by John Creasey
He looked steadily towards the Inspector, who nodded curtly. Out of the corner of his eye Mannering saw Tring shake his head, very slightly.
Bristow’s voice was sharp, abrupt.
‘Mr. Mannering, I’ve information that you have some of the Kallinov jewels in your possession.’
Mannering stared.
‘You’ve what?’
‘Don’t hedge,’ snapped Bristow. ‘I want to see what’s in your pockets.’
The Baron returned Bristow’s frosty gaze with one equally cold. ‘Bristow, this is going too far. I haven’t been here five minutes, and I’ve had the escort of your little man all the time—’
‘I know all about that. They weren’t in your room at the Towers, but you were followed from there, and you were also seen telephoning from a kiosk. The inference is that you have the stones with you – and another inference,’ Bristow added grimly, ‘is that you were going to hand them to Leverson’s man, outside. Well, you won’t – he’s being watched.’
Mannering was wondering how much of this Lorna was hearing, praying that she would get out by way of the fire-escape. But there was the possibility that the police were watching the back as well as the front of the house; if she did get away she might be detained: which would mean disaster, for by her expression he guessed that she had found the Kransits.
Had the police been watching when she had arrived?
He spoke in a deceptively mild voice.
‘The little matter of a search warrant, Bristow.’
‘Why waste the time? You know I can get one for the asking.’
Mannering shrugged, as though he had decided that capitulation was the wisest course. He saw Bristow’s eyes, hitherto hard and wary, show surprise, and he knew he had been expecting stronger opposition. Yet by letting them look through his pockets he would be giving Lorna time to get away.
Mannering was satisfied that the conclusion he had drawn from the anonymous letter was not far out: Bristow had been given the information about the Kransits in time to watch him at the flat, but not before. He could not hope to learn where the information had come from then.
Tring did a thorough job.
The jumble of oddments from Mannering’s pockets grew, proportionately with the length of Tring’s face. Despite the fact that within two minutes he must have been sure that the diamonds were not on the Baron, he spent fifteen minutes turning out every pocket, examining every lining. Not until then did he give up, while Mannering eyed Bristow with veiled mockery.
‘Apologies are due, I think.’
‘You had the jewels—’
‘Don’t be a damned fool,’ snapped the Baron. ‘You told me that I’d been under observation from the moment I left the Towers, you know I’ve had no opportunity of getting rid of anything. I didn’t touch the Kransits, Bristow. Next time I shouldn’t put so much trust in a squealer.’
He was feeling relieved up to a point, but the danger to Lorna still seemed acute, and until he knew what had happened to the Kransits there would be no peace. There was some satisfaction in finding Bristow at a loss for words, and even stumbling into an apology. But when the ring came at the front door bell he was tense again ready for any revelation as Tring opened the door.
Lorna came in!
She was smiling, and there was an assurance in her manner that sent relief sheering through the Baron. She was almost coquettish with Bristow, and when the door finally closed behind the policeman Mannering gripped her arms tightly.
Eyes and lips smiled close to his.
‘No trouble,’ she said, ‘but when Tring came in I nearly collapsed! I’d found them underneath the wardrobe, a minute before you arrived. I’d seen Tring outside, so I didn’t call for Leverson’s man. Thank God the fire-escape wasn’t watched!’
‘Where are they now?’
‘I gave them to a cabby to take to Leverson’s flat, and phoned him to expect them.’
The Baron began to laugh.
Lorna joined in, but they sobered to the realisation that danger still existed. Bristow was not likely to be fully satisfied until the mystery of the Towers robbery was solved.
The question was – would it be solved? And would the thieves make further efforts to incriminate the Baron?
That question, with the other problems, left him no chance but to start the chase independent of the police.
Chapter Six
Flick Leverson
In a house in Wine Street, Aldgate, lived that doyen of fences, Flick Leverson. Leverson had bought and sold stolen jewels for forty years, and in the ‘trade’ was of unblemished reputation. He was past sixty, and already conservative about his clients. One of the few for whom he continued to work was John Mannering.
In the past Leverson had helped the Baron out of many a tight corner, and thus their friendship had been forged. A tall man, with his left sleeve hanging empty from a war-wound, grey-haired, cultured, mellow, he would have been at home in any exclusive London club. His steady, occasionally twinkling grey eyes, his deep, pleasing voice, were (hose of gentleman born. On either side of him at Aldgate lived general practitioners, who had not the faintest idea of their affable neighbour’s true calling, thinking him only a collector of priceless antiques.
All of this Bristow, who had arrested Leverson on the occasion of his only trial and prison sentence, knew well, knowing also that Leverson was as difficult a man to catch as the Baron.
On an evening two days after the robbery at the Towers, Leverson sat in a comfortable chair, a brandy glass in his hand. Opposite him was Mannering, equally at ease.
‘And so,’ Mannering said, ‘I can’t keep out of it, Flick. I want the Glorias back, I want to find how far Armstrong was involved, and I want most of all to find who tried to put me away.’
Leverson spoke reluctantly.
‘It might prove nasty, John. Bristow won’t let up now he thinks you have fooled him. I’m devilish sorry about sending a man Tring recognised; I thought he was safe.’
‘The Yard must be getting more proficient,’ Mannering said sardonically.
‘I needn’t warn you not to under-rate them,’ returned Leverson. ‘They were here within an hour of the Kransits arriving, but I had the gems safely away, of course. Do you want them now?’
‘There’s plenty of time.’
‘And that settles that,’ said Leverson with a shrug. ‘Well, now, you say the letter was typed at the Towers!’
Mannering lit a cigarette, and eyed Leverson thoughtfully.
‘More, Flick. It was typed on a machine in Sharron’s small library, accessible to anyone, family, servant or guest. It was posted before the robbery, which means whoever sent it was confident of success. And although I can just believe Armstrong would help in the robbery, I don’t believe him capable of trying to plant the jewels on me, nor arranging for it to be done. There’s a vindictive man behind this, and a clever one, and he isn’t going to be pleased that I escaped trouble. Worse, he knows I’m the Baron, and I can’t be sure what he’ll try next. However,’ added Mannering grimly, ‘he is not likely to rejoice in his efforts for long, if I have any say in the matter. Well, will you keep your eyes and ears open for the rest of the Kallinovs?’
‘Yes.’ Leverson frowned. ‘I don’t know whether they’ll cut up a collection like that, though, they might have a buyer for the lot. I’ll watch, anyhow. Is that all you want?’
‘Yes and no,’ said Mannering. ‘Rightly or wrongly, I’ve narrowed the suspects down to Mendleson, Crane, Fauntley and young Sharron. I’m sticking to men. Fauntley and Crane seem impossible, but—well, have you heard anything of Mendleson and Reggie Sharron?’
Leverson frowned.
‘I can’t say I have, John. Mendleson’s a local product, you know, he was born in Whitechapel High Street. He’s not a man I like.’
‘Do you know him?’
‘Quite well. He has one of the finest collection of seventeenth-century French cabinet work in the world. I’ve been to his pl
ace several times, and he’s been here.’ Leverson nodded towards a superbly carved silver table. ‘He’s after that, of course, with a no-limit cheque if I would sell. He has a queer reputation I’ll grant you, and is the stop-at-nothing type. I’ll make what inquiries I can, and ring you. But for God’s sake, be careful!’
Mannering laughed, finished his brandy, and departed.
The brandy had warmed him, but the night was bitterly cold – the fourth day of that cold spell which had ended in disaster for Armstrong. The youngster had fallen – or been pushed – and lost consciousness: probably he had not felt the coming of death, from exposure, and contributed to by loss of blood. The inquest had been adjourned after the briefest of hearings. Mannering could not keep his mind off the affair, off its various ramifications. He turned to the right, and as he did so he caught a glimpse of a man standing, cold, miserable and familiar, outside Aldgate Station. He made a bee-line for him.
‘Hallo, Tanker, still at work?’
‘Indeed, yes, sir. I forget what an armchair feels like. On a night like this, too, enough to freeze you stiff.’
‘A drink seems indicated,’ said Mannering cheerfully.
‘Not me, sir. Duty’s duty.’ Detective Sergeant Tring sniffed.
‘Incorruptible member of an incorruptible police force,’ said Mannering. ‘You might tell Bristow I’ve just been on a social call, and I’m going straight to my flat.’
He nodded, smiled, and as a taxi came near, lifted a hand. Before Tring had a chance of getting a second one, Mannering was inside. By the time the disgruntled Inspector had found a taxi, Mannering’s was out of sight. Tring gave orders to be driven to 88g, Brook Street. If Mannering was going straight home there was no damage done.
Mannering did, in fact, go directly to his flat. The fact that Tring had been on his trail meant that Bristow was taking no chances. It was not going to be easy to play a lone hand.
The brightest spot, so far, was that Fay Sharron had found friends in Lorna and Lady Fauntley.
After the guests had left the Towers there had been a family quarrel, unnecessarily bitter on her parents’ side. Fay had left at once, and gone to the Fauntleys’ Portland Place house. Whether it would mean a breach between the Fauntleys and the Sharrons was not of particular importance. The importance lay in Sharron’s outspoken condemnation of Armstrong.
Was Sharron glad to find a scapegoat?
A second result of the burglary had been the dismissal of Errol and Knowles, the watchmen. They had done, apparently, everything that could be reasonably expected of them; nevertheless, they had been dismissed as soon as the police had given permission. It would go hard with them to find other work, although both were pensioned C.I.D. officers, likely to suffer no acute hardship.
A man who usually took the bad with the good, and who was not easily angered, should not have lost his head as Sharron had done. His own culpability – or what he called his own – might have explained it in some measure of course, but was it a sufficient explanation?
Mendleson – the Sharrons – Crane.
All with equal opportunities.
No, that wasn’t true. The Sharrons had the best opportunities, knowing exactly what type of locks were used. But the whole affair was such a maze of complications and contradictions that only the anonymous letter could be called reliable evidence.
Now that Leverson was on the watch, however, word might come through.
As he opened the door Mannering heard the brrr-brrr of the telephone, and stepped towards it. Lifting the receiver he heard the voice of Reggie Sharron, still thick and hoarse.
‘Hallo-oo! Is that you, Mannering? … I’ve been trying to get you all the evening. I’ve got to see Fay, and she won’t have anything to do with me. I’ve got to see her—’
‘Why?’ asked Mannering, sharply.
‘Better not babble over the telephone,’
‘Can you come round here?’
‘Not a hope. This stinking cold. I’m told I ought to be in bed. Can you come here? I’m at the Junior Reserve.’
‘I’ll be over in twenty minutes,’ promised Mannering.
When he reached the street he saw that his own cab had gone, and that Tanker Tring was paying off another. The Baron’s eyes gleamed as he stepped to the kerb.
‘Hallo, Tanker, clues lead you this way? You’ve brought just what I wanted. The Junior Reserve, cabby, please.’
Tring, muttering highly-coloured imprecations, espied another taxi a hundred yards away, and lumbered towards it.
Mannering reached the Junior Reserve Club ten minutes after receiving Reggie’s call. A page-boy took him to the fourth floor, which was also the cheapest, further evidence that the peer kept his son on short commons.
A thick voice called, ‘Come in.’
Sharron started to struggle to his feet, as a cough shook his whole body. Mannering was alarmed by his feverish flush.
‘Don’t get up, you idiot, and why the blazes aren’t you in bed?’ Mannering demanded. ‘What the devil brought you from Beverley like this?’
Reggie attempted a smile.
‘Oh well, brotherly love and all that kind of thing. Sorry about this sniffing. I—at-cboo!’ He sneezed four times, and was gasping for breath when he finished.
‘I’ll give you a hand to get in bed,’ Mannering said. ‘Have you a regular doctor in town?’
‘Oh, all right, old Gregory of Queen Anne Street – you know him.’
In ten minutes Sharron was in bed, packed with hot-water bottles, and the doctor, Mannering hoped, on his way.
‘S-sorry to be such a p-pest,’ gasped Reggie as he settled down. ‘My head’s going like a trip-hammer! I—Lord, I forgot. Look here, Mannering, I really ought to see Fay, she—well, I mean she ought to know.’
Something of Mannering’s earlier tension returned, but he spoke casually enough.
‘Ought to know what?’
‘Well, about Bill, y’know. I—’ Another interval for sneezing, and then Sharron gasped his story out. ‘One of the maids did the room next to Bill’s late that night. It had got missed or something, oh yes, a hot-water bottle leaked, and they couldn’t let Mrs. Crane sleep in wet sheets.’ He forced a ghost of a grin. ‘She says she saw Bill go into his room at a quarter-past twelve, and heard him walking about for ten minutes. And when she was there ten minutes later, just before the Cranes went into the room, he was still there – he poked his head out and asked if she’d seen Fay. What I mean, Mannering, is that he couldn’t have been fooling—ooh, my head!—about with the safes and in his room, could he now?’
Mannering looked at him narrowly. If Armstrong had not been helping the thieves, how had he been shot?
A possibility flashed through his mind, one that seemed to explain many things. Supposing Armstrong had gone out, seen the thieves and been mistaken for one? Supposing they had doubled back, dodged Errol and planted the jewels before pushing him into the sunken garden?
It was a fresh angle altogether, opening out the possibility that Armstrong was not concerned at all, and it sharpened Mannering’s appetite for the chase.
Mr. Cornelius Gillison, of Barnes, glared at the scared face of a man in front of him.
‘You damned fool! You put that stuff in Armstrong’s pocket, when I told you to get it and come here straight away. Everything was fixed, and you—’
‘We—we ‘ad to finish him! Before ‘e was shot ‘e’d seen—’
‘Never mind who he saw! Listen, Smith, get rid of that stuff, or some of it. D’you hear? If you don’t you’re through. And next time I send you out on a job, follow instructions or I’ll break your blasted neck!’
And while Smith sidled away, Gillison flung himself in a chair and tried to solve the problem that the incrimination of Armstrong had created. Presenting the police with one suspect had its dangers; putting up two was madness.
Chapter Seven
Complications
The doctor looked sternly up at Mannering outside Re
ggie Sharron’s door.
‘We mustn’t move him. I’ll arrange for a day and night nurse. Pleurisy, without doubt, and he had a nasty spell of it last year, we don’t want a pneumonia case if we can help it. I’ll get in touch with his father.’
Mannering spent five minutes with the secretary of the Junior Reserve and felt sure that there would be no lack of attention for Reggie. Outside, standing between two street lamps brilliant in the frost was Tring. Mannering had long passed the stage when Tring was a joke. He said sharply: ‘Ask Mr. Bristow if he can be at my flat in half an hour, Sergeant, and tell him it’s in connection with the Sharron burglary.’
Tring wavered uncertainly. He knew how deeply Bristow felt about the burglary in Hampshire, and was torn by the responsibility of deciding whether to follow Mannering or whether to lose time by telephoning Bristow’s Chelsea house.
Mannering’s uncompromising back, and his clear voice instructing a cabby to go to Portland Place, decided him. Tring went to the nearest call-box, and Mannering saw him pulling the door open as he went by in the cab.
Parker, Fauntley’s butler, opened the door at Portland Place.
‘’Evening, Parker. Is Miss Lorna in?’
‘Yes, sir, in her lounge with Miss Sharron.’
Standing with her back to a blazing log fire, her cheeks flushed with the heat of the room, Lorna looked her best. It was always difficult for Mannering to believe that this tall, lovely, sometimes passionate creature was the child of Hugo and Lucy Fauntley.
‘You needn’t worry on that score, Fay,’ she was saying. ‘If you’re right, and Bill Armstrong was victimised by someone else, John will find out.’
She broke off as Mannering entered the room.
He greeted them with a smile, adding: ‘I haven’t many minutes, I’m afraid, but I thought Fay ought to know that Reggie’s at the Club, running a spot of temperature. Dr. Gregory says there’s no need to worry.’
It was hard to understand the expression in Fay’s eyes.