Prepare for Action

by John Creasey

  ‘You don’t even know whether the brother is alive,’ snapped Laidlaw.

  ‘We will soon,’ said Loftus gently.

  There was not a lot more said, and Hershall and Laidlaw went into the next-door flat by the concealed communicating door. When they had gone, the three leading men of Department Z were left alone together.

  Hammond broke a short silence.

  ‘Everything depends on finding Mike Errol and Howe.’

  ‘If there’s no result by the morning, Bruce, will you go down?’ asked Loftus.

  ‘Why not tonight?’

  ‘Because it won’t take much longer if you wait for the early train,’ said Loftus, ‘and you can get some sleep. You’ll stay here for the night.’

  They went to bed soon afterwards, Loftus insisting on having the alarm clock, and promising to call Hammond in good time for the early train.

  On the next day Hammond went down to Radstock, and thence to Lashley; and on this day, also, things began to happen to Ainsworth.

  Loftus’s first knowledge of it was a telephone call from Regina, to say that Ainsworth had left the flat and was obviously in a badly worried frame of mind. The second was a telephone call from the agent watching Lannigan’s house. Ainsworth had gone there, and what was the agent to do?

  16

  Many Things At Once

  Martin Ainsworth rang the bell at Lannigan’s Queen Street house.

  Ainsworth had no idea that Rita lived there.

  The encounter with Lannigan on the Chelsea Embankment had been simmering in his mind. He was unable to find a reason why the man should offer to help him, and the mystery of the chance meeting worried him. He forced his uneasiness aside as the door opened and the ugly man who dressed so well and whose voice was so unexpectedly mellow smiled at him.

  ‘Good morning, Mr. Ainsworth, I’m glad to see you.’

  ‘I thought perhaps—I mean, you suggested that I should call on you,’ said Ainsworth. ‘I hope that——’

  ‘Do come in,’ interrupted Lannigan, ‘this way.’ He led him to an overcrowded, musty drawing-room. ‘We don’t need to beat about the bush, Mr. Ainsworth. I know that a thousand pounds is difficult to find, and I think we might be able to come to some arrangement. About Quayle, now—neither of us have any liking for him. You worked for him for some time, of course, and you will know something about his habits, his daily visitors, his usual haunts.’

  Ainsworth felt a kind of mesmeric fascination at the smooth suavity of the voice, although he disliked the trend of the questions.

  ‘Do you know, Mr. Ainsworth, whether he was ever associated with a Colonel Ratcliffe?’

  ‘I think he knew such a man, yes.’

  ‘Or a Mr. Edward Howe?’

  ‘He did know a man named Howe, certainly,’ said Ainsworth.

  ‘Excellent,’ murmured Lannigan. ‘Excellent. Now I think we had better go upstairs, Mr. Ainsworth; I have some papers there which I think will interest you. In a very short while we shall know whether we can work together successfully, and if we can, then I can assure you that my principal will be only too glad to assist you in the matter of current expenses.’ Lannigan’s ugly face widened in a smile. ‘After you, sir. Straight up the stairs.’

  Ainsworth went up a long, narrow flight of stairs and paused on the landing.

  ‘You need to go up the next short flight,’ said Lannigan. ‘The door on the right. Excuse me.’ He pushed past Ainsworth, who stood surprised, even bewildered, but was not aware of anything to make him afraid, although his heart was beating fast. Even when Lannigan unlocked the door and ushered him into a pleasantly furnished bedroom, obviously a woman’s room, he was only puzzled.

  He did not know that it was Rita’s home.

  ‘I find it necessary to keep important papers in the least expected places,’ said Lannigan, and pushed an easy chair forward. Ainsworth sat down and accepted a cigarette. Lannigan went to a drawer in a dressing-table, unlocked it, and drew out a cash-box. First he lifted a bundle of treasury notes, then a number of crisp banknotes. He put them carelessly on the top of the dressing-table, and if he saw Ainsworth’s eyes turn towards them he made no comment.

  He took some other papers out, and then said softly:

  ‘I think that Sir Edmund Quayle is not only a liar, and a slanderer and a cheat, Mr. Ainsworth, but it is possible, just possible, that he is an agent of the Nazis.’

  Ainsworth’s eyes turned from the money. He stiffened in his chair and looked into Lannigan’s still smiling face.

  ‘I don’t know where the devil all this is getting to,’ he snapped. ‘I believe a lot of things of Quayle, but I don’t think he’s a spy. The names I have affirmed as knowing him are only of social acquaintances.’

  ‘Gently, gently, Mr. Ainsworth, your loyalty does you credit. Now you may or may not be aware that the young lady who has taken a flat opposite you in Chelsea, and who has been so friendly and so kind, is an espionage agent. A spy. Her attentions to you have been so devoted because she thought that you could give her certain information of importance.’

  ‘What utter rot!’ shouted Ainsworth.

  He stood up abruptly and stepped to the door. His movement surprised Lannigan, who followed swiftly gripping his arm. At the same moment Lannigan put his hand to his pocket, and drew out a small knife with the blade opened; the handle of the knife was wrapped in a handkerchief. All Ainsworth saw as he wrenched himself from the man’s grasp was the handkerchief.

  Then Lannigan stabbed him.

  He plunged the knife into Ainsworth’s back, aiming for the heart. It was a powerful, swift, and dastardly blow, but all Ainsworth felt at first was a sharp stab of pain, white-hot but not acute after the initial spasm. It made him stop pulling at Lannigan, and he looked into the man’s face, saw the thin lips drawn tight over large white teeth. In a sudden panic he raised his voice and tried to shout, but Lannigan clutched his throat and the shout died away into a gurgle.

  Ainsworth stood quite still by the door, his head turned, staring at Lannigan.

  Lannigan drew the knife out, and then stabbed again.

  This time Ainsworth gasped, for the pain was much greater. He felt as if his very vitals had been torn, and there was a deep, horrible thunder in his ears. Lannigan’s face looked distorted, his grin was a leer, an ugly, bestial thing.

  Then there was a sound at the window.

  Ainsworth did not hear it, but Lannigan did, and turned abruptly with the knife poised for a third thrust. Lannigan saw the head and shoulders of a man outlined against the glass.

  He stood quite rigid, staring, and then realised that the man was standing on a ladder. He saw a hand move, and snatching up a book from a table by the bed he flung it at the window.

  The glass broke into a hundred pieces: the figure ducked, and for a moment was lost to sight.

  Ainsworth slipped to the floor with a groan. By then Lannigan was at the dressing-table, whipping up the notes. He thrust them in his pocket and then turned and ran out of the room; he heard the crack of a bullet and the lead peck into the wall behind him. He was unhurt, but in the violence of his haste barely saved himself from falling down the stairs. He gasped for breath, but recovered himself and plunged on. He was desperately afraid then that there would be someone waiting for him by the door, but there was no one there and the door was closed.

  He wrenched it open and ran into the street. He was on the pavement when he realised that he held the knife and the handkerchief in his right hand. He flung them into the house, then turned and hurried away. A taxi drew near and he hailed it. The cabby stared at his pale, strained face, but said nothing. He accepted the order to go to Hampstead Underground station.

  Lannigan sank back in the taxi with perspiration streaming down his face. He looked through the small rear window as the street disappeared from his sight, and saw a man turn the corner and run in the wake of the cab. A second taxi was in sight, and the man jumped on the running board.

  Lannigan
tapped on the glass, and when the driver turned his head, exclaimed: ‘Faster, I’m in a hurry!’

  The cabby trod on the accelerator, but the taxi behind held on. Lannigan expected to be shot at any moment, but suddenly saw the other cabby swerve to avoid a motor-cyclist. The delay was brief, but enabled Lannigan’s man to get ahead.

  Lannigan stopped him when he was round a corner, near Shaftesbury Avenue.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ he said. He paid the man generously, then jumped out of the cab and slipped into a narrow side street. He hurried along it, past bombed buildings and plots of land which had once been the sites of imposing premises, turning right and left, until he felt sure that he was safe from being followed. Then, and not until then, he went to an underground station; he left the train he took there at Hampstead Heath.

  At a kiosk near the station he called Mr Smith, and that hearty gentleman’s voice rang warmly in his ears.

  ‘Ah, my dear fellow, I have been expecting word from you. Has everything gone off according to plan?’ Smith rumbled into a laugh.

  Lannigan snapped:

  ‘No. Ainsworth’s gone, that’s all right, but I was seen. We can’t fix it on the woman, and Queen Street’s closed up.’ He heard a gasp from the other end of the wire as he hurried on: ‘Ainsworth hadn’t any idea about Q, and the others, except that they knew one another; he wasn’t lying, he just didn’t know.’ He stopped, gasping for breath. Then: ‘He can’t have told the girl anything, it’s okay.’

  ‘All right.’ Smith’s voice was harsh. ‘Now get away.’

  ‘I’m going fast,’ said Lannigan. ‘Don’t forget—Queen Street’s closed up.’

  He hung up abruptly, then straightened his tie and smoothed his hair before stepping out of the kiosk.

  He saw several men lounging at the entrance to the station, but not until two of them approached him, one from either side, did he realise that they were police or special branch men. They put their hands on his shoulder, and one said jauntily: ‘We’ll have a word with you, sonny.’

  • • • • •

  Martin Ainsworth lay on the floor of his wife’s room, half-conscious.

  Lannigan’s attack had not killed him outright, and he had even been aware of the shooting, and the noise, as a man jumped through the window in Lannigan’s wake. He did not know, of course, that two men had been watching the house, and that one had followed Lannigan in a taxi while the other had joined the chase on a motorcycle, thus keeping Lannigan in sight all the time and ensuring his detention.

  He did not know that Lannigan was being taken to Loftus’s flat.

  He only knew that there was a sharp pain in his back, near the heart. It frightened him. For some minutes he lay there with the uncomfortable pain and oozing warmth in his back; then laboriously and with the help of the door he pulled himself to his feet, He swayed from side to side; his face was bloodless, but he set his lips and went into the passage.

  The house seemed empty.

  Thought of the stairs brought a wave of nausea over him, but he went slowly towards them, and managed to get down the first four, the short flight Lannigan had mentioned. At the head of the main flight his head swam, but he gritted his teeth, pushed one foot forward, and then began the gradual descent.

  He was thinking of Regina Brent, whom he knew as Regina Grey. He was thinking, too, of what Lannigan had said about her. His thoughts were confused, but he experienced a deep sense of disbelief. He did not think Regina Grey was a Nazi spy, he could not credit it. He felt that he was dying, and that he would not be able to keep on his feet for long, but he wanted to see her: he felt desperately that he had to see her.

  He reached the foot of the stairs.

  His head was filled with a fierce pain, a throbbing which grew worse with every movement he took. His eyes were half-closed, and all he could see at first was a sheet of dazzling white light; that cleared at last, and he could discern the open front door and the street beyond. He went out, not looking either way for some minutes, while several cars and tradesmen’s vans passed him. His head steadied a little, and he turned it in one direction. He saw a taxi approaching, and raised his hand. The man stopped by the kerb, and Ainsworth gasped:

  ‘Chenn Street—Chelsea. Number—11.’

  ‘Right, sir.’ The cabby peered at him narrowly. ‘You all right, sir?’

  ‘I’m—sick,’ gasped Ainsworth. ‘Must get—home.’

  The cabby jumped down, and helped him into the cab. Ainsworth could not sit back in the seat but stayed on the edge of it. The jolting of the taxi sent agony through him, but he retained consciousness until he reached Chenn Street, and the cabby stopped.

  ‘’Ere, I’d better ’elp yer,’ said the man sharply.

  Ainsworth gasped his thanks. He knew that he could not reach the top floor on his own, and he had to get there; every second he had been in the cab he had been seeing Regina’s eyes and face; and he had been hearing Lannigan’s words: ‘She’s a spy, she’s a spy, she’s a spy.’

  He reached the top landing.

  With an effort he took some silver from his pocket and paid the cabby, who rang the bell of Regina’s flat as Ainsworth tried to touch it. There was no immediate response, and the cabby frowned and rang again. A stir of movement inside preceded Regina’s appearance at the door.

  She stopped abruptly at the sight of Ainsworth’s white face.

  ‘I’ve brought ‘im ‘ome,’ the cabby said. ‘Better look after ‘im, missus, ‘e’s in a bad way.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Regina quietly. ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  She took Ainsworth’s arm. He stood swaying for a moment, then leaned heavily against her and allowed her to lead him into her flat. The cabby went downstairs, and Regina pulled a chair towards Ainsworth and helped him to sit down. She did not know where he was hurt, but the look on his face told her that he was not far from death.

  He said: ‘Miss—Grey. Must—tell you.’

  He drew a deep breath and then stopped.

  For some moments there was silence, and Regina was wondering where he was hurt and whether she could help him. It seemed to give him great pain to move, but he kept still and was breathing much more steadily.

  ‘Not long—to live,’ he said. ‘Listen—Lannigan—man I went to—to see. Said you were—a spy.’

  Regina drew a sharp breath.

  ‘Wonder—whether—you are,’ gasped Ainsworth. ‘Not—enemy agent—anyhow. Listen. Lannigan wanted to know—about Quayle. Friends of Quayle. Listen. Quayle sees a lot of—man named—Ratcliffe. Visits him—often. I told Lannigan—that—he didn’t. But he did. Often. And a man named—Howe. Disturbed them at—at a conference, once. Why Quayle—fixed me. Reason for the quarrel. Never trusted—Quayle. Been watching him, trying to find—what he does. But remember—Howe. Ratcliffe. Dang’rous men. They frightened Quayle. Badly frightened. Know they did. Listen.’ He paused a moment, and his breathing grew worse. Only strength of will kept him going for the few moments of life that were left to him. ‘Listen. Quayle goes to Ratcliffe. Underground—workings. Colliery. Near—Bath. Pit closed—down. I kept—kept quiet about it. Didn’t know the reason. Anyhow, needed—money. Bad thing to do. All bad, have always been bad.’

  He paused again, and Regina spoke for the first time: ‘Don’t worry now, Martin, don’t worry.’

  ‘Can’t—help it. Married that shrew of—a woman. Ruined me. Ruined me.’ He paused, and then drew a deep breath. ‘But I wished—it was—different. Loved her, once. Not the way—I love—you.’ His eyes were suddenly clear as they stared into hers.

  ‘Rest now,’ said Regina softly.

  ‘Going to rest—for a long, long while.’ Ainsworth’s eyes widened, his hand suddenly gripped her wrists. ‘You’ve been—a wonderful——’

  As he spoke his lips parted more widely, and his grip relaxed. He fell heavily against the back of the chair, shuddered involuntarily, and then lay still.

  • • • • •

  Regina reste
d Ainsworth as well as she could, bringing up another chair to support him. Then she stood aside and stepped to the telephone. In a few seconds she was repeating to Loftus the gist of what had been said, and Loftus promised to be at Chenn Street within twenty minutes.

  In the intervening time, she washed her hands, and kept out of the little room where Ainsworth lay dead. She could not prevent herself from thinking of the way he had spoken of her and of his wife.

  Then Loftus arrived.

  She repeated what he had told her, while Loftus found the keys in Ainsworth’s pocket and opened the man’s flat. He searched amongst papers there while Regina continued to tell the story, calling it to mind almost word by word.

  He smiled at her, and his manner helped to keep her steady.

  ‘The disused coal mine. There aren’t many mines in the Radstock area, and we know about the Howe Colliery, which was closed down. Mike and Howe are probably down there.’

  ‘Mike!’ exclaimed Regina, and the intensity of her words made Loftus look up at her sharply. ‘Why didn’t I know? Where did he go? Why——’

  ‘Easy,’ said Loftus. ‘We’ll get him before the show is over.’ He straightened up from a desk, shaking his head. ‘Ainsworth didn’t keep any records of it, but I don’t see that it matters. Colliery’s disused. I suppose the Ministry of Mines will know something about them, and we’ll want blueprints and an ordnance map of the district.’ He seemed to be talking more to himself than to Regina, but that was deliberate, for he was watching her closely, surprised at the effect that the news of Mike’s disappearance had on her.

  He lifted the telephone and dialled Craigie’s office. Craigie promised to contact the Ministry of Mines for the necessary information, and then said quietly: