Carriers of Death (Department Z) Read online

  ‘At the door marked Town Clerk—Private,’ he tapped and walked in. The man sitting at the large desk facing him looked up in surprise.

  ‘Who are you, sir?’ he demanded sharply.

  ‘My name’s Kerr,’ said Kerr, ‘from Scotland Yard. I’m sorry to intrude, Mr. Reynoldson, but you can give me valuable information on a matter that is vital and urgent. It concerns a Colonel Piper...’

  Whether this direct approach took the Town Clerk’s fancy, whether he was perturbed by mention of Scotland Yard, or whether Piper’s name surprised him Kerr could not guess. But the Town Clerk gestured to a chair and he echoed the name.

  ‘Colonel Piper?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kerr. ‘Will you listen a moment?’

  He said enough to make Reynoldson’s face pale, and followed with a quiet:

  ‘Can you give me any information at all about the man?’

  Reynoldson pursed his lips.

  ‘No information that would interest you, Mr. Kerr, but one or two curious things. For instance, although Piper is a man of independent means and certainly does not attend any business, he has a great number of callers who always come and go by car. I’ve learned this,’ the Town Clerk apologised with a smile, ‘from the tittle-tattle of my butler. The only other thing is that Piper seems to have—almost an obsession, about burglars. He takes extreme precautions, certainly.’

  ‘He does, does he?’ murmured Kerr, and rose to go. ‘I don’t think I need worry you any more at the moment, Mr. Reynoldson. Many thanks, indeed!’

  Ramage was waiting in the Benz outside, and five minutes saw them at the Station again. Miller was on the steps, waiting. He hopped into the car as Ramage jumped out, and Kerr hardly stopped it. As they went, he reported what he had discovered, and learned in turn that a force of thirty armed policemen were concentrating on Common View.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Miller asked.

  ‘Load Carruthers and Trale into this,’ said Kerr without hesitation, ‘and introduce myself to Colonel Piper. I’m sure he’ll be surprised to see me. And I wonder if we’ll find any of our other birds?’

  ‘If you do, there’ll be trouble,’ Miller warned grimly.

  ‘I know.’ Bob Kerr was smiling with something very like contentment. ‘This will be warm, all right, but—with a little luck, Miller, we’ve got them!’

  Craigie, or any man who had worked for or with Department Z in the past ten years, could have told Kerr that never in the Department’s history had there been an affair like that of Marlin and Benson. There were three vital differences, and several subsidiary ones that had a bearing on the issue.

  First, there was the absolute lack of clues, and the complete disappearance of all the men connected with the case directly the Department began to realise they were suspect. Second, there were the long—two or three days was a long time, in the work of Department Z, where a day’s delay might mean life or death for hundreds—periods of futile working, of following wasted trail after wasted trail.

  Third, there had been that peculiar method of attack by Benson; his was a type of ruthlessness that even Craigie had rarely encountered.

  In some ways, Kerr’s attitude was similar to Benson’s. Craigie, who saw a great deal more of this business than many would have believed, knew that although Kerr had uncovered very little, although the case was dragging out dangerously, although the issues were bigger, probably than any that had gone before, his new agent was the most disconcertingly direct man he had ever used. He acted the moment there was so much as a whisper to suggest a move in any direction; and he moved incredibly fast.

  At two forty-five that afternoon neither Kerr nor Benson dreamed they were within a hundred yards of each other. This was when Kerr at the wheel of his Benz, and Carruthers and Trale in the rear, began to turn into the drive of Common View.

  Benson was with Marlin in the first-floor study. He had called to arrange for the final preparations of the thing that was, without shadow of doubt, to spark the international blaze. Marlin had talked to certain gentlemen, who proposed to meet his asking price of one million pounds, plus expenses, and both parties were well pleased with progress. Having just accepted a large sum in cash, Benson was grinning his satisfaction as he prepared to leave.

  ‘That’s all right, then, Marlin. They’ll go up tonight. Not a minute before or after, take my word.’

  Marlin eyed him with mingled admiration and contempt.

  ‘You’re a cool devil,’ he said, dispassionately.

  ‘I know my job.’ Benson grinned again. ‘I’ll be seeing you, Marlin.’

  ‘If there’s any emergency,’ Marlin began: ‘ring...’

  Cutting across his words came the roar of a high-powered car, the skidding of wheels and the screeching of brakes. As both men moved instinctively to the window, they saw the Benz swing suicidally into the drive.

  ‘What the devil...’ muttered Marlin.

  ‘Kerr!’ swore Benson, and leapt for the bell-push on Marlin’s desk as the big car rushed towards the house. He had pressed it before Marlin fully realised what he had meant. Kerr! Kerr—Craigie’s man—here!

  Benson was cool and collected, now; a better man in emergency than Marlin: ‘That’s the doors locked, all right—but they’ll try the windows.’

  ‘But what...?’

  ‘We’re going to fight!’ snarled Benson, suddenly turning on the man who had given him this job. ‘If they catch us, we’ll hang. And if they don’t, we’ll be shot—or they will.’

  Marlin’s eyes bulged.

  ‘But there must be another way!’ he protested.

  ‘Sure—fighting.’ Benson had recovered from his outburst. ‘Telephone the garage and------’

  What else he would have said was drowned in the appalling din of the crash. As a cloud of dust billowed upwards, the sudden bellowing of voices from below-stairs added to the row.

  ‘They’ve smashed the windows!’ Benson snapped. ‘There’s not much you can teach Kerr. Come on, blast you—call the garage.’

  16

  End of a gentleman

  ‘If the door won’t open, try the windows,’ Carruthers had advised Kerr, more in fun than earnest. But Kerr had raced the Benz along the drive, slowed down as he crashed over shrubs and flower-beds, and was travelling at five miles an hour when the radiator of the big car crashed through the spacious window of an unused drawing-room.

  Kerr had judged it to a nicety, with little damage done to the car; but Carruthers and Trale swore as they ducked to avoid flying glass. Kerr didn’t seem to notice it. He was out of his seat as the car reached a standstill, and scrambling rapidly over the radiator to jump into the room.

  ‘My God,’ Carruthers murmured. ‘That man isn’t human!’

  ‘Nor are you,’ grinned Trale. ‘Come on!’

  They jumped after him, but in the room with the gaping window, only an open door told them where he had gone. A split second later, they heard his voice:

  ‘Oh, no you don’t!’

  Then a sound as if Kerr had used his fist and not his gun.

  He had.

  He had told himself, from the moment he suspected this house to be connected with Marlin and Benson—and quite probably to shelter their men—that there was just one way to go about this: to smash a way in. He guessed the occupiers would soon be warned of any massing of police—and he had no desire to give the gang-leader a second’s warning. Shock tactics were the only kind likely to succeed.

  He went through the first room with his automatic in his left hand and his right clenched ready for an emergency. It came in the form of a man who had raced through from the rear of the house to reach the hall as Kerr himself did. The man grabbed for his gun: Kerr didn’t bother. He smashed his fist into the man’s face and sent him reeling, and the crack as his head struck the wall assured him there would be no more immediate trouble from that quarter.

  At the foot of the stairs, he hesitated.

  There was need for caution now, for
attacks might come from any direction. He waited what seemed an interminable time before Carruthers and Trale appeared. He heard them and snapped:

  ‘Try those rooms,’

  “Those rooms” were three that opened from the hall. Carruthers and Trale tried them, ready to shoot and be shot at; but all were empty.

  ‘Trale,’ Kerr ordered. ‘Stay put by the stairs. The police will be here any minute.’

  ‘I’ll let ’em in,’ Trale grinned. ‘Promise.’

  Kerr flashed a grim smile, then started up the stairs, two at a time. He knew that the occupants of the house must be aware of trouble, or more than one of them would have appeared by now.

  If Benson were here...

  Kerr and the gang-leader caught sight of each other at the same moment. Kerr was at the top of the stairs as Benson cautiously opened the door of the room in which he and Marlin were sheltering. His gun and Kerr’s spat at the same time, but even as the flames stabbed out, Kerr had ducked and a bullet cracked into the wall behind him, showering plaster on Carruther’s head. Kerr’s own pecked into the door as Benson slammed it.

  ‘He’s in there,’ Kerr murmured.

  ‘Got him!’ Carruthers said, with patent satisfaction.

  ‘I’m not so sure—get down!’

  The shout followed the opening of a door at the far end of the landing, and made a startled Carruthers drop to the boards quicker than he had ever dropped before. Kerr followed suit just as the hail of bullets swept over them. He could see the snout of the gun and the hand of the man holding it, and touched the trigger of his automatic.

  The man screeched, the gun sagged, emptying itself into the floor. Kerr snapped: ‘Stay here, but find cover!’ and —although lying full length—somehow levered himself up and executed a prodigious leap forward, in one smooth movement.

  The far door was still partly open, held there by the machine-gun, which lay where it had fallen. He knew the sudden quiet might well be a ruse, but it didn’t stop him. He pushed the door open another five inches, but the body of the man was obviously blocking it. He could get the machine-gun out now, though, and pocketed his automatic quickly as he did so.

  Then he put his shoulder to the door and pushed hard. As it cleared the obstacle and swung back, he had the gun ready. But the room was empty, save for the man on the floor, who had caught the bullet in his chest. Kerr’s mind was still ablaze. He wanted Benson and Marlin, and as the moments flew, he grew afraid that they might yet escape. But outside, the place was crowded with police: no-one who tried to get past the cordon could succeed. No-one——

  Kerr moved as the thought struck him. He had been surprised that there were so comparatively few men here; but this was probably a headquarters: Benson would house his gunmen somewhere else. For the moment, what mattered was the room where he had seen the gang-leader.

  Carruthers was sheltering behind a large cupboard from which he could survey seven or eight of the doors in the two passages leading from the landing. His gun was in his hand, but he grinned as he saw the tommy-gun in Kerr’s.

  ‘Sauce for the goose,’ he murmured.

  ‘Be ready for it,’ Kerr warned, unsmiling.

  He put the snout of the machine-gun two inches from the lock, and pressed the trigger. The thing trembled in his hands almost like a pneumatic drill, and bullets chipped into the wood. For perhaps a minute he kept it up, and then the door sagged inwards.

  ‘Wait,’ Kerr cautioned.

  It was impossible to know what would happen, Benson may have excaped through another door, or he might be waiting—and with his gun.

  ‘Carruthers—see if you can find me a padded chair.’

  He indicated the door as he spoke, and Carruthers nodded understanding and hurried off. He knew it would be madness to try any of the upper rooms, there was no knowing who might be in them. The uncertainty—the silence—was unnerving. Trale was looking fidgety at the foot of the stairs.

  ‘No police; no nothing,’ he reported.

  ‘There will be.’ Carruthers patted him on the head—much to Trale’s annoyance, for Dodo was never at his best when waiting for things to happen—and went into the room with the smashed window. There was just the chair Kerr wanted and he took it up, puffing a little, for the furniture in the house was old and heavy.

  Kerr was waiting, his face set:

  ‘No sound of any kind,’ he muttered.

  ‘That’s what Dodo’s complaining of. And no police.’

  ‘They won’t come into the grounds until I send for them. They’re outside to stop the rats running. I’ve heard,’ he added morosely, as Carruthers crouched behind the chair and held it by its front legs to push it against the door, ‘of tunnels and passages to nearby houses. I hope we haven’t struck anything like that.’

  Carruthers was still pushing slowly and both men were crouching behind the chair, Kerr with the Thomson in his hands. The door opened six inches—a foot—two feet. No sound came.

  ‘Steady!’ Kerr whispered sharply, as Carruthers grew impatient or optimistic and took three inches at the same time. ‘Benson’s as cunning as a fox.’

  ‘Sorry,’ mouthed Carruthers.

  As he said it, Kerr took the chance of glancing quickly over the top of the chair. It was a risk, but few risks could have been more justified. For Kerr saw it coming—a little round, black thing which curled through the air, with a trail of smoke behind it.

  ‘What the hell!’ snapped Carruthers.

  Because Kerr had suddenly leapt from their cover. He caught a glimpse of Marlin and Benson in one corner of the room and saw Benson’s hand move, with the gun in it. He felt the pain as the bullet snicked his hand, but it didn’t stop him. He stretched his right hand upwards and clutched, as he would have clutched at a slip catch going over his head. He felt the thing touch and then stop, caught by his fingertips.

  Carruthers swore when he saw what it was.

  Marlin screamed and Benson fired, again, but he lost his aim as he saw what was coming and made a desperate leap to one side. Kerr held the bomb for something under a split-second, then hurled it back—not at the window, but at the two men. He dropped behind the chair as it went, and saw Benson flinging himself on the floor. He just glimpsed Marlin, a few inches from the bomb and standing as though petrified, before the explosion came.

  Carruthers and Kerr felt the blast suck at them, and heard the bang and the smashing of glass—and the high-pitched screech that preceded the explosion by a second or less. They felt the chair lift in the air; but they clutched at it like grim death, and it saved them as nothing else could have done.

  The room seemed to be rocking, under a dense shower of dust and debris from the walls and the ceiling. Kerr didn’t know what had happened to Benson, but he had a shrewd idea that Marlin had gone from this world for ever, and even in that moment he felt a fierce exultation.

  ‘Watch the right-hand corner,’ he warned abruptly.

  Cautiously, he rose to survey the scene. The chaos in front of him was indescribable. So were the blotches of red on the walls, and other, grimmer things. Benson was still on the floor, lying very still.

  Kerr didn’t need the machine-gun now. He stepped past the chair, automatic in hand------

  He saw Benson move suddenly, and tightened his grip on the gun, prepared for anything. He hardly saw the thing that Benson flicked towards him and Carruthers. Not until it struck against the wall with a little tinkling sound did he realise what it might be; and by then the, sickly smell was in his nostrils and he felt his senses reeling. He fired twice, but didn’t know whether he’d found his man as he staggered backwards, taking Carruthers with him.

  One thing and one thing only saved their lives.

  The gas wouldn’t kill them, but Benson would have shot them if he could. It would have taken time, and he dared not risk even an extra second. He had drawn a deep breath as he flung the phial of gas and dared not take another until he was out of range. Moreover, he could already hear footsteps on the stair
s.

  He reached the head of them before taking in that second breath, and by that time, Dodo Trale was half-way up. Benson was prepared for action, and he fired first. And as Dodo felt the bullet bite into his shin and went down, Benson leapt over him.

  There were shadows on the front door now, and men were thundering on it; but he knew that the doors were locked and that dynamite alone would force them. The windows were the answer.

  Benson wasn’t thinking of anything then, but the job of getting away. He didn’t waste time on regrets or curses. He was the nearest imaginable thing to a fighting machine: he was prepared to get through alive or die fighting.

  He swung round at the foot of the stairs towards the servant’s quarters and the garage behind the house. The car would be waiting there—if the police hadn’t reached it first. But luck was with him, and he climbed through the kitchen window to see the car standing ready, out of the garage. The men were gone; his instructions had been that they should prepare the car and then save themselves. True, they were probably in the hands of the attackers, but they didn’t know much, and Benson couldn’t afford to worry about others as well as himself.

  He was grinning mirthlessly as he reached the car. He did not carry a gun, but in his left hand were three of the small glass phials.

  He put them gently in the dash-board pocket—a pocket specially lined for them—and pressed the self-starter. He could see the police now, approaching from the properties on either side and along the main drive. But he had a trick or two ready for them. He turned the nose of the car towards a wall that looked to be of solid brick, a spot which the police had ignored; he revved from ten to thirty miles an hour in the forty feet he had to spare, and smashed through the wall as though through paper—which is what that section consisted of. And now, he was on the drive of the next house—the house of Mr. Reynoldson, the Town Clerk.

  The police were mostly behind him, appalled and bewildered. They fired after him, but the bullets whanged uselessly against armoured wings and panels as Benson trod on the accelerator. When he reached the exit gate of the drive, he was touching fifty.