The Baron Returns Read online

  The light in his eyes was lively, and the smile on his lips was of real humour. Mannering eyed him thoughtfully, and felt the same as he had a short while before at the flat. He liked this man.

  ‘Yes, it’s on,’ he said. ‘And now . . .’

  ‘Hallo, John! I didn’t expect you here tonight!’ came the voice of Hugo Fauntley from Mannering’s right, and Mannering made the necessary introductions. Fauntley was with a party including the Dowager Countess of Kenton.

  Jonathan Didcotte told himself that Mannering could be relied upon to lose no time, and within five minutes of saying good night, he was telephoning The Towers.

  His major-domo, by name Speel, answered the telephone.

  ‘I’d like you to keep a very close watch on the keep tonight, Speel,’ said Didcotte. ‘Particularly before I arrive. You will not tell Mrs. Didcotte, you understand.’

  ‘May Mr. Guy know, sir?’

  ‘Is Guy home?’ asked Didcotte in surprise. Guy was his son, a likely youngster of twenty-two. ‘No, don’t tell him, but—er—you may answer any questions he cares to ask. I’ll be back around two o’clock.’

  Chapter Twelve

  THE TOWERS

  If the Baron had possessed no knowledge of The Towers, where Jonathan Didcotte and his family were to live for the next two months, he could not have started the job more quickly. But he knew the layout of the old castle fairly well. He also knew that in the library was a complete plan of the keep and the cells beneath it. His first intention was to get into the library, check up on those details and plans, and then start his raid on the keep.

  He felt sure Didcotte had told the truth.

  It might have been absurd, but Mannering gambled on the nature of Jonathan Didcotte. The greater gamble, of the papers against his failure, had a fine savour.

  He reached the Bloom Street flat just before twelve. Twenty minutes later, without disguise but carrying his tool-kit, his silk scarf and a new automatic gas-pistol with a spare charge of ether-gas, he walked round to Shepherd’s Market, where he garaged his car.

  At that time he was running an M.G., just right for speed. He realised soon that he was being followed, and the face made him very thoughtful. It was just possible that Didcotte had already made advance arrangements to have him shadowed, but more likely Bristow had been at work.

  Mannering knew that Bristow always worked methodically. There had been a time when the Bloom Street flat had been watched day and night, but after a few weeks in which the Baron had been inactive, manpower shortage had made Bristow call his watchdogs off. The raids in Hampshire and Bishopsgate were reason enough for Bristow to put them back again.

  The car behind him was a red Morris-Cooper. Mannering spurted once or twice through the comparatively deserted streets, and the Morris kept pace easily.

  Mannering increased his, and was moving across Barnes Common before twelve o’clock.

  Normally he would have gone across Wimbledon Common to Kingston, and thence to Guildford, but it was too direct a route with a car on his tail. He touched seventy for a few seconds, then suddenly braked at a cross-road. The Mini-driver did not realise what he was doing, and pulled up within five yards. Mannering climbed out of his car.

  The plain-clothes man at the wheel of the smaller car eyed him expectantly. There was another man next to him. Both were known to Mannering by sight as Bristow’s men!

  ‘I suppose you’re not carrying a spare tin of petrol?’ Mannering asked. ‘I’m precious nearly out.’

  ‘I think we can oblige, sir,’ said the driver. ‘Danny?’

  His colleague got out and took a two-gallon tin of petrol from the back of the police car. Mannering walked with him to the M.G. and saw him empty it.

  ‘There you are, sir, glad to oblige.’

  ‘That’s ten shillings, near enough,’ smiled Mannering, stepping back to the Mini and taking silver from his pocket. He separated four half-crowns from a collection of loose change, and then dropped the lot! Silver streamed in the road, shimmering in the lights.

  ‘Blast it!’ exclaimed Mannering, and Danny grunted. Mannering still behaved as though he had no idea these were policemen. He went down on his knees, muttering complaints about his carelessness without ceasing. Danny helped him obligingly, and the driver came to their aid. For five minutes they chased sixpences and shillings along the road, from under the Mini and the rear of the M.G. Mannering collected ten shillings at last, parted with it, and smiled his most cheerful smile.

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ he said; ‘I hope I haven’t detained you.’

  He went back to the M.G. fully satisfied. The two-inch nails, which he always carried in the M.G., were already pushed half an inch into the two front tyres of the Mini, and at the first turn of the wheels they would dig in.

  He rolled the M.G. into motion, making a flying start. The engine of the Mini hummed behind him, and the roar of a bursting tyre came.

  The two tyres were punctured almost simultaneously. The Morris slithered across the road, on to the common. Mannering hurtled along the deserted common road, for he knew he had a twenty minutes’ start, but would have to get rid of the M.G.

  There was an all-night garage in Sheen, and the cheerful night attendant hurried to him.

  ‘I’m having trouble, and I’m in a hurry,’ said Mannering. ‘Have you got a fast car I can borrow?’

  ‘Got a nearly new Lea-Francis, sir, a snip at two ‘unnered and forty. ‘Ow long will yer want it for?’ The attendant merged sales talk with hiring terms and a grin.

  ‘Oh, I’ll be back with it tomorrow,’ said Mannering. ‘Look over my engine for me, will you?’

  ‘Oke,’ said the attendant. ‘I’ll git you a chit, sir.’

  He went into the office for a chit, and Mannering bent over the M.G., and removed two number plates. He had two sets on it, the top ones genuine, the bottom imaginary but with an Irish index. By the time the attendant arrived the top plates were in the back of the Lea-Francis, and Mannering was revving the engine. In less than ten minutes Mannering set off again.

  Two swearing, sweating members of the C.I.D. were tramping across Barnes Common. They did more than suspect John Mannering, but they would have a difficult job to prove he had put the nails in the tyres.

  There seemed something different, something menacing, about the medieval Towers as Mannering approached it, nearly two hours later, and surveyed the eight-foot granite wall that surrounded it.

  The Lea-Francis was parked in a clear space behind some bushes, ten yards from the narrow road which led from the main road to The Towers. Mannering could reach it from the castle walls in five minutes.

  He had no idea that Speel and the other two guards had been warned. He did not know that Guy Didcotte was at home, a youth already taller than his father, and a light heavyweight college champion. He was obsessed with one idea – accepting Didcotte’s challenge and winning the duel.

  It was a dark, moonless night, with the stars twinkling in the impenetrable heavens, a light wind whistling through the trees, the bushes and shrubs moving and rustling as the things of the night passed by. Once an owl hooted, and Mannering stopped dead still in his tracks.

  He moved again, scoffing at his fears, but there was perspiration on his forehead, with the same quickening beat of his heart, the same tight smile on his lips, as at the start of every job. It was not exactly fear; it was a tenseness that arose from knowing that if he failed he would find himself behind bars for a long time.

  The meadows near the castle muffled his footsteps, but if that was an advantage the high wall, and beyond it the stark outlines of the old building, seemed sinister and menacing. Nothing moved but an occasional bat, jerking on a wild, meaningless zigzag, leaping out of the gloom in front of his face. Mannering suffered more from nerves in the five minutes’ walk from the copse where he had left h
is car than he had done all the time at Teevens’s house.

  The brooding quiet of the place, the loneliness and the situation, high up amid the Surrey hills, which looked so towering and menacing in the darkness, all added to the tension.

  He knew that the library was on the south side of The Towers, and reached the small door in the south wall. He tried the handle; if it was unlocked, it would be a help.

  It was not, and he had no desire to try conclusions with the lock, for as it was locked it would probably be barred and he saw at a glance that there was no way he could get a file through the bolts.

  But there was an easier way into the castle grounds.

  Fitted to his tool-kit, a roll that went right round his waist and was eight inches wide, was a twenty foot length of knotted rope. In another section of the kit was a double hook, and he looped it to the rope.

  He was standing two yards away from the wall. His mask was pulled up, his hat – a black trilby for this occasion – pulled well down over his eyes. Hardly a glimpse of white skin was visible, for his hands were covered with dark blue fabric gloves with thin rubber fingertips. Mannering hardly realised he was wearing them, for they fitted closely yet comfortably, to his hands and fingers.

  He judged the distance, and threw the hooked end up. It sailed a couple of yards over the wall, and dropped clear on the other side.

  The wall was ridged, not rounded off, although the top of it was spiked. On the spikes depended Mannering’s big hope; the hook should catch on to one.

  He heard the thud as the rubber-covered hook hit against the far side, and then pulled gently at the rope. It came through his fingers slowly, and he felt resistance as the hook struck an obstacle. He tugged harder, and the rope would not budge. Then he went five yards back, and leaned back with all his weight, but the hook was lodged firmly.

  He began to smile behind his mask, and the fears of the past five minutes were gone. He was no longer John Mannering, but the Baron in action.

  He hauled himself up on the rope, getting purchase above each knot, reached the top quickly, and saw how firmly the hook was caught. As he unhooked the rope and dropped it into the grounds he crouched low to prevent his silhouette showing against the sky.

  He wanted to take the rope with him, and the spikes were more help than hindrance. He gripped one in each hand, lowered himself down the wall, and turned the eight-foot drop into one of a few inches. He could not even see the rope, less than two yards from his eyes. But he found and picked it up quickly, coiling it round his waist. The darkness and the silence seemed unnatural, almost as if it were forced, as if there was a trap that he could not see.

  He went on warily, calling on his recollection of The Towers. The library was on the ground floor and Addleman had built larger windows for it some years before. A thought passed through Mannering’s mind: that Jonathan Didcotte was much more likely to give The Towers the dignity that they deserved than the younger scion of a line that could trace its history back to the days of William the Conqueror.

  Mannering stopped thinking about it as he neared the wall of The Towers itself.

  Between the surrounding wall and the building was a stretch of ground, perhaps fifty yards across. Although it was grassed for the most part, there were flower-beds and shrubberies dotted here and there. A lawn stretched right up to the library windows.

  Mannering reached the large mullioned windows in which the formation of a Norman arch had been retained in the alteration. The sill of the window was only three feet from the ground, but the bottom half was covered with thick wire.

  The Baron took the tool-kit off his waist. He stuffed various items in his pockets one after another. His torch, wire-cutters, a pair of pincers, a small file, a screwdriver, and a small jemmy, the latter the most essential yet the most cumbersome tool in his kit. Only his right pocket had no tool, he wanted no hindrance if he had to grab his gun.

  The wire-cutters came into action first.

  The Baron was working quickly, his movements as delicate and decisive as those of a surgeon. Strand after strand of the thick, painted wire snapped. The snapping seemed to echo through the darkness, but the sound was negligible, and he did not pause.

  The wire was cut down both sides at last. Mannering bent it over so that he could get a clear view of the glass, and had to use his torch. He needed luck, with the window open. But it was closed tightly and the catch was set. He wished he could have toured the house to find an easier entrance, but before he started roaming round The Towers, with its passages and staircases, its many huge rooms and its keep, he wanted to have the plan firmly in his mind.

  A clock bell boomed two sonorous notes as Mannering smeared one side of a foot-square paper quickly with Seccotine from a large tube, and pasted it on to the glass. Next he took the jemmy and smashed at the paper.

  There was a dull crack! and streaks seemed to leap into the uncovered part of the window. The Baron pulled the paper away, carrying with it a dozen small pieces of glass and leaving a hole nearly large enough for him to put his hand through. He pulled one or two more pieces out, and then groped around for the catch.

  Whether The Towers was fitted with an alarm system or not he could not be sure. He tested the window for wires, found none, located the catch, and eased it backward. No clamour disturbed the silence. He pushed the window up slowly, and the squeaking of it seemed loud and bound to attract attention.

  But no other sound came.

  He paused for a moment in the darkness, the whispering of the wind in the trees coming clearly, suggesting a hundred things. Then he relaxed and climbed through the window. A thick carpet was almost flush with the walls, and there was no need to worry about making a noise with his heels.

  There was still the chance that the guards would patrol the grounds and see the broken window, but Mannering was hoping for the best – and in one respect his hopes were justified. Speel and his henchmen were guarding the keep, waiting for Didcotte’s return and an explanation of the telephone warning, while the American was on the road from London.

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE DIDCOTTE JEWELS

  Mannering pulled the curtains across the library window and saw that they were thick and opaque; he could safely switch on a reading-lamp. He used his torch as he moved cautiously about the room, located the lamp and searched the book-lined walls for the history of Addleman Towers.

  It was with a row of other historical books, a heavy, calf-bound volume. Mannering took it from the shelf to a table near by and switched on a reading-lamp. In the surrounding darkness he could almost imagine that he was in his own home. Subconsciously he was alert, but he was studying a plan of The Towers keenly. He took a pencil and a sheet of paper from his pocket and traced the lines. It was always easier for him to remember a plan when he’d drawn it, just as he could always remember names and words he had once written down.

  A study of maps and architectural drawing had been one of his earliest tasks after starting the career of daring and cracksmanship that had now grown part of him, was essential to him. He could carry a plan of a building in his mind’s eye and turn one way or the other within the place with as much certainty as if it was as familiar as his own flat or the Elan.

  His plan was rough, but effective enough.

  The library door opened out into a passage that went right round the ground floor of The Towers. Another passage led from it, and from this opened the doors of the arms-room and the billiard-room. At the end of the passage was a short flight of stairs, with a door at the bottom. Through that door another narrow passage and the main door of the keep.

  The distance from the library to the keep door was some fifty yards, and he could get from one place to the other in seconds.

  There were three doors from the library, one leading to the passage, one to the morning-room (as it had been in Addleman’s days), the ot
her to the vast hall. Mannering took the heavy, morticed lock out of the library door in less than thirty seconds, wielding the screwdriver like an expert craftsman. Now the door could not be locked against him. The one leading to the left – the morning-room – was open, but the morning-room passage door was locked.

  He wondered why the library door to the passage had been unlocked, but gifts from the gods could not be ignored. Another thirty seconds passed before he had opened the morning-room door.

  He decided to take that lock out quickly. The more ways of escape the better in this rabbit warren. Two of the screws were stubborn, and Mannering began to sweat. He was working in the darkness, relying on his sense of touch. But he finished at last and put the lock down.

  Then clearly through the silence came the sound of a footfall.

  He straightened up and slipped behind the partly open door, hardly daring to breathe. The footfalls were drawing nearer, heavy and deliberate.

  He heard the man cough. He heard him pause, and try the handle of the door next to the morning-room.

  He would find the missing lock next.

  Mannering opened the door swiftly and stepped softly into the passage. He saw the bull’s-eye lamp that the guard was using, making a round circle of light on the next door. He took three quick steps forward before the guard turned round. The Baron could see only his coat and the buttons shining on it in the reflected glow from the torch.

  Then the beam shone on Mannering.

  The guard opened his lips as thirteen stone of bone and sinew thwacked into him. He tried to cry out, but a hand gripped his windpipe. He reeled backward, waving his arms helplessly as something very cold was pressed against his forehead.

  ‘Keep still, or you’re a dead man.’

  He did not struggle. Mannering put the mouth of his gas-pistol against his nose, and pressed the trigger. The gas hissed out; the guard drew a deep breath and then slumped down, a heavy weight in Mannering’s arms. Mannering lowered him to the floor, and then carried him quickly back into the library. He was back in the passage secure in the knowledge that the man patrolling that part of The Towers would not worry him, but he wondered where and how often the guards contacted with each other.