by John Creasey
It was over in a flash, and Craigie was shouting almost before Fellowes realised it.
‘Get after ’em, Bill, get after ’em!’
Fellowes was by the door that Miller had left open. He jumped in and grabbed the wheel. Miller made a single leap and caught the running-board as the Austin lurched forward, while Craigie saw the bullets scattered about the pavement, Arran’s ghastly white face, and two red lights fast disappearing through the teeming rain. And Craigie wished above all things for Bob Kerr or Jim Burke.
But he had to handle this himself as well as he could. The devil of it was, he was desperately anxious to interview Sir Julian Crabtree and his wife, but he could not leave Arran.
It did not take him long to discover that Arran was badly hurt. His heart was just beating, but Craigie was by no means sure it would last for long. Craigie’s face was gaunt as he stood up from the wet body. Toby Arran had worked for him longer than any other agent still in action, and if he lost Arran it would be like losing part of the Department.
He knew that if he had kept the police car and taken Toby to hospital what small chance he had might have been taken, but life and death had to go by the board, the game had to go on. It was more important by far to find where the M.G. went, or to get its occupants, than it was to save Arran’s life. That was the cold-blooded truth, and Craigie did not shirk it.
Arran had told him over the telephone, not long before, that he was watching a house in St. John’s Wood, but he had not mentioned the owner’s name. Without Lois Dacre’s information Arran might have lain here until he had been discovered by someone who would have had not the slightest idea who he was. It was as well the girl had come when she had.
Gordon Craigie had not seen her next to the man who had shot at them, and did not know what Fellowes was thinking.
He stepped away from Arran, raising his voice as he heard footsteps not far ahead of him. He had intended to go to the nearest house and use the telephone, but it looked as though he would have no need for it. Out of the drizzle and the gloom came a London bobby, big, spreading and solid. His voice came gruffly.
‘You called, sir?’
‘Yes,’ said Craigie, and his first word made the other straighten up, for the voice held authority. ‘There is a man here, dead or dying. Blow your whistle, will you?’
Craigie slipped a hand into his pocket and brought out a card. In the dim light the constable peered down at it, half hidden as it was in Craigie’s coat against the rain. It told any policeman or detective to do just what the bearer ordered, and the policeman’s whistle was soon shrilling through the streets.
‘What happened?’
‘He was shot from a passing car, I think. I want you to wait here, whether the man’s taken by the ambulance or not. Superintendent Miller and Sir William Fellowes will be along soon. Tell them I’ve gone into Sir Julian Crabtree’s house.’
‘Very good, sir.’ Craigie knew that every thing that could be done to help Arran was being looked after. Grim-faced, he started across the road to Crabtree’s house.
It was one of the few occasions when Craigie was prepared to make investigations without one of his men with him. He usually kept in the background, but with the policeman in sight of the house, and Fellowes and Miller in the offing before long, he reasoned that he was safe enough. On the other hand, if Crabtree or his wife were fighting with Griceson—and it was difficult to believe anything else—the life of the head of Department Z was a long way from secure.
These people knew the Department, Craigie realised.
But he did not hesitate as he reached the house, pushed open the creaking iron gateway, and walked up the steps towards the front door. He was glad to get beneath the porch, out of the rain, and he pressed the bell.
No sound came from inside, and there was no gleam of light. Craigie tried again with the same result. A third time brought something, and Craigie stiffened.
Light footsteps along the passage, and a steady hand was pulling at the bolts. Crabtree had taken the precaution of having the place bolted as well as locked, and judging from appearances it was empty, or the occupants had retired for the night.
And then Craigie again was taken by surprise. He just stood and stared for a moment at the slim figure of the girl standing outlined against a light that she had just switched on. She looked more demure than ever.
‘Hallo,’ she said. ‘It’s your turn to pay a call.’
Craigie drew a deep breath, and then he laughed.
‘Just in case of accidents,’ he said, ‘I’ll remind you that Sir William Fellowes and others are due to call at any moment. May I come in?’
‘Did you think the warning necessary?’ demanded Lois Dacre as she stood aside.
‘I don’t know,’ Craigie said evenly. ‘Strange things happen in a strange world. Is Sir Julian in?’
‘Why, no,’ said Lois Dacre. ‘Didn’t I tell you that he and Lady Crabtree are still away on their honeymoon? I am afraid,’ she added, ‘that I’m the only one here, and I haven’t been in for long.’
Craigie nodded, and took off his mackintosh as she closed the door. Craigie’s mind was full of many questions, and he believed the girl could answer some of them. His expression was grave as he followed the girl into the second room on the left, a small, cosily furnished sitting-room. A cheerful log-fire was blazing, and a kettle was perched unexpectedly on a hob.
‘You look cold,’ she said; ‘shall I make some coffee? Or do you prefer tea?’
‘Tea, please,’ said Gordon Craigie, and he wondered whether Lois Dacre was as clever as he believed.
As he accepted a cup of hot tea he heard a clock strike from a corner of the room. He counted the strokes. Ten—eleven—twelve. It was later than he had expected. Kerr had telephoned six hours ago; a great many things could have happened since he had last heard from his star agent.
‘Is that fast at all?’ he asked.
‘Only a few seconds. Now, Mr. Craigie, what can I——’
But Lois Dacre did not finish the question.
There was the ringing of a front-door bell, sharp and imperious. It came three times, two short and one long, and Craigie saw the expression on the girl’s face alter. She jumped up, putting her cup on the table and slopping some of her tea on to the polished oak.
‘I won’t keep you a moment,’ she said. Her voice was tense, her expression more concerned than Craigie had seen it before. ‘And if you value your life, Mr. Craigie, don’t move out of this room!’
Craigie nodded without speaking. He watched her disappear, and she left the door ajar. A draught cut across his legs as she opened the front door, and he heard her voice, followed by a man’s. It was slow, measured, regular, and yet Craigie had an idea that the man had been hurrying.
While Lois Dacre closed the door behind the second caller, and helped him off with his streaming mackintosh, in the dim light from the hall the newcomer’s face, dead-white and looking more like alabaster than human flesh, seemed very gaunt. Mr. Griceson had called, and Mr. Griceson looked worried.
• • • • •
Meanwhile Bob Kerr had been travelling.
The Morris which the pawky-faced youth had hired from the village near Staines touched seventy several times that night, and the driver proved that he had been born for the wheel.
Just three and a half hours after they had left the cottage near Staines the Morris drew up outside the main post-office in the Wiltshire town.
Kerr limped from the car towards the sorting-office door, his knee very painful. If it were humanly possible, he had to find where those letters, with the Bradford-on-Avon postmark, were posted.
But the door opened as he reached it. Kerr stood back quickly, and smiled.
‘Well, well, well!’ he said. ‘Fast work, my Jeremy!’
Mr. Jeremy Lucas, introduced to the Department by Kerr, and lately sent by Craigie to follow the inquiries Kerr might not be able to carry out, showed some surprise.
‘L
ord, I thought you were dead! Craigie was damned pessimistic. What have you been doing?’
‘Playing hoopla,’ said Kerr. The sight of another Department agent cheered him more than anything else could have done, while he knew that Jeremy Lucas was a man fit for anything in the way of fighting or shooting. ‘Get anything?’
Lucas beamed.
‘For the goods apply to Jeremy. Yes, we are lucky, old son. Craigie gave me a couple of envelopes, and a postman in here swears to the house those envelopes come from. He says he picks as many as a couple of dozen in a day from the pillar-box in the gatepost of a house three miles out of the town. Smart?’
‘Luck,’ said Kerr, his eyes gleaming. ‘Where is the place?’
‘Thanks to the fear of God and the influence of Department Z, not forgetting a little persuasion on the part of Jeremy Lucas,’ said Jeremy modestly, ‘I’ve arranged for a postman to take me there. He’s driving a van, and it will pick me up in a minute. This fellow at “Red Acres”——’
‘Where?’
‘“Red Acres”—the name of the house—has arranged for special late collections. The van’s due there at nine-forty-five, and it would have been off in a few minutes, anyhow. Joking apart, Bob, it looks as though we’ve found something.’
‘It looks mightily like it,’ agreed Bob Kerr thoughtfully. ‘Steady a minute, I’m thinking.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Mr. Lucas with some concern.
Kerr looked at Lucas. A dozen things flashed through his mind, and above all was the fact that the man at ‘Red Acres’ might be connected with Griceson, who had owned ‘Wilton’, the house near Dorking. If that was so, it was reasonable to suppose there would be half a dozen men there at least—those who had flown from ‘Wilton’ that morning. That morning! Was it only nine hours since he had raided the place, and ten since he had found Mueller’s body?
‘How many gardeners has he got there?’ The question came while the far-away look was still in Kerr’s eyes, and Lucas said gently:
‘Just ease off a shade old man, you’ve had a busy day. Who? What?’
‘Why did I introduce you to Craigie?’ demanded Robert McMillan Kerr with some irony. ‘The man at “Red Acres”. What’s his name?’
‘Fellow named Jeffs. A tough, by all accounts. Ex-pug and what not.’
‘So you did discover that,’ said Kerr, ‘but nothing about his gardeners or menservants?’
Lucas stopped smiling, and cursed himself.
‘Good Lord, I get you! What kind of crowd has he got there? I didn’t think——’
‘That’s just the trouble,’ said Kerr with a fleeting smile. ‘Will that postman and his van wait for you?’
‘Yes, he will not go off until I’m here.’
‘Right, we will go inside,’ said Kerr.
The sorting-office looked deserted, although in one corner was a pile of parcels and in another, sacks of letters obviously waiting to be taken to the station for the night despatch. Two sorters were looking through mail that had just come in, but most of the long row of desks and shelves were deserted.
In one corner of the big room was a partitioned office, with the door open. Kerr and Lucas hurried towards it, the former finding his knee easing a lot with exercise. He could see the red-faced, bewhiskered man sitting at a high desk.
Kerr recognised the type of official. He would be typically Wiltshire—a little slow, judging from the first encounter. But he would fasten on to what Kerr wanted quickly enough.
As it happened, the Acting Postmaster had already been impressed by Lucas’s papers of identification. He smiled affably, and Lucas introduced Kerr.
‘My commanding officer,’ he said smilingly, ‘Mr. Robert Kerr——’
The whiskers pushed out a little as the postman whistled.
‘Mr. Kerr. Now, don’t I recognise you, Mr. Kerr?’
‘Our airman’s famous wherever he goes,’ said Lucas with a grin, and Kerr smiled, his slanting features oddly impressive and the cut across his forehead making him look even more formidable than usual.
‘That’s nice of you, Mr. Leeder. You’ll have to forgive me if I seem in a bit of a hurry, but the matter’s urgent. Can you tell me how many gardeners and menservants Mr. Jeffs employs at “Red Acres”?’
Leeder frowned, his red face round and shiny and his bushy moustache sticking forward.
‘Well! Maybe Tom Doe will be able to give ye more information. The driver, Mr. Kerr. I’d be asking him if I were you.’
Kerr hurried outside, to find the van waiting, and the driver, a small, wiry-looking fellow with a bright unshaven face, talking with the perky youth from Staines.
Kerr spoke quickly.
‘Bert, this gentleman will be coming with you.’ He nodded towards Lucas as he spoke, and went on quickly: ‘Follow the van until it stops, and then drive a few yards past it. If it starts again, repeat the manœuvre. Understand?’
‘O.K. wiv’ me,’ said Bert, but Jeremy Lucas looked peeved.
‘Look here, Bob, what——’
‘We’re in a hurry,’ snapped Kerr, ‘and we can’t both sit in a mail-van. Skip to it, Jeremy, and grease your gun.’
He spoke in an undertone. Jeremy Lucas looked cheered and raised no other protest. In two minutes the little red mail-van and the battered Morris were on the road again, and Kerr was talking to the driver.
The man knew ‘Red Acres’ and Mr. Jeffs well. Moreover, he was able to tell Kerr that there were usually three or four gardeners at the house. That afternoon, moreover, when Tom Doe had been delivering, he had noticed five or six strange men about the gardens. But that often happened, for Mr. Jeffs seemed to be continually having alterations done to his house, and he needed the workmen.
‘Do they sleep in?’ asked Kerr to hide the elation that he was feeling. For the first time he was really sure that he had found the house to which Griceson had hurried, that in ‘Red Acres’ most of the men from ‘Wilton’ would be housed.
‘There’s a bungalow near, sir, where they sleep, an’ they even have a recreation-room,’ said the postman. ‘Right good to his servants is Mr. Jeffs.’
‘Like him?’ asked Kerr.
‘I wouldn’t go so far as to say so,’ said the postman, ‘seeing I don’t know him well. Between me and you, sir, he’s a rum-looking cuss. Looks a proper bruiser.’
Mr. Jeffs sounded more than interesting.
The fact that there was a bungalow, and that the men—Jeffs’s workmen, or Griceson’s gunmen—were segregated there, away from the house, was an important point. Kerr was more than satisfied with the way things were going.
‘Here we are,’ said the postman, and Kerr felt the van slowing down. ‘There’s the bungalow, sir—over there; you can see the lights. And the big light on the left, that’s from the house. Anything else I can do, sir?’
‘Just keep handy, and if you get any reason for it, scoot like hell for the town and call the police,’ said Bob Kerr easily.
Jeremy Lucas was already standing by the van. The Morris was pulled up just ahead of it. Kerr repeated the orders to Bert and then, with Jeremy Lucas at his side, started for the bungalow.
12: Things Happen
No sound came from the house ‘Red Acres’, nor from the bungalow near the drive gates. Kerr and Lucas moved softly across damp grass, neither of them speaking, both thankful for the heavy clouds and the wind that offered them some help. Rain would come at any moment, but it had not started yet.
The silence was almost uncanny. Kerr was prepared for a trick, although he heard not the slightest sound to suggest that anyone had been watching. But the dead silence, the feeling that a shot might come out of the darkness at any moment, was getting on his nerves. As they neared the bungalow, and drew within the aura of its light, he hesitated.
‘Careful, Jeremy. I don’t like this. Over there to the right, and see what you can see through that window. I will try this one on the left.’
‘Right-ho,’ said Lucas, and he craw
led away, moving with a stealthy silence that was part of his usefulness.
There were two lighted windows at the bungalow, and Kerr wanted to see what he could through each of them. One had curtain-blinds, but there was a gap in the curtains. The blinds of the other room had not been pulled, and Lucas had an easy task.
Kerr reached his window and pressed flat against the wall for a moment, his ears alert. No sound came. Slowly he moved forward towards the crack in the curtains, and found he had a clear view of the room.
He almost laughed.
There was one man there, a broad-shouldered fellow with a pair of pink slippers on vast feet. He was reading a paper, and his face was half hidden, although Kerr recognised the bruiser type in a flash. The man was obviously thinking nothing at all of the possibility of trouble. He looked like any workman at the end of a hard day’s grind.
Kerr was still smiling when Lucas came up. Lucas spoke one word, close to Kerr’s ear.
‘Empty.’
‘Fine,’ said Bob Kerr. ‘And it’s a bungalow, which means we needn’t fear trouble from upstairs. We’ll find the first open window and get through.’
‘Why not try the house first?’ demanded Lucas.
‘Because it’ll be wiser to visit this gentleman and make sure there’s no attack from the rear,’ said Kerr. They were walking softly round the bungalow as he spoke, and they reached the front door. Kerr decided to try the handle. It was locked.
‘I’ll get in here. Keep your eyes open in case of trouble.’
Lucas watched, his gun in his hand. Kerr took a pick-lock from his pocket—one of the instruments that he had learned to use since he had been a member of Department Z—and wielded it as dexterously as any cracksman. In two minutes the door was wide open, and Lucas heard Kerr’s low voice as the bigger man pointed to a door.
‘Let’s move, my son. My fellow’s in that room. Stay near while I try the others.’
Kerr tried the handle of one of the doors. It opened, but the room was in darkness. He repeated it with the three remaining doors, and found that the place was empty but for the man with the gaudy taste in slippers. One of the rooms was fitted up like a dormitory and another was obviously the recreation-room which Mr. Jeffs provided for the comfort of his workmen.
