Tony Beresford discussed many things with Dodo Trale at the Carilon, chiefly that gentleman’s success with Adele Fayne. Trale’s opinion of the dancer was not high.
“She hasn’t got even a suspicion of a brain, Tony. If it wasn’t for Solly Lewistein, that girl wouldn’t be on the Emblem at all, what about being the star piece. I’ll grant you she’s got the legs and——”
“We’re not concerned with what she’s got,” grinned Beresford, “but what she knows. Is there a line between her and Gorman?”
Dodo Trale examined the dry bottom of a tankard. He was a small man as men go and puny in comparison with Beresford, while his grey eyes and general bearing suggested indolence out of the ordinary. Certainly Dodo Trale looked lazy, but, Beresford liked to tell him, he also looked beautiful. That night his dress-suit was cut to the peak of fashion, for immaculacy was a religion with that agent of Department Z, and his dark hair was brushed well back from his forehead, revealing his classical profile and emphasizing the perfection of his features. Even as he demanded more beer and more tankards of Petitt, the head-waiter at the Carilon, Dodo Trale looked bored.
Petitt passed the request on to a lesser soul, wished Beresford a frigid good-evening, and passed on himself.
“Well?” demanded Beresford. “Is there?”
Trale deliberated.
“I don’t know, Tony. Somehow I think there is. Of course, Gorman’s been seen about with our Adele a lot. I don’t mean that. I mean I think she’s—— Ah, beer!”
“Before you drink that,” said Beresford, grabbing both tankards, “you’ll talk. She’s what?”
“I think she’s scared of him,” said Trale; “and pass that over quickly, drat you.”
Beresford complied for the sake of peace.
“So you think Adele Fayne’s scared of Leopold, do you?”
“Yes,” said Trale, from the mouth of his tankard. “She hedges like blazes when I start to talk about him. I can’t get a word out of her. Ah-h! But I’ll tell you one thing, Tony.”
“Go on while you’ve time,” said Beresford, who knew Dodo Trale’s propensities with beer.
“I think Solly Lewistein’s scared too. I happened to mention that I’d met Gorman in the passage outside Adele’s dressing-room last night, and Solly seemed to go cold.”
“Gorman’s money keeps ’em both, remember,” muttered Beresford.
“Not that kind of scared,” said Trale. “If they were frightened of losing a good billet, they might sulk, but when they had the chance they’d call Gorman everything they could think of—not that it’d be much with Adele, mind you—but they wouldn’t shy away when you mentioned his name, and look as if you were poison.”
Beresford drank deeply and thoughtfully.
“Who’d you think we could get most out of—the girl or Solly?”
“Solly. If you offered him enough money, I reckon he’d sell Gorman right out. I don’t think the girl knows enough. Gorman’s got sense if nothing else, and he wouldn’t try to put anything in that cold storage plant.”
“Obviously,” said Beresford gently, “you don’t think much of Adele. Did she turn you down, or didn’t she think your motives were pure?”
“She hasn’t turned me down, and I haven’t got any motives. I’m suppering with her again to-night, at the expense of Gulliver Odell—you know that gentleman?”
“Ye-s.” Beresford in turn studied the dry bottom of a tankard. “Is there anything between Gorman and Odell, d’you think?”
“I kind of guess so,” said Trale. “Solly Lewistein think’s Odell’s punk, and Adele spits whenever he’s mentioned. But he’s got influence somewhere, so——”
“It’s probably with Gorman?”
“That’s my guess,” said Trale.
Beresford lit a cigarette and eyed Trale seriously.
“Do you know the size of this job, Dodo?”
“I’ve got an idea.”
“Humph! Well, it’s a lot bigger than your ideas. We might catch a packet any day, any time——”
“Anywhere!” crooned Dodo suddenly and to the surprise of many members of the Carilon who were telling funny stories and buying the best beer in London.
“Don’t be a ruddy ass,” grunted Beresford. “I don’t think Gorman knows you’re one of us—nothing’s happened yet, has it?”
“Not even a rough-house,” mourned Trale.
“Well, it will,” said Beresford. “Feel like taking a chance to-night?”
“Will it cancel that supper engagement?”
“No.” Beresford looked grim. “Unless you’re too dead to keep it.”
Dodo’s eyes widened, and he choked at his beer.
“So-ho! We’re really getting down to it. What’s the job, Tony?”
Beresford lowered his voice and spoke without moving his lips, so that only Trale knew he was speaking.
“See Solly Lewistein,” said Beresford, “and ask him how much he’ll take for the low-down on Gorman.”
For a moment Trale seemed too thunderstruck to speak. At last:
“And is that your idea,” he demanded, “of a really first-class lead for a spot of trouble? Because I——”
“Son,” said Beresford, and Dodo Trale was quietened by the expression in the big man’s eye, “if Lewistein doesn’t bite, and takes the story to Gorman, I wouldn’t give two pins for your chance of seeing morning.”
Trale swallowed hard, although his tankard was empty.
“Well, well, well!” he exclaimed at last. “Ain’t it lucky I wasn’t born rich, old son? When do I see Solly? While the show’s on?”
“Yes. It’s half past nine—no, ten o’clock, within a couple of minutes. You’ll catch him all right if you go now.”
Dodo Trale stood up, looking for all the world as if he would never be able to outlive the boredom of that evening.
“O.K. with me,” he said. “Have I got time to pop round to my place and collar a gun?”
“Better take mine,” said Beresford. “I’ll join you in the cloakroom in five minutes, and I’ll pass it over then. And, Dodo——”
“Sir,” said Dodo Trale.
“Watch your step. If Solly seems to jib, go straight round to Fellowes at Scotland Yard and get him to put a man on your tail——”
“The Yard?” Trale whistled under his breath. “What’s the matter with seeing Craigie and getting one of our men?”
Beresford looked grim.
“Can’t do,” he said. “Craigie’s not been in for some time, and he made a new list out yesterday. Until we find him I don’t know who’s with us nor who’s dropped out, if any. So——”
“Do you mean,” asked Dodo Trale, suddenly very still, “that Craigie’s missing?”
“I do,” said Beresford.
“My God!” breathed Trale, and his face was white.
If he had had time for musing, Tony Beresford would have reflected on the fact that Dodo Trale grinned when he talked of putting his head, figuratively, into Gorman’s noose, did not turn a hair when he was convinced that the consequences of his coming interview with Leopold Gorman’s theatrical manager were likely to be fatal, or next door to it, but went white when he heard that his Chief was missing. There was no man in the Service who would not willingly have given his life for Gordon Craigie. Craigie contrived to lend a human understanding to a job which was inhuman because of the certainty of death coming in the long run to its agents, and death by violence; by doing so he had made himself, literally, loved by those men, to whom the word ‘love’ between men was absurd.
Beresford, however, had many things to do. In effect he was O.C. of Department Z, a job which was no easy one, even if he had access to Craigie’s papers. But with Craigie missing—the problem of the Chief’s disappearance had already been passed on to Very High Officials—Beresford would be badly handicapped until those officials gave him signed permission to take charge.
The most serious handicap was his lack of knowledge as to who was still on Department Z’s list of agents. He needed more help, and he needed it badly. And then, suddenly, he cursed himself for a fool. There was help in plenty waiting for the asking; that the men he had in mind were not agents of Z was an advantage rather than a disadvantage; they would not be recognized by Leopold Gorman, or Gorman’s mysterious ‘big boys’.
Beresford felt cheered. To cheer himself still further, he hopped into the first telephone-booth and called up the Regent’s Park house, hoping for a word with Valerie Lester.
That same solemn-voiced servant answered him.
“Miss Lester left the house, sir, about thirty-five minutes ago.”
“Alone?” Beresford snapped the question.
“She was called for, sir, by a gentleman.”
“Do you know him?”
“No, sir. Reynolds, who received him, has gone out.”
Beresford replaced the receiver, after a muttered thanks. He was worried, although he realized the possibility that Valerie’s companion was one of Josiah Long’s associates. On the other hand, Gorman might have tricked her away from the Regent’s Park house.
Beresford cursed, audibly and to the disgust of a spinster who was passing him across the Trafalgar Square roundabout. He did not grin at the lady’s ‘tcha!’ a sure sign that he was worried much more than usual. The possibility of trouble developing with Valerie Lester made his blood chill. Yet, he reasoned, she was in the thick of it; just as Josiah Long had been singled out for special attention, so, probably, would the American girl be spotted.
Fighting back his anxiety, Beresford hurried to the Éclat Hotel, where he hoped to find several gentlemen of his acquaintance who would not shy at trouble. It was not his lucky night, for the only men who would serve his purpose—and who were indulging in a beer-battle at the Éclat’s bar—were Robert Montgomery Curtis and Wallace Davidson.
A beer-battle between those august gentlemen was a thing of humour for those in the mood for it. It consisted of a trial of repression on the part of the combatants, for the winner was the man who drank less beer over a prescribed period, throughout which period the beer, in tankards, must be hovering in front of the battlers’ nose, frothy with temptation.
“Why,” said Bob Curtis, a giant of a man whose ugly face was redeemed by a pair of the most humorous brown eyes in London—“why, here’s St. Anthony! Join us, soldier!”
“Beer—tankards, three, quick,” drawled Wally Davidson, a man of perpetual weariness, considerable size, although smaller than either Beresford or Curtis, of light-brown, curly hair and undistinguished features but immaculacy on a par with Dodo Trale’s. “You look peeved, Tony my son. Would you rather have something with more bite?”
“Bring that stuff to a table,” grunted Beresford, “and try to keep your wits clear. I’ve got a job for you.”
Davidson and Curtis* exchanged glances, instructed a waiter to transfer their beer from the bar to a table, and followed Beresford willingly. They did not know, but they guessed that Beresford was a man of strange missions, and they were possessed of a philosophy which proclaimed satisfaction only in action.
“Well?” demanded Bruce hopefully.
“Spill it!” drawled Davidson. “No, drat you, not the beer! Oi! What the blue hades is your trouble, Tony?”
Beresford, who had touched his lips with the tankard of beer, deposited it suddenly on the table, spilling a fair portion in close proximity to Davidson’s trousers. He stared for a fraction of a second towards the door of the bar-room, at a man who had just entered and who was looking round the room inquiringly. Davidson and Curtis looked, carefully, with Beresford. They saw the slim, well-dressed figure of a young man whom they knew moderately well, but for the life of them they could not conceive why his appearance had made Tony Beresford go temporarily mad.
They did not know that Robert Lavering was supposed to be dead!