Meet The Baron Read online

  “And you can remember the Lambeth place?” asked Lynch.

  “Would I recognise my mother? Sir, we went there, and I opened the safes, and then he takes the locks out - ”

  “Out?” echoed Bill Bristow, who had been listening with an increasing sense of wonder and perturbation.

  “I can see,” said Charlie, with dignity, “that you ain’t used to assorting with gentlemen, Inspector. Yes. They were his property, weren’t they, and he could do what he liked. ‘How’d you do it? ‘he says, and I shows him, and he tries it a bit himself, and one way and another he picks it up pretty quick.”

  “Meaning,” said Bristow heavily, “that you taught him how to pick locks, did you?”

  Charlie Dray’s eyes were pools of innocence.

  “His own locks, Mr. Bristow.”

  “What kind?” asked Lynch.

  “Well,” said Charlie cheerfully, “there was a pretty good selection. Eight, I think. There was a Chubb Major and a Yale 20 and half a dozen combinations. He was a dab at ‘em by the time we’d finished. Howso. Two quid, he gives me, and them little things you lifted this morning, Mr Lynch.”

  “He gave them to you?” asked Lynch.

  Charlie sniffed, but there was a crafty glint in his eyes.

  “On the up-and-up and the nothing but, mister. A present, he said, and may there be many more! Now ‘ow was I to know - ’ow was any honest man to know - ”

  “Charlie,” said Lynch gently, “you’re a goddamned liar, and if you don’t know what that means you ought to.”

  The little man’s eyes narrowed.

  “S’elp me,” he muttered uneasily, “I never lifted ‘em, mister. I ain’t done a job since I came out.”

  “Seven years,” said Lynch dreamily, “for the Kia bracelet. You wouldn’t get off with anything less. But I’d do what I could for you, Charlie, if you’ll take us to the place where he bought the safes and the place where you unlocked them for him.

  “Now, listen,” said Charlie Dray earnestly, “I’d do that fer a friend like you any day, Mr Lynch.”

  Lynch turned to a local sergeant, an interested and amused spectator.

  “Let me have a man, will you,” he said, “to tote this along with us?” As the man turned Lynch grinned at Bristow. “See what I’m driving at?” he asked.

  Bristow nodded, and took a case from his pocket.

  “Smoke? If you’ve done what you always do - left the thing that matters out - ” he said, “the name of Charlie’s friend was Baron.”

  “So logical,” sighed Lynch, “you ought to have been a Frenchman. Ta. Give Charlie one, Bill; give Charlie one.

  Several hours later a weary Bristow and a worn-out Lynch returned to Scotland Yard. The temperature during the afternoon had topped the eighty mark, and both men were hot, dusty, thirsty, and disappointed. Charlie Dray’s story had been substantiated - up to a point. The second-hand-safe dealer had certainly sold the safes to a Mr T. Baron, whose description tallied with that of the man in the tweed cap at Levy’s shop. The office building where the safes had been unlocked and the lessons in lock-breaking had been given was in the hands of house-breakers, and the firm of agents which had let the rooms to the man Baron remembered the man well, but only by name. All the business had been done by post and telephone.

  “And Charlie Dray,” mused Lynch, “either can’t or won’t remember much about Baron’s face. Hm. Y’know, Bill, I don’t believe in hunches, but I’ve a nasty tickle in the diaphragm over this bloke Baron. He’s cool. He’s clever. He’s well educated”

  “But yet he sounded” Bristow hesitated and shrugged. “His voice was - ”

  “You’re not well,” said Lynch gently. “His voice and his handwriting were disguised. Out of your own mouth, Bill.”

  Bristow thought, but he did not say what he thought, and it did not altogether concern Mr Baron.

  John Mannering told himself that he had every reason to be satisfied with the way things were going. The comparative failure of the raid on the Fauntley strong room was a thing of the past now, and the thefts of the Kia bracelet and the Kenton bauble had been perfectly managed; others, too, had gone through as easily, and if occasionally he felt the pricking of conscience at the fact that he was robbing men and women whose company and trust he enjoyed he forced it away from him. The risks he stood more than made up for the way in which he was playing his double role.

  Certainly he did not feel the slightest awkwardness when he met and talked with the Dowager Countess of Kenton; in fact, he told himself that he had given the Dowager such grounds for complaint and discussion that she was in his debt.

  At one of the Fauntley dinner-parties - growing larger and more comprehensive week by week - Lady Kenton spied him, unaccompanied, and buttonholed him. There was nothing she liked better than an attentive male audience, and Mannering was perfect in that respect. His smile as he approached her made her forget her loss, but she remembered it before long.

  “And these policemen,” she mourned, “they’re so helpless, Mr Mannering. That man Bristow - I’m convinced he said something under his breath when I saw him this evening.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me,” admitted Mannering, smiling, “but he’s probably doing his best. He’s after a clever rogue, and - ”

  “Clever!” snorted Lady Kenton. “Clever! A sneaking, cowardly cat-burglar who robs a poor, helpless woman! Clever! The scoundrel! If I could only find him, Mr Mannering, I’d - I’d . . .”

  “Cocktail, m’lady?” said her ladyship’s footman. “Dinner in half an hour, m’lady.”

  Lady Kenton lifted her glass to Mannering, and told herself that he had quite the most fascinating smile she had ever seen. What a lucky girl Lorna Fauntley was, if Lorna only knew it!

  Lorna moved from a small group of people gathered round the television set in the corner of the room; her dark hair was still a little unruly, her eyes were still mutinous and still probing, although they cleared as she reached the Dowager and Mannering.

  “I was just saying . . .” began the Dowager.

  “I believe with a little prompting I could almost guess,” laughed Lorna. “It’ll be something to do with a burglary”

  Lady Kenton looked offended. John Mannering laughed, until the Dowager’s frown cleared. Lorna squeezed the older woman’s hand and accepted a cocktail.

  7: A Talk With A Gentleman

  Other rumours floated into Scotland Yard about the man who called himself Baron. An expert safe-breaker whose fingers were still nimble but who was nearing the end of his career volunteered the information that a man in a tweed cap and a long mackintosh had asked for lessons in the cracksman’s art. Of course, the old lag said virtuously, he’d called at the wrong house; but Bristow doubted it. Then Red Flannagan, who preferred the modern method of cracking safes with the use of gelignite, admitted that a man in a black suit, wearing a Trilby hat pulled down over his eyes, had called on him and suggested lessons. “An’ at no correspondence-school prices, neither,” said Red. “I told ‘im where to go, Bill.”

  “Don’t be familiar,” snapped Bill Bristow; “and if you haven’t been working and you didn’t take his money how is it you’re so flush lately?”

  “Yer can’t prove nothin’,” snarled Red.

  “That tells me a lot,” said Bristow thoughtfully.

  He grew a little closer to Baron when Flick Leverson was caught trying to smuggle a little packet of precious stones out of the country. All the gems were stolen property, and Bristow knew that Flick was a fence of high degree. He was elated when he discovered that the bigger stones from the Kia bracelet and the Kenton brooch were in Flick’s packet.

  “It’ll go easier for you,” Bristow told the fence, “if you’ll give me a description of the man you bought those two things from - and tell me everything you know about him.”

  “Then it won’t go easier for me,” said Flick philosophically. “He wore a mask, Bill, a tweed cap, a mackintosh and rubber-soled shoes. I’ve nev
er seen him before nor since. I don’t know where he came from.”

  “What kind of a mask?” asked Bristow

  “A handkerchief over his mouth and nose.”

  “Colour?”

  “Blue or black. It was after dark when I saw him.”

  “How did he know about you?”

  “No idea,” said Leverson and Bristow knew that the fence would not talk a great deal.

  “Voice?” he snapped.

  “Up in the air,” said Flick. “Squeaky and . . .”

  “Oh damn it!” muttered Old Bill, to the fence’s surprise, for Bristow was usually a good-tempered officer.

  Whether it was the same man with a different voice or whether Baron had passed the two pieces of jewellery to someone else for disposal, Old Bill didn’t know. He did know, however, that he was beginning to worry about Baron.

  Small jewel robberies were reported to the Yard frequently from various counties and London’s Society suffered considerably from the same trouble. If there was anything remarkable about the thefts, Bristow told himself, it was that they all took place during a dance, dinner-party, or celebration of some kind or other. When he went over them more carefully with Superintendent Lynch he discovered two other things of interest.

  The robberies seemed to follow the Fauntley family round England. Lord and Lady Fauntley, Lorna, John Mannering, the Dowager Countess of Kenton, and half a dozen other members of the same set were always present. And every time the theft was of a trinket of comparatively small value. No effort was made to take more valuable stones, such as Lady Fauntley’s Liska diamond.

  “Get all the dope you can,” said Lynch, “on the servants of that crowd. It’s beginning to look like an inside job, Bill.”

  “But there’s always definite proof that the man came from the outside,” said Bristow.

  “Too definite,” said Lynch. Then, cautiously: “At least, it might be.”

  Bristow put half a dozen men on to the task of following the history of the various servants, but little came of the investigation. There wasn’t a bad record - nor even a suspicious one - in the whole bunch.

  “Ah, well,” said Lynch phlegmatically, “he’ll either give the game up before we get him or he’ll go too far.”

  “That’s a useful contribution to the problem,” said Bill Bristow. “Wait until he starts on something big.”

  “Funny thing,” said Lynch, “but that’s just what I am doing.”

  Mannering was enjoying himself. He had nothing against Detective-Inspector William Bristow; in fact, the rumours that he had heard from such sources as Red Flannagan, Flick Leverson, Levy Schmidt, and others favoured the policeman. But some urge, some devilry which possessed him, had tempted him to try the pawnshop trick, in which Levy had been glad to help, for he had seen a way of buying good stuff at low prices, and at the same time proving his goodwill towards the police. Levy, Mannering had discovered, was a fence of the highest class, and it was through the Jew that he had his introduction to other members of the profession. He needed the introductions. Not the least difficult part of his new life was the disposal of the gems, while he had realised after the Fauntley strong-room affair that he must have more than a rough knowledge of safes and locks. He prided himself on learning quickly, but the success of the pawnshop affair pleased him as much as that of the small robberies he had contrived at the expense of certain members of society.

  Gambling had been in Mannering’s blood almost from the moment he had opened his eyes. The years of comparative peace in Somerset seemed now like a fantastic dream. The game was the thing.

  Prior to the birth of the new idea he knew that there had been something lacking in the game. Staking a certain amount of money on a horse or the turn of a wheel had its attractions, but failed to quicken his blood; his own share was passive beyond the signing of cheques. But in this new game there were thrills and to spare. His freedom depended on his own quickness; his livelihood depended on his own thoroughness. It was his wits against the police.

  Mannering had weighed everything up before he had started; the handicaps were heavy, but the rewards high. There was money and to spare, if he had the courage and the brains to keep away from the police; but he knew that the odds against beating the law were very much against him. Unless - Unless he could get the police fighting against a shadow; unless he could create two or three different personalities, confront the police with two or three problems, all separate on the surface, but all connected through the man known as the Baron. Could he? Was it possible to set the police - Bristow and Lynch in particular - hunting shadows while he worked?

  It was possible, Mannering told himself.

  At that time he judged pretty well how much the police knew. He guessed that suspicions had been aroused by the similarity between the house-party crimes, and he knew that the authorities connected the mysterious T. Baron with the Kia and the Kenton baubles. He even suspected that wherever the Fauntley set moved so would a member of the Force; the time was here when it would not be safe to use the same method - the brief dowsing of the lights, the robbery, and the switching back of the lights, with the resulting confusion. It was necessary, he told himself, to change his methods, if only temporarily. If he persisted with them he realised that the police would start investigating the house-party crimes very carefully, and sooner or later they would discover the truth.

  There was one thing that worried Mannering. Not for a moment was he troubled about using Fauntley as a dupe; most of the man’s money had been made during the War years, and Mannering held a very real objection to profiteers of his type. Certainly he would have no scruple at having another attempt at Fauntley himself.

  But there was Lorna.

  Mannering himself hardly knew what he thought of the girl. On the first few occasions on which he had met her she had intrigued him far more than any musical-comedy actress had ever done. But he was bitter. He thought rarely of Marie Overndon, but the cynicism that had followed the episode at the Manor remained. He told himself that she had spoiled him for serious attachments in the future, come who may.

  Lorna was . . . different.

  The Fauntley household, he told himself, would remain as his background. Nothing had been put into words, but it was generally accepted that between Lorna and himself there was an understanding, and the belief satisfied Fauntley. Lorna was enigmatical, erratic, and, her father believed, possessed of some foolish introspection which prevented her from giving Mannering a straight answer, but as Mannering had no complaint Lord Fauntley let things slide. His own concern was the making of money and more money, the collecting of precious stones and yet more stones.

  The illusion of wealth that Mannering had so carefully created was a powerful one. No one, not even Randall or Plender, suspected that the fantastic turf wins he had made were imaginary, while the affair of the Klobber diamond shares had convinced Plender that Mannering was using his brains to make money, instead of relying on the turn of a wheel or the form of a horse. Mannering laughed to himself when he remembered the Klobber sensation. Actually he had profited from those supposedly defunct diamond-mines to the tune of a few hundred pounds, but when he had passed on the hint - obtained through a careless word from Fauntley - to Plender it had done him more good than a substantial monetary profit. It had fostered the illusion of his wealth to such an extent that he almost believed in it himself.

  He faced the prospect of the future with a coolness that sometimes made him laugh aloud. The rules were simple. He would take what he could, where he could, from anyone who would not suffer a great deal from the loss. The Dowager Countess of Kenton, who had outlived two husbands, was fabulously wealthy. The owner of the Kia bracelet could have bought gems ten times its value without batting an eye. Others who had contributed to his banking account were very wealthy themselves. No one suffered, except in pride of possessions, Mannering told himself time and time again, although with Bristow it was his personal pride.

  In the first months
of his career Mannering had made one or two mistakes that might easily have cost him his freedom, but his carefulness in the matter of his dress and voice had saved him. For one thing, when he had hired Charlie Dray to teach him the elements of safe-breaking he had not allowed for the possibility of Charlie being an expert pickpocket. Some stones of the Kia bracelet had been neatly pinched. So had Charlie, but fortunately the latter’s knowledge of his pupil’s appearance had been slight.

  Against Charlie Dray Mannering bore a grudge. One day, he promised himself, Charlie would suffer a severe pain in the neck. To Levy Schmidt, on the other hand, Mannering was grateful.

  It was inevitable that in his guise as Mr T. Baron Mannering should meet and talk with many strange people, most of whom were members of the profession in some way or other. To some he could talk in complete confidence; others created the impression that if they could get any information on which to turn King’s Evidence they would do so without the slightest qualms. Mannering was forced to go warily with those he talked to and dealt with, but as he never gave an address and rarely saw the men more than once or twice - with certain necessary exceptions in whom he believed he could place implicit trust - he did not worry.

  It was late in July when he first heard the rumour of the Rosa pearls.

  Some three years before the Rosa pearls had been stolen from their rightful owner in America, and since then there had been not the slightest clue to their whereabouts; Randenberg, the victim of the theft, had been amply covered by insurance, but he mourned the Rosa pearls as the prize piece in a collection that rivalled that of Fauntley in England. Mannering had known of this many months before he had thought of turning to cracksmanship for a livelihood, for the Randenbergs had spent two seasons in England, and he had met them several times.

  It was a mere whisper of the pearls that came his way when he was trying to dispose of a small ring that he had stolen from an Essex household during a visit. So far as he knew the ring had not been missed. The fence with whom he dealt with very small stuff grinned when he saw the ring; it was higher quality than he usually handled.