by John Creasey
Craigie’s voice came urgently.
“Are the others all right, Curtis?”
“I—I think so.” Curtis swallowed hard, and noticed that the room was beginning to float about him again. He saw Craigie hurry through to the rear of the bungalow, and was conscious when he heard the Chief’s voice raised to say:
“Trale’s all right, Beresford—and La Fayne.”
At which moment Robert Montgomery Curtis fainted, not to know until later that the Frenchmen and Gorman’s gunmen had been too cowed by their leader’s fall to give fight.
CHAPTER XXV
OF A CONVERSATION AND A PLACARD
FOR the fifth time since they had first met, Tony Beresford and Valerie Lester were dining—or at least being—tête-à-tête. It was two days after the affair at the bungalow, two days which had been full ones for Beresford, and even fuller for Valerie Lester, who had been preparing hurriedly for a journey.
In those two days Beresford had learned many things. He had been told by Craigie how that gentleman had been completely hoodwinked by Major Gulliver Odell, whom he had thought to be a fool and little else. The Major, complaining that he had been involved in an accident and was confined to his room, had telephoned Craigie, via his flat, saying that he believed he knew something about Leopold Gorman which Craigie should know. The Chief had sent a man to investigate the truth of Odell’s ‘accident’, and the man had confirmed that Odell was at his flat, alone, and with a heavily bandaged leg. Craigie had consequently visited the flat, to suffer, as Long had suffered at Adele Fayne’s rooms on the following day.
Major Odell, having caught the biggest fish, had then trapped Valerie Lester, and, with her, the Arrans. Valerie had ‘fallen’ with her eyes open. The Arrans, believing that Odell might lead to Gorman, had visited that gentleman shortly after he had left the Silver Slipper, and a minor gas-attack had finished them. Not until Beresford and Miller had arrived at the flat had any one of the four seriously thought that they would escape alive.
They had been kept at Odell’s flat, Craigie reasoned, because Gorman had no other rendezvous in England, apart from his own house. The financier’s anxiety to keep his connection with the outrages hidden had, Craigie knew, caused him to make his headquarters at the Côte d’Or with Franchot as his chief lieutenant. With the exception of the three Englishmen who had surrendered at Resthaven, and the deceased Nosey Dean, Gorman had no agents in England. Major Odell—who had been short of money for a long time—had been ‘bought’ by Gorman, but until the last few days of the affair Odell had operated from Paris. He had been the connecting link between Gorman and Franchot for some months.
The French connection, Craigie reasoned, explained why Lavering had been lured to France (Gorman had deliberately gone to Paris to entice the American across the Channel). Corinne the dancer had been intended as a decoy for Lavering, but the threat from Department Z had made Gorman change his plans and rely on the ‘arsenic treatment’ to keep Lavering under his control. Thus he had been safe in allowing the American to leave the nursing-home in Paris. At any time Lavering’s supply (unknown to Lavering himself) could have been withdrawn. (That Bob Lavering would have been the power behind the Wheat Pool was evidenced less than a month later, when his father died suddenly from natural causes.) Craigie could discover no reason for the destruction by fire of the nursing-home; Beresford suggested, reasonably, that in the home was ample evidence of the poisoning to which Lavering had been subjected, and the fire was intended to destroy that evidence.
“Maybe yuh’re right,” admitted Josiah Long, who was one of the four people present at the conversation when these things were explained.
“What was Solly Lewistein so scared of?” Fellowes asked.
“He knew that Adele Fayne had been poisoning Lavering,” said Craigie, “and he knew about the murder of Williams too. Both of them were completely under Gorman’s thumb, and were frightened to death that they would be charged as accomplices after the fact of Williams’ murder.”
Beresford grinned, then scowled. He had seen the knife in Solly Lewistein’s throat, and it had not been pleasant.
“Odell was up to his neck in it, was he?” asked Long.
“Yes,” said Beresford. “I suspected that gentleman was deeper than we thought when I heard that he was a gambler, and short of money.”
“It was lucky you had that last-minute idea,” said the Chief Commissioner.
“It was luckier that Craigie thought of going to the bungalow looking, at a distance, like Odell,” said Beresford. “If Gorman hadn’t been caught out by that, there would have been the devil to pay at Resthaven.”
“Would have been?” asked Josiah Long mildly.
“You be quiet,” Beresford grinned, “or we’ll have you deported.”
Josiah Long blinked. He was feeling the effects of his encounter with Gorman, and the stuff with which he had been doped had weakened him to such an extent that he had been unable to be in at the death, a fact which rankled deeply. Beresford cheered him, and drank his health in Gordon Craigie’s whisky (for the conversation took place in the holy of holies, Department Z) and then departed, for he had an appointment with five young and hearty gentlemen, being the Arran Twins, Dodo Trale, Wally Davidson and Robert Curtis. The meeting of those five and Beresford was hilarious, and was a celebration continued a long time after Beresford had left.
Beresford thereafter cleared up several jobs which needed doing, assured himself that Bob Lavering was in good hands, and, when he reached his flat, suggested in so many words to Sam Tricker that Maria would be a necessity at the flat in the future.
“And as,” he said very seriously, “we haven’t got room for more than two bedrooms, Sam, you’d better be popping the question. I’ll be your best man——”
Sammivel’s face split into the widest beam that Beresford had ever seen on it.
After these things, Beresford called on the Chesters to see Valerie, and for a while they talked. In consequence of the things they said, Valerie had spent a hectic twelve hours buying many things, and out of her experience Diane Chester helped her.
Soon afterwards Valerie and Tony Beresford dined together in the restaurant-car of the Dover boat-train. The last placard that Beresford saw in England proclaimed a fall in petrol prices.
“And that,” smiled the big man, “is a very pleasant wedding present.”
His wife smiled, for the future looked very bright.
Leopold Gorman was taken to Farningham Hospital, and after an operation on his damaged knee, was transferred to a police nursing-home. The third day after his arrival he was found dead from arsenic poisoning. Gordon Craigie knew that the men who had sheltered the financier during his career had not dared to face the consequences of his trial and the subsequent revelations.
Craigie was pleased rather than sorry. He knew that the plot to control world markets had failed, that Governments were taking precautions against any panic reactions, and that those men who had supported Gorman with their money would crash, financially, soon after Gorman died.
It so happened that within a month of that death four suicides shook the stock markets of the world. Only Miccowiski, in Russia, faced the consequences of his failure, and he suffered as most men suffered who failed not only themselves but also the Soviet.
But the affair which had started with the International Economic Conference had other repercussions. Major Gulliver Odell was hung for the murder of Nosey Dean and Nicholas Williams, although throughout his trial he kept silent about Gorman, hoping that he would gain a reprieve. Adele Fayne left the stage; without Solly Lewistein she was like a rudderless ship, but after her hysteria at Resthaven she altered, mentally, for the better. No charge was pressed against her; Craigie knew that she had been nothing but a tool, and that there was nothing to fear from her by herself.
Craigie thought of these things, and then of the Arrans, who were soon to start on another job of work. Timothy was quieter than before the Lavering affair. T
he death of Corinne had affected him deeply. Craigie knew, however, that a steadier Timothy would be a better agent; he would be able to replace Beresford, whose marriage automatically cut him off from Department Z’s list of agents. Curtis and Davidson, moreover, joined that select list, two men who were likely to do well.
It had been a bad beginning, Craigie told himself, but it had cleaned up well. Gorman’s French assassins had been deported, and Piquet would look after them, together with Franchot, at the Côte d’Or. The three English gunmen would hang, although their trial had not yet started—Odell’s had come first, for as little sensation as possible was wanted by the Men Who Mattered.
Craigie thought, suddenly, of the registry office marriage at which he had been a witness, and smiled when he recalled the slim, calm loveliness of Valerie Lester. And then he knocked the tobacco from the bowl of his pipe and leaned back in his armchair.
THE END
This edition published in 2015 by Ipso Books
Ipso Books is a division of Peters Fraser + Dunlop Ltd
Drury House, 34-43 Russell Street, London WC2B 5HA
Copyright © John Creasey, 1935
All rights reserved
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1
The Man Who Did Not Speak
A little flutter of applause rose from the spectators as the ball slammed against the pavilion rails. A man ran leisurely after it, his face very brown against the whiteness of his shirt. He picked up the ball and threw it effortlessly towards the wicket-keeper, who took it off the first bounce and tossed it to the bowler, who in his turn caught it one-handed and walked back for his run. A short, stout man, his red face split by a set of splendid teeth, fiddled with his pad buckle, tapped a spot on the pitch, took his stance and waited for the next ball. Through the silence over the ground, a silence punctuated by the twittering of small birds and the occasional caw-caw of a low-flying rook, the pounding of the bowler’s feet came clearly.
‘Long run, that fellow takes,’ murmured the Rev. Denbigh Morse, tipping his clerical straw further over his eyes.
‘And on a day like this,’ sighed the clergyman’s neighbour, Colonel Martin Wyett; a tall, stout, perspiring man.
‘But effortless,’ said Mary Randall, niece to both the cleric and the soldier.
The cleric said ‘Hmmm’ and the soldier said ‘Ah!’ They were both past middle age, and both old blues. Cricket was as much a part of them as eating and drinking.
Mary Randall watched the bowler’s final leap, and saw the red ball fly from his hand. There was something fascinating about that fast bowler. There was the concentrated energy of thirteen stone behind each ball, but it was delivered effortlessly. A little card in her hand told that he had bowled nineteen overs, with seven maidens and thirty runs—no mean performance on an August day with the temperature eighty-one in the shade, and heaven-knew-what in the sun.
‘Ah!’ The exclamation exploded from the Colonel’s lips.
‘Got him!’ said the Rev. Denbigh Morse, sitting upright and removing his straw altogether. The little white circle round his forehead, glistening with sweat, would have amused his niece at any other time, but she was intent on the game.
The ball hurtled against the stumps. The wicket-keeper made a joyous but ineffectual grab at a flying bail. The red-faced batsman waved his bat cheerfully at the bowler, and turned towards the pavilion. The bowler grinned back, and dropped to the grass, his limbs spread-eagled. Half a dozen fieldsmen followed suit, while the others gathered round the wicket and held the usual inquest.
‘Kenyon’s third, all clean bowled,’ said Piggot, a small, wiry man who was relaxing in this homely atmosphere of country house cricket from the strenuous round of county grounds. ‘He’d create a riot at Lord’s, on his day.’
‘And he’s bowling as fast as when he started,’ said Driver, who was skippering Randall’s Eleven against Colonel Wyett’s strong combination of county and university players. (The Colonel owned Greylands, where the game was being played, and treated the cricket field with a reverence that his brother-in-law, the Vicar, might have envied for his church).
‘Why doesn’t he play more?’ asked Mick Randall. Mick had two religions: cricket and his sister.
Driver shrugged. ‘I don’t suppose he’s in England for two consecutive months in the year.’
‘Man in,’ said Piggot.
The inquest was over. Kenyon picked up the ball and strolled back for his run. The rites of initiating the incoming batsman were performed. Kenyon’s feet pounded the grass. The ball pitched a trifle short, and went away to the off. The bat flashed out, fatally, there was a click of leather on wood, and Mick Randall, at first slip, flung himself sideways. The ball smacked into his left hand and stuck. That thrill of sheer joy which is the right of any cricketer who makes a good catch went through him. The batsman walked pavilionwards, disconsolate.
Kenyon strolled towards the inquest.
‘Good work, Randall,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think you could reach it.’
‘More luck than judgment,’ Randall disclaimed.
‘It wasn’t luck that you got off the mark quickly,’ returned Kenyon. ‘Well, Sam—what chance of getting ‘em out before lunch?’
‘Depends on you,’ said Sam Driver. ‘Five wickets to go, and forty minutes to do it in. The best men have gone, of course. I’m glad you got rid of Serle. He was getting set, and he can hit like Jupiter. Hallo—man in.’
Kenyon strolled back, thoughtfully. A slight, rather enigmatic smile curved his lips. He’d got rid of Serle; Serle with the plump red face and the splendid teeth. Driver didn’t know it, but the duel between the fast bowler and Arnold Serle had much more in it than straightforward cricket. ‘In fact,’ Kenyon told himself, as he started his run, ‘I’d give a lot to get rid of him as quickly, in that contest more serious than this. Damn, a full toss. He’ll swipe it.’
The incoming batsman did swipe it, but not where it deserved. It shot upwards, high into the heavens, and the wicketkeeper stood waiting for it, his hands held upwards as though imploring manna. Manna came. Another murmur of applause ran round the circle of spectators, for Kenyon’s hat-trick.
Twenty-five minutes later Mick Randall took an easy catch in slips, and Colonel Wyett’s Eleven were all out for the paltry—in view of the plumb wicket—score of a hundred and twenty-three. Kenyon’s bag was six for thirty-five. Mary Randall had a feminine passion for the arithmetical niceties of the game.
Her brother waved to her, and spoke to Kenyon, who was walking with him. Since that brief congratulation on his first catch Mick Randall had developed a great admiration for the big man—Kenyon stood six feet two.
‘You haven’t met Mary, have you? My sister, I mean?’
‘No,’ admitted Kenyon, looking at the little group towards which Randall headed him, and wondering whether Mary was the tall, angular woman dressed in abominable red, the fat, dumpy schoolgirl who had cornered the Colonel, or the tall, slim girl, dressed in a plain cream-coloured dress, with a wide-brimmed hat set aslant a head of dark brown hair.
It would be the slim girl, he hoped. It was. As he approached her and she smiled at Mick Randall, Kenyon was suddenly aware that she was lovely. It was not a loveliness easily defined. Her lips were perhaps a shade too full, her nose tip-tilted, her chin was pleasantly rounded, with a thrust that some take to mean determination, but Kenyon doubted whether chins and characters had anything in common. Her eyes—grey, wide-set and clear—held frankness; her complexion, despite the heat, was good.
‘A good catch, Mick,’ she said. Kenyon noted the a
ttractive huskiness of her voice.
‘Couldn’t have made it if he hadn’t given me the chance,’ said Randall. ‘Mary, meet Jim Kenyon—Mary, my sister.’
Kenyon smiled. He had looked attractive from a distance; now his clear-cut features, large, but not too large, held handsomeness with an indefinable suggestion of strength. He was darker than the girl; and his eyes were flecked grey.
‘You ought to feel tired,’ said Mary.
‘I am.’ Kenyon nodded towards a deck chair. ‘Do you mind if…?’
As all three sat down, the Vicar sauntered towards them, proffering cigarettes. Kenyon smoked. A small crowd of spectators, including the Colonel—who came to congratulate the man who had done most to humble his, the Colonel’s, team—maintained a sporadic conversation. Kenyon felt lazy, but his ears were keyed to the sound of Mary Randall’s voice. Finally a procession was started towards the house and lunch.
Kenyon was with the Randalls. Randall père, who had arrived at Greylands too late for the early play, was pleased with himself, for he liked to win the annual match with Wyett’s Eleven. Michael Randall senior belonged to the old school of diplomats. He was attached to the Embassy in Paris, a fact which annoyed him because little cricket was played in France, and in few countries had the post-war hurdy-gurdy played a more discordant tune. White-haired, he had that very clear, pinkish complexion which seems to be the right of English gentlemen who are temperate in most things except their devotion to sports. He took to Kenyon immediately.
A pleasant family, Kenyon thought.
Probably his expression revealed something of this, for at that moment the big man looked across the table, to find Timothy Arran regarding him. Toby Arran, one of the Arran twins often called—and with good reason—the Unholy,* was screwing his ugly face into a grimace. To one who knew that face well that could easily be interpreted as a wink.
And without apparent cause, Kenyon felt himself blushing. At the same moment Timothy Arran, his expression guileless, leaned across the table to ask if Mary Randall had noticed and admired, as he had, Kenyon’s rosy, schoolgirl complexion.