Love for the Baron

by John Creasey

  He tried two of the four doors. One was a boxroom packed with trunks and suitcases and a few old pieces of bric-a-brac. The next was a double bedroom, with a woman’s negligee flung over a chair. The third door opened onto a bathroom, and the fourth was locked.

  He took out a skeleton key and inserted it in the old-fashioned lock, twisted slowly and cautiously and felt the lock click; when it turned full circle the noise seemed very loud. He stood to one side pressing against the wall, but no sound of answering alarm or investigation followed.

  He waited a full minute and then pushed the door open, listening intently; and now he could hear the sound of breathing; very soft, very even, but unmistakable. It came from the right. The light was so bad that he could not see a bed or anything else, so he used his pencil torch aiming it low, and half-covering it with his fingers.

  This was a bedroom and the bed was behind the door. He saw a woman’s legs, and feet; she was not wearing shoes. His heart began to beat faster as he stepped further, into the room, half-closing the door. The light spread slowly and cautiously over the woman on the bed. She was fully dressed, and there was a belt or strap tied round her waist securing her to the bed.

  He had found Lucille.

  He went closer to her and touched her shoulder but she did not stir. He uncovered the torch to make the light brighter, and raised one eyelid with his thumb. She still did not move but he could see the pin-point pupil and knew that she was unconscious from one of the morphine group of drugs.

  And there was no way of telling how long she would remain unconscious.

  Slowly, Mannering drew back.

  The obvious thing, the only thing surely, was to take her away before he went through the rest of the house.

  But how could he get her out?

  And even if he was successful in this, what could he do with her when he had her outside?

  He could not simply leave her in the car, for he would have to break in again, and on such a night as this she would perish of cold.

  He might telephone Bristow, but this was not a venture Bristow should be involved in.

  The attic?

  He remembered the big trunks, the oddments of furniture. If he took her up there surely she would be safe enough, and if he were forced to talk he could tell George that he had taken her out of the house. He rested the torch on a bedside table and then bent over the bed, groping for the end of the strap. He found it, and it unfastened easily. He left it under the bed and then lifted Lucille and carried her to the doorway.

  She was no weight worth speaking of, but – she was worth that weight in gold. She had come, knowingly, to danger; she had come away to draw the danger from him.

  No one was in sight; there was still no sound.

  He took her up into the attic, put on one of the lights, went towards some hot water pipes, and then rested her on a piece of spare carpeting. Next, he drew two of the trunks in front of her, so that no one glancing that way could see anything to make him suspicious. Satisfied, he went back to her room, pulled the door to and locked it with the skeleton key; the most anyone was likely to do if they were searching for an intruder would be to try the door. If they came to see Lucille – but that was needless worry, they must know that she would be unconscious for several more hours.

  He went down the narrow staircase and as he reached the first landing a door downstairs opened, he heard men talking, heard them moving about in the hall. There were three men as far as he could judge. One had a deep, near-guttural voice; one had a high-pitched voice with a curious kind of twang in it, a hint of viciousness: that was the man who had twice called him on the telephone.

  The third voice was a pleasant one, undoubtedly English public school; and he had heard it before today.

  This was Charles Pace, of Harcourt, Pace and Pace.

  17

  Three Less One …

  The man with the guttural voice was saying: “Are you sure you won’t have a brandy?”

  “No thanks,” said Pace. “My family will be expecting me.”

  “Families can wait,” said the harsh-voiced man, with a laugh. “We’ll let you go in twenty minutes.”

  “Well—”

  “That’s better,” said the man with the vicious tone to his voice. “We wouldn’t like you to go without drinking to our success, would we, George?”

  “It isn’t that—” Pace began, and he sounded nervous.

  “You bet your sweet life it isn’t,” said George.

  Mannering was now close to the balustrade which ran about the landing, and by bending low could see without being seen. There was nothing surprising about his foreshortened view except perhaps that Pace was between the others and each man was holding one of his arms; it was almost as if they were keeping him prisoner.

  The man George was broad and bull-chested, with a short neck. He had close-cut iron-grey hair which would have been luxurious had he let it grow. The hand which held Pace’s arm was big, with long, thick fingers. He moved with ease and assurance and spoke clearly despite the cigar which jutted out of the corner of his mouth.

  The third man was much taller than Mannering had expected, tall and thin, and from this angle good-looking. His grip seemed to hold Pace more tightly than his brother. He wore a suit of conventional grey, and his hair was pale, wavy and silky-looking.

  They reached an open door on the other side of the hall from the room they had left, and as George went in, he said: “We just want to make sure nothing goes wrong, Charles.”

  “Oh, it won’t go wrong, I assure you!”

  “I’ve a few questions to ask and I didn’t want the Gordons to hear,” George said. “They’ll go as soon as they’ve served coffee.”

  All three disappeared into the room.

  Mannering waited until he heard footsteps, and a man appeared carrying a silver tray; a woman followed him carrying a smaller tray, with a coffee pot, sugar and cream on it. They were middle-aged, and quite unremarkable. They entered and left the room very quietly, and presently Mannering heard the closing of a door.

  Moving without any self-consciousness, he went down the stairs. He limped a little, as he always did when wearing disguise, thinking himself into the part of ‘Mason’, a character he had played so often. He crossed the hall, studying the layout as he did so. There was another door close to the one where the men were, and he opened this: he could slip in there when he heard the others coming.

  He could hear voices but could not distinguish the words, so he placed his gloved hands on the handle and turned it very slowly. It was a risk, but it had to be taken. He pushed the door open half-an-inch, in time to hear Pace speak and to confirm what he had already suspected: the partner of the late Norman Harcourt was a frightened man.

  “You know perfectly well that I won’t let you down,” he said.

  “There’s just one thing that worries me,” said George. He turned to his brother. “How about you, Stanley?”

  “I’ve no idea what you mean!” exclaimed Pace.

  “Then let me explain,” Stanley said in that unpleasant voice that held both sneer and menace. “You had a lot to say to Mannering when he was at old Harcourt’s house this morning, and you seemed very pally. Keep away from Mannering.”

  “I can’t avoid him if Lucille—”

  “Lucille won’t brief Mannering any more, he’s out,” declared Stanley Peek with satisfaction.

  “What did he want to know?” demanded George.

  There was a momentary pause before Pace answered with what seemed to be bewilderment in his voice. “He wanted to know who had been nearby when your father suffered from his fatal seizure, and also when Mr. Harcourt was taken ill at the office. He seemed to think … “Pace paused, and George rasped almost without waiting: “Go on! What did he seem to think – or rather, what do you assume he seemed to think?”

  “That someone caused the two seizures,” answered Pace, still sounding bewildered. “I don’t see how anyone with the slightest knowledge
of medicine could think that—”

  “Did he say that’s what he meant?” asked Stanley sharply.

  “Not in so many words, but—”

  “What did you say to him?” demanded George.

  “I—I promised I’d try to find out if anyone had been handy at both times and places. I said Lucille had, of course—”

  “You said what?” roared George.

  “I told him Lucille had been present, but—”

  George Peek began to laugh, a deep-throated laugh which had something unpleasant about it; while Stanley’s high-pitched giggle added a note that was almost obscene. The laughter went on for some time, while Mannering noted two things.

  First, someone who had been present at Harcourt’s Wimbledon home that day had made a report about what had happened to these men. And second, that for a few moments they had been alarmed, had been fearful that Pace would name someone else who had been present on both occasions. There was a third thing, easy to infer: there was a possibility of the attacks being induced, and by the relief in their laughter at the naming of Lucille, it was almost conclusive that she was not the one involved.

  Then, who was?

  Someone who had been at Harcourt’s house?

  Slowly the laughing slackened, and the two Peek brothers began to talk again, but the menace had gone from their voices; they were obviously intent, now, on putting Pace at his ease. Pace said very little.

  “So you just go on acting as you are and everything will be fine,” said George. “You won’t have a thing to worry about.”

  “Not a thing,” agreed Stanley, and after a pause he asked: “Did your dear departed partner tell you he had ever been to our cellars?”

  Cellars?

  “No,” answered Pace.

  Cellars? wondered Mannering.

  “That’s good.” A brief laugh broke into George’s voice again. “So you go on representing Lucille but you do what we tell you and you’ll be well paid. Don’t do anything without consulting us. If you do—”

  “He can say that his partner had grave doubts about Lucille’s sanity, surely,” Stanley interrupted.

  “Oh, sure, sure. That will be okay. But nothing about the other: we want that for the last minute if we have any trouble with the bitch. Well, you said you wanted to go early, Charley boy …”

  Mannering slipped into the next-door room. The other three appeared in the hall, visible for a second, Pace still in the middle. The front door opened and George exclaimed: “My Gawd, it’s getting thick! Sure you won’t stay the night, Charley?”

  “Oh, I shall be all right!”

  There were ‘goodnights’ before the front door closed and one of the Peek brothers locked it; judging from the sounds he also bolted and chained it. Mannering kept very still. The men walked towards the room from which they had just come but did not go in at once. The roar of a car engine could be heard starting up.

  “Shall we go and see Lucille?” Stanley demanded.

  “We don’t need to worry about her until it’s time for her next dose,” declared George. “Did you take Pace at his face value?”

  “Boy, was that man scared!”

  “Yes, I think he was scared all right,” George said with obvious satisfaction. “And Mannering’s scared, too, or he wouldn’t have let Lucille go. We’ve got them where we want them, Stanley.”

  “George,” Stanley said ruminatively, “I’m not so sure about Mannering. I’m not so sure he’s scared.

  And I don’t like to think of him running around with the idea that someone helped Ezra and Harcourt on their way out.”

  “There’s no chance of proving—”

  “I don’t like it,” Stanley insisted, and for the first time it occurred to Mannering that he was the more formidable of the two brothers. “If he talks too much—”

  “There’s no need to worry, I tell you,” George insisted. “Pace will tell him there was only Lucille! Forget it.”

  “I’m not sure we shouldn’t finish Mannering off,” Stanley said.

  “He’s surrounded by police, and followed wherever he goes,” George replied. “We have to leave him for the time being. If we want to fix Mannering we can use Lucille. She’ll be more amenable when she comes round.” His voice held a note of jubilance. “It’s all over bar the shouting, I tell you. We got Lucille back, the old boy’s dead, Pace is in our pocket – why, even Mannering gave us a hell of a lot of help. We don’t need him dead now, Stanley. We’ve got everything we wanted – yes, sir. We’ve got our cake and we’ve eaten it!”

  He went off into a paroxysm of laughter, and almost immediately Stanley’s high-pitched, obscene note joined in.

  It was hard to imagine anyone being more pleased with themselves.

  There was an awkward silence after their hilarity, broken by George saying: “Why don’t we go and have a game of snooker?”

  “Good idea,” his brother declared and they walked to a room at the far end of the passage. Soon, Mannering could hear the sharp click of the billiard balls as the two men began to warm up for their game.

  They would probably be playing for some time: certainly all the time Mannering needed to look for the cellar.

  It might be approached from a cupboard under the stairs; but it was not.

  Trusting that the Gordons would still be in the domestic quarters, Mannering searched the ground floor thoroughly but found no possible entrance. He pushed open a door which yielded at a touch and he found himself in a stone passage which obviously led to a brightly-lit kitchen. He heaved a sigh of relief as the blaring sound of radio or television came to him. Now he could move about more freely.

  He tried several doors but they led only into storerooms.

  He found another passage and an outside door which was locked from the inside. He turned the key, opened it, and saw fog swirling about a lamp over the door. He stepped into a narrow outside passage, found a washroom and an old-fashioned laundry room with a boiler. He was about to leave when he thought he saw the faint outline of a door behind the boiler – the wall there seemed to have been bricked in. He looked again, but could not find the slight division which had attracted his attention. He stood, baffled. Then he began to turn his lamp this way and that. Suddenly he exclaimed: “Ah!”

  The outline showed when his torchlight touched it at a certain angle; but for that he would have missed it. He put on the light in the wash-house and studied the wall very closely. There had been a doorway and it was bricked up.

  Why?

  He moved again to the other side of the boiler, and it occurred to him that there was something very odd about it. The house itself had been modernised without sparing any expense but here was an old-fashioned clothes boiler, much larger than most and converted from gas – he could see the old pipes – to electricity.

  Now I wonder, he said to himself, as he studied the ‘On’ and ‘Off switch. At the first a red light glowed, at the second it went out. He looked inside the boiler and saw the usual circular heating elements. There was a little water inside. It was clear as far as he could judge, with none of the astringent odour one might expect from a boiler in which soda or detergents were often used.

  Nor were there any cartons of detergent or soap powders on nearby shelves.

  “Well, well,” he said aloud, and then began to press or pull everything which might be a switch, but nothing happened until he pressed the On and the Off switches simultaneously. Instantly there was a click, and almost at once the whole boiler began to move, taking one of the stone slabs of the floor with it. Mannering drew back and saw a hole gradually widening, and beyond the hole a flight of brick steps. He felt a surge of excitement at this discovery. The steps appeared to go down at least twenty feet. There was a handrail down one side, and the air was fresh enough to indicate that the cellar was well ventilated.

  He switched off the light and went outside, for there was an obvious possibility that the secret opening of the entrance would raise an alarm, but no one appea
red; the only lights were those which had shown before. The fog seemed thicker in this small area, and he heard the low-pitched growling note of car engines crawling along in the streets.

  He went back to the wash-house and put on the light, then bent down to examine the hole in the floor. On one side were electric switches and when he pressed them a light went on. He went slowly down the stairs, holding onto the rail. At the foot was a steel door, right across his path, and for the first time he wondered whether he could get to the other side. At least one thing was certain, now: this cellar was protected almost as well as his own strong-room at Quinn’s. He drew back, studying the door. There was no padlock and no lock that he could see, this was an electrically or an electronically controlled sliding door.

  It might be possible to cut through it, but it would take him an age to get the necessary oxy-acetylene cutter – a lightweight one he had used at one time without difficulty. It was possible that this door was controlled by some switch upstairs, but he had no reason to think so; all controls so far had been on the spot.

  He began to press the door itself inch by inch, and had reached a ridge which appeared to connect two panels when he felt something give, sought the spot again and pressed for a second time.

  Very slowly, the door began to open.

  He never knew why he side-stepped suddenly, darting behind part of the door which was still moving. He had hardly reached cover before there was a sharp zutt! of sound, a flash – and a bullet honed along the passage and struck the brick steps, sending chippings in all directions.

  18

  “The Cake”

  Mannering stood in the silence of the cellar as the echoes of the shot and the falling pieces of brick stopped. Had he been directly in the opening, the bullet would have caught him in the chest, and by now he would have been dead, or at best, seriously injured.

  He stood without moving for some time, partly from shock, and partly to find out if the shot, or the opening of the door, had set off an alarm in the house. The door had appeared to open normally, and had probably caused no trouble. The shot—