Help From The Baron (12 page)

“You’re not bad at dissimulating, are you? I think he said the Fiora Collection.”

“Who said?”

“The lout who told me that you had them,” answered the girl, and sipped her drink again. “He also said that he had kidnapped Joy Lessing, Simon’s sister, and would release her if Simon found out where you kept the jewels. But I don’t want Simon getting into trouble, with you or with anyone else. He’s in enough trouble over Francesca, she’s nearly driving him mad. That girl has a darling-daddy complex.”

“Where do you come in?” Mannering asked mildly.

“I’m just the doormat.”

“I’d like to know which door.”

For the first time, Susan Pengelly laughed. She uncrossed her shapely legs; she took small shoes, and had the trimmest of ankles. Sitting in the chair, she looked as big round as she was high.

“I don’t think it matters, but I’m Simon’s faithful slave. I’ve been in love with the hero for years. Unrequited, but I’m the maternal rather than the hot-blooded type, in spite of my over-development. This is exactly what happened.”

She had a way with words, and when she described what had happened in the car, it was easy to forget her appearance and the glitter in her green eyes. She made it all very vivid, and succeeded in portraying Simon Lessing accurately - first his furious attack and then his dithering. All this time, Lorna sat on a high stool, circa 1500, and watched her. Mannering knew that she should be worried about him changing his clothes, but somehow she wasn’t. There was a curious intentness about the way she looked at the Pengelly girl.

Susan Pengelly finished, saying: “And he just ran, leaving you with your reputation besmirched, Mr. Mannering. Simon cries hoarsely that you couldn’t do such a thing, but he was always inclined to be a hero-worshipper. Would you credit your husband with such villainy, Mrs. Mannering?”

“The very idea is absurd,” Lorna said mechanically.

“What I’m afraid of is that Simon will get himself into more trouble over this,” observed Susan. “I saw the way that lout looked at him. If he met Simon in a dark alley, I feel sure he would use a knife or a razor, and Si’s far too good-looking to have his face spoiled. But he’s desperately fond of Joy, and in loco parentis, so to speak. Their parents died three years ago, went down together in a ship, and Simon is guardian and mother and father rolled into one. He takes that kind of thing very seriously. Now he doesn’t know whether to storm in here and make you talk or go to the police, or try to look for Joy himself.” She paused, finished her drink, and took a cigarette from the box by her side. She lit it, then looked at Mannering through a little haze of smoke. “I’d like to find Joy, too. Have you the diamonds?”

Mannering said: “No.” He didn’t move, and watched her very closely. “What was this youth like?”

She twisted round in her chair, dug down by the side, and drew out a large envelope, stiffened with board on one side. She held it out, quickly, screwing her eyes up against the smoke which she had driven into them.

“I got a good look at him,” she said.

Mannering opened the envelope, and Lorna left the stool circa 1500 to look over his shoulder. It was a quite startling likeness; a camera could have done little better. In fact, the colouring - it was in coloured crayons - improved on any camera. There was the half-sneering, half-furtive look, the parted lips showing the teeth set in a small upper jaw, the reddish hair and reddish shadowing on cheeks and jaw.

The youth’s split lips showed; and a trickle of blood reaching his chin.

Suddenly, explosively, Mannering laughed.

Lorna looked at him sharply; Susan wriggled forward in her chair and got up. She didn’t reach Mannering’s shoulder.

“So it’s funny.”

Laughter shook in Mannering’s voice.

“It’s brilliant, you’ll make my wife envious! The funny thing is Charlie Ringall’s face. Did Simon do this to him?”

“I think he would have killed him.”

Mannering sobered. “So he reacts like that, does he?”

He held the drawing away from him, for better effect. “Poor ‘dear Chas.’ He . . .”

“Are you saying that you know him?” asked Lorna incredulously.

“We’ve met,” said Mannering. “The last time, he was sitting in my car - as in Simon’s. He had a blackjack and was ready for trouble, but things didn’t go well for him, and I delivered him to Ephraim Scoby Esquire.” His glance at the girl was swift and piercing, but her face looked blank; or as blank as it ever could, she was full of personality as a balloon should be of helium. “Scoby appears to be his boss. Darling . . .” He turned to Lorna, hands raised slightly, expression rueful and woeful at the same time. “I’m dreadfully afraid that . . .”

“You ought to go to see him,” Lorna said heavily.

“Yes.”

“Well, you can’t.” Lorna moved back, but not as far as the stool. She didn’t smile. She looked severely magnificent. “Toby is your oldest and closest friend. This is his twentieth-wedding anniversary, remember? Only the family and close friends will be there. You are proposing their health. And,” she added with forbidding emphasis, “you’re coming.”

“Let me go and see Ephraim,” suggested Susan Pengelly brightly.

“Do you know where Simon is?” Mannering asked.

“At his flat. I made him swear that he would stay there until I arrived. He knows I’m here. He admitted that he was afraid that if he came too he would start a fight. The truth is, he wouldn’t believe you; that man Ringall was far too persuasive. I’m not really sure that I believe you.”

Mannering stood eyeing her.

Lorna said: “It’s just on seven, John,” in a commanding voice.

Mannering said: “Sorry. Yes. Do you know what I would do if I were you, Miss Pengelly?”

“No. What?”

“In spite of the threat to Joy Lessing,” Mannering said quietly, “I would go to the police. I’d tell them everything. I’d answer all their questions. And I’d go at once.”

The girl said, as if taken aback: “So you would! And how would you stop Simon from wringing my neck?”

“I wouldn’t tell Simon what I’d done,” said Mannering, and then moved swiftly towards the door, beamed at Lorna, said with dancing gaiety: “Sorry, Sue, I must go and get changed. See me tomorrow, or telephone me late tonight.”

He went out of the room, and a moment later a door opened and closed with a bang.

“Does he mean that?” breathed Susan Pengelly.

“I’ve never known him frightened of the police yet,” said Lorna Mannering; and she smiled, as if she knew that she had never told a greater lie.

Chittering rang up, soon afterwards, and Lorna took his message. Prinny had not been held by Bristow, and was back in his shop.

The Plenders lived in a graceful square, where one could still hear the clip-clop of horses’ hooves, and see tall footmen, hear the crack of the whips, see the sheen on the coats of chestnuts or bays, or fine grey horses, or black or piebald; if one’s mind would carry that far. By day there was no room to squeeze a perambulator in the square, but by night there was ample room for parking. So Mannering took the Rolls-Bentley.

Half-way to the square he said: “I may have to leave straight after the speech.”

“I don’t mind what time you leave after it,” Lorna said, “but you’re staying until you’ve made it, even if I have to rope you to me.”

“Yes, dear,” murmured Mannering. “Dinner at seven forty-five, speeches at nine-thirty, over by ten, and I fly.”

After that he drove in silence, Lorna snug in a black Persian Lamb coat, the diamond of a tiara sparkling in her black hair. Flunkeys were on duty in the square, for the Plenders had a long ancestry, the house had been in their family from the day its door had first opened two hundred years ago, and on rare occasions they liked to rekindle memory of the spacious days for those who had plenty of this world’s goods.

Inside the hall, lit by fifty lamps in a glistening Spanish chandelier, the Plenders looked not a day more than forty. The Mannerings were the last guests to arrive. Lorna was apologetic, Toby Plender’s wife told her not to be silly and carried her off to mysterious regions. Toby Plender grinned at Mannering and, as they went to join thirty or forty men and women waiting and drinking in an ante room to the dining-room, he said with mild irony: “I see you have your name in the papers again.”

“Blame the papers. Toby - how much will you forgive me for?”

“Nothing.”

“I must telephone Bristow. I may have to go and see him. I left it until I had Lorna here, if I’d called from the flat she would have used a frying-pan on me or else refused to come alone. Unless the Devil or Bristow makes it impossible, I’ll be back for the toast.”

“That’s all right, John,” Toby Plender said, and wasn’t fooling. “Try to get back. I’ll calm Lorna down. If you can’t make it, the Old Boy will say the nice things for you. Big trouble?”

“For some people,” Mannering said.

He went to a telephone in a room where the cackle of voices sounded as if from a long way off, and where he was alone. He did not feel alone. He felt as if he were being crowded by shadows and watched by ghosts. He dialled Scotland Yard and waited, and seemed to feel the weight getting heavier; the weight which fear places upon the human heart. He did not really know why he should be so afraid. He did not know this Joy, except to recall a pretty, animated face and golden hair and a provocative little figure . . .

“Scotland Yard, can I help you?”

“Superintendent Bristow’s office, please.”

“I’m sorry, sir, Superintendent Bristow is in AZ Division at the moment.”

“Do you know why?”

“Just a moment, sir, I’ll put you through to the Chief Inspectors’ office.”

“Right,” said Mannering. “Thanks.” He waited. He had to tell Bristow - and he preferred Bristow to any policeman - that these threats had been uttered against Joy Lessing; also that she had disappeared. He could not take risks with the girl’s safety, perhaps with her life. He was sure that Bristow would handle it with all the discretion that it demanded, and wished Bristow were in his office.

A man spoke.

“Who’ssat?”

“John Mannering,” Mannering said. “I was hoping to have a word with Bill Bristow. Is he coming back soon?”

“Shouldn’t think so,” the Inspector said. “He’s over at AZ. Murder job. You’d know the poor beggar. Chap named Prinny, Abe Prinny. Did a bit of fencing, although we never caught him with the goods. Head bashed in. Shop turned inside out. Nasty job, we’d had him here for questioning, the devils must ‘a been waiting for him in his shop after we let him go. We’d searched and drawn blank. Bristow’s flaming mad, so unless it’s urgent, I’d keep away from him tonight.”

“Oh,” said Mannering very heavily. “I see.”

Mannering knew Bowing’s Hotel well. He also knew the porters. He had no difficulty in getting Ephraim Scoby’s room number - 302 - and none in finding his way to the room. It overlooked a square as quiet and as nostalgic as that where Lorna at this moment was discovering that he had betrayed her.

He listened at the door, made sure that he could hear no one speaking inside, and slid a pick-lock into the keyhole.

One man could take a car engine to pieces and put it together again, another could invent explosives, a third could amass fortunes, a fourth grow onions; Mannering could open doors and force locks of all kinds. He had once been an expert par excellence. He had, in fact, once been a cracksman extraordinary, to coin a phrase, and in those days he had won much notoriety and not a little fame as the Baron, who always worked strictly incognito. He regarded them as the good or the bad old days, according to his mood, and always remembered them when, as now, he turned the lock with hardly a sound.

He pushed the room door open.

There was a little lobby, with pegs for hats, coats and dressing-gown. Opposite the pegs was the bathroom, on Mannering’s left. Opposite the passage door, facing Mannering, was the main bedroom door. The bathroom was in darkness, but the bedroom light was on.

That door was ajar.

Mannering pushed it a little wider.

The smooth-faced man, his jowl darker now because of a few extra hours’ growth, sat in an easy-chair with the light above his head, and his feet up on the double bed. He had the evening paper in front of him; it rustled slightly. He wore horn-rimmed glasses. Those, his stubble and his jet black hair threw up the sallow tinge of his skin. He was quite a strong-looking character, and a half-smoked cigar was in one corner of his mouth.

“Ephraim,” Mannering murmured.

The man started. His hands must have moved fully an inch, and the paper jumped and rustled. He began to turn his head, but checked the movement, showing remarkable control of his nerves. He raised his head slightly, and looked away from the newspaper, but not at Mannering. He was looking into a mirror.

“How is dear Chas?” asked Mannering, and went farther into the room.

Now, Scoby turned to face him, taking off his glasses and blinking while his eyes refocused. In his way, he was handsome.

“If you mean Ringall,” he said, quite steadily, “you shouldn’t have made an enemy of Ringall.”

“Prinny shouldn’t have made an enemy of you, either.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The judge, the jury, the prison Governor, the death-cell warders and the hangman will enlighten you, little by little and in due course,” Mannering said expansively. “I shall give them some of the information, for I have just come from the police. They know about Joy Lessing. They know a lot of things. Don’t hurt Joy.”

Scoby said: “Have you gone crazy? Who’s this Joy?”

“Simon’s sister.” Mannering moved again. Scoby didn’t seem to be frightened, but probably was. He shifted the cigar from one side of his bloodless mouth to the other. His face still had that powdered look. He hitched himself up a little higher in his chair, and his right hand went towards his coat pocket. He was the kind of man who might carry a gun, and would use one whenever he thought that he could avoid being found out, or whenever he thought that he might be legally justified in doing so: as now, by shooting an intruder.