by John Creasey
Detective Officer Druitt said: “Are you the Mr. Mannering?”
“I’m Mannering of Quinns,” Mannering said.
“That’s what I mean, sir. Did you expect the Jap here?”
The use of “Jap” irritated Mannering but he knew that he mustn’t show it. He told his story briskly and comprehensibly, seeing belief replacing the doubt in the detective’s eyes. He finished: “He isn’t Japanese, he’s a Thai, a very respected man in Bangkok and among dealers everywhere.”
“Thank you, sir. You think this blonde woman met Mr. Toji at the airport and told him you’d sent her, do you, sir?”
“I think it’s possible.”
“As she already booked a room for you here, she must have been pretty sure that the visitor had come to see you, mustn’t she? Have you told anyone?”
“Only my office manager.” Mannering had kept Toji’s confidence so faithfully that he had not even told Lorna. “No one discovered that Toji was coming here from my end.” As he spoke he realised that he would have to make a formal statement soon, probably at the Yard. That would be better than telling this man everything now, and repeating it. “I’ll be glad to make a full statement when it can be taken down properly,” he went on. “Just now we ought to look about the room.”
“A murder squad is on the way from the Yard,” the detective said. “We’ll have to leave everything until then.”
“Of course,” Mannering said, as if he accepted that without question. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He hurried out, guessing that Druitt would stay in the room until his colleagues arrived. Dr. Rush was in a small room off the hall, talking to the tall woman and the plump grey-haired man.
“No one is going to blame you,” he was saying almost testily. “I doubt if your hotel will be named. Let me know if there’s anything I can do. Elsie, if you take my advice you’ll keep busy about the house. If you sit around you’ll just brood over it.” He turned away, and looked startled at sight of Mannering. “Ah, Mr. Mannering. You’ve met Mr. and Mrs. Smith, no doubt. Most distressing experience for them.” He nodded, and bustled off.
The man and woman turned to Mannering.
“Please don’t worry my wife with any more questions,” Smith pleaded. “She’s dreadfully upset as it is.”
“Who took the telephone booking in the name of Mannering?” inquired Mannering.
“I did,” the woman answered.
“Elsie, there’s no need—”
“Was the woman already staying here?” Mannering ignored the plump man’s objections.
“Yes, she came last night,” the woman replied. “She registered under the name of Yates, and said she had some business in London this morning. It’s terrible. Terrible.”
“Did she have any luggage?” asked Mannering.
“Just one case,” Smith answered. “But please—”
“The police will ask all these questions, and it should be a help to go over them now,” Mannering said persuasively. He did not think questions would really harm Mrs. Smith. They might even save her from a bout of hysterics. “Was anyone else with her?”
“Mr. Mannering, we run a respectable hotel!”
“I’m sure you do,” said Mannering hastily. “But did she leave by herself? Apparently she drove to London Airport to meet Mr. Toji.”
“She said she had hired a drive-yourself car,” answered Smith. “She went off in a taxi at eight o’clock, and came back with the man in an Austin. The man said he was to wait in Mr. Mannering’s room, and as it was empty I didn’t see any harm in that.”
“Did you see Miss Yates leave?”
“No.”
“Has she paid her bill?”
“She paid in advance for bed and breakfast,” the proprietress answered. “She seemed charming and honest, I can’t believe she had anything to do with this awful thing.”
“I wonder if I could have a look in her room,” Mannering said.
The hotel-owner and his wife were still so upset and preoccupied that they raised no objection, and led Mannering up to the second floor. As they reached it, two cars and a swarm of men arrived downstairs.
“That will be the rest of the police,” Smith said. “I’d better go and see them. Elsie—”
“Why don’t I look after your wife,” suggested Mannering, “while you have a word with the police?”
“Thank you, thank you.” Smith hurried downstairs. His wife, looking very pale, opened the door of a small room in which a narrow window overlooked the back garden and the backs of similar houses in the next street. The bed was made, the room had the unlived-in look of most hotel rooms.
“When did you make up the room?” asked Mannering.
“Soon after Miss Yates left. After all, I didn’t know—”
Mannering interrupted: “Was there anything left about?”
“No, she had packed her case – it was standing just there.” Mrs. Smith pointed to the window. “I made the room up myself, so I know what I’m talking about, I really do. Staff is so short, and in any case they never do their work properly.”
“Did you empty the waste-paper basket?” asked Mannering.
“There wasn’t really anything in it, except last night’s newspapers.”
“Do you still have them?” asked Mannering.
“I always keep newspapers, you never know when they’ll come in useful. But why—”
Mrs. Smith broke off as footsteps sounded on the stairs. Mannering had a quick look round but saw nothing which might interest or help him, until he looked behind the old-fashioned walnut dressing-table, with its wing mirrors. Curled up on the floor was a cylinder of paper. He could not get at it easily, but could see a shiny surface on the outside and some printing which showed through.
The woman hurried towards the door. Mannering squeezed behind the dressing-table and picked up the roll of paper. As he did so, Druitt’s voice sounded: “I understand that the young woman stayed on this floor, Mrs. Smith.”
“Yes she did. She—”
The hotel proprietress put on her more nervous, strident voice. She broke off as Mannering held the little cylinder in his left hand.
Druitt and another plainclothes man came in.
“What are you doing here?” Druitt asked sharply.
“Looking around,” Mannering said.
“I thought I told—”
“I don’t think I like being told anything,” Mannering interrupted coldly. “If I’m wanted, I’ll be at Quinns. Thank you, Mrs. Smith.”
He nodded curtly to the detective and went out. He half expected to be stopped, but Druitt let him go. A policeman on duty at the front door actually saluted.
Mannering turned towards the Bayswater Road. He took the roll of paper out of his pocket. It was a gummed label which had curled up and come off a piece of baggage. Square and yellow with black printing, it ran:
B.I.C: British India Steamship Navigation Company
There was no name of vessel, nothing else to help, but if this had come off the blonde Miss Yates’s baggage, it could mean a great deal. There was no certainty that it had, of course, but it was very new-looking. He folded it in half, carefully, and placed it in his wallet, then looked about for a taxi. One came along as he reached the corner.
“Scotland Yard,” he ordered.
“Right, sir.”
Mannering sat back, with a picture of the little man from Bangkok vivid in his mind’s eye. He had absorbed the shock, but the real sadness of the situation was beginning to affect him. He could recall Toji’s bright, eager face, his thoroughness, the way his eyes lit up whenever he was discussing Oriental jewels. Toji had been a dedicated man – and he had come to England with such implicit trust in Mannering.
Was he dead by now? Or had he a chance to live?
Was it conceivable that he had taken the Mask of Sumi with him to the Compton Hotel?
Mannering found questions streaming through his mind one after the other. The most insistent was: how had anyone in London learned what Toji had brought with him and known it had been worth stealing?
Quite suddenly it dawned on Mannering that he wasn’t using logic and reasoning; he was jumping to conclusions. There was as yet no proof that robbery had been the motive. There could have been other motives for his murder – and the word murder wasn’t yet justified. It was even conceivable that Toji had killed himself.
“Nonsense!” Mannering said aloud. “He wouldn’t have come to England to commit hari-kiri.”
The taxi turned into the Embankment gates of New Scotland Yard, and stopped at the foot of the steps leading up to the C.I.D. building. Mannering paid off the driver, walked up the steps, and was welcomed by a sergeant in the reception hall.
“Haven’t seen you for a long time, Mr. Mannering. Hope you’re well, sir.”
“Very well, thanks. And you?”
“Can’t grumble, sir. Mr. Bristow said to go straight to his office.”
Mannering was startled, but covered his surprise well. He knew the way up to the next floor and to the office of Superintendent William Bristow, old friend, old adversary, and the Yard’s expert on precious stones. A sergeant was coming out of Bristow’s office as Mannering arrived.
“Morning, Mr. Mannering!” he welcomed heartily.
“Good morning.”
The sergeant held the door open. Mannering went in to a large, airy, sunny office with a view of the Thames which was bright in the summer sun. Bristow was now grey, grey-haired, grey-moustached (except in the middle where it was stained with nicotine) and grey-clad. His hair was cut short, and his moustache was clipped. He was spruced to the point of immaculacy, and sported a white gardenia.
“Hallo, John.” He stood up and stretched his hand across his desk. “I thought it wouldn’t be long before you came to make your peace.”
“Has there been a war?” inquired Mannering.
“The Division thinks you probably engineered the Toji affair yourself for some nefarious purpose known only to dealers in precious stones,” Bristow said. “Sit down.” He pushed cigarettes across the desk. “Do you know why Toji killed himself?”
“What?”
“So you did think it was murder,” Bristow said smugly. “You can’t be right every time, can you?”
“Are you sure he killed himself?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Oral dose of morphia, in tablet form. He had a small phial of the tablets in his pocket. His fingerprints are on the phial, a fragment even on one of the other tablets. He swallowed them about one o’clock today, if Dr. Rush is right. And he’s dead now.”
Although he had expected it, news of Toji’s death was a shock. Mannering stood up and crossed to the window, really upset. Then he went back to the desk.
“Did you know him well?” asked Bristow, in a much more sympathetic tone.
“Well enough.”
“Why did he come to England?”
“Shall we have a stenographer in?” suggested Mannering. “Then I can make a real job of the whole story.”
“Of course,” Bristow said.
Mannering dictated for over five minutes to a woman stenographer. Bristow made no comment until she had left, but studied the letter and cable from Toji, which Mannering had brought with him.
“Someone knew what he had brought here,” Bristow said at last. “There can’t be any doubt about that.”
“What did he have with him?” asked Mannering.
“Don’t you know?”
“No.”
Bristow said: “The Mask of Sumi.”
“I can’t believe he’d bring it.”
“He did. Customs officers saw and examined it. Toji actually declared it on his declaration form as a jewelled mask of great antique value known as the Mask of Sumi.”
“How do you know it was genuine?” asked Mannering huskily.
“I don’t think you need have any doubts about that,” Bristow retorted. “Toji told the Customs officer that he had brought the mask to prove the genuineness of the Collection he had to offer. He said that he was coming to see you. I’ve since checked with the London Airport police and your friend Justin. The woman Yates told Toji she was your personal assistant, and obviously convinced him, because he went off with her without any hesitation.”
“I wish I knew how she made him believe I would be at the Compton Hotel to meet him,” Mannering said. “Toji wasn’t a gullible old man. She must have had a very good reason.”
“I suppose so.”
“I’d also like to know who telephoned Lorna to say Toji was at the hotel,” said Mannering.
“I can answer that one,” Bristow said. “It was Smith, at the hotel. He found Toji semi-conscious and asking for ‘Mis’ Mannering’. A slurred Mister can sound like Mrs.”
“How did he get my flat number?” asked Mannering. “Mannering isn’t an unusual name.”
“Toji had it written on a slip of paper. Here it is.” Bristow passed over a sheet of airmail paper which had two telephone numbers on it – Quinns as well as that of the Chelsea flat. “Smith tried the first number and it was engaged. So he tried the other. John, someone has stolen that mask, and it’s in England somewhere. Have you any idea where?”
Chapter Three
ON BOARD?
“No,” Mannering answered. “I’ve no idea where the mask is or who has taken it. I’m not really convinced it was the real one, and I’m not convinced that Toji killed himself.”
“I’m satisfied that he did,” Bristow declared. “If you want to waste time on some cock-eyed theory there’s nothing I can do about it. How much was the mask worth?”
“Didn’t Customs agree a value?”
“Intrinsically, twenty-five thousand pounds,” said Bristow. “But to a collector – twice as much, say?”
“At least,” Mannering agreed. “Probably nearer a hundred thousand.” He slid his hand inside his pocket, feeling his wallet, thinking of that B.I. label. This was a moment of real decision – whether to make inquiries himself or leave it to the police. If the label had come off a bag belonging to the blonde who had fooled Toji it might be of vital importance. The police might be able to find out and quickly, for the woman called Yates would have left other prints and the police would have photographs of these by now. It might only need a moment’s comparison.
If the prints on the label were not the blonde’s, no harm would be done. If they were then the police would have to be told at once and there would be little scope for private investigation.
Bristow’s telephone bell rang.
“Excuse me.” He lifted the receiver. “Yes, sir,” he said, so this was the Assistant Commissioner. “He’s with me now – yes, I’m sure he will.” Bristow rang off, pondered as if not sure of Mannering’s reaction, and then said quietly: “The Assistant Commissioner is worried about international complications over the death of Toji. He wants you to have a word with the Thai Consul. For some odd reason they seem to think highly of you.”
Mannering smiled, feeling a deep sense of relief.
“Why don’t you take a leaf out of their book, Bill?”
“I’ll go and get the Consul,” Bristow said.
He went out, leaving Mannering alone in the office with all the files and the reports on the case.
Mannering knew Bristow too well to believe that he would be slipshod or careless in any way. This looked almost as if he wanted Mannering to have access to those files. Mannering stretched across the desk, turned the file round, and flipped it open. Below some written notes were photographs of finge
rprints, two of them marked female and one male. There were several copies of each. Mannering slipped one print of each into his pocket, as he scanned Bristow’s handwritten notes.
These were in the form of questions.
1. Did Toji have more than the mask with him?
2. Did M. tell anyone Toji was coming?
3. If not, how did anyone know enough to make the interception at the airport possible?
4. Is Mannering keeping anything back?
5. Total value (a) mask (b) all jewels?
6. Where to get history of jewels?
Beneath this list was a kind of postscript:
M. might have told a collector or some other dealer.
Well, he hadn’t.
As he finished reading Mannering heard footsteps outside, much heavier than Bristow usually made; Bristow was giving warning of his approach. Mannering closed the file and twisted it round. The door opened and Bristow ushered in an Oriental who stood barely as high as his shoulder. He was dressed immaculately in dark grey. He smiled. He shook hands. He said he had heard of Mr. Mannering and also that Mr. Toji had planned to come to see Mr. Mannering. He, the Thai Consul, had known Mr. Toji well. He, the Consul, as well as Mr. Toji and all Thais of any standing, felt the loss of such a venerable relic as the Mask of Sumi a great blow to the integrity and to the reputation of Thailand. If Mr. Mannering could do anything at all to assist the police to recover this priceless treasure, which had been entrusted to Mr. Toji by Prince Asri, then he, the Consul, would be forever grateful. Mr. Mannering might not be aware that Prince Asri had in fact been acting on behalf of the Sumi Government, who had wished the sale of the crown jewels to be kept secret. Otherwise it would be suggested that the Government was in a desperately bad economic plight. In fact, the Consul understood, the sale was to remove all danger of an attempt to restore the Sumi Dynasty.
“Was that why Prince Asri was used as the agent?” asked Mannering.