Chapter Fourteen

‘MIKE’

MIKE’S mousy hair and indeterminate features justified the vagueness of Chloe’s description. He was plump but not fat. His clothes had the air of a good-class country tailor; neither new nor shabby, but well-worn. He had an almost apologetic manner which puzzled Mannering at first.

Mannering had decided to take Chloe’s message literally. He faced the possibility that she was exploiting her ability to win his sympathy, that he was to be a victim just as Gerry had been. In the pocket of his coat, as he stood by the slightly open door of Chloe’s bedroom, looking into the lounge where Mike was sitting at ease, was Savoyan’s automatic.

As Mr. Jonathan Mellor he had reached this flat – a ground floor one – just after five o’clock, and had been reassured that in an emergency he could get out of the bedroom window, overlooking the quiet thoroughfare of Warne Street.

Chloe had seemed nervous.

Mike had come at exactly five-thirty.

To Chloe’s bitter reproaches he had shown a slightly apologetic front, with an insistence that he had been acting under orders, and in any case he had done her no serious harm. Chloe did not let him leave the subject easily; and for the first time Mike showed his teeth.

‘Now that’s enough,’ he said, roughly. ‘You’re one of us and can’t get away.’

‘That’s all very well, but …’

‘Forget it,’ said Mike softly.

Mannering felt the menace of his voice. He could see Chloe’s face – she had arranged Mike’s chair so that he had his back towards the Baron – and he sympathised with her nervousness, as she said reluctantly: ‘Oh, all right!’

Mike shifted his position to get cigarettes.

‘Don’t be difficult, or you’ll run into serious trouble,’ Mike said. ‘I’ve just come to reassure you on one point.’

‘What are you getting at?’

‘Gerald Collyn,’ said Mike. ‘Savoyan threatened to kill him, and I doubt whether you liked the idea. I am to tell you he is safe and well – angry as a bull, but that is to be expected.’

‘Where is he?’ Chloe sounded as though she was stifling tears.

‘I can hardly tell you that,’ said Mike. ‘Savoyan has reported that misadventure of his with the Baron, and that you rescued him at the suggestion of the Baron. Was the man masked when you saw him?’

‘No.’

‘What does he look like?’

‘I’m not good at describing people.’

‘Try,’ encouraged Mike, and Mannering saw the girl’s eyes narrow in fear, and wondered whether she could ever be a reliable ally.

‘He was middle-aged, I should say. A miserable-looking man. Rather pale – unhealthy. I noticed his sloping shoulders. I—I don’t remember much, he wasn’t here long, but he had brown eyes. A big moustache, clipped short. Is that any help?’

‘How tall was he?’

‘About the same as Savoyan.’

‘It ought to help,’ Mike conceded. ‘Well, that’s all for now, my dear. Be in readiness, you will be wanted again before long. In future you will work with me, not with Savoyan.’

‘Well, I’m not sorry about that.’

Mike stood up, and as he turned sideways to the Baron, he smiled. It was a slow, rather contemptuous, almost threatening smile, and it lifted Mike out of the nondescript category.

‘Perhaps not, my dear, but Savoyan was a better man to work with than some. Don’t you think?’

The Baron’s hands tightened, Chloe’s eyes held a sudden unmistakable alarm.

‘Was?’ she gasped.

‘Don’t be too curious,’ advised Mike. ‘You were wise to move from Westminster, out of the way of the Baron. Oh, yes,’ he added suddenly. ‘Have you ever met a man named Mannering?’

The Baron went rigid, and failed to see the little smile on Mike’s face as Chloe said: ‘No. Do you mean John Mannering?’

‘Yes. So you’ve heard of him? A renowned collector of jewels. There has been a little misadventure with him, as you will have seen if you read the Paris news. At all events you will probably meet him soon. We want to find where he keeps his stuff. A lady’s man, I believe.’

‘Lady’s man nothing!’ snorted Chloe, natural for the first time since Mike had arrived. ‘Everyone knows he’s tied to Lorna Fauntley.’

‘To what heights your social knowledge rises,’ murmured Mike sardonically. ‘As it happens, there is talk of a rift in the lute. Quite inevitable when a courtship lasts so long. The Miss Fauntley, I’m told, is looking elsewhere.’

Mannering, very still, felt a chill in his bones. The detachment with which he had watched and listened had gone.

‘Who told you?’ asked Chloe. ‘They’ve been as close as turtle doves. Everyone knows …’

‘Don’t trust everyone,’ said Mike. ‘Trust only me – as I,’ he added with a threat in his voice, ‘trust you. Goodbye, pet, for now. I can let myself out.’

Chloe stood in the middle of the lounge, staring after Mike, and had not moved when the Baron stepped from the bedroom. She started when he touched her arm, but a lifted finger ensured her silence. He said softly: ‘I’m going after him, through the window. The same arrangements as before. Chloe, I’m relying on you.’

‘What did he mean about Savoyan?’

‘That’s one of the things I’m going to find out,’ Mannering said quietly. He pressed her arm again and hurried to the bedroom window.

He saw Mike at the wheel of an Austin Cambridge, and as the car moved off he climbed through the window. His own car – Mr. Mellor’s small Morris – was standing a few doors up Warne Street. Before Mike had turned into the main road, Mannering had let in the clutch.

He had no idea where the other was going, but he hoped it would not be far. Before he had found time to ponder the conversation the Austin turned into the main approach of Paddington Station.

Mannering pulled into the parking place well away from Mike, and followed him leisurely to the booking hall. But Mike had a ticket, and used the hall merely to get to the main-line platforms. So it was to be a long trip, unless Mike was meeting a train. He merged with the crowd waiting by a train for South Wales. Mannering booked a return ticket to Gloucester, and returned to the platform. The train was on the point of leaving, but he walked rapidly along the platform until he reached the first-class carriage where Mike was sitting.

Mannering jumped into a carriage near by as the whistle blew, the first chug-chug of the engine jolted the train. He had time to buy a magazine and a couple of papers, flinging half a crown to the stall boy, before he sat down, breathing heavily and wondering how far this trail would lead him. He crushed every other thought.

He recalled Chloe’s description of the Baron.

It had been reasonably good – Mr Mellor’s appearance lent itself more to word pictures than Mike’s – and Mannering decided that slight adjustments were necessary. He had an emergency make-up set in his tool-kit, for he had gone to St. John’s Wood prepared for action, and he hurried to the toilet. To remove the ‘unhealthy’ skin Chloe had mentioned and to give his cheeks the rosiness of many English country gentlemen took ten minutes. He did not fear recognition, although he took some of the padding from his coat to reduce the sloping shoulder effect that Mike might remember. Satisfied, he returned to his carriage.

The train was running through the suburbs, masses of red tiles and multi-coloured bricks flashed by. Suburban gardens already splashing colours against their drab background were on either side, small patches of green lawn spoke of the pride of amateur gardeners. Mannering looked at and through them, trying to guess whether Gerald was safe, and Savoyan dead.

In his quiet, colourless way Mike had emphasised the ruthlessness of the opposition, shown a strength that would explain the control that he, Savoyan, and Corbertes had over Chloe, the unknown Tilly, and the dead Rentu.

Out of the years of his experience as the Baron, Mannering knew better than to scoff at criminal organisations. They not only existed but they caused Scotland Yard chiefs more sleepless nights than any individual thief. There were illegal jewel rings; and the buying and reselling of stolen jewels was a well-organised traffic, second perhaps only to drug distribution.

This one, too, was international, and its aims seemed obvious.

That Mannering should be a chosen victim was not surprising. His renown as a gem-collector was considerable, his open-handed buying common knowledge. And that Chloe should be chosen to ‘work’ on him was not sheer chance. As far as he could find only Chloe and Tilly worked ‘the mugs’ for Corbertes in London. Again, Corbertes had made a mistake out of ignorance; had he known the Baron’s identity no one would have worked on Mannering.

‘He’ll learn,’ murmured Mannering to himself, and a ticket inspector interrupted his reverie. He found that the first stop was Reading, and he settled down to reading the newspapers for the next twenty minutes. Among them was a midday Cry, and for once its headline was not given to the prospects of the afternoon’s racing but to murder.

Mannering stared down at the announcement, read the address, knew that the murdered man was Leo Savoyan, and that his body had been found at a flat occupied by Mr. Jonathan Mellor, at Row Court, Westminster.

Which meant that the police would be after Mellor – or the Baron, alias Mannering.

Coherent thoughts came out of the haze of quick, unwanted first impressions. Savoyan had been released from the flat and gone to Kensington. Mike had talked to him.

‘They took him back to the flat where I’d handled him,’ Mannering muttered, ‘and they killed him there.’

He could see the cleverness of the move, the indescribable cunning. They knew Savoyan had been located by the Baron, knew he was in danger; they had killed him so that he would never be able to talk to the police, and left him so that the police would look for the flat’s tenant, believing it to be the Baron’s.

Mannering’s forehead was damp with sweat as he stared unseeing out of the window.

At the flat was the make-up case, clothes, and tools – evidence enough for the police that the Baron had been there. He had even left a gas-pistol and a scarf, articles Bristow would be able to identify on sight. The only relief was that none of the things could be traced to Mannering: he had made his purchases too carefully. There were no tabs on his clothes, and he had always fingered the bags and cases while wearing gloves, there would be no fingerprints.

But if they tried to get at him through the agents of the flat, what then?

He felt very cool, in spite of the danger, as he went over all he had done. And he saw his first major mistake; the Russell Square flat and the Streatham Common house were also rented by Mellor, he could use neither of them again; they were dead losses.

But that should end the immediate danger.

He had taken the house first, rented the other places from there, and all the negotiations needing personal attention such as opening a small banking account had been carried out as Mellor. Mellor would have to be wiped out.

But the police would be looking for the Baron, would associate Mellor with the Baron, on a murder charge.

He had not mentioned Savoyan by name to Bristow, but he had to Collyn, and the peer had probably told Brenda. Brenda would be interrogated because of her father’s disappearance, and might tell the whole story, enabling Bristow to link Mannering with Savoyan.

‘I wonder where I was when he was killed?’ mused the Baron. ‘Somewhere with witnesses, I hope.’

He felt, bitterly, that for the first time for many years he had no unbreakable ties as Mannering. If danger grew acute he could disappear.

The train was slowing down.

Mannering forced himself out of his gloomy reflections and looked along the platform. The door of the carriage which Mike had taken was opening. Mike stepped down and, without glancing right or left, walked to the exit. Mannering followed as soon as the man had passed the ticket collector, and he was in time to see a chauffeur touch his cap at the plump man and lead the way to a Daimler saloon drawn up in the empty station approach.

Now Mannering had to take a chance.

To order a London cabby to ‘follow the car in front’ rarely occasioned much surprise. In the smaller provincial towns it was liable to cause suspicion. Mannering approached the youngest of three taxi-drivers standing by their battered hackneys. He was a lanky, pale-faced man with a wet cigarette-end stuck in the corner of his mouth.

‘I’d like you to keep that Daimler in sight,’ he said. ‘Don’t keep too close, will you?’

‘Wassat?’ The cigarette-end dropped.

‘That Daimler.’ Mannering took his wallet out and displayed a wad of notes. The younger man’s reaction suggested a lower level of intelligence than London cabbies. He merely shrugged his shoulders and opened the door of the dilapidated Austin.

‘OK, sir.’

He clashed his gears as he started off, and Mannering’s heart thumped. Would he lose the Daimler before he was out of the approach? At every crossing and corner Mannering feared that the Daimler would get away. The driver seemed puzzled by each problem of direction, made false starts, once almost ran into the back of a van which pulled up suddenly by some traffic lights. But all the time the Daimler was in sight.

They turned left at last, and approached a wide, sweeping road in the residential part of the town. There was a steep incline, and the cab’s engine wheezed, while the Daimler easily out-distanced it. Mannering tapped on the glass.

‘Don’t lose it!’

‘I don’t want ‘im to know I’m follering, do I?’ said the cabby reproachfully.

Whether it was the effect of crime films seen or novels read, or whether it was some original idea of his own, the driver met the emergency with a fine aplomb. At most turnings right or left he slowed down, as though looking at the signposts, and between them he forced surprising speed out of a cab that was overdue for the scrap heap. Alternating between anger, agitation, and amusement, Mannering sat back, bumped on the flat springs, taken over bad roads at speed and macadam or asphalt at a crawl, jolted and jarred until he felt sore from head to foot.

But after five miles the Daimler was still in sight.

It took a bend, and was momentarily out of sight. Mannering had grown so accustomed to catching it again that when they reached a long, straight stretch of road with woods on either side he was startled to see no sign of it.

‘So you’ve lost it,’ he said bitterly.

‘Goin’ to Wellin’ Hall,’ said the driver. ‘That’s the only place he could’ve turned in. Want to foller?’

‘Where is it?’

‘’Arf a mile up the drive, that’s where. There’—the cab was slowed down outside gates of wrought iron that badly needed paint. ‘That’s the drive entrance.’

‘Are there any other gates?’

‘No. Want to go up?’

‘No.’

‘Coming back now, then?’ The cabby sounded impatient, as though he had seen enough of this escapade.

‘Where is the nearest village?’ asked Mannering.

‘Matter’ve half a mile up the road.’

‘Go and wait there for me,’ said Mannering, ‘and not a word to a soul, do you understand?’

The driver understood, with the help of a pound-note, and Mannering watched the taxi driving off while he wondered whether he had been wise. On foot he might get in difficulties, while the man might talk. On the other hand, he had carried the job out well.

Mannering slipped through the drive gates, eyed the shrubbery on either side with practised eye, and took cover behind the bushes as he made his way towards the house. Welling Hall, and the length of the drive suggested a big residence; and he was not mistaken.

The Hall seemed to sprawl in an expanse of neglected park-lands, and when he first saw it, perhaps two hundred yards away, he was struck by the general air of dilapidation. Moss and slime appeared to cover some of the walls, weeds grew in profusion except for one or two trim patches of lawn in front of the house, and there seemed little evidence of habitation. But he saw the Daimler driving from the front of the house towards some out-buildings; it was being garaged.

That suggested Mike proposed to stay for some hours.

Cautiously through the shrubs Mannering approached the house. The shrubbery led up to the wall of one side, and he could see clearly without much risk of being observed. The neglected, dejected-looking mass of early Georgian slate and stone appalled him.

Then he saw the man at the window of one of the third-floor rooms. His profile was towards the Baron, and he was talking; even at that distance his fear seemed clear enough.

Mannering stared, wondering what Lord Collyn was doing at Welling Hall, with the man known as Mike.