by John Creasey
He heard a sound behind him, and Lorna called: “John!”
“I’m here, come up.” He heard her slip. “Careful!”
She didn’t answer, but suddenly a bright beam of light shot out, showing the writhing smoke; she had brought the torch from the Rolls-Bentley. She came in sight, carrying the torch in one hand and the box of tools in the other: specialist cracksman’s or locksmith’s tools.
“Open the case and put it on a step,” Mannering said, and was caught with a spasm of coughing; that seemed to hurt Lorna as much as it hurt him. “Take out—the long awl. Then shine—the torch on the wall about level with—my waist.”
Lorna began to do what he said before he finished; and soon the long awl, like a shoemaker’s awl but with a longer handle, was in his hand.
“Now take the screwdriver and scrape the plaster between the stone blocks, we’re looking for a soft spot,” he instructed, and began to probe with the awl. The most likely place was just here, it would be handy for anyone leaving the Tower Room, or approaching it.
Who else knew the secret of the room, and of locking the mechanism, except Rodney?
And how was the girl?
She might be suffocated by now.
Hester was picking up furniture and placing it on rugs which she had put over the floor boards which were smouldering, to try to slow down the burning. The room was thick with smoke, and there was no air from the tiny windows. She kept coughing, holding her stomach with the flat of her hands to lessen the pain. Tears were running down her cheeks and she could not help herself.
She fought for life, and all the time she thought: “They’ve put me here to die.”
Mannering saw the blunted point of the awl, which had been pushed against the unyielding cement so often. He was a step lower down, now, and Lorna one below that. No one else had come, and he could not understand why. The man he wanted was Hennessy, with news that the fire-brigade was here, and that someone was on the way with a pneumatic drill.
Supposing one was brought?
Only one man could work on the wall, and the space was so confined and the smoke so thick that he would only be able to work spasmodically. The smoke was much worse, and he and Lorna were coughing against each other. His throat was parched. Oddly, he did not feel much pain at his back, it was almost as if the exercise had helped him.
Why hadn’t the doctor come?
In fact, no one had had time to act, yet.
Then the point of the awl sank between the stones, and he felt a moment of intense relief.
“Lorna!”
“Yes?”
“I’ve found what I’m looking for.” A cough spoiled his excitement. “Go and—get a wet cloth. Put it round my face.”
Lorna was coughing as she went down the stairs. Mannering kept prodding at the little hole; it was filled with plasticine or something soft and malleable, and he was able to hook it out. He bent down for the screwdriver, and his back seemed to break. He pushed the screwdriver into the little hole, and began to hook out the putty. The whole thing had been done with fiendish cleverness, someone had meant to make sure that no one discovered this.
He could just make out the size and shape of the hole; rather like a match-box.
The screwdriver was up against hard stone, now.
He went down a step, so that he could see inside; and picked up the torch. The bright light showed the metal and the tiny keyhole. He needed not tools but nitroglycerine for the task. He hadn’t a chance with the tools, it would take far too long.
Nitro-glycerine: the burglar’s aide.
He heard a man’s voice, and looked round, saw Dr. Richards looming through the smoke.
Mannering said: “Go and telephone the police again, say that I must have nitro-glycerine to blow a safe or strong-room.”
Richards gaped. “What?”
“For God’s sake hurry!”
“S—sorry,” Richards gasped, and held out his left hand. “Here’s a loaded syringe, you’ll—”
He slipped; and dropped the syringe. Mannering heard it break, actually saw the liquid spill out of it and stain the step. Richards stood absolutely still, as if paralysed by horror at his own clumsiness.
“Go and tell the police I must have nitro!” Mannering roared at him.
Richards muttered: “Yes, yes, I’ll go. Yes.”
He went hurrying; and Mannering was alone again.
He bent down cautiously and examined the steel and the keyhole. He had come up against this obstacle often before. They were usually in strong-rooms and in big safes, and buried not in stone but metal. This mechanism must have controlled the swing door.
How long would it be before the nitro-glycerine arrived?
That was the only hope for the imprisoned girl, for it would be hours before the lock could be forced, as long before a hole could be made in the outside wall.
Hennessy was in his car, racing towards the Hall, knowing that the fire-fighting unit was already on its way, and likely to pass him at any moment. It had problems; of water supply and of a turntable and extending ladder to get up to the tower, but he could do nothing about that. He had to see what was happening for himself.
The big, round-faced sergeant was by his side, and the radio fitted to the dashboard was switched on. A call came, sharp and clear.
“This is Gilston Police Headquarters, calling Chief Inspector Hennessy, calling Chief Inspector Hennessy.”
“Speaking for Chief Inspector Hennessy,” the round-faced man said.
“Further message picked up from Mannering at the Hall. Mannering has asked for nitro-glycerine to force a strong-room door. Over.”
Hennessy said desperately: “Tell them there’s a supply in the laboratory, taken on the Nettley job last week. Tell them to get it to me in a hurry, but be careful with the damned stuff.”
The sergeant gave the message …
The clangour of the fire-engine bell sounded as the first of the units drew almost level with him. He pulled in, to let it pass. He was near Vane’s bungalow, and saw the big sign over the entrance to the greenhouses and grounds: VANE’S MARKET GARDEN. As he flashed by in the wake of the fire-fighting unit, he saw Alicia Vane at the window; she would realise that there was something wrong at the Hall, and would soon be on the way to find out what it was.
Alicia went running into the garden, calling Michael. He came hurrying from one of the greenhouses.
“A fire-engine’s just gone to the Hall and Ted’s following,” she said. “I’m afraid it might be something to do with Hester.”
“Let’s get going,” Michael urged, and swung round towards the van. “Now that Guy’s taken the turn for the better I can’t believe that anything will happen to Hester.”
Alicia didn’t answer.
She prayed.
Mannering was coughing less, because the wet cloth round his face kept the smoke away. His eyes seemed to be on fire, tears of pain were streaming from them. He heard Lorna coughing, and others, too; plenty of people were in the passage, but none would venture for long in the narrow confines of the staircase well.
Why the hell didn’t the police arrive?
He heard a man call, then cough, then call again. The smoke was thicker. He turned round awkwardly, and then saw Hennessy; and Hennessy was carrying a small packet in his right hand, and coming with very great caution.
“Nitro?” Mannering demanded.
“Yes,” Hennessy said. “You used to handling it?”
“I can manage,” Mannering said. “What kind of container is it in?”
“It’s flat – used on a breaking-in job by specialists.”
“Just what we want,” Mannering said, and then Hennessy drew level with him and opened the case. Lying in tiny grooves were small flat containers, rather like a miniature book of matches to look at, and one of them was small enough to put into the keyhole.
Hennessy said: “Be careful with it!”
“I don’t want to blow myself up any quicker than you
do,” Mannering said. “No key?”
“Horton says Rodney had the only ones. You—you insert this stuff. I’ll lay on the electric cable for the concussion,” Hennessy said.
Mannering grunted.
Hennessy went down the steps much faster than he had come up. Mannering heard a mutter of voices. He could think only about the girl inside the room, and the risk involved in blowing the lock. It was all right for Hennessy to talk, and better that Lorna should think that they had time to use electricity to detonate the treacherous liquid.
Mannering knew that there was no time.
He must get the smallest container into the keyhole, put two others into the match-box size hole beside it, and pack it as tightly as he could with clippings of plaster and the plasticine. Then he must get down the well of the staircase, take what cover he could, and explode the nitro by simple concussion; by throwing a heavy tool at the hole.
A direct hit would do all that was necessary.
In this confined space, it was impossible to tell what chance he had of escaping alive.
Hester was lying by a window, where she had gone for a kind of illusory air.
She had been unconscious for five minutes, unaware that the carpets, the rugs and the furniture were blazing.
The fireman in charge of the telescopic ladder took one look at the tower and said: “We’ll be fifty yards short of that, sir, haven’t got a chance. Only thing we can do is to work from that balcony. We could erect a platform there and get out to the tower windows, but it will take hours.”
“It will take hours,” a man echoed.
It will take hours reached the ears of the crowd waiting down at the base of the tower; reached the ears of Alicia and Michael Vane as they left their van and hurried to join the crowd.
A police sergeant said to another:
“The Vane girl’s up there, Mannering said so. I wouldn’t give her a chance in a thousand.”
Alicia bit her lips, to keep back a scream.
Michael said: “I could kill Mannering in cold blood.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Concussion
There could only be minutes to spare.
Mannering pushed the nitro-glycerine gently into the keyhole, and then with agonising caution, packed it with a wedge which he carried in his tool kit. Once it was tight, he put a large container into the bigger hole, but it would be useless to try to pack that. He jammed a small spanner in, to make sure that as much of the force of the explosion as possible went inwards, on to the lock.
That was all he could do.
He took three heavy tools from the case, and then backed down a step. It was going to hurt abominably to hurl the tools at the nitroglycerine, and there was the awful risk that he would miss.
He went down another step.
The curved wall would enable him to find some sort of shelter, the danger was that in trying to move quickly, his back might hurt so much he would stumble into the full force of the explosion.
He weighed one of the tools in his hand; a pair of stainless steel pliers. He wanted a brick, he ought to have told Hennessy to bring something heavy to throw.
Well, he hadn’t.
The torch beam shone into the hole, and he knew exactly what he had to hit.
He edged himself into position, and drew back his arm; the pain at his back was bearable. He drew his arm further back. It was like taking a coconut shy, with his life and the girl’s as the prizes.
Nine times out of ten he would hit a coconut.
Crazy thought: coconut!
For God’s sake get on with it!
He hurled the pliers; dodged; then slipped. He fell. His back seemed to break in two. If he had missed, he would never be able to get back and try again.
Then he heard the roar, then felt the blast and a sudden, terrible weight on his right shoulder.
Lorna was struggling to free herself from two policemen who were holding her back. She had come, choking and gasping, from the smoke-filled staircase, and for five minutes had been nearly unconscious. All she wanted was to reach John. She pulled herself free, but Hennessy was standing at the entrance to the staircase, blocking her path.
“Take it easy, Mrs. Mannering,” he urged. “We’re going to blow the wall down. Mr. Mannering’s fixed the explosive, we’re waiting for an electrician with a detonator. He’s on his way. There’s no need for—”
At that moment the explosion came.
It began with a strange hissing sound and developed into a deafening roar. Lorna was pulled off her feet by the suction in the doorway and the narrow staircase. She was flung against Hennessy. He cracked his head against the stone corner of the door, and grunted as he fell. Lorna toppled on to him, but did not lose consciousness. The floor and the walls seemed to tremble and shake, and the roaring went on. She was so deafened and so breathless and shocked that she could not think, but gradually thinking returned; and she realised that John had been in there. She tried to get up. People were bending over her, soothing her. She fought them off, until she was on her feet. Pieces of stone and masonry, tools, cement and clothes were strewn about the floor. Firemen were already forcing their way through, and the smoke was very much thicker.
“John!” Lorna screamed. “John!” She tore herself free from the restraining hands and rushed to the staircase. It was littered with rubble, and the dust and smoke seemed to choke her. She saw the light of torches playing on the dust particles, and also the red glow of the fire. Gasping, choking, she raced up the stairs until she came upon one of the firemen, on his knees beside a crumpled figure; the figure of John.
Lorna flung herself forward.
Mannering’s face was cut and bleeding, and there was a gash over his right eye, but although his coat had been torn from his body, he seemed to be in one piece; not blown to bits as she had feared. She saw the fireman lift him, and exclaimed: “Be careful with his back!” But that hardly mattered, he could feel nothing now. Other firemen were coming into the cramped space. The lift was too small, so John was carried down three spiral staircases in all. St. John Ambulance Brigade men were already near the gallery. Richards was there with his equipment, and Lorna knew that everything that could be done would be done.
Then Lorna heard Hennessy speak from a stretcher on which he lay: “How’s the Vane girl? Is she all right?”
The words were hardly out of his mouth before a man and woman came hurrying from the staircase near the lift; something in their expressions told Lorna that these were the girl’s mother and father.
“Is she all right?” Hennessy seemed to be talking in a daze, as if he did not really understand what he was saying. Richards was bending over him, and giving him an injection.
“Is my daughter safe?” Alicia Vane demanded. Then she saw the rubble-strewn doorway, and exclaimed in horror, and before anyone could stop her, thrust herself towards the heat and smoke-filled staircase. Men were stumbling on the stairs, and one called sharply: “Get out of the way!”
Alicia moved aside, pressing flat against the wall. She saw the legs and feet of a girl, coming towards her; two men were carrying the girl, a third was supporting her head and shoulders.
“Oh, God,” Alicia whispered, and it was a prayer. “Hester, Hester my darling.” Desperately she turned and staggered down the steps, so that she need not waste a moment of the men’s time. Michael saw her and came hurrying, and as she fell into his arms, she said: “They’ve got her out but I think she’s dead, I think she’s dead.”
Michael Vane kept his arm tightly about his wife.
The firemen came, carrying Hester, and immediately Dr. Richards cleared a path towards a couch on the gallery. They laid the girl upon it, and drew back. Richards went close to her, and her mother and father approached on the other side.
Michael breathed: “She’s alive, Ally. She’s not dead.”
“Yes, she’s alive,” Dr. Richards agreed, briskly. “Most of the injuries are superficial, I’d say, but she needs to get into t
he fresh air. She’ll be all right soon, you needn’t worry.”
Alicia was sobbing.
“How’s the Vane girl?” Hennessy was demanding.
“She’s all right,” someone called. Hennessy stopped muttering.
The passage and the balcony and the stairs leading to the gallery below looked like a casualty station. Men and women were on the move all the time, and among them was Largent. Lorna had seen John taken to an ambulance, and knew that he was on his way to Gilston Hospital. She knew that there was nothing she could do to help him yet, unless she could find out what had happened at the Hall, and what Largent was doing. She was near Largent when the firemen, their hoses snaking up the spiral staircase, put the fire out, and then began to bring down the damaged furniture and ornaments. It was Largent who exclaimed aloud when he saw a statuette in one man’s hand, and he swung round to Lorna: “Do you see that?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but reached the man’s side and took the statuette; he spun round excitedly. “This is it, this is the fake – your husband said there was one here. I thought he was trying to cover up a mistake, but here it is!”
“This real, or is it a fake too?” asked a fireman who was carrying a dagger with a jewelled hilt as if it were precious.
Largent took only a moment to say: “That’s a replica – and it’s another piece that your husband had identified as false, Mrs. Mannering. The real pieces must have been kept in the Tower suite after they’d been stolen. Who—”
He broke off.
Someone exclaimed, as if in horror, and there was a sudden lull in the buzz of talk. The only sounds came from the staircase, and the footsteps of a man who was approaching with long, measured tread. It was Lord Horton. His face looked like a death mask. His eyes were glittering, the only part of him which seemed to be alive. He kept walking forward, and men pressed back against the wall, out of his path.
Behind him, pathetic in her helplessness, was Miss Medbury.
Dr. Richards said: “Barry! What is it?”
Horton must have heard, but ignored him. He went towards the spiral staircases. He trod on rubble and on thick dust. Plaster was crushed beneath his feet. He had never seemed more massive – nor so unreal.