Frank stared. He'd never seen someone actually wring his hands before.
Berman stopped wringing and mopped his forehead. "Do you have any idea what Jed is worth to my agency? If any suspicion got back to my bosses that I've let him just disappear ... " His voice died out. "I'll be finished in Hollywood. Nobody will trust me - nobody."
"You'd better go to the police again," Joe suggested.
"No way I can do that." The agent shook his head vigorously. "What if Jed just sneaked away to meet some lady? I mean, he's been known to do that now and then. To avoid any kind of bad publicity, we've got to find him quietly. Can you help me out here?"
Frank frowned in thought. "I'd say the most likely explanation for Jed's action is that he got some kind of news about Jillian Seabright."
"Do you have the phone number for London Stitches?" Joe asked.
From the pocket of his loud shirt Berman took out a wad of memo slips. "Yeah. Here it is." He plucked out a slip of paper and handed it over.
Picking up the nearest phone, Joe called the magazine. "I'm a member of Mr. Jed Shannon's staff, and I've got a problem," he said into the receiver. "Mr. Shannon received a telephone message while he was at your offices earlier. He was supposed to take some notes - and lost them."
Joe worked very hard to make his voice sound sincere. "Worst of all, he doesn't remember the caller's name. So if - oh, you're the one who took the call. Do you remember the name - Dickens? Bert Dickens? Great. Thanks a million." Putting the phone down, he glanced over at Berman.
"Means nothing to me." The agent gave them a baffled shrug.
Frank was already digging out the telephone directory. "Here it is. Bert Dickens - and he lists himself as a private inquiry agent."
Joe had a grim smile on his face. "Looks like Jed didn't think we were good enough for this job." He looked hard at Berman. "Did he hire himself another detective?"
"If he did, he sure didn't tell me about it. But Jed's been very upset about this Jillian. And he did mention that he thought you were a little young."
"He's not that much older than we are himself," Joe pointed out.
"Acting and detecting are two different things," Berman said.
Joe gestured to the phone book, still in his brother's hand. "So do we give our friend Dickens a call?"
Frank shook his head. "I think this calls for a personal interview.'
***
The address in the phone book was in East London. To get there from Jed Shannon's town house, the easiest route was by way of the London Underground.
"Hey, Frank," Joe whispered after they'd gotten their tickets, "how far underground do these trains run?"
Two sets of escalators later they had finally reached the station platform. Frank thought the arriving train looked a little old-fashioned. It actually had a wooden floor. But it was surprisingly quiet - and very clean.
They switched trains after two stops, then rode on for what seemed like forever until they'd reached almost the other end of London.
Coming out of the station, they found themselves under gray skies in a quiet neighborhood of four-story brick buildings. Frank whipped out his pocket map of London and started off for the local main street.
"There - there it is," he said.
His brother, however, dug in his feet and began tugging on Frank's arm.
Frank gave him a look. "We don't have the time, Joe."
"I didn't have much lunch, since Karen and I cut it short to go hunting for you." He tried to look very sincere. "It seems to me, Frank, that fate is taking a hand. I mean, why else would this private eye have his office right over this fish-and-chips restaurant?"
They had stopped under the awning of the fast-food restaurant, the only dry spot on the rainy street. Joe was looking longingly through the window at the fried fish and french fries. Frank was trying to move him along.
"Let's go, Joe. This detective may know something about where Jed is."
"Okay, okay." Joe followed his brother to the stairway that led up to the second floor of the sooty old building. "I'll try to curb my hunger."
Frank decided that Bert Dickens wasn't enjoying much more success than Ian Fisher-Stone. The hand-lettered sign on the back of the index card held up with thumbtacks was an indication.
They headed up a steep stairway paneled with old, dark wood. It was also dimly lit and smelled strongly of stale oil from the fish-and-chips shop below.
"And yet another missing person," Joe remarked as they climbed upward.
"Jed may not be missing. It could be that he just decided to take off and look for Jillian on his own."
"I don't much like the idea of somebody we're trying to help sneaking off to get another detective behind our backs."
Frank shrugged. "He's impatient, and he's got lots of money. He probably figures the more detectives, the better. Sort of like doctors, when you get a second opinion."
They reached the second floor, opened a door, and entered a long hallway lined with office doors.
"This Nigel Hawkman you were telling me about, Frank. Do you think he - "
"Hawkins," corrected his brother. "If Larry Berman hadn't sent for us, Hawkins would have been the next person we'd have gone to see."
"The people we've questioned seem ready to swear that Jillian is honest," Joe said, frowning in thought. "But this whole business is beginning to sound like some kind of caper centering around the Cornwall girl and her emeralds."
"Here's Dickens's office." Frank nodded at a warped wooden door with a wrinkled business card tacked to it.
Joe took hold of the knob, pushing against the door. It opened inward about ten inches, then wouldn't budge. Leaning his weight into it, he got the door to open another two or three inches.
"Stuck?"
Joe poked his head through the opening. "Uh - oh. Come on, give me a hand here." He began pushing harder.
"What's blocking the door?" Frank demanded, adding his shoulder to the job of forcing an entrance.
"Just what we need," Joe answered. "A body."
Chapter 9
"He's breathing." After a brief struggle to move the door with the dead weight against it, Frank had squeaked his way through a bare sliver of doorway. Then he'd knelt down to the body lying on the floor. "I think this guy was just slugged - the same way I was."
The man he was examining lay on the hardwood floor of the small office. He was pudgy and middle-aged and had thinning reddish hair and a bushy mustache. And if anything, he had to be worse off than the seedy agent. His office didn't even have a rug.
"So this must be Bert Dickens, huh?" Joe helped his brother lift the unconscious man, carrying him over to an ancient leather couch against one wall.
As his head touched the cracked leather the man's eyes blinked. "Outsmarted me, they did," he announced in a slurred voice. "Made a total fool out of Bert Dickens."
"Take it easy," Frank cautioned. "You'd better lie still for a while, Mr. Dickens." He rubbed his own head. "I know how it feels."
Faded blue eyes took the Hardys in. "And who might you lads be?"
"I'm Frank Hardy, and this is my brother, Joe."
"My competition. Well, sir, I'll tell you - Bert Dickens would have been a lot better off if he'd let you two muck along in this mess on your own."
"You were working for Jed Shannon?"
Grunting, the middle-aged detective grabbed hold of Frank's arm and pulled himself to a sitting position on the swaybacked couch. "Been working for him these past two days," he said. "The lad hired me to find this missing sweetheart of his."
"Any luck?"
Dickens felt the lumps on his head, a pained expression on his face. "Doesn't look like it, now, does it?"
Frank did his best to keep a straight face. "I meant, do you have any idea of what's happened to Jillian Seabright?"
"Dead ends are all I've come up with."
Joe frowned. "But it was you who telephoned Jed Shannon this afternoon."
"That it was. T
his pair of blokes dropped in on me and, you might say, persuaded me to make that call."
"What did they look like?" Frank asked.
"The boss - at least he asked the questions and gave the orders - was a very natty chap. A round guy with a red face, blond, mustache, dressed like a gent."
"Sounds like the guy I met." Frank nodded. "He used a blackjack on me, too."
"No, it was the other bloke who got me," Dickens explained. "Big nasty boyo, he was, your typical thug. Maybe an ex-prizefighter, something like that. Looked like he'd been in a scrap or two in his lifetime."
"Let me guess," Joe said. "Did he have a broken nose?"
"That he did." Dickens rubbed his own face. "Thought he was going to take a crack at breaking mine."
"Maybe another old friend," Joe said. "The guy who took potshots at us the other night."
"They gave me a phone number to call," Dickens told them. "I was to say it was a real emergency to whoever answered - that I had to talk to Jed Shannon and nobody else. When he came on I was to tell him how I had important information about Jillian Seabright. I couldn't give it over the phone, and he was to rush right over here, not telling a soul." Dickens grimaced. "Sounded to me as if the lad took the bait sure enough."
"Did he come here?"
The detective started to shrug but decided it was too painful. "I have no idea. Soon as I made that call, old Thuggo went to work. Must have done a proper job to leave me slumbering away on my own floor until now."
Absorbing all the new information, Frank said, "They seemed to know Jed's plans for the day, Joe, even though we got rid of the bugs on his phone."
Joe nodded, turning to the detective. "Is there anything we can do for you? Want us to call a doctor?"
"Not right yet. I'd just like to sit for a bit and collect what's left of my wits," Dickens said. "You could do me one favor. Fetch that sign from my desk and hang it round the doorknob as you leave."
The sign read Out: To Lunch.
Joe obliged the detective, and he and Frank left the office.
Walking down the dimly lit staircase, Joe said, "I'll bet they grabbed Jed as soon as he entered this building."
"Now we have to find where they took him." Frank looked grim. "Probably the same place they have Jillian."
Joe grinned. "Try to see the bright side. At least we don't have to look for two places."
They stepped out of the building to find a new set of rain clouds washing the street.
"Still want those fish and chips, Joe?" Frank asked.
"Hard to pass up, but I'm intending to take Karen Kirk to dinner and see what she can tell me."
Joe and Frank headed for the Underground train. "I'll do a little digging on my own while you're with Karen," Frank proposed, "and catch up with you later. Where will I find you?"
"I thought we'd try Chumley's near the Strand," Joe said as they boarded the train. "You were the one who told me about it. You read about it in the guidebook. 'The historical restaurant on London's most historic street.' "
Back at the hotel, Joe grinned as his brother tossed him the car keys. "Do me a favor, okay? Don't come barging in on us until the end of the meal."
***
Chumley's restaurant consisted of three fairly large rooms. Thick oaken beams held up the ceilings, and the walls were paneled in dark wood. The windows were stained glass, and the waiters all wore tailcoats. Joe and Karen were seated at a small table in the innermost room. After the damp chill outside, the small fire crackling in the stone fireplace nearby felt welcome.
"Chumley's has been here for nearly two hundred years," Karen said, studying her menu.
"Wouldn't be surprised if our waiter has been, too." Joe was studying the pretty auburn-haired young woman sitting across from him.
Karen shut her menu and reached into her shoulder bag, which sat on the floor next to her chair. "I gathered some material for you," she said, taking out a large manila envelope and passing it to him.
Joe opened it to find a large photograph and two sheets of typed paper. "So, another picture of Emily Cornwall, huh?"
"Taken when she was eighteen. It's the only close-up shot of her anybody seems to have," Karen said. "A friend on one of the magazines made me a quick copy."
Joe frowned at the smiling face in the picture. "Now that you've seen this, do you still think she resembles Jillian?"
"They certainly are similar. If you dyed Jillian's blond hair to the same dark shade as Emily's, there'd be an amazing resemblance."
Slowly Joe placed the photo on the crisp white tablecloth. "Jillian Seabright disappears just as Emily Cornwall is about to return home and claim a very valuable necklace." He gazed up at the smoke-darkened beams in the ceiling. "Now, is that a coincidence? Or is somebody going to pull a switch - substitute Jillian for the heiress and collect the loot?"
"I'm telling you, Joe, Jillian would never willingly go along with anything like that."
"Suppose she's not willing? Maybe she's being forced to - Oh, sorry," Joe said to the waiter. "Give us a few more minutes to make up our minds, please."
Their aged, gray-haired waiter had silently appeared beside the table. "Very good, sir," the man said, and he withdrew.
"If it's a scam, we might have a line on the guy behind it," Joe said. "Does the name Nigel Hawkins ring any bells?"
Karen shook her head. "Jillian never mentioned him."
Joe started reading over the notes she'd given him. "They ought to fire whoever typed this. It has mistakes all over."
"I typed it."
Joe glanced over the top of the papers, his ears going red. "Then it's, uh, very creative. Um, especially the spelling."
"I'm not used to a manual typewriter anymore. At home I use a word processor. I took notes on everything in the files, then typed them up at the office on the only machine I could find." Karen's hands sat on the table, her fingers drumming it. "If it's not up to your high standards ... "
"Hey, it's fine," Joe said. "I'm just used to noticing details." He grinned across at her. "So when I see Beswick spelled with a z and find Emily with an i left out ..." Joe decided to change the subject. "Well, I can make out that Emily Cornwall is definitely back in England."
"She was severely injured in an auto accident three years ago in Paris," Karen said. "She was lucky. Her parents were both killed."
"That was right after she left school in Bern, Switzerland," Joe said, consulting the notes. "Emily has been recuperating in Europe ever since. Nobody in England has seen her in years."
"So it might not be impossible for an impostor to walk into the solicitor's office and claim the Talbot emeralds - which is just what Emily is supposed to do in three days."
"Well, there's this companion to consider - what's her name?" Joe went back to the papers. "Right, Miss Sheridan. She's been with the family for six years, and with Emily every day since the accident."
"Suppose someone bribed her?"
"Possible, but ... " Joe shook his head.
"How about this idea, then? The real Emily died in Europe." Karen leaned over the table, her hazel eyes sparkling with excitement. "Miss Sheridan doesn't tell anybody, because that means her salary would stop. When it comes time to collect the emeralds, she decides to bring in a ringer."
"We don't know enough about the companion, so all of this is just speculation," Joe said.
"There's also the problem of handwriting. Emily will obviously have to sign half a forest's worth of papers. You can't just stroll in and say, 'Hi, I look like Emily. Give me the gems.' "
"That's what you get for stopping after only the first page of my notes." Karen pointed to the top of the following page.
"Okay. Emily's right hand was broken in the car crash."
"So if I were going to impersonate her, I'd practice writing her signature. And if any of the lawyers said it didn't look quite right, I'd start crying a little. Then I'd remind them that I had to learn to write all over again after my awful accident."
"That might work," Joe agreed, "if she's right-handed."
"Next paragraph."
Joe read on. " 'Emily Cornwall is right-handed.' " He nodded. "Okay, it all seems to fall together. But we have to make sure we're not just jumping to conclusions. Jillian may have disappeared for entirely different reasons."
"May I make a suggestion?"
"Sure, what?"
"Let's order dinner," Karen said, "and not talk about any of this until we're finished."
They did exactly that. About two hours later they left Chumley's.
"What's your next move on this case?" Karen asked Joe.
He took her hand. "I want to talk it over with Frank," he said. "But I think a ride down to the village of Beswick would be a good idea."
Karen nodded. "I'll bet Jillian's down there, being kept against her will."
A fat raindrop splattered on the sidewalk next to them. More started falling in a sudden cloudburst. Joe glanced unhappily at the car, parked about two hundred feet away. "Maybe if we run ... "
He set off, but Karen called, "Wait! I've got an umbrella in here somewhere."
Joe turned back to watch her start digging through her shoulder bag.
Behind him, the car exploded with a fiery roar.
Chapter 10
It seemed to be raining fire and jagged chunks of metal as well as water.
Joe leapt for Karen, pulling her to the soggy sidewalk, shielding her body with his. The world seemed strangely silent after the blast.
"Are you okay?" Joe finally got his vocal cords to work.
"Y - yes," Karen managed. "Boy, you moved pretty fast, Did you get hurt?"
"Not as far as I can tell." Still on his knees, Joe glanced at the wreckage of the car. Flames were playing around it, and the rain sizzled on the hot metal. "Looks like the bad guys are really playing hardball now."
Suddenly he was on his feet, half-crouched. The sound of running footsteps echoed in the fog. They could make out a blurred figure approaching.
"Everything all right?" Frank asked, skidding to a halt. He'd been heading toward the restaurant when the sound of the sudden explosion tore through the fog.
Joe helped Karen up. "Well, my hair feels like it's standing on end, and my ears are ringing worse than the last time we went to a rock concert. But outside of that, I don't think I have any problems."
Castle Fear Page 5
