by John Creasey
It had appeared that the last word was with King Staren, even if the concession was with Fordham. But Fordham had retaliated. His announcement that he was engaged to Katrina had staggered the world’s press, and set most of the world laughing. Staren had forbidden the marriage, and threatened to disown Katrina if she went ahead with it. Worse, he had kept her prisoner in the Ranian capital. But money in Rania was not plentiful—and money with Fordham was. So guards were bribed, and Katrina escaped. The next the world heard of her was when she arrived at Southampton to be met by Fordham and, two days later the biggest sensation of all—a registry office marriage.
Arthur Fordham had certainly been in the news.
Burke had known him slightly. He had not met Katrina, but he had liked what he had heard of her. Now, he could imagine how she was feeling, and his eyes were very hard.
“You’ve an idea what the job is?” asked Craigie, some hour later.
“Just an idea.” Seated in another armchair facing him, Burke stretched himself and smiled at the grey, gaunt man who was his chief. He had an admiration for Gordon Craigie that well exceeded his admiration for the rest of the world put together—with the exception, of course, of Patricia, who was in quite a different category.
The office was more like an office, now. Most of the rugs Craigie had draped round him for his brief night’s sleep were bundled into a cupboard next the fire-place. A small table-cum-bookcase held a tin of tobacco, a pound jar of jam, and a punctured tin of condensed milk. Craigie had had his bachelor’s breakfast, and had nearly cleared away.
It was a rule of Craigie’s never to have anyone in that room but his agents—or on special occasions, the P.M. himself.
There were secrets in that room that no one but Craigie knew, and few people even guessed. Craigie had spent many years building up the privacy of that room. From time to time, certain august gentlemen suggested that this privacy business was a bee in Craigie’s bonnet—why the hell couldn’t he behave like a normal man, instead of locking himself up in an office which couldn’t be entered unless he operated some damn fool switch, inside or outside?
The precautions to ensure such privacy were extreme; Craigie admitted the fact. It was possible, for instance, to pull switches which made almost any part of the three inside walls into doors leading to various parts of the Whitehall building. If anyone (however august) wanted to see Craigie, he had to telephone the Department; it was the only way of getting at him. If an agent wanted to see Craigie, he pressed a button outside the office and waited. The button operated a green light set into the room’s mantlepiece and when Craigie operated another switch, the part of the wall nearest the waiting agent slid open.
Craigie did not talk or act like a man with the secrets of the world on his shoulders, and he had never been known to boast, even mildly, of his achievements. Most of the people who knew by sight this gaunt, grey-haired man with the shrewd, hooded grey eyes and the perpetually lighted meerschaum pipe, would have been astounded to learn the power that he possessed. Only once in all his career as head of Department Z had anyone in the Cabinet tried to direct Craigie’s activities; and even then, had not succeeded.*
Such was Craigie.
Many of the men who had occupied the chair Jim Burke lounged in that morning were dead; the Department’s work was precarious. Burke knew it; everyone who entered that office knew it; no-one had ever wanted to back out. Craigie seemed to pick his men with a sixth sense that never failed him.
He had picked Burke, early that year, and he thought him as good a man, if not better, than any who had worked for him. He had, in fact, many of the qualifications needed to run the Department, and for a while Craigie had wondered whether Burke might one day be the man to take over from him. But there was Patricia——
“It’s Fordham, of course?” Burke guessed, now.
Craigie nodded, and reached for his pipe—that meerschaum that seemed never to grow old.
“Yes—Fordham.”
“Do you think the Ranian gentlemen had anything to do with it?” asked Burke. “He didn’t like Fordham, especially after the marriage.”
Craigie rammed thick flake into the meerschaum’s bowl.
“I don’t know what to think,” he said. “The oil concession looked like trouble for a long time, and I’ve been watching Fordham. But I’ve seen nothing suspicious there, and I’d begun to think there was nothing to worry about. Now...” He shrugged.
Burke didn’t interrupt. One thing he took for certain: Craigie didn’t connect Fordham’s death with the Ranian trouble.
“Now, we know there was something to worry about, all right,” Craigie went on. “There’s another thing, too. The bullet that killed Fordham was fired from a Niass .22 automatic, a gun only made in Rania.”
“Which is conclusive proof,” said Burke,
“Of what?”
“That no one from Rania killed Fordham. Staren may be a hard-bitten old reprobate, but he’s clever, and if he’d paid someone to kill Fordham he would have made sure there was no obvious connection with his country.”
“Meaning?”
“That whoever killed Fordham deliberately made it look like a result of his marriage and the upsetting of Staren’s apple-cart.”
“So that’s what you think?” murmured Craigie, lighting his pipe.
“Yes. Don’t you?”
“Let’s go a step further,” said Craigie. “Supposing Staren is behind this murder—and it’s a mighty long supposing, for Rania isn’t a country that dare tread on our corns, although Staren himself is capable of anything. But then, grant him the cleverness to realise that we’d see past a Niass bullet and assume a third party had killed Fordham, under cover of the known enmity of Staren of Rania.”
“H’mm.” Burke looked doubtful. “I was in Rania three months ago. I know Staren. I don’t think he’s deep enough for it.”
“Good,” said Craigie. “I wanted to hear that. Now here’s the other thing, Jim. An hour—we guess—before Fordham was killed, a man was murdered on the outskirts of Cottesdon Village. Near Winchester. He was shot with a Webley .32, and he lived long enough to say ‘tell Fordham first’. They’re his actual words. They were addressed to his daughter, who found him dying, and after trying to telephone Fordham and sending a message to the police she begged a lift in a passing car and scorched to London to Fordham’s flat. She was too late.”
Burke grunted:
“She’s got guts.”
“She has.” Cragie nodded briefly. “I saw her, just before you came in. It’s hit her hard, poor kid. I didn’t ask her much, though—I told her you’d be seeing her.”
“Blast you!” said Burke, uncomfortably.
“She’ll take it well,” Craigie assured him. “Something like Pat.”
Burke coloured.
“I was wondering,” said Craigie, eyeing the big man thoughtfully, “whether Pat can help her. She’s alone, from what I can gather. Naturally, she wants to keep away from the village. She talks of staying in London, but I don’t like it.”
“In case there are developments?”
“Yes.”
Burke said slowly:
“I don’t want to lay Pat open to anything. You know that. Besides...”
He gave a brief account of the shooting that morning. Craigie’s hooded eyes hardened.
“It’s possible someone’s afraid we’ll start moving, and that you’ll be in it,” he said, grimly. “But no more than possible, let’s remember. Anyhow—see Mary Brent first, and think about sending her to Pat after.”
Burke nodded.
“She may know some reason for the murder of her father,” Craigie added, “and she’ll tell you she was followed from her house to the village, when she left him to get to a telephone. See what you can learn. Then I think——”
He tapped the stem of his pipe against his teeth, and Burke went a dusky red.
“Oh, Lord!” he groaned. “You don’t want me to see—Katrina?”
&nbs
p; “Mrs. Fordham, yes,” said Craigie. “Sorry, Jim. Two nasty jobs, I know. But you’ll be in this, anyway, and you can handle it better than anyone else we’ve got.”
Burke nodded and shrugged, resignedly. To interview in succession a girl whose father had been murdered and a newly-wedded woman whose husband had been shot was a grim morning’s work.
“All right,” he said. “Anyone else detailed on the job yet?”
“The Arrans. Use them as you like.”
“I don’t think,” Burke said, straight-faced, “that I’d better do that.”
Craigie smiled as the big man stood up.
“Perhaps not. Well—go steady. It might be a small thing, but Fordham wasn’t small. And I wouldn’t be surprised to find, after this sudden death, that his activities were a lot wider than we knew before. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”
“Right, and I’ll ring you when I’ve seen the women,” said Burke, but he was obviously still not happy at the prospect as he took the addresses of Mary Brent and Katrina Fordham and left the office.
He elected to go through a maze of corridors that eventually led him to the front entrance of the Home Office building. He stepped into Whitehall, at last, and walked briskly towards Westminster Bridge—he had left the Talbot at a Victoria garage—and soon passed Scotland Yard. He also passed a massive, floury-looking gentleman whom he knew well, by name, sight and nature.
Few people understood how Superintendent Horace Miller contrived to look so much like his name. His fair skin, his flaxen moustache and his equally flaxen hair always seemed dusted with a powdering of fine flour; hence ‘Dusty’ Miller. But his clothes were well-brushed, and his eyes alert; there was dust in neither of them.
Burke stopped.
“Hallo, Miller. I haven’t seen you for——”
“It’s been heartbreaking,” grinned Miller, as they shook hands. “Busy?”
“Can’t you guess?”
“Fordham.”
“Yes.”
“A nasty business.” Miller shook his head. “I missed it last night, so I shan’t be working with you.”
“A pity,” said Burke, and meant it.
But as it happened, Miller was wrong. The two were to work together on the Fordham affair as they had worked, amicably and most successfully, on others. Miller was not a brilliant man, but he was steady, he knew his job from A to Z, and he had no objection to working with or even for Craigie’s men.
But as Burke left in a taxi for Mary Brent’s hotel, Miller’s mind was on Richard Lavis. He had just learned from one of the guards outside the Hampstead house that Lavis was in a state bordering on collapse, due to (a) nerves, (b) a thick night, and (c) something about being the only one left—a rather peculiar thing to say, which Miller intended to probe at as soon as he could get to Hampstead.
5
BURKE BLUFFS A GENTLEMAN
Burke saw the thin-faced man in sober grey tweeds enter the taxi immediately behind the one he had hired and, outside the Claycourt Hotel, Victoria, saw the same man pass the hotel, dismiss his taxi, and then cross the road to the Metropole Theatre. He might, of course, have business at that theatre, but Burke doubted it.
For the moment, however, he was more concerned with the first part of his unpleasant morning’s work.
He asked a reception clerk for Miss Brent, and gave his name.
In three minutes, he was in her room.
He saw a slim, fair-haired girl whose eyes were shadowed, and whose lips were almost colourless. She had good features, and if she would never be beautiful she would, at least, be attractive when the signs of her grief were gone. Her chin was good, her voice steady. There was an expression lurking in her eyes that reminded Burke of a battered but dogged lightweight towards the end of a bout with a man who could give him three stone. In fact, she looked as if she would stick things out till the last—and keep on trying to find the reason for them.
She was dressed in a white, knitted suit and low-heeled white shoes. Her hands were small and she wore a plain, gold ring—on her right hand, not her left—and her hair waved naturally.
So much he saw in a glance, as he held out his hand.
“I’m sorry to worry you, Miss Brent.”
A fleeting smile crossed her pale, strained face.
“It’s all right. You’ve got to, of course. The—the others have been very—kind.”
“I hope I shall be,” said Burke.
She looked at him, soberly.
“I think you will. Do sit down? And I was just going to have coffee—will you join me?”
“Gladly, thank you.”
She rang for the waiter, and when the coffee was brought, she poured it with steady hands.
“Sugar?”
“Two, please.”
God! thought Burke, but she’s got guts, all right.
He guessed that she was preparing to tell her story, and he did not force her. She began quietly, without looking at him. But when she reached the point where she had heard her father call out, from his library, she looked directly at him, and he hated the hopelessness in her eyes. She told him everything, with an attention to detail that showed him that, shocked as she had been by the discovery, she had kept cool: her mind had photographed everything.
What she could not describe were the two men who had come out of the car towards the telephone box; the light had been too bad. She believed their car was a Lancia. The driver who helped her had told her it had taken the Andover road—he would perhaps be sure of its make. She hadn’t heard his address, but his name was Braddon.
“The police will know where to find him,” Burke told her.
She looked a question.
“No,” he said, frankly. “I’m not the police. You see the Fordham connection makes the issue rather wider. And I’m particularly anxious to know just what was the connection between your father and Arthur Fordham. Do you know?”
She shrugged wearily.
“Yes, I know. And ever since it happened, I’ve been afraid of—of anything.”
Burke’s eyes narrowed.
“And it was——?”
“That accursed concession!” Mary Brent’s eyes blazed, the words whipped out. “Danger, danger, danger, from beginning to end! I wish I’d never seen Fordham—I wish father had never seen him! It’s been terribles—terrible!”
Burke thought: “The concession—the concession Fordham got from Rania. Is it that business, after all?” He said:
“You mean the Ranian concession? Did your father have anything to do with Fordham over that? Directly. I mean?”
His coolness took the flush from Mary’s cheeks.
“I—I’m sorry.” Burke smiled understandingly, and she went on: “Yes. Dad was a chemist, and he worked with the Commercial Petroleum Company for a long time. He travelled a lot for them.”
“Prospecting?”
“Testing drillings. He retired, four years ago——”
“How old was he?”
Mary’s lips tightened, and her hands clenched.
“Fifty-seven. He—he had a serious illness, lasting some little time, after a year in South America. So he retired—the Company looked after him, very well. We—we had three wonderful years. And then he grew tired of doing nothing, and Arthur Fordham had no trouble in getting him to test the Ranian oil.”
“Fordham came to him?”
“Yes. He knew Dad, of course, I think everyone in the oil world did; he invented several testing processes that saved a lot of time. Anyway—Dad went to Rania, nine months ago, and stayed there until July, just before all the trouble about the concession.”
“And—there was danger?”
Mary Brent shrugged her shoulders, a sad, weary gesture.
“I think so. Dad bought that house in Cottesdon, and although he didn’t say so, I think he was hiding. He was afraid of—something.” She broke off, with a wan smile. “I don’t know that, but I’m almost sure. Then a month ago, Fordham came to the house a
nd I remember him saying ‘another couple of months, and we’ll be out of the woods’.”
“Do you know what your father answered?”
“Yes. He said: ‘I hope so; it’s getting me down’.”
“And the date of the visit? Do you remember?”
“It was a Monday—the day after Fordham returned from—from his honeymoon. I don’t know the actual date.”
“I can easily find that,” said Burke.
He proffered cigarettes, and the girl took one. The red tip glowed vividly against her pale face.
“There was never anything else to tell you, in so many words, that your father was afraid of—anything?”
“Nothing.”
“Had he known Fordham before the Ranian trip?”
“No—only by reputation.”
“Reputation in the oil world?”
“I—I don’t know. I think so.”
Burke wondered whether Fordham’s activities in the oil world had been confined to the Ranian affair. From Mary Brent’s story, he doubted it. It was a story that gave Burke ample food for thought, and it boiled down to a simple presumption—and one that Burke didn’t want to accept.
Fordham and Brent had been murdered because of their activities concerning the Ranian oil concession. On the face of it, it was madness to try and blind himself to that, and the obvious step to follow was that Staren of Rania had revenged himself on Fordham.
By why on the chemist who had worked with him?
“Did your father know, beforehand, of the engagement of Fordham and Princess Katrina?”