Chapter Seven

Uncertainty

Lorna stood in the doorway and looked across at Mannering, who had not moved. A chiming Sèvres clock from the drawingroom struck twelve. Mannering’s eyes were closed and he rested his head on the back of the chair; yet there was no suggestion of repose in his manner.

“John,” Lorna said quietly. “Shouldn’t you go to bed?”

“You go,” he urged.

“It isn’t any use waiting up,” Lorna reasoned. “He didn’t promise to call back tonight, did he?”

“No.”

“Then you may not hear until morning.”

“Before morning I am going to have to find another way of finding out whether that boy is alive.” The tone of Mannering’s voice made it obvious that he was not talking for the sake of it. Old Sing Lee’s manner had done more to disturb him than anything which had gone before.

Lorna knew him only too well in these moods.

Nothing would shift him; no argument, no matter how reasonable, and no appeal, no matter how heavily charged with emotion. To help, she had to go at least part of the way with him, understanding what he felt even though she did not feel the same pressures herself.

“If you would get ready for bed, it would certainly save time,” she said lightly. “Then when he telephones—”

“If he telephones! Darling, everything that happens convinces me that there’s much more to the Tarian affair than I dreamt when I first heard of it. And if I had any doubt that the boy is in danger, Sing Lee has dispersed it. I may look as if I’m dozing but in fact I’m thinking as fast as my mind will go, looking for a clue I haven’t yet seen but which is almost certainly there.” He paused for a moment but soon went on: “I wish you’d seen the boy. If you had you would know—”

The telephone bell rang.

His whole body stiffened momentarily before his right arm moved, slowly, slowly, and he touched the telephone. It rang three times before he picked it up, as if he were afraid of what news this message would bring.

“This is John Mannering.”

“I am glad to have good news for you,” said old Sing Lee. “Prince Hamid is in London, and he is alive and well. Do not ask me how I know, please, but be sure of its truth.”

Mannering said in a voice ringing with relief: “That’s wonderful news.”

“So you had reason to fear that the Prince was dead,” remarked Sing Lee, in his careful way. “Do not take risks, my good friend. Do not take risks.” There was a pause before he added in a firmer voice: “Now I wish you a very good night.”

Without another word, he rang off.

Lorna saw a flicker of what might have been concern cross her husband’s face but it was gone in a moment and relief shone clearly. He stood up, without using the arms of the chair as leverage; few men half his age could have risen with such ease and confidence.

“I hadn’t realised how much it mattered to me whether he lived or died,” he said. “But my goodness, I know now! I might even get some sleep after all, if you’ll let me get to bed instead of talking.” He gave her a quick hug, then strode ahead of her through the doorway.

When she joined him in the bedroom, no more than five minutes later, she thought that he was feigning sleep; but in a few moments she realised he was dead to the world.

She stood looking down at him with compassion and love; but there was fear, too. For nothing would now stop him from following the affair of the young Prince Hamid; nothing short of death.

Mannering slept until after nine o’clock.

When he woke, the sun was bright against the window and a beam struck one of the wing mirrors of the dressing-table. Lorna’s bed was empty. After a few minutes he began to stir, feeling thoroughly rested but in no mood to get up.

Oddly, the memory of the eager-eyed policeman flashed through his mind a fraction of a second before that of Prince Hamid. He still felt the enormous relief at the assurance that Hamid was safe, but now other perplexities and anxieties occurred to him. Why, for instance, had Sing Lee been so affected? And so mysterious? Vividly Mannering recalled the long pause between his question about Hamid and the old man’s answer. There had been ample time for Sing Lee to consider not only what he should say, but also its effect. The old man, who had been born and raised on the floating village of Harbour in Singapore, did nothing unconsidered. He had known that he was causing concern and perhaps bewilderment, and would not have caused either without deliberate intent. Why?

So the questions began.

“This won’t do!” Mannering exclaimed aloud, and glanced virtuously at the clock. “Half-past nine?” Who was he fooling, he had known it must be late. He pushed back the bed-clothes, but before he started to get up there were footsteps in the hall, and Lorna appeared in the doorway.

“Good morning, darling!”

“Good morning! I’m abominably late.”

“Then why not be really shameful and have a cup of tea in bed?” Lorna suggested. “I can bring it in two minutes.”

“You are almost tempting me.” Mannering dropped back on to the pillows. “If I knew—”

“How Bristow was your conscience wouldn’t trouble you. He is at the shop.”

“Already!”

“He telephoned twenty minutes ago,” Lorna told him, and disappeared. Almost at once she returned with The Times and The Globe, the only newspapers they had delivered, and dropped them on to the bed, kissed his forehead lightly, then went out again. He scanned the headlines, finding none to excite him; the Middle East situation, the Far East situation, Northern Ireland, the home economics situation, the management labour situation, a pop group’s involvement with heroin. The raid on Quinns hadn’t reached these editions. He put the two newspapers aside to read more thoroughly later if time allowed, and then Lorna brought in a tea tray and several letters. She pulled up a chair and poured out, as he asked: “Don’t we have any help in the kitchen this morning?”

“I sent Ellen out shopping,” Lorna explained. “I didn’t want her to realise how lazy you were getting.”

She meant, so that they could talk freely.

He handed her two letters which might have social as well as business news, and opened four himself. A letter from a friend in Atlanta, Georgia, telling him of a sale at one of the big colonial houses in the city; couldn’t Mannering go there and bring his lovely wife? Two letters offering rare treasures at bargain prices, almost certainly from individuals who bought goods without asking questions and sold them to those outside the trade; such letters seldom went to Quinns. A letter from a friend in Australia, a man who had played a remarkable part in the Mannerings’ life and would never be forgotten. Nothing sensational, nothing demanding any thought.

After the tumultuous events of last night he could do with an unsensational morning. Before he had finished his tea, however, thought of Hamid and the missing silver was beginning to nag him.

He bathed and shaved hurriedly, ate his breakfast with the absent air of one whose thoughts were a hundred miles away, kissed his wife goodbye, and left the flat.

From an upstairs window Lorna watched him drive off in the Bristol. No one followed him.

‘Thank goodness for that,” Lorna said to the room. She went up on the loft ladder to her attic studio, which spread over the entire flat. Half-finished canvases lined the walls, a new portrait of a very old woman stood on an easel.

She began to concentrate on the painting, but John and what he might feel driven to do was never far from her mind.

Except for three newspapermen outside Quinns, Hart Row was normal enough. Bristow came out of the shop as Mannering arrived, red about the eyes but otherwise none the worse for his misadventure.

“Good morning, John,” he said. “I’ve told these chaps there’s nothing fresh since last night.”

“And these chaps won’t believe it,” Mannering said goodhumouredly. “All the same, it’s true.”

“You haven’t any idea who stole the silver, Mr. Mannering?” a young man asked.

“None.” Mannering glanced along the road and saw a tall, massive man approaching with a purposeful stride which could not be mistaken: this man had been waiting for him. Another newspaperman? wondered Mannering, but as the other drew nearer there seemed something familiar about him.

An older reporter with a thin, beaked nose, asked sceptically, “I thought Quinns was supposed to be impregnable, Mr. Mannering.”

“Last night uncovered a chink in the armour,” Mannering said.

“A very big chink, if I may say so. Why was Bristow alone at the shop with all that silver ready for taking?”

“That is exactly what I want to know,” declared the big man in a deep rather husky voice which had an accent which Mannering placed at once; just as he placed the man. “You practically made the thieves a gift.”

Suddenly this man overshadowed them ah; in size, in loudness of voice, in aggressiveness. He was half a head taller than Mannering, handsome enough in a rugged way, with a weather-roughened skin, and very clear, pale grey eyes. The tweed jacket sat well on his big but rather sloping shoulders.

“Well?” he demanded, and his glare, the way his hands bunched, the way he loomed over Mannering all suggested that if he did not get an answer at once, he would beat one out of Mannering.

Bristow glanced into the shop towards two younger assistants. But he knew better than to interfere at this stage.

Mannering smiled good-humouredly. “Good morning, Mr. Blount!” The older newspaperman echoed: “Blount!” Another man poised a camera at the giant.

“How the devil do you know who I am?” demanded Blount, and on the word ‘am’ he swept his right arm round, buffeting the photographer across the head, sending both man and camera flying. “Well, what about it, Mannering?”

Mannering was no longer smiling.

“When you’ve apologised to the photographer, I will talk to you,” he said icily. “Not a moment before.”

He turned towards the door of Quinns.

The huge man made a lunge at him, with the hand which had made such short work of the photographer, but Mannering slipped to one side, feeling the other’s fingers drag at the cloth of his sleeve. “All right, Bill,” he whispered, watching the window closely. A single jewelled coronet lay there now, set on black velvet: and the velvet and the darkness of the interior of the shop made a good mirror. He saw Blount come at him again, both arms wide and flailing; and he spun round on the balls of his feet and drove first his right and then his clenched left fist into the other’s stomach.

Blount was taken completely by surprise. He staggered back. The older newspaperman got in his way, by accident or design, and the giant went toppling.

Bristow was smiling with satisfaction.

Mannering turned and went into the shop. The two young assistants, scarcely attempting to hide their delight, sprang forward.

“Good morning, sir!”

“’Morning, Rupert.”

“Good morning, sir.”

“’Morning, Brian.”

Mannering did not pause but strode along to the office, taking out his keys as he approached the door. The newspapers were now in neat stacks behind the desk, and a tiny silver spoon stood beside the salver; additional salvage. He opened the office door and rounded the Queen Anne desk, flexing his fingers as he did so; Blount wore a belt, and the belt had a buckle.

There was a photograph of Blount on the middle page of yesterday’s Globe.

It showed the giant in a very different mood, with his five-year old son on his shoulder; the man who had discovered the buried treasure, if ‘buried’ was the right word in the circumstances. Mannering studied it, as well as the small farmhouse in the background, then put this aside as Bristow came in carrying a sheaf of letters.

“Very nicely done,” Bristow applauded.

“I hope so. It should soon tell us what kind of man he is,” Mannering remarked.

“Whether he comes to see you or not, you mean?”

“Yes. If his pride’s been too hurt—” Mannering broke off. “How is he?”

“Sitting on the pavement looking dazed. Being photographed by half-a-dozen photographers who must have been at the end of Hart Row,” Bristow added, grinning broadly. “He won’t brush newspapermen aside in a hurry.”

“No,” Mannering said, and motioned to a chair. “Is there much in the post?”

“Not in my part,” Bristow said.

“Then I’d better have a look at mine,” Mannering decided. “There may not be too much time later in the day.”

Bristow, sitting opposite him, slit open each envelope and took out the contents, handed these across to Mannering who unfolded and skimmed through the letters. This had become a routine since Bristow had been at Quinns, and it enabled Mannering to pass on instructions or make comments so that Bristow would know what to do if he, Mannering, were out during the day.

There was nothing of exceptional importance, only the usual offerings, notices of sales, letters from dealers all over the world, who would be in London in the next few weeks.

A buzzer sounded on Mannering’s desk, and he pressed a push-button and said: “Yes?”

“It’s Mr. Hugo Blount, sir,” the voice of one of the young men in the shop sounded clearly. “He wants to see you. The photographer and he have shaken hands.”

“Then send him in,” said Mannering, and switched off, while Bristow pushed his chair back and stood up.

“I hope you won’t see him alone,” Bristow said. “If he really lost his temper that man could easily break your neck.”