The Baron at Large Read online

  Copyright & Information

  The Baron at Large

  First published in 1939

  © John Creasey Literary Management Ltd.; House of Stratus 1939-2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of John Creasey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2014 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  EAN ISBN Edition

  0755135237 9780755135233 Print

  0755138570 9780755138579 Kindle

  0755136896 9780755136896 Epub

  0755145402 9780755145409 Epdf

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  John Creasey – Master Storyteller - was born in Surrey, England in 1908 into a poor family in which there were nine children, John Creasey grew up to be a true master story teller and international sensation. His more than 600 crime, mystery and thriller titles have now sold 80 million copies in 25 languages. These include many popular series such as Gideon of Scotland Yard, The Toff, Dr Palfrey and The Baron.

  Creasey wrote under many pseudonyms, explaining that booksellers had complained he totally dominated the ‘C’ section in stores. They included:

  Gordon Ashe, M E Cooke, Norman Deane, Robert Caine Frazer, Patrick Gill, Michael Halliday, Charles Hogarth, Brian Hope, Colin Hughes, Kyle Hunt, Abel Mann, Peter Manton, J J Marric, Richard Martin, Rodney Mattheson, Anthony Morton and Jeremy York.

  Never one to sit still, Creasey had a strong social conscience, and stood for Parliament several times, along with founding the One Party Alliance which promoted the idea of government by a coalition of the best minds from across the political spectrum.

  He also founded the British Crime Writers’ Association, which to this day celebrates outstanding crime writing. The Mystery Writers of America bestowed upon him the Edgar Award for best novel and then in 1969 the ultimate Grand Master Award. John Creasey’s stories are as compelling today as ever.

  Chapter One

  Invitation

  A man sat in a house at Barnes, and regarded with some annoyance a short, plump visitor, whose dark limpid eyes gazed back at him sleepily.

  ‘You must not raise arguments, Mervin, I’ve told you that before. The Kallinov collection will be at Beverley Towers on the twenty-third, and we shall take it. Smith and Rogerson will operate, with help from inside.’

  ‘Reliable help?’ murmured Mervin.

  ‘Of course! I am told, too, that the Baron will be present. It will be quite simple to encourage the police in thinking he is at the bottom of it.’

  ‘Who is the Baron?’ inquired Mervin, gently.

  The other pursed his lips.

  ‘I am not sure of his exact identity – few people are. But I am sure that he will be one of several guests at the house. The police, I understand, have their suspicions. At the first news of a robbery the Baron will immediately be suspect; it should not be difficult for us to strengthen that suspicion.’

  ‘It could be done,’ agreed Mervin.

  ‘It will be done,’ asserted the other firmly.

  Mervin’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘I find it a little hard to believe that we can get our hands on a quarter of a million pounds’ worth of jewellery, with the Baron nearby. Do Smith and Rogerson know he will be there?’

  The other laughed harshly.

  ‘Don’t be a fool. Do you want to give them cold feet? They can learn about that afterwards.’

  ‘If I were taking an active part in a burglary,’ Mervin said, ‘I should want to know a lot more. Who was helping me there, for instance.’

  ‘They’ll be told, on the night of the job.’

  ‘You won’t forget that I warned you of unforeseen difficulties, with the Baron about?’

  ‘I won’t need to remember,’ snapped the other. ‘The Kallinovs will disappear under the Baron’s nose, and the police will take him. All right, I shan’t want you anymore.’

  The man at the desk waited for the door to close on his visitor, then lifted the telephone.

  John Mannering read the invitation with some amusement: Lord Sharron hoped that he would be able to visit Beverley Towers for the third weekend in January, and that he would bring the Gloria diamonds with him.

  ‘For, as you know,’ the letter went on, ‘the whole Kallinov collection is now in England, and to collect each piece under the same roof will be an historic occasion.’

  Three years before, such an invitation would have been tantamount to asking the Baron to raid the collection: but Sharron had no idea that the Baron and Mannering were the same man.

  The one was a legend, the most successful and most feared jewel thief in England, the other, a man-about-town, member of one of the oldest families in the country. Only a few people had come to suspect that they were identical.

  There had been a time when the Baron had robbed both for excitement and gain, but that was long past. The temptation, however, remained, and this was likely to strain it to the utmost, more especially as his interest in the Kallinov collection had always been keen.

  Mannering, wondering what precautions Sharron would take against theft, could not repress a sharp regret that the Baron, as such, was dead.

  He sat down and penned a note of acceptance, then set out to find whether Lorna Fauntley, the girl with whom he was in love, would be at Beverley. That her father, owner of three of the Kallinov pieces, would be there, was a certainty.

  There was no real suspicion of malpractice about Mr. Matthew Mendleson, although he played the markets dangerously at times. Short, stocky, florid, his peculiarly light grey eyes regarded his wife with sardonic amusement.

  ‘Most disturbing for you, my dear, but the invitation has already been accepted.’

  ‘But, Matthew—’

  ‘Must we argue?’

  Clara Mendleson’s stout body drooped. Her brown eyes had the expression of a wounded doe’s. A touch of commonness – understandable since she had been Aldgate born and bred – did not detract from her popularity, although at times it enraged her husband.

  In her early married life she had been happy with Matthew, but now they did no more than keep up appearances; and Clara had taken a strange, secret love of her own. Mendleson, knowing who the man was, took no apparent notice, content to play on his wife’s nerves with covert innuendo.

  He watched her sardonically as she turned from his over-luxurious study in their South Audley Street house.

  ‘Clara, my dear, I hope I haven’t interfered with any of your private arrangements?’

  ‘No, no, of course not!’

  She was panic-stricken as she hurried to her own room. But in five minutes she had taken a small white powder, in ten a hint of her earlier beauty returned and her eyes were shining.

  Mendleson re-read Sharron’s invitation.

  ‘… to collect each piece under the same roof … will be historic …’

  A quarter of a million pounds’ worth of j
ewels under one roof! The thought of realisable assets of such value had an unexpected effect on him. Forgotten were his dealings on the Stock Exchange, his company promotions, his involved financial commitments.

  All the Kallinov collection would be at Beverley. Could he get them for himself?

  ‘Oh, John will be there,’ said Theo Crane lightly. ‘I don’t know about Lorna.’

  His wife smiled. She was sitting at her dressing-table, brushing her long, lovely hair, and Crane stepped towards her. He was small, handsome, dark and quick-witted.

  ‘We’ll go, of course,’ he said.

  ‘We’d better, I suppose. As you put their antiquated ruin to rights, we can hardly refuse to stay in it!’

  ‘Quite a job that. I’m really proud of it. The strong-room was the most difficult. Sharron wouldn’t have the jewels moved, and I was on edge until it was finished.’

  It was two years since Crane, an architect who specialised in the reconstruction of old houses had ‘modernised’ Beverley Towers. His hobby was precious stones, and he owned the Rianti sapphires and the Kallinov rubies. It was his interest in jewels that had introduced him both to Sharron and to John Mannering.

  Rene, married for ten years and in love with her husband, sometimes wondered whether she knew all that was in his mind.

  ‘There’s a note of acceptance from Fauntley this morning,’ said Lord Sharron to his wife. ‘Everything’s turning out most satisfactorily. I’ve never wanted anything more in my life than to see that collection here!’

  Lady Sharron’s voice was sharp.

  ‘I’ve no doubt at all that you’ll try to buy the lot before you’ve finished.’

  ‘Unfortunately that’s out of the question,’ said Sharron regretfully.

  Tall, broad, inclined to put on flesh since his fiftieth birthday, Sharron lived for his hunting, his jewels and his position.

  His wife was a magnificent-looking woman, tall, stately, deep-breasted, ruling the Towers with efficiency and arrogance. Of their two children, her favourite was their son; her daughter had roused her antagonism by getting engaged to a ‘nobody’, and Sharron was hardly aware that his own opposition to the match was inspired by his wife.

  She had been worried by other things of late.

  Though he had kept it from her, she knew that Sharron had lost heavily on the stock markets, and was planning to start a new venture with Mendleson. She disliked Mendleson, but not strongly enough to offer opposition, if there was any chance of reviving the Sharron fortunes. Though faintly uneasy at their association, she knew that Sharron expected to create a big impression on the financier with the display of his own jewels.

  They were, indeed, unique, even the hardened collectors being stirred at the sight of them arranged in the well-guarded library close to the strong-room. One might prefer diamonds to rubies, or emeralds to sapphires, but of their kind these gems were superb. The room seemed afire with the glory of the stones, and as John Mannering examined them – with Fay, Sharron’s daughter – he was aware again of the temptation they presented.

  He had suggested that it would be wise to have a special police guard, but Sharron had scoffed at the idea.

  ‘I’ve two armed watchmen, and the strong-room is impregnable,’ he said.

  Mannering had seen the locks, the electrical control, and the alarm system, but knew that with the right tools not only he but any expert cracksman could get into the strong-room in an hour.

  The Towers stood alone. Apart from cottages there was no house nearer than three miles. Three roads led from it, while in the grounds themselves, shrubs and copses afforded ample cover.

  As the jewels were being taken back to the strong-room, Fay and her fiancé, a rather boyish and gloomy-looking man named Armstrong, slipped through a side-door into the garden.

  It was cold. A bright half-moon showed up the white frost as it settled on meadows and hedgerows: the grass crunched sharply as Fay and Armstrong walked from the house.

  Armstrong’s head was bare. Fay, too, was hatless, the frost crisping the halo of her dark hair. Her face, small and piquant, looked worried.

  ‘Hill, what’s the matter?’

  ‘Matter? Why, nothing.’

  They walked without speaking past an ornamental lake, now frozen over.

  ‘Well, anyhow,’ Armstrong said at last, ‘if there is, it’s nothing new. You know well enough that I’m nearly thirty, and no nearer to earning an income on which to marry you than I was two years ago. It’s no use saying we can manage; you would never be happy on a pittance.’

  ‘I can’t make you get a licence, but one day perhaps you’ll realise what a fool you are to waste precious years,’ Fay said coolly.

  Armstrong pushed his hand through his hair. With the collar of his coat turned up, his lean face with its high-bridged nose looked both handsome and obstinate.

  ‘I suppose it’s a form of snobbery,’ Fay went on. ‘If you would only realise how unimportant money is—’

  ‘Unimportant? With a quarter of a million pounds’ worth of gems on display? On a tenth of that you and I could be far happier than any of the owners!’

  “They’re happy enough,’ Fay said reasonably. ‘Mendleson may live for money, but Crane is as much in love with Rene as I am with you, and Mannering—’

  ‘That man! Why, he hasn’t done a stroke of honest work in his life!’ He looked away from her, and began to move towards the house. ‘We’d better get back, you’ll be frozen.’

  Two men in the shrubbery crouched down, rubbing their numbed fingers, but forced to wait until the couple had returned to the house before they dared move.

  Inside, Mannering was listening to Lord Fauntley.

  ‘No, no, John!’ Fauntley was saying testily. ‘I can’t agree, with you. Mongrel stones are interesting but not really valuable. The Glorias are exceptional because they were with the Kallinov collection. I won’t have it said that a red diamond is worth three times a pure white.’

  Fauntley raised himself on his toes to make the most of his stature. At sixty he had achieved an ambition: he was a Minister without Portfolio in the lately reshuffled cabinet. With it he had grown more self-important, more fussy, more self-opinionated; yet he remained at heart a friendly, likeable little man.

  He would have continued the argument had not the first notes of Schubert’s Der Jangling und Der Tong floated softly through the long, high-ceilinged room.

  At the end of it, Armstrong was the first to say goodnight.

  Mannering was about to follow suit when Sharron’s son came in. Reggie Sharron was a tall, spindly youth who did not share his father’s passion for precious stones, and had spent the weekend with friends.

  Reggie lifted a casual hand in general greeting. Mannering chatted to him for a moment or two before going up to his room. The thought he took with him was that the Sharrons were anything but a united family.

  He had no idea how long he slept.

  It was still dark, and a light wind was blowing from an open veranda window when a sharp report disturbed him. It came again, a sharp clear sound, unmistakably that of a shot.

  In a flash Mannering was out of bed, but before he had reached for his slippers, his door was flung open and Sharron appeared, a dressing-gown clutched unevenly, his eyes filled with alarm.

  ‘Did you hear a shot?’

  ‘I certainly did.’

  ‘If anything’s gone wrong I’ll never forgive myself,’ Sharron gasped.

  Mannering turned abruptly towards the window. Pushing it wider open, he stepped on to a veranda. Against the grey, frost-covered ground he saw two men moving towards the drive.

  Chapter Two

  Alarm

  To Mannering’s practised eye the wall on one side of the veranda offered a fairly good grip. Two feet to the right was a cement stone pillar, and this he gripped, letting himself swing from the veranda. For a moment he hung there, his whole weight on his arms as he felt with his feet for some slight support. Finding it, testing
it, lost a precious minute and the sounds of the running men were almost out of earshot before he leapt the last four feet to the ground, and started off towards the drive.

  Whether the shooting had been from Sharron’s guards or from marauders, was anyone’s guess.

  Cries were coming from the house, and lights were springing up.

  A little to his right, he saw a shadow moving in a shrubbery. He checked his pace, and made out the figure of a man moving through the maze of dwarf-trees.

  The man was twenty yards or more ahead of him, and moving as fast as the shrubs would let him. Mannering followed warily, hoping that others from the house would catch up with him.

  Suddenly, from his left, he heard the sound of a man’s heavy breathing, then a breathless exclamation: ‘Look out! There he is!’

  There were obviously two men on his left, while the one he had been following was straight ahead. Mannering crouched low, knowing that the pair could see him clearly if he stood upright. Had the speaker referred to him or the man ahead?

  ‘I can’t see him.’

  ‘He’s foxing, damn him! Quiet!’

  The whispers continued as Mannering moved cautiously forward, much hampered by the maze of shrubs. Without crashing through the bushes he could not be sure in which direction the path was leading him.

  The frost was crunching beneath his feet, and he knew that he could not prevent anyone near from hearing his approach.

  Why didn’t Sharron and the others come?

  Suddenly the path ran into a clearing in the middle of the shrubbery. He could see a man, standing against the moonlit sky, and recognised him as Erroll, Sharron’s chief watchman. He saw the glint of a gun in the man’s hand.

  A second man seemed to appear from nowhere, behind Errol.

  Obviously it was one of the two Mannering had overheard, but his own sharp cry of warning was futile. A hand was raised, holding what looked like a truncheon, and it smashed down on the nape of Errol’s neck. The watchman plunged forward, and the attacker dropped out of sight.