Hide the Baron

by John Creasey

  “We can talk about what you like, but I can’t forget what I’d rather talk about,” Merrow said. The edge had gone from his voice, and the way he now spoke was likeable. “All right, Jo. I’m much too tense and taut, and I know it. Blame my adventurous past. What’s this about Hodderburn’s sending a spy.”

  “Don’t be silly. They thought that with you and Jimmy away—”

  “They thought that with Jimmy away,” corrected Merrow, “it would be wise not to trust the nephew who appeared out of the blue. Give them full marks for doing their job properly. Mind you, so they should, there must be a quarter of a million pounds’ worth of rococo bric-a-brac in the house. You sit on money, lean against money, read money, are reflected in money, sleep with money, breathe money and we’re probably going to celebrate Jimmy’s next birthday by eating off gold plate. He is negotiating for some.”

  “No!”

  “Yes,” mimicked Merrow. “So Hodderburn’s were quite right. But if that sawney-voiced old solicitor’s clerk makes himself too much of a nuisance, I shall punch him on the nose.”

  Mannering heard Joanna’s half-reluctant laughter.

  “He’s not,” she said.

  “Not what?”

  “A solicitor’s clerk.”

  “What is he?”

  “A private inquiry agent,” said Joanna. “He—”

  She paused again, and Mannering sensed the sudden change in her mood, and in the atmosphere. “George, what—”

  He said roughly: “Forget it. I don’t like amateur policemen, and I don’t know that we want one at the house. But I’m not in a position to do much about it. If he makes a pest of himself, tell me—we’ll do something about it then. And you might let me know the kind of question he asks, it would be interesting.” Another pause. “Jo, bring your chair a bit nearer.”

  “No!” She said that more vigorously than she intended. “I must go, and Mr. Richardson wants to have a word with you. No!” she repeated, but the word was smothered, and the chair scraped.

  By the time she opened the door and entered the passage, Mannering was at a window, yards away. When he looked round, Joanna was still flushed, and that certainly hadn’t lasted from the time he had looked in. He smiled amiably, and promised that he wouldn’t be long, then went into the ward.

  George Merrow was leaning back on his pillows, almost flat on his back. He looked as if he were in some kind of pain; and probably his leg hurt. His fists were clenched on the bedspread. He stared at the ceiling, not at the door, and Mannering doubted whether he knew that it had opened again. There was never likely to be a worse time to try to get information out of Jimmy Garfield’s nephew. Mannering almost decided not to try, but changed his mind and went forward firmly, looking rather big and ungainly.

  He cleared his throat.

  “Can you spare me a minute or two, Mr. Merrow?”

  Merrow looked at him, but didn’t move otherwise, and didn’t answer. The film of sweat on his forehead might be the result of physical pain, or of nervous tension. His face was slightly distorted, but that didn’t hide the fact that he was aggressively good-looking.

  Then he said harshly “If I have to. What’s it about? I’m not thinking of robbing my uncle of his fortune or his secretary of her—”

  “What an unpleasant young man you can be,” interrupted Mannering, with the dry matter-of-factness permitted to middle age. Perhaps it was that which stifled Merrow’s angry retort; perhaps it was his rider: “Calculated, I suppose, to rebuff any young woman, no matter how well disposed she may be.”

  “Mind your own damned business!”

  Mannering gave the little smile he had assiduously practised until it came almost naturally.

  “But I am not paid to mind my own business, Mr. Merrow, I am paid to mind your uncle’s. These attacks upon you—”

  “I’ve said all I’m going to the police,” Merrow told him acidly.

  “They are not particularly impressed by your unready tongue,” murmured Mannering. “I understand that you have told them that you have no idea why you should have been attacked, although since you lived at Brook House you have been, on several occasions. The obvious conclusion is that you were attacked in order to make the way clear for another assault upon your uncle. Do you subscribe to that?”

  Merrow said: “You can guess.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the police of your danger?”

  Merrow drew a deep breath, but something in the calmness of Mannering’s eyes checked an outburst; he cooled down enough to speak gruffly, and with an answering gleam in his own eyes.

  “You haven’t judged me aright,” he said. “I’m such a gentlemanly nephew, and so considerate for all other people’s feelings, that I preferred to hug the secret to my manly bosom rather than to worry Uncle Jimmy.”

  “Did you know that he was in danger?”

  Merrow snapped: “Damn you, no! I’ve told the police—”

  “What worries us all is what you haven’t told the police. It will worry you, too, if they decide to detain you when you’re fit enough to leave.” Mannering let that sink in, but it didn’t appear to make much impression. “Let’s assume that you didn’t tell your uncle because you thought it would worry him. Let’s assume you didn’t believe that he was in any danger. What did you think was the reason for the attacks on you?” Merrow tightened his lips, looking as if he were clenching his teeth, while Mannering went on in the same calm voice: “What had you done, to deserve being shot at?”

  Merrow didn’t answer.

  “The police aren’t fools,” Mannering persisted with calm assurance. “In many years of experience, I’ve come to admire the way they work, Mr. Merrow. Aylmer is astute, and in this case he is constantly in touch with Scotland Yard. When the Yard gets its teeth into a job, it doesn’t let go. The Yard is now probing into your past. It doesn’t know much yet, only that you have lived abroad for some years, according to your own statement, and came here, presumably at Mr. Garfield’s invitation. That was a little over two months ago, and you were introduced as his nephew.”

  Merrow still didn’t speak.

  “Are you his nephew?” Mannering asked mildly. “The police have their doubts, you know.”

  Merrow said: “They can doubt, you can doubt, the whole world can doubt. I’m Jimmy Garfield’s nephew, and can prove it. As you and the police are so damned clever, go and see Rackley’s, the Detective Agency in the Strand. They found me. Jimmy spent a fortune searching for me, he brought me here. I didn’t ask to be invited, and I came because he seemed an old man and it wouldn’t do any harm to let him have what he wanted for the last few years of his life.”

  “Or to inherit whatever share you thought that such considerateness would earn,” suggested Mannering.

  Merrow clenched his fists, and Mannering was ready to dodge away from a blow, but none came. Merrow said between his clenched teeth!

  “All right, and why not? Repeat: I didn’t look for Uncle Jimmy, he looked for me. I didn’t know that he existed as my uncle. I expected to get along under my own steam. Then I came here for what I knew might be six months or six years or longer, and anything I got for burying myself in this god-forsaken part of the world, I’d earned. Yes. I like money. Are you just a philanthropist yourself?” Mannering chuckled.

  “The merit of true honesty,” he observed. “There is little that I like better. You expected to be shot at and in danger, didn’t you?” Merrow didn’t answer.

  “The difficult thing to believe is that there were two distinct motives for the attacks—one for that on you, one for that on Mr. Garfield,” Mannering said flatly. “Mr. Merrow, you hardly know me and have no reason at all to take my word, but I shall not lie to you.” He paused; then added with a kind of dignity!” I am acting now as an agent of Hodderburn, White and Hodderburn who would of cours
e, as solicitors, respect any confidence you placed in them. There is no need for me to tell the police anything that you voluntarily tell me, or in fact, that I discover. Yet if you were to explain the motive for the attacks on you and I were to tell the police that I was fully satisfied, it would ease the pressure which they will almost certainly exert.” Merrow still didn’t answer. Silence dragged on.

  “I hope to come and see you again tomorrow,” said Mannering, at last, and stood up. “Now I must go and look after Miss Woburn. She shows very little outward sign of the great strain, does she?” He stood up.

  “What strain?” Merrow demanded sharply. “We-ell,” said Mannering, pursing his lips when he finished, and looking down at the injured man with a kind of fatherly concern, “I’m not sure that the doctors or the police would approve of this confidence, but—”

  He shrugged. “Miss Woburn has already proved her steady nerve and her great personal courage, but there comes a stage when courage breaks. I wish she looked more nervous, or at least showed her nervousness more; then if she did crack it would be much less harmful.”

  Merrow said thinly: “She freed my leg. She found Gedde dead and my uncle hurt. What else has she got to fear?”

  Mannering put the tips of his fingers together; the skin at the backs of his hands was slightly wrinkled, from a drying lotion, so that they did not look the hands of a young man.

  He was deliberately long-winded.

  “After all, she has no personal relationship with anyone here, and she hasn’t worked for your uncle long enough to have a sense of family loyalty. The—ah—unhappy fact is that she saw one or two men who attempted to kill her, surely you knew that. So did a man named Mannering. I believe the newspapers said that it was a road smash, but it went rather deeper. As a result of it, presumably because she can identify these men for the police, she has been put in a position of great danger. So has Mannering. In fact Mannering’s wife has been severely injured, and he was hurt in a bomb explosion. Such ruthlessness! It is difficult to assess the extent of the danger to Miss Woburn, of course, but she has a police guard day and night, and is followed by the police wherever she goes. There was one outside the window when she was here just now.”

  Mannering paused again.

  Merrow was quite still; hating all this.

  “That is why we are all so anxious to find out who is attacking her,” Mannering finished quietly. “At the moment, the police have to spend a lot of time and man power on checking your past. If you told the simple truth that manpower might be released for the other task, of finding the men who would like to see Miss Woburn dead. Perhaps when I see you tomorrow, you will have decided—”

  He broke off, and went to the door.

  When he began to open it, Merrow called roughly: “Wait a minute. Come here.”

  Mannering hesitated.

  He judged from the tone of the sick man’s voice that he wasn’t in a mood to argue any more. Part of Merrow’s trouble came from the bad time he’d had with his leg, but there must have been a lot on his mind before that, and possibly a great deal on his conscience; as on his uncle’s. The important thing now was to persuade him to tell everything he knew, to handle the situation so that he would not switch off, abruptly, in a defiant refusal to talk. Obviously, he was a creature of mood; it would take very little to sway him one way or the other.

  Mannering turned, and began to say: “I haven’t known Miss Woburn for long, I admit, but if we can’t find a way to help her—”

  He hoped that would do the trick.

  It might have done, but for the interruption.

  He heard footsteps, muffled by the hard rubber flooring of the passage, but didn’t look round. He assumed it was a nurse. The door had a hydraulic hinge, and he let it swing behind him, intent only on his effect on Merrow.

  The door didn’t close.

  He smelt a whiff of perfume, heard a rustle of movement followed by a startled: “Oh, I am sorry! I didn’t know anyone was with you.”

  Mannering saw Merrow staring at the girl, his expression blank at first, then twisting in a wry grin. Mannering glanced down at her. She had fair hair and bright, shiny make-up and a bountiful figure.

  This was the maid, Priscilla, and girls didn’t come any prettier or more provocative.

  “I could come back—”

  “You come right here, Prissy,” ordered Merrow, “and hold my hand. Tight. You may have saved me from making a grave mistake, this Mr. Richardson has a persuasive tongue.” His smile was still twisted wryly as he looked at Mannering. “If I think I can help any way at all, I’ll send a message.”

  That was final; and there was nothing Mannering could do to change it.

  Priscilla looked at him pleadingly, as if knowing she had upset him, but unwittingly – and as if she were trying to apologise. He shrugged and went out. He remembered the note of passion underlying the scene between Merrow and Joanna Woburn. A woman would say that you could never tell with a man. He wasn’t so sure. Merrow wasn’t acting in character over the maid; there had been defiance in his manner, a defensive attitude which suggested that he had been badly hurt and could only think of hurting back.

  But was that the explanation?

  Mannering wondered if Joanna had seen the girl come along, and if she had, what she would feel.

  He reached a corner.

  One look at Joanna’s set face told him that she had seen Priscilla go into the ward, and didn’t like it.

  The detective escort appeared to be completely oblivious.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Quiet of the Night

  Mannering put down the receiver of the extension telephone in his room, and sat back in a comfortable chair. He was fully dressed, but his shoes were off; a pair of his own slippers were in the fender, but he hadn’t put them on. He was smiling, for the Night Sister at the hospital in Chelsea had been wholly reassuring. Lorna was sleeping naturally, and the signs were good; not a definite all-clear yet, but very promising.

  He brooded over that walk along the Embankment. His mood hardened.

  He went over all that had happened during the day, and wasn’t sure that he yet had everything in the right perspective. Merrow was one puzzle, Joanna another. Undoubtedly a curious bond existed between them, as if intense dislike and deep affection lived side by side.

  Joanna had said little when they had returned to the house. Nothing had happened on the road. They’d dined together in the big dining-room, partly at Mrs. Baddelow’s insistence; then Joanna had excused herself, pleading a headache, and gone to her room. That was next door to Mannering’s. Adjoining on the other side of Joanna was a room with a communicating door, and one of the Orme policemen would spend the night in there. Another was on duty outside, making a regular patrol of the grounds. Were these precautions enough? A clock struck ten as Mannering pushed his feet into his slippers, and went outside. No one was in sight. He tried the handle of Joanna’s door; she had locked it, as the police requested. So no one could easily get in that way; one detective was at hand, the other outside.

  Mannering went downstairs, still uneasy in spite of the precautions. The danger for himself had eased, but he could see that of the girl’s more vividly. It was bad enough to know that she might be attacked; to think of her dead …

  He went downstairs, and found White, the policeman-butler, coming out of the dining-room.

  “Everything set, White?”

  “I think so, sir.”

  “The place is thoroughly wired for burglar alarm, I suppose?”

  “Oh, yes, thoroughly, sir.”

  “No weaknesses that you’ve discovered?”

  “We had a Landon man over here this morning, checking and servicing the whole system, and we had double sensitivity arranged for Miss Woburn’s room—door and window. If anyone gets at her—�
� White shrugged.

  “They won’t, sir.”

  “How about the grounds?”

  “One man there now, sir, and a second to come at midnight, when we’ve bedded down.” White managed to convey the impression that he thought ‘Mr. Richardson’ was being excessively fussy.

  “It seems fine,” Mannering said, “but still—”

  “You really needn’t worry, sir.”

  Mannering said mildly: “I hope you’re right, you know. We can’t check and double check enough.” His pause puzzled White, and then he added very softly: “She’s too young to die.”

  White caught his breath.

  “I don’t mean to say that I don’t fully understand the importance of it, sir.”

  “That’s good,” said Mannering. “Now, what about the roof?”

  “That’s easy, sir. Mr. Garfield kept the top floor empty and there are only three staircases down. We’ve sealed each off, sir—no possible danger at all.”

  What could go wrong?

  “It all sounds impregnable,” Mannering conceded. “I know I’m an old fusspot, but what about the staff? I gather they’ve all been thoroughly checked.”

  “Mr. Aylmer did that himself, sir, and one of the gardeners was stood off yesterday morning—nothing known against him, but he isn’t known around here, and the Super was playing safe. Miss Woburn authorised it, sir. All the other people are local, known them all our lives, so to speak—’cept Mrs. Baddelow, and she’s been checked. And they’re pretty angry. Mr. Garfield is very popular, and all of them have got very fond of Miss Woburn. Everyone’s on the alert.”

  “What time will you lock up?”

  “Midnight sharp,” answered White. “We’re waiting for old Jake, the odd job man, and Prissy—Priscilla. Usually get back on the eleven o’clock bus, I’m told, so they should be here at any minute.” He was beginning to sound impatient again. “Might as well go and have a look.”

  “If you don’t mind,” said Mannering apologetically, “I’ll come with you.”