The Death Miser (Department Z Book 1) Read online

  ‘Now, I’m going to ask you things and you’re going to answer,’ muttered Quinion. ‘If you don’t, or if you speak above a whisper, I’m going to drill a nice clean hole right through you. Get me?’

  The man nodded, thoroughly scared. Quinion, satisfied that there was little likelihood of revolt whilst the fellow was faced with the threat of de Lorne’s automatic, questioned quickly.

  ‘Do you walk straight in there? Or do you knock first?’

  ‘Knock,’ whispered the other, staring into Quinion’s compelling, flecked grey eyes.

  ‘How many times?’

  ‘Twice—with your knuckle.’

  ‘Do you wait for an answer?’

  ‘Yes. Spooks will say “enter”.’

  ‘Who will?’ demanded Quinion, raising his brows.

  ‘The old man … Spooks, we call him.…’ The man was too cowed to grin, but Quinion found it hard to repress a chuckle. ‘Spooks’. He would have to go a long way before finding a better nickname for the man called The Miser.

  ‘Then you walk in?’

  ‘Then I throws the door open and take a hold on the trolley and in we goes.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Then we goes up to Spooks and he says what he wants, brandy; I ain’t never known him want anything but brandy, and we doles him a spot out.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘He’ll say how much.’

  ‘And after that?’

  ‘Then we goes all round, starting from Spooks’s right, and pours out whatever they asks for.’

  ‘And then you come out?’

  ‘No. Spooks gives us a spot of his “shut-ear”.’

  ‘What the devil is “shut-ear”?’

  The man was obviously regaining confidence. In spite of the figure of his companion stretched out on the floor in front of him, he felt that these two men threatened little harm. They were not of the type of Loder and Alleyn.

  ‘Well, guv’nor, it’s a dope what he’s got hold of. He gives you a drop in a spot of whisky and you can’t hear nothing. Then you stands by and serve out whatever they wants.’

  ‘How can you, if you can’t hear?’ demanded Quinion. He was praying that the luck would hold and he would be able to carry out his plan before there were any further interruptions.

  ‘They beckons with their fingers, and points. There’s only brandy and whisky there.’ He darted a look towards the two decanters on the trolley. ‘I lay you can tell which is which, boss.’

  ‘I’ll lay I can,’ answered Quinion. He looked across at de Lorne. ‘Take those glad rags off that chap, Peter, and wrap ‘em round you. Then cover this bloke.…’ He looked at his informant with a grin.

  ‘I hope you haven’t been lying,’ he said easily, ‘because I would make it very painful for you afterwards. But for the time being I shall have to hit you over the head. But if I pass you a couple of fivers it’ll be worth it, won’t it?’

  There was a gleam of cupidity in the smallish eyes.

  ‘Blime, guv’ … be a sport and give us a chance to get out of here. The Old Man’s safe for a bit; Alleyn’s away, and Loder’s dead. We could do it now.’

  Quinion frowned for a moment. Then he grinned, taking two five-pound notes from his pocket.

  ‘I’ll take you,’ he said suddenly. ‘Your pal’s waking up. Is he in it too?’

  ‘Give him half a chance, boss, and he’ll fly away.’

  Quinion dipped into his pocket again.

  ‘Give him these, and let him run. Now, off with that cloak.’

  It was madness, he assured himself three minutes later. Both the servants were by the front door, the one who had been knocked out blinking painfully in the light, and the other exhorting him profanely, but in stage whispers, to wake his ideas up. De Lorne, clad from head to foot in one of the cloaks, was bending down over one end of the trolley-tray, and Quinion was leaning over the other. With a grin he lifted the whisky decanter and swallowed a mouthful of neat spirit.

  ‘Have a drink?’ he suggested to de Lorne.

  The other grimaced.

  ‘Hope to the Lord it isn’t doped with “shut-ear”,’ he said piously. ‘All set.’

  ‘Good. Now, here’s to hoping!’

  Yes, it was crazy. The Miser with a dozen of the men who were with him on some fabulous plan, was about to be ‘raided’ by two psuedo-servants, whose life would not be worth a moment’s purchase if their identity was discovered.

  Drawing himself up, Quinion rapped twice on the panels of the door. There was a wait of several seconds before the voice of ‘Spooks’ came to his ears. It was a firm, clear voice, mellowed with age. A gentleman’s voice, and one which Quinion thought was somehow familiar.

  ‘Enter,’ said The Miser.

  17

  Quinion Learns Many Things

  QUINION was fully alive to the tremendous risk that he was running, together with de Lorne; but had the risk been twice as great he would have considered it well worth taking the chance.

  He had no doubt but that Gordon Craigie had known of the meeting at Cross Farm, and the telephone call had been put through in order to make sure that someone was at hand. It was occasionally necessary for one of the agents of Department ‘Z’ to telephone the office, but only on the most important and urgent matters did Craigie telephone to an agent.

  Quinion knew, too, of the small ‘meetings’ which were held sometimes at Oak Cottage; Margaret Alleyn had told him of them, and of The Miser … yet at the cottage The Miser had always been absent. Now, however, he was in attendance, and the meeting was a full one. It was the type of opportunity for which Quinion, in his more optimistic moments, prayed; nothing on earth would have made him hold back. The possibility of The Miser realizing at once that the two men who entered were strangers was the main danger.

  Within two minutes Quinion was convinced that the first part of the gamble had come off. The Miser accepted him without question. He called, in that mellow voice which Quinion felt again to be familiar, for brandy, motioning when the small glass was half full. Hardly daring to lift his eyes, Quinion went round the large table, serving whisky or brandy to each of the men.

  Apart from the grotesque appearance lent by the skulls which surmounted each head, the meeting might have been any ordinary business affair. Quinion could imagine any one of the men sitting at the board table of a dozen respectable firms in the city. Just such a meeting, he imagined, might be called in emergency at the house of any one of the directors at a time when all of them had dressed for dinner.

  As he went round, pushing the little trolley, he was seething. Face after face appeared to him as familiar, and time after time he placed the men. One, a little Scotsman with a vast expanse of forehead and a few thin hairs spread carefully over an otherwise bald pate, was the managing director of Tunn, Son … Co., perhaps the biggest financiers in London. Another, obviously a foreigner, and sitting incongruously next to the Scotsman, had a tremendous beard into which he mumbled continuously. He was a man whose name struck fear into many a loyal Soviet heart. A third Quinion recognized as Brundt, the leader of the West German left-wing opposition, and a man of almost unlimited powers.

  The conversation was stilted for the most part, but Quinion imagined that it was for the benefit of the servants. He found it difficult not to turn and look towards The Miser, but a display of curiosity was not likely to help him. He waited until the trolley was turned towards the man at the head of the table, then watched his man through his lashes.

  No one could have questioned the great masterfulness of The Miser. In spite of that wrinkled, parchment-like skin with its myriads of wrinkles and the hunched shoulders which made The Miser’s neck seem considerably shorter than it was, the strange amber eyes irradiated strength. The mind behind that high, domed forehead was vitally alert; Quinion imagined that the intellects of the dozen men in evening dress were dwarfed by that of their leader; yet every one of them was an authority on his particular subject. From what Quinion could
judge, the strength of the meeting was half political and half financial, although there were four men whom he could not place, all of them foreigners.

  Quinion had already primed de Lorne about how to try to frustrate their dose of ‘shut-ear’. He watched The Miser carefully measure two small amounts of whisky into the two glasses which had been left over after the members of the meeting had been served. He saw the old man add deliberately a drop of liquid from a glass phial, and stepped forward to take the glasses. He breathed again when the leader of that strange gathering looked away from him, and tossed the contents of the glass into his mouth. Turning quickly, so as to hide de Lorne from as many pairs of eyes as possible, he emptied his mouth into a large handkerchief that he had held screwed up, in his hand. De Lorne with a quickness of hand that would have done credit to any magician, followed suit with his potion.

  As Quinion turned round and replaced his glass on the tray, he saw the great amber eyes fixed on him penetratingly. Shivering inwardly, he felt the hair at the back of his neck rising.

  Even at that moment he knew that he was afraid of the vast power of The Miser; if ever a man was evil, that man was.

  For a few seconds that passed like hours Quinion wondered whether the trick had been discovered. The burning gaze of those terrible eyes, blazing in the parchment-like face that by itself might have been death, with the grinning image of a death’s head on top of the high forehead, was as terrible as it was bizarre. A confusion of words hurtled through Quinion’s mind as he averted his gaze, until three of them seemed to hammer against his forehead in a frenzy to escape.

  The Death Miser!

  He went cold suddenly. The Miser’s great orbs turned away and the old man spoke quietly to a perfectly groomed, middle-aged Englishman sitting at his left hand. Quinion knew the other to be Julian Hatterson, the guiding hand behind a huge combine of super-markets which had branches in every town and village of any size in the United Kingdom.

  Standing back from the table, and moving only when he was beckoned by one or other of the men, he examined the gathering more closely. Next to Hatterson sat Brundt, the German, and next to him Tunn, the Scottish financier. Two lesser lights in the financial world sat next to Kretterlin, the agent of the Soviet, who was placed beside Tunn. Then there were the four men whom Quinion did not know, but on The Mister’s immediate left was Martin Asterling.

  Asterling. Quinion tried to imagine a reason which could explain his presence at that mad meeting. He was a German who had taken on American nationality twenty years before and had made a world-wide name for himself in films. Recently he had been reported in the Press to be making an extensive tour of Europe in search of talent, and to study the possibilities for film production in England.

  Still more inexplicable was the presence of the man who sat next to Asterling. Simon Hessley was perhaps the best known man in England. His interests were everywhere, and he had a finger in most governments, a word to say in most financial deals in the city, and a controlling hand in three great national daily newspapers. If England was ever forced to vote for a dictator, Hessley’s immense following and tremendous popularity would practically assure his triumph; Quinion, his mind in a whirl, tried to imagine what benefit Hessley could hope to derive from what The Miser was planning.

  Ten minutes or more had passed when The Miser tapped gently on the table with the small hammer which rested in front of him. Immediately the hum of talk ceased, and all eyes were directed towards the top of the table.

  Quinion flashed a warning glance at de Lorne, who responded with a barely perceptible flicker of his eyelids. Hardly had Quinion looked away from his friend than the mellow voice of The Miser broke the silence.

  ‘Brandy.…’

  Quinion had to clench his teeth to prevent himself from laughing. A dozen of the greatest minds in the world were gathered round the table of this mummified picture of death, waiting on his words … and the word had been ‘brandy!’

  Neither Quinion nor de Lorne appeared to hear. It was obviously a trap; The Miser was testing the effects of his drug, and the slightest move on the part of either of the pseudo-servants would have meant discovery. But neither man moved.

  There was a pause of perhaps thirty seconds before the leader of the gathering looked away from Quinion. The latter, uneasily aware of the power behind those flaming eyes, eased his neck a shade as he waited on the other’s words. The smooth voice, still irritatingly familiar to Quinion, went on in measured, deliberate tones.

  ‘Gentlemen, we are able to talk freely now, and I am anxious to lose no more time. There is nothing to do beyond giving me your reports.’

  The speaker broke off, staring malevolently at Kretterlin, whose deep, rumbling voice had interrupted him.

  ‘Well?’

  Even the Russian seemed cowed for a moment by the concentrated fury in that single world. He stuttered for a second into his vast, straggling beard, then threw his great head back challengingly. Quinion wondered at the man’s perfect English as much as he admired the manner in which he faced The Miser. No. 7 of Department ‘Z’ was under no delusions as to the leader of that meeting. The Miser’s expression was diabolical.

  ‘There should be no servants,’ said the Russian harshly. ‘It is foolish. What you would call asking for it.…’

  There was a hush which fell like a mantle over the whole room. No one there beyond the Russian dared have interrupted, and the others seemed to be waiting for the eruption which would ensue.

  The Miser sat staring at the Russian for several seconds. There was no movement of any kind in his mummy-like features, but the great amber eyes flamed terribly, and his voice, when it broke the pregnant silence, had lost much of its smoothness; it was harsh and arrogant.

  ‘Kretterlin, I will overlook your interruption this time. It is the first visit which you have made to a full meeting, although I have heard from Alleyn of your tendency towards … insubordination. Should you endeavour to advise me again I will arrange for your interest in our campaign to be terminated. You understand?’

  The words cut like a knife into the silence, and several of the men seemed to shrink back. The Russian was no craven, however, although his leader’s manner seemed to take away much of his confidence. It was replaced with a kind of desperate fury, the fury of a fanatic. The man moved from his seat suddenly, sending his chair backwards with a crash. His eyes, set deep in their sockets, blazed.

  ‘By Saint Peter! I haff not been address like that since the day of the Purge. Those servants, they are dangerous! I, Kretterlin, say it! They must go!’

  Quinion’s face expressed nothing but a vague apprehension such as he considered likely in a man who could hear nothing but could see the anger of the Russian, and de Lorne might have been his twin. Yet both men were holding their breath in suspense. If Kretterlin got his way their efforts would have been fruitless … beyond the knowledge of many of the men behind The Miser’s scheme; but it was knowledge of the scheme itself that Quinion wanted.

  For a full minute there was a clash between the two great personalities. The Miser uttered no word; Kretterlin returned the burning glare of the amber eyes which gleamed almost red with a fury that nigh matched it. There was a tension like the calm before a whirlwind.

  Like a knife, the tension was broken by Simon Hessley, and once again Quinion found himself hard put to it to stop from laughing. Hessley’s voice—its timbre was familiar to the whole of England—broke in with a softness that seemed puny against the hard voices of The Miser and Kretterlin.

  ‘Are we going to spend the rest of the evening like this? Kretterlin, you haven’t been here before; those servants will be stone deaf for five or six hours. Miser’—the name seemed bizarre coming from those curling lips, but Hessley used it almost familiarly—‘Kretterlin is quite right, and perfectly justified in objecting; but he will submit if we assure him that we know the servants are safe.’ He glanced for a moment towards the Russian, who had picked up his chair and was sitting
in it calmly. ‘Is that good enough, Kretterlin?’

  ‘I suppose,’ the Russian growled, eyeing The Miser sullenly. ‘I only ask you to be reasonable.’

  Quinion was amazed at the way in which The Miser accepted this. He lifted his hand as though admitting that he had been in the wrong. Yet the Hon. James wondered; it had been too easy—and there was an enmity existing between the Russian and his leader; of that the agent of Department ‘Z’ was sure.

  The Miser continued as though there had been no interruption, however, and the Hon. James had to jerk his mind back quickly in order to follow the trend of the old man’s words. The Miser’s voice had regained its mellowness, making Quinion search his mind for the memory which would tell him where he had heard it before.

  ‘I will have your reports in the order at which you are sitting, starting from my right. Asterling, please.…’

  If Quinion had wondered at the film magnate’s presence he was aghast at his words. All over the world movie and television films of tremendous popular appeal had been made; but all had a militarist leaning; and they were carefully calculated to stir up enmity between countries. The fact seemed to hit Quinion between the eyes: it was incredible that these men, trusted leaders of the people, were actually propagating war. But that was what they were doing … planning a World Revolution!

  Each man gave his report concisely but with complete confidence. Brundt, Kretterlin, and Simon Hessley spoke of political support which would be forthcoming from their respective countries. It made Quinion’s head reel; war on a vaster scale than ever before was being planned for no other purpose than the enrichment of the members of The Miser’s organization. The little Scotsman, Tunn, spoke in millions of pounds, reeling off figure after figure. He was obviously the financial genius of the campaign, and deposed a complete statement of the expenses incurred and the profits which should accrue. Nothing had been omitted, and Quinion was staggered as he heard the Scotsman talk calmly of market after market which was completely under the control of one or other agent of the vast scheme. War would enable prices to be forced up, bringing with them tremendous power to the members of the organization.