Nest-Egg for the Baron Page 14

  “Could be,” Mannering conceded, “but I don’t think so. He’s well disposed to us. I telephoned him after getting back from Midham, and he told me what Pendexter had said, didn’t seem to hold anything back. I think he has a peculiar idea that Bristow and the Assistant Commissioner wouldn’t approve at all.”

  Lorna said dryly, “That you can find out things that the police can’t?”

  “Spare my blushes!” Mannering grinned, and added almost casually. “I’ll look in on Crummy Day tonight.

  Dibben may have been lying, but—” He shrugged. “We’ll see. Lone Wolf Mannering, the bold bad Baron—”

  “Quite alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wainwright would give his right hand to go.”

  “He can keep his right hand. I’ll have no guards, no lookout men, no accomplices except my wife, and her only in spirit,” said Mannering, and kissed her, hugged her, felt her tension. “The last time that I went out with help I nearly came a cropper. I’ll be happier making my own mistakes.”

  Half an hour later he left the Green Street flat. He was not followed. Whatever Fenn had in mind, he certainly wasn’t watching Mannering all the time. Mannering went by bus to Victoria, then by taxi to a side street not far from the station, next on foot to a little cul-de-sac where there were several lock-up garages. He kept a car there, registered under a false name, always ready for emergency use.

  He kept a make-up case there, too.

  He unlocked the door and stepped in, made sure that he wasn’t watched, closed and locked the door and then looked about him. The garage was clean, but smelt faintly of petrol.

  He seemed to change as he moved into the garage. He wasn’t John Mannering any more. He had moved back over the years, into that other guise – the guise of the Baron. He was going to work alone. He was going to break into the premises of a man who was certainly bad, and might be a killer or a man who hired killers. It did not occur to him, as it did to Lorna, that he had hardly given a second thought to the risks of the raid, once he had decided to go. He took risks like this as other men gambled with money; and whenever he gambled the odds were against him.

  The change in his mood, in his very character, wasn’t the only change. He sat in the back of the car, with a bright light on in the roof, a mirror fastened to the back of the front seat, a make-up case on the seat by his side. He used make-up – grease-paint, eye black, cheek pads, a wig—as an expert would use them, and he was absorbed in the task of making himself up.

  The last thing he did was to slip a loose plastic covering over his fine white teeth, so that they looked yellowed and ugly. Then he sat back, and examined himself in the mirror. He looked at a man ten years older, harder-faced, flabby, without a trace of good looks.

  Next he changed into an old suit, padded round the waist and at the shoulders, which he kept in the back of the car.

  He wound a tool-kit round his waist, too, and stuck thin adhesive tape, almost a second skin, to his fingers.

  At last he was ready.

  An hour after he had entered the garage he drove out at the wheel of an inconspicuous, medium-sized Austin with a specially tuned engine. It purred sweetly through the almost empty streets, crossed Parliament Square and Westminster Bridge, then headed towards the City and the East End.

  It was a little before midnight when the Baron reached Aldgate station. He turned towards the right and, in a square near Aldgate Pump, parked the car with several others, then walked briskly towards the High Street. Few people were about, although it was busier than the City or the West End at this late hour.

  Mannering walked past a pawnbroker’s shop, which bore the legend:

  C. R. Day

  Jewels Bought and Sold

  Securities Taken

  The shop itself was in darkness, but there was a light in a window on the floor above.

  Mannering passed the shop again on the other side of the road. No one seemed to be watching. He felt sure that he would have been able to tell if any police were there; but the only policeman was one in uniform, up by the station, talking to a man in plain clothes.

  Mannering turned down a narrow side street, and found “the approach to the back of Crummy Day’s premises.

  No one was in sight.

  Mannering still had a chance to back out; there was no compulsion, but there was a powerful driving force which he couldn’t resist.

  Unless Crummy Day’s place was different from most others, getting in would be simple; getting out would be the trouble.

  Did the answer to the vital question—why was he being attacked?—lay inside, with the answer to Pendexter Smith’s reason for bringing the nest-egg and Miranda? Would he find the answer to Miranda’s deafness and her pathetic agony of mind?

  Fenn thought so.

  Well, Fenn had pretended to think so.

  Mannering moved out of the narrow side street towards the little area at the back of Crummy Day’s. By now he felt excitement burning through him like an electric current. The excitement came fiercely and almost uncontrollably; it had fed the Baron in the past, it was the force that drove him now.

  Chapter Nineteen

  At Crummy Day’s

  The Baron stepped into the kitchen at the back of the pawnbroker’s shop.

  The only sound came from the High Street – faint, echoing noises of traffic, footsteps, and passing cars and buses. An aeroplane, its lights showing, droned overhead when he turned to close the window. The only light came from the stars and from a house, a few doors away; and that made a dim glow.

  There was no blind; no curtains.

  He moved to the back door, and examined it carefully in the light of his torch. There was a burgler-alarm cable, delicately adjusted, as there had been at the window. He had moved that carefully, nerves on edge, until he had been able to climb in without jolting it. He still listened, trying to make sure that it hadn’t been touched, that no one was lying in wait.

  He studied the alarm-cable fastenings carefully, then prised the staples out with a claw tool, laid the cable down gently and doublefolded it alongside the wall. Next he went to the door. The bottom of the door cleared the insulated wire by a fraction of an inch.

  He unlocked the door, then drew the bolts.

  The pawnbroker obviously relied on his burglar-alarm system, the lock and the bolts were old-fashioned, had probably been there when the premises had been built, eighty-odd years ago.

  Mannering closed the door, but could open it at a touch; a means of escape was ready. He didn’t leave the kitchen at first, but waited in a corner, looking intently through the window. No one approached. If anyone had seen him and had waited to lull him into a false sense of security, they would have come by now.

  If the police had been watching—

  Surely this was the one time when he need not worry about the police.

  There was doubt about Fenn; he felt it, Lorna felt it. He wished he hadn’t thought of Lorna then. Lorna came between him as the Baron and as Mannering, made him too human, weakened his resolve. His nerve had been steady until that moment; now it began to quiver.

  He moved; and movement helped.

  The kitchen led into a passage; on the right was a room with a window overlooking a narrow alley and the yard he’d come through. A storeroom; a junk room, if it came to that. He could smell the fusty junk, could make out the shapes of cardboard cartons, show-cases, pictures. This was part of the stock-in-trade that Crummy Day used to make it look as if he ran just a genuine business.

  Next to this was the shop.

  The door leading to it from the passage was heavily bolted; Mannering didn’t think that was to stop anyone from getting into the shop, but to prevent them from getting out if they broke into the shop from the street. He went to the front door, at the side of the shop, shone his torch on it, and whistled softly.

  The burglar alarm here was cleverly fitted, and the lock was intricate and strong; few men would be able to force it.

&n
bsp; The Baron turned to the staircase – and had his first shock.

  The staircase had been walled off at landing level, and at the head of the stairs was another door, as strongly protected as the street door. This explained why the back entrance had been easy to force; and told its own story. Crummy Day kept his valuables behind that locked door at the head of the first flight of stairs.

  The Baron shone the torch on the lock.

  It was the latest Landon; he’d seen several like it, knew that many of them were electrically controlled; this might be electrified. He tested this out by tossing a tiny piece of fuse wire; there was no flash, nothing to suggest that the metal was alive.

  Inside the house there was a strange quiet; outside, the traffic noises and people laughing and a drunk breaking the calm by singing raucously.

  The Baron bent down and looked at the stairs themselves. They seemed solid, and were covered with linoleum that had been down for ages.

  If he went out again and tried to get into the first floor by a window, he would probably run up against strong defences. And he would increase the risk of being seen. He didn’t want to go back. He squatted, studying the stairs, as patient as if he had a day and a night to spare.

  He murmured softly, “I think this is it.”

  He unwound his tool-kit from his waist, laid it on the floor, put the torch into position so that it gave him some light, and selected a knife. He cut the linoleum off two stair treads, then the upright piece between them. He put these aside carefully, making sure that they didn’t lie so that they could trip him up if he were in a hurry.

  He fitted a bit in to a brace, fingers moving quickly and dexterously; just a craftsman who seemed intent on what he was doing. He began to drill. The wood was deal, soft and yielding; and the oiled bit went in almost as smoothly as a knife into cheese; the only sound was the softly whirring drill.

  After drilling each hole, the Baron paused.

  The drunken singer’s voice was farther away at each pause. Traffic was getting quieter. There were no sounds in the house.

  When he had drilled four holes, close together, he put the drill away. He didn’t leave it ready for further use; he might have to up and off in sudden alarm. Long practice and the thorough self-training of bygone years were a great stand-by.

  Even listening for sounds came automatically; so long to listen, so long to work. When actually using the tools he could thing over anything that seemed different – any changes in the atmosphere, any hint of sounds.

  He screwed a cup-hook into the upright piece between the treads, then fitted a blade into a small saw-handle, and used this instead of the brace and bit. It made little more noise. He didn’t stop so often, but sawed through the supporting piece between the two threads, and the saw bit swiftly into the soft wood.

  At last, he was able to move a large piece, pulling it away with the cup-hook.

  He laid it aside.

  Getting at the treads above and below was easy, then. He had room to squeeze through here, and he looked down into a cupboard built beneath the stairs; at coats and hats, a set of golf-clubs, walking-sticks, all the oddments one might expect to find.

  He wasn’t interested in the cupboard.

  The joists supporting the weight of the floorboards above the cupboard were thick, but also of deal. It wasn’t so easy to saw through these, he had to keep his hands at a tension; but he got through.

  He listened for longer stretches now, for the noise he was making was nearer the living-quarters above the shop, and more likely to be heard. That light had been on in a front room; he wasn’t sure that it was out.

  Next came the landing floorboards, and with these he had his first real luck. They had been cut two or three times, for gas pipes; he was able to push two or three up with little trouble. That meant the floor covering was loose. He held his breath as he pushed one or two boards aside.

  Dim light came from the landing.

  He kept very still.

  The light was steady, and he heard no sound. He shifted a board. It scraped a little, and the noise seemed worse to him than it did in the landing. He paused, then moved another.

  Soon there was room for him to climb up into the living-quarters.

  He hauled himself from the staircase cupboard.

  He had his tool-kit round his waist again, everything else in his pockets, he was ready to run; but there was no hint of alarm. The boards creaked, but he didn’t slow down. First his head and shoulders, then his chest, were above the level of the landing floor. He got a leg up and over, a moment later was standing up, breathing softly, heart racing.

  The light came from a bulb fitted against the wall just above a door; it was a low-powered, very small bulb. He didn’t doubt that it was a kind of night-light.

  High on the wall was a square wooden box, like the kind used for electric fuses. He opened this carefully, standing on a chair. Inside was a powerful burglar-alarm bell. He smiled with satisfaction as he disconnected the hammer, climbed off the chair, and felt much happier.

  He put the floorboards back loosely, opened the flat door from the inside, and left it ajar. Now there was no need to fear an alarm; and a way out was ready.

  He looked about the landing.

  It was spacious, the boards were polished, there were three skin rugs and several old oak pieces of furniture; this was like the entrance to the flat of a wealthy man who had good taste.

  A passage led to the right; and three doors led off the landing itself.

  The Baron studied the layout, and found another, narrow staircase, at the end of the passage. He went up this, keeping close to the wall by force of habit and so lessening the danger of creaking boards.

  The top landing was much smaller, and didn’t seem so well furnished. Here were three doors. One led to a big room, obviously used as a stock-room – and here the Baron’s torch moved slowly round, the beam shining on lovely things, treasures which would not have been out of place at Quinns. There were ordinary run-ofthe-mill antiques, too, it wasn’t exactly a treasure house, but it was more a dealer’s stock-room than the storeroom of a pawnbroker.

  In another room there were empty show-cases. He hadn’t found the safe.

  He went into the third room on this floor, and as he opened the door, his senses whispered a warning. He stopped instantly. In that moment he was tense but very calm; he could hear anything.

  What he did hear was breathing.

  His heart began to pound, from the reaction. He heard no other sound at all. When he was steadier, he pushed the door wider open. The window of the room was not curtained, no blind was drawn, and lights from the High Street filled it with a soft glow. He didn’t need to use his torch. He went towards the bed, where a man lay sleeping.

  He recognised Bill Brash.

  Chapter Twenty

  Discovery

  Mannering closed the door of the room behind him, very softly. He hadn’t stayed long. He had taken the key out of the inside of the lock, and now he inserted it from the outside, and turned it; it clicked sharply. He stood waiting tensely, hardly breathing until he was sure that Brash hadn’t been disturbed. Then came the old, familiar thumping of his heart.

  He turned away.

  He didn’t want to think about Brash, yet; the meaning of this might be obvious; it was even possible that Fenn suspected that Brash was here, but if that were so, wouldn’t he have made a search?

  He moved to the landing, and noticed a draught of cool air sweeping over his face. Alarm flared; for a door might have opened, someone might be coming upstairs. He saw and heard nothing.

  He moved again, and felt the current of cool air, went to one side and saw an open window. It was too narrow to climb through. He looked out, awkwardly. It would tax the agility of a tiny monkey to climb up here, for the window was set in a blank wall which overlooked an alley and the wall of a house behind the High Street.

  Mannering shone his torch, carefully.

  This window wasn’t the usual
kind; was more like a small glass door. It could be fastened like a door, too. Then he saw that part of the wall was different here. In fact, a section of the inside wall had been taken out, but could be put back to cover and to conceal the window.

  He moved both the window and the piece of wall; each was fitted on hinges which moved smoothly and without the slightest sound. Opposite, in the other house, was a large window. He didn’t think there was much doubt about the purpose of the windows. If the police raided Crummy Day’s, and Crummy carried “hot” jewels on the premises, they could be thrown out of this window to the house opposite – and when the inside was closed and covered, no one would know that there was anything but the blank wall. If it were ever found by the police, the stuff would have been sent to safety first.

  Mannering moved away, listened at Brash’s door, heard nothing, and went downstairs. He hadn’t yet found the safe, but need he look? If the police came and found Brash—

  He reached the landing, and went to each of the doors. Two were locked, two unlocked. He looked into a bedroom and a bathroom. The bedroom overlooked the High Street, there was some traffic and light from street-lamps; and a low-pitched, rhythmic snoring. Mannering moved cautiously towards a large double-bed. A bearded man and a heavy-looking woman lay there, face to face. The man’s beard showed up grey even in this poor light; it was he who snored. The woman’s hand was close to his almost bald head.

  Mannering remembered the story of Crummy Day’s soubriquet; he always had crumbs on his beard.

  Mannering took the key out of the lock, and locked the couple in. Search first, tackle Crummy afterwards.

  Would anyone else be at the house?

  There were only the locked rooms to search, now; and he had plenty of time. He hadn’t been much more than an hour from the time he had started working on the window of the kitchen. Nothing suggested that Crummy Day thought there was the slightest need for alarm.

  Then, out of the brooding quiet, came a crash of sound, the clattering roar of a burglar alarm. He’d found one, and not searched for another; but there was one.