by John Creasey
If he didn’t talk, he’d suffer....
If he did talk, O’Ray would learn of it, sooner or later, and Alec Broomfield knew exactly what would happen to him. He remembered Curson; he remembered Prettle.
They took him to Burke’s flat, and they stripped him to the waist. He shivered, not with cold, and they forced him into a hardwood chair and bound him to it, his ankles to the legs and arms tightly to the back. All the time they kept silent, unless it was a casual comment, one to the other. Their faces were lean, hard, and even worse. They frightened Broomfield. He shivered uncontrollably, now, and there was sweat on his forehead and his stomach.
Davidson and Trale finished their job, and then dropped into easy chairs. They smoked, thoughtfully, heedless of the man close to them, and they seemed to start with surprise when he gasped at last:
“Listen—listen! I’ll talk——”
“Shut up,” snapped Wally Davidson. “Burke will deal with you.”
And the terrified Broomfield saw a vision of a big, steely-voiced man with the hardest grey eyes in the world....
“Neither bullet touched her,” Jim Burke repeated.
“I don’t know what kind of a marksman Broomfield is, but he couldn’t have missed her—twice—from that distance—”
“He did,” interrupted Craigie, filling his pipe.
“If he tried to get her,” Burke finished. “Gordon—I may be a fool, but I don’t think Broomfield tried to hit her. Frighten her, yes. And by the look of it, he succeeded.”
“And O’Ray was trying to frighten her—we guess.” Craigie struck a match.
“It looks like it,” Burke scowled. “Another thing. There was no silencer on his gun. Why?”
Craigie smoked in silence as Burke tried to answer himself.
“Possibly because he intended to make a row? He wanted us to know he was shooting—had his getaway all cut and dried, and didn’t dream we’d have anyone watching the back, say. But why the hell should he want to let us know all about it?”
“I don’t know,” said Craigie.
“And I don’t,” said Burke. “But I will! Anyway, I’ll bet you a pound to a penn’orth of jam, O’Ray’s in this—and bang in the middle of it. And when we talk about Cropper-Gordon’s in future, we’ll say O’Ray, and save time. O’Ray wants Granton’s, and he wanted the concession. The thing is—is he working for Rania. Or is he playing his own game?”
“O’Ray isn’t the man to play anybody else’s.”
“Unless it suits him.” Burke scowled again. “Damn it, Katrina said Fordham was killed because he married her—”
“She mightn’t be right.”
“On the other hand, she might. Still, the thing for the moment is this: Broomfield shot at her, and deliberately missed. As deliberately, he made sure we heard him. Those shots didn’t come until we were actually at the door. And we can take one thing for certain from that.”
“H’mm?”
“He didn’t want her dead,” said Burke, emphatically.
He mused silently for a few moments. Then:
“Blast me for a fool! Of course——!”
“Of course what?” Craigie murmured: he was having trouble with his pipe.
“Just this.” Burke ran a hand through his hair. “Katrina owns the concession. O’Ray wants it. If she’s killed, before she’s signed it away, he can’t get it. Right? But I can tell you someone who will——”
Craigie stopped fiddling with his pipe.
“Good Lord,” he said, hollowly.
“Yes.” Burke nodded. “Staren, of Rania. Her father. It will go back to Ranian control, then, if she’s killed before signing it away. So the only party interested in her immediate death is—Staren.”
“Her father.” Craigie’s words were a protest.
“Dammit,” snapped Burke, “Staren’s got no more feeling for Katrina than a goldfish. He’s a callous old devil—you don’t need telling that—and she’s also got right under his skin by the alliance with Fordham. So far as her father’s concerned, Katrina cut herself off from him, then. In his eyes, she’s virtually dead. He won’t care a tinker’s cuss whether she’s physically dead, too. God! No wonder she’s scared of him——”
“And you think she is?” asked Craigie, slowly.
“I’m sure of it,” said Burke. “I——”
Whatever else he was going to say was lost, for a maid tapped on the door and announced Doctor Little.
Little waddled in, beaming and quivering, a mountain of a man.
“How now, boys! What have you been up to, this time?”
Burke told him. Little raised eloquent brows and departed to examine the patient. He returned after ten minutes and the expression on his face was chiefly of puzzlement.
“She’s all right?” Burke snapped, and Craigie looked his concern.
Frowning, Little sat on a chair that sagged beneath his weight.
“She’s foxing,” he announced.
The word seemed to echo round the room. Burke was too startled for immediate comment. Craigie looked incredulous. But they knew their Doc Little. He could only be right.
“True,” he affirmed. “There’s nothing the matter with that little lady. She hasn’t even had hysterics, although she’s pretending she’s got ‘em now. If she’s been as scared as you say she has, she’s got over it damn quick.”
There was a short, tense silence. The almost unbelievable truth worked its way through Burke’s mind, and Craigie’s. It seemed fantastic——
Katrina Fordham had been shot at, by a man who meant to miss. The shots had been fired to deliberately make a row. And Katrina Fordham had pretended to collapse.
Pretended....
It was Burke who broke the silence.
“Now isn’t this beautiful?” he murmured thoughtfully. “The lovely Katrina’s foxing. She isn’t scared. And if she isn’t scared, she knew there wasn’t any chance of those bullets hitting her. Hell and damnation!”
It was, he admitted afterwards, one of the biggest shocks he’d had in his life. The more he thought about it, the worse it grew. Because they had not the slightest excuse in the world for trying to browbeat Katrina Fordham into admitting she’d been foxing. And whatever her father’s feelings, a protest from her to the Ranian Legation would mean a flutter of concern in many august circles? If—as was more than possible—they tried to force her to talk and rumour of their efforts got into the press, the whole country would be howling.
With a man, it wouldn’t have mattered a damn. But with Katrina, Princess of Rania, widow of Arthur Fordham, object of pity for many million souls, it would matter a great deal.
Bitterly, Burke outlined these opinions. Craigie, who was looking worried and grey, agreed.
“We can’t do anything with her,” he said. “Yet——” He turned to Little. “Look here, Doc. You’re a hundred per cent certain about this?”
“Two hundred per cent,” Little assured him.
Then blinked in astonishment at Jim Burke.
As he spoke, one moment, Burke was scowling as he puffed cigarette smoke towards the ceiling. The next, he was on his feet, his face alive with excitement. Smashing one massive fist into the palm of his other hand, he shouted.
“Man, but we’re fools! Fools!”
Craigie’s eyes widened; and he smiled.
“What’s biting, Jim?”
“Biting!” Jim Burke fumed, furious at his own obtuseness: “It’s eating me! And it ought to be eating you——”
“Go on,” Craigie prompted.
“Gordon—can’t you see? Katrina’s foxing. She’s not afraid. Right? She couldn’t fox if she was afraid—if she felt anything. But she doesn’t! She married Fordham in defiance of her father and her country; she exiled herself for him, and now, less than a week after he’s been murdered, she’s foxing—working with the people who killed Fordham!”
Burke’s eyes, gleaming with excitement, were on Craigie. And Craigie began to see.
&nb
sp; “Go on,” he said again.
“It doesn’t work,” Burke summed up, with quiet conviction. “It doesn’t fit in. A woman who could give up all that for a man doesn’t get callous, five minutes after his death—”
“Get to the point,” Little groaned.
“I will,” grinned Burke. “The woman in there isn’t Arthur Fordham’s widow. It’s not the real Katrina!”
14
THE SECOND CAPTURE
Burke was quieter now, but he was still grinning. For once he failed to see, quickly, the real meaning of a thing. But Gordon Craigie’s face was wrinkled in perplexity and concern as Burke went on:
“We ought to have guessed immediately we heard of the complete clear-out of servants. That wasn’t because Katrina was afraid of them. They were changed because it was essential no one should know her well enough to tell the difference.”
“But surely someone would guess?” protested Little.
As long-standing medical adviser to Department Z, Doc Little was rarely barred from their discussions. Little, they knew, was an expert in talking a lot and saying nothing.
“Why should they?” asked Burke. ‘She’s not well-known, over here. After she married Fordham, she went away on her honeymoon. She came back on September the fourteenth—nearly seven weeks ago. She’s been—speaking from memory—to about three balls, but for the most part she’s been left on her own, at the flat. Why? Because she’s newly-married, and most people wouldn’t worry her for the first six months. So, she’s a complete stranger to England; she knows only a dozen or so people, who have only met her on a few occasions. Even her marriage was done quietly. She’s been a newspaper headline, and little more. I should say the only people who really know her well—her mannerisms as well as her looks—are the servants. Speaking of England, of course. And all the old servants have gone.”
Little said:
“But the chances of someone calling who knew her well are pretty big, Burke.”
“Wrong. They’re very small. Because now she’s been bereaved, even those people who would have called, before, will keep away. They’ll leave their cards; they might try to see her once, but with a false Katrina here, they’d be asked to wait for a while. And waiting would seem natural. Dammit, Doc, it’s plainer than your middle button.”
Since Doc Little’s middle button was singularly prominent, the allusion was not out of place. As he beamed his appreciation, Craigie spoke up.
“I think you’re right, Jim. If this woman isn’t the real Katrina, it fits in with her reactions to—everything. But then—” he tapped the stem of his meerschaum against his teeth—” where is Fordham’s widow?”
His words cut through Burke like a keen wind. In his temporary excitement—and it was one of the rarest things in the world for Jim Burke to get excited—he had been concerned only with the discovery he had made. Craigie’s words brought him up with a jolt.
His lips tightened, bleakly.
“We’d better see our new friend, hadn’t we?”
Craigie started towards the door. Little, cocking an inquisitive eye at Burke, grinned when the big man nodded. Little might be useful at the interrogation that was about to commence, he decided.
As he followed them both along the passage, Burke remembered ruefully that a few days before, he had wanted complications. Now they were falling thick and fast. But he was not looking forward to the coming interview; it was one thing to make a man talk, a very different thing to apply methods of persuasion to the fair sex.
Martin Best was lounging untidily against the wall of the bedroom. The door was half-open.
“You’ll have to wait a minute for the lady,” he grinned. “She’s gone out with the maid.”
Burke snapped:
“Gone out where?”
“Whoa back!” Best was a sensitive young man. “The second door on the left.”
“How long’s she been gone?” Craigie snapped.
“Six or seven minutes.” Best suddenly looked worried. “You don’t think——”
But Craigie had already reached the second door on the left. He knocked sharply. There was no answer. He knocked more loudly—then turned to Burke.
“Can you shoulder it down?”
“I can try,” said Burke, and did. At the third attempt, the door opened with a sharp crack.
The bathroom was empty. The window, immediately above the fire escape, was wide open. In the courtyard below, there was no sign of the supposed Katrina Fordham.
The silence that followed their entry was pregnant. Burke broke it, at last.
“The maid’s gone, too,” he pointed out.
“It’s fairly obvious,” Craigie agreed, flatly, “that she let Doc in, listened to what we said, and hurried off with a warning.” He sounded weary. “And if the maid was in the game, I wonder if the others are?”
Burke, although he acted quickly enough, was feeling equally flat. For once in his life, he was mentally winded. But he cheered up a little, half an hour later, after he had talked with the cook and the butler; the other servants, he knew, slept out.
For the butler was an old lag, and the cook had only been out of Brixton for a month. The late Mr Prettle had supplied the Fordham menage with jail-bird servants. Which fact almost certainly accounted for his death, for if the police had interviewed him, they would have discovered the truth. To stop him talking, Graydon (it was assumed) had killed him.
“Well," said Burke, drily, recovering a little of his lost sense of humour, “we wouldn’t have talked with Prettle until tomorrow, and we’ve learned all he could have told us, tonight.”
“It’s half-past one,” said Doc Little, suddenly.
Burke looked at his watch, and whistled.
“So it is. Well—we’ve one little job to do, before we’ve finished. But we shan’t need you, Doc.”
Little intimated that he wasn’t sorry, and went off. A chastened Martin Best and a little man with a lisp, another of the almost countless young men who worked for Craigie and were prepared to die cheerfully for strange things nine-tenths of the world didn’t believe existed, stayed to keep an eye on the surly, crabbed butler and the wailing cook. Burke and Craigie walked to Brook Street. They said very little: Burke’s mind was on his coming talk with Alec Broomfield.
Broomfield would hardly have much power of resistence left, now. He had probably stewed himself into a frenzy of fear, and would be easy to interrogate.
A grim smile was curving the corners of Burke’s lips as he unlocked the front door of his flat and stood aside for Craigie to enter. He almost forgot he was tired.
And then he forgot everything else; and so did Craigie.
For across the floor of the room, Sam Carter was stretched out unconscious—or worse. And through an open door, he could see Wally Davidson sprawling over a chair. Dodo Trale was propped up against the wall, his head lolling forward on his chest.
Alec Broomfield was still tied to his chair, and still stripped to the waist. His eyes were glaring with fear, horror, a hundred things.
There was a bullet hole in his head, one in his neck and one in his heart.
“It might be worse,” said Burke, a few minutes later. But he spoke without much conviction and Craigie, tight-lipped, said nothing.
“I’m ‘phoning Little again,” Burke added, dialing the number. “Dodo’s got a nasty clout that’ll want patching up.” He waited, wearily, until Doc Little’s voice came over the wire.
“I hope you haven’t undressed,” Burke greeted him. “Davidson’s been knocked out, Trale’s been very nearly put out, and Carter’s half dead. Don’t be long.”
“Five minutes,” Doc Little promised, and was as good as his word.
There was a very grim gathering in Burke’s flat at three o’clock that morning. Dodo Trale was at the West-land Hospital, under an anaesthetic, for his skull had been cracked and Little was afraid of pressure on the brain. But Sam Carter’s head had proved thick, and was only bruised, while the cut a
cross Wally Davidson’s forehead required only plaster, although Wally himself had been quick to profess the needs for a stiff whisky as well.
Wally’s story was simple. Someone had rung the front door bell, and Sam Carter had hurried from the kitchen to the door, leaving the door of the middle room open. So the gentleman with a low-crowned hat, a heavy coat and a Thompson sub-machine gun had had them all in line.
There was another man with him, also with a low-crowned hat, and with a distinct Bronx-type American accent. He had entered calmly, cracked Sam over the head with a lump of iron piping, and treated Wally the same. Dodo, typically, had attempted to make a fight of it, which was probably why his crack over the head had been a heavier one than the others.
Dodo Trale would know himself lucky, when he recovered. No man who takes chances with machine-guns can expect to get away with a whole skin.
But Burke was very grim, as he took mental stock: the outlook was black.
Their first captive was dead. The second had flown. The death of Broomfield was a particularly severe blow. He would have talked.
“And,” Burke thought grimly, “that’s why he died. Graydon—we can be pretty sure—guessed he’d give way under the strain, and got rid of him. Curson went the same way; and Prettle. It’s a hell of a situation.”
It was.
They could guess who had killed Fordham and Brent, but they had no idea yet of the real motive. They knew it was connected with Granton’s and the oil concession, but they couldn’t find the line from one to the other.
There were worse things.
Katrina Fordham was missing. Was she, too, dead? And when had she been replaced by the woman Burke had seen at the flat?
Burke didn’t know, but he guessed it had happened after the funeral. He had been struck by the change in Katrina Fordham when he had seen her in that gold dress. At the funeral, she had seemed genuine. But he couldn’t even be sure about that; he didn’t know her well enough.
It was a safe guess that Broomfield had been instrumental in making the change. Broomfield had fixed the servants, probably lured the real Katrina away, and been generally useful. He was dead, now; that suggested his period of usefulness had been over.