Meet The Baron

by John Creasey

  “Vy, Misther Bristhow, tho thorry, tho thorry! Vy didn’t you come in the private entranth, Misther Bristhow? Come thith vay, thith vay, and mind the stheps - vun - two - three - - ”

  Bristow followed the Jew into the grimy parlour at the rear of the pawnshop, and marvelled to himself that a man as rich as Levy Schmidt could live in such filth. He shrugged the thought away. Levy had a perfect right to handle his own money and affairs as he liked; and Levy, moreover, was a valuable informant.

  The parlour was as gloomy as it was dismal, despite the brilliance of the sun outside. It was heaped with more second-hand clothes, odd articles of furniture, crockery, and cutlery. Nothing that could be pawned was missing. Mile End patronised Levy frequently and exhaustively from sheer necessity.

  “Now vot, Misther Bristhow - thit down, pleath - can I do for you? Can it be - ”

  “What a lot more you’d say if you didn’t talk so much!” said Bristow cheerfully. “The Kenton brooch, Levy. You’ve got it?”

  Levy nodded. His dirty, scrawny face was lined with years, and his brown, hooded eyes gleamed as he regarded the detective with satisfaction. He turned away and limped towards a square steel safe in the corner of the parlour.

  “Vy yeth, Misther Bristhow, vould you pelieve it, I forgot? Mind you,” the pawnbroker added hastily, “I voth forthed to pay ten poundth for it, Inthpector; he vould not leave it viddout a pit of money. You come back ven I haff more in the thafe, I thaid, and he promithed he vould, Inthpector - just vun minute more. Hey! The Kenton brooch, hey!”

  Bristow took the bauble in his fingers and peered at it. The lambent green fires in the stones greeted even the dim light of the shop parlour. Bristow pulled a photograph from his pocket and compared it with the jewel in his hand. It was the genuine Kenton brooch he was prepared to swear.

  He slipped it into his pocket, wrapped in tissue-paper, and nodded at the Jew.

  “That’s it,” he said. “Now who was the man? Know him?”

  “Never thet eyeth on him before in me life, misther!”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Vell - it’th dark in the thop, Inthpector. Tall and dark and vot you might call viciouth, hey? Not a nithe man to know, hey? And his coat-collar voth turned up - like thith.” Levy put his scrawny hand behind his neck and hunched his shoulders expressively.

  “Coat or overcoat?” asked Bristow.

  “Overcoat, and a day like thith!” Levy lifted his hands to the ceiling. “Vy, didn’t it thout thuthpithion?”

  “Why didn’t you telephone for a couple of policemen?” asked the Inspector a little irritably.

  “Vell” - Levy shrugged his shoulders until the miscellaneous collection inside the pocket of his once black, now green coat jingled together - “vot could an old man like me do, Inthpector? Get the brooch, I thaid - that wath the firtht thing. And then telephone you, hey?

  Not by a word or sign did Levy betray that he knew more than he said. True, he had given the only description of the visitor he possessed; but Levy had no love for the police, and he had a great love for jewels of the quality of the Kenton stone. Between him and the visitor who had brought the jewel there had passed a conversation that Bristow would have given a lot to have heard.

  “I’m not grumbling,” the Inspector said, knowing that if he grumbled he would get little or no information. “What was his voice like?”

  “Not a nithe voith,” said old Levy. “Hard, misther, vid the corner-mouth talk, hey?”

  “Hm,” said Bristow, and his mind worked automatically.

  “An old lag, but not a Londoner, or he’d know Levy. The light business shows his nerve, and he’ll probably be known in the Midlands or up north. Broke, or he wouldn’t have taken ten pounds and an excuse for the brooch. He won’t come back, of course.”

  “Where’s the ticket he signed?” asked the Inspector.

  “Vy, yeth, I forgot, vould you pelieve it? Vun moment, Misther Inthpector, vun - ”

  The old Jew’s voice quavered away as he waddled out of the parlour towards the shop. Bristow could hear him pulling out a drawer beneath the counter, and heard him muttering to himself. Bristow scowled, trying to sort the thing out in his mind. Levy should have held the man somehow, he told himself

  “Here ve are, here ve are,” said Levy, limping down the stairs into the parlour. “Vunny kind of name, Misther Inthpector.”

  Bristow took it, and looked casually at the signature, little dreaming how often he was to look on the name and curse it. His attention tightened, however, when he saw that the signature was little more than a series of block letters joined together; it suggested illiteracy or cunning - or both.

  “Hm,” he muttered, “T. Baron. What strikes you as funny about that, you old gas-bag?”

  “Vell,” muttered Levy, “vell - high and mighty, vot? Hey! Just a minute, misther, the thop - ”

  Bristow nodded as he heard footsteps in the shop beyond. He waited for two or three minutes, with growing impatience. Levy was muttering, and the other voice, low-pitched and harsh, was travelling into the parlour, the tone, not the words, being distinguishable. Levy was haggling, and the other was losing his temper. Bristow started to frown. His frown deepened as he heard a shuffle of footsteps and a rapped: “No, you don’t. Stay there!”

  Bristow stopped scowling. He stood up slowly and fingered the steel of the handcuffs in his pocket. It was absurd, of course, but the probability remained that the would-have-been pawner of the Kenton brooch had returned. Bristow knew that the gods were generous at times, and a fool was born every minute.

  Keeping close to the row of clothes in the passage, and out of sight of the men in the shop, he went up the stairs.

  He saw the man suddenly, and grinned. Levy’s description had been brief but good. Tall, dark-skinned, with a tweed cap pulled low over his eyes, reaching almost to the bridge of his nose, and the collar of a dilapidated rainproof coat turned up above his chin, the thief of the Kenton brooch - providing the case was as plain as it appeared to be - was staring at Levy, who was crouching back against the wall behind the desk. Bristow could just see the tip of Levy’s nose and forelock of white, greasy hair.

  I tell you, Levy was muttering, “that vot I thay ith . . .”

  “Can that!” snapped the man in the tweed cap. And then, without the slightest change of expression in his voice, he said, “Bristow, come out of there!”

  The silence in the pawnshop could be felt. Bristow himself felt as if he had been punched in the stomach; his wits were wool-gathering, his legs and arms felt weak. He could just hear the soft breathing of the Jew and the ticking of half a dozen clocks.

  “Levy,” said the man in the tweed cap, breaking the silence harshly, “you’ve split to the narks enough, I reckon. Are you religious?”

  Levy muttered something deep in his throat. The detective felt a peculiar tightening of the muscles at the pit of his stomach, and a coldness seemed to have spread through the shop, despite the heat of the day. He shivered.

  “Because,” went on the man in the tweed cap, “unless Bristow decides to come into sight you’re going on a long, long journey. So - ”

  Bristow swallowed a lump in his throat and moved forward. Levy was shivering against the wall, and the man in the tweed cap was holding something in his right hand, holding it loosely and pointing it towards the policeman; he seemed to ignore Levy.

  “You’ll get a heavier sentence for this,” said Bristow, keeping his voice steady. “Put that gun away and - ”

  The man lifted the gun. For a moment Bristow’s eyes narrowed, but his coldness increased. It all happened in a fraction of a second. Bristow had just time to think in a queer, hazy way of death . . .

  Then something sweet and sickly came through the shop, something that made Bristow gasp and choke and stagger back. He recognised the fumes of ether gas as he heard the thief laugh, a harsh, unpleasant sound that grated, and saw old Levy drop to the floor, falling as though in slow motion on the sc
reen. The Jew’s hand clawed the air, his mouth was twisted open. A vague shape loomed in front of Bristow’s eyes, and he struggled for a moment in an effort to regain his feet. Then the darkness swallowed him.

  The man in the tweed cap ran through the unconscious detective’s pockets quickly, found the Kenton brooch and stuffed it into his own pocket, and then hurried out of the shop, his shoulders hunched and his head buried in the collar of a frayed mackintosh.

  And a little later John Mannering chuckled to himself.

  As Bristow’s sergeant told him some time later, the detective and the pawnbroker might have been on the floor of the shop for hours but for the arrival of a woman who wanted to pledge a pair of boots. She saw the two bodies, and, not being used to such evidence of violence, even in the East End, screamed and rushed into the street, where she was caught and interrogated by a placid policeman a few minutes later.

  The policeman investigated, and then started to get things moving; he recognised the Inspector, and knew the slightest error would earn him a sharp rap over the knuckles. Consequently Bristow was revived without loss of time, and the policeman was relieved to find his superior was not seriously gassed.

  “Baron!” muttered a sick and furious Detective Inspector Bristow some two hours later. “Baron! It’ll be a long time before I forget that name, blast him. Did you find anything, Tanker?”

  Sergeant Jacob Tring of the plain-clothes force, known as Tanker because of his slow, ponderous, yet remarkably successful progress in his work, shook his head and regarded the pale face of his chief stolidly.

  “Not a thing. Levy was out as much as you’ and if it hadn’t been for that old woman who went in to pop a pair of boots you might have been there for hours. I shouldn’t smoke just yet, chief,” Tanker went on. “The innards are made for some things and not for others.”

  “You go to hell!” said Bristow snappily. “Well, we know something now. Send a call through for the Baron - T. Baron - to every station; get that pawn ticket run over for fingerprints - ”

  “There ain’t no pawn-ticket,” said Tanker. He brightened perceptibly as he made the statement, for he was a man cheered by bad news and depressed by good tidings. “He took it.”

  Bristow stared and then swallowed hard. His brow was black, and he started to speak in a way that Tanker had rarely heard before.

  “One day I’ll - ” he growled; and then suddenly and absurdly he laughed.

  It was a remarkable thing to do, but Tanker had known his superior for a long time, and was prepared for anything. The sergeant shrugged his shoulders and looked out of the window of Bristow’s small office at the Yard. A tall, lanky, doleful-looking man was the sergeant, dressed in shiny blue serge, patched but well-polished boots, and, even in the office, a bowler hat two sizes too large for him. Tanker’s hat was an institution at the Yard. Bristow was still laughing, and his assistant decided that there was such a thing as too much of a joke. He grunted.

  “Levy said you’d got the brooch in your pocket, chief, so we had a look. Nowt, of course. We tested’ everything in the pockets for prints, but there was none of them there, either.”

  “Next time you want to look in my pockets,” said Bristow, checking his laughter, “wait until I’m awake. Has her ladyship been through this morning yet?” “Twice”, ‘said Tanker.

  The smile left Bristow’s face, and he frowned. The cool effrontery of the trick had appealed, suddenly and unfailingly, to his sense of humour, but the task of making a report to the effect that he had actually had possession of the Kenton brooch sobered him. If the Dowager learned that she would cause a great deal of bother and annoyance. He grew brisk.

  “Well,” he said, “what are you standing there for, Tanker?” (Only Superintendents and higher officials called Sergeant Jacob Tring by his real name.) “Get that call out, man.”

  The sergeant hurried out of the room, and for a while Bristow brooded alone. Then he took a deep breath and left his office for that of Superintendent Lynch. He found the Superintendent in, and made his report verbatim. Lynch, large, red-faced, placid, and cheerful, grinned slowly.

  “Caught for a sucker, Bristow,” he said; “but what’d he stage a show like that for, I wonder?”

  “If I knew,” muttered Bristow, “I - ”

  “Ever seen the man before, or anything like him?” asked Lynch, who rarely wasted time, especially at the start of a case.

  “You’ll find a dozen in any high street east of London.”

  “Eyes? Complexion? Hair?”

  “Eyes and hair covered, complexion dark.”

  Harsh. I’d recognise it if I ever heard it again.”

  “There seems to be a meaning behind that,” said Lynch placidly. “What is it, Bill?”

  “He disguised his voice as easily as he did his handwriting,” said Bristow, “and he took them both away with him when he went.”

  “Naturally,” said Lynch. “You don’t seem quite at your best, Bill. What did you say he called himself?”

  “Baron. T. Baron,” said Bristow.

  There was a sudden tightening of the lines at the Superintendent’s eyes, and a sudden pursing of his generous lips. Bristow frowned.

  Lynch did not speak at once, but his brooding eyes contemplated the Inspector for several seconds.

  “Now that,” he said at last, “is a very funny thing.”

  “Levy thought so too,” said Bristow.

  “But he wasn’t thinking what I’m thinking,” said Lynch slowly. “Are you feeling all right?”

  Old Bill’s smile returned to his lips and eyes. He needed no telling that there was an idea at the back of Lynch’s mind, and he had a great regard for the Superintendent’s ideas.

  “Ye-es. Injured more in the pride than the abdomen. Why?”

  Lynch stood up and picked his hat from the peg on the door, placed his thumb and forefinger behind Bristow’s neck, and urged the detective into the passage. As they walked along - the Big and Little of It, according to those members of society who had thought of calling Bristow Old Bill - Lynch was saying, in his curiously gentle voice: “It’s a funny thing, a very funny thing, Bill, that we pulled Charlie Dray inside this morning for trying to pass some of the stones from the Kia bracelet. You’ve heard of the Kia bracelet, Bill?”

  “Ye-es,” said Bristow, and then racked his brains. He did not recall the circumstances of the affair, although the name was familiar enough.

  “Removed, so cleverly removed,” said Lynch, who had a bad habit of trying to be lyrical, “from Mrs Chunnley at the Pertland House Ball last February. Now we come to think of it, the lights went out, Mrs Chunnley felt the bracelet slip from her wrist, and, sesame, the lights came on again.”

  “I gather,” said Bristow, “that you think there’s a connection between the Kia bracelet and the Kenton brooch?”

  “How liberally you were endowed, Bill, with the power of reasoning! Yes, I do. Now we come to think of it - I’m generous, Bill, and include you - the two jobs were as near identical as any we’re likely to come across.”

  “That’s true enough,” admitted Bristow, frowning.

  “Thank you,” said Superintendent Lynch with heavy wit. “Now we go back to Charlie Dray - he’s at Bow Street, time being - who was trying to pass some of the stones from the Kia bracelet this morning. He said a thing that makes Mr Baron sound very funny.”

  “Well,” said Bristow, when they had tucked themselves into a taxi - Lynch was notoriously lazy - and were humming towards Bow Street, “what about Dray’s story?”

  “Will you keep quiet a minute?” demanded Lynch testily.

  Bristow grinned and was silent. Lynch said nothing more until they were confronting Charlie Dray in the charge-room at Bow Street some twenty minutes later.

  Charlie Dray was a weedy, pale-faced, ginger-haired man who had once earned fame as a cracksman of exceptional ability. No lock had been too cunning for his art, and only a domestic quarrel had led to his undoing, for Charlie had been
shopped for nearly being unfaithful. After fives years’ penance he had forsworn married life and his profession, and he earned a living by selling lozenges to football crowds during the winter and ice-cream to race crowds during the summer. Not once during the three years of his freedom had he trespassed against the law, so far as Superintendent Lynch knew. Yet that morning . . .

  “Charlie,” said Lynch gently, “I’ve no wish to see you in uniform again, so I want you to spill your story again, and fully, to Old Bill and me. Don’t laugh, Charlie!”

  Dray chuckled; his good humour was notorious.

  “You will have yours, woncha - little joke I mean? Now, listen, if I strike me dead I speak the truth - ”

  “Pardon?” said Lynch politely.

  Charlie guffawed. “But, joking apart, sir, wot I told you was the truth nothing but, strike me, Superintendent. Bloke comes to me a month ago and says, ‘Charlie, I’ve heard it said you know something about locks.’ ‘Then,’ says I, ‘you looked up an out-o’-date reference book, mister. ‘Now,’ says he, ‘I wouldn’t disturb your morals - ‘”

  “Did he say morals, Charlie?” asked Lynch severely.

  “Did I tell you I was telling you the truth nothing but?” demanded Charlie aggrievedly. “Morals he says, and morals I says, because, if you look at it that way, sir, it’s a laugh. Howso. ‘- For anything in the world,’ he says, ‘but I’ve just bought a lot of old safes, and some of ‘em are locked, and I want to open them.’ ‘On the level? ‘asks I.’ If so I’ll do ‘em.’ ‘On the level,’ says he, so we goes along to a place in Brick Street - ”

  “Can you remember the place?” said Lynch.

  “Eyes shut and three parts over,” said Charlie, “and the Izzy who was selling him the safes.’There they are, he says, ‘so you can see I’ve bought ‘em. Now I’m going to take them, and you, to a little place in Lambeth, and you can open them for me.’”