The Terror Trap

by John Creasey

  Burke got out, glad of the chance to stretch his legs.

  “Can you get another car here?” he asked, without much hope.

  Lloyd nodded.

  “There’ll be two or three, brought by our men. I could get one, in emergency.”

  “Good. We might need one. There’s a telephone, I take it?”

  “Oh, yes—in the pit manager’s office for one. We passed it before we reached the place where Wigham’s gone. A small, brick building right on the other side of the village.”

  “I noticed it,” Burke nodded. “I’ll make my way back there, and you can get a message to me if Wigham moves. Whatever happens, keep on his tail. I’ll wait here for the super and Pickering.”

  “Right,” said the confident Lloyd. “But just a word in your ear, Mr. Burke. Be careful where you go and what you say. These people get funny ideas in their heads—and they’re nasty when they get out of hand.”

  Burke grinned.

  “I think I can manage.”

  “I hope you can,” said Lloyd, grimly.

  To reach the manager’s office, Burke had to cross the railway lines that led towards it from the various pit-heads. As he worked his way round, keeping out of sight of the pub where Tommy Wigham had gone, he was deep in thought.

  Consequently, it was a surprise when a stone caught him in the middle of the back. He jumped, and swung round. A second stone missed his head by a fraction. A third stubbed the ground at his feet.

  Trouble had come!

  19

  DANGER DOWN BELOW

  There was no-one in sight, but there were a dozen places where men could hide. As Burke located several pairs of feet behind a coal truck, three or four more stones hurtled towards him. A split second later, others came from the right and he gasped as one caught him in the ribs. Then for the first time he heard voices—a roar of derision that made the blood rush to his head.

  He knew, now, why Lloyd had warned him.

  But it was too late to wish he’d acted differently. He was half-surrounded by men he couldn’t see, and he knew he was in very real danger.

  Burke didn’t lack courage, but he had little chance against a hostile mob. He had his guns, of course, but he would only use them as a last resort. So he did the only thing that occurred to him. He spun round on his heels, ducked, and ran.

  His flight was a signal for the men to come out of hiding. Behind and to the right and left of him, little crowds of them came running, shouting, jeering. Stones and chunks of coal were coming thick and fast, now. It was by luck alone that none scored a direct hit.

  Burke ran on, grimly.

  He had no way of knowing how far he was from the main street of the village. There were plenty of police in the Granton field, but ten minutes could well dispense with all need for the police. Burke realised the ugly note behind the jeers: The men were after his blood. God! What fools men were!

  He was running hard, now, and he was outdistancing his pursuers, slowly. But as he turned to glance back over his shoulder, a small flint caught him about the right eye and blood started to flow down his cheek.

  The sight of it seemed to infuriate the men.

  There was a howl that split the air. A big piece of coal smashed on to the ground just behind him: if it had caught his head, it would have brained him. There was a savage, menacing note in the men’s voices. The blood was half-blinding him and he knew it would be touch and go.

  And then he stubbed his foot on a railway sleeper, and went flying. Alarm surged through him and not for the first time in his life, Jim Burke felt real fear.

  He knew that it was madness, now, to try and run for it. They’d catch him, for he was winded badly from the fall. He’d have to face them, he knew, and his heart thumped at the prospect.

  He’d under-estimated their number.

  There were forty men at least, and there was real hatred in their faces. Only one thing gave him any glimmer of hope: While he was down, no stones came.

  He got up slowly, and turned to face them. They were ten yards away, now, led by a giant of a man who topped Burke’s six-feet-two by fully three inches. His little eyes were glittering viciously as he looked at Burke, who waited, tense and virtually helpless.

  Blood from the cut on his forehead blinded his right eye and dripped on to his coat. His hair was awry, and the knee of one trousers-leg had been ripped open. He was breathing hard, and his fists were clenched.

  For a fraction of a second, the crowd stopped. Jim Burke did not look inviting, even for them. But their giant of a leader started to rouse them.

  “Let’s get at him,” he bellowed. “The dirty, lousy tyke—let him see what we think of him. Come on, blast yer, come on!”

  The crowd was only a couple of yards behind him as he dashed forward—but Burke went to meet him. There was a split-second of almost blank amazement as the others hesitated. And then Burke met his man.

  “Ready?” he spat at him.

  “Why, yer—!”

  “Come on!” snapped Burke.

  His clenched right fist flashed out with deadly accuracy, and as the other’s nose streamed blood, his bellow rent the air. Then with a ferociousness that sent Burke staggering back, the giant came on. Twice, his fist crashed into Burke’s stomach; twice, Burke steeled himself and took the blow. Then for a split second, the huge man was off his balance...

  Burke used his chance. He swung a left—and Burke’s left was a thing to dream about. It caught the giant behind the ear and sent him flying sideways, so that he struck the ground face-first. But even in the heat of the moment, Burke could admire the huge man’s courage.

  As he staggered to his feet, three or four of the others started forward. Snarling, the giant waved them back. There was something abysmal in his fury—in the primitive urge to finish his slaughter for himself.

  As he came on again, head down and arms whirling, Burke side-stepped and gave him a crashing blow to the side of the head as he blundered past. Now the crowd was silent—watching, wide-eyed, this battle of giants. The huge man came again; and this time Burke waited for him. For sixty terrific seconds, they stood and pounded each other.

  Burke was in the pink of condition—but so was the giant. Years spent hewing coal had developed muscles even Burke could envy. But he lacked one thing Burke had—the ability to keep his body stiff, so that the blows were half-deadened. Burke kept up his rain of jabs, thudding mercilessly and with dreadful regularity at the other’s midriff. The giant’s breath grew short; he was gasping, and tears ran down his face to mingle with the blood still streaming from his nose. But he kept on...

  Burke was very close to finished. Never in his life had he faced an onslaught like this, and every breath sent red-hot needles through his lungs. He kept his lips tight, and he didn’t give an inch, but his arms were like lead weights and his fists were red and raw. Even pain was almost lost in his dreadful, overwhelming weariness. It couldn’t go on...

  It stopped, as a thing like that was bound to stop, with startling suddenness. The other man gasped, shuddered once, and then his great body seemed to crumple and he fell forward on his face.

  Burke swayed...

  Through a mist, he saw the crowd about him; through the buzzing in his head, he heard voices. Somehow, he kept on his feet. As he dashed his right hand through his hair, pushing it back from his eyes, wiping the blood away, his voice cracked out:

  “Wait a minute—!”

  He didn’t know whether they had started for him, yet, but the very fierceness of his voice stopped them. They stared at him—and then gasped as they saw his right hand.

  His voice cracked out again.

  “See that? It’s a gun. I could have used it ten minutes ago, if I’d wanted to—”

  And then in a gesture that might have cost him his life, he hurled the automatic away from him. It smacked down on a heap of stones, jarring the trigger. A tongue of flame spat out, and a bullet buried itself harmlessly in the ground.

  Burke didn
’t look at it. He looked at the white faces of the men in front of him, and he knew that he had won.

  “Now,” he was saying, ten minutes later. “What was it all about?”

  He was a good mixer, and as he smiled somewhat grimly at the men about him, he spoke in a way that suggested he was one of them. There was a sheepish air about the crowd, and it was mob no longer.

  He was sitting propped up against the wheel of a coal truck, and propped against the next was the giant who had fought him. From heaven-knew-where, towels and water had come, and Burke had been grateful for the ensuing ministrations. His head smarted, his eyes ached, and his lacerated fists felt like nothing on earth; in a few hours, he knew, his body would be black and blue; and at the moment it probably resembled raw meat; it felt far worse than his hands. But he could see clearly, now, he could breathe easily, and his mouth had escaped the battering.

  The first words that had pierced the dullness of his brain after the fight had been from the giant near him, who had recovered his voice quickly. It had run.

  “Gawd! I’m still alive!”

  Burke had started the chuckle. Humour was back with the men, now—and with humour, reason. So he put his question, and as he put it he brought out his flask and passed it to the giant. The man stared unbelievingly, out of swelling eyes.

  “Help yourself,” Burke invited.

  “Now weren’t that worth scrappin’ fer?” demanded a wag. “Don’t yer want it, Mike, or shall I help yer?”

  “No ruddy fear you won’t!” said the giant. He took a swig, sighed, wiped his mouth on the back of a bloody hand, and passed the flask back to Burke, who wasn’t sorry for a swallow. Then:

  “What was it about?” he asked again.

  The big man, whose right cheek was swelling visibly, spat thoughtfully and said:

  “Well, Mister, I ain’t goin’ ter say I’m sorry—but I will say you can take it! But arter Granton come poking ‘is blasted nose in, yesterday, I reckon you were a fool to come. And that’s flat, ain’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Burke, “but why a fool?”

  The big man—whose Cockney origin was so obvious that Burke was puzzled to find him representing a Welsh group—spat again.

  “Now look here, Mr. Lavis, yer know——”

  Very quickly, Burke understood. He smiled as best he could and interrupted.

  “The name’s Burke,” he said. “I’m not Lavis.”

  The man gaped. Burke was conscious of a mutter of surprise amongst the others, all of whom were staring at him oddly. The giant named Mike swore roundly. Then:

  “Aincha’, then? Well—‘oo the ‘ell are yer?”

  “We’d better get down to it,” said Burke. “I’m a plain clothes man, after someone for a job in London. I’d heard rumours he was down here, and I came to find out. No—wait a minute. He’s connected with your trouble, and for that reason I know who you mean by Lavis. Lavis is a director of the company——”

  “The ruddy——” started a stocky man, scowling.

  “‘Old it, Spark,” commanded the giant, effectively.

  “Thanks,” said Burke. “And you’ve been told that I’m Lavis, and you’re after his blood—because he’s a director. That isn’t far out, is it?”

  “It’s O.K.,” said Mike.

  “Who told you?” asked Burke.

  “Smith, the lousy swipe!” growled Mike. “I never did like that bloke. ‘Ere—what’s this guy like, you’re arter?”

  “About medium height, with pug nose and freckles. He calls himself Wigham——’

  “And ‘e calls hisself Smith!” The giant heaved himself to his feet. Confronted by his vastness, Burke marvelled that he had managed to stand up to the man’s battering. “Wotcher want ‘im for?”

  Burke smiled a little, and said quietly:

  “A lot of things, but chiefly for giving a bunch of grapes to a girl—with arsenic in each grape.”

  Mike stared down at him.

  “Murder! The ruddy whelp! ‘Ere—”

  “She didn’t die,” said Burke, “but that wasn’t his fault. No, there’s no hurry, Mike—he’s gone, by now.”

  “He was there an hour ago,” growled the giant. “And I reckon he’ll be there now. I’m goin’ ter see.”

  Shrugging resignedly, Burke climbed painfully to his feet and followed. Unlike Mike, he was not surprised to find the Morris missing. Mr. Smith—alias Wigham—had realised his game was up, and he made himself scarce.

  Wigham—or whatever his real name was—Burke reflected bleakly, took his chances as they came. He had seen Burke: he would know the miners on the Granton field for a dangerous lot who had been worked up to a pitch of fury by constant suppression. And he would know that if they got at one of the directors—as they believed they had been doing—it would have gone hard with him.

  The mob knows no law——

  Young Lavis, in the same circumstances, might not have died; he would certainly have been beaten senseless.

  Burke surveyed the white, strained faces of men who, so short a while before, had been like beasts. It was beyond his understanding. For now they were of all things—men.

  “I thought he’d be gone,” Burke nodded, as Mike and two of his mates came out of the pub, after their fruitless search. “But don’t worry—I’ll get him. Now, I’d like to learn some thing. First—we’re forgetting our little battle. Any complaints?”

  Someone chuckled and there was a general chorus of “No”.

  “Fine. Now—Pickering’s your manager. I’ve heard it said that you get on all right with him?”

  “Pick’s O.K.,” said Mike. “Why?”

  “I’d like you,” Burke told him, “and one or two others, to come with me and talk to Pickering—and Lewis, the Swansea police superintendent. I want them to hear just how much this man Smith has had to do with the trouble. Will you?”

  Mike (whose other name, it afterwards transpired, was Cator and who had come from London a few years before as a non-union man, to change his views after he had been down the pit once or twice) looked at the big man out of his closing eyes, spat again, and grunted.

  “Yep. I’ll take yer.”

  “That’s fine,” said a gratified James William Burke.

  He had not said “this isn’t a trick“; he knew he could rely on Pickering and Lewis to take no official notice of his battered face and lacerated knuckles. And he was certain, now, that the man who had organised the agitators at the Granton field was none other than Tommy Wigham, alias Smith.

  It was.

  Mike Cator told the truth, flatly and unabashed. Smith had started the trouble a week before, and he’d done his work well. The long-suffering miners had been roused out of what he had termed their lethargy. When, afterwards, Burke learned the actual things that had happened on the field, he could understand the men’s fury: The Granton pit conditions had been almost as bad as in the nineties.

  But as he listened to Mike Cator in the manager’s office, Burke was chiefly concerned with his story as it affected the Fordham-Brent case. And they all knew, now, that Wigham, who was almost certainly backed by O’Ray, had started the stoppage that had closed down every pit in England and Wales. Now, Wigham was away—but Lloyd was after him. It could surely be only a matter of time, before he was caught...

  But Jim Burke didn’t know everything, and he certainly couldn’t see into the future.

  Meanwhile, in London, Gordon Craigie had been busy. He had seen, with Burke, the probable extent of the activities of O’Ray and Fordham; a lot of things were clearer, after that telephone talk. And they grew even more obvious as report after report came in.

  Craigie had pulled every string he knew to get the information. He had learned, early on, that O’Ray, as chairman and managing-director of the Cropper-Gordon group, controlled forty-three coal-fields; twenty-five of them in the Durham area, and six each in South Wales, Northumberland and Derbyshire. Then Superintendent Horace Miller, who had been called on to help and ha
d interviewed O’Ray’s broker, had discovered that O’Ray had bought, under his broker’s cover, a substantial parcel of Midland Colliery Association shares. And the Midland group was second only to Cropper-Gordon’s in importance...

  Miller had discovered something else, from the same man.

  There had been a lot of trouble, getting the shares. A Mr. David Seabright, acting for someone unknown, had fought tooth and nail for them. Seabright, Miller was told, had given up trying to get Midlands, but when O’Ray’s broker had turned his attention to the big Northumberland group, he had been unable to make a purchase. Seabright had got in first.

  It was at half-past two that morning when Seabright, a bluff man of middle-age, was awakened by a nervous servant and told that a police-superintendent wished to see him. Seabright kept his temper, and told the truth.

  He was—or had been—buying for Arthur Fordham.

  By half-past ten on the following morning, all the information about English, Welsh and Scottish coal companies was in Craigie’s hands. He made a summary of the position, for his own easy reference. It ran:

  * * *

  Controlling

  Substantial Share

  No

  * * *

  Interest

  Interest

  Interest

  O’Ray:

  45%

  30%

  25%

  Fordham:

  10%

  15%

  75%

  * * *

  Between them, then, O’Ray and Fordham had virtually controlled the British coal trade. But more than that, the figures spoke volumes for the bitterness of the fight for control between Arthur Fordham and Sir Marcus O’Ray. And compared with O’Ray’s, Craigie found, Fordham’s activities had only very recently started.

  Then the oil figures began to arrive.

  The information trickled through slowly, and slowly it built up. Fordham had been quieter than O’Ray: he had bought through a number of ‘dummies’ who had hardly realised for whom they were acting.