Nest-Egg for the Baron Read online

  The telephone bell rang; it never seemed to stop.

  “Fenn speaking.”

  “Grimble here, sir,” came a deep voice. “Mannering left about an hour ago. No one has been to the shop, except a couple of customers who rang the bell once and then went off. I’ve their descriptions and all that, sir.”

  “Good. How’d Mannering look?”

  “Like plain ruddy murder,” Grimble said. “I wouldn’t like to get in his way just now.”

  “Know him well?”

  “Fairly well, sir.”

  “Trust him?”

  “Trust Mr. Mannering?” Grimble sounded astonished. “Well, I would and I wouldn’t. He’s honest, sir, if that’s what you mean, I’d trust him with my last penny or my young daughter, day or night, but he isn’t above putting one across us. If he thought—”

  “Go on,” Fenn urged, when Grimble stopped.

  “Don’t know that I’m justified in saying that, really, sir,” said Grimble cautiously, “but if he thought he could lay his hands on the brutes behind Sylvester’s murder, I think he’d kill them himself. It’s a funny thing with Mannering, once you’re one of the family, so to speak, you’re there for keeps. Anyone who works for Mannering is damned lucky, if you ask me.”

  “Except Sylvester.”

  Grimble paused, and then said slowly, “That’s different, sir, isn’t it? I don’t mean that way.”

  “I know what you mean,” Fenn said. “Thanks.”

  He rang off, and looked at the photograph of a Yard XI in white flannels, with absent Superintendent Bristow well to the fore. Bristow wouldn’t have needed to ask Grimble that, but knowing Mannering too well had its disadvantages as well. The Mannering whom Fenn had seen at Quinns had been first dazed and then deadly; and Grimble confirmed that opinion.

  Fenn studied reports which had come from Midham, and a dossier, already very thick, on Bill Brash. One thing had been discovered about Brash: he was a close associate of Crummy Day, a pawnbroker with an “iffish” reputation.

  Brash’s finger-prints were on the spear which had killed Revell. That was something that Mannering didn’t know.

  Fenn got up and hurried out and downstairs to the waiting-rooms. He thrust open the door of one, and Mannering looked up from an armchair in a corner.

  “Sorry, Mannering,” Fenn said, as if he really, meant it. “The A.C. held me up, and then there were two or three jobs I couldn’t avoid. Now I’ve all the time you want. Cigarette?”

  Mannering took one. “Thanks.”

  “Care for a drink?”

  “No, thanks,” Mannering said. It was cooler in the waiting-room, which had one small window, but still too warm for comfort. Mannering looked grey about the cheeks; and still very bleak. “I’m taking a chance on you,” he said, “and I hope you’re going to justify it. The man I let go last night is named Dibben.”

  “Changed your mind, have you?” Fenn looked pleased.

  “No. He telephoned me to say that I was on the spot—in line for murder. He didn’t say why, just warned me, and hung up. There couldn’t be any purpose in that, unless it were true.”

  Fenn looked his disagreement. “None?”

  “What do you think?”

  “If he’d wanted to put the wind up you—”

  “That would make him an actor who could put himself over perfectly,” Mannering said. “I’ve ruled that one out. I’d like to find out who he works for, what he’s doing, and what contacts he has, and I can’t do it myself. Will you—without pulling him in on the Dragon’s End job?”

  Fenn said, “Listen, Mannering, there was a murder down there. Remember.”

  Mannering looked at him levelly.

  “I don’t forget murder,” he said. “I don’t forget anyone’s murder. All right, he could have done it. You’ll know his name, directly you get any other evidence you can pull him in. I’m not asking you to do less than your duty.” That was almost a sneer.

  Fenn said, “I’ll let him ride, Mannering. Dibben, eh?” He took out a pencil and a small note-book.

  “M. Dibben, 17 Penn Street, Whitechapel,” Mannering said.

  “Thanks. Anything else?”

  “Not yet,” Mannering said.

  Fenn closed his note-book, put his pencil away, and stood upright – ramrod straight, for once not looking convex. He smiled faintly, but his expression and his voice were serious.

  “If I were you, John,” he said, “I’d go home and take it easy. Talk this over with your wife. Sit back, and leave the rest of the job to us. You didn’t get much sleep last night, you’ve had a strenuous day and bad shock. You might do something you’ll regret if you don’t give yourself a rest.”

  There was a pause; then Mannering gave a taut smile.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I appreciate that. If I don’t do it, you can’t blame yourself.”

  “Taken by and large, I’d rather see you alive than dead,” Fenn said. “And I don’t like this threat to you.”

  “Suspicion all over?” Mannering demanded. “I’m not any weaker physically, and still have a strong right arm.” Fenn just grinned.

  On his way downstairs, into an early evening which was eerie because of a great dark cloud casting a pall over the centre of London, as if sulphurous smoke were pouring down from some turbulent volcano in the skies, Mannering thought of the way he’d started. “If I were you, John.” A friendly gesture, and Fenn didn’t make gestures, didn’t do anything, without a purpose.

  Mannering drove out into the Embankment, and was on the far side of Parliament Square, which was choked full with home-bound traffic, when the deluge came. A few huge spots of rain struck the cars, the huge red buses, the teeming pavements; and then suddenly the rain fell, as it does in the tropics, with a roar which scared a lot of people who had never heard its like before. It smashed upon London in a torrential stream. Cars, their drivers suddenly blinded, banged bumper to bumper. A dozen skidded. The pavements were suddenly emptied as everyone on foot rushed for cover. The thronged square and the long width of Victoria Street were as deserted as they would be at midnight; every shop doorway was tightly jammed with people; pale faces were turned up towards the lowering yellow sky, in awed amazement.

  Mannering was jammed in.

  The rain came down for ten minutes in one solid wall; and although traffic began to move again afterwards, it was only at a crawl. Gars were parked on either side of the road, with drivers who hadn’t the nerve to go on. The hold-up gave Mannering time to think again, and he didn’t want to think.

  He had to tell Lorna about Sylvester.

  She had known him for a long time, he was part of Quinns. She had been worried before, now—

  She needn’t know about Dibben’s warning.

  The rain was slackening, and the sun began to shine behind the clouds. The light was strange, almost yellow ochre in places, becoming a brighter yellow. It reflected off the glistening pavements, the streaming road, the roofs of the cars and the scarlet buses. Mannering got into a stream of traffic which was moving fairly fast.

  Was Fenn right? Did they want to kill him for something which had happened at Dragon’s End the night before? Something he had seen – or noticed – yet the significance of which he had not understood? Something in one of the grotesque carved figures, perhaps; or in one of the stuffed animals, perhaps even at the floorboards.

  There was the other angle, the one at which Fenn had jumped immediately: that Dibben was simply working on his nerves. He didn’t believe it. The man had been almost insolent at first, but it had been an insolence covering fear: he had begged for a chance, been given it, and – tried to make amends. One to Dibben.

  Did his warning to Mannering put Dibben himself in danger?

  Would Fenn keep his word?

  The traffic thinned out, the rain stopped. Water was rushing down the guttering of houses and shops and pouring like miniature torrents down the kerbs. Great pools of water collected by the drains, twice Mannering had to dr
ive through one. Children were already playing at the sides of the roads, dipping sticks in muddy puddles, trailing pieces of wood and paper boats, paddling.

  He reached Green Street.

  Only the Yard man was in sight, in a doorway opposite. Everything seemed normal. Lorna would be back by now, and Miranda with her; he could think of Miranda’s glorious eyes and her pristine beauty, it could drive away the dark and ugly thoughts.

  Lorna had to be told, remember.

  He got out of the car, slammed the door, glanced up at the window. No one was in sight. Perhaps they weren’t back yet.

  He heard a sound, glass smashed, someone was shouting: the words became intelligible.

  “John, John, John!”

  That was Lorna, her voice strident with fear and with warning.

  “John, John, John!” she screamed.

  He ducked back from the doorway as he heard a vicious humming, then the thud of a bullet in the front door. He dropped to the wet ground and squirmed backwards into the cover of the car. Lorna had stopped shouting, but her cries and the roar of the shot were still in his ears.

  He squinted through the window of the car, and from the crouching position saw the face of a man at the window of a house opposite; the first-floor window. He didn’t recognise him, but saw the gun in the man’s hand, levelled and waiting until he showed himself.

  But the Yard man was on the move, his whistle shrilling out, and he came running into the road. Mannering didn’t see but heard him, and shouted:

  “Get back, get back!”

  The Yard man came on, the gun barked, the man staggered. As Mannering caught sight of him, he did a funny little pirouette, and collapsed.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Flood

  Mannering heard a splash which told him that the Yard man had fallen into the puddle near the car. Mannering edged towards the front of it. He heard the man grunting. There was no other shooting; apart from the Yard man’s gasping breath and the traffic at the far end of the street, there was no sound at all.

  Then footsteps clattered, the street door opened, Mannering glanced round and saw Lorna.

  “Go back!” he cried, “go back!”

  She ignored him and came running; but there was no more shooting. Breathless, she reached him, and he felt the tension of her body and the cold steel of a gun which she thrust into his hand.

  “He’s left the window,” she gasped, and paused for breath. “He might go out the back way, but—”

  Mannering was watching the door of the house where the man had been; where he was. It began to open. He rose, stealthily, his right hand holding the gun, his left on Lorna’s arm, keeping her down. He looked over the rain-splashed bonnet, and saw the door opening wider; a hand appeared. Traffic swished by at the end of the street, but nothing turned into the street itself.

  “Darling, be—careful.” Lorna spoke jerkily.

  “Quiet.”

  The Yard man still lay in the pool of water, making no sound now. Was he dead? Unconscious? Mannering caught a glimpse of him lying on his side; at least he wasn’t going to drown.

  “Mind!” cried Lorna.

  The door of the house opposite opened wide, a man leapt into sight, short, stocky, dressed in light brown. His gun was pointed towards the car. Mannering took one shot, then ducked as the man emptied his gun at the Rolls-Bentley. A bullet smacked against the bonnet just above Mannering’s head and richocheted off; Mannering felt it stir his hair.

  “Oh, keep down!” Lorna cried, and held him tightly.

  The man raced into the street, turned right towards the Embankment, and ran wildly, Mannering shook Lorna off, and stood up. The man was a moving target but within range; Mannering aimed for his legs.

  Then he heard a scream.

  He knew, in that instance, who it came from. It was strange, highpitched, eerie, startling. The running man, traffic along the Embankment, everything else vanished from sight as he turned his head.

  Miranda stood in the doorway of the house, mouth wide open, eyes filled with awful terror; screaming.

  The moment passed. Mannering, teeth clamped tightly together, swung round towards the running gunman, who was close to the corner, nearly out of range.

  “Look after her,” Mannering rasped. “’Phone 999, and see to that chap.” The Yard man lay quite still, and Lorna didn’t move, but turned and looked at Miranda as if the scream had paralysed her.

  Miranda screamed again.

  Half-prepared for it as he was, Mannering still felt its effect. It went through him like the screaming whine of a handsaw scraping against metal. He clenched his teeth again as he pulled open the door of the car and slid into the driving-seat.

  The gunman had turned the corner.

  Mannering started the engine, swung the wheel, swished through water a yard from the feet of the unconscious Yard man. In his driving-mirror he saw a taxi turn into Green Street from the King’s Road end; possible help for Lorna. He put his foot down, and the car leapt forward. Then almost in front of him the surface of the road broke, a gush of seething, muddy yellow water leapt two yards into the air. He jammed on the brakes, then gradually swung the wheel. The force of the water caught the side of the car, and the wheel was almost wrenched out of his hands. He held on, tyres squealing against the kerb. The car quivered, and slithered to a standstill. Just behind him, the water gushed like a huge, tumultuous fountain; it was already running axle-deep beneath the car, flooding the kerb and the pavement, and coming half-way up the car’s wheels.

  As it gushed and rushed past, Mannering knew that he no longer had a chance to catch up with the man. Trying would be a waste of time. He turned and looked back. The gush was coming out of a burst main more slowly now, just a tumbling hillock of turbulence, but water several inches deep stretched right across the road.

  The taxi had stopped, with water up to its running board.

  The driver and young Wainwright were lifting the Yard man from the water. Lorna stood in the doorway, an arm round Miranda, but Mannering couldn’t see Miranda properly. For the first time, he felt a spasm of irritation with her; but for that scream he would have brought the gunman down.

  He got out and hurried across the road, wading ankle deep.

  “You managing?”

  “Okay,” said the cabbie, a short middle-aged man wearing a brand-new trilby hat, startling on top of a head of untidy grey hair and above a face badly in need of a shave. “We’ll take him in.”

  Mannering turned towards the house. Lorna couldn’t do anything because Miranda was clinging to her, the tension of her slim young body was evident, and Lorna just couldn’t get free. Miranda was crying, her shoulders quaking, odd little whining sounds were coming from her lips.

  She had screamed.

  It was the first sound Mannering had heard her utter, yet his first swift reaction had been resentment, not far removed from anger. He didn’t think much of himself for that. He squeezed Lorna’s arm as he went past. No one was in at the ground-floor flat, and he ran up the stairs, finding Ethel and a neighbour at the open door of the flat on the first floor.

  “Is—is everything all right, sir?” She was trembling.

  “Not too bad, Ethel. Mrs. Harington” – the neighbour was a friendly fifty or so – “a man has been hurt, and they may want to bring him into your flat.”

  “Oh, dear,” Mrs. Harington exclaimed. “I’d better turn down a bed. May Ethel lend me a hand?”

  “Of course.” Mannering was already half-way up the stairs to his flat.

  He dialled 999, reported briskly, and then called Fenn; Fenn wasn’t in. Mannering moved away from the telephone. The sun was shining a long way off, but immediately overhead was a dark cloud which looked as if it were going to drench the district again. A few big drops of rain fell. There was a strange yellow tinge in the sky, on the surface of the Thames, on the moving traffic, the roofs, the roads; everything. The centre of the storm was moving sluggishly northwards.

  He fe
lt a little easier, without knowing why.

  He hoped that policeman wouldn’t die.

  He kept seeing a mind picture of the assassin.

  Mannering went into the bedroom, and closed the door. Lorna was sitting at the dressing-table; when he had come in she had been looking at herself intently, and without any satisfaction. Now, she turned sharply to face him. The swiftness of her movement betrayed her tension; even though she relaxed into a smile, evidence of nervous strain was still there.

  It was nearly half-past eight; and the first time they had been alone since the shooting in Green Street.

  The police had come, an ambulance had followed, but the Yard man hadn’t been badly hurt. That was his good luck; a bullet had grazed his temple, and the wound had bled freely. He had been taken to hospital but not detained.

  There had been the usual stream of questions, the routine, the deliberate hand-written notes in thick note-books, all this at an exasperatingly slow tempo.

  Then Grimble had arrived and quickened things a little. But there hadn’t been much that Mannering could tell him, except to describe the man who had fired the shot.

  Miranda had been the big problem.

  The shooting seemed to have done something to her which nothing else had succeeded in doing. Except for the screams, she had uttered no intelligible sound, but – she had screamed; some release of terror had made her find her voice.

  Richardson, whom Lorna told by telephone, was noncommittal, said that he was going to discuss the case with Lancelot Nash, and promised to report as soon as he could.

  Wainwright had helped the police, then reported to Mannering; and although it was obvious that his mind was really on Miranda, he hadn’t skimped the reports of his inquiries. It was quite simple; seven different contacts, most of them friends and trusties of the absent Larraby, had warned him not to have anything at all to do with Crummy Day, of Aldgate High Street.

  “Of course, I couldn’t tie any of them down to a specific reason, sir,” Wainwright had said, “but they just didn’t trust him. Two or three just laughed at the thought of you having anything to do with him. Simply laughed.”