by John Creasey
A middle-aged secretary came downstairs with a dozen letters for Mannering to sign. Most were for airmail, some to America, one to Japan, one to Moscow, one to Teheran. All were in answer to inquiries or offers for the sale of priceless objects. There was romance and beauty as well as money in Quinns’ business.
His telephone bell rang, and he lifted the receiver.
“Mannering speaking,” he said.
“Mr Mannering, it’s David.” Levinson’s voice was tense, as if with excitement. “Can you come to Miss Gentian’s flat at once, sir. It’s Number 3, Hillbery Mews, just behind Cadogan Square. I’m afraid that Miss Gentian has met with an accident.”
5
ACCIDENT?
Accident? thought Mannering.
He was sitting in the back of a taxi, less than five minutes after receiving the message. London was warming up to its rush hour. The throb of engines was rising all the time, the clatter of footsteps and the cackle of voices was unceasing. He had never seen the pavements more crowded, nor the traffic much thicker, but they made progress, slowly as far as Park Lane, faster towards the new roundabouts at Hyde Park Corner, slowly again towards Knightsbridge. The driver turned off towards Cadogan Square, as if trying to remember exactly where Hillbery Mews was: Mannering had a feeling that it was not far from the big new Carlton Tower Hotel, Americans’ home from home. His driver took some short cuts, and stopped at a narrow entrance to the mews.
“Won’t be able to turn round if I get inside,” he announced.
“That’s all right.” Mannering paid the man off and walked along the cobbled roadway leading to the mews. He saw three doors, two of them painted black, one of them powder blue – like Sara Gentian’s two-piece suit. This door had a little porch, and looked rather like a country cottage; all one missed were red ramblers. All three doors were closed. There was in fact just room to get a small car in, but little to manoeuvre; the mews had been cut in two by the walls of a mammoth new block of flats.
There was no sign of David; no sign of anyone. The windows of two black painted houses had window boxes ablaze with geraniums and deep blue lobelia; there was no window box outside the blue painted window. Each house, or maisonette, was very small – tinier than most mews residences in London.
Mannering went to the door painted blue, and as he did so, it opened.
“Come in, sir.” David Levinson’s voice was pitched at a whisper.
Mannering stepped into the tiny hall. There was barely headroom for a tall man, and he was over six feet tall. A short flight of steps led up from the end of the passage, and two doors led off to the right.
“Where is she?” Mannering asked, bending down slightly.
“In the bedroom, sir – I thought it best to take her up there.”
“Why take her anywhere?” demanded Mannering. “What happened?”
As he spoke, he sniffed; and immediately identified the smell of gas. He did not press Levinson any more but his heart began to beat fast. The second door on the right was ajar. Levinson looked pale, and was breathing hard. Usually he had rather a high colour. He was Jewish, although that was not immediately apparent, and when he filled out he would be a very impressive man. At the moment he was too thin.
“I found her sitting in the kitchen, sir, with—with the gas full on. The gas oven and the taps. I did my best to get rid of the odour without attracting attention. I don’t think anyone in the other houses has any idea of what’s happened.”
“How is she?”
“She’ll be all right,” Levinson assured him. He led the way up the stairs and pushed the door at the top open. It was rather like a hotel. A bathroom led off on the right, and the bedroom itself had a big window, overlooking the side of another new building. But it was quite light and bright. It was furnished in contemporary style, with blues and yellows predominating; Sara Gentian had no doubt of her favourite colours.
She lay on the bed.
Mannering glanced at Levinson with a new respect and new understanding. The younger man had taken off the unconscious woman’s skirt, unzipped her suspender belt, and unfastened the suspenders. She lay on her back, head turned towards the door, eyes closed, red lips vivid. It was one of two divan beds, and Levinson must have pulled it away from the wall so that he could get behind it, and give Sara the kind of artificial respiration she needed for this particular kind of emergency – the usual method, with her lying on her face, could have been fatal. Mannering stepped across and felt her pulse. She was breathing quite evenly, and the beat was regular. There was no sign of bruising.
“She couldn’t have been under for long,” Levinson said.
“She can’t have been home much more than an hour,” Mannering pointed out. “What do you make of it?”
“I keep wondering why she should come straight from Quinns and do this,” said Levinson, looking at Mannering as if for an explanation. “You didn’t—you didn’t do or say anything that would drive her to this kind of desperation, did you?”
“If a highly strung woman is at the end of her tether, even a casual word can end up in this,” Mannering reminded him. “She didn’t get what she came to me for, it’s true.” He was remembering that he had warned her of the consequences of slander; could that have tipped the scales? He remembered how she had changed, too; how frightened she had seemed when she knew that her uncle had said that the missing sword had been stolen. Could that have frightened her to this extreme?
In the short time that he had known her, nothing had suggested she was so distracted.
“How did you find her?”
“I broke in.”
“Why?”
“There was no answer when I knocked, but I was pretty sure that she was in,” the younger man answered. “I asked a workman repairing the electricity cable in the street if he’d seen anyone come, and he told me that a woman in blue had got out of a taxi and come hurrying here, about half an hour before I arrived. Then I looked through the letter box, and—well, sir, I have a very keen sense of smell. It didn’t seem the right time to stand on ceremony, so I forced the door. You may remember suggesting that I learned the way to open the more common locks, in case we needed to open a lock of a cabinet or bookcase or a cupboard at the shop – and it intrigued me. This is a mortice lock, so all I needed was a skeleton key. I hope it was the right thing to do.”
“It was right,” agreed Mannering. “You could have sent for the police.”
“Did we want a scandal? The police would have led to the newspapers, wouldn’t they?”
“Why didn’t you think we wanted scandal?”
“Someone would find out that Miss Gentian had been to Quinns and come straight back here and tried to kill herself. I thought that the good name of the firm—”
Levinson talked very quickly, going red as he spoke; to Mannering he seemed very young. He had very big, black, curling lashes – a woman’s lashes and a woman’s eyes. As Mannering looked at him, he began to stammer, then suddenly gulped and burst out: “Well, I didn’t want to get her picture in the papers, did I? You know what a sensation they would have made. Society Jane Tries to Gas Herself. But it was partly because of Quinns,” he added, defensively.
Mannering grinned. “You’ll do. Now let’s have a look at the kitchen.”
They went downstairs, leaving the bedroom door ajar so that a current of air passed through the room – fresh air that Sara Gentian needed so badly. She could not have been out long, and might wake up soon. Levinson, looking much broader at the shoulders when one was immediately behind him, led the way into a small modern kitchen. It was in black and white, with no blue anywhere. Every modern gadget seemed to have been squeezed in, from an eye level gas oven to a washing-up machine. A tall fridge stood almost as high as the ceiling. That modern gas oven, its door wide open, was ideal for suicide; one only had to sit on a chair, lea
n forward with one’s head on one’s hand, and breathe in the gas. A chair stood to one side, a spiky legged modern thing, doubtless more comfortable than it looked.
“She was sitting on that,” Levinson volunteered.
“Show me how.”
“Show—” the younger man began. Then he pulled the chair up, sat down, hesitated, slowly folded his arms on the front of the table top at the side of the gas oven, and faced the door. With the door half open, the full force of the gas would pour out on him as he faced it. After a moment, he moved his left arm to close the oven door so that the opening was very close to his face. He stayed like that for several seconds. Mannering watched, acutely aware of the residual smell of gas.
“Thanks,” he said at last.
“What’s in your mind?” inquired Levinson.
“Have you touched the taps much?”
“Only to turn them off.”
“We ought to test them for fingerprints,” Mannering said.
“You mean—” Levinson’s eyes rounded. “You mean this might not be attempted suicide? Good God!”
“So you took it for granted.”
“I suppose I did, rather. But—who would want—”
“That’s one of the things we have to find out quickly,” Mannering said. “David, I’m going to talk to Scotland Yard, and have them come over here and test the place for prints. That’s the only way to have the job done thoroughly. We can report a breaking and entering, needn’t say what really happened.”
“But they’ll know what happened if we ask them to test the gas taps!”
“It will still be on the record as a break-in,” Mannering assured him. “Go upstairs and make sure that if Miss Gentian wakes up she doesn’t come down yet, will you?”
“Mr Mannering—”
“The quicker the better.”
“Mr Mannering, she will come round within half an hour. It can’t make any difference whether we wait for that long.” Levinson was very forthright, his voice a little too loud. “If she did do it herself, then we needn’t have the police at all. She’ll tell us as soon as she wakes up – she won’t be able to lie about it if she’s questioned without warning.”
It wasn’t his day, thought Mannering; first the girl had outwitted and now this youngster outgeneralled him. Levinson was quite right. Levinson, on the other hand, had no reason to feel as sure as he that Sara Gentian had not tried to take her own life. She had been too vital, too intense in every way.
Or was he wrong?
“All right, we’ll give her a chance to come round,” he conceded. “Do you know who she lives with?”
“No. I didn’t have time to make any inquiries,” Levinson replied. “Good job I came straight round here. Good job you sent me, for that matter. Did you half anticipate—”
“I wanted to know if she was going to report to someone else as soon as she left Quinns,” Mannering told him. “Whether she had come to me of her own accord, or whether anyone had sent her.” He told Levinson the story which he had already repeated twice, and his thoughts roamed as he talked. He had nearly finished when there was a sound outside. He paused, and thought he heard someone approaching the front door.
“Someone’s coming,” Levinson said hastily. “A man, I’d say.”
It was a man; hurrying. In fact he seemed almost to run the last few steps, and iron tipped heels click-clacked on the cobbles. After a second or so, there was a sharp ring at the front doorbell, a battery type which fitted to the back of the door; it made a loud rasping sound.
“Go and stay with the girl,” Mannering ordered. “I’ll see who this is.”
“He’ll want to know—”
“Go and do what I tell you.”
Levinson flushed, then stepped out of the kitchen and went up the stairs. Mannering waited until he heard his footsteps overhead. The bell rang again, harsh, urgent. He went slowly to the front hall, wishing that there was a way in which he could see who it was before opening the door. He waited until the third ring, then heard a metallic sound at about waist level. A streamer of light came in through the letter box, and he heard a man call: “Sara! Let me in. Sara!”
Mannering opened the door.
A man gasped in surprise, and backed away hastily, still at the crouch. The first thing Mannering noticed was his nearly bald head, the next his round, plump face, the next his untidy shirt, collar, and tie. He missed a step, stumbled, grabbed at the wall to save himself, and slowly straightened up.
“Who—who—are you?” he demanded. His voice was unexpectedly deep; he had the look of a man who was likely to squeak. “I—I want to see Miss Gentian.”
“Miss Gentian’s not well,” Mannering told him. “I don’t think she’ll be able to see anyone for two or three hours. Would you like to—”
“Ill? Sara? Ill? She was perfectly all right this morning. What’s happened? Are you a doctor?”
“No, but I can understand you wanting a doctor, if you still think it’s a matter of life and death.” Before the man could speak, he went on roughly: “Why did you telephone me about Miss Gentian and the Mogul Swords of Victory?”
As he was speaking, he felt sure that this was the man who had telephoned and warned him against giving Sara her own way.
6
CLAUDE ORDE
The plump man, still standing at the open door, seemed to gulp half a dozen times before he spoke again; his glossy brown eyes were huge. At last he muttered: “You’re Mannering.” Mannering stood aside. The other squeezed into the hall; he nearly touched the walls on either side, for his elbows seemed to stick out. He was as different as anyone could imagine from David Levinson. He reached the foot of the stairs, looked up, and muttered again: “Is she ill?”
“Yes.”
“What—what happened?”
“She collapsed.”
“Did you—did you bring her back?”
“We looked after her.”
“Ill,” echoed the plump man. “I wouldn’t have believed—did she have a heart attack?”
“Would you expect her to?”
“I just wondered. She’s always been so well, she—I tell you she hasn’t had a day’s physical illness in her life. Did you—did you do what she wanted?”
“What do you think she wanted me to do?”
“Bring the sword back to Gentian House, of course.”
“What made you think she would want that?”
The man frowned. Take away his fat, which was curiously like puppy fat, and he would be quite good-looking. The frown made him seem older, and his voice became impatient.
“Don’t be silly. She told me what she was going to do.”
“Why should she tell you?”
“You obviously don’t know anything about the situation,” said the plump man, impatiently. “If you did, you’d know that Sara and I are cousins. I’m just as interested in the family fortune as she is. I knew she wanted that sword back at Gentian House, and would try to persuade you to take it there. I wanted to make sure that she didn’t succeed.”
“Why not?”
“Because I thought it a lot of fuss over nothing,” Sara’s cousin said.
“A matter of life and death, remember.”
“All right, let me finish, can’t you? Lord Gentian’s a sick man. This kind of behaviour will make him worse. Now if he’d had a heart attack, no one would be surprised. I laid it on a bit to make you take notice of me. Obviously you did.” He looked up the stairs. “Where is Sara?”
“So you’re a cousin of hers,” Mannering said.
“That’s right – Claude Orde. You needn’t make the usual joke about my parents being poets although they didn’t know it. I must say I think there’s something damned queer about this – Sara, ill.” He shook his head. “I don’t
believe it. Not Sara. What—” he broke off, moistened his lips, then touched Mannering’s arm. “She hasn’t had an accident, has she?”
“Someone tried to murder her.”
He said it in order to break through Claude Orde’s composure, and could hardly have succeeded more. Orde started, gripped his arm tightly, moistened his lips again, and stared towards the bedroom door. His jaws seemed to work; his grip was very tight. Suddenly, he looked closely into Mannering’s eyes, and said hoarsely: “I knew it. I knew it.”
“Supposing you tell me just what you know, and what this is all about,” Mannering said sharply. “It’s time that—”
“Is she all right?”
“She is now.”
“Thank God for that,” said Orde. “Thank God! Well, she can’t say I didn’t warn her. Mannering – tell her to stop worrying about that sword. Tell her to forget it. Tell her that it will only end up in tragedy.” His eyes closed, his voice was so hoarse that it was difficult for Mannering to hear the words. “Make her stop worrying about it, do you understand? Make her.”
He turned towards the front door.
Mannering put out a restraining hand, but touching Orde’s seemed to release a coiled spring of repressed energy. Orde bent his arm and rammed his elbow into Mannering’s stomach, knocking him heavily against the wall. Before Mannering could recover, Orde reached the door and wrenched it open. Pain was spreading through Mannering, and there was nothing he could do to prevent the man from leaving. As he saw the door open wide, however, David Levinson came hurtling down the stairs; Mannering had never seen a man move faster. Before Orde could step outside, Levinson had reached him.
“Not yet,” he said. “Mr Mannering wants to talk—”
Mannering saw Orde’s round, plump face pale with anger, saw him clench his teeth, and sensed what followed. Levinson gasped as if with pain and came staggering along the hall, tripped over Mannering’s foot, and went sprawling on his back at the foot of the stairs. His head thudded on the edge of a tread. Orde went out, slamming the door behind him, making the little house shake.