Help From The Baron

by John Creasey

  Mannering’s lips began their upward curve.

  “Hadn’t I better pay him a visit?”

  “John,” advised Chittering, with great deliberation, “be careful with Mr. Ephraim Scoby. He is dangerous, like a snake. Whether you have these Fioras or whether you haven’t, I think he really believes you have.”

  “I’ll be very careful,” promised Mannering, “but someone has to disillusion him.” He glanced at his watch. “I must go, Lorna will have my neck if I’m not home by six. We’re due at - ”

  The telephone bell rang. Mannering hesitated and scowled at it, and then lifted it. Chittering didn’t get up.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Trevor again, sir, sorry to interrupt you,” said Trevor, who always lacked confidence on the telephone, “but there is a young - ah - lady here, who says that she must see you. She says . . .”

  “Tell her I’m sorry,” Mannering said, “and that I’ll gladly see her in the morning. I must go home now, I’ve an urgent appointment.” He rang off before Trevor could speak again, and got up. “If it’s important to her, she’ll stay and we’ll see her as we go out. Talked to the Yard lately, Chitty?”

  “No. Should I?”

  “They picked up Abe Prinny at his shop at lunch-time, and he was still at the Yard at four o’clock. I don’t want to ask any favours of Bill Bristow, but I’d like to know if they’re holding Abe, and why.”

  “Oke. Where shall I ring you?”

  “At the flat or at Plender’s.”

  “I shall probably call in person at Plender’s,” Chittering said, “he has a cellar which makes yours look like a leaky barrel.”

  He opened the office door.

  Mannering took his hat off a peg, and went out. Trevor was hovering near.

  “Sorry it’s late, Trevor, but I must rush. Mr. Larraby isn’t back yet, is he?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, lock up, set the alarms, and then get off. Oh - telephone my wife and tell her I’m on the way, will you?”

  “At once, sir,” promised Trevor. Far from being oppressed by staying later than usual, he was obviously glad to be entrusted with the task of locking up half a million pounds or so. He was conscientious to a degree, too. He Followed Mannering and Chittering to the door, and Mannering asked: “What did the girl say?”

  “She didn’t say anything, just turned and went out,” said Trevor. “I can’t imagine it was anything very important.”

  “That’s fine,” said Mannering.

  The worst of London’s rush hour was over. Only a few cars were left in the bombed-site car park. Chittering, having refused a lift, had walked towards New Bond Street. Mannering opened the door of his car, and had a shock. It was a real shock, for he had actually turned the key in the lock - yet a man was sitting in the seat next to the driver’s. The light in the car was poor, but the man looked young and slim. Certainly he was ragged-looking, he needed a hair-cut, and he seemed young.

  He was nursing a shiny, black-leather cosh.

  It was made of pliable leather filled with lead-shot, guaranteed to kill if brought down heavily on the right spot; and capable of knocking out a man with the hardest skull, yet showing little in the way of a bruise. He held it in his left hand, and sat close against the door - as far as he could be away from Mannering.

  Nervously?

  Mannering hesitated, then slid into his seat. He turned the key in the ignition, started the engine, and let it warm up. He didn’t look at the youth or show any sign that he knew he was there. A car in front of his moved off, and he followed. Soon he was driving along narrow streets towards Piccadilly. Out here, the light was better, and sideways glances showed him the reddish hair, the silky stubble and the funny mouth.

  Mannering turned into Piccadilly.

  “Where can I drop you?” he asked.

  The youth seemed to relax. He was grinning, but his hold on the cosh was still tight.

  “I will say this for you,” he said, “you’re a cool card. You can drop me where you like, Mannering, and . . .;”

  “When you speak to me,” said Mannering, in a voice which had the cutting edge of a carving knife, “you will say ‘Mr. Mannering’ or ‘sir’.” He slid the car into the kerb. “Get out.”

  “Now look here . . .”

  “I said get out.”

  The youth moved the cosh and shifted his position so that he could use it. He looked half-scared, in spite of his weapon. He had a bruised chin, mouth and eye, as if he had been in a fight quite recently; his mouth looked particularly sore.

  “Don’t you be so cocky,” he shrilled. “You’ll get what’s coming to you. What’s your price?”

  “I told you to get out,” Mannering said softly.

  “You keep still,” the youth ordered. “If I swipe you with this, it’ll break your jaw. You know what I’m talking about. What’s your price?”

  Mannering didn’t speak, but looked at him levelly - and then gave him a sharp side-kick on the ankle. It hurt. Mannering grabbed a bony wrist, wrenched the cosh away, and brought it down sharply on the back of the youth’s head. The first blow was glancing and didn’t knock him out, but it scared him. Mannering grabbed his shoulder, pushed him round and struck again.

  “Gug-gug-gug,” gasped the youth, and slumped back in his seat.

  Mannering took out a whisky flask, poured some of this over the youth’s face, then turned the next corner, made a detour, and soon crossed Piccadilly. Not far from Dover Street Station there was a large hotel in a quiet square, an old-fashioned place, with much dark oak, red plush and brass which needed cleaning every morning. This was Bowing’s. A grey-clad commissionaire in a cockaded tip hat and a long coat and many medals, came to open the door.

  “Thanks,” said Mannering, and smiled his brightest. “Hallo, Fred. Help me out with this chap, will you?” He put the cosh into the youth’s pocket, and opened the other door; the commissionaire, in tribute to his training and his self-control, said nothing. The smell of whisky was enough to make the average drinker thirsty.

  They dragged the youth out.

  “He is a friend of Mr. Ephraim Scoby, who is staying here,” said Mannering. “Deliver him with my compliments, will you?”

  “I will, Mr. Mannering.”

  “Thanks,” said Mannering, and two half-crowns changed hands. Another commissionaire arrived, to help out, and Mannering drove off.

  He had not yet decided whether Ephraim Scoby believed he, Mannering, had the Fioras, or whether for some reason he wanted to persuade others that he had. At the moment, that was immaterial. What mattered was getting to the Chelsea flat; he would arrive at least half an hour late. Lorna would be harassed and on edge, and he couldn’t blame her. Lorna was a slave to punctuality; if there were a good fault, that was it.

  Mannering had made up five minutes of the lost time when he turned into Green Street. He left the car outside the house, and hurried up the stairs two at a time. His flat was on the third and top floor, with Lorna’s attic studio above it.

  The only way up was to walk.

  He let himself in with a key.

  “I think this will be him,” Lorna said to someone out of sight, and came into the hall. She didn’t look harassed, annoyed, reproving or dismayed. “Darling, Miss Pengelly has called and is very anxious to see you. You remember, she was at the party last night” Lorna’s tone and her expression told him that however much she regretted it, she knew that he ought to see Miss Pengelly, whom he did not remember from Adam. Or Eve. “She called at the shop, but you were in a hurry to get home.”

  “Oh,” said Mannering, blankly. He approached the study door, which was ajar. Lorna was close to his side, and whispered: “It’s about Francesca, but don’t trust her an inch.”

  “You see how dutiful I try to be,” Mannering added, and went into the study, a step behind Lorna.

  It was the red-head with the enormous bust, the jade green eyes, the big mouth, pointed nose and sharp chin. She looked as
if she had been squeezed and pushed into her yellow jumper as she sat in an armchair, head back, eyes narrowed so that they glinted brightly. She looked like a witch; or a woman who would sit and knit and gossip and laugh with glee while watching heads fell from the guillotine or bodies swinging from the gallows at Tower Hill.

  Mannering’s greeting could not have been nicer had she been a beauty queen.

  “Hallo, Miss Pengelly, I hope you’ve forgiven me. How can I help you?”

  She kept him waiting for an answer. He didn’t force her, and Lorna also kept quiet.

  “You can exchange the jewels for Joy Lessing,” she said at last.

  12: MANNERING MISSES A PARTY

  Mannering did not respond to the shock of the challenge. Susan Pengelly was watching him with at least as much intentness as he was watching her. Bad she might be, even the Jezebel that she looked; but she wasn’t a fool, and she had said that with calculated purpose.

  Lorna glanced at Mannering.

  “Don’t tell me that you also come from Mr. Ephraim Scoby,” murmured Mannering. He moved away, still looking at her, until he reached a cocktail cabinet which fitted into a corner and was disguised as a fourteenth-century cupboard. “Can I get you a drink?”

  “Thanks. A gin-and-Italian, please.”

  “And you, darling?”

  “I won’t have one now,” Lorna said. She was still badly shaken. “You know we mustn’t be too long.”

  “Oh, yes.” Mannering poured out the gin, then added Italian vermouth from a bottle with a gaudy label, then a whisky-and-soda for himself. He handed the girl her drink. “Cheers.”

  “Here’s to honest men,” said Susan, and tipped her drink down. “What name did you say?”

  “Ephraim Scoby.”

  “He sounds like something out of Dickens.”

  “He comes from a far, far more unsavoury spot. Who gave you the idea that I have whatever jewels you’re talking about? What jewels are they, by the way?”

  “You’re not bad at dissimulating, are you? I think he said the Fiora Collection.”

  “Who said?”

  “The lout who told me that you had them,” answered the girl, and sipped her drink again. “He also said that he had kidnapped Joy Lessing, Simon’s sister, and would release her if Simon found out where you kept the jewels. But I don’t want Simon getting into trouble, with you or with anyone else. He’s in enough trouble over Francesca, she’s nearly driving him mad. That girl has a darling-daddy complex.”

  “Where do you come in?” Mannering asked mildly.

  “I’m just the doormat.”

  “I’d like to know which door.”

  For the first time, Susan Pengelly laughed. She uncrossed her shapely legs; she took small shoes, and had the trimmest of ankles. Sitting in the chair, she looked as big round as she was high.

  “I don’t think it matters, but I’m Simon’s faithful slave. I’ve been in love with the hero for years. Unrequited, but I’m the maternal rather than the hot-blooded type, in spite of my over-development. This is exactly what happened.”

  She had a way with words, and when she described what had happened in the car, it was easy to forget her appearance and the glitter in her green eyes. She made it all very vivid, and succeeded in portraying Simon Lessing accurately - first his furious attack and then his dithering. All this time, Lorna sat on a high stool, circa 1500, and watched her. Mannering knew that she should be worried about him changing his clothes, but somehow she wasn’t. There was a curious intentness about the way she looked at the Pengelly girl.

  Susan Pengelly finished, saying: “And he just ran, leaving you with your reputation besmirched, Mr. Mannering. Simon cries hoarsely that you couldn’t do such a thing, but he was always inclined to be a hero-worshipper. Would you credit your husband with such villainy, Mrs. Mannering?”

  “The very idea is absurd,” Lorna said mechanically.

  “What I’m afraid of is that Simon will get himself into more trouble over this,” observed Susan. “I saw the way that lout looked at him. If he met Simon in a dark alley, I feel sure he would use a knife or a razor, and Si’s far too good-looking to have his face spoiled. But he’s desperately fond of Joy, and in loco parentis, so to speak. Their parents died three years ago, went down together in a ship, and Simon is guardian and mother and father rolled into one. He takes that kind of thing very seriously. Now he doesn’t know whether to storm in here and make you talk or go to the police, or try to look for Joy himself.” She paused, finished her drink, and took a cigarette from the box by her side. She lit it, then looked at Mannering through a little haze of smoke. “I’d like to find Joy, too. Have you the diamonds?”

  Mannering said: “No.” He didn’t move, and watched her very closely. “What was this youth like?”

  She twisted round in her chair, dug down by the side, and drew out a large envelope, stiffened with board on one side. She held it out, quickly, screwing her eyes up against the smoke which she had driven into them.

  “I got a good look at him,” she said.

  Mannering opened the envelope, and Lorna left the stool circa 1500 to look over his shoulder. It was a quite startling likeness; a camera could have done little better. In fact, the colouring - it was in coloured crayons - improved on any camera. There was the half-sneering, half-furtive look, the parted lips showing the teeth set in a small upper jaw, the reddish hair and reddish shadowing on cheeks and jaw.

  The youth’s split lips showed; and a trickle of blood reaching his chin.

  Suddenly, explosively, Mannering laughed.

  Lorna looked at him sharply; Susan wriggled forward in her chair and got up. She didn’t reach Mannering’s shoulder.

  “So it’s funny.”

  Laughter shook in Mannering’s voice.

  “It’s brilliant, you’ll make my wife envious! The funny thing is Charlie Ringall’s face. Did Simon do this to him?”

  “I think he would have killed him.”

  Mannering sobered. “So he reacts like that, does he?”

  He held the drawing away from him, for better effect. “Poor ‘dear Chas.’ He . . .”

  “Are you saying that you know him?” asked Lorna incredulously.

  “We’ve met,” said Mannering. “The last time, he was sitting in my car - as in Simon’s. He had a blackjack and was ready for trouble, but things didn’t go well for him, and I delivered him to Ephraim Scoby Esquire.” His glance at the girl was swift and piercing, but her face looked blank; or as blank as it ever could, she was full of personality as a balloon should be of helium. “Scoby appears to be his boss. Darling . . .” He turned to Lorna, hands raised slightly, expression rueful and woeful at the same time. “I’m dreadfully afraid that . . .”

  “You ought to go to see him,” Lorna said heavily.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you can’t.” Lorna moved back, but not as far as the stool. She didn’t smile. She looked severely magnificent. “Toby is your oldest and closest friend. This is his twentieth-wedding anniversary, remember? Only the family and close friends will be there. You are proposing their health. And,” she added with forbidding emphasis, “you’re coming.”

  “Let me go and see Ephraim,” suggested Susan Pengelly brightly.

  “Do you know where Simon is?” Mannering asked.

  “At his flat. I made him swear that he would stay there until I arrived. He knows I’m here. He admitted that he was afraid that if he came too he would start a fight. The truth is, he wouldn’t believe you; that man Ringall was far too persuasive. I’m not really sure that I believe you.”

  Mannering stood eyeing her.

  Lorna said: “It’s just on seven, John,” in a commanding voice.

  Mannering said: “Sorry. Yes. Do you know what I would do if I were you, Miss Pengelly?”

  “No. What?”

  “In spite of the threat to Joy Lessing,” Mannering said quietly, “I would go to the police. I’d tell them everything. I’d answer all thei
r questions. And I’d go at once.”

  The girl said, as if taken aback: “So you would! And how would you stop Simon from wringing my neck?”

  “I wouldn’t tell Simon what I’d done,” said Mannering, and then moved swiftly towards the door, beamed at Lorna, said with dancing gaiety: “Sorry, Sue, I must go and get changed. See me tomorrow, or telephone me late tonight.”

  He went out of the room, and a moment later a door opened and closed with a bang.

  “Does he mean that?” breathed Susan Pengelly.

  “I’ve never known him frightened of the police yet,” said Lorna Mannering; and she smiled, as if she knew that she had never told a greater lie.

  Chittering rang up, soon afterwards, and Lorna took his message. Prinny had not been held by Bristow, and was back in his shop.

  The Plenders lived in a graceful square, where one could still hear the clip-clop of horses’ hooves, and see tall footmen, hear the crack of the whips, see the sheen on the coats of chestnuts or bays, or fine grey horses, or black or piebald; if one’s mind would carry that far. By day there was no room to squeeze a perambulator in the square, but by night there was ample room for parking. So Mannering took the Rolls-Bentley.

  Half-way to the square he said: “I may have to leave straight after the speech.”

  “I don’t mind what time you leave after it,” Lorna said, “but you’re staying until you’ve made it, even if I have to rope you to me.”

  “Yes, dear,” murmured Mannering. “Dinner at seven forty-five, speeches at nine-thirty, over by ten, and I fly.”

  After that he drove in silence, Lorna snug in a black Persian Lamb coat, the diamond of a tiara sparkling in her black hair. Flunkeys were on duty in the square, for the Plenders had a long ancestry, the house had been in their family from the day its door had first opened two hundred years ago, and on rare occasions they liked to rekindle memory of the spacious days for those who had plenty of this world’s goods.