Chapter Seven

GERALD COLLYN

MANNERING kept his eyes on his friend as he took out his case and offered cigarettes. Lorna looked from one man to the other, sensing the sudden tension. A match flared. Plender blew grey smoke towards the window.

‘Well?’

‘Ffoulkes and Bristow seem to have converted you,’ murmured Mannering.

‘Ffoulkes and Bristow are clever, shrewd, and efficient men,’ said Plender. ‘Neither would have countenanced those search warrants unless they had been sure of their facts.’

‘Wrong,’ said Mannering. ‘I did not visit Collyn tonight.’

‘It’s a pity,’ said Plender, ‘but I don’t believe you.’

Lorna stood up abruptly.

‘This is just the thing that worries me. If the rumour does get about that John was suspected, how can you expect anyone to ignore it? If an old friend like you will believe it, the fools who live on scandal will take it for granted. It doesn’t matter whether we make a case against the police or not. They’ve forced him into a corner, and he can’t escape the slander. They will whisper behind his back, he’ll probably be boycotted – oh, it’s damnable!’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Plender. ‘That’s why he accepted an apology and didn’t press an action. However, apart from being a friend’—his expression was deprecatory, as though he disliked pointing that out—’I am also a legal adviser. Particularly experienced in crime. Why not remember that? I won’t pass it on to the police. As your legal adviser you can safely tell me anything. If you tell me that you went to James Street and stole the diamonds, even if I passed that on to the police they could do nothing. It would be hearsay. If I saw you holding the Chentz diamonds in your hands, that would be a different matter. An unprejudiced opinion,’ added Plender, sitting on the arm of a chair, ‘is this: that Ffoulkes and Bristow will not easily be deterred. It’s obvious that they feel sure you are the Baron. They can do many things that might incriminate you, or make you incriminate yourself. Only by taking action can you stop them from having you followed. Now or in the immediate future you are going to conflict with them so sharply that you will need legal aid.’ Plender grimaced. ‘I have given legal aid to murderers, blackmailers, crook financiers, and others. Why not to the Baron?’

‘Thanks,’ said Mannering drily. ‘It’s an impressive rogues’ gallery. Toby, for a long time Bristow has been trying to make me admit that I’m the Baron. His trick tonight was to put Lorna in a spot and hope I would confess to something I hadn’t done in order to save her from interrogation. I don’t like those methods, but they might have succeeded if I had stolen the Chentz diamonds, and if Lorna had been a party to the theft or the concealment. I didn’t. She wasn’t.’

‘I don’t believe that those two experienced policemen have acted without a conviction that you were the Baron.’

‘They’re convinced all right. I’ll put a theory to you.’

‘Not too far-fetched,’ pleaded Plender.

‘Supposing the Baron is a well-known member of society, supposing after a few years he withdrew from the game, and supposing after his retirement other people, ostensibly under the cover of the Baron, imitated his exploits? What would the original Baron do?’

Plender stared.

‘Is that the situation?’

‘It’s a theory.’

‘So,’ murmured Plender, patting his bald patch until Lorna wanted to scream, ‘you are the Baron, but someone else has been stealing your thunder?’

‘I am not the Baron. I shall never admit to the police, to you or to anyone. But I do know the Baron had nothing to do with this week’s robberies.’

‘You lost your vocation, you’d have made a good lawyer,’ Plender said. ‘If I were the Baron I would have a go at finding whoever is impersonating me.’ He raised his brows. ‘That is strictly unprofessional, and takes me back to the days of my youth.’

‘Supposing the Baron was dogged by the police, and couldn’t get at the gentleman in question,’ Mannering said. ‘What then?’

‘I’d make a big effort to draw the police off.’

‘Exactly,’ said Mannering grimly. ‘He has. I’m glad Ffoulkes didn’t decide to go through with it.’

Plender stood up.

‘I’m going, in case you make more statements like that.’ He looked bewilderedly at Lorna. ‘I’d never have believed it,’ he admitted. ‘Do you mind if I tell Mary?’

‘It wouldn’t be right to keep an interesting theory entirely to yourself,’ said Mannering drily.

Half an hour later Plender sat on the edge of his wife’s bed and, after waking her and adopting various ruses to make sure that she was alert, proceeded to tell a remarkable story.

Mary Plender, who was not beautiful but who was respected, liked, and admired, who was a confidante of her husband’s on all things of importance, had a shrewd intelligence allied to a sturdy loyalty.

‘Do you know, Toby,’ she said, ‘this is probably why John and Lorna haven’t married!’

‘Trust a woman,’ said Plender. ‘You’re probably right.’

‘I’m sure I am. What are you going to do?’

‘My money’s on John,’ Plender said. ‘On Bristow’s admission he’s been defying the Yard for four years, and they’ve known it all the time.’

‘Supposing he runs into serious trouble, will you help him?’

‘What are solicitors for?’ asked Plender, and laughed. ‘I know it’s late, but if you’ll move over …’

Brenda Collyn looked unhappily into her father’s face. The peer, much more perturbed by the second robbery than by the first, the loser of one of the finest strings of diamonds in the country, was harassed and angry. The police, summoned just after eleven o’clock, had told him that they believed they knew the cracksman, particularly after the description, given by a footman, of the big man with a blue mask over the lower half of his face, and with a gas-pistol in his hand. The footman had been found in the garden, bound hand and foot – as the watchman had been only four nights earlier. Collyn reproached himself bitterly for not taking more precautions with the strong-room. On the other hand, the thought that the thieves would strike twice within a week had never entered his mind.

It was nearly two o’clock when Collyn said sharply: ‘You must know where Gerald is, Brenda. I’m surprised that you’re so obstinate. I told him this afternoon that he must forget the absurd idea of trying to find the thief, but he’s obviously gone off on some ridiculous chase …’

‘But he told me he wouldn’t!’ cried Brenda. ‘He was satisfied with finding that card. I—if we had tried something we might have stopped this!’

‘Nonsense,’ said Collyn wearily. ‘And it isn’t going to be easy to forgive this. Brenda’—his voice grew softer—’Gerry doesn’t make a habit of staying out until the early hours, and he’s always confided in you.’

‘I don’t know where he is,’ insisted Brenda, very close to tears. She had been in bed and known nothing of the robbery until her father had called her.

Lady Collyn was away with her two elder daughters, and Collyn wished that she was at hand to influence Brenda.

‘Daddy, I …’ The tears came, and Collyn put his arms about her shoulders as she clung to him. ‘Oh, I hate telling you, but Gerry’s been out late several times recently. I go downstairs after the servants have locked up, and unbolt the front door for him. He told me he would be late tonight. You won’t be too hard, he …’

‘He makes a habit of this?’ exclaimed Collyn. ‘Who does he go with? Is it a girl?’

‘I think he does a round of the nightclubs. If you hadn’t set your mind against that kind of thing, he would never have defied you, but you know what Gerry is.’ She was quieter, and Collyn knew she was wondering whether her disloyalty to her brother was justified.

‘It’s all right,’ Collyn said heavily. ‘Don’t worry, my dear. You’d better go back to bed.’

‘I’d like to wait until he comes home.’

‘He can’t be much longer,’ said Collyn.

‘It must be awful for you,’ Brenda said, her big eyes wistful as she sat huddled up in an easy chair, silk pyjamas covered with a light dressing-gown, and one foot wriggling in a heel-less French slipper. ‘The other night all the family jewels, now the Chentz diamonds. Will the consequences be serious?’

‘The jewels are insured at a little less than their full value,’ said Collyn. ‘That doesn’t matter much.’

But his words lacked conviction. Brenda no longer looked wistful.

‘Daddy, is that true?’

‘Of course they were insured.’

‘Then what are you looking so worried about?’

‘You mean tired,’ said Collyn with an attempt at rueful humour.

Brenda uncurled herself and approached her father, knowing that he was trying to evade her challenge.

‘There’s more in it than that,’ Brenda insisted.

‘I think you’d better go to bed,’ said Collyn with a return to his abrupt, deliberate manner, and Brenda knew that it was useless to keep arguing. She went out, and Collyn stared at the door as it closed.

A few minutes later he had forgotten her rather dejected little figure, and was trying to decide just what the losses did mean to him. He looked a frightened, broken man.

At half past two the telephone bell rang. The deep voice at the other end of the wire was not Gerry’s. As soon as the caller mentioned his name he knew why it was familiar.

‘Why, what brings you through as late as this, Mannering?’

‘Forgive me if I’m intruding,’ Mannering said. ‘It’s about Gerald.’

Collyn spoke sharply.

‘What do you know about him?’

‘He’s been to Panelli’s for the evening,’ said Mannering. ‘You probably know all about that.’

‘Please go on.’

‘Is he back?’ asked Mannering.

‘No.’ Collyn’s breathing grew quicker. ‘What makes you ask?’

‘He went off with a party that had been getting him drunk,’ said Mannering. ‘The company wasn’t impressive.’

‘How do you mean, impressive?’

Alone in his flat, Mannering hesitated before he answered. Perhaps he had been worried unnecessarily by young Collyn’s presence and behaviour at the night-club, and after Lorna had gone he had called Guiseppe Panelli himself. The Italian, one of many who knew that the patronage of John Mannering was an important factor in his prosperity, was only too glad to offer what help he could. Apologetically he had said that he could not offend regular clients, that the brunette who had been with Collyn was not only rich but spent freely. He had heard that the man of the other couple had spent some time in prison. This, Panelli had reiterated, had been nothing but hearsay; as far as he knew, there was no evidence to support it. The gentleman in question, a Mr. Savoyan, had always behaved well.

‘Are you there?’ The peer spoke harshly.

‘Yes. There was a man named Savoyan among the party, a man with an unsavoury reputation. I know nothing against him, but, do you know Savoyan?’

‘I’ve never heard of him,’ said Collyn. ‘Mannering, I’ve a lot on my mind already. I’ve been robbed tonight.’

‘So I’ve heard,’ Mannering said. ‘I know the police very well, and saw Ffoulkes tonight. May I be frank?’

‘I hope you will be.’

‘Gerald’s mixing with some odd company, a woman was deliberately making him drunk, one of the men has a mysterious reputation – and you’ve been robbed. Could these people have been getting information from Gerald?’

‘It’s an alarming thought,’ Collyn said worriedly. ‘The police didn’t suggest it, did they?’

‘No. But if it’s true they might get on to it. I know the clubs and striptease shows fairly well. I’ll gladly look in at those most likely,’ Mannering said.

‘I’d be most grateful, Mannering. It’s good of you.’

Mannering rang off and lit a cigarette, then hurried out of the flat to his garage. For the first time that week he did not see a policeman on his heels. That did not mean that he was not being watched; it simply proved that Ffoulkes had given orders that he was not to know that he was being followed. In a way that increased the difficulties of the situation. On the other hand, it was easier to avoid a trailer who kept his distance.

Mannering drove first to the Heyday Club, a cross between a striptease and a night-club, in a mews behind Piccadilly. A clubman’s card enabled him to get up the narrow, coco-matted stairs into the crowded room of hot, sweating humanity taking pleasure out of being charged excessively for wines, chocolates, cigarettes – anything, in fact, which a half-drunken man would pay for. The sight nauseated Mannering: but of the forty-odd people there he saw no sign of the man Savoyan or of Gerald Collyn.

Five other visits were equally futile.

Mannering knew that when he had exhausted the best places in the West End, the next would be on a lower level than Panelli’s. There remained two likely alternatives: that Gerald had gone home with the brunette, or that they had not visited another club but gone out of London. The third possibility that they had gone to one of the little-known and unsavoury rendezvous in the West End had to be considered, but Mannering shied from it.

Short of trying to trace Savoyan, an almost impossible task at half past four in the morning, there was nothing more he could do. He telephoned Collyn, but Gerry had not returned, and the peer sounded distraught.

‘I ought to ask the police, Mannering, and yet … this man Savoyan – is he known to be a criminal?’

‘I couldn’t say that. Why?’

‘I’ve been thinking since you telephoned,’ said Collyn slowly. ‘I understand from my daughter that my son has been going with some strangers for some time. If Savoyan is a criminal it is indeed possible that there is a connection between him and the robberies. My strong-room was opened with a key tonight, so was the safe. Gerry could have borrowed the keys and had impressions made. Couldn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then if my son is involved, how can I go to the police?’ asked Collyn.