Menace (Department Z)

by John Creasey

  His lean and narrow face was turned now in the direction of Kerr, who had just come in.

  ‘Sorry I had to mess up your afternoon, Bob. I phoned the Burkes and said you couldn’t get to them. A queer show.’

  Kerr thumbed his jaw.

  ‘Queer’s the word for it. I’m damned if I’m sure yet whether the man was a lunatic or not, but what Lois has telephoned from Camberley suggests he wasn’t. So some gentlemen in Vallena – including this Mr Kryn, alias Jacobs – would like to see us dead, eh?’

  Craigie smiled.

  ‘Well, they’re not the first people to do so. I’m a lot concerned with why they do it.’

  ‘Any ideas?’ asked Kerr.

  ‘Plenty. Haven’t you?’

  Kerr scowled.

  ‘Well, the usual round, of course. But AKA – what the blazes does AKA want to mess about with us for? A tinpot little state which doesn’t know its own mind. An unpopular puppet Prince, a play-girl Princess –’

  ‘That’s the whole thing,’ said Craigie, taking a meerschaum from a rack near the fireplace. ‘Someone inside the State does know his – or her – own mind. That someone wants to upset trade relations with England, and as far as I can see have precious nearly succeeded in doing it. They’ve chosen a novel way,’ added Craigie with a chuckle. ‘I can imagine the thoughts of a man who order braces and gets powder-puffs! All the same, it’s the other angle that makes it more serious, Bob.’

  Kerr nodded.

  ‘The reports you’ve had from Vallena. What’s the gist of them?’

  Craigie stuffed his meerschaum with slow deliberation.

  ‘Well – when I telephoned you earlier, they were just interesting. There’s talk of a faction over in Vallena that want to join the Hitler regime. There aren’t many countries without a party with that bee in their bonnets, but Vallena’s been pretty free from it up to now. The only thing Vallenians seemed really interested in is their Princess.’

  Kerr sniffed, thinking of the activities of the Princess Katrina of Vallena, which had done more than anything else to make her country’s name familiar. Estranged from an unpopular husband, she led a hectic life in the casinos of the world; Kerr knew she flew her own plane; so did every man and woman able to read.

  ‘Bit far removed from Germany, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, on the surface perhaps. Tucked there at the foot of the Carpathians, it’s got Poland on the north, Czechoslovakia on the west, and Rumania south and east. The Black Sea is the nearest big water-way, but from what we’ve seen, most of their stuff is shipped across country to Holland or Belgium, and put on steamer there. Not much of an obvious contact with Germany, I agree. The obvious indirect one is Poland.’

  Kerr frowned.

  ‘It looks too early to size it up yet, Gordon. Is this Nazi talk the only suspicious kind you’ve heard?’

  ‘There’s a strong faction for linking up with the U.S.S.R.,’ Craigie told him, ‘and that looks like the real trouble. A repeat of the Spain business, differing only geographically. White versus Red – Democracy versus Dictatorship – mostly,’ added Craigie with a rare touch of bitterness. ‘One man’s greed versus another’s.’

  Kerr’s eyes shone for a moment: Craigie rarely let himself go.

  ‘Was that why you thought of sending me out there?’

  Craigie poked the mouthpiece of his meerschaum towards his chief agent.

  ‘Partly, Bob. But chiefly because both parties in Vallena have been dealing with the Associated International Industry Corporation, a beautifully high-sounding name that covers –’

  ‘Our Adam Criff, eh? That’s the angle.’

  Craigie nodded. Kerr thought fleetingly of a Mr Adam Criff, who had at one time figured in the Italo-Abyssinian conflict, later in the Franco revolution, still later and more profitably in the Chino-Japanese war. Mr Adam Criff’s interests seemed to follow strife, and obviously Craigie was worried lest Mr Criff encouraged strife in Vallena.

  The odd thing about Criff was that he did not appear to be connected with armaments. Even in his earliest appearance in the Paraguay-Bolivia horror he had concentrated on foodstuffs. An odder thing was that he was young-middle-aged, and increasingly popular with upper crust society.

  Kerr was thinking fast.

  So Craigie had had reports from agents in Baj and other places suggesting that there was a possibility of a flare-up between the two sides in Vallena, and Adam Criff was interested. That would be ample justification for sending his chief agent over.

  ‘It’s connected all right,’ he said, ‘and this fiddling business with English-bought merchandise has a place. I – hallo, visitors.’

  Nothing was heard, but in the mantelpiece a small green light showed. Craigie took extreme – and some people thought absurd – precautions to make sure he was not approached unknowingly. Ostensibly there was no door to Department Z. Actually there were five or six, opening from different passages in the maze of Government buildings of which the office was a part, and all operated on a sliding panel principle. Perhaps it amused Craigie.

  ‘From the street,’ Craigie said.

  No one could press the concealed bell outside without knowing where it was, and only Craigie’s agents and one or two Yard men knew that. Craigie leaned forward to the fireplace, pressed a button that seemed to be part of an ornate cream tile, and both he and Kerr looked round.

  Kerr jumped up quickly, as Lois Dacre entered. The door slid to as she reached him, but it was Craigie who spoke first.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Doriennet,’ said Lois simply. ‘I’ve just telephoned young Kingham. He called me an hour or so after I left Horn’s place. Doriennet’s down there, murdered it seems, and certainly dead. Who’s coming to investigate with me?’

  * * *

  Just fifteen minutes later, Mr Wallace Davidson and Mr Robert Carruthers, relieved from their watch at the Riltaz Hotel by other agents, bundled into Carruthers’ Lagonda. Carruthers was driving, and at Hyde Park Corner he saw a Frazer Nash, holding Kerr and Lois Dacre.

  Davidson smiled, somewhat wearily.

  ‘Caught ’em, old son. Going to try and get there first?’

  ‘Try?’ snorted Carruthers. ‘That wreck of Bob’s can’t do more than seventy, it ought to be taken out of service. I wonder what’s happening?’

  ‘Plenty, or we wouldn’t have to move so fast. Cancel all social arrangements, Carry. Damn it, I wish we’d had time for a quick one, I’m thirsty.’

  ‘If we get well ahead we could stop at a local,’ said Carruthers hopefully.

  Davidson looked cheered.

  ‘It’s an idea, but you can’t drink while you’re driving, Carry, it’s not done. Illegal or something, isn’t it? Know the pub?’

  ‘The White Star, Camberley.’

  ‘Good man,’ said Davidson heartily.

  In the next traffic block he scribbled the name of the pub on a sheet from his notebook, and Carruthers – working in perfect accord – managed to draw level with Kerr’s Frazer Nash at a Hammersmith Broadway stoppage. Davidson flicked the note over. It struck Lois Dacre on the cheek, but she gave no sign that she had received it, until some five minutes later she retrieved it from the floor.

  ‘Any developments?’ Kerr asked her.

  ‘Probably, I – the louts! They’re stopping at a pub in Camberley. Bob, how on earth they manage to keep going with Craigie I don’t know, they must be drunk half their time.’

  Kerr laughed.

  ‘Don’t worry about them, Lois, they always come up to scratch. If they’re not thirsty they always pretend to be. It’s a kind of affectation. We’ll hoot three times as we go past.’ He glanced at Lois Dacre’s somewhat indignant face – she had worked once before for the Department, but had not yet managed to understand the peculiar nature of Craigie’s band of hearty young agents. They had a habit of acting the fool, more particularly when there was danger in the offing.

  Not knowing the wrath they had called down on their heads,
Carruthers and Davidson made the run to the White Star, Camberley, eight minutes faster than Kerr. Time, in fact, for two quick ones. They were actually outside the pub before the Frazer Nash appeared, and true to policy Davidson merely winked an eye in recognition.

  Moving with an apparent lethargy that was deceptive, Davidson reached the Lagonda before Carruthers. A small, red-faced man in a suit the wrong shade of blue reached an innocent-looking Morris 10 before them. The man in the blue suit appeared to have no connection with Department Z, but he took the same turnings towards Lane House.

  Suddenly, devastatingly, he ceased to be an insignificant little man sedately driving a family car. In a superb demonstration of ace driving, he squeezed past the Frazer Nash, forcing Kerr’s bus well over. As he went past he swung round in his seat.

  Carruthers saw the start of the mad drive, and promptly switched on his headlights. In the glare they could see the little man, with an automatic in his left hand, and his right hand on the wheel.

  Davidson swore, and his hand flew to his pocket as flame came from the little man’s gun. For a moment there was uproar, and as Carruthers jammed on his brakes he had a horrible feeling that he heard Lois Dacre scream.

  Chapter 4

  Mr Criff and Others

  In the glare of the Lagonda’s headlights the whole scene was bizarrely clear: the little man shooting, Kerr wrenching at his wheel, Lois Dacre falling below the level of the windscreen. Then the man in the blue suit became suddenly aware that the second car-load of men were working with Kerr.

  It seemed to terrify him.

  He loosed his remaining bullets wildly, and dropped down to the steering, but he might as well have pulled up at once. Davidson aimed at the rear wheels of the Morris. In that breathless rush past the Frazer Nash even a driver of such superb skill had been forced to slow down, for he had been shooting as well.

  One rear tyre and another burst with a roar that seemed like dynamite. The Morris lurched to the far side of the road, while the Frazer Nash shuddered to a standstill, its front wheels locked in the hedge. There was no room for Carruthers to get the Lagonda through.

  It was not necessary.

  The little man in the wrong shade of blue seemed to realise that though there was no hope of driving away, there was a very small chance of escaping on foot. Before his car had stopped, he leapt for the hedge, and Carruthers saw him scrambling over.

  ‘Get the little runt,’ he snapped.

  Davidson fired twice in quick succession.

  Carruthers was already hurrying towards the car. He wanted to make sure that Lois Dacre was not badly hurt, and he left the gunman to Davidson.

  Still with the headlights illuminating the scene, he saw Lois slowly straighten up.

  Carruthers beamed.

  ‘Foxing, eh? I’m disgusted with you, Miss Dacre, I’d already worked out a startling paragraph for the evening papers, in the hopes of collecting a bit for the exclusive story, of course. You all right?’

  Lois looked at him scathingly.

  ‘What a crazy fool you are. Yes – I don’t think my hat’s any more use, though.’

  It was not. Two bullets had decorated it with small round holes. Carruther’s good spirits were damped a little, while Kerr’s expression was thunderous.

  ‘Blasted little rat. Good thing you were behind, Carry.’

  ‘Good thing Wally was thirsty, or we’d have been in front,’ Carruthers said. ‘Red Face didn’t think we were in it, and expected us just to find the bodies. Quick work, eh?’

  ‘I’m lucky,’ said Kerr soberly, ‘but Doriennet, poor devil – ah, well.’

  They were all out of the cars now. The Frazer Nash’s front wheels were too buckled for the car to be of any immediate use, and the Morris looked considerably the worse for wear. But the point of main interest was Wally Davidson.

  He had extricated the wounded gunman from the hedge, where he had fallen when Davidson had shot him in the leg.

  Carruthers called out: ‘Let’s look him over.’

  Kerr broke in, almost sharply: ‘There’s time later for that, Carry. Run through his pockets, Bob, and see what he’s carrying. Wally, we’ve got to lift the Morris over this side of the road, and get past. We’re wanted up the lane.’

  ‘Navvying now,’ groaned Davidson.

  The Morris was not as heavy as it might have been, and by taking the front first, and then the back, they soon had it on one side.

  Kerr waited just long enough to lift the bonnet.

  ‘Think it might go off?’ asked Davidson.

  ‘Super-charged,’ said Kerr briefly. ‘Let’s get going.’

  A thoughtful quartette and a badly frightened gunman who had forgotten the pain in his legs and was wondering what these hard-faced but oddly flippant men were going to do with him, were loaded into the Lagonda, and Carruthers squeezed through the gap.

  ‘Anyone know how much further?’

  ‘Half a mile or a little more,’ Lois said, ‘the road gets narrower, and there are some nasty turns.’

  ‘What fun,’ said Carruthers. ‘I can’t wait.’ But presently he too lapsed into silence. There was more than enough to be thoughtful about.

  Kerr thought more quickly than any of the others, and he saw three things significant enough for concern. The first, and least important, was the fact that beneath the guise of an ordinary Morris 10, the little man had been driving a super-charged car, capable of travelling at a hundred miles an hour or more. Small wonder the man had managed to pass the Frazer Nash!

  The second was that Red Face must have been waiting for their arrival at Camberley, and recognised them when they passed the White Star. Not so good. But he had not recognised either Davidson or Carruthers, both well-known members of the Department. This suggested that only Kerr had been identified.

  The third point was that Red Face had been entrusted to carry out this job alone, and that suggested that the active fighting forces of the men who worked – presumably – for Kryn was not a strong one. Otherwise there would have been two men on this job.

  But the cool nerve of it!

  Red Face, of course, had reckoned on having only the one car to handle. He had followed Kerr, and working on the assumption that Kerr would have put such behaviour down to road-hogging, raced past him and then opened fire. But for the arrival and interference of the Lagonda, it would have gone very badly for Kerr and Lois Dacre.

  Kerr was conscious of an acute feeling of dissatisfaction with himself. Thanks to Doriennet he had been warned in good time, and he should have been prepared for trouble. But even when he had seen that the Morris was taking the same road as himself, he had thought of nothing more than the possibility of being followed. An open attack had simply not occurred to him.

  He looked affectionately at Lois.

  It would take more than a single attack and a passing danger, no matter how acute, seriously to worry her, he knew. He remembered the time, six months back, when she had been shot nearly to death. Even after that she had not hesitated to continue working for Craigie. He was proud of her, but that she should be exposed to such desperate hazards worried him.

  Kerr jerked himself out of reminiscence. Doriennet had been murdered, as far as he could judge, and there were other things to be cleared up. Adam Criff’s part in this game. Kryn’s – whoever he was. And the reason for Doriennet’s presence at the house of Mr Matthew Horn.

  * * *

  Kerr made his report to Craigie five hours later. Lois had gone home, and the other two were resting, but every available agent on Craigie’s list had been warned to prepare for action.

  The local police had been told of Kerr’s coming, and had accepted without question his control of the situation. Freddie Kingham, Matthew Horn, and all members of the household, including Joshua Kingham, had been interrogated. Freddie’s father, an artist of sorts, had proved to be a vast man with an echoing voice and the barest modicum of common sense.

  As far as Kerr had been able to judge, no
ne of them had expected Doriennet at the house. Horn’s account had appeared straightforward, and the servants’ statements, Kerr said, seemed honest enough. The only one who might be worth watching was the butler, Bennet, who fitted into his role almost too perfectly.

  ‘In short,’ said Kerr, ‘there seems a reasonable chance that the poor devil of a Vallenian was going to Horn for help, and was murdered on the way. But there’s another implication, Gordon. Kryn – we’ll say he’s our man for the sake of a name – might have wanted Doriennet to be found at Lane House, to make things awkward for Matthew Horn.’

  Craigie pursed his lips.

  ‘A possibility, certainly. At all events, the aeroplane that took Doriennet from Heston landed at Farnham according to the pilot, at Doriennet’s urgent request.’

  ‘Did Doriennet seem worried?’

  ‘Fidgety as hell, according to the pilot,’ said Craigie. ‘After they’d landed at Farnham, Doriennet took a taxi from the station, as far as the end of Lane House drive. The taximan says he was told exactly where to stop.’

  Kerr whistled.

  ‘That looks very much as if Doriennet had been in England before.’

  ‘I certainly don’t think he told us all the truth.’

  ‘Seems to implicate Horn, too.’ Kerr said. ‘Who’s watching him?’

  ‘Dodo Trale.’

  Silence dropped on them for some minutes.

  There were far too many complications for Kerr’s liking. He remembered Doriennet’s words. According to the man, the people who had been with Kryn when he had eavesdropped, Kerr was the one who worried them most. That suggested that Kryn was scared of the resources of Department Z, and had planned to get rid of the agent he believed to be the most dangerous.

  Kerr’s lips parted in a reflective smile.

  Kryn evidently had no idea of the real power of the Department. Men came and went, but like the brook in Tennyson’s poem, the Department went on, effective, ruthless, remorseless as ever. He might die tomorrow, but it would not seriously affect the working of Craigie’s branch of the Secret Service.

  But Kerr saw no reason for dying unnecessarily.

  He scowled when he remembered Doriennet’s love of life, and the pitiful figure of the man bundled into a corner of the garage at Lane House.