by John Creasey
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1
Lovely Lady
“My firm and unalterable opinion is that she’s the loveliest pretty I’ve seen for three months, a week and three days,” said Michael Errol. He was clearly at great pains to keep his voice low, although it seemed on occasions that the effect of a moderately thirsty evening would defeat his purpose. Perhaps one word in ten was clear enough for the seven other occupants of Cherry’s bar to hear. Moreover he looked frequently past his cousin’s shoulder at the woman sitting alone. “Take her eyes, blue as the stars . . .”
“Stars aren’t blue,” said Mark Errol in a voice which suggested that he was soon to lose his temper with his talkative cousin.
“I am speaking in a poetic sense,” said Mike reproachfully. “How can mundane words describe a sleeping beauty . . .?”
“She isn’t sleeping.”
“She looks tired,” said Mike gently. “She should be sleeping. Ever struck you how difficult it must be for a beautiful woman?”
“No,” said Mark with acerbity, “but it’s struck me how much better life would be if you would stop burbling.” He glanced at his watch, and frowned. “It’s nearly half-past seven. We ought to be on our way.”
“On our way?” demanded Mike. “Don’t be an idiot, we needn’t leave for another five minutes.”
Mark smiled drily. “Speaking in a poetic sense, of course, what is five minutes?” He rose to his feet, a tall large man, and one good to look upon. Gently he steered his cousin to the door.
The woman whose eyes were sleepy and yet who was nearly as beautiful as Mike had attempted to describe, did not look towards them. She seemed, in fact, to be wrapped in thought.
Leaving the bar at last, Mike and Mark Errol turned into one of the many narrow streets between Piccadilly and Regent Street.
It was late spring and the evening was warm, while the hour of black-out was some time off. People still lolled at ease on the grass of Green Park; many were in uniform, most with the steel helmets and service gas-masks which declared them members of the civilian army.
The Errol cousins did not carry gas-masks.
Moreover they were in lounge suits, and thus they called for some comment from people who watched them—older folk, for the most part, in whom the spirit of 1914–18 was strong, and who could not understand that a lounge suit could be as much a symbol of service as a uniform.
The attitude of the white-haired old gentleman who came towards them as they strolled was the more forgivable since they were so tall and large and clearly in good health. They were remarkably alike and were often mistaken for twins; feature by feature there was little to distinguish them from one another. High forehead, with hair growing rather far back, but crisp and plentiful. Straight noses perhaps a little long, wide and full lips and somewhat massive, even aggressive chins. They were hatless that evening, and thus it was easier to tell Mike from Mark, for Mark’s hair, always a little more unruly than his cousin’s, was cut a little shorter and was a shade—no more than a shade—darker.
Both walked with long, slow steps; both appeared to have no care or concern in the world. The white-haired gentleman approached them rapidly. Fierce blue eyes glared at them from a reddish countenance. Words came explosively. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves?”
Mike looked at Mark, together they regarded the old one.
“Should we be?”
“Certainly you should,” snapped the old one, and he was breathing heavily, he was more than indignant, he was ashamed for them. “Every man worth his salt is fighting—fighting—there is no room in the Empire for sluggards who do nothing, who find for themselves reserved occupations . . .”
Mark looked at Mike, then: “Aren’t you rather jumping to conclusions, sir?”
The old man’s fury wavered. Something in the faces of those he accused gave him the lie. He still was not sure, but doubt was there. “Well, if I’ve been too hasty, you must forgive an old soldier,” he said gruffly. He seemed to dwindle.
They bowed together and walked on. Mike grinned, but Mark was frowning, for he took things harder than his cousin.
“Damned old fool,” he said.
“Oh, I don’t know. Good intentions and all that,” said Mike.
“Good intentions! Interfering old busybody. I’ve a good mind to ask him what he’s doing . . .”
It was Mike’s turn to lay a hand on his cousin’s arm.
“Not just now you don’t,” he said. “Forget it, man, anyone would think your conscience was uneasy and he’d caught it on a sore spot.” Very suddenly Mike began to laugh, and after a pause his cousin’s face cleared and they laughed together. It put them in a good humour, for the situation had its funny side. They wondered—although they were not twins they had similar thoughts at similar times on many things—what the old one would have felt had he known the truth.
Almost certainly he would not have believed it, and would have declared that Department Z, to which they belonged, was a melodramatic escapism from the realities of the war. In fact many people thought so, and few believed in it—but the few who did were people who mattered, and they included no less a person than the Premier of England, who at that moment was in a small room in Downing Street talking to a spare man of medium height, with wispy grey hair and keen grey eyes. From that worthy’s drooping, humorous lips there hung a meerschaum pipe, and from the Premier’s lips there jutted a cheroot, half-smoked.
A bull-like man, the Premier, with packed shoulders and a round, mobile face, showing even then something of the dynamic energy which moved in him.
“Well, now you know as much as I know, Craigie. I can’t tell you anything else, but I want you to look into it. Get me a report as soon as you can, and give Smythe a ring when you want to see me.”
“Ye-es,” said Craigie, taking his pipe from his lips. “Have you half-an-hour to spare now?”
“Now?” Graham Hershall frowned.
“It’s just on half-past seven,” said Craigie, “and I’ve told two of my men to be at the office by twenty-five to eight. They might be able to tell us a little.”
“What an amazing fellow you are, Craigie. I shall never quite get used to you. You heard nothing about this business until last night . . .”
Craigie smiled. “I knew something about it three months ago.”
“What?”
“Three months,” repeated Craigie.
“But—now that won’t do,” said Hershall almost sharply. “I should have had your report before now if that’s the case.”
If Craigie was worried by the rebuke he did not show it.
“There was nothing to report,” he said, “and when I start send chits along to you based on suspicions and might-be’s we’ll stop getting on so well.” Hershall gave an involuntary chuckle and stepped to the door. There was a twinkle in his heavily-lidded eyes as he opened it.
“I’ll be ready in five minutes,” he said.
Thus it happened that at twenty-five minutes to eight on that May evening, four people moved together towards an office in Whitehall. It could be approached from several directions, but that which Craigie and his men used most often was in a side-street, a small door which many passed by without noticing it.
It opened on to a narrow stone passage, which led to the cleaning and maintenance staff quarters in one direction, and in the other, to a flight of stone steps. The steps turned half-way up, on to a narrow landing. Here there were several press-buttons. None of them opened the door, but one showed a light inside the office and thus told Craigie that the caller knew hi
s way about.
That evening Craigie pressed a button set in the staircase wall in a position where—he knew—only three other people could find it. As a result, what appeared to be a blank wall slid open, and showed his office, a long, low ceilinged room in one end of which was a large desk, a set of steel filing cabinets, and a Dictaphone.
The other end was a very different story. Four armchairs were grouped round a fire, barely screening a large cupboard the half opened door of which disclosed a miscellany of homely objects.
The fire was burning brightly, the embers glowing red.
Craigie stepped aside for Hershall to enter, pushed a chair nearer the fire for the Premier, and poked the logs into a blaze. He had just finished when a light showed beneath the mantelshelf—a green light which glowed only for a moment and was accompanied by a faint buzzing sound.
Hershall’s eyes crinkled at the corners.
“That’s your man, I suppose? Who thought up all this ingenuity, Craigie?”
“I did,” said Craigie, leaning forward and pressing another button. The sliding door opened to show the Errols.
Craigie solemnly introduced them. The grip of Hershall’s hand was quick and firm. The Errols lowered themselves into the remaining armchairs and stretched out their long legs. The momentary embarrassment—if embarrassment it could be called—of finding a Prime Minster where none had been dreamt of, had quite gone.
“You would spring something on us like this,” said Mike.
“Bibs and tuckers all creased,” said Mark.
“Gentlemen,” said Graham Hershall, “we are going to be serious, but I’ll say first that the Air Force probably wishes it had many members like you. Now, I’ve just twenty minutes. You’re going to start talking. Craigie?”
Craigie wasted no time.
“The Errols had best know first what you’ve told me,” he said, and looked at the cousins. “Briefly, it is this: food supplies in England are being jeopardised by sabotage inside the country. We aren’t seriously harassed by it yet, but unless it’s stopped we may have real trouble.”
Mike and Mark nodded but otherwise looked blank.
“A report on it has only just been presented to the Prime Minister,” continued Craigie after a pause to light his pipe, “but we have known a little about it for three months. You two don’t know it, but you have, in fact, been working on the affair.”
“Good Lord! Are we provision merchants unknowingly?” queried Mike.
To a different man from Graham Hershall that remark might have seemed facetious enough to merit a rebuke. Hershall’s eyes smiled however, and he puffed at his cheroot, the picture of a satisfied man—although in truth there were many things which did not satisfy him. Hershall knew these men; not the Errols personally, but the type which worked for Craigie. He knew many of their exploits, he knew above all things that there was not one of them who would hesitate to take enormous risks to carry out the orders of the mild-looking man who led them. And he had the wisdom to know that their facetious humour, although at times trying, carried them over many a difficult stretch. So he made no comment, and Craigie went on.
“The sabotage has been on a small scale. In fact for the first two months it looked as accidental as a run of bad luck. But when one or two underground food dumps were seriously damaged—the first occurred a month ago—it began to appear as organised sabotage. The Ministry of Food took it up, the Special Branch at the Yard worked on it . . .”
“No one thought it necessary to tell me,” interposed the Prime Minister.
“And I heard whispers from half-a-dozen sources which made me give it some thought,” continued Craigie mildly. “There was obviously one factor of importance—all of the trouble took place in the thirty-ninth food area.”
“Sly beggar, isn’t he, sir?” asked Mike Errol of the Prime Minister. “All he told us was that someone was getting at the Commissioner for that area, and told us to look about us.”
“Have you had any results,” demanded Hershall sharply.
“They telephoned me this afternoon that they thought they had,” said Craigie. “Which of you is going to tell this story—we’d rather have it in one piece.”
“Oh, let them use their usual method,” said Hershall easily.
Mike looked at Mark, who nodded. Mike said slowly:
“Sir Thomas Arkeld’s the Commissioner, of course—middle-aged director of one or two multiple grocery firms, good man as far as we can see. Do you know him, sir?”
Hershall nodded.
“Good, that helps,” said Mike. “He has one weakness, if it can be called that. The ladies. He’s a bachelor, fair reputation—nothing underhanded, if you follow me, but . . .”
“I know him quite well enough to see what you mean,” said Hershall. “Go on.”
“Thanks. We checked up on his inamoratas. There are three at the moment—two he has known for many years, the other is a newcomer. Really a beauty, I could get enthusiastic . . .”
“Don’t,” said Mark drily
Hershall stopped a chuckle.
“Well, there she is,” said Mike, his retrospective admiration unabated. “I’d say she’s thirty, no more and perhaps a bit less. Dark. English, as far as we can judge. All the money she wants, judging from her dress, a flat in Town and a glorious little cottage in the country—we had a look over the cottage yesterday, she left for Town in the morning and Wally—one of our men, sir—followed her. No papers, no nothing there—we’re talking confidentially, of course; we had no warrant or anything but . . .”
“Go on,” said Hershall.
“Thanks. Right, then, the only thing to make us suspicious was that she’s a new element, and could be working on Arkeld on whatever business Craigie had in mind—there was a good connection, that was pretty obvious. However,” said Mike a little dreamily, “we weren’t as clever as we thought. The lady didn’t go straight to London, and surprised us while we were there. We had to push a tablecloth over her head to stop her from seeing us—and us from seeing her, quite a waste really. The cogent point being, of course, that she had managed to shake Wally off, and that meant that she was aware that she was under suspicion.”
“Isn’t that jumping to conclusions?” asked Hershall.
“The quickest way to reach ’em,” said Mike instructively. “Thus we decided that she was suspicious of being suspected, and she wanted to find who was after her. It didn’t mean she thought that it was Special Branch, or anything like that, of course—might have been a private worry for all we know. Supposing she has a husband? However, she managed a neat trick, and had us followed. A shrimpy little beggar was on our heels down from Bedford and we let him get as far as the flat before we nobbled him. He’s at the flat now,” added Mike offhandedly. “Wally’s looking after him. But that isn’t the worrying angle. We went to the Cherry—know it, sir?”
“It used to be a night club,” said Hershall. “Yes.”
“A tea-club now, near enough,” said Mike. “Sad days! Anyhow, we went in for a drink. And who should be there but Arkeld’s lovely lady, name of Myra, Myra Berne, if her identity card tells the truth. Odd spot, isn’t it?”
2
Shrimpy Little Man
There was an implied compliment in the fact that Hershall asked no questions, not even requesting any details that they may have omitted; he tacitly assumed that they had told all they knew, and he was right. There was silence in the office for some seconds, and then Hershall said:
“You propose to question this man, of course?”
“I expect Wally’s on the job now,” said Mike.
“Hmm. Well, I’ll be glad to know what you find as soon as possible, but there’s one thing, Craigie. It is a fact that all the trouble has been in the thirty-ninth area. Be frank. Do you suspect Arkeld?”
“I haven’t reached the stage of suspecting anyone yet,” said Craigie, “but I’ve one or two ideas.”
“Let me have them.”
“If it’s Arkeld w
ho is causing the trouble, I don’t see much object in it. The country’s divided into so many areas—running into hundreds, of course. A complete failure of supplies in any one area will cause no serious difficulty—nothing more, in fact, than a temporary dislocation. The obvious assumption is that the trouble is German-inspired, and Germany wouldn’t waste time on one small area. One Commissioner might be approachable, even two or three—but there would be no possibility of a wholesale system of treachery amongst them.”
“Quite right,” Hershall nodded.
“So that it’s more likely that others than the Commissioner are implicated,” said Craigie, “and that the Director-General and Regional Directors might be vulnerable to some kind of approach.”
Hershall cleared his throat.
“If you assume that Arkeld is vulnerable through this Berne woman, who gets information and passes it on, then someone may try to get it from the men who can do more extensive harm—hmm. Quite obvious, of course. What do you propose?”
Craigie smiled. “I’ve the five Directors under survey,” he said, “and the reports should be in today or tomorrow. I thought you would like to hear the Errols’ story, and . . .”
“And to know you were doing what could be done,” said Hershall a trifle heavily. “Yes, I spoke too soon. But keep me in touch, Craigie. Good luck, Errols.” He rose from his chair in sprightly fashion especially for so heavy a man, nodded, and stepped to the door. The Errols sprang to show him out, and Craigie pressed the control button.
“Don’t let your ascetic appreciation of beauty grow too deep,” said the Prime Minister to Mike Errol, and his lips parted in a quick smile before he walked swiftly down the stairs.
Once outside, they knew that he would be seen and followed by his Special Branch detectives, there was no need for them to worry about him. Mike pushed a hand through his hair.
“If that wasn’t a dirty crack, I’ve never heard one.”
“You asked for it,” said Mark. “If I’d let you, you would have launched into a detailed description of her.”
Craigie interrupted mildly:
