Burke was quieter now, but he was still grinning. For once he failed to see, quickly, the real meaning of a thing. But Gordon Craigie’s face was wrinkled in perplexity and concern as Burke went on:
“We ought to have guessed immediately we heard of the complete clear-out of servants. That wasn’t because Katrina was afraid of them. They were changed because it was essential no one should know her well enough to tell the difference.”
“But surely someone would guess?” protested Little.
As long-standing medical adviser to Department Z, Doc Little was rarely barred from their discussions. Little, they knew, was an expert in talking a lot and saying nothing.
“Why should they?” asked Burke. ‘She’s not well-known, over here. After she married Fordham, she went away on her honeymoon. She came back on September the fourteenth—nearly seven weeks ago. She’s been—speaking from memory—to about three balls, but for the most part she’s been left on her own, at the flat. Why? Because she’s newly-married, and most people wouldn’t worry her for the first six months. So, she’s a complete stranger to England; she knows only a dozen or so people, who have only met her on a few occasions. Even her marriage was done quietly. She’s been a newspaper headline, and little more. I should say the only people who really know her well—her mannerisms as well as her looks—are the servants. Speaking of England, of course. And all the old servants have gone.”
Little said:
“But the chances of someone calling who knew her well are pretty big, Burke.”
“Wrong. They’re very small. Because now she’s been bereaved, even those people who would have called, before, will keep away. They’ll leave their cards; they might try to see her once, but with a false Katrina here, they’d be asked to wait for a while. And waiting would seem natural. Dammit, Doc, it’s plainer than your middle button.”
Since Doc Little’s middle button was singularly prominent, the allusion was not out of place. As he beamed his appreciation, Craigie spoke up.
“I think you’re right, Jim. If this woman isn’t the real Katrina, it fits in with her reactions to—everything. But then—” he tapped the stem of his meerschaum against his teeth—” where is Fordham’s widow?”
His words cut through Burke like a keen wind. In his temporary excitement—and it was one of the rarest things in the world for Jim Burke to get excited—he had been concerned only with the discovery he had made. Craigie’s words brought him up with a jolt.
His lips tightened, bleakly.
“We’d better see our new friend, hadn’t we?”
Craigie started towards the door. Little, cocking an inquisitive eye at Burke, grinned when the big man nodded. Little might be useful at the interrogation that was about to commence, he decided.
As he followed them both along the passage, Burke remembered ruefully that a few days before, he had wanted complications. Now they were falling thick and fast. But he was not looking forward to the coming interview; it was one thing to make a man talk, a very different thing to apply methods of persuasion to the fair sex.
Martin Best was lounging untidily against the wall of the bedroom. The door was half-open.
“You’ll have to wait a minute for the lady,” he grinned. “She’s gone out with the maid.”
Burke snapped:
“Gone out where?”
“Whoa back!” Best was a sensitive young man. “The second door on the left.”
“How long’s she been gone?” Craigie snapped.
“Six or seven minutes.” Best suddenly looked worried. “You don’t think——”
But Craigie had already reached the second door on the left. He knocked sharply. There was no answer. He knocked more loudly—then turned to Burke.
“Can you shoulder it down?”
“I can try,” said Burke, and did. At the third attempt, the door opened with a sharp crack.
The bathroom was empty. The window, immediately above the fire escape, was wide open. In the courtyard below, there was no sign of the supposed Katrina Fordham.
The silence that followed their entry was pregnant. Burke broke it, at last.
“The maid’s gone, too,” he pointed out.
“It’s fairly obvious,” Craigie agreed, flatly, “that she let Doc in, listened to what we said, and hurried off with a warning.” He sounded weary. “And if the maid was in the game, I wonder if the others are?”
Burke, although he acted quickly enough, was feeling equally flat. For once in his life, he was mentally winded. But he cheered up a little, half an hour later, after he had talked with the cook and the butler; the other servants, he knew, slept out.
For the butler was an old lag, and the cook had only been out of Brixton for a month. The late Mr Prettle had supplied the Fordham menage with jail-bird servants. Which fact almost certainly accounted for his death, for if the police had interviewed him, they would have discovered the truth. To stop him talking, Graydon (it was assumed) had killed him.
“Well," said Burke, drily, recovering a little of his lost sense of humour, “we wouldn’t have talked with Prettle until tomorrow, and we’ve learned all he could have told us, tonight.”
“It’s half-past one,” said Doc Little, suddenly.
Burke looked at his watch, and whistled.
“So it is. Well—we’ve one little job to do, before we’ve finished. But we shan’t need you, Doc.”
Little intimated that he wasn’t sorry, and went off. A chastened Martin Best and a little man with a lisp, another of the almost countless young men who worked for Craigie and were prepared to die cheerfully for strange things nine-tenths of the world didn’t believe existed, stayed to keep an eye on the surly, crabbed butler and the wailing cook. Burke and Craigie walked to Brook Street. They said very little: Burke’s mind was on his coming talk with Alec Broomfield.
Broomfield would hardly have much power of resistence left, now. He had probably stewed himself into a frenzy of fear, and would be easy to interrogate.
A grim smile was curving the corners of Burke’s lips as he unlocked the front door of his flat and stood aside for Craigie to enter. He almost forgot he was tired.
And then he forgot everything else; and so did Craigie.
For across the floor of the room, Sam Carter was stretched out unconscious—or worse. And through an open door, he could see Wally Davidson sprawling over a chair. Dodo Trale was propped up against the wall, his head lolling forward on his chest.
Alec Broomfield was still tied to his chair, and still stripped to the waist. His eyes were glaring with fear, horror, a hundred things.
There was a bullet hole in his head, one in his neck and one in his heart.
“It might be worse,” said Burke, a few minutes later. But he spoke without much conviction and Craigie, tight-lipped, said nothing.
“I’m ‘phoning Little again,” Burke added, dialing the number. “Dodo’s got a nasty clout that’ll want patching up.” He waited, wearily, until Doc Little’s voice came over the wire.
“I hope you haven’t undressed,” Burke greeted him. “Davidson’s been knocked out, Trale’s been very nearly put out, and Carter’s half dead. Don’t be long.”
“Five minutes,” Doc Little promised, and was as good as his word.
There was a very grim gathering in Burke’s flat at three o’clock that morning. Dodo Trale was at the West-land Hospital, under an anaesthetic, for his skull had been cracked and Little was afraid of pressure on the brain. But Sam Carter’s head had proved thick, and was only bruised, while the cut across Wally Davidson’s forehead required only plaster, although Wally himself had been quick to profess the needs for a stiff whisky as well.
Wally’s story was simple. Someone had rung the front door bell, and Sam Carter had hurried from the kitchen to the door, leaving the door of the middle room open. So the gentleman with a low-crowned hat, a heavy coat and a Thompson sub-machine gun had had them all in line.
There was another man with him, also with a low-crowned hat, and with a distinct Bronx-type American accent. He had entered calmly, cracked Sam over the head with a lump of iron piping, and treated Wally the same. Dodo, typically, had attempted to make a fight of it, which was probably why his crack over the head had been a heavier one than the others.
Dodo Trale would know himself lucky, when he recovered. No man who takes chances with machine-guns can expect to get away with a whole skin.
But Burke was very grim, as he took mental stock: the outlook was black.
Their first captive was dead. The second had flown. The death of Broomfield was a particularly severe blow. He would have talked.
“And,” Burke thought grimly, “that’s why he died. Graydon—we can be pretty sure—guessed he’d give way under the strain, and got rid of him. Curson went the same way; and Prettle. It’s a hell of a situation.”
It was.
They could guess who had killed Fordham and Brent, but they had no idea yet of the real motive. They knew it was connected with Granton’s and the oil concession, but they couldn’t find the line from one to the other.
There were worse things.
Katrina Fordham was missing. Was she, too, dead? And when had she been replaced by the woman Burke had seen at the flat?
Burke didn’t know, but he guessed it had happened after the funeral. He had been struck by the change in Katrina Fordham when he had seen her in that gold dress. At the funeral, she had seemed genuine. But he couldn’t even be sure about that; he didn’t know her well enough.
It was a safe guess that Broomfield had been instrumental in making the change. Broomfield had fixed the servants, probably lured the real Katrina away, and been generally useful. He was dead, now; that suggested his period of usefulness had been over.
Graydon was at large; and there was still O’Ray to consider.
O’Ray was at his house, in Grosvenor Square. The house was surrounded, and all visitors would be watched, on the morrow, and followed. O’Ray would have a hard job to get away—
Or so it seemed. But Burke wasn’t happy, even about that. The ruthlessness of this affair appalled him. He remembered the way Graydon had shot at him; but for his steel vest, he would have been dead, like the others. Graydon and his men killed without compunction.
And Graydon was still at large.