by John Creasey
“You didn’t tell me about Williams when you telephoned,” Craigie said quietly.
Beresford detected a mild note of reproof, and chuckled.
“No. I’d telephoned Tricker at the flat, before speaking to you. Tricker says that Williams hasn’t been in since I left London. I told him to telephone Miller at the Yard if Williams returned before I got to the flat, and to tell Miller to hold Nicholas the Learned on some charge or other.”
“What kind of charge?” inquired Craigie.
“I left it to Tricker,” said Beresford, with a grin. “He sounded well, and he says he’s been up to-day. Seriously,” he added, “if Williams wasn’t at home at half past six, there was a sound chance that I’d get back before he did.”
Craigie nodded, and smoked for a few minutes in silence. Beresford, stretching his great legs in front of him, lit another cigarette and told himself that two problems of equal importance were waiting for solution. They were:
1.Why had Gorman tried to hold—in effect kidnap—Robert Lavering?
2.Who was Nicholas Williams, who was he working for, and why had he once used water instead of a knife?
Suddenly:
“I’m beginning to wonder,” said Beresford, “whether Williams is working for Gorman. He doesn’t fit the part, as Williams, as Ruddy Face, nor as the policeman. I——”
He broke off as the telephone-bell burred. Craigie got up and walked across the office. Beresford heard his occasional words, the sharpness of his voice, and the final: “We’ll be right over. Good-bye.”
Beresford was already out of his chair.
“Where are we going?” he demanded.
Gordon Craigie looked grim.
“We’re going to Ealing,” he said. “That was Miller. He’s been to Ealing on a murder job, and he says that the dead man’s either Nicholas Williams or his double!”
CHAPTER IX
VALERIE LESTER SPRINGS A SURPRISE
ONLY by shutting out all memory of Ruddy Face and the Paris trip could Beresford bring himself to identify the body of Nicholas Williams. Williams was found in an empty house near Ealing Common, and the police had been called by a tramp who had broken into the house for a night’s shelter. The scholar’s death had been caused by a bullet wound through the heart—and he had been dead for forty-eight hours!
“And yet,” said Craigie, looking grimly at Beresford in the dim light of the empty house, which was illuminated only by half a dozen storm lanterns and the white beams of police torches, “you reckon you saw him, as Ruddy Face, yesterday afternoon. We’ve gone wrong somewhere, Tony.”
Beresford grunted, and looked down on the white face of the unfortunate Williams. Suddenly:
“What’s the colour of his eyes?” he demanded.
Miller already had physical particulars.
“Grey,” he said.
Beresford banged his palms together, and swung round on the detective.
“I thought so,” he grunted. “Both of you saw Williams—or the man who came to Auveley Street on Monday night. But his eyes were blue——”
“Hidden by glasses,” said Miller suddenly.
“I remember them,” said Craigie. “Thick lenses, but they were blue all right. Which means——”
“That the real Williams had a telegram and went to Oxford to see Meiklejohn. He was killed on his way back, and the pseudo Williams took his place.”
“He took a big chance of being recognized by you,” said Craigie, rubbing his nose.
“Not so big,” protested Beresford. “It was late, and the light was artificial. He was excited—or he aped being excited, and in that light, and at that time, I wasn’t likely to notice any differences beyond the display of temperament that he served up. No,” he added thoughtfully, “I don’t think that he took much of a chance, Gordon. It’s not as if he had to keep it up for long.”
“Did you see him after that night?” asked Craigie.
“No. But that’s nothing unusual. He was often out all day, pottering about in museums or at gatherings of intellectuals, and he was something of a hermit.”
“Poor devil,” muttered Craigie. “Killed because Gorman’s crowd wanted to get into your flat for that night, and take no chances.”
Miller cleared his throat, and went across the empty room to talk with his fingerprint man. Beresford thought suddenly of his words to Timothy Arran a few hours before. Anyone might jump into eternity because they crossed the path of those who worked in the Game—and those who worked against it. Death came quickly, from any angle, at any time.
He blinked as a photographer made a flash for a photograph of the dead Williams, and seemed to see the horribly distorted face of Corinne through the blue-white glare. He cursed, suddenly, viciously. Craigie gripped his arm.
“Steady up, Tony.”
Beresford forced a grin.
“All right,” he said. “It’s the outside element that’s getting me. Corinne and this poor devil——”
“Work it off,” said Craigie, staring hard at the big man. “Work like the devil, Tony. We’ve got to get at the bottom of it, and the longer we take getting there the more jobs we’ll meet like this.”
Beresford nodded, and his mind cleared of the cold anger which had filled it. Suddenly:
“We still don’t know why the pseudo-Williams didn’t put me right out,” he said.
“There’s a lot,” said Craigie, “that we don’t know. But there’s one big thing we do know, my son.”
“Name it,” grunted Beresford.
“We know that Gorman’s at the back of it all. And we know that he’s still buying. He took a controlling share of Eastern Consolidated Oils to-day.”
“Orient-Western and Eastern Consolidated together, eh?” Beresford drummed his fingers against his thigh. “That means he’s got petrol under his thumb. We’ll see a price increase soon, I suppose. Anything else?”
“The rise will be a cautious one when it comes,” prophesied Craigie. “Yes, there are half a dozen smaller jobs he’s tackling. I was working out some figures when you arrived. I’ll finish them to-night, and you can come over in the morning and we’ll talk round it again. We’ve got to keep at it. We can’t lay up.”
Beresford nodded, his eyes narrowed.
“We’ll need more help,” he said. “The Arrans will be busy in Paris for a day or two, and there’s one big angle that wants working up in London.”
“Which one?” asked Craigie.
Beresford’s eyes were very hard.
“I don’t like it,” he said. “Women in this game are the devil. But what’s Adele Fayne doing? Can we get anything from her?”
Craigie shrugged his shoulders, but there was a curve at the corners of his lips.
“I’m hoping to,” he said, “if only to get a line on some of Gorman’s theatre combines. Number Seven is working on Adele Fayne.”
“Number Seven?” Beresford looked doubtful. “I thought Timothy Arran was Six and Toby Seven.”
“We keep changing,” said Craigie, and in his voice there was a note of infinite weariness. “We have to, Tony. I’ve heard nothing from Nick Carris for six months. He’s off the list. So Dodo Trale takes Number Seven, and the Arrans go up a point each. I’ll let you have the new list in the morning. Meanwhile, take my tip and borrow a spot of your man’s sleeping-powder—and if he’s got none at the flat, get some from Doc Little. I don’t want you to crack, Tony.”
Tony Beresford chuckled. It was not so much that he was amused; he wanted Craigie to feel that he was still a hundred per cent capable, for it was an axiom that if an agent could not laugh he could not work.
“My son,” said Beresford, laying his hand heavily on Craigie’s shoulder, “you do me wrong. Let’s get back to town, Gordon, and gnaw a bone.”
Craigie refused to help with the bone, and after dropping the Chief at Whitehall, Tony garaged the car in a tin shed at Shepherd’s Market, walking from there to his flat. The cool night air cleared his mind, enab
ling him to see things in their true perspective, and that perspective was disquieting.
The plain truth, Beresford told himself, was that the only ostensible reason for connecting Leopold Gorman with the crimes in Paris and London was the fact that Diane Chester had seen him betraying an unusual—by appearances—interest in her friend. It was true enough that Gorman was buying on a big scale, but buying was no crime, and it was reasonable to suppose that Gorman was paying for his purchases either on his own bills or the bills of any syndicate backing him. There had come no whisper of trouble from the City, and whispers were usually well ahead of events. On the surface of things, Leopold Gorman was increasing his holdings and potential influence; also on the surface there were no grounds for connecting him with the two murders and the other crimes.
Neither Beresford nor Craigie had spoken of these facts, but both men had realized they existed. It was that, as much if not more than the effect of the murders, which had tended to make both of them view life that night on a basis which Beresford called, for the sake of a better description, slightly morbid.
Both of them believed that Gorman was behind it. Both of them knew that the Adele Fayne and Bob Lavering engagement gave them grounds for suspicion. But there they stopped. And Tony Beresford, turning the key in the lock of his front door, told himself that the thing to do, first, foremost and before anything else could transpire, was to get a direct line between the financier and the Paris incidents. And then he told himself, gloomily, that he had as much chance of getting that line as he had of reaching the moon.
Beresford, then, was depressed. His depression tended to make him forget that Department Z worked in devious ways, and that there was rarely a straight-forward problem to be solved. The essence of Secret Service work was to garner information from all quarters and on all subjects, to sift the wheat from the chaff, and mix what remained together until it made sense. At that stage in the affair which has been variously described, but by Beresford was always looked on as the Lavering Affair, the actual rewards for Department Z’s efforts had been substantial. Only the fact that they believed Gorman was at the back of it, and wanted badly to prove it, gave Beresford—and, he knew, Gordon Craigie—that rare feeling of depression.
Beresford felt more cheerful when he reached his flat and discovered Maria sitting in the depths of his pet armchair, steel-rimmed glasses drooping from her nose, and a copy of the Evening Sun in front of her. Maria was not attending faithfully to her duties. For all she cared, Beresford thought with a grin, Samuel Tricker might have been gasping his last. Treading softly, Beresford poked his head into Tricker’s room. The ex-prizefighter was sleeping the sleep of the just, and although his head was still bandaged, he looked much fitter than he had on the previous day.
Cheered, Beresford crept into the kitchen and brewed himself coffee, which he liked hot and strong, and plied himself with bread and cheese. He enjoyed the snack, and enjoyed his task of keeping the two beauties asleep even more. When, twenty minutes after his arrival at Auveley Street, he slipped between the sheets, he did so with the conscience of the man who has done his day’s good deed; and he slept well.
He was awakened at half past eight by a sprucely clad but rather anxious Tricker, with tea and a message.
“Miss Lester telephoned you, Mr. B. Would you please ring her up as soon as poss.?”
“Lester? Lester?” Beresford sat up, yawning, and tried to recall a Miss Lester. “Darn you!” he said suddenly. “Why didn’t you wake me, Sam?”
“I ’ave, sir,” said Sam truthfully.
Beresford grinned, having connected Lester with Valerie and found the message pleasant. He took his tea, and eyed Sammivel sternly; that worthy, for the first time in Beresford’s memory, was looking sheepish.
“Well, Sam?” inquired Beresford.
Tricker shifted his feet, and patted his bandage, as though imploring a light sentence on a sick man.
“Well, Mr. B., it’s like this. We ’ad a ’eadache larst night an’ took a coupla ashprins, an’——”
Realization dawned on Tony, but his face was set.
“Who,” he demanded, “are ‘we’?”
“Well, we wasn’t expectin’ you ’ome, Mr. B.——”
“The same ‘we’ Sam?”
“Yes, Mr. B. It wasn’t ’er fault, though, s’elp me. We—she—I’d ’ave woke up if you’d only give us a shart, Mr. B. Maria wouldn’ver let it ’appen fer the worlds, she says, an’ she ain’t no liar. ‘Never before ’ave I slept at me post,’ says she, an’——”
“Sam,” said Beresford gently.
“Yes, Mr. B.”
“You’re a born fool, Sam. Tell Maria that I came home drunk last night, and that only her guilty conscience matters. And don’t interrupt me, Sam. Tell her that in order to ease my—I mean her—conscience, she ought to grill my bacon. While she is grilling my bacon, you go out and get me a copy of l’Echo de Paris—you’ll get one at the Circus station—and before you do any of those things, Sam, hand me that telephone.”
The beam on Samuel Tricker’s face threatened to disturb even the bandage on his forehead.
“O.K., Mr. B.!” he said. “And thanks, Mr. B.”
Beresford grimaced at him, and dialled the number of the Chesters’ Park Lane house. A mournful-voiced butler promised to contact with Miss Lester, if the gentleman would hold on. Beresford, who knew of that near-mausoleum which the Chesters called a home, grinned and did.
Valerie Lester’s voice came over the telephone quickly, clearly, and yet with a suggestion of that huskiness which made it so attractive when not impeded by the wires.
“You wanted me, sweet one?” greeted Beresford.
“Yes,” said Valerie Lester. “I wanted you yesterday morning, and you weren’t in. I wanted you yesterday afternoon and you weren’t in. I wanted you last night——”
“I was out last night,” said Beresford blandly. “But if I hadn’t been I wouldn’t have known how badly you longed for me, so your twopences weren’t wasted.”
Valerie Lester laughed lightly, but when she spoke Beresford noticed the hardening of her voice.
“Tony——”
“Sorry, lass. I’ll be serious.”
“Are you all right?”
“Am I——” Beresford broke off, and whistled under his breath. Here was a development with a vengeance! At last: “Why in the name of the pink moon shouldn’t I be all right?”
There was a pause. Beresford, picturing the vivacious face of the girl at the other end of the wire, wrinkled his nose in perplexity at her question. For there could be no mistaking its meaning. She either knew, or suspected, that he had been doing things not usual in the life of the average man-about-town; and Beresford wondered how she knew or why she suspected.
“I’d rather not say, over the telephone,” said Valerie at length. “But I had a—warning—that made me worried.”
“About me?”
“Ye-es.”
Beresford wanted to say something that would have seemed, afterwards, a little hasty, so he checked himself and asked whether she had had breakfast.
Valerie laughed—Beresford liked the way her laugh came over the telephone—and said that she was about to.
“Is Aub there, or Diane?” asked Tony.
“Diane’s on the Row. Aubrey’s got a headache.”
“How like that man,” groaned Beresford. “Howso—you’re breakfasting alone, are you?”
“Hm-hm.”
“I like the way your voice went up and down when you said that,” said Beresford, “but I don’t like the sentiment.”
“You are a fool!” said Valerie Lester. “What’s the matter with the sentiment?”
“You’re not breakfasting alone,” Tony assured her cheerfully. “You’re breakfasting with me—I’ve got Maria here, Queen of Chaperones, so your heart needn’t flutter. That’s if you can wait half an hour for your breakfast,” he added considerately.
“I’ll try,” said Valer
ie. “In half an hour?”
“Ten past nine on the dot,” said Tony. “Don’t keep me waiting!”
He replaced the receiver, and hopped out of bed, slipping into a dressing-gown and invading the kitchen quarters, where Maria, still sharp-featured but definitely nervous, was prepared to grill bacon. Beresford stood in the doorway and said, “Boo!” Maria jumped round and proverbially out of her skin. Her eyes widened when she saw Beresford, and for a moment her lips tightened.
“Did you say that, young man?”
“Yes, I did, young woman, and I don’t want any backchat. I’m having a friend in to breakfast, so double the rashers, and don’t make a mess of the tomatoes like Sammivel does.”
As he spoke, Beresford was smiling, and when he finished he continued to smile and he winked. It was, as Valerie Lester knew, one of the most attractive of smiles, and it broke through the armour of Maria and battered down all her defences.
“You great big fool of a man!” she said, with a shake of her fist. “What time’s your friend coming?”
“Ten past nine, and her name’s Lester.”
“A woman?” Maria’s eyes sparked.
“Yes, and if you don’t like it I’ll come and tickle your conscience. Turn the hot tap on, there’s a dear soul, so that I can scrape my stubble.”
As Beresford tubbed, he told himself that he would not think of Valerie Lester’s warning until he knew just what it was. And he grinned to himself as he remembered that Diane Chester, Valerie Lester and even Maria had called him a fool. Beresford liked being called a fool. It made him, he said, feel clever.
CHAPTER X
A SURPRISE AND A SHOCK
VALERIE LESTER appeared, punctual to the minute, and Beresford told her that she looked divine. Actually she looked beautiful. She was dressed in a blue serge tailor-made costume, and the V of the coat revealed a cream-coloured silk creation which in turn showed the white smoothness of her skin. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks glowing after her brisk walk from Regent’s Park, and her dark-brown hair was like a flurry of autumn leaves.
