by John Creasey
‘Will the Baron let us?’ demanded Ffoulkes.
Bristow was telling himself that there was a limit to liking and a limit to friendliness towards the Baron, who would certainly swing the whole public round in his favour. He knew that his own suggestion of keeping the return of the Irawa Ruby from the papers was impracticable. Probably the Museum authorities were being interviewed by reporters, and Bristow hated to think of tomorrow’s newspaper headlines.
This time, Bristow assured himself, there was one good thing the Baron had no alibi. As soon as a haul was made he showed himself and started to prove to Bill Bristow why it was impossible for him to be the Baron. This time Mannering was keeping out of the way, and Bristow read nervousness and lack of confidence in his continued non-appearance.
At ten o’clock next morning, when the call was going out to the police patrols for Mannering, and when his description had been flashed to every station and every patrol-man in England, Mannering slipped out of Flick Leverson’s front door and walked quickly towards Aldgate High Street.
All signs of disguise were gone: he was John Mannering, immaculate, apparently self-possessed, and with the gleam in his eyes that so infuriated old Bill Bristow,
Mannering was fully prepared for trouble.
The Museum raid had been the most daring of his career, and the irony of the situation appealed to him now. He had never felt the possibility of being caught, once he had managed to get rid of the proceeds of the haul.
This time there had been no proceeds – but he was in a tighter corner than ever. He could be charged with breaking and entering the English Museum, causing damage and bodily harm – but not with theft. If they did get him and the first charge wasn’t theft it would be the most ironic thing in the world.
A tall, heavily-built policeman was walking towards him.
Mannering’s heart jumped, but he looked straight ahead. The man frowned and eyed him. Mannering quickened his pace, reached Aldgate station and slipped through the side entrance.
He walked to the front quickly so that he was able to look down the road in the policeman’s wake, and he saw that the man was coming back.
Mannering stepped out of his cover, and almost banged into the policeman. The man jumped.
‘Excuse me, sir.’
He was civil, anyhow!
‘Yes?’ said Mannering easily.
‘Are you Mr. John Mannering?’
‘That’s right,’ said Mannering, and the little pulse in his forehead was beating nineteen to the dozen.
‘I thought so, sir. There’s a call out for you. Would you be good enough to go to the Yard, sir, to see Superintendent Bristow? He wants some information, sir.’
‘Does he indeed?’ asked the Baron, and he was smiling now with relief, for no matter what Bristow had suspected he had not sent out a ‘detain call’. Mannering could imagine the Superintendent’s fury, and he wondered whether Bristow was waiting in the Yard at that moment, hoping he would go. ‘I’ll call on him, constable.’
Mannering got a taxi, reached Bloom Street, paid off the cab, and almost walked into the lean Tanker Tring, a doleful Tanker whose hat was even lower over his ears than usual.
‘Not tired yet?’ enquired the Baron.
‘Morning, Mr. Mannering. Mr. Bristow wants you.’
‘Where, Tring?’
‘At the Yard, sir.’ Tanker could not get out of the habit of years, and he called all gentlemen ‘sir’.
‘If he wants me he can come here,’ Mannering said.
If Tring insisted on his going to the Yard he would know that Bristow had something he could call a case. If Tring did not insist . . . That tell-tale pulse in his temple was ticking now, and he stared at the detective blandly.
‘I’ll tell him, sir,’ said Tanker Tring at last, and the Baron smiled and passed on, so relieved that he felt elated.
He reached the flat and made himself coffee. By the time he had finished it there was a tap on the door, and he opened it quickly. Bristow stood there, his light grey suit as spick and span as ever, and the rose in his buttonhole fresh.
‘Good morning, Bill!’ said Mannering.
‘Morning,’ grunted Bristow, and stepped in. ‘Where were you last night?’
‘Out,’ answered Mannering.
Bristow was dour and determined, and Mannering knew he would have to go carefully, seeing the danger as clearly as Bristow saw it. Bristow might force him into proving he hadn’t been at the Museum.
‘I know. Where were you?’
‘Just out.’ Mannering’s smile was brittle.
‘I see,’ said Bristow slowly, and then his voice hardened and his words came quickly. ‘It’s not good enough, Mannering, understand that. You were at the English Museum last night, and . . .’
‘Where?’ demanded the Baron, and the nuance of surprise was so good that Bristow was almost taken off his guard.
‘The English Museum,’ he repeated quickly. ‘You were seen.’
‘That man must have had marvellous eyes,’ said Mannering, but the room felt stifling. ‘I was nowhere near the Museum, Bill.’
‘Weren’t you? The Baron broke in and—’
‘Oi . . . Oi!’ cried the Baron; now his eyes were gleaming, and Bristow had the sinking feeling that Mannering could squeeze out yet again. ‘You’re still mixing me up with the Baron, Bill . . .’
‘Oh, blast you!’ burst Bill Bristow. ‘You’re the Baron, even Ffoulkes knows it now. The report’s gone through, and there’s enough evidence to justify a detentive arrest. Mannering. When you’re under arrest, you’ll have to prove you weren’t at the Museum last night.’
Mannering was standing very still. For a moment Bristow thought he had him beaten, but Mannering’s voice came very grimly.
‘I see, Bill. So you’ve taken your pet theory to high places. You’re trying to work the wrong way. A man is innocent until he is proved guilty.’
‘I can detain the innocent.’
‘And you’re thinking of detaining me.’
‘I am,’ Bristow said grimly, ‘unless you can explain your movements last night.’
‘Where’s your warrant?’
‘It’s useless to keep arguing. I can get a warrant in half an hour, and half an hour makes no difference. You’ll never get away, because you’re watched all the time.’
‘I’ve been watched so often that it’s a habit,’ said Mannering, ‘and your men aren’t the experts they should be. I won’t come without a warrant.’
Bristow began to smile. He believed he could get Ffoulkes to issue the warrant on this.
Someone tapped on the door.
The sound came so suddenly and unexpectedly that it made Bristow jump and Tring swing round. But Mannering moved first and fastest. He reached the door and opened it quickly. Then he dropped back, for Mr. Jonathan Didcotte walked into the room.
Chapter Twenty-three
SAID THE BARON
The thing happened in less than ten seconds, but an age seemed to pass. Mannering saw Didcotte’s smile and read in it understanding. He saw the early evening paper in Didcotte’s hand and saw the headlines:
The Baron Returns Irawa Ruby
And while Didcotte was watching him, while Bristow was half afraid that Mannering would find a trick, while Tring was wondering whether he dare tell the American he could not stay, the Baron uttered the words on which his future depended.
‘Hallo, Didcotte, I’ve been expecting you. Tell this fool of a policeman we were together last night, will you?’
And the room seemed to go tense. Bristow’s eyes were glittering frostily, his hands clenched; Didcotte was still smiling, but the surprise was more than he expected; only the Baron seemed completely at ease.
‘Mannering, it’s useless!’ snapped Bristow,
but Mannering swung round with a sudden fury.
‘Useless, is it? You bloody fool, what do you think I kept silent for? Because I’d been to the musuem? You must be crazy. I was out with Didcotte until two o’clock last night, and where we were doesn’t concern you!’
Bristow drew a deep breath. The worst of it was that it might be true – he could not be sure with the Baron. He looked at Didcotte, telling himself he would not know whether the American was telling the truth or not.
‘It’s all right, Mannering – Mary knows where I was. She’s quite broad-minded. But what’s the trouble?’
Superintendent William Bristow, the most disgruntled man in England, left the Baron’s flat ten minutes afterwards. Didcotte had given the Baron his alibi, and although Bristow did not trust it, he could certainly prove nothing to the contrary.
He did try in the next few hours to trace Didcotte’s movements on the previous night. He failed, for Didcotte had been out by himself until the early hours.
Bristow took his report to the Commissioner, and Ffoulkes nodded thoughtfully.
‘I thought he’d have an alibi, but I’m coming round to your way of thinking. The Baron will have to be more careful in future.’
‘He’s so damned smart,’ grunted Bristow.
‘Not so smart that he won’t slip up,’ said Ffoulkes. ‘Keep at him. Oh, Mr. Lynch has telephoned from Paris. Lord Fauntley refuses to say a word – to him or the Press. I think we were wrong with Fauntley, but we’ll see. Anyhow, the ruby’s safe. Have you seen the papers?’
Bristow shook his head, and the Chief Commissioner passed an evening paper across his desk.
Bristow stared down at it, the muscles of his face working. He had feared it, but it was worse than he had expected, for the paper eulogised the Baron, who was on his pedestal again.
‘It’s lucky I came in,’ smiled Jonathan Didcotte.
‘Lucky’s one word for it,’ said the Baron. ‘What made you come?’
Didcotte’s eyes crinkled at the corners.
‘The Museum story,’ he said. ‘I learned quite accidentally that Philippa Grey knew both your identities. I learned all about the Purnall necklace, and rather liked the story. Besides, I owe you something myself.’
Mannering smiled, and lit a cigarette. His relief was still making him feel dazed.
‘What actually made you come?’
‘Well, Philippa and I both wanted to help,’ said Didcotte simply. ‘Things were looking black when you took that ruby. I called here last night several times. I was going to suggest that you took it back! I came straight round to congratulate you.’
Mannering chuckled.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ll take it as read. Let me see that paper.’
He read the same account as Bristow was reading, and when he had finished he looked capable of tackling the Museum again.
During the morning Lorna read the story, and her eyes began to dance. She waited anxiously for word from Mannering, and he telephoned just after eleven o’clock.
‘I’m all right, sweetheart! I’ll see you for lunch. Will you telephone your father and tell him for me to start talking now? Let him say he’s going after the Evening Star, that the police are a pack of nincompoops, and—well, he can please himself. He should enjoy it.’
‘He will.’ laughed Lorna.
Some half an hour later Lord and Lady Fauntley faced each other across the table in their suite at the Hotel Metropole. Lucy Fauntley’s eyes were gleaming, and Fauntley was looking ready to burst. He could say what he liked, he would teach them to follow him from London, he would teach the Evening Star, he . . .
‘You look pleased, Hugo dear,’ said Lucy. ‘I always hate it when you’re unhappy, and I thought perhaps you’d done something silly, but I ought to have known better. There. John told you it would be all right, too. Aren’t you glad you didn’t talk first, now all the other people are in the wrong because the ruby’s safe and you didn’t lose it?’
‘It was ridiculous – absurd!’ exclaimed Hugo Fauntley. ‘I’ve never been so insulted in my life, and when that fellow Lynch calls again won’t I let him have it! Won’t I make the Evening Star print its apologies, eh? And, as you say, dear, if John hadn’t warned me not to talk too soon I might have made a fatal mistake. Fatal. Yet . . .’ He eyed his wife uncertainly. ‘Lucy, this is foolish, I know, but how did Mannering know what the Baron was going to do?’
Lucy Fauntley laughed and patted her husband’s hand.
‘Don’t you worry about the Baron any more,’ she said. ‘He’s been a good friend of yours, and if he’s a good friend of John what does that matter?’
‘A friend of John Mannering!’ exclaimed Fauntley, as though a new light had been shed on his perplexity. ‘Do you know I’d never thought of that? I once wondered if John Mannering was the Baron.’
‘What an absurd idea!’ said Lucy Fauntley.
‘Yes,’ said Augustus Teevens, ‘show him in – yes.’
He sat in his barely furnished office, his moon-face set benignly, but a ferment of anxiety in his mind, Wigham, his chief clerk, opened the door a few moments later, and John Mannering entered, putting his hat and gloves gently on the stockbroker’s desk,
‘Well, Gus?’ he said, and Teevens moistened his lips.
‘Well—er—quite a pleasure, Mr. Mannering. Quite a pleasure. I—er—I . . .’
‘Can’t you get the lies out?’ asked Mannering gently.
Then his voice hardened and he leaned forward. ‘Listen to me. You tried to get Fauntley blamed for the Irawa Ruby, and you failed. You will always fail when you play tricks with Fauntley or with me or with the Baron. Remember I’ve enough evidence to send you and your solicitor behind bars for ten years.’
Teevens’s little eyes darted furtively to and fro.
‘I assure you, Mannering, that . . .’
‘You don’t have to assure me of anything,’ said the Baron. ‘Your last chance has gone, Teevens. Don’t forget it.’
He collected his hat and gloves from the desk and turned away, without waiting for Wigham to show him out. Teevens saw that broad back and the tall figure, and he shivered, for although Mannering was already out of the door, Teevens remembered the expression in his eyes.
The affair, the Baron told himself as he went downstairs, was finished. He knew a beaten man when he saw one, and Teevens was crushed. The Moore jewels were in Leverson’s hands, and the Baron’s bank balance was very healthy. Fauntley’s law case was not due for some time, and Mannering was thinking of persuading the peer to insist on a public apology and withdrawing the case. Triumph with dignity, the Baron thought, would appeal to Fauntley’s self-importance.
He walked from Lombard Street to Piccadilly, and nodded to the commissionaires outside the Elan. He saw Tanker Tring, his faithful shadow, but Tanker was going to have a rest for a while at least. The Baron thought they both deserved a holiday.
Lorna was sitting in the foyer.
Her eyes were bright, her lips warm. She was laughing soon, and Mannering felt as content as he could until the way opened for them to marry.
‘I suppose,’ Lorna said half-way through the lunch, ‘I can’t hope the Baron is dead.’
‘I doubt it,’ smiled Mannering. ‘Although he might go abroad for a change. Do you want him to finish?’
‘In some ways.’
‘Do you want him to?’
Lorna’s eyes were smiling into his.
‘Well – no.’
‘That’s fine,’ said the Baron, ‘that’s perfect.’
He told her, later that day, of the part Didcotte had played, and Philippa Grey. It was fitting, therefore, that when they dined at the Elan that night the Didcottes and Philippa Grey should be at another table. Lorna nodded at Mannering’s unspoken suggestion. They joined th
e other party, and young Guy Didcotte stood up eagerly.
‘Hallo, Mr. Mannering. Very glad to see you. You introduced us, so you will want to congratulate us.’
‘Who and what?’ asked Mannering.
‘Philippa and me,’ said Guy Didcotte, with deep satisfaction, ‘on our engagement.’
Mannering called for champagne, and Didcotte smiled in satisfaction. Mary Didcotte told herself yet again that Guy was lucky and wise in his voice of Philippa Grey, while the Baron looked into the eyes first of Philippa Grey and then of Lorna Fauntley, and he told himself that he was well satisfied.
So was Lorna Fauntley.
The danger to the Baron was gone, and even Bill Bristow had given up hope of catching him for anything he had done in the past. The only hope of putting the Baron in a cell was to catch him red-handed, and Bristow was not sanguine about it. Lorna guessed as much.
‘You’ll take a rest for a while, John?’ she asked.
‘I think we both deserve it,’ smiled Mannering. They were in the drawing-room of the Portland Place house, Lorna deep in an easy chair and Mannering smiling down on her. It seemed fantastic to think that only a few days before he had been hunted and she haunted by the police. ‘And we’ve other things to think about.’
The smile faded from Lorna’s face.
There was Rennigan, her husband, and while he lived she could not marry Mannering. It was the inescapable barrier, the thing that always intruded on their happiness and made them realise the vicious circle of their association.
‘Yes. But there’s nothing we can do, John. We can’t trace him without risking trouble, and after this I can’t let Mummy and Daddy know.’
‘I don’t want you to,’ said Mannering softly. ‘But I am beginning to wonder whether there isn’t another way of dealing with Mr. Rennigan. Shall we start thinking about it?’
‘I rarely do anything else!’
‘Then we’ll start working on it. If ever I find Mr. Rennigan he’s going to feel very sorry for himself. Is he in England?’
