by John Creasey
Lucy said fearfully, “Sure she can breathe?”
“She can breathe,” the man with the hypodermic syringe declared. “I bored holes in it.”
“She won’t be here for long.” Schumacher’s eyelids were drooping again, and he was breathing more heavily. “Put her sweater and skirt on, and be quick about it.”
“That sweater’s a bit too small for me.”
“Who cares if you show how big you are.” Schumacher looked as if he would strike Lucy, but in fact he realized that he should have thought of Nina’s slighter figure. It was too late now. “Get them on, quick.” He watched as she took off her wool-knit dress, and as she pulled on Nina’s clothes he went on: “When I talk to you at the galleries and the museums, you just say: ‘Gee, that’s wonderful’ or ‘Gosh, I like that.’ Don’t try to say anything clever. Understand?”
“I could fool you with my American,” Lucy said. She pulled at the sweater, to prevent it from clinging so tightly.
“Don’t try to fool anybody.” Schumacher turned to the other man. “Facey, get her away from here as soon as you can, and when it’s safe, open the chest.”
“Don’t you worry,” said the man he called Facey.
Schumacher led the way into Gulliver Street, and no one took any notice of him and Lucy. No one took particular notice of him in their brief visits to the National Art Gallery, the Royal Academy, or the Victoria and Albert Museum in Knightsbridge, but a great many people had a mental picture of Abel Schumacher and an American girl in a black sweater and a red skirt. Some of the younger men even carried a mental image of the tight fit of the sweater.
Florence Foster thought that Frank was such a gentleman, and obviously determined to get to know her better. It was strange, but she knew surprisingly little about men. She had not allowed herself to be particularly interested while she had looked after her aunt. She seldom admitted the truth to herself, but years ago, when she had been a little under fifteen, a very well-developed under-fifteen, she had allowed herself to be taken for a walk in some woods near her home. Nothing had “happened,” but before she had scared the man into taking his probing hands away she had been nearly hysterical. For a long time even the thought of sex relations had been repugnant to her, and her aunt had been glad that she should be so little interested in men. It had not occurred to Florence that her aunt had been selfish and possessive, nor had it occurred to her that she was developing an unnatural antipathy toward the opposite sex.
Two or three men had wanted to become friendly but had cooled off when they saw the odds. Since she had been on her own she had made herself think more about them, and had actually been able to laugh at the early experience. Now she was little more than shy.
It was impossible to be shy with Frank Matthews.
They were going to dine at a West End restaurant tonight, and then go to a dance.
A detective officer from New Scotland Yard was at the restaurant, saw the couple, thought the man looked like the American Mayhew alias Mason, and steered his partner toward the pair. When he heard him speak he believed he was Australian, not American. Thereafter, he concentrated on his job: he was working for Old Dog’s Collar, checking whether many of the hostesses here went off with the men who dined alone.
That same afternoon, about the time when Schumacher and Lucy left the Victoria and Albert Museum, where they had studied the Constables as well as some early English painters, Alice Clay was looking out the window of her tiny flat. She was beginning to feel lonely. She had never been one for solitude, and liked to be out and about, dancing, or at the pictures, or eating at restaurants - anywhere there were people. There were plenty of people in the street, cars, cyclists, school children, and everyone seemed happy.
“I cant stand another night stuck in here with the telly,” she said aloud.
Then she felt that suffocating feeling come over her, and the idea of going out on her own was frightening. She stood by the window, hands clenching, when there was a ring at her front door.
“Who’s that?” she cried.
Slowly, she approached the door, and touched the handle as the bell rang again. It made her jump. She put a foot against the door and opened it a few inches.
“Who’s that?”
“Is that Miss Alice Clay?” It was a man with a pleasant English voice.
“Yes. Who wants me?”
“Miss Clay, I called on you once before, when you first came to live here. My name is Stephens, the Reverend Ronald Stephens - curate at St. Mary’s.”
“Oh, yes, I remember!” Alice opened the door wider and saw a fair-haired man of about thirty, with nice blue eyes. She knew he was married; he’d told her so and she’d thought what a pity. Now he was someone it was safe to invite in, someone to talk to. “Won’t you come in?”
“May I?” When he had entered, and had refused the offer of a cup of tea, he said very quietly, “Miss Clay, forgive my frankness, won’t you? One of my parishioners is an officer at the local police station, and he told me how deeply upset you were by the terrifying experience you had so recently.”
Alice said, “It was awful.”
“I’m sure it was. I’m deeply sorry about it. I came along to see if I could help in any way.”
“Help?” Alice echoed.
When the Reverend Ronald Stephens smiled he had quite a twinkle.
“If only to remind you that most people are very good and worth knowing. You haven’t been out since the incident, have you?”
“I’ve been scared to,” Alice confessed. “I know it’s silly, but I’ve been scared to death.”
“It isn’t silly at all,” declared the curate. “Do you like meeting people?”
“Oh, ever so!”
“I wonder if you’d be interested in a kind of club we run at St. Mary’s. It isn’t a church club, in fact many of the members never come to St. Mary’s, although we hope they will one day. There’s nothing we’d like better than to see you there, incidentally. But that’s up to the individual. I won’t try to describe the club, but if you care to come along you’ll soon get a good idea of what it’s like.” When Alice didn’t answer, Stephens went on: “One of our members would be happy to call for you tonight.”
“Oh, would he?” Alice’s eyes lit up.
So did the eyes of the curate of St. Mary’s.
And about that time Elliott Henderson lifted the telephone in his suite at the Bingham, expecting a long-distance call. Instead, it was Abel Schumacher.
“Hullo, Abel. How did the art galleries go today?”
“Not too well, I suspect,” Schumacher said. “In fact Nina gave up a couple of hours ago - she said she was going to see someone she knew from the Queen Elizabeth. I checked at the desk, and when they told me they hadn’t seen her come in, I thought I’d better tell you.”
“I’m certainly glad you did,” Henderson said.
“It’s my pleasure,” Schumacher declared. Then he added ruefully, “I think the truth of the matter is that I’m far too old for her. Let me know how she talks about the day, won’t you?”
“Surely,” Henderson said. “Thanks for calling.” He rang off, without any cause for suspecting that Abel Schumacher had lied.
Felisa came in a little after half past six, before there was any word from Nina. By seven o’clock both mother and stepfather began to feel anxious, although not yet alarmed.
9: The Fourth Wife
Just before six o’clock, when Gideon was planning to leave for home, Oliver of the Fraud Squad came in. Oliver was a tall, glum-looking individual, who wore thick-lensed glasses “the better,” he would say with his almost gloomy humour, “to see the forgeries with, Gee-Gee.” He was a man with a vocation: that of distinguishing any kind of forgery; also a man with a cross: his eyesight, so essential to his work, was failing. He had always tried to keep pace with the scientific methods, using infra-red rays and anything he felt was reliable. Just as some men had a nose for news, and others for luck, so Oliver had an eye
for counterfeit currency and forged documents.
“Something about the look of it,” he would say, then rustle a specimen between his fingers, and add, “And something about the feel of it.”
Now he brought a transparent plastic folder with several pockets, each pocket containing West German marks. He also had a typewritten report.
“Spare five minutes, George?”
“Five?” Gideon echoed, and smothered a sigh. “I mustn’t be too late. Won’t it keep?”
“You said treat it as urgent,” Oliver reminded him. “Just five minutes.”
Gideon resigned himself to half an hour, lifted the internal telephone and dialled the sergeants’ room.
“Sit down, Olly . . . Hallo . . . Stott, ring my wife, will you, tell her I’ll be having three or four guests in after supper - emphasize the ‘after’ - and ask her to lay everything on.”
“I’ll do that right away, sir,” said Detective Sergeant Stott.
Gideon rang off.
“Beer session.” Oliver sniffed. “Why can’t I come?”
“Like to?”
“Can’t.” said Oliver. “That’s if I can persuade my boss to spare me five minutes on a certain job. If he sees it my way, I’ll be up half the night preparing a memo for tomorrow.”
Gideon opened a cupboard in his desk.
“Like a Scotch?”
“Thanks, George, don’t mind if I do.” Oliver extracted four of the mark notes and placed them on Gideon’s desk as Gideon poured. “Those marked with a red A - genuine, George. Ta. . . . The black B - one of the forgeries Bonn sent us. The red B, one of those from Thos. Cook’s, this morning. Nice drop of Scotch.”
“Go on,” said Gideon.
“The black B and the red B are identical,” Oliver told him. “So some of the same forged notes are on this side - twenty-seven are at least. The forgery’s as perfect as any I’ve come across. Paper’s the same, dunno how they got it but that’s Bonn’s problem. Colour’s identical. There’s one thing Bonn either didn’t tell us or didn’t know.” Oliver sipped his whiskey and soda again, but Gideon did not spoil his moment of satisfaction. “See red B?”
Gideon studied it, and saw a single pale smudge, rather like a spot left behind by liquid which had caused a slight fading.
“Yes,” Gideon said.
“Found that out by accident, last night. I was having half a pint and a spot dropped on to that.” He dipped his little finger in his drink and dabbed the note. After a pause he wiped it off, and there was a faint mark. “I’d like to ask all banks, including all tourist agencies who have foreign exchange facilities, to try the alcohol test on each one. Give ’em a couple of days and we should get some idea how many of the forgeries are here. Right?”
Gideon finished his drink.
“Right.”
“I’ll ask all the head offices to send to their branches and have the replies analyzed by the head offices. Save us a lot of trouble, and—”
“Go ahead,” interrupted Gideon.
“Okay. Seven minutes,” Oliver said. “Don’t blame me if you’re late home.”
“If they’re coming at eight you haven’t much time,” Kate said to Gideon when he reached home just before seven o’clock. “Who’s coming?”
“Lem, and an old friend of yours.”
Kate looked startled.
“Of mine?”
“You once said you wished you could have one hundredth of the diamonds he lifted in the way of business,” said Gideon. He laughed. “It was a long time ago. Twenty-six years.”
Kate stared at him, and then turned to the door.
“I must get the front room ready. You’ll have to take the dinner out of the oven, dear. Just the two?”
“Just the two.” Gideon took a steaming cottage pie out of the oven, the potatoes on top a crisp golden brown. The kitchen table was already laid. Kate liked her food cool, he liked his hot. He was half through his huge plateful when Kate came in.
“Give up,” she said.
“Quincy Lee,” declared Gideon.
“Quincy–” Kate actually shifted her chair back in astonishment. “The smash-and-grab man?”
“He’s come to make sure all is not proven, if not forgiven.”
“I’m not sure I think it’s a good thing,” Kate said.
When Quincy Lee arrived, at exactly eight o’clock, she was at her gracious best. Lee was a short, wiry man, with iron-grey hair, grey eyes, a weather-beaten complexion. He wore a shoestring tie, and the cut of his lightweight suit was unmistakably American. He shook hands with Gideon as if they were long lost brothers, and when Lemaitre arrived five minutes later almost crushed his hand.
After two or three minutes of ‘How are you?’ ‘How’ve you been?’ and generalities. Kate got up, saying: “I mustn’t stay here, I’ve some letters to write.”
“Don’t run away on my account,” urged Lee. “I guess you’ll get as much kick as the boys will.”
Kate glanced at Gideon, who said easily, “The letters can wait, Kate, can’t they?” He noticed the deliberation with which Kate sat down again; as if she were making sure she did not appear to be overeager.
“First thing I want to get off my chest is how much I owe to you guys—” Quincy began.
Lemaitre snorted. “For not nabbing you, you mean?”
“I didn’t mean nothin’ of the kind,” denied Quincy. “You made it so hot for me I knew there was no future in little old England for Quincy Lee, so I emigrated. Worked my way across the Atlantic on a tramp steamer–”
“So that’s why we never caught you,” Lemaitre butted in. “Tell me something, Quincy. How much did you make out of that Hatton Garden job?”
“Easy, Lem,” counselled Gideon.
“He won’t incriminate himself after all these years!”
“Just to be on the safe side, why don’t I put it like this?” suggested Quincy. “I managed to save up a little pile in England, and when I decided to emigrate I had enough to set myself up in a little business. Got up to Boston, and decided it looked too much like home, and New York wasn’t safe, with C.I.D. men using airplanes like a ferry service. So I got a Greyhound bus - heard of them Greyhounds?”
“You bet!” Lemaitre’s spirits seemed to rise higher all the time.
“Took a ticket across to Los Angeles, but liked the look of a place en route - Albuquerque. It wasn’t until I’d lived there a month I discovered it was in New Mexico - always thought it was Texas, they were so pleased with their sand and their sun. Seemed big enough to get lost in and small enough to get out of quick,” went on Quincy. “So I set up as a watch repairer and built up a nice business, then I started buying a few bits of costume jewellery and went on from there.”
“Anything hot?” demanded Lemaitre, almost hopefully.
“Take my word for it, Mrs. Gideon, I kept on the straight and narrow from the day I set foot in the old U.S.A. Never deviated - not by so much as a penny. I got fascinated in a different kind of rock - real rocks and minerals, semiprecious stones, that kind of thing,” he explained. “They’re scattered all over Arizona and New Mexico, up in Utah and Colorado too. In the winter I went into the mountains and dug the stuff out of the rocks, and made jewellery and sold polished rocks in summer. Happy as a sand boy, I was - never looked back and never regretted it.”
After a pause, Kate said, “Did you get married?”
“You betcha! Girl came in to get her watch repaired. Fascinated by my English voice, she was, and that watch kept on going wrong. We were married in less than a year. She asked me what I did in England and I told her I was a rock collector there too.”
Lemaitre snorted. Gideon laughed, Kate smiled broadly.
“So we hitched up. Had five kids, and they’re all married now. Got eleven grandchildren, Mrs. Gideon - eleven, believe it or not.” There was pride in his voice, yet sadness in his eyes. He pulled his bulging wallet from his hip pocket, and took out a wedge which proved to be a photograph holder. He flick
ed through several, stopped at one, looked at it solemnly for a moment, and handed it to Kate.
“There’s my Liz. Wonderful woman, she was. Cancer got her, the end of last year. Wicked to watch her, it was.” Quincy paused, while Kate studied the pleasant-looking face of a woman who had been in her thirties when the photograph was taken. “Never had any inclination to come back home while she was alive”, Quincy confided. “But when she was gone I kinda had a hankering. Two of my sons are in the business. They go out and dig the minerals these days. Their wives help in the shop, and all of them urged me to come. Six months’ vacation I’ve got.”
He stared at Gideon.
“Why did you get in touch with us so soon?” asked Gideon.
Quincy replied simply. “I had to know how I stood. The Gee-Gee I knew way back would be okay, but people change. You’re the top man now, and when you’re at the top you look at things different, somehow. Six months okay, Mr. Gideon?”
Gideon hesitated. Kate looked at him as if she could not believe that he had any doubts, Lemaitre actually gaped. Quincy Lee did not once shift his gaze.
“As a top man, Quincy, I have to say this,” said Gideon. “Keep out of trouble, and you can stay six years if you want to.”
Quincy’s eyes lit up. “I’ll keep my nose clean - I swear it!”
Gideon grinned. “As George Gideon, I didn’t even need to say it, Quincy. Now–”
The telephone bell rang.
Kate said quickly, “I’ll answer it,” and jumped from her chair before any of the others moved. Quincy Lee glanced at her as she went out, and then looked back at Gideon.
“Never had any real doubt what you’d say, Mr. Gideon. While she’s out of the room - mind if I give her a little present? Navajo silver and turquoise work, the genuine stuff.” He pulled a long narrow box out of his inside breast pocket. “Earrings, bracelet and a couple of brooches, not worth much and I got it wholesale. Okay?”