John Creasey Box Set 1: First Came a Murder, Death Round the Corner, The Mark of the Crescent (Department Z)

by John Creasey

  ‘But I’ll deny meself,’ he maintained grimly, ‘I’ll fight the devil, Boss, and all of them painted ‘ussies.’

  ‘What are you going to do when you fall in love?’ demanded Kenyon.

  ‘I did, once,’ said his valet, scowling. ‘She died, praise be. ‘Ad a proper do over one gel I—sir,’ Stinger would break off resentfully, ‘you are hegging me hon.’

  Thus Stinger. Kenyon had taken him on every jaunt and would not have parted with him for a fortune.

  ‘What’s ‘appening…?’ demanded the little man.

  ‘We’re likely to be dodging about a bit,’ Kenyon told him. ‘And I might drop in at any time, Jem, so don’t you go turning this place into a…’

  ‘Out o’ yer own mouth,’ said Stinger sourly.

  ‘A meeting-house for the reformed.’

  Stinger admitted himself out-manoeuvred, by changing the subject.

  ‘Larst time you never knew where you where,’ he complained, ‘I got a lump on the back o’ me head when a bloke coshed me.’

  ‘For which reason,’ said Kenyon, ‘remember the eleventh commandment. Beware of all gas-fitters, electric-fitters, and gentlemen from the water-works. Distrust canvassers and ask all visiting policemen to prove their identity. Admit no one, man, woman or child, unless they are under your eyes all the time and you know them well. Take no notice of telephone messages nor urgent letters that would take you away from the flat. And Stinger…’

  Stinger created the peculiar impression that his mouth was watering.

  ‘Looks like being a proper do, don’t it?’ he said.

  Kenyon agreed that it did. For his part, the valet was not sure whether his employer was a glorified cracksman or a private dick. He didn’t much care, although he knew that he was a friend of Dusty’s, which suggested that he was a private dick.

  Dusty Miller—or Superintendent Horace Miller, C.I.D.—had once been a thorn in Stinger’s side.

  Kenyon went into his room, selected two automatic pistols from a small collection hidden in a drawer in his wardrobe, slipped a gas-pistol and a small gas-mask into his pocket, and told himself he was ready. Stinger would be packing enough clothes to last him for a few days at Greylands.

  Jim Kenyon thought with mixed feelings of that picturesque little village in Somerset. He compared it with some of the places where his work for the Department had sent him. Delhi, with its smell and white glare, its minarets and mendicants; Serle had been heard to say he had seen him at Delhi. New York, with its astonishing skyline, and its crammed cement canyons. Rio, especially the long, flat view from the hills outside. Liberia, that West African plague-spot, where a few heat-weary whites helped the natives to produce rubber. Canton, Stamboul, Moscow, and a dozen other capitals and countries. For the first time he was working in England, and it had led him to that supremely peaceful Somerset village, with its Manor, its squire, its rector and—and Mary Randall.

  Mary Randall and the Department didn’t mix. And yet they were inextricably interwoven at that moment. The girl knew something which made her afraid. He had no idea what it was, but he had seen fear in her eyes.

  There was another problem. How long would Serle stay at Greylands? Nothing could ever fill Kenyon’s thoughts like Department Z. The risks and the adventure, the constant fight against the unknown and the unlikely, appealed to some instinct in him. And yet he could not say, honestly, that he had ever been obsessed by the games he had played—to call them games was a little foible—as he was by Mary Randall.

  ‘I suppose,’ he told himself, with his puckish smile, ‘that I’ll have to face it.’

  Stinger poked his head round the bedroom door, and said that he didn’t know whether Mr. Kenyon was getting deaf, but the telephone had been ringing. Kenyon hurried into the living room.

  A low-pitched, unfamiliar voice answered his hallo.

  ‘Mr. Kenyon?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘Ah. Mr. Kenyon, I don’t want to appear melodramatic, but there is a little affair in which you are interesting yourself…’

  Just for a moment, Kenyon stiffened, his eyes hard. Then, suddenly, he laughed—and the voice at the other end of the wire stopped. There was a pause. Then:

  ‘Mr. Kenyon. Are you still there?’

  ‘I’m just recovering.’ He said it beautifully, only half stifling derisive laughter as he chided: ‘I may be wrong, but you really shouldn’t…’

  ‘What?’ The voice was higher-pitched. Kenyon had the impression that it was vaguely foreign.

  ‘You shouldn’t work so monotonously to rule.’ Kenyon smothered another chuckle. ‘You’re warning me, and it’s been done so often. I stopped playing that game long ago. But if you really want to say it word for word, carry on. Can you remember it, or has it been written down for you?’

  ‘I was afraid you might take it like this.’ The speaker cleared his throat, then added stiffly: ‘You will be a lot safer in London than at Greylands. So will your friends.’

  ‘Don’t worry about my friends,’ said Kenyon cheerfully. ‘Just put the fear of God into me. How’s Arnold?’

  The sound from the other end of the line might have been a laugh or gasp; Kenyon charitably assumed the former.

  ‘Serle? He is a very good friend of mine, Kenyon, if not quite in the way you think he is. But I’m wasting time.’

  ‘You never said a truer word.’

  ‘One of these days…’ began the other, but Kenyon cut him short.

  ‘One of these days,’ he mimicked, ‘you’ll grow up. Your methods, Ben Ali, need polishing…’

  There was a silence that could almost be felt.

  ‘He was stunned with shock,’ Kenyon said brightly. ‘I once met a bloke who spoke English exactly like you at a spot just north of Busra. Cunning little devil. He died of thirst. Such a funny thing, thirst; it comes on you every time you haven’t a drop to drink, and…’

  ‘Just remember this,’ the man interrupted. ‘Keep away from Greylands, Kenyon, if you value your…’

  ‘I can’t let you say it,’ protested Kenyon, sorrowfully, ‘so I’m going to cut you off. I found the cartridge case, by the way. A .25 wasn’t it?’

  The line went dead. Kenyon replaced the receiver thoughtfully, and the smile on his lips deepened. He was reasonably sure that the speaker was an Arab. Like the man whom he had chased after the pavilion fire.

  ‘Knowing something of me,’ Kenyon said, regarding his reflection in a small mirror and criticising the slight irregularity of his nose, ‘what will our Mr. Serle’s Arab friend expect me to do if he threatens danger at Greylands?’

  He picked up the telephone to report the conversation to Gordon Craigie, adding, at the end of it:

  ‘Assuming the message originated from Serle, presumably he expects me to go dashing to Greylands to be in the thick of the trouble. So the astute thing for me to do is…’

  ‘Stay in London,’ said Craigie.

  ‘Exactly,’ Kenyon agreed. ‘Because he’s obviously anxious to get me out of London.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Now listen.’ Kenyon’s voice grew persuasive. ‘I have very good reason to believe that Mr. Arnold Serle will be arriving in London by train, and that an attempt will be made on his life…’

  ‘Steady!’ protested Craigie.

  ‘That’s what you tell Miller.’

  ‘You want the stations watched, do you?’

  ‘It’s worth trying,’ said Kenyon. ‘Any excuse will do for Miller. Serle will be spotted directly he’s in town. He’ll probably shake off the flatfoots, but we will know he’s about.’

  ‘Supposing he comes by road, or air?’

  ‘He’s such a well-known man,’ said Kenyon, gently, ‘and when you come to think of it there aren’t many policemen in London, and the organisation is good.’

  ‘I’m not really sure that I want a general call for Serle.’ Craigie demurred. ‘We’ve nothing against him.’

  ‘My dear chap—’ Kenyon blessed the
fact that he knew Craigie well: ‘the official reason will be that Serle has been threatened. No one will know what we’re after. Is he worth watching, or isn’t he?’

  ‘All right,’ said Craigie, and Kenyon could imagine his lips pursing.

  4

  Kenyon Springs a Surprise

  It has been recorded in other stories of Department Z that Superintendent Horace (Dusty) Miller looked his name. He was a big, florid, blue-eyed man, with a fair moustache, and hair that somehow created the impression that he had been standing in his mill so long that he had become a figment of floating flour. It can also be said that he was a shrewd, painstaking officer, who had no objection to lending a hand in a good cause, who stood no nonsense, and believed Gordon Craigie to be little short of a genius.

  He also knew Jim Kenyon.

  Consequently, within an hour of the telephone conversation between Kenyon and the man with the foreign-sounding voice—’Let’s call him,’ Kenyon had said, ‘plain Ali’—the main roads and termini were being watched for Arnold Serle. Serle’s face and his smile were well known, and the sporting members of the police force felt that they were on a holiday task.

  One or two other things happened. Or didn’t happen. A hopeful freelance telephoned the Evening Wire from Esher, and reported that an Hispano Suiza, driven by a Mr. James Kenyon, had crashed into a telegraph-pole. The car had been badly damaged, but Mr. Kenyon had continued his journey in another car. The News Editor rang up the local police station and confirmed the story.

  Kenyon himself telephoned to the Arrans, and if Arnold Serle had means of listening in to conversation to and from the Manor he would have received his prescribed earful.

  Then Kenyon went to his Gresham Street flat, and waited. He was a patient man, and waiting did not bore him. But it was not long before the telephone bell rang.

  ‘Paddington Station,’ said Craigie. ‘Serle was followed to Victoria, and then slipped his men.’

  ‘He would,’ said Kenyon. ‘I’ll find him, though.’

  In fact, he had to look for the Serle needle in the London haystack.

  He had a word with Stinger, who had started reading the Apocalypse, and left the flat.

  Mr. Arnold Serle let himself into an inconspicuous, self-contained flat in the Sloane Square district, moved quietly through the main rooms and switched on the light in a small, windowless apartment furnished as an office. As the light flooded the room, a man struggled to his feet from the armchair.

  ‘Sleeping again,’ said Serle. His voice, and his smile, were exactly the same as when he had talked with Jim Kenyon two days before, the smile brilliant and the voice a little jerky. ‘You’ll overdo it one of these days, Ahmet Ali. Any callers?’

  The swarthy-faced man whom Kenyon would have recognised, shook his head as he rooted for cigarettes.

  ‘No, no one. Did you get through all right?’

  Serle accepted a cigarette; his smile at that moment had a wolfishness which was singularly unpleasant.

  ‘Yes… I was followed to Victoria from Paddington, which means that I am being watched…’

  ‘The police?’ Ali snapped.

  ‘Yes,’ said Serle. Grey smoke streamed towards the ceiling light. ‘Plainclothes men, but that’s nothing to go by. Did you talk to Kenyon?’

  ‘One of these days…’ began the Arab, viciously.

  ‘Kenyon has a reputation for making you feel like that. He’s such a fool—to look at. And he’s an interesting cricketer, Ali. He keeps you playing good length stuff, and then delivers a yorker or a shocking long hop, leaving you to make the mistake. That strikes me as being rather typical of Mr. Kenyon.’

  ‘Does it?’ muttered the Arab. He shared an opinion with many people that Arnold Serle talked too much. ‘You should have let me finish him at Greylands.’

  Serle regarded his man without approval.

  ‘You are too anxious, and you make too many mistakes—or you would, if I let you. Supposing you had killed Kenyon instead of frightening him?’

  ‘We wouldn’t have him to worry about.’

  ‘True. But you would have been stopped within twenty miles of Greylands. Being easily frightened, you would have talked, and your association with me would have been revealed. No,’ said Arnold Serle, with his bright smile, ‘you’re not safe to leave to your own resources.’

  The Arab said nothing.

  ‘And so,’ Serle concluded, switching on an electric kettle plugged into the wall, and pointing to a coffee tray, ‘we’ll handle him between us. Have you an evening paper?’

  ‘In the other room.’

  ‘Get it, please.’

  Five minutes later, Serle finished a survey of the back page of the Evening Wire. Kenyon and Craigie would have been interested to see the number of little crosses he had placed opposite the names of certain well-known cricketers, and they would have seen that none of the names coincided with those visitors to Greylands during the season. Then, with the sigh of a man who had done his job well, Serle scanned the headlines. The Arab poured out coffee, as he read the two-inch paragraph reporting Kenyon’s ‘accident’.

  ‘He’s swallowed the bait,’ he commented. ‘Kenyon’s out of London.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Ahmet Ali. ‘I had a message from Greylands. He’s reaching there tonight.’

  Serle drank his coffee quickly.

  ‘You should tell me about things like that without losing time,’ he said. ‘Go to his flat and fix a lamp.’

  The Arab hesitated.

  ‘It might only affect his servant,’ he protested.

  ‘It doesn’t matter whom it affects!’ Serle snapped, and the other shrank away as he flared in sudden fury: ‘Get on and do as you’re told, you cringing little…’

  He stopped as suddenly. His smile came back, and the scarlet flush in his cheeks ebbed.

  ‘You see,’ he said, ‘I am getting touchy. Strange things happen when I get bad tempered, Ali, so…’

  The Arab touched his forehead and bent low. The surliness had disappeared from his expression; he became obsequious and self-effacing.

  ‘I will go at once,’ he murmured.

  Arnold Serle heard the front door of the flat close, and smiled. Alone, he bathed and shaved, then donning silk pyjamas and a dressing-gown, relaxed in an armchair in the sitting-room of the flat and pondered the problem of Kenyon. An hour passed; two. Serle sat on, smoking and staring at the ceiling, still wondering how best to handle him.

  He had an uncomfortable feeling that James Kenyon was a cut above the other Intelligence men. Kenyon was always doing the obvious, but invariably had a second card up his sleeve. And yet he had swallowed the bait that had taken him out of London! Certain things, Serle assured himself, never failed to evoke certain reactions from men of Kenyon’s stamp….

  Just before midnight, the Arab returned. He went into Serle’s room, and waited for the Englishman to speak.

  ‘How did you get on?’ Serle asked.

  ‘The servant was out,’ said Ahmet Ali. ‘There was no trouble, no interference.’

  ‘Then go to bed,’ ordered Serle.

  The man turned away. Serle was rubbing the fingers of his right hand across the palm of his left, a habit which a thousand cricketers throughout the world would have recognised. Neither of them felt the slightest tremor of apprehension at that moment.

  Then Ali opened the door.

  He dropped back into the room suddenly, terror masking his face. And he was helped. A hand with a ten-inch span pressed against his chest; a gentle push sent him sprawling. Serle jumped out of his chair like a bullet from a gun.

  ‘I shouldn’t,’ drawled Jim Kenyon, from the door. ‘Go to that desk, I mean. There might be a gun in it, and who wants gun-play between friends?’

  He entered the room, beaming, shut the door behind him, and watched the changing expressions on Serle’s face. In Kenyon’s right hand was something which glittered a menacing blue-grey.

  ‘One big advantage,’ said Kenyon, conve
rsationally, ‘in being a Department man, is that you’re not tied by foolish rules and regulations. If a flatfoot wants a gun he must have special permission, but I can have a dozen with no one to say me nay. Convenient, isn’t it? Has friend Ali a licence for his, by the way?’

  The Arab had picked himself up and was slouching against the wall. He muttered something beneath his breath, but Kenyon seemed not to notice. Serle had recovered from the shock of the big man’s entry, and was beginning to smile.

  ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I’ll have to buy him one. You really are a surprising man, Kenyon.’

  ‘There you are.’ Kenyon glanced briefly at the Arab: ‘An unsolicited testimonial.’ He turned back to Serle. ‘I’ve put one across you,’ he told him brightly.

  Serle nodded. ‘How?’

  ‘No secrets from brother-professionals,’ said Kenyon generously. ‘I left the flat, hoodwinked you into believing that I was on the way to Greylands, sent my man out, and waited for you or yours to turn up. Yours did. After he had finished his little inspection I followed him, and here I am. Easy, isn’t it?’

  ‘Very,’ Serle conceded drily. ‘Do you smoke, Kenyon?’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll have one of my own,’ said Kenyon. ‘I once took a cigarette from a friend and it had a nasty taste. But I’ll have a match.’

  ‘What is it you’re after?’ demanded the fat man as he held a light for Kenyon.

  Suddenly he thrust the match forward into Kenyon’s face, driving a wicked left punch towards the other’s stomach as he did so. Kenyon’s head went back like lightning, his right hand fastened round Serle’s neck and he flung the other backwards, deflecting the punch and sending him thudding against the wall.

  As the fat man fell, Ahmet Ali flung himself forward. Kenyon turned, to shoot a terrific right to his jaw. The Arab’s head jolted back and he went down with a crash.

  Serle struggled to his feet, his eyes glittering. Kenyon was smiling, but there was an edge to his voice when he spoke again.

  ‘That,’ he said, ‘was unwise. I might have given you a break, but not now.’

  ‘You’ll suffer for this,’ muttered Serle.

  ‘Agreed,’ said Kenyon. ‘You burned the tip of my nose, and it’s smarting already.’ He dipped his left hand into his pocket and drew out a pair of handcuffs. The bright steel glittered beneath the light as he threw them towards the fat man.