by John Creasey
‘Five yards,’ muttered Kenyon.
The machine jockeyed along, jolting and jerking but covering the ground, till its nose actually overhung the front steps of the White House. Kenyon caught Curtis’s eye.
‘We’ll make it,’ he said, as Besset stopped the plane. ‘Tommy—take the gun.’
Besset nodded. The two big men levered themselves up and vaulted over the side of the plane. As they raced up the steps bullets spattered after them, but they reached the hall in safety; and there was a grin on Curtis’s face.
‘Warm, ain’t it?’
‘A darned sight warmer than I like,’ Kenyon told him.
‘Try Lightwear,’ said Curtis. ‘The stuff with the little holes. Ah—would you!’
As he spoke a dark-skinned man showed at the top of the stairs of White House. Curtis fired and the man fell. Blood streamed from his forehead.
The hall, a large one, led to the rear of the house by a narrow passage alongside the main staircase directly opposite the front door. Four small doors opened from it.
‘I’m not sure,’ muttered Kenyon, ‘that we’re not as badly off as we were before.’
He opened the door of what appeared to be an empty room in the front of the house. ‘Get ‘em in here,’ grunted Kenyon.
The silence in the house was eerie, after the din outside. The place had an uninhabited air. Possibly Serle’s force had been concentrated in the grounds and the house itself was deserted. If that were so, it was almost too good to be true, but it seemed true enough. Apart from a few futile shots, there was no interference as Knight and the girl were carried through the hall into the empty room. Wyett hobbled along by himself. Besset, the machine-gun slewed round so that it covered the whole of the front of the house grounds, held off any attempts to rush them.
‘I’d like to look through the place,’ said Kenyon, ‘but it’s best to wait.’
Curtis seemed disappointed, but he raised no objection. For a minute there was a lull. Then, very clearly, there came the sound of another aeroplane. Curtis was grinning. Kenyon wiped the sweat from his forehead, and searched for a cigarette.
‘Tim and Toby,’ he muttered. ‘And the others. There shouldn’t be much trouble now.’
Curtis looked even more disappointed.
Just ten minutes later, half-a-dozen cheerful young men made their way from the second plane towards the house. They came in single file, and they were armed, but they met with no resistance. In the distance, they could hear the humming of several powerful car engines.
Toby Arran was the first of the newcomers to enter the hall.
‘It’s very inconvenient,’ he said, with a scowl, ‘leaving the bus outside. I nearly tore my trousers.’
‘I did,’ mourned Timothy, close behind him.
‘Leather coats don’t suit either of you,’ said Kenyon, rudely, ‘and you weren’t born to be funny. What did you see coming down?’
‘Couple of dozen blokes legging it for some cars, half a mile away,’ said Toby. ‘They looked worried. We obviously broke their morale.’
‘You did?’ boomed Bob Curtis.
‘I helped,’ said Timothy, gently.
Kenyon broke into a laugh that shook him from head to foot.
The arrival of the second plane had undoubtedly broken the spirit of Serle’s men. The downstairs rooms of White House were completely deserted, and the grounds yielded nothing but the bodies of three dead men, and two others who were wounded and raving.
Kenyon, grim-faced, went through the building, room by room.
‘It’s pretty obvious,’ he told Curtis, who went with him, ‘that there was someone else here, higher up than Serle. Serle seemed as surprised as we were…’
‘A pity he got away,’ said Curtis, remembering the shot he had not fired.
‘Not so,’ said Kenyon. ‘Serle’s the one and only man whom we know is connected with this crowd. He might lead us to them.’
‘Might,’ murmured Curtis, dubiously.
‘We’re going to catch a packet for this,’ Kenyon went on. ‘I reckon the police’ll be along within an hour.’
‘Against us?’
‘Against us,’ echoed Kenyon, grimly. ‘We’ve got to get into hiding, but you know where to go. Meanwhile—I wish I could find Mick Randall.’
As he spoke he reached the last, unsearched room. He had discovered nothing, but he was hoping that the Arrans who were burrowing through every conceivable hiding-place in the building, would find something, if only a list of names, that might help them to trace the leading spirit of the New Age Party.
Above all things, Kenyon wanted to learn the name of the leader. He had been certain that it wasn’t Serle; and that morning’s affair was convincing proof. There was someone else. Who? Was it possible that members of the Cabinet were actually behind the drug plague?
It was possible. Kenyon ran through the names of those gentlemen whom he could remember, offhand. There was Fenwick, the Home Secretary, Sir Giles Gardener, Minister of Traffic, Mannering, the Premier, Gorton, Womack, Clinton….
‘Names,’ he muttered, ‘just names.’
He stopped suddenly at the last door of his search, and his face went pale.
There were three men in the room, two of them lying face downwards on the floor, the third staring wildly about him, as though on the border of madness.
‘Randall!’ gasped Kenyon, and ran forward.
Sir Michael Randall seemed to have just enough sense to recognise his rescuer. He muttered Kenyon’s name, then dropped back against the wall. Kenyon saw that he was chained to a ring built in the floor.
Curtis turned the first man over, and swore.
‘Here’s young Mick,’ he said.
‘Dead?’ asked Kenyon. He felt sick.
‘I don’t know,’ said Curtis, ‘but the other poor devil is.’
Kenyon looked around, and then he had one of the shocks of his life.
The dead man, who had been stabbed through the heart and had been dead for some time, for his flesh was already chill, was Dr. Matthew Dickson of the Westland Hospital!
19
Kenyon Makes a Decision
The aeroplane in which the rescue party had arrived carried twenty passengers. It needed a longer run than Besset’s plane, but the drive of the White House was wide enough.
Half-an-hour after its arrival, Wally Davidson tuned in the great engine. Kenyon carried Sir Joseph Scanling’s daughter into the larger cabin, and settled her comfortably. The only thing of use they had found in the house was a bottle of veronal tablets; the girl had been given two and was sleeping easily.
Righteous Dane and Ronald Knight were delirious. Martin Best, another member of the rescue party and a man who had dabbled in medicines before he had come into a fortune, was afraid that Dane would not last long. Knight’s wound was more painful than dangerous.
Best commandeered a small luggage cabin, and dressed Colonel Wyett’s shattered leg. The Colonel seemed in a state of stupor.
In the main cabin the Arrans, Kenyon and Curtis did their best to look cheerful. Davidson started the plane, and it roared along the drive for a few seconds, then swooped upwards.
Kenyon looked out of the window.
The first plane was still nosing into the porch of the house, but otherwise the place looked normal enough. Along the main road, coming from Guildford, he could see a string of cars travelling fast. They turned towards White House, and he knew that he had not been wrong when he had decided to evade the risk of police interrogation. It was suddenly borne in upon him that by the morning he would almost certainly be listed as ‘wanted’ in the Police Gazette. It was even likely that the national dailies would run the story.
There was something oddly illogical about the whole business. The world was topsy-turvy. It seemed incredible that the Powers That Be could condone Serle, and the men behind him.
But they would.
Kenyon looked at Irene Scanling suddenly. He remembered those awful screa
ms, that terrible, whimpering crying. What was the drug? How was it administered?
One thing was certain; it was taken in varying doses. The average member of the New Age Party was not treated in the same way as Scanling’s daughter had been.
Kenyon was suddenly, coldly afraid. For as he looked at the girl he pictured Mary Randall, and Mary was in as much danger as anyone. And those screams…
He closed his eyes for a moment, and the back of his neck was cold and damp. When he opened his eyes again he was looking through the window of the cabin. England appeared very much the same as usual. A warm sun was shining on the fields and villages, on a thousand different colours and tints. In the distance he could see Guildford and Godalming; directly in their path was Ripley: further ahead lay Cobham, and then came the first massed houses of Greater London.
Looking down, he saw a crowd of fantastic little white dots in a field below, ringed with a darker fringe of ant-like spectators. A cricket match…
‘Nice little crowd,’ said Timothy Arran, joining the big man.
Kenyon didn’t smile.
He turned away from the window, and went to Sir Michael Randall, who was recovering from the ordeal. Kenyon was aching to hear his story, but he knew it would be foolish to tax him with questions too soon.
But Randall seemed calmer.
‘I’ll never be able to thank you,’ he said. ‘It was terrible—terrible.’
‘What happened?’ asked the big man.
Randall shrugged his sparse shoulders.
‘Someone came for me at the Magnum—where I was staying—with some message or other. Ah, yes. It was a man who said that Mick wanted me…’
Kenyon swallowed hard.
‘I went in a car he’d brought,’ Randall told him. ‘And really—I went to sleep. I woke up in that room.’
The diplomat broke off, with a shudder. Kenyon found himself, suddenly and sharply, recalling those screams that had made him break into the White House.
‘It was horrible!’ muttered Randall. ‘The poor girl was in agony. Writhing—screaming.’
‘Yes,’ said Kenyon. ‘I know.’
Randall passed a hand across his head.
‘And—there was Mick, too. He had been very much the—the same. Only he didn’t scream. He fainted when they took Irene away—and—and—I think I did, when they killed Dickson.’
‘You knew Dickson?’
‘Why, yes. He was a family friend. Dickson had been visiting me in Paris recently, about a treatise in Egyptian…’
‘Hieroglyphics,’ murmured Kenyon, remembering.
He wondered, suddenly, whether he had given Matthew Dickson the attention he had merited. Was Dickson’s association with the Oriental students at the big hospitals entirely academic, or was it connected with the New Age organisation? And—the most important question—had Dickson used his family friendship with the Randalls on behalf of New Age?
It was just possible that Dickson had tried to double-cross Serle and his leaders, but the mark of the crescent, already growing black, was on Dickson’s hands. Addicts would rarely have the moral strength to revolt.
‘I suppose,’ Kenyon questioned, quietly, ‘you’ve no idea that Dickson was working against you?’
‘None at all, none at all,’ said Randall. ‘In fact, I liked him. So much that I had hoped he and Mary—but you won’t want to hear that.’
Kenyon didn’t, although he said nothing.
‘I can’t understand what all this is about,’ went on Randall, wearily. ‘It’s so—absurd, and it’s terrible. That firing I heard—the bomb…’
‘You saw that?’
‘Through the window,’ Randall shuddered. ‘I really thought the world was coming to an end. I just can’t understand it. For the past few weeks I’ve been tormented. I’ve been worried about Mary, about Mick—about everything! It seems that the very Powers That Be are against me.’
There was grim irony in that remark.
‘Have you no idea at all what the cause of the trouble is, Sir Michael?’ asked Kenyon.
‘None,’ said Randall.
But there was an expression in his eyes that might have been of fear—or something worse. Kenyon was suddenly and overwhelmingly convinced that Randall did know something, did know why he and his children had been the victims of a remorseless persecution.
Kenyon took a chance.
‘Do you think it’s fair to lie about it, sir? You know as much about it as most. Any kind of information is going to help us. The name of the leader, for instance…’
And then he felt sure that Randall could tell him a great deal, and he believed he knew the secret of the Randalls’ persecution.
‘No,’ said Randall, and there was piteous entreaty in his eyes. ‘Don’t ask me that, Kenyon. I daren’t tell you.’
‘You’re with friends,’ Kenyon told him gently. ‘No one here is going to do anything but help.’
‘No!’ repeated the diplomat, and although he whispered the word it seemed to Kenyon like a shout. ‘It’s too terrible to think of, Kenyon; too terrible.’
He covered his face with his hands. Kenyon looked very grim; but there was the coldness of dread in his heart. He could only conceive one meaning behind Randall’s ‘No!’
Randall knew Serle’s leader. That was why he had been removed from Paris, why Mick and Mary had been badgered. Randall knew, and his knowledge was dangerous to the other side; there was no limit to the steps that might be taken to force this man to keep silent.
Kenyon had to find out what he knew. There was, he thought, one faint chance of beating the mark of the crescent; if he knew the name of the leader—the one name would be enough—that chance would be much greater.
‘You must tell me, sir. It’s not a matter of personal feeling. Whoever it is—however distinguished—you must…’
‘It’s not that,’ gasped Randall, and there were tears in his eyes. ‘I’d tell you, but I daren’t. I daren’t!’
‘Why not?’ There was urgency in Kenyon’s question.
Randall stared at him for a moment, the tears still filling his eyes. He passed a shaking hand across his forehead.
‘Don’t you see?’ he whispered, in a thin, unsteady voice. ‘Can’t you understand? It’s—Mary.’
‘Mary!‘ Kenyon’s voice was like ice.
‘Mary,’ muttered Randall. ‘She was with me, when I left the hotel. If I talk, she’ll—she’ll…’
He stopped speaking. Slowly he turned towards Scanling’s daughter. It was almost as if Kenyon could read the other’s mind. Randall was thinking of those terrible screams, thinking of the effect the drug would have on Mary.
Oh, my God! thought Kenyon.
He hardly knew whether it was a minute or an hour that passed as he stared into nothingness, aiming the grim facts over in his mind. It was Mary against everything else. Mary.
He could see her as she had been on that first day—seated in the shade of the trees; watching the match at Greylands, noting the score. And looking so very cool, and so very lovely. He remembered, too, the trouble in her eyes when next he had seen her. He seemed to feel her arms about him, her lips on his. He seemed to hear her call his name. If anything should happen to her…!
The nightmare was broken suddenly.
Toby Arran, who had been in the control-room with Davidson, entered the larger cabin and touched his arm. Kenyon turned, as from a dream. Toby, very grim, handed him a written message.
‘We picked that up from the radio,’ he said.
Kenyon read it, although he half-guessed what it would contain. He handed it back without a word.
‘Chin up,’ said Toby Arran. He was repeating the message to himself. It read:
‘Here is an S.O.S. Will Mr. James Kenyon, of 19 Gresham Street, W.1., come at once to 88a, Queen Anne’s Gate, where his fiancée, Miss Mary Randall, is dangerously ill?’
No one but Kenyon and his friends would suspect that the message was anything but a genuine S.O.S. Simi
lar calls were put out from Broadcasting House almost daily. To them alone, the real meaning of the call was plain.
It told Kenyon that unless he dropped his work, unless he went to Queen Anne’s Gate—and to Arnold Serle’s flat—he could be sure the girl would suffer.
Kenyon looked around the cabin.
Wyett was sitting next to Randall. The redness of the Colonel’s face had faded to a pasty white. Next to Wyett was the girl, still sleeping. Mick was next to her, unconscious. On the opposite side of the cabin were the several members of Department Z. Dodo Trale, Besset and Timothy Arran had started a game of cards, but Timothy was dealing them halfheartedly. Davidson was at the controls, with Toby Arran keeping a fatherly eye on him. At the far end of the plane—in the luggage compartment—Martin Best was bending over the twitching figure of Ronald Knight. Righteous Dane, naked to the waist except for a bandage, was lying on the floor, his face deathly white. Kenyon could just see the legs of Matthew Dickson; the rest of the dead man was covered by a sheet.
Kenyon saw them all, with cameo clearness.
He knew that they were heading for a little coastal town in Essex, where a sudden influx of young men would not be noticeable, and where the other members of the Department were already gathered and waiting. He knew that Davidson was a clever enough pilot to make sure that they reached the town—Glinsea—without being spotted by other aircraft. At Glinsea’s biggest boarding-house a large party of young men would be gathered together.
But what then?
They would have a few days, at the most, to work in. The efforts of the police would be turned against them. Fellowes might object; he would certainly warn Craigie if he learned that their hiding-place had been discovered, but they would be fighting a losing battle. Every hand was against them; the chances of success were small.
And if he took those chances, if he continued in defiance of Serle, and those who were leading Serle, the cost was—Mary.
Kenyon beckoned Toby, who looked back from the control-room. The big man’s face was haggard; there were shadows in his eyes. He knew, among other things, that these men would do exactly as he told them, they would obey him as implicitly as they would have obeyed Craigie.