Hide the Baron Read online

  “You could try.”

  “That’s right,” Merrow said, “I could try, and perhaps do more harm than good. I don’t know. What I’ve told you is true. I am Garfield’s nephew. I have travelled a great deal. I have also spent four out of the past five years in a South African jail.”

  He flung those words out.

  Mannering said: “A lot of men have been in jail without becoming misanthropes. What did you get jailed for?”

  “Making a fool of myself.”

  “They gave you a stiff sentence for that,” Mannering murmured.

  Merrow said: “I trusted a woman. I was looking around for a new gold stake in the Transvaal. I thought I’d make one. I played safe, as I thought, and got my girl friend to influence some capital for it. I hadn’t enough. If I’d known Jimmy Garfield then, I could have asked him, but I didn’t know I had a millionaire uncle. I put all I’d got into this—nearly three thousand pounds. I had a prospectus drawn up, and, under cover of secrecy, got a lot of investment capital subscribed. My girl and her friends banked it for me, they said.”

  “Then I published the details of the field. But there wasn’t any gold. I’d been played for a sucker. The little beauty had robbed me of everything, including my good name. She even squeezed herself out of it, she put up such an act in court – I was the double-dyed villain. She was as beautiful as Delilah, and twice as—”

  He broke off.

  Mannering said very gently: “And you served your sentence for fraud.”

  “That’s right. I was in jail when Uncle Jimmy’s men caught up with me.”

  “Does he know about the prison sentence?”

  “He does.”

  “So he’s broadminded.”

  “We talked about it only once,” Merrow said slowly, “and he’s never referred to it again. All he said was that he’d done some things in his life he was ashamed of. He’d once cheated a young man out of a few thousand pounds, and the youth committed suicide. He had a row with another man over it—his accomplice. He—”

  “Did he name the youth he’d swindled?”

  “No.”

  “The accomplice?”

  “No.”

  “Did he say anything more about it?”

  “It was nearly twenty years ago, and the accomplice was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment,” Merrow said flatly. “He said he’d tried to make amends but been rebuffed.” For a moment, Merrow hesitated, and there was a searching, longing look in his eyes. “No,” he added at last, “he didn’t mention any name.”

  Mannering decided not to press the question.

  “What about these attacks on you?” he asked.

  Merrow said: “They were to scare the wits out of me.”

  “Why?”

  “Some of the crowd I was mixed up with before discovered who I was, and came back to England. They suggested that I should let them into the house one night, so that they could make off with everything they could lay their hands on. It was all nice and specious. I needn’t be involved. Uncle Jimmy would be insured, so no one but insurance companies would suffer, and who cared about them? They said that if I did it, I’d get a quarter share. If I didn’t, they said they’d got something on Jimmy that would send him to jail for the rest of his life.”

  Mannering said sharply: “Had they?”

  Merrow answered: “The truth is, I don’t know. I couldn’t risk going to the police, the old boy had been so decent.”

  “What did you say to these people?”

  Merrow said savagely: “I told them to go to hell, I wouldn’t play. They tried to scare me. Threats, shots which just missed, car accidents which weren’t really serious but could have been. I could have told the old man, but it wasn’t only the threat they made. His heart isn’t good, and—well, I thought if I held out, they’d get tired of it. They weren’t likely to kill me while they still hoped I’d play—wasn’t that reasonable enough?”

  “Very,” Mannering agreed.

  “I kept toying with the idea of telling the police, but put it off,” said Merrow. “I’d no reason to believe that anyone else was in danger.”

  Mannering said very quietly: “So you just sat back and did nothing at all.”

  Merrow didn’t answer.

  “You being you, I don’t believe it,” Mannering said flatly.

  Merrow growled: “You’re too clever, aren’t you? One of these days—” He broke off.

  “All right, I fought back. I knew one thing for certain: it was someone who lived locally. I mean, they used a local man. Someone who knew the district, the copses, the countryside generally. Two or three little things happened that made me think that it might be someone in the house. I suspected them all, from Mrs. Baddelow downwards or upwards, and not excluding Joanna.”

  He’d suspected Joanna.

  It came out defiantly, too; as if Merrow expected to be called a fool; but what was foolish about it? Joanna had applied for a job and been accepted, and so she had a wonderful opportunity to spy on Merrow and to do what the unknown men wanted him to do.

  “Any proved cause for suspicion?”asked Mannering.

  Merrow snapped: “No. There were times when I hated myself for doubting her. Others when she seemed the obvious suspect. The one certain thing is that some one in this household spied on and reported my movements, and made it damned difficult. I got to the stage of not caring what they did or said, just hoping that it would come to an end. When I caught my leg in that trap—”

  Mannering said: “Could Joanna Woburn have put the traps down?”

  “No!”

  “Could she?”

  “I said no!”

  “I was hoping for an honest answer,” Mannering said.

  Merrow growled at him: “Damn you, why have a down on her? Supposing she could? She didn’t. Aylmer’s told me that those traps were in the Museum Bar at the ‘Grey Mare’ at lunchtime on the day they were used. Joanna couldn’t have gone there, collected them, and set them.”

  “They could have been collected and put somewhere convenient for her.”

  “Well, I don’t believe she had anything to do with it,” Merrow said, “and yet—” His mouth twisted; for a moment he looked positively ugly. “Well, how the hell can I be sure? One woman who looked as wholesome as she does was bad right through. Joanna could be, too.”

  “Could have been,” Mannering corrected.

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “Doubts about Joanna can be put out of your mind,” Mannering reassured him. “She’s been attacked twice, and last night was touch and go. If she worked for these men, they wouldn’t attack her this way, would they? I don’t think there’s a lot of reason to doubt Joanna, you can forget that one.”

  Merrow closed his eyes. The newspaper rustled, and then slid off the bed to the floor. Merrow lay on his back, his lips set tightly. He was a man to pity; and he looked both strong and helpless as he lay there.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Discoveries by Bristow

  Bristow swung along the passage at New Scotland Yard towards the Assistant Commissioner’s office, and those who knew him well knew also that Bristow had his tail up. The Assistant Commissioner, a leathery-looking military man fairly new to his post, who was beginning to know him well, motioned to a chair, and greeted: “What’s the excitement about?”

  “I think we’re getting somewhere on the Garfield job,” Bristow said.

  “Thanks to the genius of your friend Mannering?”

  “Partly,” said Bristow, and allowed himself a slightly caustic reproof. “If we had a dozen men as good as Mannering here, we’d be in clover. He’s been digging deep and he’s got Merrow to talk. Here’s the story—”

  The Assistant Commissioner, a meticulous man, made notes in a
neat hand. They read:

  G. Merrow convicted of fraud in South Africa, blames associates, says associates now attacking him.

  Prisoner caught at Brook House named Brill, twice convicted of crimes of violence. Killer.

  Bristow was still talking: “I’ve cabled Johannesburg, and should get a reply today, for information about the gold-field fraud. That’ll give us the names and known movements of the people concerned in that job.”

  “Good,” approved the Assistant Commissioner solemnly.

  “Then we’ve got Brill,” said Bristow. He said that with mingled satisfaction and reserve. “Brill won’t talk and nothing will make him. It’s hardly worth while trying. I’ve been through his record, and he’s never made a helpful statement when on a charge. Before he went down on the last job for seven years—he got his remission and came out two years ago—he was on a charge of attempted murder. By opening his mouth, he could have saved himself. He didn’t; he kept loyal. Never sure whether it is loyalty or because they just hate our guts,” Bristow said with feeling, “but we come across a lot of Brills, and this time we seem to have struck something really ugly.”

  He waited for a reaction.

  “Go on, please,” said the Assistant Commissioner formally.

  “The man who fell down the stairs at place and broke his neck also had a bad record,” Bristow told him. “His name was Byall. He’d been inside for robbery with violence. He was another silent type. Both of these men were as vicious as they come. They were killers. They took chances that would have scared ninety-nine men in a hundred. They weren’t up against it for money—both of them ran bank accounts and had several hundreds of pounds to their credit, and they got regular payments. Brill didn’t say anything to us, but at the banks they were supposed to make their living by betting. More likely, they were on a pay roll.” Bristow was so intent on what he was saying that he lit a cigarette without waiting for approval; and the A.C., who missed nothing, let it pass. The Superintendent’s excitement was infectious. “Now and again some of us get together and try to sort out the kind of stuff we’re likely to come up against,” Bristow went on. “Did so only a few weeks ago, when we picked up Benny Duvanto for the King Street Tolling. Benny was another of this type. There aren’t twenty of them in the country, as far as we know—and they’re more explosive and more dangerous than two thousand ordinary crooks.”

  The A.C. said sharply: “Exaggerating, Bristow?”

  “Considered opinion,” Bristow nearly snapped. “You mean, we do have hired killers who have neither compunction nor fear?”

  “That’s about it,” Bristow agreed. “We know where most of them are, and keep them under survey as far as we can; but we can’t keep them in the country or tabs on each one. Now we know that two were in this job, and we also know that they knew one another. It could be that several others, still free, are mixed up in this job, and if they are—”

  He didn’t finish.

  “What are you going to do?” asked the Assistant Commissioner.

  “Have each one we know checked and followed,” Bristow said. “Can’t do more, sir. With the bit of luck we need, we’ll have some names to play with tonight. No need to worry you with the rest of the story—except that I’ve been talking to Mannering on the telephone, and he takes the same view as me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That the two men he and Miss Woburn saw when she was held up on the road made a big mistake in letting themselves be seen, that it wouldn’t matter unless they wanted to appear pretty freely in public. So Mannering thinks they’re likely to be involved in a big fraud, and that the box of so-called miniatures taken from Garfield is a key to it.”

  “Hm, yes, could be,” conceded the Assistant Commissioner. “Garfield been able to talk yet?”

  “The doctors say that he can’t be questioned for another four or five days. He’s come round twice, each time almost lucid, but he’s still on the danger list. Any ordinary man would have been dead by now.” Bristow stubbed out his cigarette and, without thinking, lit another. “I think that covers the essentials, sir.”

  “Good. Any news of that small car which Miss Woburn fired at?”

  “No.”

  “No other local developments?”

  “I’m in touch with Aylmer regularly, and we’ve sent Marble down there to help out,” said Bristow. “I don’t think Aylmer will miss much. He has photographs where we have them and general descriptions of the bad men we have on our list, and if he recognises anyone, he’ll be on to us like a shot. The trouble with most of the photographs is that they’re old.”

  “We don’t seem to be missing many angles,” the Assistant Commissioner conceded.

  Bristow went back to his own office, not dissatisfied. His desk was cleared of everything except papers relating to the Garfield job; there was a limit to the amount that one man could do. He had seldom felt more edgy. One met ruthlessness of the kind being shown in this job one, two or three times in a lifetime; and when faced with it, the outlook was bad.

  All the precautions in the world couldn’t be guaranteed to save Joanna Woburn or Mannering, once Mannering was known. Bristow knew it. Unless the men were caught in time, more murder was inevitable.

  Bristow’s chief worry was not knowing how much time he had to work in.

  If he could get one break, such as find the car with the bullet mark in the back, for instance, it might make a world of difference.

  He telephoned the hospital in Chelsea, received a good report on Mannering’s wife, and replaced the receiver.

  As he did that, a constable in the greater London area was examining the back of a small car which had a peculiar mark in the back. He only noticed it because at the station that morning they’d been briefed to look for small, dark cars with a bullet mark or indentation on the back. Turning a corner near Hampstead Heath, he had seen a car parked outside a house at an angle which showed the mark.

  The constable was P.C. Wilberforce, attached to the Hampstead Police Station, a middle-aged, unambitious officer who knew his job from A to Z and had no desire to get stripes and have to learn a new alphabet. The fact that some years before he had inherited what was, for him, a comfortable little sum so that he and his wife and three children could live in comparative comfort, was an important influence.

  Wilberforce had a conscience and did his job thoroughly, but made no attempt to step outside his own limits.

  The car was an elderly Hillman 10. It was parked outside one of the older houses near the Heath, on a slight rise; that, and the slanting morning sun, had shown up the mark. No one else was about, although the rattle of milk bottles sounded near by; probably the milkman and his float was in the drive of a house, or round a corner. The house was three doors away from crossroads.

  Wilberforce, a thin man who looked too small for his uniform, hitched up the leg of his trousers, and knelt down to examine the mark more closely.

  He knew what bullet marks were like, for before joining the police he had served in the army which had been forced from Dunkirk. He knew the kind of mark that a bullet made on all kinds of metal, too. This one had struck the sheet metal at the back of the car just where it was curving slightly, to vanish beneath the car body. He put his little finger in it. The edge was rather rough. He tried the handle of the boot; it was just possible that the bullet had stayed inside the boot, if this were a bullet hole.

  P.C. Wilberforce did not know of any other means by which a hole of that kind could be caused. Just took the tip of his little finger, and that probably meant a 32; the gun used had been a 32.

  Where any other officer would probably have felt excited at the thought that he had made a discovery, Wilberforce experienced just a little mild satisfaction. Lack of ambition, as often, went hand in hand with lack of imagination, and he did not pause to think that he might be in danger.

&n
bsp; He did not know that he was being watched.

  The first man to see Wilberforce looking at the car was Seale – standing at his favourite place near the window, where he could see the Heath, the passing traffic, and anyone who approached. Seale promptly sent for Greer. Both men watched as P.C. Wilberforce hitched up his trousers and bent down.

  “What the hell’s he doing?” Seale demanded. “What’s at the back of the car?”

  Greer began: “Nothing, I shou—” and then broke off abruptly.

  “What’s the matter, lost your tongue?”

  Greer gulped. “I’ve just thought, there might be—”

  He was scared by the look in Seale’s eyes, but couldn’t evade the issue now. “The night I was at Brook House. The woman fired at me, remember. If she hit the back of the car, there would be a mark.”

  Seale said: “You—” and then shot out a hand and slapped Greer’s face. The plump man backed against the wall; the puce of his silk shirt looked deep and bright against the cream-coloured paper.

  He didn’t speak.

  “We’ve got to get that copper,” Seale said, “and we’ve got to get him fast. You—”

  “We can’t bring him here!”

  Seale said: “Go and get him.”

  The policeman outside was still on his knees.

  Greer said “We can’t bring him here! I don’t give a damn what you say, we can’t!”

  “I tell you—”

  “Why the hell don’t you let me think?”

  Seale stopped. Greer looked out of the window, and for a long time they stood quite still. The red mark on Greer’s face gradually began to fade.

  Then he said: “Freddy’s downstairs. We’ll have him go and tell the copper that he’s found something on the common, will he take a look.” Greer paused, as if he were seeking desperately for some weakness in that idea.

  The policeman stood up.

  “Get it done,” growled Seale.

  “Okay, okay.” Greer turned and hurried downstairs.