Chapter Fourteen

Missing Man

Wainwright must have heard the newspaperman’s comment, but he didn’t appear from the kitchen. Mannering led the way to the study. Two minutes later, he heard the hall door close; Wainwright had gone.

All this time, Chittering had been watching him narrowly, one eyebrow raised slightly above the level of the other, china-blue eyes suspicious.

“What is on?” he demanded. “Were you at Midham last night?”

“Don’t make wild guesses.”

“I verily believe you were,” declared Cluttering, and grinned a mighty grin. “Magnificent! Bold, bad Mannering at scene of savage crime. Ever done any spear-throwing, tossing the caber, or anything like that?” He took out cigarettes. “You are not yourself,” he added; “you haven’t denied it yet.”

“Give me half a chance,” Mannering said dryly. “No, no, no. Thanks.” He took a cigarette. “What’s on?”

“Don’t tell me that Ned Wainwright didn’t tell you that I’ve been grilling him and Sylvester,” said Chittering. “I had Wainwright under the microscope for fully five minutes. Sylvester kept fluttering in the wings, trying to come to the rescue, but a photographer was with me, and he dealt with Sylvester. Sweetly, you understand. As a matter of fact,” Chittering went on, “Wainwright isn’t bad at all. I didn’t get a thing out of him. Training him to be Larraby’s successor?”

“In what capacity?”

“Legman and all the rest,” said Chittering comfortably. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he turns out very well. He was quite bland with me half the time, with a little more experience he’ll almost be able to make a lie sound the truth.”

“Why don’t you take him in hand?” Mannering asked sweetly.

“Okay, John, I give up. What’s blowing?”

“My chief worry is a girl who’s deaf and dumb,” Mannering said, in a tone which made it clear that he had stopped being flippant. “And yes, there is a job you can usefully do. Fenn—”

“I was going to ask about Fenn. How do you find him?”

“Unexpectedly co-operative.”

“Be wary of Nicholas Fenn,” warned Chittering, with obvious sincerity. “He of the smooth voice and the gentlemanly manners is cunning like a fox. And he’s comparatively new; we don’t know his methods yet. I suspect he’s one of the ‘come into my parlour pretty maiden’ type, and that when he gets nasty he can be pretty foul. Still, you also have eyes and little grey cells. What,” went on Chittering, sweetly, “is the dirty work you want this noble son of Fleet Street to do for you?”

Mannering rounded his eyes.

“You ask Wainwright how noble you are! Three things, Chitty. Find out all you can about Mortimer Smith and Pendexter Smith of Dragon’s End. Discover all you can about their collection of head-hunters’ pieces and museum left-overs—and see if you can get a line on a nest of jewelled eggs. The clue is Indonesia, Ba-Kona dynasty. Yes, I am quite serious.” He described the nest of spun gold and the eggs that went with it, and something of his love of precious stones crept into his voice; and impressed Chittering.

“I’ll do what I can,” the newspaperman promised. “And report later, sir.”

He gave a mock salute.

He hadn’t been gone ten minutes before Fenn was on the line; and Fenn’s voice was sharper than Mannering had heard it before – the voice of a man who wasn’t going to stand any nonsense.

“Did you tell Brash that we wanted him?”

“I did,” admitted Mannering.

“You damned fool. It’s as bad as wilfully obstructing us.” Fenn’s voice could cut like a knife. “He’s run for cover, his car’s been stranded. If you’d kept your mouth shut, we could have picked him up in half an hour. Now it’s a man hunt. I hope—”

“Fenn,” said Mannering, in a voice so honey-sweet that it stopped the Yard man in full flow, “I apologise, humbly and abjectly. A complete misunderstanding. If Bill Bristow had told me what you told me about Brash, I’d have taken it for granted that he wanted me to pass the news on—wanted to get Brash on the run. And it worked that way. But I repeat—”

“I’m not Bristow,” Fenn said; and then gave himself and his game away. “What impression did you get when you told him he was wanted for murder?”

“He was surprised.”

“Sure?”

“Yes. Surprised, shocked, shaken. Whether because he didn’t kill or because he didn’t think you’d get on to him so quickly, I don’t know, but they were his emotions. Any idea where he is?”

“Not yet,” said Fenn, “but we’ll get him.”

The receiver went up with a loud and deliberate snap.

Mannering smiled faintly as he looked at the ceiling and a solitary fly bumping against it in a series of futile assaults. He did a lot of thinking. He hadn’t finished when he told Ethel that if anyone wanted him he would be at Quinns, and left the flat. He wasn’t followed, although a man from the Yard was still on duty watching. He got into the Rolls-Bentley, and drove to Hart Row, left the car outside, and went in.

Sylvester and another assistant came forward from the shadows, but had no startling news to impart.

“I’m going to have a look at the nest-egg,” Mannering said. “You haven’t unlocked the strong-room this morning, have you?”

“No, sir, it hasn’t been necessary to touch it,” Sylvester said. “Would you like any help?”

“I’ll manage,” said Mannering. He went into his office.

The strong-room was electrically locked and sealed with rays which gave warning of anyone’s approach; everything the Baron had learned about safes and strong-rooms and locks and burglarproof systems had been used to make this as near impregnable as it could be. Once it had been raided; it was now three times as strong as it had been then.

He closed and locked the door, pressed control electric buttons and switched ray-control levers. Now he could begin to get into the strong-room. Next he shifted a filing-cabinet, and rolled back a corner of the carpet, revealing polished boards. These were so cleverly fitted that they looked quite solid and unbroken; but at the touch of another switch a trap-door opened. Beneath this was yet another steel trap-door; he needed two keys to open this.

He started down the short loft-ladder to the strong-room, which had once been a cellar. The walls had been strengthened with reinforced concrete, over a foot thick. The ceiling was the same. There were two small ventilation shafts, but neither led directly to the street or the tiny yard at the back of Quinns.

A dozen safes were almost as impregnable as the strongroom. Round the walls, some in crates and some unpacked, were treasures which connoisseurs would pay a fortune to possess; all lovely things, each a delight to any expert eye, something to brood over and to love. Men did love these things; the lustre of a Ming vase, the fire that seemed to be burning in the heart of a diamond, the perfection of a master’s touch with a brush – this was a storeroom of treasures worth an incalculable sum; not all Mannering’s, for much was held for sale on commission; but a great deal was his.

The nest-egg was in the middle safe of five along one wall.

Mannering opened this. The keys scratched against the metal. He pulled the great, heavy steel door open. His heart began to pound. There was much that he didn’t understand about the case, in some ways it was almost uncanny; and suddenly he was afraid. It was impossible – but had some one broken in, had the nest-egg—

The case was there.

Mannering said, “Idiot,” and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, then took the leather travelling case out. He carried it to a small table, unlocked and opened it, and looked down at the superbly spun nest and the lovely jewelled eggs. When he switched on a powerful light, the jewels seemed to catch fire. He screwed a watch-maker’s glass to his right eye, and examined each egg and each stone set round it, and he held his breath. All of these were perfect gems, the value was even greater than he had thought the night before. The nest might have been made by golden birds which could lay bejewelled eggs. It looked so soft to the touch, too, but in fact was hard and cool.

Mannering straightened up, and took the glass away from his eye. Studying jewels like this did something to him, touched a spark which had turned into a flame in the distant days of the Baron. He had a passion for precious stones which really amounted to mania. Rare and beautiful gems affected him physically. He felt cold and shivery, as if touched by fever. This was a battle which he had to fight and win over and over again. At one time the sight of such jewels as those would have broken down all his defences; he would have felt the longing for them so great, so fierce, that he would have stolen them rather than let them go to another man’s possession.

Temptation, not these days to steal but to buy beyond his means, kept him almost daily company. In this strong-room he was filled with the tension, and knew that until he had gone upstairs, thrusting the jewels out of his mind, he would feel like this. He had made sure they were here, and nothing else really mattered. At heart, he knew that he had not needed to make sure, that the nest-egg was safe. The beauty of the gems had lured him down, to gloat as a miser would gloat over his hoard.

Once the doors of the safe were shut on them he would feel better, and when the trap-doors were in position, better still; and once he started looking through the morning’s post, with Sylvester, he would be back to normal.

He went up the wooden steps towards the office, looked round at the safe once, gave a thin-lipped smile, climbed up the stairs, and for a split second had his eyes on a level with the floor.

Something moved.

It was beyond the desk; something bright and shiny which he saw through the opening of the desk, the spot where he usually sat. He stopped moving for a split second, then went on, but his heart pounded with a different kind of excitement.

He had seen a polished shoe. Someone was on his knees behind the far end of the desk, hidden from sight, waiting for him to turn round and lower the trap-doors.

Was the man armed?