Panic! (Department Z)

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  1

  Says Mark

  Any man or woman with a sporting turn of mind would have offered long odds, on first seeing Mark and Michael Errol, that they were not only brothers but twins. The bet-taker would have won, for in fact they were cousins—a relationship from which they appeared to derive singularly little pleasure. Indeed, the same casual and careless punter would have considered them bad friends, despite the fact that they shared a Brook Street flat as well as that unmistakable Errol chin.

  The chin, on a day in August which each spent blaming the other for the decision to stay in a now sweltering London instead of escaping into the countryside, was a subject of some bitterness between them.

  ‘If you,’ Mark announced, with a scowl, ‘would learn to use a decent razor, you’d get a shave that wouldn’t make me ashamed to take you out.’

  Their voices, let it be said at once, were not alike. Mark’s was deeper, almost rough at times, and he clipped his words. Michael’s was fuller, more mellow; and he was inclined to drag his words. But being what they were—two young, popular but unattached bachelors, wealthy enough to spend twelve months in the year in sheer idleness—and as yet untempted to do otherwise—they had perfected the art of imitating each other’s voices for no better reason than to mystify acquaintances and amuse themselves.

  ‘I,’ Mike drawled calmly, ‘do not propose to use a cut-throat for your or anyone else’s benefit, little man. It is more than enough to be seen about with one.’

  Mark rose to the bait in predictable fashion.

  ‘One what?’

  ‘One cut-throat.’ Mike sprawled in his easy chair, a breeze from the open window behind him ruffling his dark hair. ‘Did it ever occur to you, Marko, that your scowl, your squint and your bark combined are pretty forbidding? Dress you in a muffler and cap …’

  ‘When you’ve stopped blethering,’ Mark growled, ‘perhaps even you will admit you need a shave if we’re going to that perishing …’

  ‘Don’t say it!’ grinned Michael. ‘You know that polo is a sacred subject in the Errol family. Your respected father, my venerated uncle, would develop apoplexy if he knew how you feel about it. And after all—be reasonable! It’s warm. All we have to do is sit there looking pretty …’

  ‘With you there?’ Mark said witheringly but he did not appear to enjoy the thrust. ‘We’ve got to dress up, sit and bake in all that heat, be charming to old ladies and stay pleasant to pretty young things who don’t give a damn about polo, and call ponies horses …’

  ‘In fact, you are feeling somewhat rebellious,’ Mike summed up.

  ‘It was your confounded idea!’ said Mark, bitterly. ‘The old man had about given up expecting to see me at Hurlingham, and you have to go and offer …’

  ‘By admitting that we were free this afternoon, little man,’ Mike pointed out, with maddening logic, ‘you started the ball rolling.’

  ‘Oh, forget it!’ Mark pushed his hand through hair which was rarely as well-groomed as his cousin’s and so helped puzzled acquaintances to tell them apart.

  They were almost exactly of an age—a few months short of thirty. They were both six feet tall to a fraction of an inch, both broadly—but muscularly—built, and both good to look at, if not entirely handsome. They had the same dark, almost black hair. Their eyes were grey, their lashes long, their noses regular—unlike the traditional Errol Roman—and both possessed that large, square chin with its unmistakable cleft. They were, as frequently happened, dressed alike in silver greys and Old Carthusian ties.

  ‘What I was going to say,’ Mark resumed, ‘is that I propose we cut it. You can sprain your ankle or break a leg, and …’

  ‘Nice of you,’ murmured Michael. ‘Unhappily, I feel in the best of health, little one.’

  ‘Don’t call me little one!’

  ‘Touchy,’ mused Michael. ‘That’s a pity. You’re a month early, y’know. It’s September before you usually start agitating for something to do. But let me put on record here and now that I refuse to take part in any scheme for rehabilitating tramps …’

  ‘That was your crazy idea …!’

  ‘Or helping discharged prisoners—perhaps that was my idea? It cost me twenty-five quid and …’

  ‘It just didn’t work out as it should have done,’ snapped Mark. ‘And I found Pitcher, didn’t I?’

  Pitcher was their man, and undoubtedly Mark had found him—through the humdrum medium of a Domestic Agency. Pitcher was of a height with the cousins, but fat with it.

  ‘And,’ continued Mark, belligerently: ‘Hurlingham is off. Dammit, it’s nearly eighty in the shade already! And don’t talk to me about filial duties. I’ve had …’ He stopped, and his scowl gave way to an expression of almost seraphic content.

  ‘We will go,’ he announced, with an air of finality, ‘to Richmond, and take a boat out.’

  Mike stared.

  ‘Of all the crazy notions …!’

  ‘Let me remind you,’ Mark imitated his cousin’s drawl to excellent effect, ‘that we have entered into an agreement whereby we have alternative choices of occupations and amusements, and solemnly we have declared that each shall respect the other’s decision. You chose Brighton—Brighton!’—he shuddered— ‘last week-end. I choose Richmond, this.’

  Mike groaned. ‘So be it. But you, in a punt …! And I can’t swim …’

  ‘Let’s get off,’ Mark urged, suddenly full of energy. ‘Pitcher. Pitcher! Where the devil …?’

  ‘It’s his day off,’ murmured Mike.

  ‘It would be! Well, you ‘phone the pater that we can’t …’

  ‘Whoever chooses an occupation,’ intoned his cousin, with patent enjoyment, ‘makes all the arrangements. Proceed, old son.’

  Mark proceeded—and duly made excuses to a parent who was not noticeably surprised. The pair of them left 55c, Brook Street, collected their jointly-owned Talbot from its garage, and drove off—albeit unwittingly—into the service of that Department of British Intelligence known as Z.

  There are those who have never heard of Department Z, and very many have no idea that it is the ultra-secret section of our entire Intelligence Service. Even fewer are aware that while its director, Gordon Craigie, is as little-known as a permanent Under-Secretary, virtually nothing can happen in the capitals of the world which does not reach his ears with astonishing speed.

  Still less known is the large, ungainly-looking man named Loftus—William Loftus—who, at the time concerned, was leading active agent of the Department. Or of Ned Oundle, that spindly, spidery man with the improbably soulful-looking eyes, who acts as chief lieutenant to Bill Loftus.

  But it happened that they were both near Richmond …

  * * *

  ‘Well, old son?’ Mark demanded.

  ‘Not bad,’ drawled Mike, which was an admission.

  They were lounging at either end of a punt moored to a shady bank, close to the Old Deer Park. The lapping of water was music in their ears as they watched two swans make their majestic way down-river. It was cool: they had lunched well at a riverside pub, and their pipes were drawing smoothly. For Mark, it was a triumph.

  ‘No polo,’ he murmured, dreamily. ‘No noise. No baking in the Hurlingham heat. Above all, no …’

  ‘Women,’ Mike finished for him. They liked to be known as misogynists, although at times their behaviour hardly supported such a claim.

  ‘Let us be fair.’ Safe for the moment at least from feminine wiles, Mark could afford to be magnanimous. ‘They can be
all right. I mean, some of them are quite good to look at—and I’ve known some intelligent …’

  ‘But never a combination.’

  ‘Agreed. Agreed!’ Mark repeated, more firmly. ‘Picture two here, right now. We’d have to make conversation, flatter them, feed them on chocolates, scrape out of a theatre tonight by the skin of our teeth. We’d—what the devil’s that?’

  ‘That’ was a loud, sharp noise, quite close at hand. The cousins sat up abruptly, and stared towards a nearby thicket. They could see nothing through the mass of willow branches, bramble and shrubs—but about their ears, that sharp report still echoed.

  ‘It sounded like a shot,’ Mark murmured.

  ‘Damn right it did.’ Cautiously, Mike eased himself forward. ‘It might have been a keeper …’

  ‘If it was a shot, it came from an automatic.’

  Mike continued to peer around, saying:

  ‘You could be right, but then, again, you could not. Listen!’

  A new sound was coming towards them. Slow, almost stealthy, and certainly strange. It seemed all wrong that anything so untoward should be happening in that peaceful spot. Yet something about the shot, and the furtive movements following it, filled them with a sense of uncertainty, almost of foreboding.

  And then a voice came: low-pitched, masculine.

  ‘Through here … steady with him …’

  ‘I can’t see out the back of my neck—mind his head!’

  ‘Don’t shout!’ snapped the first man. ‘Anyhow—’ a low-pitched chuckle which was not of humour—‘he won’t be needing his head again.’

  Mike looked at Mark, and the expression in his cousin’s eyes mirrored his own. The stealthy approach was clearer; they could hear bushes being pushed aside, hear the snapping of twigs and dry branches. The implications were clear enough. A shot, the talk of carrying a body …

  ‘There’s a gap …!’

  The Errols had contrived to reach the bank without making a noise. They could see, at the point where it met the river, the path along which the unseen men were coming. As they crept towards it, with the noise of approach growing closer, they heard the chug-chug-chug of a motor-launch further up the river. The chugging grew louder. The Errols cursed at the sound, which was muffling the movements of the men in the thicket.

  And then things happened, it seemed simultaneously.

  The launch came into sight, and made for the spot where the punt was moored. There was a man standing in it, a girl behind him, another man at the wheel. As it roared towards the bank the two men in the thicket, just visible now to the Errols, stopped in their tracks—and one swore.

  ‘By God—that’s Loftus!’

  There was a pause, a heavy thud—and then suddenly a man’s head appeared, face upwards. There was an ugly wound in his forehead, and he looked dead. At the same moment they heard a click—faint, almost insignificant—but to Mark and Michael Errol, ominous.

  The safety catch of an automatic?

  Mark chanced it. He moved—and Mike followed. As they burst through the undergrowth to the path, they saw a thick-set, grey-haired man with an automatic in his hand—which he was pointing towards the launch …

  Mark dived for his ankles in a perfect Rugby tackle, as Mike went for his taller companion.

  The gunman swore savagely as his shot went harmlessly into the water. Almost in the same moment, the gun flew from his grasp as he and his friend were brought crashing down together. But in the moment of success, came failure. A boot struck Mike under the chin, and he loosed his hold, stars whirling in his head.

  The tall man was up in a flash. With cold-blooded accuracy, he aimed a second, vicious kick at Mike’s head—and this time, Mike slumped down unconscious.

  Mark heard the launch cut out—and held on like grim death to his captive’s ankles. But he sensed the threat from the tall man, in time.

  As that vicious foot lashed out at him, he rolled sharply aside—then sprang up with the ease of a man in perfect trim, and cracked his fist towards the other’s chin. He did not connect. The tall man moved his head a fraction of an inch—and sent a pile-driver to Mark’s stomach. Mark covered, but only partly avoided the blow, and he gasped. Then the tall man flashed his hand to his pocket, and Mark saw the glint of grey steel—

  He lunged for the man’s legs, as the shot came.

  The echo of it clattered about the thicket—but it hadn’t hit Mark. His opponent, obviously an expert in rough-and-tumble, kicked again at his head. Mark, unable to dodge it completely, almost went the way of his cousin. He was expecting a bullet at any moment; he heard the crackle of shots close by, but felt no hurt.

  Squinting through fractionally open lids, he caught a glimpse of a man—and darted out a hand as the fellow passed. There was a snuffled oath—and then a thud that seemed to shake the earth. Eyes gleaming, Mark scrambled up.

  What looked like a young mountain was on the ground at his side. But before Mark could realise what was happening, the mountain erupted—the man on the ground came upwards like a volcano, and nothing short of a Camera could have withstood his weight.

  Mark Wyndham Errol thudded into a tree.

  The man-mountain came after him, his huge fists clenched. Winded, aching, alarmed—but thankful that there seemed to be no gun—Mark steeled himself for the unavoidable knock-out as one great fist was aimed his way.

  Then:

  ‘Bill—that’s not him!’ came a woman’s voice.

  In the split second between the start of that punch and the woman’s cry, something quite unbelievable happened. The fist unclenched. Palm and fingers hit against Mark’s face—but spread widely to cushion the impact: buffeting him only, like a blow from a broom. At the same time, a deep voice roared:

  ‘Then where the devil …?’

  ‘That way …!’

  The big man swung round, and disappeared down the path. Gasping, bloody-faced and helpless, Mark stared at the woman who was hurrying towards him.

  Two women!

  Some minutes before Mark Errol had declared that some of the species could be quite good to look at—and assuredly, these were. One, slightly taller than the other, had the most glorious blue eyes, the loveliest corn-coloured hair imaginable. The other was as dark as the first was fair, very much smaller—almost petite—but of an equally dream-like loveliness.

  Neither was smiling.

  Mark gaped.

  Mike, coming round, groaned as he tried to move—then opened his eyes and looked up. He saw the visions, and his eyes opened wider.

  Suddenly from somewhere very close, there came the roar of a car engine. Even in their bemused state, the Errols heard the taller of the lovely women say:

  ‘They’ve gone—we’ve lost them!’

  And in her voice there was something akin to despair.

  2

  Says Mike

  Mike Errol, still muzzy-headed but by no means blind, eased himself into a more comfortable position, and continued to stare at the two women. For this moment, at least, he had ceased to be a misogynist. Which was excusable enough—for the faces of both women showed character as exceptional as their beauty.

  Mark was experiencing the same subconscious change of heart as his cousin, where the fair sex was concerned. Certainly, he could not fault the taller woman: the flawless perfection of her face and figure could not have been better served than by the tailored white skirt and blouse she wore, or that flaxen hair in its classically simple French pleat. But in her companion, he assured himself, there were flaws …

  For instance, that minutest of moles, on her right cheek … the faintest of tilts, at the end of her nose …

  Blemishes which were better than perfection …

  But this was absurd, he chided himself, and made a conscious effort to concentrate on other matters.

  The humming of the car engine was almost inaudible, now, and back along the path down which he had disappeared, came the large man. He was taller than Mark by several inches, and on h
is huge frame, loosely-cut grey flannels made him look considerably bigger even than he was. No one could have called him handsome, but that healthily-tanned face, under its thatch of mid-brown hair, held strength, character, and all those indefinable things which turn a naturally ugly man into an undeniably attractive one. Smoky grey eyes ignored the Errols and rested on the taller girl.

  ‘They had a car by the road,’ he said, shortly. ‘I didn’t have a chance. If these blasted nitwits hadn’t butted in, we’d have had them.’

  He transferred his gaze—bleak, now—towards the Errols.

  Mike was still too befuddled to realise the implications of that comment, but to Mark it was the last straw. He was winded and bruised, he had set himself twice at the mercy of a gun, had done his level best to save utter strangers from injury or worse—and the reward was to be called a nitwit!

  With some effort, he found his cigarette-case, selected a cigarette, lit it, and flicked a match towards the vast man, who stood regarding him with obvious annoyance.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, acidly polite. ‘And now, do you mind if we get back to our punt? Sorry to spoil the afternoon’s enjoyment, and all that. Next time, we’ll decide to sit and watch.’

  There was a glimmer of a smile in the big man’s eyes, transforming him. He took a cigarette-case from his own pocket and offered it to the girls—causing Mark to flush like a guilty schoolboy.

  ‘I suppose,’ the man said, resignedly, ‘you thought you were playing heroes? These things will happen … Are you wounded, at all?’

  ‘Only in spirit,’ said Mark Errol.

  The smile spread to the big man’s lips.

  ‘Well, you’ll get over that. Try this on—’ he glanced at Mike—’your brother.’

  ‘This’ was a whisky flask he produced from his hip-pocket.

  ‘I haven’t a brother,’ Mark said automatically: ‘He’s my cousin.’ But he accepted the flask, gratefully.

  The big man and the taller girl made their way down to the launch—which, Mark now saw, had struck one end of the punt, splintering a floorboard. As a result, the punt was half-submerged, its cushions all but floating.