Nest-Egg for the Baron Read online

  “Probably as well you didn’t stop him, we couldn’t have had our look round otherwise,” Mannering said soothingly.

  Half an hour later, Mannering glanced into Wainwright’s room, which was little more than a box room at the end of a narrow passage built three hundred years ago. The young man was fast asleep, lying on his back snoring faintly; yet it was easy to see what Lorna meant when she said that he was a nice-looking lad. “Lad” wasn’t so right, now; asleep, he looked older.

  Mannering closed the door quietly, went downstairs and outside to his car. After the first whine of the self-starter, it made little sound. He went quietly and slowly out of the parking-yard on to the main road, as quietly through the outskirts of Midham, and then with more speed up the steep hill towards Dragon’s End.

  There were two hours of darkness left.

  He took the car right up the drive this time, parked it at one side, then sat in it for ten minutes, with all lights out. Nothing stirred, except the night creatures on their timid journeys.

  He got out, and walked towards the house. The lights were out. The kitchen window had not been latched, he opened it easily and climbed in.

  He was trying to recall Dibben’s manner, the way he had squealed on Brash. It had come so smoothly and easily. Had he lied about Brash? Was Crummy Day his real employer? Or had he lied about both Day and Brash?

  Brash had been here.

  Yet Dibben’s squeal had been too pat. Brash’s name had been on the tip of his tongue.

  Forget it; there were other things to do.

  There was darkness everywhere, and the uncanny silence of a big house.

  Mannering shone the thin pencil beam of a torch until he reached the big room. The door was closed. He pushed it open and stepped inside. His torch stabbed through the darkness – and fell upon the man who was nearly a dwarf, the happy, humming man.

  He would never hum again.

  One of the African spears had been hurled at his hunched back, and it pinned him to the floor.

  Chapter Twelve

  Search

  Mannering straightened up from the body of the little man, who had almost certainly died instantly. The spear had pierced his body to the heart, must have been thrown with tremendous force. There was very little outward bleeding; blood would come if the spear were taken out.

  Mannering turned away.

  Every moment he had been here, he had been intent on catching the slightest sound. He heard none.

  He stepped towards the door, stood by it in the darkness and listened again. There was no noise anywhere. Yet someone had been here, waiting the chance, and struck savagely, murderously.

  The floorboards were nearly all in position again; Mannering remembered that several had been out of place and that the man had replaced some before he and Wainwright had left. He had still been working when the silent killer had flung the spear, so that could not have been much more than half an hour after Mannering had gone.

  Had the killer been in the house when Mannering had been here before?

  Could he identify Mannering? And Wainwright?

  Mannering moved slowly about the hall and passage, listening at the door of each room, letting thoughts jostle one another in his mind. He heard no one else, was quite sure that he would have heard breathing in this dark silence. Someone might be upstairs, but no one was down here.

  He looked round, putting the light on in each room. Each was empty. He had come to search for any clue that might help to explain what had happened to Pendexter Smith.

  The staircase, half-circular, was wide, massive, and carpeted from wall to banisters. He made hardly a sound going up. In the darkness it was eerie. The huge old house became full of little, creaking noises. He reached the landing, shining his torch round and then he took a chance and switched on the landing light. It was glaring and brilliant, like those downstairs, threw everything up into sharp relief; and it made black shadows.

  The landing was crammed with museum pieces, too. The conglomeration was as farcical as that downstairs. Oddments from different corners of the world stood side by side. By one wall was a china figure of a praying Buddha, amazingly lifelike in its obese stillness. In spite of the tension, he went to look at it.

  He turned away, and went into room after room. There was another library, kept surprisingly clean and tidy. In five minutes, he discovered that the items in the house had been catalogued in neat handwriting, a card-index system could hardly have been better. There was no safe.

  Next door to this was a woman’s room.

  Going in, Mannering became immediately aware of a smell of perfume, not strong but very pleasant. He shone his torch to see himself across to the window, drew the curtains, then went back to the door and switched on the light.

  The room was furnished as an expensive modern salon might be furnished by a firm of repute. The furniture was of polished walnut; the furnishings heavy and distinctive. If it were Miranda’s, the girl had chosen a colour scheme of pale blue and gold; and there was no discordant note. The double bed had a mock canopy over the head panel. The large dressing-table, with its three tall mirrors, looked as if someone had sat at it, not long ago. There was a faint dusting of powder over the exquisite petit point of the dressing-table set. One scent spray was very old; enamelled and very beautiful. The room gave the impression of being lived in by someone who knew how to live.

  In the wardrobe were clothes that would suit Miranda.

  On the dressing-table was a large photograph of Pendexter Smith which might have been taken yesterday. There was the old man to the life, with his glittering sunken eyes and his monkey-like mouth and chin, his wrinkled eyelids. It was hard to understand the girl’s affection for a man who was so ugly.

  Mannering found nothing that would help, switched off the light, and went to the next room. He opened the door with a stealth which was almost instinctive now; stealth which he had learned as the Baron, when a single false move would have made the difference between success and disaster; between freedom and jail.

  He stopped and listened.

  He heard breathing.

  Someone was breathing in this room, quite noisily, but it wasn’t quite a snore. Mannering stood with his fingers on the handle, making sure of the rhythm of the sound, that whoever lay there was asleep.

  He went right in. The floor was carpeted thickly. The window was opposite the door, and he could see the stars through it.

  The bed was behind the door.

  Mannering shone his torch, and the pencil of light made a bright sword, pointing towards the head of the bed. It showed up the head and face of Pendexter Smith, stark, ugly, unmistakable.

  Mannering let the torch shine fully into Pendexter’s face. The old man did not stir. Mannering went nearer, keeping the light off the eyes. That slightly wheezy breathing was very steady. Something about this made Mannering study the old man very closely. Then he stretched out a hand and touched his shoulder. Smith didn’t stir.

  Mannering gripped his shoulder tightly, and shook him.

  Smith still didn’t stir.

  A minute later, Mannering raised the lid and looked into one eye, which was held in the light of his torch. The pupil was so tiny that he could hardly see it. Pendexter Smith lay in a drugged sleep while another man, much younger but with the same kind of misshapen body, lay dead in the room below.

  As Mannering left Dragon’s End, dawn was breaking. The light was grey and weak, but the birds were waking and the trees and shrubs, the lawns and the flower-beds, began to take shape, were no longer an amorphous mass concealed by darkness. He could see the big oak and beech which lined the drive, antirrhinums, asters, and zinnias in huge beds, lawns and grounds which were beautifully kept.

  Half-way down the drive, he turned to look at Dragon’s End.

  It faced south-east, and the first light shone upon its closed windows, reflecting faintly from the glass. The house, built of red brick, looked massive, with one turret topped by a steeple, odd pie
ces sticking out at the corners, the roof odd shaped, the chimneys massive and ugly. It was all ugly – but solid enough to stand there for centuries to come, a monument to the age when man almost forgot beauty of line.

  He turned away.

  Five minutes later, he was in his car.

  Ten minutes later, he was in the call-box from which Wainwright had telephoned him.

  Chief Inspector Nicholas Fenn, a bachelor, heard the telephone bell through the mists of sleep, cursed it, did nothing about it, but, when it persisted, eased himself up on one elbow and grabbed it from the bedside table.

  “Hallo?” he growled.

  He listened for a moment, then hitched himself up to a sitting position; sleep vanished.

  Mannering spoke briskly and concisely. He gave Fenn the impression that he didn’t think he would have to say any of this twice. He gave reasons for what he had done and what he was doing; good, cogent reasons. Then he said: “It’s up to you, now.”

  “All right, I’ll get Midham moving, but leave everything else until you came to the Yard,” promised Fenn.

  When he rang off, he was thinking hard about what Bristow had told him.

  The remarkable thing about Nicholas Fenn was that he didn’t waste time saying that Mannering shouldn’t have gone into Dragon’s End. He kept to the point, and did not appear to be interested in the strict letter of the law.

  It was a glorious summer’s day.

  The three windows of the office were open as far as they could come down. A few insects drifted in and almost as quickly drifted out. A smell of petrol fumes came in, too, but there was a slight breeze off the river, and the smell wasn’t too unpleasant. The massive block of the London County Hall rose up so that Mannering, sitting opposite the window, could just see the roof. The noises of traffic, of people walking, of aeroplanes by the dozen, hardly seemed to penetrate the office.

  Fenn sat listening intently.

  Mannering finished.

  “Some story,” Fenn said, after a short pause, and went on smoothly: “Mind if I recap a few items?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Why didn’t you tell your assistant, Wainwright, about finding the dead man?”

  “I’d like to see how he reacts under a shock and strain,” Mannering answered. “I think he’s good, but I’m not sure.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “I had a couple of hours sleep, then woke him, and we travelled up to London together.”

  “H’m, yes. Know where Brash is now?”

  “No. My question,” went on Mannering, and grinned. “Why didn’t you keep after Brash last night? You sent Grimble after him, remember.”

  “He shook Grimble off.”

  “Or did Grimble lose him?” asked Mannering dryly.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Fenn in a flash. “Don’t you like Grimble?”

  “I’d like to be sure what happened.”

  “I had five minutes with Grimble myself,” Fenn told him grimly, “and I think Brash slipped him deliberately. They got mixed up in the Oxford Street crowds. Brash dawdled for a bit and then nipped across the road. It may have been an accident, but I shouldn’t think so. Wainwright was either good, unsuspected, or lucky. This man you caught—”

  “Yes?”

  “I ought to pick him up,” Fenn said, and his brown eyes were devoid of expression.

  “Do that, and we lose a spy who might pay big dividends,” Mannering agreed. “If I were you, I’d leave him alone. I can always put the fear of death into him.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” Fenn looked at him steadily, as if he knew that Mannering had “forgotten” to tell him that Dibben had named a certain pawnbroker, one Crummy Day. “Another recap. The time of the murder?”

  “Not before three-fifteen, not later than four o’clock, as far as I can tell you.”

  “Could Pendexter Smith have been the killer?”

  “Have you ever tried to carry an African spear far, never mind throw it?”

  “Well, no,” confessed Fenn. “Pendexter too old?”

  “Too decrepit, unless he’s an expert. There’s a job for you,” Mannering added expansively, “find someone who’s expert at hurling spears, and you have your man. I—”

  “Brash,” murmured Fenn.

  Mannering said, very softly, “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve been checking pretty closely,” Fenn told him, “and Brash is one of these people with odd or unusual hobbies. Instead of playing games, he dotes on archery. I can’t vouch for his spear throwing, but he can toss a pretty javelin. I’m pulling Brash in for questioning, and checking everything I can. Only one thing really worries me.”

  “What?”

  “It seems too easy.”

  “Complaining?” asked Mannering.

  “Just wondering,” said Fenn. He gave his almost sly grin, and for a moment made Mannering feel almost uneasy. “Just wondering why you’ve told me all this, what you’ve kept back, and why you aren’t handling this with your customary defiance of the law.”

  “You’ve got me all wrong,” Mannering said earnestly. “Now it’s my turn for questions, or are you putting the bar up?”

  “Ask what you like, and if I can I’ll answer,” Fenn promised. “I’ll tell you one more thing before we go any farther. The man caught at your flat yesterday hasn’t said a word.”

  “Any record?”

  “A three months for pretty larceny and two years for housebreaking,” Fenn said. “The housebreaking was four years ago, he seems to have been running straight since. Or that’s what we thought. He’s got the kind of nerve that a man gets when he knows someone powerful is backing him.”

  “Married?”

  Fenn said mildly, “Yes, a pretty wife, I’m told. And yes, I’ll watch her!”

  “If they’re as good as they seem to be you won’t get any results from watching her,” Mannering said. “What’s his name?”

  “Freddy Bell,” Fenn told him. “And if you need to know, his wife’s name is Dora Bell.” The Yard man kept a straight face. “What are you going to do next?”

  “Think.”

  Fenn jeered, “And where do you think that will get you?” He stood up. “Have you seen Miranda Smith this morning?”

  “Yes,” said Mannering, in a different tone. “Yes, I’ve seen her. Have you started checking that accident story?”

  “We have.”

  “Any news from the medical front?”

  “None at all,” said Fenn.

  “Richardson’s coming to see her again this morning,” Mannering said, “and if she doesn’t show too much fear, he’ll take her away for observation. He’ll also check with Lancelot Nash, of course. Any objections?”

  “No,” said Fenn. “I only hope Richardson does what Nash couldn’t.”

  “If you get any news from Midham—” Mannering began.

  “I’ll let you know,” promised Fenn again. “Being cooperative, aren’t I?”

  “I can hardly believe you’re a policeman,” Mannering marvelled.

  They chuckled, and Fenn saw his visitor to the door. As he left, Mannering felt that shadow of uneasiness again; was Fenn being almost too friendly?

  Mannering drove straight back to Green Street.

  Outside the front door was the little green M.G. which Brash owned.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Clash With Brash

  Mannering hurried up the stairs, his heart beginning to thump. There couldn’t be danger, his reason told him; but if Brash were a killer and had some reason to hate or to fear Miranda, anything might happen.

  He heard shouting.

  He thrust the key in the lock and pushed the door open – and Wainwright staggered back against it. In front of Wainwright, his face vermilion red and eyes flashing, was Bill Brash. He leapt forward, fists clenched and waving, with no more idea of fighting than a small child. He smashed a blow at Wainwright, who sidestepped it easily. Before Mannering could call out or stop the slaughter,
Wainwright went forward and drove his fist into Brash’s stomach. As Brash gasped and fell forward, chin open, Wainwright smashed an upper-cut.

  Brash went scudding backwards, lost his balance, and fell at Miranda’s feet.

  She stared at the two young men with the fear which was so dreadfully wrong in her beautiful eyes. In that moment, when he was thinking only of Wainwright and Brash, Mannering looked twice at the girl. If a supreme artist had said, “Here is a model for all your beauties,” no one could have been surprised.

  Wainwright made as if to run forward.

  Mannering grabbed his arm.

  Then Lorna appeared from her bedroom, carrying a walkingstick, hurrying with the stick raised and the ferrule thrusting forward – as if at all costs she meant to separate the men. At sight of Mannering, she stopped abruptly.

  “My lady roused and angry,” murmured Mannering, his eyes gleaming. “Sorry I’m late, darling! Ned, go and wait in the study, will you?” He moved across to Miranda, and looked straight into her face, and something of the fear died away. “I will not let them fight again,” he said, shaking his head and pointing at the men. “Do you understand?”

  She tried to say something, but no sound came. Her eyes flooded with tears, and she turned and hurried into the drawing-room. Lorna looked after her, then said quietly: “That was over Miranda.”

  “Who started it?”

  “Oh, Brash did.”

  “Why?”

  Lorna was almost pensive. Mannering guessed what was going through her mind: a mixture of anxiety for Miranda, worry about what had taken place during the night, and amusement at tire antics of the two young men.

  “I think,” she said carefully, “that it was because of the way Wainwright looked at Miranda.”

  Mannering grinned.

  “And how did he look?”

  “Oh, bother it all!” exclaimed Lorna, “it’s so silly and yet so touching. If you want a word, it’s adoring. He came in here with something very much on his mind, and when he saw Miranda again, he went to pieces. He dithered and fussed and blushed. Then Brash arrived and said something which annoyed Wainwright, something about Miranda not being safe here, and he wanted to take her away. And off it went.”