The Terror Trap

by John Creasey

  Graydon was at large; and there was still O’Ray to consider.

  O’Ray was at his house, in Grosvenor Square. The house was surrounded, and all visitors would be watched, on the morrow, and followed. O’Ray would have a hard job to get away—

  Or so it seemed. But Burke wasn’t happy, even about that. The ruthlessness of this affair appalled him. He remembered the way Graydon had shot at him; but for his steel vest, he would have been dead, like the others. Graydon and his men killed without compunction.

  And Graydon was still at large.

  15

  STRIKE

  At eight o’clock next morning a heavy-eyed Jim Burke took a cold shower, dressed, and breakfasted, all without saying a word beyond: “Good-morning, Sam.”

  From the moment he had awakened, he had been thinking. He didn’t get very far. He couldn’t see past the possibility of O’Ray being in this thing; O’Ray, Katrina and Graydon were the only three who were, so far as he knew, alive. And, of course Lavis and Mary Brent, who were still at Surrey, and so far unattacked.

  There was some explanation. There must be.

  He turned over in his mind everything that had happened. He visualised every moment of the past week, seeing again the faces of the players in this grim game. Mary Brent—Lavis—Graydon—Tommy Wigham.....

  It was only as he drained the last of the coffee that he realised something.

  There was one man who was marginally connected with this affair which he hadn’t seen. There wasn’t a chance in a thousand that the man knew anything or was more than an accidental player, but Burke was in such a state that morning that he would have considered one chance in a million hopeful.

  On the night of the murders, Mary Brent had been driven to London from Cottesdon by a man named Braddon.

  Braddon had never been interrogated; it had been reasonably assumed that he had been a passing motorist who had been able to help Mary Brent. But:

  “I’ll see the gentleman,” Burke decided, and for some reason the decision cheered him.

  He telephoned Miller, at Scotland Yard, and that gruff gentleman promised that the constable who had helped break down the door of the Brake Street flat on the night of the first murders, would be at Scotland Yard by ten o’clock to answer questions.

  Next, he telephoned Byways.

  Tim Arran said yes, it was the nursing home, and it was the matron speaking. More, did Burke think Tim Arran wanted to be buried in Surrey, or was he only to die there?

  To Timothy’s extreme surprise, Burke didn’t try to be funny. Instead:

  “Tim—don’t,” he said. “There’s hell to pay up here. Are you all right?”

  “Nothing to report at all.” Tim was no longer flippant. “Unless you’d call Tommy Wigham anything. He’s been down here.”

  Burke whistled.

  “The deuce he has! How’d he locate it?”

  “He didn’t. He located me, when I was in Dorking yesterday afternoon. He’s a traveller in pants, and I was buying some handkerchiefs.”

  Burke visualised the pug nose and the freckles of Tommy Wigham as he said:

  “And he came to Byways with you?”

  “No. He came after me. He seems hopelessly keen on Mary Brent, Jim. I’m sorry for him.”

  “Did he see Mary?”

  “No.” Tim grinned to himself. “The orders, sir, were that no-one was to enter, sir, without permission. So—”

  “Tim,” said Jim Burke, wearily, “save your jokes for a better day. What happened to Wigham?”

  “He put up at the pub in the village. Said he’d call again this morning.”

  “What time?”

  “Mid-day. He’s selling more garments to more gentlemen in Dorking, earlier on.”

  “What time did you meet him, yesterday?”

  “Ohhh—elevenish.”

  “H’mm,” said Jim Burke, thoughtfully. “I think I’ll come down and see Mr Wigham, Tim. No—I don’t think he’s in it, but I don’t know he isn’t. I’ll be down by twelve. Keep him there, if he comes early.”

  “It’s done.”

  “Thanks. And tell Pat I have to hustle, but I’ll see her later. How’s young Lavis?”

  “Sitting up. He’s much better, Jim. A likeable lad, and he’s had a rough time. And I spy developments.”

  “Eh?”

  “Mary Brent—Richard Lavis.”

  “Oh.” Burke smiled fleetingly. “I’m glad someone’s getting fun out of the blasted job. All right, Tim. Twelve o’clock.”

  “Chin up,” said Timothy Arran, replacing the receiver, and Burke smiled again.

  He felt better. The Wigham development gave him something concrete to think about; so did the vague business of Mr Braddon. Two more telephone calls told him (a) that Sir Marcus O’Ray was still at his house, and (b) that Gordon Craigie was in agreement with the suggested trip to Surrey. Nothing of any kind had developed since that early morning rush, beyond the fact that Dodo Trale was now ‘comfortable’.

  At half past nine, Burke arrived at Scotland Yard. Miller was there, and so was the policeman—P.C. Merridew.

  He told his story concisely. He had been hailed on the night of Fordham’s murder by a gentleman—he stressed the word ‘gentleman’—who had afterwards given his name as James Braddon, of Nineteen Quentock Street, W.l. There had been a girl with Braddon and she had been obviously excited. Braddon had told him there was trouble on the second floor of Seventeen Brake Street and after knocking at the door and getting no answer, they had broken into the room and——

  “That’s far enough,” Burke stopped him. “What did Mr Braddon do afterwards?”

  “He explained, sir,” said P.C. Merridew, “that he had given the young lady a lift, and did not know her. He gave his name and address, in case he’d be wanted at the inquest, and then he went off, sir. He had a grey Hispano, number ZYX 8132.”

  “Good work,” approved Burke. “He wasn’t called at the inquest, was he?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What was he like to look at?”

  “Fairish tall, and good-looking, sir. He had a grey moustache, and his hair was grey too. But in the dark——”

  “It’ll help,” Burke smiled. “Thanks a lot.”

  As a proudly flushed P.C. left Miller’s office, Burke thumbed through a telephone directory. Mr James Braddon of Nineteen Quentock Street, it appeared, was a solicitor: telephone number, Mayfair 31245. Burke called it.

  A man’s voice, high-pitched and somewhat peevish, answered him. Burke frowned a little, hardly knowing why.

  “Mr Braddon, please.”

  “Braddon speaking,” said the other, intimating by his brusqueness that he had no time to spare.

  “Will you be in for half an hour?” asked Burke. “I would like to see you, Mr Braddon, on important private business——”

  “I’ll be in,” said Mr Braddon, and rang off.

  Burke looked at Miller, and laughed.

  “He knows his own mind,” he said. “And that’s more than a lot of people do, Horace. Coming with me?”

  Miller said he was. More murders had been committed in the last few days than he liked, and he was getting worried. Incidental murder meant little; it had always happened and it always would. But organised murder was different.

  More than once, as they made their way to Quentock Street, Burke wondered whether he had put his foot in it. If Mr Braddon had anything to hide, he had ample time to do it in; in fact he had ample time to make a complete disappearance.

  Burke hurried; not for the first time, his Talbot broke the thirty-mile limit. Consequently it took them only ten minutes to reach Quentock Street, and three more to be ushered into Braddon’s presence.

  And then Burke had a shock.

  Mr James Braddon, solicitor, was thin, short and obviously a dyspeptic. By no stretch of the imagination could he be called ‘Fairish tall and good-looking’. His moustache was not grey; it was sandy to mouse, like his hair, and straggled, wispishly, r
ound his lips.

  But Mr Braddon had spirit.

  As the two big men who had entered his pleasantly-furnished study-type office, he obviously guessed at once that something had surprised them.

  “What is it, gentlemen?” he asked; more crisply than his appearance led them to expect.

  Indeed, after five minutes, they discovered him to be the absolute antithesis of his looks. He was pleasant, apparently good-natured, helpful; and he did not fly into a rage when he learned that a tall, good-looking man owning a grey Hispano had falsely given his name and address. He placed himself entirely at the disposal of the police, and he suggested it was just possible that one of his late—even present—clients had given his name and address on the spur of the moment, not wanting to be involved in murder. Murder was an unpleasant business—and society was, regrettably, only too ready to misconstrue apparent facts. The story of the night drive through Hampshire and Surrey to London was—wasn’t it?—liable to misconstruction, and the said gentleman might, for instance, be a married man.

  Mr Braddon’s dry smile suggested that his visitors could obviously fill in the blanks.

  “In fact,” he summarised, peeping over the top of his rimless pince-nez, “there are a dozen good reasons why the man should have given a false address. I will not try to evade the obvious: he knows me; mine was the first name that occurred to him when confronted with his—er—problem. Which suggests that he knew me in my professional capacity. I should say,” said Mr Braddon, judiciously, “that I have at least forty gentlemen who would roughly answer the description, on my books. Or they were on my books.”

  “How long have you been in retirement?” asked Burke.

  “Eighteen months, within a few days.”

  “I see.”

  Burke’s glance met Miller’s. Both were quite sure that Mr Braddon wanted watching. He might be all he seemed; but he certainly might not.

  “Would it be possible,” Burke asked pleasantly, “to see a list of your clients—preferably both past and present?”

  “Certainly,” said Mr Braddon, promptly.

  He rose from his chair and turned to a steel filing cabinet immediately behind him. He had not been put out by the question, Burke noted: but had he been ready for it?

  Three minutes later, he was prepared to wager that Mr James Braddon was all he appeared to be. For when he checked quickly down the alphabetical list of Mr Braddon’s clients, past and present, he found exactly what he expected:

  O’Ray, Sir Marcus, Kt. O.B.E. Director, 91c, Grosvenor Street, S.W.I.

  Miller’s foot pressed Burke’s as he, too, saw the name. They found no others that interested them, but Burke hesitated as he handed back the book. Then he reached a decision:

  “Mr Braddon, I have a question to ask you, in the strictest confidence. Perhaps I should mention that it is official business——”

  “Mr Burke,” said Mr Braddon, drily, “I have practised as a solicitor for thirty-five years.”

  “Thank you,” Burke smiled. “Mr Braddon—do you handle all of Sir Marcus O’Ray’s affairs?”

  “Oh dear, no, I did at one time handle the affairs of his Hampshire estate, but he has recently let Cottesdon House and the grounds. The gentleman you want to see is Mr Graydon. Er—the press has, I believe, mentioned his name recently.”

  But Burke had no time for humour.

  “Did you say Cottesdon House?” he demanded. “In Hampshire?”

  “That’s right. A wonderful place, Mr Burke. Three miles from Cottesdon village, ten or so from Winchester, and with some wonderful country about it. Wonderful.”

  “Good God!” said Burke.

  Sir Marcus O’Ray had a country estate near Cottesdon. Mary Brent’s father had been murdered at a house on the outskirts of Cottesdon village. O’Ray—it seemed—had given her the help to get quickly from Cottesdon to London....

  For a few moments, Burke was silent, his mind racing.

  “What you tell me,” he finally explained, “is something of a shock.”

  Mr Braddon pounced.

  “I thought it would be. You see, O’Ray had a grey Hispano car. I understand he sold it, on the morning after poor Fordham’s murder.” Mr Braddon paused for a fraction of a second to rescue his pince nez. “I noticed the Cottesdon murder, Mr Burke, and I connected it with Fordham’s.”

  “Why did you connect them?” Burke snapped.

  “Because I knew Brent well,” said the surprising Mr Braddon, unabashed. “I advised him strongly against going to Rania. His health was anything but good, and I was sorry for that poor girl of his. I tried to find Mary afterwards, but I didn’t succeed. I hope—” Mr Braddon smiled enquiringly, “she is in good hands?”

  Jim Burke leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath. Miller seemed quite speechless. With another quick smile, Mr Braddon stood up and went to a small wall-cupboard.

  “It’s rather early, gentlemen, but perhaps you would like a drink? Or if you prefer tea——?”

  “A large whisky, please,” said Horace Miller, coming to himself at the chinking of glasses.

  Burke sat back, trying to think it out.

  Mr James Braddon, it appeared, had known John Brent for many years, both in his professional capacity and as a personal friend. He told his visitors that Brent had been worried after the finish of the Ranian oil concession affair, and he confirmed Mary Brent’s statement that the murdered man had bought the house in Cottesdon hoping to be ‘safe’. What he had been afraid of, Mr Braddon did not know.

  It appeared that immediately after Brent had bought the Cottesdon place Sir Marcus O’Ray had offered his—the Manor—for a three year tenancy: O’Ray had not stayed at his country residence after Brent had gone to live in the village.

  When Burke and Miller left Quentock Street, the thing that remained firmly in their minds was that Sir Marcus O’Ray knew most of what there was to know about the Granton oil concession affair. Both of them were convinced that it had been O’Ray who had acted the good Samaritan to Mary Brent that night. His being in Cottesdon might, of course, have been accidental.

  It wasn’t likely, however.

  On Mary Brent’s statement, two men had been in the village that night; one had followed her from the house, the other had been at the wheel of a car which, later, had turned on to the Andover Road. If those two men had wanted to stop Mary Brent from getting away, or from getting to London, they could have done so. It was safe to assume they had been armed.

  It was also safe to assume one of them had just killed John Brent. It was equally safe to hazard that if they had badly wanted to get at Mary Brent, the arrival of a stranger would not have deterred them.

  But the arrival of a man they knew, who was their leader, would have stopped them. They would have relied on him to handle the situation.

  Now, Burke thought he was beginning to see some light.

  O’Ray had taken charge of Mary Brent. He had seen her safely to London; he had been with her at the discovery of Fordham’s body. He had, in fact, impeccable alibis for the Fordham job, and the part he had played would almost certainly have eschewed suspicion.

  That was, if he had given his true name.

  But he hadn’t. He had taken a risk, for O’Ray was a public figure and even P.C. Merridew might have recognized him. Burke, reasoning hard, told himself that O’Ray would not have taken that risk without some substantial motive. It looked all odds that O’Ray had originally intended to disclose his real name and thus, in all likelihood, provide for himself a sound reason for his future interest in the affair. If Burke had known from the start that O’Ray had been the means of discovering Fordham’s body, he told himself, he would not have been surprised in the slightest degree by O’Ray’s appearance at the Fordham flat on the previous night.

  But he couldn’t for the life of him understand why O’Ray—presuming the pseudo-Braddon to have been O’Ray—had given his name as Braddon.

  All he had to work on, was the fact that O’Ray
had given that false name at the last minute. He must have done, or he would not have chosen a name and address that could be easily checked. Something, then, had happened right at the last minute to make him want to avoid recognition. It was even possible that the something had occurred while O’Ray was in the flat.

  “Find the reason for that,” Burke was walking now, along Bond Street with Miller—”and we’ll know a lot more. Here’s a ‘phone, Horace.”

  Miller grunted agreement, and went into one booth while Burke went to a second.

  To Scotland Yard, Miller gave instructions that the past life of Mr James Braddon, solicitor, be inquired into. He also gave instructions for O’Ray’s Grosvenor Street house to be surrounded by police, to reinforce Craigie’s men. For they were going to detain O’Ray: It seemed to both of them the only possible course of action.

  Burke, meanwhile, was telephoning Craigie. Having given him a résumé of the things he had learned, he added:

  “The idea is to get O’Ray under lock and key, Gordon.”

  “On what charge?” asked Craigie.

  “In brief, deliberately giving false information to the police. That’s strong enough to hold him, on the Fordham murder.”

  Burke could hear the tapping of a pipe-stem against strong teeth. Then Craigie grunted:

  “All right. But be careful with him.”

  As Burke stepped out of his telephone booth, he could see that Miller was still talking in the other one. Hailing a bawling newsboy, he idly bought a paper: there was rarely anything but racing to shout about in the morning editions of the evening papers.

  But as he glanced at the front page, his lips set very grimly and his eyes grew hard. For the headlines ran:

  * * *

  LIGHTNING COAL STRIKE SPREADS MINERS IDLE IN RHONDDA, DURHAM AND NORTHUMBERLAND

  * * *

  And the first words of the news-story were:

  * * *

  The strike commenced this morning at the Granton pit, belonging to the Granton Collieries Company. There had been a long-standing grievance....