by John Creasey
Copyright & Information
Hide The Baron
First published in 1956
© John Creasey Literary Management Ltd.; House of Stratus 1956-2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The right of John Creasey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
This edition published in 2013 by House of Stratus, an imprint of
Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,
Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.
Typeset by House of Stratus.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.
ISBN EAN Edition
0755135733 9780755135738 Print
0755139070 9780755139071 Kindle
0755137418 9780755137411 Epub
This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author's imagination.
Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.
www.houseofstratus.com
About the Author
John Creasey – Master Storyteller - was born in Surrey, England in 1908 into a poor family in which there were nine children, John Creasey grew up to be a true master story teller and international sensation. His more than 600 crime, mystery and thriller titles have now sold 80 million copies in 25 languages. These include many popular series such as Gideon of Scotland Yard, The Toff, Dr Palfrey and The Baron.
Creasey wrote under many pseudonyms, explaining that booksellers had complained he totally dominated the 'C' section in stores. They included:
Gordon Ashe, M E Cooke, Norman Deane, Robert Caine Frazer, Patrick Gill, Michael Halliday, Charles Hogarth, Brian Hope, Colin Hughes, Kyle Hunt, Abel Mann, Peter Manton, J J Marric, Richard Martin, Rodney Mattheson, Anthony Morton and Jeremy York.
Never one to sit still, Creasey had a strong social conscience, and stood for Parliament several times, along with founding the One Party Alliance which promoted the idea of government by a coalition of the best minds from across the political spectrum.
He also founded the British Crime Writers' Association, which to this day celebrates outstanding crime writing. The Mystery Writers of America bestowed upon him the Edgar Award for best novel and then in 1969 the ultimate Grand Master Award. John Creasey's stories are as compelling today as ever.
Chapter One
The Trap
Joanna caught sight of George Merrow among the trees, and hesitated. The beauty of the evening suddenly lost its quiet and its delight. Until the moment she had seen him, she had been wholly absorbed in the copse through which she was walking, the flitting birds who would soon settle for the night, the tiny, lullaby sounds of the country. Beneath the branches of the pine trees, which grew here with larch and a few oak and beech, she could see the last of the evening sunlight brushing the green of meadows with its gold.
Just beyond the brow of the nearer meadow lay Brook House; home, as far as she had a home.
That was a sobering thought.
She liked the huge house, she liked and was amused by old Jimmy Garfield, she was ready to love the district. The one worrying factor was George Merrow, and there he stood, lurking among the trees.
Lurking?
She couldn’t see him now. Either he had slipped behind the shadow of larger trees, or, in walking, she had changed the angle at which she had been looking. After the moment’s hesitation she walked briskly along the well-defined path. Whatever else, it would be folly to allow Merrow to know how much he worried her.
He could not be more than fifty yards away.
Looking out for him, and yet pretending that she had not noticed that anyone was there, made her oblivious of all the other things that went on around her. She did not know that his were not the only pair of eyes watching. She quickened her pace, looked intently ahead along the path. She had once been told that when she walked like that, with long easy stride, shoulders back and arms swinging, she put men in mind of the Goddess Diana. She wasn’t thinking about that then, but here she was among the trees, where a huntress might find a target, quite unaware of the fact that she looked boldly handsome; enough to make even timid men stop to stare. The old green tweed skirt, the rust-coloured linen blouse with its shallow V, the way her brown hair was coiled about her head, were all part of the vivid picture.
She didn’t see Merrow.
Perhaps she’d misjudged him; perhaps he’d gone on.
She reached the densest part of the little copse, where the thicket was badly overgrown and where, the previous evening, she had seen a family of field-mice playing. None was there now.
It was dark in the thicket, and the distant brightness was bidden.
Well, she could deal with a difficult man, couldn’t she? She had to deal with this one; sooner or later the ‘affair’ would have to come to a head. The odd, ironic fact was that if Merrow had not been so aggressive, as if he took it for granted that his looks would make all conquests easy, she would not have disliked him. His looks, carriage, clothes and general manner were all very much in his favour. She knew little about him, except that he was a nephew of Jimmy Garfield, and that he had travelled a great deal. Once, talking to them after dinner, he’d held even the old man’s attention closely with a story of a journey through India. Odd comments, none boastful, betrayed his familiarity with the Near East, the Far East, and even parts of South America.
He was still out of sight.
Perhaps he had chosen to go ahead on the short cut which she knew he used whenever he was alone. It meant crossing the stream, which wasn’t easy for her; she’d only tried it once, and split the seam of her skirt.
Among George Merrow’s undoubted virtues was physical strength and agility; he could jump that stream from a standing start, with no effort at all.
Either he was out of sight, or else actually waiting for her; surely the only word to describe that was ‘lurking’. She strode along, wishing that she weren’t so obsessed with thought of Merrow, hoping that she wasn’t flushing. She flushed too easily, often for the silliest of reasons.
If he weren’t behind the next oak tree, which had stood there for three hundred years and –
He was.
He stepped out in front of her, so swiftly that it made her heart leap wildly. He timed the move to perfection, and she couldn’t avoid him, desperately though she tried. In a moment his arms were round her, he held her tightly, and before she could strain away from him, kissed her full and lingeringly on the lips. Then he moved one arm, held her chin firmly, and kissed her again; and then, still with one arm round her waist, he eased away, and looked into her eyes.
“The colour of honey,” he said very softly. “That is what I think of you, Joanna.” He kissed her again.
She hadn’t attempted to struggle, had just held herself stiff. She felt the tightness of his arm relax, until she was free to move away. She moved, as swiftly as he had done, and he looked startled. Before he could speak, even before the surprise had faded, she struck the side of his face with the flat of her hand; every ounce of her strength was in the blow. It made him lose his balance and bump against the rugged trunk of the centuries’ old oak.
He stayed there, looking bewildered; baffled.
“That,” she said, “
is what I think of you.”
She stalked past him.
She had an uneasy, scared kind of feeling that he would follow, and that she might have made him desperately angry. She also had a feeling, it was no stronger, that fires few people suspected burnt deep in George Merrow. There was something of the primitive about him; his cave-man tactics were natural to him.
The truth was, he frightened her.
Her heart thudded, she wanted to hurry so that she could reach the meadow, where movement was freer, but she made herself walk, and wouldn’t look round. She heard nothing. The soft grass of the meadow was only a few yards away now; she was in the fringe of the trees; she could see the castellated top of Brook House.
There was no sound of Merrow following her.
She looked round, and he wasn’t in sight. That brought a relief from tension, but she didn’t slacken her pace. Now that the crisis was past, she coloured furiously and uncontrollably; her cheeks stung as if they were burning. She felt first hot, then cold, as the evening’s breeze blew down from the top of the hill.
The copse lay behind her and to her right, very thick in the direction in which George Merrow had gone. She could not hear him walking. She could not imagine what he looked like, or what he was feeling. The one certain thing was that she couldn’t stay in this job if this was the way things were to go. In fact it would be wiser to leave, this weekend; easier to get the parting over quickly. She had come on a month’s trial and could tell Jimmy that she just wasn’t contented, the countryside was too lonely for her. That way she wouldn’t have to tell the truth; and the truth would probably worry the old man, who had a noticeably soft spot for his nephew.
She didn’t want to leave. It wasn’t everyone’s job, but she liked it. ‘Secretary’ was the word used to describe the dozen and one jobs she had to do, and she was in fact a secretary in that she wrote letters and attended generally to correspondence. For the rest, the work was greatly varied, from driving Jimmy about if he felt like a fun in his Rolls-Royce, to taking his Ovaltine to him last thing at night.
“You really want a chauffeur-valet,” she’d said to him, only two nights ago.
“Don’t want anything of the kind,” he’d answered in his hoarse cracked voice. “Want just what I’ve got—a handsome young woman dancing attendance on me! Think a man’s eye is any different because he’s a septuagenarian?”
She’d laughed; something about him made it easy to laugh, even when he said conventionally outrageous things.
He would be sorry to lose her, and she would be sorry to go; but the situation developing with George Merrow was inescapable. Even if George relaxed his pressure for a little while, it was probable that he would break out again at any time. Oh, admit it, the best thing to do about an unpleasant situation was to change it before it became worse. She could get another job, if not such a good one, and –
She was fifty yards from the edge of the copse, walking more slowly because the meadow sloped upwards, when she heard the screech. It made her stop quite still, and listen. It came again, a yelp more than a screech this time, and seemed to tell of acute pain.
It came a third time, and began to scare her.
Then it settled down to a high-pitched whining, but the shrillness of the first yelps had gone right through Joanna, and she felt shivery. Now she stood still, looking towards the sound. It didn’t quieten, and was as if a dog were in pain. She listened, half expecting to hear Merrow call out to reassure it, or even talk to it, because voices travelled far and clearly; that sound, little more than whimpering, seemed close at hand.
If Merrow had gone striding on, beyond the stream, he might not have heard …
She heard a different sound; a metallic kind of noise, harsh and grating, with a hint of clanging about it; and as it came, a gasp and a single, short, sharp word. The whimpering stopped; so did the other sounds. Fifty yards of meadow land and perhaps twenty yards of the copse hid her from whatever was happening, but she didn’t go towards the noises, just stood staring, as if willing herself the power to see through trees.
Then: “Joanna,” George Merrow called, in a clear, controlled voice.
She didn’t call back, and still didn’t move. His voice seemed to echo, clear but empty of expression.
The dog whimpered.
“If you can hear, please come at once,” Merrow called very deliberately.
It might be a trap.
She snapped her fingers at herself, then began to hurry towards the spot. Once on the move, she couldn’t move fast enough. ‘Trap’ be hanged, she was thinking in terms of silly melodrama; that was the way he affected her. Something really strange had happened, had driven the half sneer out of his voice.
She called: “Coming! Keep calling out, I’ll know where you are.”
“Thanks. Head for the rhododendrons.”
“All right.”
There was only a small clump of rhododendrons near, and as Joanna made for it, she reflected that Merrow knew the whole of the grounds thoroughly; almost as if he had lived here for years, instead of a few months.
The whimpering of the dog persuaded her that there was really grave trouble, that both of them needed help urgently.
“Keep to the right of the clump,” he called, in a normal speaking voice, “and watch the ground carefully.”
“Why?”
“Traps.”
“What?”
He chuckled, and for a perverse reason that annoyed her. A few nights ago the subject after dinner had turned to cruelty to animals, blood sports and traps. Jimmy Garfield took a strong line: all blood sports and all forms of traps were cruelty, according to the old man; but Merrow had defended blood sports, and even praised them – yet in a way which hadn’t riled the old man.
Joanna watched the ground, here thick grass, there leaf-mould, and saw nothing remotely like a trap. She avoided any spot where one might be hidden by the autumn’s thick growth of fern and bramble. Blackberries, tight and red and giving no sign of coming black lusciousness, were very thick.
“Turn left at the path,” Merrow called.
He sounded very near.
The dog whimpered only occasionally. Further away there was the sound of running water, at the tiny waterfall in the middle of the copse. A match scraped; as if Merrow was lighting a cigarette.
Joanna reached the well-trod path, went right, and then found the spot where he turned towards the stream. She saw him on one knee, a cigarette at his lips, looking stark white against his tanned face. It was gloomy in here; only in the distance did the evening light seem bright.
His leg was caught just above the ankle. The trap was big, black and ugly looking, and she could see the claws on either side of his leg. And it had closed on him with vicious strength – was holding the leg in a vice, was probably touching the bone. He must be suffering agony, but he knelt there, looking at her with a funny kind of grin.
“Nice of you to forgive,” he said. “Thanks. It’s been tampered with. I can’t unspring it. I’m all right for a minute, go and see how the dog is, will you? I can’t see him, but he’s not far along.”
“Never mind the dog. You—”
“This is one time when we’re not going to argue,” Merrow said crisply. Now that she was closer, she could see the sweat on his forehead and his upper lip, and he couldn’t keep the look of pain out of his eyes; his lips were set, too, between the words. He was gripping a small tree tightly with his left hand.
“You’re a fool,” she said tartly.
But she hurried past him.
The dog was only ten yards away, a liver and white mongrel of terrier size, trapped by the hind paw, turning round and trying to see what was holding him and causing such pain. He heard her, looked up, and yelped.
“Careful with him,” Merrow called. “He might bite if he
’s still in severe pain. Much damage?”
“It—it looks like—like yours.”
“Is he tugging to get free?”
“No.”
“Sensible chap. Joanna, I don’t think you’ll be able to force the traps open. Will you run hell for leather to the house, and get Gedde? Then—”
“Of course I can get them open,” she said snappishly, “and I’m going to do you first.” She hesitated, looking into the dog’s pleading eyes. “Lie still,” she urged, “don’t move, I’ll be back in a moment.”
She turned her back on the dog.
It yelped, and she knew that it had tried to follow her, and dragged on that injured leg.
“Experiment on the dog,” called Merrow, and in spite of the agony he must be in there was a note of mockery in his voice. “Only don’t take too long.”
Chapter Two
The Mission
She was on her knees, By Merrow’s Side, Pulling at the teeth of the trap with all her strength. She felt the perspiration at her forehead; all over her body. She set her teeth. Merrow’s handkerchief, folded into a pad, and his leather tobacco pouch, saved her hands from the trap’s sharp teeth, but they still hurt.
The dog lay near, watching, not whimpering. It had been easy – well, easier – to open the trap wide enough for the small leg, but this was a different task. She had to look at Merrow’s leg, too; the blood smearing his brightly polished shoe and the end of his grey flannel trousers. He was tugging on the other side, and grunting in a curious way which made her look up.
He was staring down at the steel teeth. He’d lost his colour, and had become a dirty grey. Sweat poured down his cheeks. All these things were guides to the pain he was in, and Joanna knew that he couldn’t keep on much longer.