by John Creasey
She would have to be handled, and the job would be his.
‘I’ll go and see her,’ Craigie said.
‘I’m going to get up,’ said Loftus.
Tea arrived as he spoke, and the nurse who brought it immediately reported to the doctor. In the middle of tea and thoughts that were a long way from pleasant, Bill Loftus was visited by a grim-faced and dour medico, who told him that he must stay in bed for another twenty-four hours, or take the consequences.
‘Which would be?’ asked Loftus amiably.
‘You might collapse, and if you do it will be a long job.’
‘I don’t feel a bit like collapsing,’ said Loftus, and when he saw the glint of anger in the medico’s eyes he smiled in a way which few people could resist. ‘Sorry, Doc, but the matter’s urgent. You’ve made a pretty good job of me, and I’ve got to take a chance with the rest.’
The medico shrugged.
‘It’s your own life,’ he said.
‘That’s just the trouble,’ said Loftus. ‘It isn’t, at the moment. Have my clothes sent in, and then slip along to the lady’s ward, will you? Mr. Carter’s there now.’
‘She’s as well and as obstinate as you,’ said the doctor with a shrug.
Craigie was gone for nearly half an hour, which did not surprise them. Loftus used the time in learning details of the attack on the Cliff Royal. It had been so sudden that there had been little or no chance of fighting back; the gas which had been used had had less effect than that used at the Manor, however; both Davidson and Errol had been dosed, but there had been no ill-effects.
‘Another hint that it wasn’t Forster, or the gas would have been the same,’ said Loftus. ‘What about the man Grey?’
‘He was out, too.’
‘Did he recover?’
‘He was a bit talkative afterwards,’ said Errol, ‘and he’s heard something about Warncliffe.’
‘Ye-es,’ said Craigie. ‘A queer angle, the Warncliffe-cum-Janice Grafton one. Someone is looking after them, of course.’
‘Yes. Although looking after doesn’t get us far in this business,’ said Mike Errol. ‘They seem to know just where we are all the time, light or dark.’
Loftus shrugged, and adjusted his tie.
‘It’s the whole trouble, my Mark. Eyes in the dark. A very useful thing. My God, it can break us if Germany gets away with it. Break us.’
Each man knew that it was true.
Not one of them had ever blinded themselves to the likelihood of a long war. They knew that Germany, half-starved though many of its people might be, and facing internal difficulties far worse than were ever likely to come in England, was prepared for a struggle that would last for years. Talk of a crack-up from the inside was to a degree reassuring, but the Department knew that in most cases the wish was father to the thought. Economically Germany was unsound—but force could get what money could not. The neutrals were forced into making concessions and supplying goods, which they did for England on a strictly cash basis. Most sections of the German people had been convinced that the war was necessary, that the Allies were in truth the aggresors, and they would tighten their belts and fight. The comparatively small People’s Front was courageous and tenacious—but its broadcasts had more effect outside of Germany than in it.
Loftus did not pretend that he thought the war would be over quickly. Success depended, as with the British it always would, on the control of the high seas.
At the moment that control was in Allied hands.
The submarine menace had been reduced to a negligible quantity; magnetic mines had flared into prominence, but soon died down. The attacks on neutral shipping were on the increase, but were having no direct effect on the war, while supplies were reaching England regularly and in ample quantities. The pocket battleships, virtual pirates in the Atlantic, had been hemmed into neutral harbours and interned, or had been sent to the bottom. Since Lawrence had taken over at the Admiralty, Germany had been swept virtually from the seas.
But now this weapon brought a greater, deeper menace than ever before.
Death and destruction, by night.
By land, sea, or air.
And one ship had gone, others might be reported at any moment. The effect of the weapon on the Allied cause could be disastrous. In a matter of weeks, if not in days, the ascendancy which the Allies had gained could be swept away. There had been no decisive action yet; with this weapon the side which possessed it must be the victor in the first major encounter.
At best the lens would prolong the war indefinitely.
At worst it could lose it for the Allies.
Loftus said slowly:
‘Well, we know where we are. And if Garry Cartwright is going to be awkward, we’ll have to change her mind. Not a nice thought,’ he added bleakly.
Errol grunted: ‘No.’
That was the first intimation that Bill Loftus had received that Mark Errol remembered the Waterloo encounter with anything more than self-reproach. He eyed the man quickly—and he saw enough to know that the brief meeting had meant something to Mark.
Loftus, who often told his lady that he had fallen in love with her photograph in a matter of seconds, did not pass the matter over too lightly. Mark, glancing at him, saw something of what was in the other’s mind. He shrugged.
‘It’ll pass.’
‘Take it easy,’ said Loftus. ‘Well, I’m going to see Craigie.’
But he did not get as far as the girl’s ward.
Craigie was coming along the passage towards him, and it was one of those rare occasions when Craigie really betrayed that he was worried. His eyes were opened wider than usual, and his face looked gaunt. He gripped Loftus’s arm, and Loftus felt the sharp pressure of his thin fingers.
Loftus’s heart sank.
‘God! She’s not dead? Or missing?’
‘No,’ said Craigie. ‘She’s coming round all right. Bill, this is more serious than anything yet. Jonathan Scott has been kidnapped.’
‘What?’
‘The Foreign Minister, kidnapped,’ repeated Craigie, and he continued to stare blankly at Bill Loftus. ‘Someone phoned the information to his wife, and she called Wishart. He was taken from Downing Street. The policeman on duty there, named Mulliner, was found dead in St. James’s Park; obviously he had been impersonated. We—we must get him back. The question is, who took him? Forster’s people, or the Cartwrights?’
‘I think,’ said Loftus grimly, ‘that I’d better have a word with the girl.’
*See Panic by John Creasey.
16
Re-enter Warncliffe
She was dressed, and sitting in an easy-chair, next to the bed in the private ward to which she had been taken. But for the patches beneath her eyes, in a dark suit, she looked well. She was as cool as she had ever been, and the cigarette was dangling from her lips—as inevitable, it seemed, as Craigie’s meerschaum or Lawrence’s cigar.
Outside her door were two policemen.
Outside the window were two others.
She had been told that, and she had no gun, no weapon at all that she might use, even had she thought of trying to escape. She looked up at Loftus with one brow raised a little above the other.
‘So you’re on your feet?’
‘I am, my dear,’ said Loftus gently. ‘And I’m particularly glad to see that you are. I hope you’re not as obstinate as your brother.’
‘It depends what it’s about,’ said Garry Cartwright. ‘What part of the world have you taken him to? Dartmoor? Or Cannon Row?’
Loftus sat on the end of the bed.
‘Forster got him,’ he announced bluntly.
She leaned forward in her chair, gripping the arms until her knuckles showed white. He saw the tension which had come to her face, the horror in her eyes.
‘God, no, anyone but Forster!’
‘But for a lucky break, he would have had you,’ said Loftus. ‘There was a lot too much fooling at the Manor, and he lost out. We had a
ll the luck in the world—you did in particular. Whom do you work with?’ he added abruptly.
‘Friends.’
‘Could they give instructions apart from him?’
‘I wonder,’ said Garry Cartwright, and her eyes were normal now.
Loftus said in a softer voice:
‘How many ships have you fitted with guns?’
Again her eyes widened, her hands clenched, and she actually half-rose to her feet. Half-standing, half-sitting, she stared up into a face which no longer seemed good-humoured: and she said in a voice he could hardly hear:
‘What—do you mean?’
‘Precisely that,’ said Loftus. ‘A ship has been sunk.’
‘By—night?’ She whispered the word.
‘By night.’
‘Oh, God!’ she said, and said again: ‘Oh, God! They’ve gone mad, they must have done! They weren’t to use that unless we had real trouble with you, and I didn’t think we would. It...’
And then she stopped, and her shoulders straightened.
‘I’m sorry, Loftus. Questions won’t help you.’
‘I see,’ said Loftus. He turned to the door, and pressed a bell close to it. When a nurse tapped, he called: ‘Send the two younger gentlemen from my ward in, please, with a tray of surgical instruments.’
‘What, sir?’
‘Do it quickly,’ snapped Loftus, and he won a gasp as the nurse turned away. He looked at Garry Cartwright, and he saw incredulity in her eyes—but she was breathing more quickly.
‘What—are you going to do?’ she asked.
‘You should know,’ he said casually. ‘I’m going to find out what you know, if after causing you a lot of pain or not. I’ve done it before, but not with a woman. You don’t know what pain a scalpel can cause, do you? And...’
‘You wouldn’t dare!’
‘And now she gets all dramatic,’ said Loftus, and he grinned. ‘I may seem to be fooling, but I’m not. I...’ He stepped forward suddenly, gripped her wrists and crushed them together in his great hand. He half-lifted her, by her wrists, from the chair. And then he let her fall back, and he went on in a dead voice:
‘Understand this. Over a hundred lives were lost tonight in a demonstration of this thing which you and your brother have found. They were drowned—understand? Some of them battered almost to pieces before the ship went down. Others were crushed and trapped so that they had no chance to get away. It looked like a Nazi action, and that would have been war. It was your friends, and that was mass murder. Piracy and murder. Do you think I’m going to let you stop me from learning all I can? Do you think I dare’—he sneered the word—‘make you do a little of the crying those sailors had to do? You’ve got a chance. They had none.’
He stopped, heavy footsteps sounded outside the door. There was a tap, and Mark Errol’s voice called:
‘You want us, Bill?’
‘Have you got the instruments?’
‘Yes,’ said Errol.
‘A moment,’ said Loftus.
He kept his eyes on the girl, and almost unwillingly he felt admiration for her. There was a lot to be said for anyone who could be as cool and calm as she.
She said: ‘Jim told them not to act until he gave the word. I would have stopped anything like it, or given them away. You can’t stop murder with murder. We’ve been prepared to go a long way—we’ve had to. But’—she even smiled—‘if you think your threats would make me talk, you’re quite wrong.’
And Loftus believed her.
For a moment he felt helpless, for he did not know whether he could get information from her by torture. As he stood watching that small, determined face, he told himself that thousands of others, perhaps millions, would die if he relented.
‘But I’ll tell you what I can,’ said Garry Cartwright abruptly. ‘After this I suppose I’ve no choice. Not,’ she added helplessly, and now Loftus saw that she was really near despair, ‘that you can do anything. If they’ve got my brother they have the thing itself. And Forster will take him to Germany without losing time, there’s not much doubt of that.’
‘It won’t be easy,’ said Loftus.
‘Easier than you think.’ She shrugged. ‘Well—are you going to send the butchers away?’
‘When I’ve heard the story,’ said Loftus, and he shrugged. ‘But others will want to hear it too. We’ll get along to my room.’
As he opened the door, Mark Errol and Davidson stood outside, and they looked a little sheepish. Wally, particularly, for he carried a tray of instruments.
She averted her eyes from the tray.
They walked towards the bigger room. Craigie had just entered, after a further telephone talk with Wishart. He looked surprised as the girl led the way, and Loftus said:
‘We’re going to hear a statement, Gordon.’
‘Good. The truth I hope,’ said Craigie.
‘I’ll tell you all I can,’ said Garry Cartwright. ‘Now...’
• • • • •
The Rt. Hon. David Wishart and the Rt. Hon. Winsley Lawrence had not slept that night—and prior to then they had contrived to sleep for an hour or two even in the worst of crises. Scotland Yard was looking for Scott but the task was made doubly difficult by the need for secrecy. The Press could be silenced, up to a point—but even under the censorship there could be leakages of information, the disappearance of Jonathan Scott would create a sensation of the first order.
More...
Scott directed foreign policy.
In the pre-war days the Prime Minister had taken a directing hand, but Scott had been Minister for War in those days. Now Scott was the key man—and his disappearance by itself alone would be disastrous. There were a dozen points of foreign policy demanding urgent attention—which only Scott could give thoroughly and expertly.
It was tragedy.
And, they asked themselves time and time again, there seemed no reason for it. They had no idea who had staged the kidnapping. From Craigie they had heard Loftus’s story, or the gist of it. They had heard of the Cartwrights, and of the agent who was reputed to be from Berlin—Forster, who was likely to stop at nothing to get what he wanted.
Had Forster staged the kidnapping?
Or the Cartwrights?
And what did the Cartwrights aim to do?
They had the door ajar, for it was nearly five o’clock, and the room had grown warm. They heard the ring at the front-door bell, and the slow footsteps of the footman going towards it. Wishart started.
‘Craigie, I wonder?’
‘Probably,’ said Lawrence. He changed his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.
It was Craigie, and with him Loftus. The others knew the big man, and they shook hands. Craigie seemed less tired than he had for some days, and spoke briskly as he sat down.
‘We’re getting somewhere,’ he said. ‘I’ve the Cartwrights’ story for you. It has its fantastic points, but it does explain a lot. In the first place, the Nazis did not sink the Ibrox.’
‘Nonsense,’ barked Lawrence.
‘It’s true. The Cartwrights are members of a small organisation, as wealthy as any small country,’ said Craigie, and now that he was repeating the essence of what he had heard from the girl he himself was finding it almost impossible to believe. ‘I can’t give you names—the girl doesn’t know them. She does know that financial magnates from a dozen countries, combatant and neutral, have formed a syndicate to exploit the new lens.’
Wishart said: ‘We must find out who they are.’
‘It will take time,’ said Craigie quietly. ‘Well. Cartwright invented the lens. His sister claims that its range is more than ten miles—it hasn’t been effectively tested farther than that. Cartwright and his sister are pacifists.’
‘What?’ shouted Lawrence. ‘Pacifists who...’
‘And,’ went on Craigie, who knew that the best way of handling Lawrence in an obstinate mood was to ignore him, ‘they linked up with the syndicate on the understanding that th
e lens should be developed so as to ensure peace. I told you,’ he said, as Lawrence clicked his thumbs sharply against his palms, ‘that there was a fantastic angle to it; Lawrence, for heaven’s sake let me tell you the story as I know it and don’t interrupt.’
Lawrence subsided, and Wishart signed to the Chief to go on.
‘The Cartwrights’ idea was that a sufficiently strong force could be used to make each combatant country cease hostilities. A power which they could not control, for instance, would make even the big powers stop and think. But the weapon had to be absolutely secret and one which none of the warring countries could use.’
‘Ye-es,’ said Lawrence, and for the first time he seemed impressed. ‘Go on.’
‘The Cartwrights had the lens, but no money. The brother did the commercial work, getting in touch first with one man and then another. He used agents—friends whom he believed he could trust. He wanted money, of course, but believed he could get it on the basis that the financial interests of most countries and most individuals were being badly affected by the war. Peace would be worth a fortune. Millionaires in industries badly affected by the war would be only too glad to get hold of anything which might bring it to an early end. Cartwright put his proposition to such men and they accepted it. Before any rumour of the thing went out, they had to have everything they wanted to demonstrate effectively. Ships and aeroplanes primarily.’
‘Hmm,’ said Lawrence, and he jutted his lips forward. ‘So the Ibrox went down to a pirate?’
Craigie nodded.
‘It’s the only explanation. Miss Cartwright assures me that only as a last resort was the weapon to be used at sea, and then only after representations were made to the Governments concerned, and turned down—as was expected. But the man Forster, probably a German agent although that is not yet fully established, learned something of it through the secretary of a member of the syndicate. The secretary was murdered. Forster went thoroughly into the lens’s potential—as thoroughly as he could in the circumstances, and in the course of his investigations discovered that Professor Grafton claimed to have made a similar discovery.’