At half past eight on the following morning, Tony Beresford swung out of Auveley Street in his maroon-painted Hispano, and headed for Farningham, in Kent. The only development since he had left Scotland Yard at five o’clock was confirmation, from Curtis, that the two prisoners were comfortable, but that mention of Gorman set them screeching. Beresford determined to have a shot at extracting information.
As he spun through Vauxhall, then cut across London towards the Kentish borders, he felt the reaction of the previous day’s events. The fact that Valerie Lester was missing made him feel that he could not prevent himself from going to Gorman’s Park Place house and facing the financier with a direct accusation. But he realized that he would be serving no purpose by so doing. He would not even help Valerie Lester.
The green fields of Kent, fresh after a light rainfall overnight, did nothing to ease the big man’s frame of mind. There was one thing, and one thing only, that would do that—the sight of Valerie Lester safe and unhurt.
Beresford told himself that he was a fool, a thousand times a fool, for letting his thoughts centre round the girl. It was more important by far to find Craigie, even more important to force information which might help against Gorman from the two prisoners at Curtis’s bungalow. But the fact remained that Beresford’s chief interest was the girl. The possibility that she was not all that Long had said tormented him. She might be playing a double game, with and against Josiah Long at the same time. She might be...
“Don’t be a ruddy fool!” Beresford snapped aloud. “You’re losing sight of the big stuff, and if you’re not careful you’ll miss something that matters—now what the hell was that?”
‘That’ was something which pinged against the side of the Hispano, and it says a great deal for the state of Beresford’s mind that he assumed it was a stone thrown up by the wheels. A second ping, fast upon the first, made him grunt and look quickly on either side of the road. There was no one in sight, but on the left side of the road a wooded tract of countryside might have hidden a small army. On the right the fields were bare of everything but the first shoots of the hops, and the network of poles for training them ready for the autumn picking.
But Beresford was not concerned with hops nor their eventual state at that moment. He was telling himself that it would be touch and go if he got out of this spot of bother!
Unconsciously, he was glad that it was happening. It cleared his mind, and forced him out of the comparative state of lethargy into which he had fallen. It was no time for thinking; it was time for doing.
He sized the situation up quickly. The woods ran close to the road, and stretched further than he could see, for the road turned sharply to the right about two hundred yards further on. That acute bend prevented him from following his first inclination and sending the Hispano hurtling along the road, trusting to sheer speed to avoid being hit. For Beresford knew there were two or more gunmen in the woods, and the Hispano made a good target, if a moving one.
Beresford slouched down as far as he could in his seat while retaining full control of the roadster, and took one hand off the wheel. An automatic slipped between his fingers, taken from his pocket, and he kept a hold of the gun while peering into the woods. Twice again those shots came, hitting against the side of the car, but there was no sound before they found their mark, no stab of flame visible through the trees.
Beresford clenched his teeth as the Hispano went forward. The speedometer touched fifty before he began to slow down ready for the bend. He was no fool, and he reckoned that it was better to make sure of the corner and then let the engine have its full run. A smash at the bend would end all the chance he had of getting away from the ambush.
He did not call it an ambush, but he would have been justified in so doing. In the woods, he knew, the gunmen were taking their time as they fired at the Hispano. And they were firing well. By the time he reached the first bend of the corner seven shots had struck the side of the car.
It was the seventh which gave him the split-second of warning that he needed to avert disaster. It sent a shiver of foreknowledge through him, for he realized suddenly that the marksmen were firing well, that seven times they had hit the car, but not once had a bullet gone over his head! In short, Beresford thought as he swung his wheel, they were firing to panic him, not to kill!
Beresford knew the reason as he turned the bend!
In the centre of the road a Daimler limousine was at a standstill, drawn up so that only a small car could have passed on either side. There was no chance at all of Beresford in the Hispano missing the Daimler, and if he had taken the obvious course, by treading on his accelerator and taking the bend hell-for-leather, he must have crashed into perdition. As it was, Beresford was going at little more than twenty-five miles per hour as he started to turn, and that split-second of warning, intuitive rather than actual, had made him fasten on to his brakes desperately. The Hispano skidded as its driver braked and turned the wheel at the same time. For a moment Beresford thought that he must go broadside into the Daimler, but another skid took the Hispano round, and Beresford let his muscles go loose as the radiator of his car crashed against the offside wheel of the Daimler.
The crash sent Beresford’s big body jolting sideways, but the worst of the impact had been avoided. The only damage, Beresford thought with a grunt, was to the two cars...
And then he had a shock. For the first time he saw that the Daimler was not empty. A man was sitting at the wheel, sitting with absurd stillness after the smash, and staring at Beresford with eyes opened wide in terror! Beresford swallowed hard, and stared unbelievingly at the man. He needed no telling who it was.
“Odell!” Beresford breathed.
Beresford felt automatically in his pocket for his cigarettes, and lit one as he approached the big car, feeling in need of the narcotic. As he drew near he saw the reason for the Major’s stillness, and knew why he had not shouted a warning. And Beresford saw a red mist in front of his eyes as the full devilishness of the trick came home to him!
The man was tied to the seat so that he could not move. His hands were fastened to the wheels, and he was gagged effectively, so that he could not cry out. Beresford needed no telling of the plan which had been conceived. After the smash, which would have killed both men if he had not taken the corner carefully, the men (or one of them) from the woods would have hurried down to the scene of it, cut away the tell-tale cords binding Odell, taken the gag from his mouth, and left the wreck of the two big cars for anyone to find. Nothing in the world would have convinced any sane man that the smash had been anything but an accident caused by reckless driving.
“And that,” Beresford muttered to himself, “was why they fired at the car and not at me. And,” he added, with a glint in his eyes, “it speaks volumes for the breeze which is floating behind Leopold Gorman. He daren’t take a chance at open killing.”
That surmise was only partly true, but it was true enough for the moment. Beresford kept his eyes open and his gun handy, but he did not anticipate any trouble from the gunmen who had tried to make him take the bend at a high speed. Nor did he get any trouble from them.
He cut through the cords at Odell’s wrists, following with those which fastened the man to the seat. Odell, glaring and a fiery red from forehead to collar, tried to speak but failed, and tried to get the gag from his mouth but failed.
“Allow me,” said Beresford with a sudden smile. In spite of the circumstances, the near-apoplexy which was possessing Odell had its humour, and laughter was an easy thing to Tony Beresford.
He inserted his large forefinger into the Major’s mouth and eased out a small rubber ball. Odell retched.
“Try a spot of this,” said Beresford a couple of minutes later, proffering his ever ready flask to Odell. The man sipped the whisky, sipped again and muttered “Thanks—thanks. My God, but I thought I’d finished for good an’ all dat time, buddy!”
As he heard the words, Beresford’s body went rigid, and his mind went cold. The humour went from his eyes and he stared at the man as if he could not believe the evidence of his sight. It wasn’t Odell...
“You!” muttered Beresford. “You...”
“Sho’ thing,” said Josiah Long cheerfully, “an’ my opinion of yuh is getting better an’ better!”
It took Beresford several minutes to recover from the shock of his discovery. He had convinced himself that Josiah Long was not all that he seemed. Several things had pointed to Long’s association with Gorman, despite the confirmation from America of the agent’s official capacity, but the discovery of Josiah, trussed up and ready for killing in an ‘accident’, was ample confirmation of the enmity which Gorman had for him.
Fast upon this thought was his realization that events suggested that Major Odell was in the affair much deeper than it had seemed—and the last time Valerie Lester had been seen she had been with the Major.
Beresford swore, then forced his thoughts into different channels. He jerked his thumb at the two cars, scowling the while.
“They won’t help us much,” he grunted; “but we’ve got to get back to London, and get back quickly.”
“Maybe we’ll get a ride,” suggested Josiah Long cheerfully. “There’s a fork turning up de road—let’s walk.”
As the two men swung along the road, Josiah Long told his story. Beresford listened, grim-eyed. The more he heard, the less he liked of Major Gulliver Odell’s part in the affair.
Briefly, Josiah Long had left Scotland Yard on the previous night, free to do what he liked, but for the two detectives who had been trailing him. He had slipped his men, and had decided that the most likely source of information was Major Odell, or Major Odell’s friends. Consequently he had decided to visit one or two of the Major’s ports of call, dressed and looking like Odell.
His first call had been at Adele Fayne’s flat, for he knew nothing of Beresford’s preparation for that lady’s sudden change of address. The door of the flat had been opened by a man whom he had not recognized...
“An’ de guy let me in, buddy, an’ den brought de butt of a gun down on me head. I didn’t stand a chance——”
“It was about all you deserved,” grunted Beresford. “Impersonating Odell was asking for trouble.”
Josiah Long shrugged his shoulders.
“Maybe, maybe not. If it’d woiked de udder way, an’ I’d gotta line somewheres, it’d been genius.”
Beresford grunted.
“Anyways,” said Long, “de next thing I knew I wass in de Daimler, trussed like you found me. I wass drugged until den, an’ when I came round I reckoned I wouldn’t be on dis li’l woild much longer. I sure owe yuh a lot, Beresford.”
Beresford grunted again.
“A bit back for the Lancia business,” he said. He laughed. “And I’d reckoned you worked those tricks, somehow.”
“Did you?” Josiah Long blinked. “Can’t say I blame yuh, buddy. Wass dere any udder things you had on me?”
Beresford nodded. He was fully convinced now that Josiah Long was genuine, and it was a relief to talk.
“I told you,” he said, “that Nosey Dean was drowned. He wasn’t—he was shot, with the same gun that shot Williams. But you had the gun——”
“So it looked like I shot Dean?”
“It did,” said Beresford. “How’d you get the gun?”
“Through the post,” said Josiah Long simply. “I should have told yuh, Beresford, but it slipped my mind, kind of.”
Beresford whistled.
“So it was an effort to make us suspicious of you?”
“That’s what I reckon,” admitted Long, “an’ it did.” He grinned. “Howso—dat car looks as if it might have room for us, buddy. Yuh call it. I can’t raise a proper shout yet.”
At twenty past nine that morning, Curtis weary-eyed because he had been forcing himself to keep awake for the past three hours, although he was tired to the point of exhaustion, swore mildly as the telephone-bell rang. He dragged himself out of his chair, staring enviously at the other three people in the room. Adele Fayne, he already knew, slept with her mouth open. It made her look as vacuous as she really was, and did little to increase her prettiness. Solly Lewistein, on a chair next to the couch which had been hastily made up for the dancer, slept noisily, and as he breathed so the sides of his chair bulged slightly outwards. Dodo Trale, who had won the toss for the first man for sleep, slept as he lived—immaculately.
Curtis lifted the receiver from its hook, halloed, told a sharp-tongued operator that he would complain to a Mr. Belisha if she wasn’t careful, which remark seemed to amuse the operator, and inquired of her what she wanted.
“A man called your number from a call-box,” he was told, “but he hadn’t enough change to pay for the call. He said his name was B-E-R-E——”
“Get me that call-box,” snapped Curtis, and the girl sensed the seriousness behind the change of his tone.
Two minutes later Curtis heard Beresford’s voice.
“I had a packet of trouble on the way to you,” said Beresford, “and I got something that makes me want to get back to London pretty snappy. But, Bob——”
“I’m listening,” muttered Curtis.
“Keep your eyes wide open,” said Beresford urgently. “I was held up on the road, which means that whoever it was knew I was coming to see you—or, at least, the way I was held up does. So——”
“They know we’re here,” said Curtis, wide-eyed, “and that means something’ll hum. All right, Tony. But send some others when you can—I’m yawning twice a minute.”
“With any luck,” said Beresford, who had had something under eight hours’ sleep, in the last forty-eight, “I’ll be there myself.”
Curtis hung up, and turned towards the three sleeping beauties. The warning from Beresford had sharpened his wits for the moment, and he was able to grin again at Adele Fayne’s open mouth, although even as she rested on the couch he was forced to admit that to many her superb figure would have more than recompensed them for the doll-like prettiness of her face and the comparative vacuity of her mind.
From La Fayne, whose back was towards the window, Curtis looked to Solly Lewistein, who was sideways to the window, which window Curtis had opened as wide as possible, for the room was small and the four people made it stuffy. It occurred to him at one and the same time that Dodo should be awakened, for his period of rest was up, and that the open window was another way of asking for trouble. He stepped over Dodo’s long legs (Trale was opposite Lewistein) to close the window, a precaution which he would not have taken but for Beresford’s warning.
And then, just as Timothy Arran had seen it a few days earlier, Curtis saw something glisten in the light of the morning sun. He swore loudly, and swung away, seeing the handle of the knife, which whistled through the open window. Curtis saw where it was going a fraction of a second too late to stop it!
The knife stabbed through Solly Lewistein’s throat, with its blood-red tip protruding on the one side and the handle the other! Curtis saw it, and knew that it had cut through the jugular vein, and felt sick. But he slammed the window close before doing anything else, and a second knife cracked against the glass, splintering it, but dropping outside the house.
Dodo Trale seemed to jump from sleep into full consciousness in a split second. As the second knife cracked against the window he leapt out of his chair, dipping into his pocket for the gun which Beresford had given him. Through the window he could see two vague figures, men on the far side of a clump of bushes in the garden—Franchot’s apaches, if he had but known it—and he levelled his gun.
“Hold it!” snapped Curtis.
The big man bent down and picked Adele Fayne from the couch as easily as picking apples from a tree. The dancer, who had been struggling to a sitting position, screamed. Then she saw Solly Lewistein, the knife in his throat and the blood coming from it. She went rigid in Curtis’s arms, and fainted.
“That’s the best thing she could have done,” grunted Curtis, hurrying to the door. “All right, Dodo—let ’em have it now.”
Trale grunted, and dropped on one knee behind the armchair in which he had been sleeping. He realized why Curtis had stopped him. If he had fired before the dancer had been taken out of the room, the men outside would have had a better chance of wounding her, for the window would be splintered completely by a bullet shot, and the knife could have come through. For the time being Adele Fayne was very precious.
Trale waited for a moment, staring into the garden. He saw a bush move, and fancied there was a man behind it. His finger touched the trigger of his gun, and the bullet smashed through the window, humming towards the bush. A man shouted and cursed, and the vague form disappeared.
Trale told himself two things as he waited for the next opportunity to fire. First, that Beresford had been right when he had reasoned that if he abducted Adele Fayne and Lewistein, Gorman would get rattled and come into the open. Secondly, that the curse which he had heard from the man whom he had shot was not in English, nor American. It was French, and an argot common in Montmartre in the bargain!