by John Creasey
Gott said thinly: ‘I don’t understand it. We’ve been here for half-an-hour, and nothing’s been said that really matters. Lewis brought us here for some reason he hasn’t disclosed, and it looks to me as if he isn’t going to disclose it.’
He stopped abruptly.
The door opened, and Lewis rose sharply to his feet, looking at the manservant, who remained sleek and unruffled, but whose dark eyes were excited.
‘I think it’s time to go, sir.’
‘All right, Blake,’ said Lewis promptly. ‘Gott, we can discuss this later. Have you brought our guest down, Blake?’
‘Yes, he’s in the passage leading to the common, sir.’
‘Good—we’ll follow.’ Lewis picked up a scarf and wound it round his neck, while Blake helped the visitors into their coats. In a few moments they were all ready. Gott was biting his lips, Manfrey’s hands and chin were unsteady, but Lewis was in complete control of himself, and led the way to a narrow passage, at the end of which were two doors. One was standing open, and he stood aside as he reached it.
‘There’s no hurry,’ he said. ‘Blake will be at the other end to take you to the cars, they’ll be here soon. I—’ he paused. ‘I must get my case, I’ve forgotten it.’ He waited until all three were hurrying along the passage, Manfrey in the lead, then went back into the lounge. He waited there for two minutes or more, and then he heard a shout from one of the passages.
With a thin-lipped smile, he went to the closed door—not that through which the others had gone—opened it, then hurried through, closing it quickly behind him.
Manfrey, Pellisser and Gott, meanwhile, had reached a narrow flight of steps, just visible in the dim light of the passage. Manfrey stumbled up them, the others muttered as they followed him, and then the cool air of the night swept down on them. Manfrey stumbled again, and then shouted—it was his cry which Lewis had heard.
Gott, the last of the trio, saw vague figures all about him. Someone large and shadowy gripped Manfrey, someone else laid Pellisser low when he tried to evade the shadows. Gott swung round towards the steps, and reached them ahead of either of the men who had selected him—Loftus’s men, of course, for Loftus had brought the Department there in force. Gott raced back along the passage when he reached the last step, but at the end he was forced to stop, for the door which had been open was now closed.
He pulled at the handle.
It would not budge. He pushed and pulled, but the door hurt him, being of steel and not of wood. He tried frantically to open it, but despite all his endeavours, the door remained firm. He was still trying when Mike Errol took his arm and led him away. He did not try to fight.
On the common Lewis and Blake, with Hoppermann between them, were hurrying towards a waiting car, two hundred yards from the scene of the scuffle.
10
Chase by night
Loftus stood behind a cluster of bushes on the common.
Ned Oundle was with him, and a tall man named Carruthers. They could hear the scuffling and an occasional shout from the grounds of Number 4, and Ned said in a deep whisper:
‘It looks as if you backed the wrong horse, Bill.’
Loftus smiled, but did not attempt to explain what had persuaded him to wait with the others, and a small cordon of Department men, on the common away from the house.
To him, the arrival of Hoppermann by taxi at Number 4 seemed to cry suspicion aloud. The abductors must have known that Hoppermann had been followed. Taking him to a house which, in all likelihood, would be immediately covered by the Department or the police, would be a fool’s trick.
These men were not fools!
So, he reasoned, Hoppermann had been taken to the house deliberately, to get Department men there.
It was reasonable to presume that the instigators of the crime would not invite arrest, and the obvious ruse was to get away from the house by a means not generally known. The house was near enough to the common for a passage to be tunnelled to another exit. The passage could not be too long, and, as far as he could see, this cluster of bushes was the nearest point to the house which, if there was a hidden exit, could provide reasonable cover by day. The people who had prepared the exit, if there was one, could not be sure that they would have to use it by day.
Consequently he had placed a small cordon about the bushes, and with Ned and Carruthers was waiting there himself. The sounds from the house suggested that some of the occupants had been caught, but that was by no means proof that all of them were in the Department’s hands.
There were several minutes of utter silence. They seemed much longer than they were, and Loftus was beginning to give up hope, when he heard a creaking noise not far away, and then a dull thud.
He stiffened, and his hand went to his pocket.
Then he heard another creak, followed by the sound of heavy breathing. It was too dark to see anything clearly, but suddenly Loftus was able to discern the silhouettes of two or three men at the far end of the bushes. He stepped softly towards them, with the others on his heels, and then Ned Oundle caught his foot on a tree-root, and stumbled.
Loftus heard a curse.
He snatched out his gun, but as he did so he felt rather than saw a movement. He did not see anything coming through the air towards him, but he did hear a slight tinkle, and he shouted:
‘Get away!’
He leapt to one side, but swiftly though he moved, his eyes were beginning to water, and he felt a sharp acridness at his mouth and nose. He recognised tear-gas, and was relieved that nothing more deadly had been released. As he went out of the immediate range of the gas he was thinking that his adversaries were prepared for every emergency.
He hoped he was equally prepared.
He took a match-box from his pocket, but the matches therein were not of the ordinary kind. He struck one, and tossed it away from him. It gave out a surprisingly bright, lurid light, which illuminated an area of some seventy square feet.
In the glow he saw the outlines of a car, fifty feet or so away from him, and three men running towards it. He recognised Hoppermann’s tall figure between two other men. He saw Hoppermann stop suddenly, heard an oath, saw the stab of flame from an automatic which one of the others carried.
Hoppermann fell.
The others kept on. The engine of the car started up, and the car moved as the men swung open the doors and threw themselves inside. Loftus shouted:
‘Look after Hoppermann!’
His own car was parked not thirty yards away, and he raced towards it. The glow of light was fading, but it was still enough for him to see by. Ned Oundle was gasping by the bushes, Carruthers was staggering further away, with a handkerchief to his eyes and mouth. But other Department men out of range of the tear-gas, were hot foot after the car.
It sped along the common.
Loftus reached his own, started the engine, and turned swiftly in pursuit. The match still showed a faint light, revealing the dark shape of his quarry over a hundred yards away; there was no rear-light.
Loftus switched on his head-lamps.
The light caught the red reflector of the car ahead, enabling him to keep it in sight. It turned on the road leading to Putney Hill, and then after five minutes started up the rise. There was little traffic, although as he swung round a corner, Loftus saw a cyclist loom up, and could even see the terrified expression on the rider’s face.
He turned his wheel sharply.
He avoided the cyclist by inches, then went roaring up the hill, getting to the top in time to see that the other car now had its lights on, and had turned right, towards Roehampton Village.
He began to toy with the idea of switching off his lights, and when they were past the village and on the Kingston by-pass, he did so, on a curve which would make it impossible for the occupants of the first car to see what he had done. When he swung round the bend, he saw the red rear-light glowing, and after a few seconds the pace of the other car slowed down.
It did so abruptly, and
he had to brake quickly after finding the car looming in front of him, a silhouette against its own head-lights. Loftus tightened his lips and his heart beat fast, but soon he was over that emergency, and following the other car at a distance of some thirty yards.
Mile after mile he followed it, wondering, when at last he reached the Basingstoke-London road, near Hook, whether he had enough petrol in his tank to take him on the full length of the journey.
At Basingstoke the leading car took the Winchester Road. Some five miles along it, it disappeared.
Loftus jammed on his brakes.
They squealed protestingly, and the Jaguar lurched to a standstill. Loftus sat forward, crouching a little, expecting something to come out of the darkness. His heart was thumping, and there was a beading of sweat on his forehead. But he heard nothing, and he could see nothing; the pitch-blackness of the night was about him like a shroud.
He eased the car towards the side of the road, and then pulled up again.
He was swearing under his breath as he lit a cigarette, cupping the flare of the match in his hands to prevent it from showing far. He realised that he had probably been seen, that the leader must have turned off his lights and gone on.
He waited for five minutes, then switched on rear and side-lights. Then he climbed out of the car. It was surprisingly cold, but windless.
He walked up and down for some seconds, getting himself warmer, trying to work out the best thing to do.
Could the car have disappeared completely?
He walked on a little further, then discovered a sharp turn to the left.
Loftus frowned.
‘That’s probably it,’ he said. ‘It went down here.’
He waited again, silently, his figure hidden by the darkness. He was quite sure that no one else was nearby; even the creatures of the night appeared to have been forced to silence. He shone his torch, reading the names of several houses. The Beeches, Conway, Fern Hill—he found seven in all. In which had his quarry taken refuge?
He switched off his torch, and kept quite still. Then to his straining ears there came the sound of stealthy footsteps somewhere nearby. Eventually they drew nearer, and he was able to locate them. He stepped slowly forward, gun in hand.
At a distance of no more than five feet he saw a man.
He saw, also, that the man appeared to be peering about him. Loftus waited for another second, while the other took two further steps forward, then said in a low voice:
‘Keep quite still.’
Whoever it was had a steady nerve. The man stopped, but uttered no sound, no gasp of surprise, of fear. The silence continued until Loftus said:
‘Put your hands up high.’
The man obeyed. Loftus frisked him, and took a gun from his hip-pocket. He could hear the man’s heavy breathing, then heard the other speak in a voice as low pitched as his own.
‘Dunster,’ came the voice. ‘R-E-T—’
Loftus felt an immense wave of relief, and grinned widely.
‘Dunster, bless your heart!’ The reverse spelling removed all possible doubt of the identity of the other man. Dunster, who at Mike’s behest had followed the cab in which Christine Weston had been taken on from Putney.
Thought of Hoppermann’s daughter, and the presence of Dunster, brought queries tumbling over one another, but he forced himself to think of the present, to worry about developments and theories afterwards.
Dunster sounded overjoyed.
‘I tried the spelling as a forlorn hope—Bill, you idiot, you had me scared!’
‘You didn’t show it,’ said Loftus. ‘How long have you been here?’
‘It seems like a couple of nights and days,’ said Dunster, ‘but it can’t be more than three hours. I couldn’t get away to a ’phone, and I thought I’d better hang around until morning, or until something turned up.’
‘Good man. You followed the cab and the girl? Did you see what house they went in?’
‘Yes,’ said Dunster. ‘It’s a new place, called Conway, I nearly lost them several times. This little turning put me off, but there’s a straight stretch ahead, and I knew the cab couldn’t have got out of sight, so I came back. I saw them going into a house—Conway, as I say. The second driveway on the right. They carried the girl in. She looked ghastly—the moon was shining on her, and her face was like wax. She—but it’s no time for talking. What are you going to do?’
Loftus pursed his lips.
‘I think we’d better do it this way,’ he said. ‘Get to a telephone—knock up a pub, or a private house if needs be—’phone Craigie, and ask him to send the Errols, Carruthers, and several of the others here. Give precise instructions, and get some local people to tell you how to approach from the rear of the house, so that it’s well covered, and then come back and keep your eyes open.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’ll be inside Conway,’ said Loftus quietly.
‘In—’ Dunster’s voice sounded very loud. ‘Don’t be a fool, Bill, they’ll cut your throat as soon as look at you.’
Loftus chuckled softly.
We’ll try to avoid it. Don’t let yourself get caught, and if anyone leaves, follow them. Where’s your car?’
‘Parked down the road—there’s a wide grass verge.’
‘Good man. You might put mine there. I—no, I think we’ll leave mine where it is,’ said Loftus. We don’t want to start an engine here, and you can walk to the ’phone. Tell Craigie just what I’m doing, and also that I am allowing myself to be taken.’
‘Look here, it sounds pretty dumb to me,’ said Dunster dubiously. ‘If you wait for me to get back, we could have a shot at it together. We might do something then.’
Loftus rested a hand on his shoulder.
‘Don’t worry, old son, more is won by acting like a fool than you might think. I’ll get in, you finish your job with Craigie and then be ready to follow anyone who comes out. Right?’
‘Right,’ said Dunster, dubiously.
He went off, moving quietly into the darkness.
Loftus found the gate marked ‘Conway’, and turned down the gravel drive, shining his torch until he could just see the house in the far extremity of the beam. He switched off, and stepped to the grass verge bordering the drive.
He went forward very slowly, threading his way through a shrubbery, and hearing every time he paused, a stealthy movement not far away from him. It was weird to be moving there, sure that he was being watched, knowing that his watcher might decide to shoot first and ask questions afterwards.
Then he heard another, louder movement just behind him, and a voice sounded just as his had sounded when he had spoken to Dunster.
‘Keep quite still!’
Loftus went rigid. The voice was rough, and carried a note of menace. He felt a hand touch his shoulder, then a man gripped his right arm, twisting it quickly in a half-Nelson, which made him gasp involuntarily. His gun fell to the grass.
He was frisked quickly and expertly.
There were two men behind him, and although the pressure on his arm relaxed they did not take the chance of letting him go.
‘Okay,’ growled one of them. ‘You git on.’
The order was helped by a knee to the buttocks, but Loftus was less concerned with the attitude of these rough-necks than with what would happen when he was taken into the house.
He wondered whether Lewis would be there.
He wondered whether Christine Weston was hurt.
And above all he wondered why it had been thought necessary to recapture her. Had she told him the truth? Did she know more than she said? Or was it possible that she had some knowledge of an importance which was unknown to her?
He was thinking of all those things as he was taken to the door of Conway, and hustled inside.
11
Loftus v. Lewis
The bright light of the small, square hall in which he found himself dazzled him, so that he closed his eyes and waited for some seconds b
efore opening them. The waiting was accompanied by another knee to his buttocks, and he had to clench his teeth to prevent himself from a retaliatory move which might yield disastrous results.
But when he was able to look about him, he turned on his heel. very quickly, making the men behind him raise their guns. As men go, they were not small; but Loftus towered above them. Their faces were set in an expression which showed a hard-bitten toughness; but this toughness did not out-do the toughness of Bill Loftus.
‘If that happens again,’ he said, ‘there is going to be a broken neck.’
The man who had kneed him was a yard behind him, blunt-faced, menacing. He opened his lips to snap a retort, but the words were not uttered. He stared at Loftus for perhaps ten seconds, then evaded his eyes.
‘Git on,’ he said.
‘Supposing one of you leads the way?’ said Loftus.
It was absurd; he might have been giving orders instead of subjected to them, with two armed men present to reinforce any command. But it worked, for one of the men grunted and pushed past him towards a narrow passage. His broad shoulders nearly touched it, and Loftus brushed against it on both sides. Why a passage should be so skimped he did not know, but it widened after a couple of yards, and the leading man unlatched a door.
This opened to another passage, leading in turn to the front hall. There, without ostentation, was affluence. It showed in the highly polished floors, the Persian rugs, the rich velvet curtains. Loftus looked about him as the first man turned up a wide shallow staircase, with a wrought-iron balustrade.
From the landing led two corridors. The first was short and leading to another flight of stairs, the second wide, with windows on one side, and four doors on the other. The windows were heavily curtained. Loftus was reflecting that the lay-out of the house was unusual and storing up all details for possible exploration later, when the leader tapped on the second door.
There was a pause, and then:
‘What is it?’
Loftus waited with keen interest, and was certain of one thing; the rough-neck was nervous. It gave Loftus an impression of the character of the man he was to meet, for neither rough-neck impressed him as being likely to be easily cowed into tame submission.
