‘Keep your hand off that automatic,’ said Kenyon, his voice very low. ‘For your information, I’ve a gun in my pocket, and if you don’t do as I tell you, it’ll go off, policeman or no policeman.’
The man’s florid cheeks paled.
‘I’ll have you know,’ he blustered, ‘that a threat to me is tant—tant—equal to…’
‘I know all about that,’ said Kenyon. ‘All I’m asking you to do is to keep away from that gun, and to make sure the crowd doesn’t see it. Some of your colleagues from Scotland Yard will be along in a minute; you can make any complaint you like then.’
The policeman was not mollified. On the other hand, he was not perturbed by mention of Scotland Yard. Kenyon, in his own mind, was almost sure that he was a genuine policeman. Yet that tell-tale series of crescents was there.
‘You’ll regret this,’ said the man, stiffly.
‘Not so much as you’d regret it if you touched that gun,’ Kenyon retorted.
‘Time’ll show as to that,’ muttered the constable. ‘Wot ’appened, anyhow?’
Kenyon pointed towards the crumpled body. He had already tried the heart and pulse, and he knew that the man was dead.
‘He fired at a friend of mine,’ he said shortly, ‘and I fired back. My shot took him in the knee and he fell off his bike. That’s enough for the moment.’
‘Where’s your firearms licence?’ asked the policeman. He was looking anxiously towards the end of the avenue, and his puckered forehead smoothed with relief when he saw two members of the Force coming towards them.
‘In my pocket,’ said Kenyon. ‘Like to see it?’
‘I would.’
He was hostile, but that was understandable. Under the circumstances he was, in fact, behaving well. He even managed a grudging ‘that’s all right’ as he looked at the licence.
‘And now’, he said, licking his lips with satisfaction, ‘here’s some o’ my colleagues, and you’ll have to explain.’
The policeman obviously considered that by this speech he had achieved a moral triumph. He glared at Kenyon with slightly protruding eyes. His nose was unusually swollen, crisscrossed by tiny red veins.
Kenyon was sharply and fearfully aware that Arnold Serle’s nose—or the pattern on it—was very much the same. It might, of course, be a coincidence—but, then again, it might not.
‘And I’ll have you know,’ the policeman was saying heavily, ‘that you’re under arrest, for interfering with…’
The touring-car drew up, and the portly figure of Superintendent Miller—carrying, as always, that vague impression that he was standing on the floor of his threshing-room—rose up.
‘I had to persuade P.C. 19732 not to touch that gun,’ greeted Kenyon. ‘Convince him that I’m not a public enemy, will you?’
‘I’m not so sure that you’re not,’ said Miller, but he said it sotto voce.
In twenty minutes the avenue was cleared. The body of the cyclist was on its way to the morgue attached to St. John’s Wood Police Station, while the still annoyed P.C. 19732, convinced that his own superiors were against him, was voicing this opinion to his colleagues. He was also itching to get to a quiet spot where he could smoke a cigarette.
‘It’s me breathing,’ he told a companion. ‘If I don’t have a puff every now and again I can’t get me breath properly.’
This somewhat ambiguous statement passed unchallenged. Within twenty minutes P.C. 19732 was smoking, in secrecy, and feeling better; and he was telling himself, with a suddenly dilated courage, what he would say to the Chief Commissioner when the investigation concerning Superintendent Miller was held.…
Jim Kenyon, meanwhile, was discussing the affair with a worried Miller and a startled Aubrey Chester, both old acquaintances.
‘It’s getting to this,’ Miller concluded, over a whisky-and-soda: ‘I’m seriously worried. You can’t keep it dark much longer.’
‘I can keep it dark,’ Kenyon told him, ‘just as long as a grateful Government believes G.C. worthy of his hire. Don’t worry, Horace. Get Tiny to fix a post mortem on the cyclist as soon as you can, and let me know when he’s through, will you?’
‘All right,’ said Miller, grudgingly. His eyes strayed towards the bottle.
‘Have a drink,’ Kenyon suggested affably.
Mary Randall had been motherless for most of her life, and many people, including Mrs. Denbigh Morse, had endeavoured to make it up to her. The nearest approach to the real thing had been the affection of her aunt, Angela Wyett; but Angela Wyett was a spinster and a pronounced feminist, and her one-sided views and prejudices had spoiled her.
At the close of that afternoon’s moment of sheer terror, when the shooting had started and Kenyon had striven to protect her, Mary had looked up and seen Diane Chester. She had known that Diane was greatly admired for her cool, fair, English loveliness. She had known also that Diane was held in great affection, but she had never known why.
She knew at that moment.
Diane had been walking quickly towards the avenue, with Aubrey a yard or two in front of her. She had been smiling, and there was a serenity about her which seemed to envelop Mary in a cloak of comfort.
‘Let’s get inside,’ she had said. ‘Jim will clear things up more quickly if we’re not hindering him.’
And as if by magic Mary had found herself walking through that great, dark, mausoleum of a hall—into those lovely, sunlit rooms beyond.
For a moment, Diane had stood outlined in light, her fair hair and perfect complexion, the warm beauty of her eyes, only enhanced by the sun. It had been a strange transition, moving into this brightness from the horror of outside: an exchange of terror for tranquillity.
‘You can take off your hat in here,’ Diane had suggested calmly, in her drawing-room. Her voice was quiet and musical; it was a voice, Mary knew, that had thrilled thousands during those early years when Diane, before her marriage to Aubrey, had been on the stage. ‘Yes, Soames, we’re ready.’
Portly, pontifical and austere, Soames had wheeled in a tea-trolley, set the cups and saucers carefully, bowed and left the room.
After a quarter of an hour which should have seemed like an age, but which for Mary had actually passed very quickly, Kenyon had come along the drive with Aubrey and the fair-haired Superintendent Miller. She knew the three men were talking together in the next room—then finally the Superintendent left and Kenyon and Chester came in.
They were both smiling: Aubrey a little diffidently. He was a remarkable-looking man—slightly reminiscent, on his least successful days, of a kindly Brer Rabbit.
‘All tidied up,’ said Kenyon, hiding the worst of his anxiety with practised ease. ‘A nice little welcome home, wasn’t it?’
Mary, enormously relieved that he appeared to be whole and in one piece, smiled back. ‘Sure you’re all right?’
‘No damage at all,’ he assured her, then turned to Diane. ‘Do you think you can persuade Mary to stay here, while I keep hostilities in the front line?’
‘I think so,’ said Diane.
‘She’d b-better t-try to g-get out,’ said Aubrey.
Three Dancer Lane, Oxford Street, proved to be one of those establishments where the window decoration consisted of a single hand-woven carpet priced fabulously, two Egyptian vases with their price-tickets turned the other way, and three articles of beaten brass not priced at all. A dark-skinned man was standing inside the shop, as though waiting for someone intrigued by the mystery of those reversed tickets and unpriced brasses to enter. Two or three other assistants lined the walls of the shop, standing rigidly to attention, or so it seemed to Jim Kenyon.
He had discovered that a first-floor office opposite the shop was vacant, and he had rented it. On the morning following the shooting in Regent’s Park he sat at the window of the office, hidden by curtains and bored by what he saw at the business address of the dead Ali Bin Fathi. Bob—or Robert Montgomery—Curtis was with him. Curtis was a giant of a man, with lazy, humorous brown eyes, and a pleasant but ugly face. He had only recently become a member of Department Z, and the novelty of it still compensated for these stretches of boredom. It was not so for Kenyon.
‘I’ll give it another hour,’ he said. ‘Then one of the others can keep you company.’
‘Thanks,’ said Curtis, affably.
The hour passed. Almost on the stroke of the last minute a heavy footstep sounded on the stairs and a heavy hand played a tune on the panelled door.
‘Think it’s going to rain?’ demanded the well-proportioned young man who entered, a young man who was careless with his dress but careful with his hair, and who was nearly as large as Curtis and Kenyon.
‘Not unless the wind changes from South to West,’ replied Curtis, brightly. ‘How’d you remember all that, Wally?’
‘Got it written down on my shirt,’ said Wally Davidson, unabashed. ‘’Lo, Kenyon, ‘lo Bob. Busy?’
Kenyon stifled a yawn.
‘Like that, is it?’ said Davidson, suddenly depressed.
‘But it’ll wake up,’ Curtis prophesied. ‘Bound to be a little bust-up soon.’
‘Two little bust-ups,’ Kenyon grinned. ‘I’m going to leave you to it, friends. Just a word of warning. If you switch the light on, have a good look at the bulb first. If there’s any liquid in it, turn the light off and phone the Yard.’
‘Lamp going to blow up?’ asked Curtis, hopefully.
‘Now aren’t you clever?’ murmured Kenyon.
‘Goodbye,’ said Curtis.
‘S’long,’ said Davidson, languidly. He was invariably weary and frequently dejected.
As Kenyon left the block of flats and entered Dancer Street he saw a Daimler limousine draw up outside Number Three, the establishment of Persian Sales Limited. From the Daimler stepped a tall, elegantly-clad woman, beneath whose left arm drooped the silky tail of a Pekinese.
He caught a glimpse of her face as she entered the shop, and recognised Lady Denise Clare, famous throughout the world for her biting indictments of modern manners and modes. He felt instinctively that any visitor to Persian Sales would be a client rather than a customer.
Kenyon knew Lady Denise Clare, and her husband, a Permanent Under-Secretary at Whitehall. Both were reputed to be unblemished pillars of society, and the visit to the shop where Ali Ben Fathi had worked suggested that the establishment carried on an outwardly genuine trade. It was possible, of course, that Serle’s Arabian friend kept his pro-Serle activities entirely separate from his Persian Sales operations.
‘But not likely,’ murmured Kenyon to himself.
He walked thoughtfully towards Piccadilly Circus, stopping at a telephone kiosk to call up the Department. Craigie answered.
‘News?’ asked Kenyon.
‘No,’ said Craigie. ‘Nothing’s happened anywhere. The reports are in from Somerset, and there’ve been no movements.’
‘No sign of S?’
‘No,’ said Craigie, and Kenyon could almost see him frown.
‘I’ll drop in after I’ve seen Forbes again,’ he offered.
‘Be careful,’ warned Craigie.
Kenyon grinned as he replaced the receiver. Craigie’s ‘Be careful’ was almost a watchword throughout the Department.
As he stepped from the booth, his interest quickened. Lady Denise Clare was alighting from her Daimler again. She had made short work of her visit to Persian Sales, and she was now descending on a gown shop, the Pekinese still elegantly held, her gaze fixed above the heads of the crowd.
Kenyon was looking at the dog, and it was only by chance that his gaze rested on its owner’s hand. For the third time in twenty-four hours, that peculiar shiver went down his back and he felt a strange, paralytic coldness.
For Lady Denise Clare’s fingers were tipped with those pink crescents. Like Dickson’s, like Ahmet Ali’s—like the policeman’s!