The Baron at Large

by John Creasey

Now he needed to put miles between himself and Barnes as quickly as he could.

  There were other factors. If this was a raid, and there could be no other explanation of Bristow’s call after one o’clock at night, men might be stationed at the back of the house. The girl was in almost as dangerous a position as himself. How could she explain walking past those two open doors and yet claim to have seen neither her father nor uncle unconscious? Quick wits were needed, and perhaps she had them.

  He had to chance it, to stay meant inevitable disaster.

  He hurried along the passage to the servants’ quarters.

  In his pocket was Yvonne’s gun, as well as his gas-pistol.

  Robbery with violence. Unlawful possession of firearms. Indictment after indictment flashed through his mind, yet without affecting the quick decisiveness of his movements. He reached the door he had forced less than an hour before and very gently pulled it open.

  He saw no one, heard nothing, not even the voices from the hall.

  He went forward, towards the little pathway alongside the house. As he neared the front garden, the shadows of the cypress hedge gave him cover. He was feeling easier for, apparently, Bristow had not surrounded the house with men.

  But he had left one at the front.

  The Baron saw Bristow’s green Morris, and the plainclothes man standing in the carriageway. It was impossible to climb the hedge: he had to pass the man to get outside.

  Now he could hear voices. A light was coming from one of the downstairs front rooms. He could hear Yvonne’s voice, and the tones told him that she was treating Bristow to a gust of Gallic temperament. It would give him five minutes or more before Bristow discovered what had happened.

  The shadow of the man standing in the gateway reached almost to the Baron’s feet. With the tool-kit and the money he had taken for Yvonne in his pocket, a single false move and he was finished.

  Keeping close to the hedge he approached the short driveway. Slowly, fearful of jingling coins together, he withdrew a coin from his pocket. Still hidden by the shadows of the hedge, he was now ten feet from the watcher, whom he recognised as Drew, one of Bristow’s most recent aides. He dared go no further.

  With a deep breath Mannering tossed the coin into the air.

  It seemed an age before it clinked against the pavement. At the sound, sharp and clear despite the wind. Drew turned abruptly.

  Mannering moved.

  He went fast, his final leap making no sound. Gloved hands fastened on Drew’s throat, stifling a cry of warning. There was one charge left in the gas-pistol, and the Baron pressed the trigger, pointing the gun awkwardly into Drew’s face. The man gasped, choked and then went limp.

  Mannering waited for five seconds, and then dragged the inert body towards the hedge. But as he moved from the gateway he heard a gruff voice from the next garden.

  “That you, Drew?’

  So the place was surrounded. Mannering’s heart beat a rat-tat-tat as he stepped boldly into the roadway, towards Bristow’s Morris. He steadied his voice and called back in what he hoped would be taken for Drew’s hushed accents, then opened the car door and slipped in. As he pulled at the self-starter and listened desperately for the engine to wake to life, he heard footsteps, and suddenly the burly form of the detective appeared in the gateway.

  The engine hummed. Mannering let in the clutch and eased off the brake.

  The man leapt forward, but the car swerved past him, humming along Castelnau towards Barnes. The only road the Baron knew well was that which ran over the Common, and he went all out.

  There was still a fear in his mind, for in a quarter of an hour at the outside Bristow could have men at his flat, and it was impossible to get there in under half an hour. He needed a hide-out and an alibi, and he knew that the one place he might reach in time was Lorna’s Chelsea studio. But Bristow knew it too – his safety depended on the time Bristow took to send men there.

  As ex-Detective Sergeant Errol had told the Baron, Bristow and the police had good reason to suspect that much of Mendleson’s money was not honestly earned. The moment Mendleson had been mentioned, Bristow had set inquiries afoot concerning Cornelius Gillison – a name which Gillison had taken by deed poll ten years before. But the processes of the law, as Bristow knew to his cost, were slow and cumbersome. He could not raid Gillison’s house without a search warrant, nor get the Assistant Commissioner to pass a warrant without presenting him with reasonable proof of Gillison’s complicity in the theft – or in some form of crime.

  For three days Bristow had searched for an excuse. Gillison’s house had been watched closely, and a man whose name appeared to be Smith had been seen to pass to and fro frequently. Neither Bristow, nor the Yard, had a record of Smith; but when he visited Jake Rummell Bristow believed he had Gillison where he wanted; at least, he had grounds for a warrant.

  Sir David Ffoulkes, one of the most human and accommodating A.C.s the Yard had known, and who chafed against the irksome regulations as much as his men, had not hesitated to give one. The indirect line between Smith, Rummell and Gillison was an excuse, good enough to use as an argument if the raid went wrong.

  Bristow knew the advantage of a surprise raid and decided to execute it late at night.

  The sullen-faced manservant who answered the door was insolent, and Bristow had to frighten him. Frightening him also scared the girl who had come downstairs. In Bristow’s opinion she was indecently clad; he had an inherent suspicion of French women, even half-French women. In his view she had been sent downstairs while her father tried to get the stuff out of the house. Her bright, frightened eyes, her incoherent spate of words, her sudden shrieks were all convincing enough of fear. Whether she was scared by the night call, or had any reason to fear the police, Bristow did not know, but so shrill were her ejaculations that neither he nor Moss heard Mannering’s scuffle with Drew, nor the start of the car. It was only faintly that he heard the ring of the front door bell.

  Moss opened the door.

  ‘Edwards! What the devil’s happened?’

  Bristow moved fast. He flung the door open as Edwards half-fell into the hall. His face was bruised and his eyes were heavy, as though recently unconscious. He was breathing hard, trying to find words.

  ‘G-got—a-away! G-got—’

  ‘Outside,’ snapped Bristow, and light streamed from the hall as he rushed along the drive. When he found his car gone and Drew unconscious, he had an idea of what had happened.

  Moss sniffed suspiciously.

  ‘I—’ He sniffed again. ‘Mr. Bristow!’

  Bristow, halfway to the door and the telephone, turned about.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Gas, that’s what.’

  Bristow reached the unconscious Drew, and bent over him. The faint smell of ether came to him, and there flashed through his mind thought of Mannering.

  ‘The Baron’s been here! Leave him, get upstairs fast!’

  They reached the hall together.

  Bristow snatched up the hand-microphone. It did not immediately occur to him that it was dead, and he banged the platform up and down violently. As the realisation came to him, he saw the open battery-box, and the pulled and cut wire.

  Bristow was close to losing his temper. The events of the past five minutes would have been enough in themselves, but in addition there was the possibility that Mannering had been here. But to lose his temper was to lose time. He stepped to Edwards, who was sitting in the hall chair, dazed and bewildered. He would not be fit enough to go to a telephone for ten minutes or more.

  ‘Better go myself,’ Bristow said aloud. ‘There’ll be one next door.’

  He turned, but he had not moved towards the door when he heard his name called from upstairs. The voice of Inspector Moss, usually so quiet and self-possessed held a high-pitched note, as unfamiliar as it was alarming. Bristow hurried upstairs, and from the landing he called down to the manservant.

  ‘Go to the alley at the back of the house and tell my
man to come in!’

  Moss was not in sight, but a light was coming from the room on the left. Bristow reached the door.

  He stood quite still.

  He needed every atom of self-control at that moment. He saw Moss bending over a bed, saw and recognised the unconscious Mendleson on it. At once he was sure that the Baron had been there, and whatever stolen jewels there might have been on the premises would have disappeared with him. With that conviction came the hope that it was possible to stop the Baron getting to his flat. Minutes had been wasted, but the moment a call was out for Bristow’s car Mannering would be finished.

  ‘I must telephone the Yard, Moss,’ Bristow said roughly. ‘You stay here.’

  And then the most fiendish noise of that fiendish night for Bristow, split across his ears. The girl, from the room opposite him, was screaming. The first cry came so clearly and so horribly that Bristow could not move, and Moss jumped up in alarm.

  Through the half-open door Bristow could see the girl’s back. Her arms were flung towards the ceiling as those heart-rending screams came out in quick succession.

  Bristow pushed past her. The safe was open, empty jewel-cases littered the floor, and he caught the winking of what looked like diamonds. On the bed lay Gillison, quite unconscious.

  The urgent need for telephoning was swallowed up in the necessity to make sure that Gillison was alive. With the light above his head casting strange shadows over his face, the man looked ghastly. Bristow bent over him, feeling for his pulse. His own nerves were jittery, and it was some time before he made sure that the pulse was beating.

  Would there be no end to the madness of that night?

  For in the passage stood three women, two young and one middle-aged. The girls held pokers, and the other a broom which she gripped threateningly. Automatically he backed away.

  ‘You stay right where you are, mister. Aggie, go and phone for the police. Go on, ‘urry!’

  Bristow clutched at the remnants of his self-control.

  ‘Stay where you are!’ The authority of his voice had its effect, and the girl Aggie stopped, but the women gripped their weapons no less firmly.

  ‘I am a policeman,’ Bristow said, wiping the sweat from his forehead and taking out his wallet. He selected a card, and the woman stretched a hand out for it suspiciously. She read it.

  ‘’Ow do I know it’s youm? You ain’t got no uniform.’

  ‘Eet ees so,’ said Yvonne from the door, so abruptly that Bristow jumped. ‘’Ow we know? Answer zat!’

  ‘You’ll know all right,’ Bristow said sharply. ‘Another word out of any of you and I’ll have you sent to the station. Is that clear?’

  They were dubious, but subdued, and he believed that Yvonne Gillison’s interruptions were deliberate, that she meant to stall him. But salvation, in the form of a uniformed policeman arrived before any of them spoke again. The patrolman had heard the screams, hurried into the house, seen Edwards – who had enough sense to gasp his name and say where Bristow was – and lost no time in getting upstairs.

  But another five minutes passed before Bristow was able to start for the telephone, next door. He was met by a scared householder, disturbed by the screams, and was given reluctant permission to use the telephone. It was fully twenty-five minutes after the Baron had started for Chelsea before Bristow succeeded in sending the general call out for his Morris, and ordering squad cars to be sent to Mannering’s Brook Street flat and Lorna Fauntley’s Chelsea studio took even longer.

  But by then the Chief Inspector had lost hope of getting Mannering for that night’s escapade.

  In an hour some sort of order had been restored at 31x Castelnau. There had been the two chloroformed men to bring round, explanations to make and hear. Gillison had his wits about him sufficiently to deny that there was anything in the house that should not be. He seemed confident enough, and as the Yard men searched his confidence seemed more and more justified.

  No one admitted seeing the Baron.

  When the questions were over and Bristow was sitting in the lounge with Yvonne and her father and Mendleson, one fact emerged. The girl had passed the rooms where her father and uncle had been unconscious, but had not seen them: or, Bristow thought glumly, refused to admit she had.

  ‘I tell you, no I see nothing,’ Yvonne persisted. ‘I heard ze ringing, I am awake. I come down, and Grant, he comes too. At the door I find you. From then you know what happened.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Bristow testily. ‘But you must have realised the lights were on in the rooms, why didn’t you look in?’

  ‘I hurried to find who comes before the ring wakes everyone. My mother comes back sometimes, wit’ no key. I thought it was her, can you not understand that?’

  ‘All right,’ sighed Bristow. ‘That’ll do.’

  ‘I hope,’ Gillison said suavely, ‘that my daughter can retire now, Inspector.’

  Bristow nodded. Yvonne went out, while Bristow settled back to deal with the two men. Sitting opposite him, remarkably alike, equally clever, unscrupulous, sharp-witted and acquainted with the many complexities of the law, they presented no easy task. He waited for Gillison to begin.

  ‘After all this fuss,’ Gillison said, ‘I hope you can tell me what inspired your interest?’

  ‘Certainly. A regular caller here is known to be in communication with a receiver of stolen goods.’

  ‘Surely not the only reason for a raid at this time of night?’ protested Gillison.

  ‘It’s enough.’

  ‘As to that, I shall, of course, get legal opinion. What do you make of it, Matthew?’

  Mendleson’s dark eyes mocked the policeman’s.

  ‘Not much, I’m afraid. The visit was quite unjustified, and becomes perilously near persecution, Mr. Bristow. However, as I see it the biggest error is in allowing the thief to go. My brother appears to have lost over five hundred pounds, not to mention his wallet. And the police were actually surrounding the premises!’ Mendleson sighed. ‘It isn’t going to make good reading in the Press, Mr. Bristow. Tell me, why did you come? I understood you were working on the Beverley Towers robbery.’

  ‘That is so.’

  Mendleson raised his brows.

  ‘Indeed? I hope you don’t suspect that I helped to steal my own jewels?’

  Bristow said nothing.

  ‘Well, well,’ purred Gillison. ‘I don’t doubt I shall hear from you again, Inspector. You will, of course, be hearing from me.’

  Bristow and Moss returned to the Yard. Bristow learned that his car was still missing, that Mannering had been found at Lorna Fauntley’s studio. He claimed that he was spending the night there, and had been there since twelve o’clock. Tring was sent for, and swore Mannering had not gone out through Brook Street: the man watching the back of the Brook Street flat was equally certain that he had not gone through the alleys.

  ‘I’ll see Mannering in the morning,’ Bristow said tersely. He did not expect to get results from interviewing the Baron; he knew Mannering’s story would have no loopholes, and that it was just another trick against the police. Wearily Bristow was driven to Gresham Street, Chelsea, where he lived.

  As he stepped out he saw a stationary red rear light outside his house.

  The Baron had returned the borrowed car.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Studio

  Five minutes after Mannering had reached Lorna’s studio, the police had called. The disguise so laboriously built up had gone, an apparently sleepy, tousled man had answered their insistent knocking. He had raised no objection when the police-sergeant asked to search the studio. The man might be suspicious of the clothes in the wardrobe which did not seem like Mannering’s, but everything incriminating was floating or sinking in the Thames, three minutes’ walk from the flat.

  Gresham Street, where Bristow lived, was five minutes’ walk in the other direction, which had enabled the Baron to leave the car and hurry to the studio. After half an hour’s pottering, the police ha
d gone, and Mannering had locked and bolted the door, then helped himself to a strong whisky-and-soda.

  The first glow of triumph had passed. He was free for the time being, but the girl was in a nasty hole. Had she the wits to say nothing, to refuse to answer all questions?

  Sleep seemed impossible while that question remained unanswered, but he was dead to the world when the sharp rapping came again on the door. Alert on the instant, he pulled back the bolts. A wild-eyed Bristow was standing there.

  ‘Oh, my lord!’ exclaimed Mannering. ‘Not again!’

  ‘You’ve carried the joke too far, Mannering!’

  ‘Joke?’ Mannering guessed that Bristow had had a completely unsuccessful evening, that he was tired out, that in all likelihood he had called so soon because of the car outside his house. He felt sorry for the policeman, but his own policy was clear. ‘I don’t think much of a joke calling me out of bed twice in the same night, and I’m tired of it. Have you recovered the Glorias?’

  ‘You know damned well I haven’t, you’ve got them yourself.’

  Mannering’s voice was low and biting.

  ‘So it’s the old game? The police are baffled and they try to blame me or the Baron. Bristow, I’m not having men follow me about as they’ve been doing for the past three days. It’s got to finish.’

  Bristow gathered about him the last remnants of self-control.

  ‘Then tell me: where have you been tonight?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘You were at your flat at eleven o’clock.’

  ‘And left at half-past.’

  ‘You weren’t seen to leave.’

  Mannering shrugged.

  ‘What time did you get here?’

  ‘Midnight, as near as dammit.’

  ‘Why did you come?’

  Mannering dropped his sharp manner, knowing that Bristow was not seriously hoping to get past his guard.

  ‘Well, Bill, if you must know the truth I was annoyed at finding Tring peeping at me from behind every lamp-post. I decided to teach him a lesson. I didn’t fancy a hotel, so I came here. It’s time you had a drink.’ He poured out a generous tot of whisky.