Shadow The Baron

  Copyright & Information

  Shadow The Baron

  First published in 1951

  Copyright: John Creasey Literary Management Ltd.; House of Stratus 1951-2010

  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 2010 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

  0755117743 9780755117741 Print

  0755118723 9780755118724 Pdf

  0755125592 9780755125593 Kindle/Mobi

  0755125606 9780755125609 Epub

  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.

  Creasy 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.

  1: The Detective Takes a Walk

  Superintendent Bristow, of New Scotland Yard, had always believed that he could think best when walking. During cold January and bleak February, he had walked a great deal. That had helped to keep him warm. At the end of the two months, he doubted the efficacy of walking as an aid to constructive thinking. Yet he persisted.

  On the first day of March, spring came to London. The sun spread a kindly warmth over the throngs in the West End. The daffodils on the barrows and in the baskets of the Piccadilly flower sellers cried heavily that winter had gone. Dark thoughts, however, haunted Bristow, a tall, spruce, well dressed man, blind to all but the hoarse insistence of a newsboy.

  “Nother big jewel robbery – speshul!”

  Bristow reached the Circus, and waited with a small crowd for the traffic to pause. A little man, poorly dressed, unshaven but bright eyed, caught sight of him, and his eyes grew sharper.

  The traffic lights shone green.

  Bristow moved across the road towards Eros. The little man followed. One of the flower sellers, a massive woman bundled up in overcoats, with an incongruous feathered hat perched on masses of dusty hair, waved a plump hand to him.

  “Allo, ducks,” she greeted. “Nice die.”

  “Beautiful,” said Bristow, mechanically. “Trade any better, Lil?”

  “Best mornin’ I’ve ‘ad this year,” said Lil. She did not need to ask what Bristow wanted, but from a small tray she took a single gardenia. With this in her hand, she lumbered up, breathing with gusty energy. She placed the gardenia in Bristow’s buttonhole, fastening it into position. Bristow gave her his daily shilling.

  “Beauty, that one is an’ no mistake,” said Lil. “Saved it for you, Mr. Bristow. You busy?”

  “I need a holiday,” declared Bristow.

  Lil chuckled comfortably. “Don’t you worry, ducks. You’ll get ‘im. Up to ‘is tricks again last night, wasn’t ‘e?”

  “You bet he was,” said the little man, who stood close by. “‘Morning, Super!”

  Bristow looked at him without favour.

  “Know anything about him, Clip?”

  “Who, me? Not my cup of tea, Super.” The little man spoke in a pseudo cultured voice from a mouth widened in a mechanical grin.

  “Besides, “I’m an honest member of the British public now, didn’t anyone tell you?”

  “They must have forgotten,” said Bristow. “Goodbye, Lil.”

  “Bye bye, dearie!”

  Bristow moved round the statue and crossed towards Shaftesbury Avenue, and now the little man walked with him.

  Another newsboy shrilled: “Big jewel robbery, read all abaht it!”

  “What, not going to buy a paper?” asked his self appointed companion, flashing coppers from his pocket, as he took an Evening News. “Accept it from me, with my compliments.”

  Bristow took the paper.

  “Chirpy this morning, aren’t you?”

  The little man chuckled.

  “Always does me good when I see you wearing a frown, Super! Not that I mean any malice, mind you, but this chap keeps you on your toes, doesn’t he? How much stuff has he lifted? Can’t be far short of a hundred thousand quid, can it? Been busy six months, done a dozen jobs and shown you a clean pair of heels every time. You’ve got to hand it to him.”

  “That’s right,” said Bristow. “I’ll hand him a pair of handcuffs one of these days.”

  “Not if you live to be a thousand.” The little man rubbed his hands together with slow enjoyment. “He’s made a fool of you and everyone at the Yard, Super. Good luck to him, I say. So long.” With an airy wave of the hand he slipped into a door of Lyons Corner House.

  Bristow crossed to Leicester Square, where every seat was filled with basking people, and opened the newspaper. He read stoically:

  £15,000 GEMS STOLEN

  FROM WEST END FLAT

  “SHADOW” STRIKES AGAIN

  Daring jewel thief, known as “The Shadow” broke into the Mayfair flat of Mr. Raymond Allen during the night and in spite of the most up-to-date burglar alarm escaped with beautiful Mrs. Allen’s jewels. The loss is estimated at £15,000. No one was disturbed although four people were sleeping on the premises.

  The theft appears to have been the work of the man known as “The Shadow” and is the tenth of a series of burglaries attributed to him.

  Superintendent William Bristow, the Yard’s jewel expert, was at the flat early this morning. The Yard has no statement to make.

  Bristow tucked the paper under his arm, and became aware of the slightly malicious grin of a stationary taxi driver.

  Bristow paused.

  “Happy?” he inquired.

  “Happier than you are, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “Hope he’ll get off?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t go as far as that,” said the cabby. “Can’t help but admire him though, can you? I must say you don’t look as if you’ve been up all night, Mr. Bristow.”

 
; “I haven’t,” said Bristow curtly.

  At Trafalgar Square, a car slid past him in purring luxury; a Sunbeam Talbot, driven by a middle aged man smoking a cigar. The car reminded Bristow of another man who owned a Sunbeam Talbot, a man who was probably as sympathetic as the cabby to “The Shadow’s” evasion of arrest.

  Bristow reached a tobacconist’s near the Yard, and within sight of the Cenotaph and Parliament Square, and he went in. The woman who managed the shop was sitting, head bent, over a newspaper. She jumped up.

  “If it isn’t Mr. Bristow!”

  “Why the surprise? I look in most days.”

  “Just reading about you,” she said, “you must be having a very worrying time, Mr. Bristow. Forty Players as usual?” She dipped under the counter. “But I must say, he’s a proper spark, isn’t he? You’ve got to admire him – how anyone dare do what he does, I just don’t know. Isn’t it the day to fill your lighter?”

  “Thanks.” Bristow handed over his lighter. “If he breaks into your house tonight and takes everything of value, will you still admire him?”

  She laughed. “Well, if you put it that way, I wouldn’t, not that I’ve got anything worth pinching. Only goes for the rich, doesn’t he? There’s no need for me to worry. There you are – last you the rest of the week.’

  “Thanks,” said Bristow, and turned towards the Yard, along the narrow street which led from Parliament Street. The policemen on duty touched their foreheads, and Bristow grunted. He walked through the Civil Duties building and the newer C.I.D to his office. His chief aide, Chief Inspector Gordon, was sitting at one of the desks.

  “Morning, Bill.”

  “Morning, Pat.”

  “A-K wants a word with you.”

  “I’m not surprised. Anything in?”

  “Just got the report from the Aliens’ place, but there’s not a clue.”

  Bristow grunted, and went out again.

  Colonel Anderson-Kerr, the Assistant Commissioner at the Yard, was to be found in his own larger office on the next floor. He was a small, leathery looking whippet of a man, with piercing blue eyes. Meticulously tidy, his desk supported in geometrical order, two telephones, an inkstand, a box of cigarettes, an ashtray, and a single file of papers. Many at the Yard disliked him, most were apprehensive in his presence. Bristow, however, both liked and respected the man.

  Anderson-Kerr motioned to a chair.

  “What time did you get to Bingham Court?”

  “The safe was opened in the same way as all the others.

  There could be two or three men with the same trick, but it’s not likely.”

  Anderson-Kerr’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Meaning, you think it might be a team?”

  “I have wondered.”

  “Well, I hope not,” said Anderson-Kerr, and pushed the cigarettes across the desk. “You know, Bristow, we’re going to have a bad time. This chap’s getting a lot of sympathy. He’ll get more, until he makes a fool of himself and hurts someone. Why the devil do people have a soft spot for a man like this? It’s happened time and time again.” He moved irritably. “You say there isn’t a line of any kind – no squeal, nothing at the receivers’ places?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Any idea what he does with the stuff?”

  “Either he’s keeping it in cold storage until the heat’s switched off, or he’s sending it abroad. I think it goes abroad – there aren’t many of his sort who can afford to wait months before they turn the stuff into money. I’m having a special check at the Channel ports and all airports. If we find that someone who left the country after one of the other jobs goes this time, we can hold him for questioning. We might find the stuff on him, too.”

  “But you don’t think so.”

  “I’m almost past thinking,” said Bristow. “Except crazy ideas.” He smiled faintly.

  “How crazy?”

  “Completely.”

  “I see,” said Anderson-Kerr. He rose decisively, and moved to the window. “Set a thief to catch a thief?” he suggested.

  Bristow said: “So it’s been in your mind, too?”

  “I keep turning it out. The Shadow is beginning to win as big a reputation as that enjoyed by the Baron in the bad old days. The Baron used the same methods, barred violence, had the same uncanny knack of getting in and out of places without being seen, and could do what he liked with any safe he tackled. They must use the same wand! Now if the Baron went after the Shadow–” He broke off.

  ‘There’s a difference.”

  “What is it?”

  “After the third job, I knew the Baron was John Mannering. After ten jobs, I don’t know the Shadow. That makes the Shadow the better man – so far.”

  “Hmm.” Anderson-Kerr swung round. “Oh, forget it. It’s impossible. We can’t use Mannering.”

  Bristow half closed his eyes.

  “I knew Mannering as the Baron, and he got away with it. The vital little bit of evidence was always missing. He’s played the fool in a thousand ways since the Baron days, but he’s no longer a thief. Whether he’d work against the Shadow on the present score, I don’t know. He would, if a murder were committed, but –” Bristow shrugged.

  “We’re both getting soft in the head,” growled Anderson-Kerr. “We can’t use him.”

  “We couldn’t approach him ourselves on this kind of job,” Bristow agreed. “But we might fix something. One of the Shadow’s earlier victims was Toby Plender. Plender and Mannering used to be fairly intimate. Now if Plender asked Mannering –” Bristow broke off, rubbing his chin. “We could rely on Plender. He’s a first class lawyer and a very good friend. If I dropped a hint to him, he might make a personal appeal to Mannering, and Mannering would probably jump to it. Like me to try?”

  “I see no cause why we shouldn’t do that,” said Anderson-Kerr slowly, “except that Mannering would probably guess the reason, if Plender suggests it now – the Plender job is, after all, four months old.”

  Bristow smiled; he looked more cheerful than when he had walked across Leicester Square.

  “It doesn’t matter what Mannering guesses, and he probably has a pretty good idea what we’re feeling, already. Shall I see Plender?”

  “Go ahead,” said Anderson-Kerr.

  Bristow hummed to himself as he walked along the passages, and beamed at Gordon as he sat down at his desk. The sound of the traffic on the Embankment was loud this morning, for the window was open. Ponderously, fatefully, Big Ben chimed the hour.

  “Caught the Shadow?” inquired Gordon.

  Bristow laughed.

  “We’ve decided on a different bait.”

  “Ah. No one can say you’ve rushed things,” Gordon said sardonically.

  He cogitated the advisability of saying more, decided it was unwise, but continued with heavy recklessness, “The trouble with you is that your heart rules your head. It’s a good fault sometimes but at others it robs the Public Prosecutor of a job. In this case, for instance, you’ve done it to such effect that you won’t even look in the obvious place. I know you’re touchy on the subject, that’s why I didn’t broach it before. But there comes a time . . .” he paused, appalled at his own temerity, but doggedly determined to go on. “I’ve taken the trouble to have a house in Chelsea watched. On the two nights when the Shadow has done his job, a certain gentleman living in the said house has been out late. Very late. Late enough to have done the job. Mannering is the Shadow. When are you going to wake up to it. Bill?”

  2: Toby Plender

  Mr. Tobias Plender, Q.C., had a large practice, a good reputation, a beautiful wife and plenty of money. Yet there were times when the look in his grey eyes was sombre. On the afternoon of the first day of March it was excessively so. He was sitting in his club, for he had lingered over lunch and there was nothing of pressing urgency in his chambers. The room, large, high and furnished in heavy reds and browns, overlooked the Mall.

  Plender leaned back, his eyes hooded, his long, pale hand
s resting lightly on the arms of this chair. In front of him was a small table, and on it several evening papers, and the headlines about the Shadow’s latest burglary were visible in all of them.

  A solitary waiter, watching lynx-eyed for the crook of a finger which might summon him to the first club member who wanted tea, was startled when Plender, without warning or apparent premeditation, jumped to his feet and strode towards the door.

  “Good day, sir. Lovely day.”

  “Foul,” said Plender, and moved on. He was tall, large boned to the point of ungainliness, yet there was a curious ease about his movements. He went no further than the telephone booths, where he dialled a Chelsea number. Almost immediately a woman’s voice answered him.

  “This is Lorna Mannering.”

  “And this is Toby Plender.”

  “Toby! We haven’t heard from you for ages.”

  “I work,” said Plender. “I can’t afford to have the wife of a millionaire art dealer painting my portrait. I can’t afford –”

  Lorna was laughing.

  “You’re wrong again,” she said. “I regret, no millionaire; no art dealer.”

  “John is near enough to both,” said Toby. His voice low pitched, held a touch of that magic with which he swayed the mind of jurors. “How are you, my dear?”

  “Fine.”

  “Where’s John?”

  “At the shop, as far as I know.”

  “That may not be far enough to keep him there until I arrive. Some myrmidon, bowing obsequiously will very much regret that he has just been called away, on pressing business” I know. I employ a few myrmidons out of the same box myself.”

  “He’ll be there,” said Lorna confidently. “Toby, try and fix an evening together. All four, I mean, not just you and John. I’d love that.”

  “I will not be painted,” stated Toby, with theatrical vehemence. “All love, my dear.”