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

by John Creasey

  ‘Darned shame,’ he told her gently, ‘that you have to be bothered like this, but it won’t last much longer. There’s just a suspicion of a shine on your nose. Do you think…’

  Mary smiled quickly, helplessly. That Kenyon could talk with such apparent lightness of heart, with three guns trained on him, completely baffled her. But she found a certain satisfaction in the fact that Serle was beginning to look a little ridiculous.

  Kenyon seemed to read her thoughts.

  ‘It’s not all courage,’ he said modestly. ‘Some of it’s confidence. You see, Arnold and I have been having a little game all the evening. First off, one of his men called to see me. I followed him. Arnold woke up, and let one of his men follow me; one of mine followed his, and so on, ad infinitum. I’m beginning to tire of it—aren’t you, Arnold?’

  Serle’s smile remained, but some of his confidence had ebbed. He was watching Kenyon suspiciously.

  ‘I’ve no cards up my sleeves,’ the big man added, shaking both arms vigorously. ‘So how can I help you?’

  Serle swallowed hard. There was no mirth in his smile, only the wolfishness that seemed to take over when he lost his temper.

  ‘I arranged this little display,’ he said thinly, ‘to demonstrate that I mean it when I say it is dangerous, Kenyon. I won’t brook interference. I have certain business with Miss Randall, and would rather conduct it without your help. This…’

  ‘Little display?’ suggested Kenyon helpfully.

  One of the gunmen stirred. The other grunted.

  ‘In plain words, Kenyon, keep away from me and keep away from Miss Randall,’ Serle ordered. ‘Do you understand?’

  Kenyon looked quizzically at the girl. She was sitting bolt upright on the sofa, and he hardly knew what to make of her expression—until the slightest of smiles curved her lips.

  His eyebrows rose.

  ‘You—er—don’t want me hanging around?’

  ‘Nicely put,’ Serle conceded, recovering his temper.

  ‘I’d so like to oblige a man who doesn’t object to driving fast bowling,’ Kenyon said pleasantly, ‘but, frankly, I can’t. As a cricketer, Serle, you’re good. As everything else, you’re not so good, and we’ll reverse the situation. Mind if I smoke?’

  He dipped his hand into his pocket, and the two gunmen raised their automatics. But Kenyon’s hand was in and out like a shot, withdrawing nothing more sinister than a pipe, nicely polished, nicely burned and nicely balanced.

  ‘I don’t quite understand you,’ snapped Serle.

  ‘I was afraid you wouldn’t,’ said Kenyon, ‘but I’ve already told you about it once. You say to me—scram! I say to you—skedaddle! I’ve the law and order behind me, and you…’

  One of the gunmen stepped forward. Kenyon surveyed the rather effeminate face and figure, the too perfectly-cut clothes, the clean-shaven cheeks and the eyes. The eyes. They were hard and grey and expressionless.

  ‘You’re taking too much from him,’ the man accused Serle.

  ‘And that,’ said Kenyon witheringly, ‘is an opinion from your chief parlourmaid, Arnold. Pretty, isn’t he?’

  The man swore, and Kenyon’s eyes blazed.

  ‘Cut that out!’ he warned. ‘And listen, Daisy—you’re getting too close to me for safety. Things are likely to happen at any minute. I’ve a large number of friends inside the hotel…’

  ‘He’s bluffing!’ snapped the second gunman.

  ‘And just to make quite sure that you don’t run away with yourselves and try to shoot me,’ Kenyon’s voice was even and very hard: ‘I’m holding this pipe between my teeth. It’s an interesting little friend—look at it.’

  The three men stared, and so did Mary Randall. The utter self-confidence apparent in the delivery of this statement staggered her; she could easily understand why the others were hesitant.

  Arnold Serle turned colour. The two gunmen backed away. They saw a little round hole in the bowl of the pipe, and from the hole a small, black needle-point projected.

  ‘An interesting little thing,’ said Kenyon, ‘picked up in Monrovia. This poison, by the way, isn’t deadly, but it’s very painful. It causes gangrene quickly. One poor devil I saw…’

  Serle’s cheeks were mottled now, and his eyes glaring.

  ‘You’ll slip up,’ he swore viciously. ‘I’ll get you, Kenyon, if it’s the last thing…’

  ‘You do,’ supplied Kenyon. ‘I know. I’m going to write a book one day, about the Threats That Bad Men Make. The only trouble is that there’ll be a remarkable similarity between them. You were saying…’

  ‘And keep away from Miss Randall,’ ordered Serle.

  ‘You’re not leaving us?’ asked Kenyon, politely. He still gripped the pipe between his teeth, and he was smiling at the anxiety of the gunmen to get away. ‘Pity. I thought this little—display, didn’t you call it?—was going to cause some trouble and so did my friends downstairs. Give my regards to your boss, Arnold.’

  The last sentence came casually, and while Kenyon was looking at the girl. He sensed Serle’s shock and swinging round, saw the consternation on the fat man’s face.

  ‘Close the door,’ he invited gently.

  The door snapped shut behind Serle and the two gunmen a moment later, and Kenyon crossed the room and turned the key in the lock.

  ‘Which,’ he remarked to Mary, unrepentant, ‘is somewhat compromising. But in the circumstances—we’re having a lot of circumstances today, aren’t we?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have believed that—possible,’ said the girl.

  ‘Good Lord,’ he protested, ‘there was nothing in it. It was a stunt pulled to impress me and frighten you. None of them would have actually fired a shot. There are things you can do in London on the day that a general call has been sent out for you, and there are things you can’t. Murder is one that you can’t. Again, the pipe trick is genuine, and they know it. They have an engagingly comprehensive knowledge of me,’ he added with a grin, ‘and naturally they didn’t want to take chances.’

  Mary rose and crossed the room to where he stood. Smiling diffidently up at him, she said: ‘I only hope that I shall be able to thank you one day.’

  ‘Look at me like that at least once every time I meet you, and you’ve more than done so. Now’—he turned to a telephone in the corner—’a couple of minutes on this and we’ll be able to start talking. We’ve a lot to talk about.’

  His couple of minutes talking to Craigie were extended to five. He finished eventually and turned to the girl.

  ‘Ready?’ he asked.

  She nodded, and began to speak. Fear, anxiety, worry—all of them were mirrored in her face, but there was relief there as well.

  Kenyon listened for twenty minutes. He made no comment and the only change in his expression was the increasing hardness of his eyes. When she had finished, he nodded.

  ‘I see.’

  But his eyes belied the words. He understood, now, part of the reason for Mary Randall’s fear. He wondered whether he understood all of it. And for the first time he wondered whether Arnold Serle hadn’t too many cards in his hands.

  ‘Or, rather,’ he murmured, ‘whether Arnold Serle’s big shot hasn’t. Serle is only an agent. He gave himself away when I dropped that hint this evening.’

  ‘You think there’s someone superior to Serle?’

  ‘Did I speak aloud?’ asked Kenyon. ‘It’s a bad habit that comes from years of solitude. Did I tell you what a lonely life I lead, Mary? A poor orphan, no home, no friend and only Stinger…’

  ‘Stinger?’

  ‘My man,’ he explained. ‘He’s about halfway through the Apocalypse, and then I’m afraid he’ll try Christian Science or the Four Square Gospel. You’ll have to meet Stinger.’

  ‘Not for a little while,’ Mary protested faintly, ‘if he’s anything like you.’

  ‘That’s what I call lack of appreciation,’ mourned Kenyon, and knew from Mary’s smile how much easier she was in her mind, now that she had t
old her story. She had had no one with whom to share the burden of the last month; and she had been very, very frightened.

  ‘Now,’ he added firmly, getting up from the sofa: ‘You get to bed. I’ve half a dozen men round the Éclat—that’s if you did telephone the police. Did you?’

  ‘Yes. I’d just finished when Serle came.’

  ‘Good,’ said Kenyon. ‘Then you’re all right—I can promise you that. Goodnight, my dear.’

  She offered her hand. Kenyon took it, and then very gently he touched it with his lips. There was a light in Mary’s eyes that had not been there before.

  At one-thirty-two on that eventful night, a Lancia drew up outside the small doorway in the street leading from Whitehall, and two men of medium height and a decided similarity of figure, climbed to the pavement.

  ‘Leave us here,’ said Toby Arran. ‘We’ll walk back.’

  The chauffeur nodded and the car drove off. Toby looked glumly at his twin. The expression on his ugly face was mournful. Tim’s exquisite features were drawn in an unhappy smile.

  ‘First time it’s happened,’ mumbled Tim, ‘so we’ll have to try and carry it off with a rush.’

  ‘Put it across him,’ agreed Toby.

  They walked towards the door which Kenyon had opened earlier in the day, went into the small hall and waited. After a few moments a beam of light broke through the darkness, and the sound of a man’s voice floated downwards.

  ‘Come up,’ said Gordon Craigie, ‘but be careful. Jim’s here, and he’s breathing fire.’

  ‘Kenyon!’ groaned Timothy.

  ‘Him!’ moaned Toby.

  ‘Me,’ said Kenyon, grimly. He watched the two men enter Craigie’s office, and glared at them. ‘What do you call yourselves? Clever? All you had to do was watch the Randalls. You’ve lost two of them, and the other one’s asleep.’

  ‘We couldn’t help…’ began Timothy, eagerly.

  ‘Took us absolutely from behind,’ said Toby.

  ‘Didn’t have an earthly,’ continued Timothy. ‘I’ve a lump on my head as big as a pigeon’s egg…’

  ‘Walloped with a lump of lead piping,’ said Toby.

  ‘Light badinage apart,’ said Timothy, drawling less than usual, ‘we just fell into a trap. Serle baited it by making a phoney telephone call and “planning” to get Mick Randall just outside the Manor grounds. We rolled up to stop the dirty work and…’

  ‘Ran into about a dozen of the swine,’ grunted Toby. His dark eyes searched Kenyon’s. ‘I—I wouldn’t have lost Mary for the world, old man. I hope…’

  ‘She’s all right,’ said Kenyon.

  Craigie, who had been filling his pipe, interrupted.

  ‘Now you’ve made your apologies for falling down on the job,’ he suggested, but with a twinkle in his eyes, ‘we’ll get to business. Kenyon’s only just arrived. He’s been busy…’

  ‘We didn’t deserve that,’ protested Timothy.

  Craigie ignored him. ‘He’ll need a lot of help, and you two will be with him. As well as Knight…’ He broke off to ask: ‘What time did Knight leave Greylands?’

  ‘Half past one,’ said Timothy. ‘Hasn’t he reported?’

  ‘No.’ Craigie frowned. Then: ‘I think Trale, Best, Davidson and Curtis had better make up your number. You two’—he nodded to the Arrans—’know them all as Department men, as Kenyon will when you’ve introduced him. This isn’t a job,’ added the Chief, with a frankness rare in him, ‘where it’s wise for you not to know each other.’

  ‘I’ll meet them in the morning,’ Kenyon said. ‘Meanwhile I think you’d better hear what’s worrying Mary Randall.’

  ‘You know?’ Timothy looked startled.

  ‘Coercion and unfair influence,’ said Toby, with sudden fire.

  Kenyon seemed not to hear them.

  ‘The full story can go in my report,’ he went on. ‘It won’t help us at all, being merely a recital of the way in which Mary discovered what she knows. And that is…’

  He cleared his throat. The others waited expectantly.

  ‘Just this,’ said Kenyon. ‘Her uncles, Wyett and Denbigh Morse, the clergyman, are being drugged. So is her aunt. She doesn’t know what the drug is, but she does know that Wyett, kept off it for a day, nearly went mad.’

  ‘My—God!’ breathed Toby Arran. It was the only sound in the large office.

  ‘And she is afraid that young Mick’s being drugged, too,’ Kenyon continued. ‘Serle keeps worrying her to do something for him. He won’t say what it is, yet, but it means that she’ll have to leave England for several weeks. And he threatens to make Mick and her father as dependent on the drug as Wyett and Morse, unless she obeys him.’

  There was a short, tense silence. Timothy Arran’s neck turned an angry red, and Toby brushed sweat from his forehead.

  Gordon Craigie’s meerschaum dropped from his lips. ‘We’d guessed that drugs of a kind were in it,’ he said quietly, ‘but we had no proof. It seems like hashish, or one of the morphine group. We’ve a start now, Jim.’

  His voice—quiet, calm, eminently reasonable—broke the tension. Toby Arran produced cigarettes, and three spirals of smoke added to the haze from Craigie’s meerschaum.

  ‘But,’ continued the Chief of Department Z, ‘there’s something else in this besides drugs. There’s someone else besides Arnold Serle. What and who it is we haven’t a notion. But I think the whole thing’s coming to a head, and we’ve got to break that head before it breaks for itself.’

  ‘What you mean,’ drawled Timothy, gently, ‘is that you’ve got to nip the volcano in the bud.’

  ‘Don’t fool,’ snapped Toby. ‘It’s something new—cricket and crime…’

  ‘Are you still leaving this to me?’ Kenyon asked.

  Craigie nodded. ‘Certainly. Contact with the office as often as you can, of course. You can have as many men as you like. I…’

  He broke off as the telephone bell rang: ‘Just a minute.’ The three agents smoked in silence while he talked. Then as he finished and turned towards them, they knew that the message concerned Arnold Serle.

  ‘That man Jim took from Serle’s flat,’ he said quietly. There was something in the evenness of his voice, in the grimness of his eyes, that made the others realise the importance of his message, and the atmosphere grew suddenly tense. ‘He is dead.’

  ‘Killed?’ Kenyon’s voice was terse.

  ‘He went berserk,’ said Craigie. ‘They were taking him from Sloane Square to Scotland Yard. He had been difficult for an hour; on the way out of the station he threw himself in front of a car. He died instantly.’

  Kenyon drummed his fingers on the arms of his chair. The Arrans grunted. Craigie stepped to the fireplace and began to fill his pipe.

  Then added slowly: ‘You don’t need me to tell you what happened.’

  Kenyon’s face paled.

  ‘Colonel Wyett,’ he said, ‘Went mad when he was kept off the drug for a day…?’

  Craigie nodded. The Arrans remained still.

  ‘So Ali was an addict,’ Kenyon summed up grimly. ‘He needed a shot of the stuff to keep him going, and couldn’t get it.’

  There was a short silence. All four men knew the power of drugs. Some left men with a craving for more; some left the victim depressed almost to melancholia; and some brought on that raving madness, those terrible fits of fury that could only be eased by more and more of the very stuff that was killing them. They well knew that once a man’s system was thoroughly used to drugs they were more important than food and drink, and that without them, the victim died—horribly.

  ‘Who called you?’ Kenyon’s voice was dry.

  ‘Miller,’ Craigie told him. ‘The body is at the Yard now.’

  ‘I’ll go over,’ said Kenyon. ‘You two had better make for your flat.’ He heaved himself out of his chair, and waved genially to the others as he made for the door. But there was no smile in his eyes.

  7

  Kenyon Sees The Mark


  Superintendent Horace Miller’s fair hair was ruffled, an outward sign of an inner irritability. He was in his over-small office at the Yard, and when Kenyon arrived the room seemed definitely overcrowded.

  ‘Of course,’ said Miller, bitterly, ‘you would do something like that, wouldn’t you? The first time for a week that I’ve been in bed before the small hours and you drag me out.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ protested Kenyon, with a faint grin. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I had a call from Sloane Square,’ grunted Miller. ‘The story was that a big man handed over a handcuffed prisoner, and said that it was fife and death that I should see the prisoner. I got up and went to Sloane Square. I guessed you were in it, from the constable’s description. The prisoner was getting restive. We managed to get him into a car after a struggle, but he must have had the bones of a contortionist. He simply slipped through our hands like butter, jumped out and ran straight into a Jag.’

  Distress was in Miller’s voice: as Kenyon knew, it was pure fallacy to suppose their work made policemen callous. ‘It was nasty, Kenyon, but all over in a second. Just a scream and the horrible sound of grinding bones. Who was he?’

  Kenyon explained briefly and Miller’s eyes widened.

  ‘A friend of Serle, eh?’ He looked thoughtful. ‘What’s happening in that quarter?’

  ‘Are you asking officially?”

  The policeman eyed him steadily. They were old acquaintances rather than friends, but they reached an understanding rapidly.

  ‘No,’ said Miller. ‘I’ll keep it under my hat.’

  ‘The Rensham job,’ Kenyon told him.

  ‘Rensham?’ Miller exclaimed. ‘That’s cropped up again! I believed it had been stifled.’

  ‘But not killed,’ said the big man.

  Both men thought back; Miller, with extra thoroughness.

  The murder of Lord Hugo Rensham had created a blaze of publicity which had been quenched with the suddenness of a candle in a rain-storm. Rensham had been a member of an important family with connections throughout the country, and the scandal of drugs had never broken cover. It had never been allowed to. Miller, in charge of the investigations, had discovered his progress hampered at every turn. He had, in fact, been driving his head against a brick wall of official disapproval. Even the Commissioner, Sir William Fellowes, normally zealous for the fair-minded treatment of his men, had given him no help.