by John Creasey
“I must,” she said; “but don’t worry about me, John.”
Mannering’s lips curved as he offered her a cigarette and suggested tea. She nodded, and she watched him make it, smiling a little, but without the mischievousness that had characterised her in the early days of their friendship.
“Why must you?” he asked, as he handed her a cup and passed sugar and cream.
The sudden return to the topic seemed to take her off her balance. Her face was very sober as she stirred her tea.
“Why do most people work?” she demanded, almost defiantly.
And then, to Mannering’s complete astonishment, tears welled up in her eyes, and she covered her face in her hands.
“Oh, my dear,” said Mannering. He stepped to her side and gripped her shoulders gently. She said nothing, but after a moment she smiled. There was something pitiful, something tragic, in that smile, and the need for knowing why seemed to Mannering the most urgent thing in the world.
“If there’s anything I can do,” said Mannering very quietly, “you’ve only to say it, Lorna. No need for questions and answers. Just say the word.”
She pressed his fingers, and smiled wanly.
They had finished tea, but for some minutes neither of them had spoken. Mannering was completely at a loss. If there was one thing he had never anticipated this was it. Lorna was essentially strong-willed. He had never seen her show emotion. She had always covered it with that sometimes cynical, sometimes mocking, sometimes uncertain veneer. And now this, taking him completely by surprise.
“There isn’t,” she said. “I’ve made a fool of myself, John, and that’s all there is to it.”
“And so we have to forget it?” suggested Mannering.
Lorna nodded. Mannering smiled, but there was a depth of understanding in his eyes.
“My dear,” he said, “you’re talking nonsense. There was a time when we started to talk of . . .”
“Marriage?” said Lorna as he hesitated, and the word was a whisper.
“Marriage,” he said soberly. “I’ve never mentioned it, because it was an understanding that we shouldn’t. But if we were married you would want me to help. Why don’t you now?”
She forced a smile to her lips.
“There’s no reason why I should,” she said.
“There’s every reason,” said Mannering, and his voice was very low.
Lorna shrugged her shoulders. She looked very forlorn, very tired — and very lovely.
“It’s a very old business,” she said. “I mean, it’s ageless. I’m in need of money. That’s all.”
She spoke listlessly, as though she was speaking without interest. When she stopped she continued to look past Mannering towards the wall.
He was glad that she did.
The complete astonishment which filled him as he heard the word “money” revealed itself on his face. It was gone in a flash, but it had been there, and he felt winded. Lorna, daughter of Lord Fauntley, who had boasted that he was among the ten richest men in England, wanted money.
There was something absurd about it, but Mannering conquered a temptation to laugh. He swallowed hard, and then said quietly: “How much?”
The blankness disappeared from Lorna’s eyes as he spoke. She laughed, and for the first time since she entered the flat she sounded normal, natural.
“That’s just the one question I’d expect you to ask,” she said. And the expression in her eyes made him flush. His voice was level enough, however, and held a hint of laughter.
“It’s the only pertinent one,” he said.
Lorna looked at him very straightly.
“I despise myself,” she said, very clearly and very slowly, “because it’s the one thing I shouldn’t say. But I do need money, John. A thousand pounds, if I can get it. Quickly.”
She stopped, and the silence could almost be felt, broken only by her heavy breathing.
Mannering’s mind was moving rapidly. The single fact registered that she needed the money — one thousand pounds. It wasn’t as large a sum as it sounded; there had been times when he would have laughed at it.
He was tempted to ask questions, but he knew that that was the one thing which he must not do. But the thing tormented him. Why did she need it? Why couldn’t she get it from her father if she did want it!
The answer to the second question was obvious, he told himself. Fauntley would ask why. She couldn’t tell him; so the reason for her need was . . .
Blackmail came to his mind. It came and went quickly. He preferred not to think about it, but he could see that the worry and anxiety in her face spoke of something like that. Blackmail!
He forced his thoughts down; the silence was growing too strained.
“That’s all right,” he said. “When exactly do you need it?”
His words came easily, even if the thoughts which had flashed through his mind after her words had seemed timeless. He was looking at her, and Lorna smiled.
“You’re very much true to type, John,” she said, and then stood up quickly and reached for her gloves. “But we’ve both been talking nonsense. I don’t need die money, and you’re an idiot for thinking that I do. Shall we dine to-night ?”
Mannering smiled, and his fingers closed round her wrists.
“Brave, but not so convincing,” he said very gently. “Try to be honest, my dear, with yourself — and me. It may help us both. Meanwhile . . .”
Her lips trembled, and her eyes were suspiciously bright.
“I shouldn’t have come,” she said.
“You know you should, for it made you talk. We can’t do much for each other, Lorna. You know why. I don’t. But when I can help I’m waiting and willing.”
The tears came into her eyes again. Mannering felt the pressure of her slim body against his. His arms tightened round her shoulders. He looked down on that dark, luxurious hair, and. he felt her sobbing. With his right hand he smoothed her head, and he kept very still.
The smile on his lips was beyond understanding.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE QUEEN ’ S WALK BURGLARY
MANNERING LIT A CIGARETTE, LEANED BACK IN HIS CHAIR, and stared at the ceiling. He was still smiling, but there was a grimness in his smile. The bundles of notes on the desk had disappeared. One small wad was left — two hundred pounds where there had been twelve hundred. It was a difficult situation to smile at, but he had to try.
Lorna had gone. She had gone very quickly, as if afraid that to linger would have been to have lost. Her attitude had puzzled and worried Mannering. She had been unsettled, uncertain, really worried, and as definitely grateful. He had not asked her a single question, and she had volunteered no information. He believed that he was glad, but inwardly he felt a very natural curiosity. Why had she needed the money?
He pushed the question to the back of his mind and moved from his chair. The pass-books which Lee’s emissary had once been so anxious to take revealed a sum of nine hundred pounds, which, with the two hundred on the desk, made a total of eleven hundred. It was enough for the moment, but it meant that he was living hand-to-mouth. He was back where he had been a few days ago.
For the hundredth time he wondered how he could dispose of the Rosa pearls, and for the hundredth time he determined to let them wait for a while; they were too warm yet. The next problem, then, was to find another likely victim, and a haul he could turn into cash quickly.
Mannering grimaced. By now he almost disliked the cold-bloodedness of his life of crime. It was as distasteful in some ways as it was exciting in others. But he would go on now until he had made enough to retire on; so much was certain. He tried to fix a figure, but he realised the uselessness of it. His expenses in a year’s time might be doubled or trebled — unless, of course, he slipped up on a job and spent a few years in gaol. The prospect, instead of making him hesitate, cheered him. There was a zest in danger that made up for everything else.
He ran through the list of his social engagements fo
r the next two weeks. The only events of note would be the Faundey dinner — Lord Fauntley held an annual affair that outshone all rivals in the matter of celebrities and luxuriousness — and the Ramon Ball. The Fauntley affair was out of it; Mannering was still determined not to make any raid on the peer’s strong-room, for the guard would be stronger than ever now.
That left the Ramon Ball.
Carlos Ramon was a South American cattle-owner who had taken by storm that part of London which was primarily money-conscious. The wealth of the Ramons was almost legendary. Carlos himself owned the largest fleet of cattle-boats in South America, and it was said that his herds of cattle rivalled the possessions of the biggest Anglo-American companies. Mannering knew the man slightly, and neither liked nor disliked him.
Carlos Ramon — Senor Carlos, Mannering recalled with a smile — had an imposing presence, a brick-red face, handsome after a fashion, with the inevitable moustache, black, greased, and pointed at the ends, and an extremely pretty wife. His wife was Spanish, without the aloofness usually credited to her race; she was, Mannering knew, perilously near a coquette. He knew, too, that Carlotta’s beauty and Carlos’s money had captured London, and the Ramon Ball, to take place four days after the visit of Lorna Faundey to
Mannering’s flat, was a farewell party; the South Americans were returning to their native land, and London was giving them a send-off; or they were bidding London a warm good-bye.
In any case the assembly would be a positive rodeo of the rich, while most of the women would outdo — or try to outdo — one another with their jewels. The prospect was inviting; there would be hundreds of thousands of pounds” worth there.
Mannering muttered to himself very suddenly as an idea came into his mind.
“You fool!” he said. “Oh, you fool!” And he smiled.
“After going to all that trouble, and suffering as you’re doing,” said Lorna Fauntley sympathetically, “there are two other costumes almost exactly alike. Poor John!”
“At least I’ve the imagination not to come as a harlequin,” said Mannering, not without point.
Lorna laughed lightly.
She had chosen, a little daringly, to dress as a Spanish dancer, and the daring, in the opinion of a few of the plainer revellers, was due to the fact that the hostess was the obvious choice for that costume. Happily Carlotta Ramon had preferred to be a Fragonard shepherdess, and Lorna was conspicuous — and distinguished; Mannering told himself that she was head-and-shoulders above the others.
Mannering’s Charles the Second was triplicated at the New Arts Hall, a fact which Lorna had been deploring. She could not know that Jimmy Randall and Colonel Belton had confided to him their choice of dress, and that he had used that knowledge deliberately.
So he laughed, and scoffed at her.
They danced together before a cavalier claimed his privilege and whirled Lorna away from Mannering. He found himself dancing with a Columbine whose eyes behind her mask suggested nervousness. He put her at her ease, but was glad that she slipped away when the music stopped. He wanted no ties for the moment.
He edged towards an exit, watching the glittering throng that had gathered together to honour the Ramons, trying to make sure that he was unobserved.
Here and there he recognised someone whom he knew, but for the most part the costumes and the masks contrived to hide the identity of the dancers. The little added zest that invariably accompanied London balls when they were inspired by a foreigner was very much in evidence. The music was a little mad; the costumes were frequendy exotic, the laughter unforced, but helped with wines.
Mannering looked at the great decorated clock in the centre of the ceiling and saw that it was eleven o’clock. That left an hour before the masks would be removed and recognition assured. One hour to work in. It was little enough time.
He slipped towards a cloakroom, staring at the floor as he went. Casual acquaintances passed him without recognising him. His luxuriant wig, rouged cheeks, and high cravat afforded excellent disguise, but he was glad when he reached the privacy of a cubicle without hearing his name uttered. He was flushed a little, and his eyes were gleaming.
From the main hall the strains of the music were floating. He smiled as he slipped out of his costume and revealed that of a harlequin beneath. The latter had been comfortable to wear, and no one at the New Arts Hall knew that he had two costumes; nor if they had known would they have guessed why.
He lit a cigarette, donned his mask, and left the cloakroom, carrying his overcoat and his top-hat over his arm. He reached the first exit from the building, glanced out, saw half a dozen commissionaires and attendants, but felt certain that he could get away unhindered and unrecognised.
That rush of excitement which had possessed him several times before on the start of a haul made his heart thump, and he was more impatient than usual.
Looking neither right nor left, he went from the building. In Queen’s Road he beckoned the first passing taxi. He jumped in quickly, shouting an address: “Twenty-seven Crown Street, cabby, and hurry, will you?”
The voice was no more like Mannering’s than Mr Mayle’s was. The driver shrugged at the unnecessary haw-haw, slipped in his clutch, and made quick time. Outside the dark shape of No. 27 Crown Street, W.i, Mannering left the taxi, paid the driver without tipping him extravagantly, and watched the cab disappear into the shadows. Then he turned away.
A strange, almost unnatural silence filled the air.
In the distance the hum of the traffic could be heard, but
Crown Street was quiet and secluded. A long, narrow thoroughfare, it was useless as a short-cut for motor traffic, and at night only the local people and an occasional policeman traversed it.
Mannering looked at his watch, to find that it was twenty minutes past eleven.
“He should be here,” he muttered, and from the fact that he was talking aloud realised his own tense excitement. He waited, pricking his ears to catch the wanted sound. It came at last — the heavy tread of the policeman he expected.
Mannering had been in this street three nights in succession. He had discovered the policeman’s usual time, and he knew that between eleven-twenty and eleven-fifty only a casual wayfarer would pass by; once the man had gone he could start his job.
He waited beneath the shadows of a spreading tree. The policeman walked on ponderously, without flashing his lantern. Mannering watched him disappear, and then turned towards the tree, a tight smile on his lips.
He had studied the tree and garden beyond, and the narrow passage beyond that. He had climbed the tree on the previous night, and he knew just how long it would take him to get to the end of the passage. Never again, he told himself, would he start a thing without ample preparation.
The sound of the policeman’s footsteps died away. No other came. Mannering climbed the tree quickly, a task made easier by several knots which stood out from the trunk. From the first branch it was a simple matter to jump over the wall into the garden of 27 Crown Street. He landed lightly, and grinned to himself more freely as he went through that garden.
Every taxi-driver who had taken a fare from the neigh-bourhood of the New Arts Hall would be questioned on the following morning, but no one would suspect that the man who wanted the Crown Street house was connected with a robbery which had taken place at Queen’s Walk, a quarter of a mile away from Crown Street. Actually the garden and the passage took him to Queen’s Walk in thirty seconds, but the policeman who realised it would have to be smart.
The Walk was lit by occasional street-lamps, and the unwinking side-lights of two stationary cars broke through the darkness. Mannering slipped into the doorway of the first house past the passage and slid a pick-lock into the keyhole.
It was an old-fashioned lock, and gave little trouble, for the picking of a lock came easily now. Mannering pushed the door open as the lock clicked back. He went inside quickly, and closed the door. For a moment he waited in the hall, but no sound came. The house seemed
empty.
It was, he believed, and he smiled as he recalled the flash of inspiration that had told him that the house, rather than the ballroom, was the best place at which to make an attempt.
Rented by Carlos Ramon for his six months” sojourn in England, the place was deserted for that night, when Ramon and his wife were at the Ball; the servants, Mannering knew, had permission to be out. He had prepared for the possibility of meeting a caretaker, but he doubted whether Ramon would have taken that precaution.
Mannering hurried up the stairs, flashing a small electric torch to guide him. His rubber-soled shoes made no sound on the oak landing as he reached it, and his face was covered with the thin blue mark that he used as much to enable him to merge into a general scheme of darkness as for a disguise.
Silently he went along the landing. The first three doors he passed were unlocked, and he went on, but the third refused to open when he turned the handle.
He stopped, and the pick-lock slid into the keyhole. Two or three dexterous twists made the lock click back. He opened the door very quickly and stepped into the room. The moment was near now.
From two windows he could see a dim light streaming, light from the street-lamps. He hurried to the windows, experimented with the blinds, and discovered with relief that they were of the roller type. He lowered them silently, and then looked round quickly.
There was a slight perfume in the air, and he smiled, needing no telling that Carlotta Ramon had dressed in here a few hours before. He flashed his light on to the dressing-table, and from one of the drawers a few small trinkets rewarded him. He opened each drawer quickly and silently, finding a diamond brooch and an emerald pendant which made his eyes glisten. But he had no time to gloat over his success. He closed the drawers, left the dressing-table, and hurried to the walls, where he hoped to find bigger game. He lifted each picture, finding the safe behind a large oil-painting opposite the door.
He worked on it, quickly, patiently, efficiently.
Now that he was actually at work the excitement had cooled. He knew that he was fighting against time, and he could not afford to fumble. Within ten minutes he must be out of the house, together with the contents of the safe . . .