Dick Barton and the Great Tobacco Conspiracy

by Mike Dorrell

  Even Dick Barton was stunned for a moment. The immensity and sheer coldbloodedness behind the evil scheme took his breath away. When he spoke it was with a softness that was full of hate: ‘You unspeakable swine,’ he said.

  Melganik shrugged. ‘Sticks and stones, Mr Barton – mere sticks and stones.’

  Then the master criminal turned towards the guards. His tone became officious and cruel. ‘Take them to the room,’ he said simply.

  The guards gathered around Dick Barton, Snowey White, Virginia Marley, and her still unconscious, drug addicted brother. Prodding them with their sten guns, they roughly bundled them through one of the steel doors, and into the corridor.

  The rough treatment continued until the group reached another door set into the solid rock. The guards opened it, forced their prisoners inside, and then slammed the door behind them.

  It was a small room, completely devoid of furniture. The walls were made of metal, and the place was illuminated by a single bare electric light bulb hanging from the ceiling. As the door slammed behind them, Dick Barton, who was supporting Rex Marley, propped him gently against one of the walls.

  Outside, the tramp of feet receded. They were now alone, and left to whatever horrible death Melganik and Hetherington had devised.

  Snowey turned towards Dick Barton. ‘What now sir, do you reckon?’

  There was a grim expression on the special agent’s face, ‘Something hellish, I have no doubt,’ he muttered. Then, he looked to where Virginia was standing. ‘Did you get through to Inspector Harrington?’ he asked.

  Virginia shook her head. ‘I was on my way to telephone when they caught me.’

  ‘So we can expect no help from that quarter,’ Dick Barton commented. He looked around the room. The prospect was forbidding.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dick,’ Virginia said. She was upset.

  Gallant as ever, Dick Barton did his best to keep morale high. ‘Not your fault old girl. Keep your pecker up.’

  ‘Jock’s still free,’ Virginia said hopefully.

  At that moment, the single electric lightbulb flickered. Then, mysteriously, it brightened again.

  ‘Hello – what’s that?’ There was alarm in Snowey’s voice.

  Then, from somewhere beyond the walls, there was the hum of an electric generator.

  Virginia cried out suddenly: ‘Something’s happening – look!’ She pointed towards the steel walls.

  Dick Barton and Snowey looked at the wall. What they could see was unmistakeable. A regular pattern appeared. There were spots set six inches apart. The spots began to move towards them.

  ‘What the ...?’ Dick Barton’s surprise showed in his voice. But he was still thinking quickly. ‘Snowey,’ he said, ‘Get Mr Marley away from that wall – quick!’

  Immediately, Snowey White obeyed instructions and hoisted the crooner to his feet. Then, he brought him towards the centre of the room.

  ‘Well,’ Dick Barton said. ‘Friend Hetherington promised us something nasty and for once he’s as good as his word.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Virginia said in alarm. ‘What is it?’

  Dick Barton took a short step across the room towards the nearest walls. He reached up to examine the ‘spots’. It was apparent that they were far more dangerous than even he had first thought. They were now protruding into the room and advancing slowly towards the occupants.

  ‘Solid stainless steel, my dear,’ the special agent said. ‘And each one with a tip like a razor.’

  Virginia Marley gasped with fear.

  But, even as Dick Barton spoke, the stainless steel rods with their tips of death were advancing further. They were now sticking out six inches and still moving.

  Dick Barton glanced up at the ceiling. It was the same story from that direction. And the ending spelt out ‘doom’ quite clearly.

  ‘Leaves nothing to chance, our Mr Hetherington,’ he commented.

  Time turned into inches of death for the group of four in the small steel room as the rods continued their advance. Twelve inches passed ... eighteen inches ...

  They huddled in the centre of the available space.

  ‘Dick – what can we do?’ Virginia Marley was on the point of breaking down.

  The special agent’s voice was cool, but his heart and mind were racing. ‘I don’t know Virginia, I tell you – I just don’t know.’

  The pointed rods continued their inexorable advance.

  How can Barton and Snowey protect Virginia and her brother from the deadly steel trap that is advancing on them?

  Can Jock help?

  Or has he, too, been captured?

  Read the next chapter of: Dick Barton – Special Agent.

  Chapter Nine

  Dick Barton and Snowey, trapped with crooner Rex Marley and his sister Virginia in an underground cell, wait helplessly as a deadly network of stainless steel spikes advances inexorably upon them.

  Now read on...

  The whirring of the generator continued, and with each turn of the pistons, death was brought closer for Dick Barton, Snowey White, Virginia Marley, and her brother Rex. They were now huddled in the centre of the room as the stainless steel points came ominously closer.

  ‘Well,’ Dick Barton remarked grimly, ‘Saving a miracle, this looks like it, chaps.’

  Virginia Marley’s face was once again strained with fear. ‘Oh, Dick,’ she said. ‘Isn’t there anything we can do?’

  Dick Barton looked frankly at Virginia. ‘Not a blessed thing, old girl.’ He turned to his loyal ex-sergeant. ‘Any ideas, Snowey?’

  Snowey looked up and across at the network of steel that threatened to engulf them all. ‘Not one that’ll get us out of this little lot, sir, and that’s a fact.’

  The whir of the generator continued.

  Outside the underground complex, braving the chill night air, and the greater danger of an almost certain fall to his death, Jock Anderson, former Rolls Royce mechanic, and currently the only member of the Dick Barton team who held a chance of saving his comrades, was climbing down the sheer rock face of the Llanchbrantiog quarry.

  And inside the cavernous underground room, nerve-centre of an operation designed to take over the whole of the country, and in front of a giant map, the renegade M.P.

  Hetherington was poring over charts with the master criminal Melganik, and his attractive but deadly fiancée Melissa.

  ‘My information is that our drugged cigarettes will leave the factory, here,’ Melganik said as he pointed out the location on the chart, ‘and will be on sale in tobacconists all over the metropolis by the morning.’

  Hetherington looked across the table to where his coconspirator was standing next to Melissa. ‘Well done, Dmitri.’

  Melganik smiled. ‘Planning and foresight, my friend,’ he remarked. ‘With these qualities anything can be achieved – anything! As you yourself well know.’

  Hetherington reached up and patted down a stray hair that had come out of place. ‘Yes – I think it would not be immodest to say that it is partly the attributes you have named that have achieved for me the position I hold today.’

  Melissa smiled graciously at the ex-M.P. ‘You are unusual for an Englishman,’ she said flatteringly. ‘The English love the amateur – the good loser.’

  A look of scorn crossed the once-elegant features of the Englishman who faced her across the table. ‘Losers! I have nothing but contempt for losers – good or bad or indifferent. Mr Dick Barton is the supreme example of the blundering, misguided, stupid Englishman.’

  Melissa’s reply was quiet and final: ‘We have no need to concern ourselves with him anymore.’

  ‘No indeed,’ Melganik agreed.

  Back in the room of death, Dick Barton and his accomplices were preparing to share their last minutes with each other. It seemed as if their time had finally come.

  ‘I don’t like the look of this, Mr Barton,’ said Snowey White.

  Dick Barton reached out and touched one of the spikes with the forefinger
of his right hand. ‘Nor me, Snowey,’ he said. ‘But at least friend Hetherington can’t say he didn’t see the point.’

  Virginia Marley was amazed. ‘How can you make jokes at a time like this?’

  The Special Agent glanced at the approaching death that advanced on them. ‘There’s very little else we can do I’m afraid, Ginny!’

  ‘And don’t call me Ginny.’

  It was now Barton’s turn to be surprised. ‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘It’s what I used to call you when you were a kid.’

  Virginia looked closely at Barton. Really she thought, he showed no sign of fear at all. ‘You may not have noticed it,’ she said defiantly, ‘But I’m not exactly a kid anymore.’

  ‘I’d noticed it,’ Snowey White chipped in. He was only telling the truth, after all.

  Virginia smiled charmingly at him. ‘Thank you, Snowey,’

  Jock Anderson reached the quarry floor safely. No guards were near. Finding himself in the shadow of a long, sleek shape that he recognised, the mechanic advanced towards Hetherington’s Rolls Royce 20/25.

  In the operations room, Melganik straightened up from the chart table. ‘So,’ he said to Hetherington. ‘Your forces can start their move on London now.’

  The renegade M.P. with a disliking for democracy picked up a telephone receiver that was lying on the table. When he spoke, it was in the same Oriental language that the guard had used earlier. He barked a series of commands.

  Melganik nodded with satisfaction as he watched Hetherington go through his paces. Then he glanced at his watch. ‘By mid-day tomorrow they will have taken control of Broadcasting House, Northolt Aerodrome, and the main line stations. Also Scotland Yard.’

  ‘And by midnight, the country will be ours!’ The comment came from a very excited Melissa.

  ‘Ours indeed, my little one,’ Melganik chuckled.

  Hetherington was disturbed by their exchange. ‘Yours, Melganik?’ he said.

  To cover his slip, Melganik smiled broadly at the M.P. ‘All three of us, of course Charles. The three of us, huh?’

  Hetherington assumed what was intended to be a firm posture. There was authority in his voice; ‘Only one man can control the destiny of a nation,’ he remarked.

  ‘Of course, of course, the master criminal assured him. ‘But even you will need advisers – associates,’ he corrected himself in time.

  ‘Advisers, possibly,’ Hetherington conceded.

  Jock Anderson closed the bonnet of the Rolls Royce, and moved further into the shadow provided by the quarry wall. He stopped for a moment as he heard the crunch of approaching feet, and, flattening himself into a fissure in the rock, kept hidden until a guard walked past.

  Then, when he was sure that it was safe, the mechanic began to work his way towards the vast steel doors that led into the underground complex. He paused thoughtfully as he noticed the guards on either side of the entrance.

  But, nearer, there was something that looked more promising. There was a much smaller door, also made of steel, that bore the inscription – ‘KEEP OUT! DANGER! ELECTRIC GENERATOR!’

  For a moment, Jock listened outside the door. Sure enough, a steady hum came from within. Then he tried the door handle. It was not locked. Allowing himself a faint smile, he opened the door, went in, and closed it behind him.

  The stainless steel spikes were now almost upon them. There was no room to turn around. It seemed as if Dick Barton, Snowey White, Virginia Marley and her brother would be locked in their present positions for eternity.

  ‘Well, Snowey-me-lad,’ Dick Barton said, ‘we’ve been through a lot together ...’

  ‘Now it looks as if a lot’s going to go through us,’ Snowey quipped in reply.

  Dick Barton looked closely at his ex-sergeant. ‘Well said, Snowey, that’s the spirit.’

  Suddenly, the bare electric light bulb that illuminated the room flickered and then went out.

  Snowey’s voice echoed in the darkness; ‘Now what?’

  Virginia Marley finally broke down. ‘It’s that awful Hetherington man,’ she screamed. ‘He’s going to make us die in the dark!’

  A quiet voice tried to calm her. Thoughtfully, Dick Barton said: ‘No – I don’t think so. Listen.’

  For a moment, there was no sound at all in the small steel room. Not even the hum of the generator.

  ‘I can’t hear anything,’ Virginia said after a while.

  ‘Precisely,’ Dick Barton answered. His deduction had proved correct. ‘Remember we could hear the hum of a motor before? There’s been an electrical failure – and this charming little death-trap was worked electrically.’

  Snowey breathed an audible sigh of relief into the darkness. ‘I think you’re right, guy,’ he said.

  By Snowey’s side, Virginia Marley made a little nervous movement. ‘But we still can’t get out,’ she complained.

  In the moments of respite from a horrible lingering death, Dick Barton’s brain had been working furiously. And, as usual, he had come up with a possible solution. ‘Or can we?’ he asked. Snowey was still standing in the dark beside him. ‘Snowey, old son,’ Barton suggested, ‘I know you’ve gained a pound or two since the military lost your services ...’

  It was a sore point with ex-sergeant White. ‘No need to go on about it sir,’ he said.

  Dick Barton continued with his suggestion: ‘Do you think you could wriggle under the bottom spikes and get to the door?’

  Snowey considered the suggestion for a moment. It was going to be difficult. He couldn’t even see his hand in front of him. Still, he didn’t really have much option. ‘I can have a go, sir,’ he replied.

  Barton’s crisp tones came through the darkness: ‘Then do that small thing.’

  There was darkness all around him. The moon was low, and covered by cloud shadow. When Jock Anderson stepped out of the generator room he could hear confused shouting in the distance. The floodlighting in the quarry had gone out when he had tampered with the generator. The shouting continued, arid then, he heard the sound of a single pair of footsteps running towards him.

  Jock waited in the darkness until the footsteps were level with him, then, he extended a foot and the guard went flying. The Oriental was quick to recover, he leapt up and unslung his sten gun. But the mechanic downed him again with an uppercut to the jaw. Then he bent down and picked up the gun.

  Feeling his way slowly through the darkness, and taking care in case he should impale himself on the stainless steel spikes, Snowey White felt his way towards the door that would lead out of the room of death.

  ‘Well, here I am, sir,’ he said to Dick Barton when he had reached the end of the room. ‘Now what?’

  ‘Can you reach the lock?’ Dick Barton wanted to know. In the blackness that surrounded him, Snowey felt for distinguishing features on the door. He found the handle, and then, just below it, made out the shape of the lock. ‘Just about,’ he muttered in reply.

  ‘Can you pick it?’

  ‘Cor stone my grannie’s hat,’ Snowey exclaimed. He’d been asked to do some strange things in his time, but this one was really the limit. Even so, he groped once more into the darkness, trying to discover what kind of a lock it was.’

  Tensely, Dick Barton waited as he heard scrabbling in the blackness.

  ‘It don’t feel too bad, sir,’ Snowey said after a while.

  ‘Have a shot at it,’ Barton suggested.

  Snowey thought for a while. Then, he said to Virginia:

  ‘You wouldn’t have a hairgrip, Miss, would you?’

  Surprised, Virginia Marley took her time in answering. ‘Why – yes,’ she replied.

  Snowey’s cockney accent came through the darkness once more:

  ‘Do you think I could have a lend of it?’

  The cavernous underground room, operations centre of a dastardly plan, was now lit only by flickering candlelight. Hetherington stood by the table. He was speaking into the telephone. He was extremely agitated.

  ‘Then mend the g
enerator,’ he shouted. ‘What? Where? Deal with it.’

  He slammed the phone back down on to the receiver and then turned to Melganik and Melissa who were standing nearby. ‘The generator has been sabotaged,’ he announced.

  ‘Sabotaged?’ There was puzzlement in Melissa’s soft, purring voice.

  ‘And one of the guards knocked unconscious and tied up,’ Hetherington finished. He was angry.

  A frown crossed the features of the master criminal Melganik.

  ‘Who could do this thing?’ he wanted to know. ‘The only outsiders who know of our plans are safely ensconced in our room of death.’

  A tense pause followed as Hetherington considered the situation. He glanced warily at Melganik and the attractive but deadly woman by his side. ‘Unless ...’ he began.

  Melganik’s reply was swift. ‘Unless what?’

  Hetherington’s urbanity returned. He was now in complete control of himself once more. ‘Unless, my dear Dmitri, this is not the work of an outsider – but sabotage from the inside.’ He paused to let the implications behind his words sink in. ‘What General Emilio Mola first called a fifth column.’

  ‘Preposterous.’ Melganik’s accent showed thickly.

  ‘Is it, though?’ Hetherington continued in totally relaxed fashion. ‘The plan is made, the troops trained, the orders given. Nothing can stop it now.’ He paused again. So perhaps someone thinks he can take advantage of the work I have done and take over – quietly disposing of me in the process.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re implying ...’ Melganik began.

  Hetherington reached in the jacket pocket of his well-cut suit, produced an automatic pistol and stepped back. ‘I think you do, Dmitri,’ he said quietly.