Held At Bay Page 8

“Mannering, you may not know that Leverson has only been out of prison a year, after serving a sentence for buying stolen jewels. You know what that means?”

  “Who arrested him?” asked Mannering mildly.

  “I did. What about it?”

  “I’d say it was just another of your little mistakes, and the judge and jury were convinced that you’d told the truth.” Mannering’s smile was full of mockery, and Leverson chuckled. “But you’re not one to damn a man for one mistake, are you?”

  Bristow fidgeted with his moustache and Leverson leaned forward and took cigarettes from a small table.

  “I’ve information, Leverson, that you’re holding stolen gems,” Bristow said sharply. “I’ve a warrant to search the house.”

  “Again?” murmured Leverson. “Will you smoke?”

  “No!” bellowed Bristow. “Tring, fetch Knoller and Dyson and start—”

  “I’d like to see the warrant first,” Leverson said.

  Bristow showed it, as Tanker Tring went to the front door and admitted the waiting detectives. A moment later he led them into the sitting-room, and the search began. Mannering was outwardly calm. But his heart was thumping. He had no idea where the jewels were, and he could not imagine how Leverson had spirited them away. He watched the search, and when the police started on the other room he glanced across at Leverson, his brows drawn anxiously.

  Leverson nodded slightly. Bristow caught their exchange of glances, tightened his lips and said nothing. He left them for a few minutes, but Mannering knew that he was watching through a crack in the door.

  Mannering and Leverson talked of trifles as the search went on. Tring, probably the most accomplished searcher at the Yard, came downstairs to report that there was nothing to show.

  Mannering and Leverson could hear them talking in the next room. The detective named Knoller was just outside, to make sure nothing was passed between the two men, or thrown out of the window.

  Would they find the stones?

  Bristow was saying: “They’re here somewhere, I’ll swear it. Mannering’s just brought them to Leverson. I’ve suspected that’s who fenced for him a long time. What room were they in before they went upstairs?”

  So Tring had seen them leave the back room, Mannering thought. His lips tightened and there was perspiration on his forehead. The helplessness was getting on his nerves, getting him worried.

  “This one,” Tring said stolidly.

  “Then we’ll go through it again,” decided Bristow.

  Mannering could hear them pulling out drawers, heard the sound of a carpet being pulled up, the tapping on the boards and walls. Then there came a banging sound, as Bristow said: “Try the coal box, and see if the fireplace has any loose bricks.”

  “It’s so blooming hot,” complained Tring. A pause, and: “Nothing in there, that’s for sure.” His voice trailed off, and Mannering squashed the butt of a cigarette and lit another. Even Leverson seemed to be more on the alert now, as though the fireplace meant something. There was a tapping again, a poker on the bricks. Mannering doubted whether he had ever spent a worse ten minutes.

  At last Bristow’s footsteps sounded outside the door. He entered, red in the face, with Tring redder and sweating. There was a streak of coal dust on the sergeant’s right cheek.

  “We’ll search you,” Bristow said.

  Leverson shrugged his shoulders and stood up. Bristow spent five minutes satisfying himself that the fence was carrying nothing, and then turned to Mannering.

  “Well? Is it to be here, or at the station?”

  The little pulse was ticking in Mannering’s forehead, and his eyes were very hard, the mockery gone.

  “At the station if anywhere, Bristow.”

  There was a silence that seemed electric. Bristow’s eyes did not flicker, nor did Mannering’s. The others played no part now, the duel was strictly between Mannering and the policeman.

  Bristow weighed up the position quickly. If he took Mannering to the station and found nothing, Mannering would almost certainly carry out his threat of complaining of wrongful arrest and detention, and Bristow knew how the Press would leap at the chance of a sensation. The truth was, he dared not do it on the flimsy evidence he possessed.

  He spoke very softly.

  “All right, Mannering, but you’ll regret this.”

  “Not so much as you will if you keep playing the fool,” said Mannering. “I told you this morning that there are limits to patience.”

  There was unveiled hostility in his eyes as well as in Bristow’s. They had been friends in the past, and Bristow was acutely aware that Mannering had once literally saved his life. But time dimmed the memory of most things, and Bristow was desperately anxious to catch the Baron. His hostility was very clear, and Mannering knew that from that moment the relationship between him and Bristow was on a different footing.

  “All right,” Bristow said. “You are lucky this time, Leverson.”

  Soon all four men were out of the house. Before long the detective at the end of the garden had been moved, and in fifteen minutes Janet came back from a visit to the shops in the High Street, to report that only one policeman was watching the end of the road, obviously to follow Mannering.

  “That’s good,” Leverson said, and he smiled at Mannering. “All right, Janet, thank you. Care for lunch, Mannering?”

  “I think it deserves a celebration of sorts,” said Mannering, his spirits soaring. “But how the devil did you do it?”

  “I’ll show you,” said Leverson.

  Janet went to the kitchen, while Mannering followed Leverson into the back room, and watched the fence pick up the coal tongs. Damn it, wasn’t the room hot enough?

  Then he saw the red-hot asbestos box lifted from the burning coals. He stared, speechless, while Leverson rested it on the hearthbricks, and slipped the catch with the poker. The heat from the glowing asbestos seared Mannering’s face, but he was filled with admiration when Leverson lifted the lid, and the glittering collection inside scintillated up.

  Leverson laughed, and shut the box.

  “One of several methods, Mannering, and probably the best. I promise you Bristow will never find anything here. The only time they held me, as you know, I was walking along the High Street with the stuff in my pockets, and someone shopped me. That someone”—Leverson’s eyes met Mannering’s gravely—“was never really identified, but I have an idea that his name was Kelworthy.”

  Mannering hardly knew why the name came as such a shock. He realised that in the past twenty-four hours he had been so busy with Salmonson that the part Kelworthy and Granette were playing in this affair had faded. Now he caught a sudden vision of Kelworthy’s scraggy face and figure, Granette’s dark, bright-eyed good looks, and Olling’s florid face.

  “He’ll probably regret it very soon,” he said. Then he explained the reason for the trouble with the Kelworthy syndicate. Leverson warned him again to be careful of Granette. Then: “I’ve a really good sherry, Mannering, that you must try. Let’s forget business and become gourmets. Among other things, Janet is as good as a Cordon bleu.”

  “Did she put the stones in the fire?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know whether to congratulate you or say you’re lucky.”

  “Congratulate me,” said Leverson. “I helped her mother some years back, when the father was inside. Janet is not the type to forget. Apart from her work here, she is fanatically honest, and I pay her enough to make sure her father needn’t go back to Parkhurst. Gratitude’s a queer thing, Mannering, but when it’s real it’s the strongest bond of any.”

  Mannering looked with new interest at Janet, cool, clean, completely self-possessed. There was a fine irony in the thought of her keeping a would-be criminal father on the proceeds of her work with Leverson, who was a law-breaker a dozen times as dangerous to the police as ever the father could be.

  The lunch was perfect, a chicken roasted with a wine sauce and a sherry that was exactly right
. Mannering left Leverson’s house almost reluctantly, sure that the two Castilla jewels were quite safe, and realising that although he had given a great deal away in this affair, he had made a net profit of over eighteen thousand pounds.

  “Give and ye shall receive,” murmured Mannering to himself. Then he wondered what had prompted him to ask Leverson to keep the Delawney sapphires at hand.

  Knoller, the detective who followed him, wondered why he was smiling, and conscientiously reported it to Bristow when he was relieved by Dyson. Mannering did not try to hide, but went into a Keith Prowse office and booked a passage on an evening flight to Paris. He had still several hours on his hands, and he went back to his flat, prepared for an afternoon of ease. He did not get it.

  He started with surprise at sight of Juan de Castilla standing outside his flat door. The Spaniard’s face was set, his eyes were flashing, his hands were clenched.

  “Ah! John. Thank heavens to see you!”

  “What’s the trouble?” Mannering asked. The cooler he was, the cooler Juan de Castilla would be.

  “Trouble!” exclaimed de Castilla as they entered the flat. “John, you remember telling me of Archibald Price, and the Sea of Fire robbery? Now Salmonson, who had the Desire Diamond, has been robbed. Both by the Baron! You understand?”

  “I’ve been wondering whether it’s a coincidence,” admitted the Baron.

  “It’s too much for coincidence!” cried de Castilla excitedly. “But that is no excuse for Anita, no excuse at all.”

  Mannering’s hands stopped moving, and his body was rigid as he stared at the Spaniard.

  “What’s Anita been up to?”

  “She has gone mad, mad!” exclaimed de Castilla. “This morning she has flown to Paris, to see Panneraude about the Crown of Castile. With some fool of a man who told her he would help – to steal it if necessary. You understand, John, she says if others can steal the jewels, she can. She is mad, quite mad about this; those jewels mean more to her than to any of us. In a moment of excitement she confided in me, but I dare not tell Don Manuel, and I can do nothing to stop her. Is it possible, John, that you can persuade her it is madness?”

  Chapter Eleven

  Mannering Moves Fast

  When Mannering had first contemplated the task of getting the five Jewels of Castilla it had seemed quite straightforward. A series of five burglaries would carry less danger than usual because only the Kelworthy syndicate knew of their connection.

  But from the moment that he had discovered the ruthlessness of Granette, even to impersonation, he had faced complications – but none so alarming as Anita de Castilla playing with a mad notion like this, actually in Paris with a fool who had promised to help her break into Panneraude’s place should the Frenchman refuse to sell the Crown! For a few seconds Mannering could only stand and stare at Juan, who was waiting as though for the oracle to speak. De Castilla had always looked on Mannering as a man who could work miracles.

  Mannering’s tension lessened, more for the other’s sake than because he felt easier in his mind.

  “My God, Juan, this is the most spirited thing I’ve heard.”

  “Spirited!” choked Juan. “Spirited, when she will probably be in a French prison before the night is out; she has some idiot infatuated with her, men are always so ready to die for Anita. John, I’m sorry I had to come to you, but we have so few friends in England, and Don Manuel just is not well enough to stand the shock. I dare not tell him.”

  “Take it easy,” said Mannering, across the spate of words. He stepped to the sideboard and poured a finger of whisky, for Juan was labouring under a greater nervous strain than he had realised. “There’s no hurry. We can’t – or I can’t – get to Paris any sooner than my evening flight. If we charter a special it will make only a couple of hours’ difference. Sit down, and tell me all about it.”

  Juan stood with his whisky in his hand, a tense smile on his face and beads of perspiration on his forehead.

  “You will go to Paris! John, I am tremendously obliged; I had hoped, yet hardly dared to suggest. Anita, she is a fool, but she will do most things for you. I think sometimes she is jealous of Lorna!”

  Juan sat down abruptly, and took a sip of the whisky. He laughed a little awkwardly.

  “I’m afraid I must have seemed an awful fool, John.” All his anxiety had gone, and he was in complete control of himself. “The only thing I could think of was rushing to you.”

  Mannering laughed.

  “There are worse ports in a storm, and I know Anita has a soft spot for me. Are you sure she wasn’t simply talking?”

  “Absolutely positive! She’s had something on her mind for several days; I have sensed it. I know Anita,” added Juan with brotherly assurance. “And this fellow who she has been seeing secretly—”

  “Do you know him?”

  “I can tell you his name, but she has not introduced me,” said de Castilla. “She has been carrying on as though it’s a love affair, but I suspected there was something else. I tried to make her talk, but she would not listen, until this morning while she was dressing and got ready to go to London airport.”

  “Didn’t you try to stop her?”

  “Of course! I raced to the airport and reached there before any flight to Paris left. But—she was gone.”

  “Gone?” Mannering was startled. “How could she manage it?”

  “Obviously, a special plane,” said de Castilla. “I inquired of the officials. Yes, there was a special charter plane, with a lady and gentleman; the description was Anita’s. You see, she was taking no chances.”

  “Ye–es,” said Mannering, pushing his hand through his hair. He was thinking that the arrangements sounded far too thorough to be Anita’s, and certainly seemed beyond the scheming of a love-sick swain. Juan was right, there were a dozen men in London who would have been prepared for any daring escapade for Anita’s sake. She was the type to sweep a man off his feet, and old enough to use her sex appeal to get what she wanted. Mannering was fond of Anita, but he knew that in the affair of the five jewels she would be unscrupulous.

  “Who is the man, Juan?”

  “A man named Lenville, Edward Lenville. He has a flat in Kensington, and—”

  But the Baron stopped him quickly.

  “Lenville! A broad-shouldered youngster, no more than twenty-five or six, with very fair hair?”

  “The very man!” exclaimed de Castilla. “John, you are getting second sight.”

  “You’re fated to interrupt today,” said Mannering, but he was speaking more for the sake of saying something, and thinking fast. “I know Ted Lenville. His father was one of the bigger gem collectors, until his death, and young Lenville’s been running through the money like wildfire. I thought he’d straightened up and was off the bottle.”

  “I’d say he was sober enough,” said de Castilla, and he wondered why the Baron laughed.

  “I daresay he is! But Lenville still has his father’s jewel collection, or part of it. I’m wondering whether he’s heard anything about your five jewels.”

  De Castilla sat bolt upright in his chair.

  “Sapristi! Then he is after the jewels, he is the man who has had all the others stolen? He is tricking Anita, making the fool of her? John, I cannot—”

  “Steady on,” said Mannering. “You’re going too fast. But Lenville is in jewels. I think I’d better have a charter plane after all.” He moved across the room and lifted the telephone, talking all the time. “I’d better go over alone, Juan; you’ll be more useful over here. If Anita sees you it will put her back up, anyhow. I wish I knew Lenville well, but—hallo? Mr. Morrison, please.” He glanced at de Castilla. “Morrison’s the man who will really get me service—hallo? Bob, John Mannering here. Thanks, I’m fine and I hope you are, and I’d like a small plane with a pilot for a rush trip to Paris. Can you have it ready in an hour and a half? Good man, goodbye.”

  As he replaced the receiver, de Castilla jumped up.

  “I
t really is good of you, John.”

  “I’d rather not see Anita behind bars, it’s not as though it’s for you,” Mannering said drily. Juan frowned; then laughed.

  “You Englishmen! How you hate any show of emotion. I wonder how you can ever say thanks to anyone for anything. Exactly what will you do?”

  “Did Anita say where she was staying?”

  “No, but we usually stay at the Rivol, and she—”

  “The Rivol!” exclaimed Mannering. He remembered Lorna’s telegram, and the information that Granette was staying there. “I know the hotel well.”

  Happily de Castilla was far too engrossed in his own problem to realise that Mannering had been startled by his thoughts.

  “Let’s hope she’s there,” Mannering went on. “In any case I’ll find her if I have to get the Sûrété to call all the hotels.”

  “I could do that from here,” de Castilla said eagerly.

  “It might take some time, but try it,” agreed Mannering. “You’d better start with the Rivol, while I’m packing a bag.”

  “I certainly will!” exclaimed de Castilla.

  Mannering was in the middle of packing when de Castilla burst into the bedroom, fifteen minutes later.

  “Found her?” Mannering inquired.

  “Yes, not at the Rivol, but at the Bristol, in Rue de L’Opera. Lenville is staying at the Rivol.”

  Mannering stared, and the seconds ticked by.

  This time de Castilla realised there was something odd about Mannering’s manner and the silence that followed. He broke off, while Mannering put a dress shirt carefully on the bed.

  “So Lenville’s staying at the Rivol.”

  “Yes, but John—”

  “My thoughts are playing me tricks,” said Mannering. “I’m more worried about this business than I’ll admit.”

  Lenville, the son of a friend of Lord Fauntley – a friend, of course, because of a mutual interest in precious stones – had offered to help Anita de Castilla rob Panneraude of the Crown of Castile. For the average young Englishman, even if he had sown wild oats when he had come into money, that was remarkable.