenly:
“Did Gorman himself give you this?”
“Yes,” Lavering nodded.
“And you were by yourself?”
“Yes. No one else was near.”
Beresford drummed his fingers on the table, staring straight ahead of him. Slowly he lit a cigarette. Then:
“Did you see anyone with Gorman when you spoke to him at the Splendide?” he demanded.
Lavering closed his eyes.
“I—I don’t remember anyone special. Someone had been out with him—a fat little guy with a red face——”
“Odell,” Beresford muttered, as though to himself.
“I don’t know his name. He looked what you’d probably call military,” Lavering said. “I——”
The American broke off suddenly and stared at Beresford like a man seized suddenly with an idea that was going to solve all his problems. Lavering’s hand shook as he reached for his cigarettes, and his eyes were more feverish than they had been.
“Jehosophat!” he grunted. “I remember where I saw the fellow again. He was at the Côte d’Or. I can remember him talking to a waiter, the same waiter that served me with my last drink——”