For the fifth time since they had first met, Tony Beresford and Valerie Lester were dining—or at least being—tête-à-tête. It was two days after the affair at the bungalow, two days which had been full ones for Beresford, and even fuller for Valerie Lester, who had been preparing hurriedly for a journey.
In those two days Beresford had learned many things. He had been told by Craigie how that gentleman had been completely hoodwinked by Major Gulliver Odell, whom he had thought to be a fool and little else. The Major, complaining that he had been involved in an accident and was confined to his room, had telephoned Craigie, via his flat, saying that he believed he knew something about Leopold Gorman which Craigie should know. The Chief had sent a man to investigate the truth of Odell’s ‘accident’, and the man had confirmed that Odell was at his flat, alone, and with a heavily bandaged leg. Craigie had consequently visited the flat, to suffer, as Long had suffered at Adele Fayne’s rooms on the following day.
Major Odell, having caught the biggest fish, had then trapped Valerie Lester, and, with her, the Arrans. Valerie had ‘fallen’ with her eyes open. The Arrans, believing that Odell might lead to Gorman, had visited that gentleman shortly after he had left the Silver Slipper, and a minor gas-attack had finished them. Not until Beresford and Miller had arrived at the flat had any one of the four seriously thought that they would escape alive.
They had been kept at Odell’s flat, Craigie reasoned, because Gorman had no other rendezvous in England, apart from his own house. The financier’s anxiety to keep his connection with the outrages hidden had, Craigie knew, caused him to make his headquarters at the Côte d’Or with Franchot as his chief lieutenant. With the exception of the three Englishmen who had surrendered at Resthaven, and the deceased Nosey Dean, Gorman had no agents in England. Major Odell—who had been short of money for a long time—had been ‘bought’ by Gorman, but until the last few days of the affair Odell had operated from Paris. He had been the connecting link between Gorman and Franchot for some months.
The French connection, Craigie reasoned, explained why Lavering had been lured to France (Gorman had deliberately gone to Paris to entice the American across the Channel). Corinne the dancer had been intended as a decoy for Lavering, but the threat from Department Z had made Gorman change his plans and rely on the ‘arsenic treatment’ to keep Lavering under his control. Thus he had been safe in allowing the American to leave the nursing-home in Paris. At any time Lavering’s supply (unknown to Lavering himself) could have been withdrawn. (That Bob Lavering would have been the power behind the Wheat Pool was evidenced less than a month later, when his father died suddenly from natural causes.) Craigie could discover no reason for the destruction by fire of the nursing-home; Beresford suggested, reasonably, that in the home was ample evidence of the poisoning to which Lavering had been subjected, and the fire was intended to destroy that evidence.
“Maybe yuh’re right,” admitted Josiah Long, who was one of the four people present at the conversation when these things were explained.
“What was Solly Lewistein so scared of?” Fellowes asked.
“He knew that Adele Fayne had been poisoning Lavering,” said Craigie, “and he knew about the murder of Williams too. Both of them were completely under Gorman’s thumb, and were frightened to death that they would be charged as accomplices after the fact of Williams’ murder.”
Beresford grinned, then scowled. He had seen the knife in Solly Lewistein’s throat, and it had not been pleasant.
“Odell was up to his neck in it, was he?” asked Long.
“Yes,” said Beresford. “I suspected that gentleman was deeper than we thought when I heard that he was a gambler, and short of money.”
“It was lucky you had that last-minute idea,” said the Chief Commissioner.
“It was luckier that Craigie thought of going to the bungalow looking, at a distance, like Odell,” said Beresford. “If Gorman hadn’t been caught out by that, there would have been the devil to pay at Resthaven.”
“Would have been?” asked Josiah Long mildly.
“You be quiet,” Beresford grinned, “or we’ll have you deported.”
Josiah Long blinked. He was feeling the effects of his encounter with Gorman, and the stuff with which he had been doped had weakened him to such an extent that he had been unable to be in at the death, a fact which rankled deeply. Beresford cheered him, and drank his health in Gordon Craigie’s whisky (for the conversation took place in the holy of holies, Department Z) and then departed, for he had an appointment with five young and hearty gentlemen, being the Arran Twins, Dodo Trale, Wally Davidson and Robert Curtis. The meeting of those five and Beresford was hilarious, and was a celebration continued a long time after Beresford had left.
Beresford thereafter cleared up several jobs which needed doing, assured himself that Bob Lavering was in good hands, and, when he reached his flat, suggested in so many words to Sam Tricker that Maria would be a necessity at the flat in the future.
“And as,” he said very seriously, “we haven’t got room for more than two bedrooms, Sam, you’d better be popping the question. I’ll be your best man——”
Sammivel’s face split into the widest beam that Beresford had ever seen on it.
After these things, Beresford called on the Chesters to see Valerie, and for a while they talked. In consequence of the things they said, Valerie had spent a hectic twelve hours buying many things, and out of her experience Diane Chester helped her.
Soon afterwards Valerie and Tony Beresford dined together in the restaurant-car of the Dover boat-train. The last placard that Beresford saw in England proclaimed a fall in petrol prices.
“And that,” smiled the big man, “is a very pleasant wedding present.”
His wife smiled, for the future looked very bright.
Leopold Gorman was taken to Farningham Hospital, and after an operation on his damaged knee, was transferred to a police nursing-home. The third day after his arrival he was found dead from arsenic poisoning. Gordon Craigie knew that the men who had sheltered the financier during his career had not dared to face the consequences of his trial and the subsequent revelations.
Craigie was pleased rather than sorry. He knew that the plot to control world markets had failed, that Governments were taking precautions against any panic reactions, and that those men who had supported Gorman with their money would crash, financially, soon after Gorman died.
It so happened that within a month of that death four suicides shook the stock markets of the world. Only Miccowiski, in Russia, faced the consequences of his failure, and he suffered as most men suffered who failed not only themselves but also the Soviet.
But the affair which had started with the International Economic Conference had other repercussions. Major Gulliver Odell was hung for the murder of Nosey Dean and Nicholas Williams, although throughout his trial he kept silent about Gorman, hoping that he would gain a reprieve. Adele Fayne left the stage; without Solly Lewistein she was like a rudderless ship, but after her hysteria at Resthaven she altered, mentally, for the better. No charge was pressed against her; Craigie knew that she had been nothing but a tool, and that there was nothing to fear from her by herself.
Craigie thought of these things, and then of the Arrans, who were soon to start on another job of work. Timothy was quieter than before the Lavering affair. The death of Corinne had affected him deeply. Craigie knew, however, that a steadier Timothy would be a better agent; he would be able to replace Beresford, whose marriage automatically cut him off from Department Z’s list of agents. Curtis and Davidson, moreover, joined that select list, two men who were likely to do well.
It had been a bad beginning, Craigie told himself, but it had cleaned up well. Gorman’s French assassins had been deported, and Piquet would look after them, together with Franchot, at the Côte d’Or. The three English gunmen would hang, although their trial had not yet started—Odell’s had come first, for as little sensation as possible was wanted by the Men Who Mattered.
Craigie thought, suddenly, of the registry office marriage at which he had been a witness, and smiled when he recalled the slim, calm loveliness of Valerie Lester. And then he knocked the tobacco from the bowl of his pipe and leaned back in his armchair.
the end