by John Creasey
“All yuh gotta do,” said Josiah Long mildly, “is to get de guy.”
“We’ll get him,” muttered Beresford. “That’s your lot, is it, Bill?”
“Isn’t it enough?” asked Fellowes.
“Plenty,” said Beresford, with the ghost of a grin. “Did you send anyone to Resthaven?”
“Two car-loads of men, all armed, and with Rogerson in charge.”
“Curtis and Rogerson ought to get on well together,” said Beresford. “Anything from Craigie?”
“Not a word,” said Fellowes.
“Nor”—Beresford forced himself to speak calmly, but both Fellowes and Josiah Long noticed the tightening of his features and the narrowing of his eyes—“nor of Valerie Lester?”
Fellowes shook his head. For a moment Beresford kept silent, trying to imagine where the girl was, and how she was reacting to the circumstances which had led to her disappearance. For the hundredth time he reasoned that if Josiah Long had been considered a vital danger to Gorman, then the girl, as Long’s assistant, was in a tight corner. She would be more dangerous to Leopold Gorman than anyone else, or so Beresford thought, but for a second time that day his hazard was only half the truth.
Fellowes broke the awkward silence which ensued.
“By the way,” he said, and Beresford opened his eyes suddenly, “have you heard from the Arrans to-day? Since last night, that is?”
Beresford grunted “No.”
“But I haven’t had much chance,” he added, reaching for a telephone, one of three standing on the Commissioner’s desk. “Anything you want them for?”
“I had a call through from Paris just after nine,” said Fellowes. “Piquet reckons that he’s on to something about that hotel murder. He wanted confirmation of something from Timothy Arran.”
Beresford nodded as he listened to the ringing sound on the wire. Either the Arrans weren’t at their flat, he told himself, or they were sleeping hard.
“Try the Carilon Club,” suggested Fellowes, “or Arran pater—no, I’ll take the Club, you make the other call.”
Within five minutes, however, the two men were convinced that the Arrans had followed the trail of Gordon Craigie and Valerie Lester, and Beresford shuddered as he thought of the end which had been prepared for Josiah Long, as Gulliver Odell, when he had been caught. It was asking too much to believe that the others would escape as luckily.
Fellowes lit a cigarette. He was more worried than he admitted, for his talk with the Very High Authorities convinced him that he would have to find very definite proof before he could make any charge against Leopold Gorman. The cunning of the financier seemed to have covered all possibilities. His financial interests were so varied, and his associates on the boards of his companies so numerous, and socially and politically influential, that any attack against him would be hopeless unless it was well—in fact overwhelmingly—substantiated.
“There’s one thing,” Fellowes muttered. “We can at least keep our eyes on Gorman, even if we can’t touch him. If he leaves London we’ll get after him.”
“He isn’t likely to do anything which will connect him with this ruddy business.” As he spoke, Beresford reminded himself of Long’s evidence that he had last been conscious, prior to his predicament on the Farningham road, while with Gorman at Park Place. But when the American’s story was examined coldly, it left so many loopholes, and in some ways was so fantastic, that a clever counsel could have torn it to bits. Long’s evidence would be useful, if the chance did come to put Gorman in dock, but only in a minor key.
“If he’s getting worried about Adele Fayne and Solly Lewistein,” said Fellowes, “he might slip up—ah!”
The “Ah!” came as a telephone rang, and simultaneously a second bell burred out. Fellowes took one and Beresford the other. Beresford’s eyes hardened, and his chin went forward aggressively. Fellowes’ eyes glistened.
At the other end of Beresford’s line Dodo Trale was speaking urgently, anxiously.
“We’re having a tough spot, Tony. Solly’s dead... yes, a knife through the window... and there are half a dozen swine outside—all French, I think... Yes, French... I can see one of them after the telephone wires. Hur——”
The line went dead, and Beresford could almost see the wires leading to Curtis’s bungalow falling to the ground. He dropped the instrument quickly, as Fellowes muttered, “You’re sure he’s heading for Kent... Rotherhithe Tunnel route?... Right.”
“Gorman left Park Place,” said Fellowes tersely, “and is going across London towards Kent.”
“Lewistein’s dead,” said Beresford, and there was no expression in his voice. “Are you coming with me?”
“Yes,” said Fellowes, and gripped Beresford’s arm. “We’re getting near the end,” he added.
“But what’s it going to be?” demanded the big man, and his voice cracked.
Leopold Gorman left his Park Place house at half past ten, driving himself, and heading for the Kentish village of Lindean. His odd-shaped shoulders were hunched as he sent the big Daimler through the traffic, and his green eyes were narrowed. He had been worried on the previous night, but now he realized that a smash was inevitable, unless he made sure that Adele Fayne and Solly Lewistein died before they could talk, and that Beresford and his accursed friends followed them quickly. They must go. No matter how many chances he took while getting rid of them, they must go.
The financier had learned, from a man who had trailed Dodo Trale and Adele Fayne, that the dancer and manager were in the bungalow near Farningham. He had sent Franchot’s men to the bungalow, and given them instructions to kill. Taking advantage of the then chaotic state of France’s officialdom, Gorman had used the Frenchmen, believing that he could more easily prevent the discovery of the fact that his money had paid them, than he could have prevented trouble if he had employed those three gunmen from London who worked for him. Nevertheless, Gorman had little confidence in the Frenchmen. He had used them because they were the lesser of two evils.
The one thing above all others which had persuaded Gorman to travel to Kent was the fact that Beresford and Long had escaped from the crash on the road. When he had discovered that Long was posing as Major Gulliver Odell, Gorman had conceived the scheme to get rid of Beresford and Long without arousing suspicion in minds other than those which already knew of the affair. He had sent his three gunmen to Kent, Long had been made ready for the slaughter—and then Beresford had squeezed out of the crash. The news of the escape had been like a physical shock to Leopold Gorman. From possibility, the chance of his plans failing leapt into probability. He knew then that it would be touch and go before the end was reached.
The Daimler went on, eating the miles, with Gorman unaware that a mile or two in front of him police cars were tearing towards the same village, and that as he finished the drive through Rotherhithe Tunnel, Sir William Fellowes and another were hurtling after him in the Commissioner’s Sunbeam, although it would have been a slight salve to his sorely tried mind if he had known that Josiah Long had been unable to join Fellowes; the American agent had collapsed before leaving Scotland Yard.
CHAPTER XXIII
ATTACK AND COUNTER-ATTACK
THE twenty minutes following his telephone call to Scotland Yard was one of the worst periods that Dodo Trale had ever experienced. He had seen and shot at a man pulling at the telegraph wires leading to the bungalow while he had been talking, but since that first shot the attackers had learned cunning, and they were breaking the telephone-line at a point out of range of revolver-fire. Trale had, for a moment, comforted himself with the thought that if they were afraid of the revolvers they would give little trouble, but he had no knowledge, then, of the garden at the rear of the building.
Resthaven was situated about thirty yards from a third-class road which led from the Farningham road. The nearest village—Lindean—was a mile away, on the way to Farningham, and apart from several small bungalows, there were no buildings in between. Resthaven w
as, in fact, isolated. Its long front garden, luckily, was only sparsely shrubbed, and was composed mainly of a green lawn. The Frenchmen outside, as Trale reasoned, could not get within knife-throwing distance without finding themselves within shooting range. But it was a different matter at the rear of the bungalow.
Trale, watching from the front, saw the wires go down and heard his line go dead. He swore, and put the receiver on its hook, glancing as he did so at the horrible figure of Solly Lewistein in the chair. Lewistein’s face was bloodless now, his eyes were wide open and glazed, and the knife stuck there, a horrible messenger of death.
Trale’s stomach turned. He looked round the room, saw a tablecover over a small table, and biting hard on his teeth, draped the cloth over Lewistein’s head and shoulders. Hardly had he done so when he heard a bellow of warning from the rear of Resthaven.
“They’re getting on the roof!” bellowed Bob Curtis. “Lock that door and get round here!”
Dodo Trale swung round, slamming the door as he ran out of the room. The key was in the lock, and he turned it quickly, then looked round in the small hall for something which he could push against it as a barricade. An oak chest served his purpose. He tugged at it, dragging it across the doorway, confident that the door could not be broken down without ample warning being given.
In the kitchen, where Bob Curtis was pressing himself against a wall while squinting out of a small window, Trale saw Adele Fayne, still unconscious, lying in a huddled heap. The usually genial Robert Montgomery was cursing softly, fluently and steadily, and his jaw was thrust out. Dwarfed in his great hand was an automatic, and he was saying how much he would like to be able to use it, and he was saying it colourfully.
“The roof, you said?” asked Trale.
Curtis nodded without turning his head.
“Yes, may their sides split! Take a peek outside there, Dodo, and ask yourself...”
Trale looked outside, and his heart sank. There was a short stretch of garden hedged by thick bushes, and those bushes would have given shelter to a couple of dozen men. The hedge was set square, boxing the garden carefully, and enclosing a space of something under twenty square feet. There were, Curtis knew, two gaps in the hedge leading to a larger garden, but the potent factor was that the Frenchmen—providing all the men outside were French—could move right up to the walls of the bungalow without being seen.
“How’d you know they’re on the roof?” Trale asked.
“Heard ’em climbing up,” said Curtis grimly. “You see that hedge, Dodo?”
“Of course I do, drat you.”
“My perishing relative—hell scorch her!—had that put there. Nice and thick, she said, so that the neighbours couldn’t see into her garden. Next time I see that unmentionable sexagenarian I’ll... Neighbours, mind you, neighbours, and there isn’t a rabbit-hutch within a quarter of a mile! Damn! Did you hear that?”
Dodo Trale went pale. Habit sent him rooting in his pocket for cigarettes, and as he rooted, the sound which had made Curtis break off came again—the unmistakable din of breaking stones or slates.
“They’re busting a hole through the roof,” said Curtis, whose worst habit was that of stating the obvious. “I wonder which room they’ll break into.”
“If you keep quiet for a moment,” snapped Trale, “we might be able to locate them.”
Curtis lit a cigarette as he lapsed into silence. For a full minute the two men listened, straining their ears to locate the exact spot in the roof which was being damaged.
“At the front,” muttered Curtis at last.
“The hall, or the room we—we slept in,” Trale agreed. “What’s our counter?”
“Keep at the door leading from here into the hall,” said Curtis, “and snipe anything that shows through the hole. It won’t do any harm in the front room if you’ve barricaded it. Have you?”
Trale said that he had, and then he swung round towards the corner where Adele Fayne was lying. He saw the dancer open her eyes, saw her look round, startled, and then he saw the terrified recollection of what she had last seen flood back to her mind. La Fayne’s lips opened. She screamed.
“God!” muttered Trale. “I can’t stand that!”
“Nor me,” said Curtis. “For the love of Heaven,” he said more loudly, “keep quiet, woman! I——”
Adele Fayne screamed again, and Curtis knew that no amount of talking would quieten her. She was hysterical, all her self-control gone. She stared at the two men yet seemed not to see them, and as she stared she screamed, high-pitched, shuddering screams which set the men shivering. There was something horrible about the sight of that half-demented creature, the dancer who had sent half London frantic, and Trale swore.
“Stuff something in her mouth,” he muttered. “It’s—anyhow, we can’t hear what’s happening on the roof if she doesn’t stop.”
“If we gag her she’ll suffocate,” said Curtis, “and if she keeps yelling we’re in a fix. Only one thing for it...”
Curtis stepped across the small room and shook the writhing, screaming dancer roughly. It had no effect. Grim-faced, he bent down and brought the side of his hand down sharply on the back of her neck. Adele Fayne gave a little choking gurgle and went still.
“Foul!” muttered Curtis. “Still—tarnation, son! They’re through!”
As he spoke, part of the ceiling in the hall crashed down!
Trale was nearest the door. He swung round, gun in hand, as something splashed into the hall through the hole in the roof. Trale stared dully at it, wondering why the Frenchmen outside should pour water...
“Bless my soul!” said Curtis, in a peculiar, high-pitched tone. “How pleasant they are, Dodo. That’s——”
“Petrol!” gasped Trale.
“Petrol,” agreed Curtis, in the same thin voice. “Now I wonder—put that cigarette out, idiot!”
Just for a moment, Curtis said afterwards, the realization of the Frenchmen’s move turned him light in the head. And when, a fraction of a second after he had told Trale to squash his cigarette, he saw something strangely like a foot and leg drop through the hole in the roof, he was sure that it was an illusion.
But it was not. The boot dropped lower, and was suspended at the end of a man’s leg from ankle to thigh. At the same time there was a crash overhead, a second, a third. Dimly, the sound of men’s voices, raised in alarm, came into the kitchen.
“Does that mean...?” Trale broke off, staring at his companion.
“Reinforcements,” said Curtis, with a wide grin. “Oh, boy, this is our lucky morning! Hallo, there!”
He bellowed as someone thundered on the front door, and hurried through the hall. Caution made him peer through a small insert of coloured glass before he opened the door, but the sight of half a dozen men in the garden, and two police-cars—open tourers, anyhow, he said to Trale—convinced him that it was safe to let the newcomers in.
A fresh-complexioned man of thirty-odd was the first man to enter the hall. He looked inquiringly at Curtis as he said precisely:
“My name is Rogerson—Assistant-Inspector Rogerson, of Scotland Yard. I——”
“There never was,” said Curtis, linking his arm in Rogerson’s and drawing that serious-minded officer towards the front room, “a more handsome, efficient or welcome inspector in all of Scotland, never mind the Yard. Do you brink beer?”
Rogerson drew his arm away coldly.
“I beg your pardon,” he said with dignity, “and I do not drink beer. I was given to understand that——”
What Rogerson was given to understand was never passed on to Robert Montgomery Curtis, who afterwards said that he seemed to recover his senses when Rogerson proclaimed that he did not drink beer.
“Better have a look at our French beauties,” Curtis said suddenly to Trale. “And at Adele Fayne too.” He looked at Rogerson and grinned. “Sorry, son. I’ve had a bit of a tough time, and it went to my head, so to speak. How many of the johnnies did you see on the roof?”
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“Two,” said Rogerson, thawing a little.
“Any on the ground?”
“Yes—four, I think.”
“They hopped off before you got ’em?”
“Ye-es.” Honesty compelled Rogerson to admit it, but he did so reluctantly.
Curtis swore mildly.
“That means they’re hopping around somewhere, and that a message is going back to London, or wherever they sprang from. How many men have you got with you?”
“Seven,” said Rogerson.
“That means we can spare three couples,” said Curtis thoughtfully. “Don’t mind me making the suggestion, do you? If you’ll push three separate and distinct braces of your boys round the garden to look for the bright ones we’ve lost, it’d help.”
Rogerson swallowed hard, and told himself that only on one previous occasion had he felt so much like murder, and that had been when the man Beresford had told him not to be a fool. But there was sound sense in Curtis’s plan. Rogerson swung round towards his men, three of whom were in the hall.
“Search round in twos,” he said, “and report here inside half an hour.”
“I take it they’re armed,” murmured Curtis.
“Every necessary precaution,” said Assistant-Inspector Rogerson frigidly, “has been taken to ensure a satisfactory conclusion, Mr.——”
Robert Montgomery Curtis opened his lips and said “Ah!” closed his lips and thought many things, but restrained himself from voicing his thoughts, because he knew that he would have been in Queer Street but for the timely arrival of the police squad.
“Then,” he said weakly, “that ought to be all right, didn’t it? Thank you, Inspector, thank you. Do you mind if I have a look at the lads you pushed off the roof?”
Rogerson grunted, telling himself that the man was mad. Nevertheless he followed Curtis out of the hall, and watched the big man bending over the one Frenchman who had been shot when the police had arrived, and who had fallen to the ground. The man was dead. The bullet had splintered his knee, and in falling he had hit the ground head first.