John Creasey - Meet The Baron

The two detectives who had helped in his rescue had gone back to the Yard, with the woman-detective. Bristow knew that it was useless to look for the bullet now. He didn’t feel that he wanted to look for the bullet. He remembered the terrible moment when he had dangled over the window-ledge, and he remembered the relief that had surged through him when Mannering had gripped him. And then, when he had recovered well enough to take charge, he had seen Mannering stretched out on the floor, and he had seen the pool of blood from the wound which had reopened in the Baron’s shoulder.

Bristow was a man, as well as a policeman. He knew that he had been saved from death — or at least from severe injuries — by Mannering’s efforts, and he could guess how much those efforts had cost the other man. And yet. . .

Mannering was the Baron.

Bristow grunted again. He was a policeman, and a policeman had no right to allow sentiment of any kind to interfere with his duty. He knew that Mannering was the Baron, and that in that flat there was enough to prove it. The bullet might be missing, but the jewels would still be there.

That bitterness he had felt towards Mannering because of the ease with which the other had outwitted him and duped him was gone. It was a straightforward job of being a policeman that remained, but it was the most distasteful one that he had ever experienced; nevertheless it had to be done.

He got up suddenly and started to speak. Before he had said two words, however, Lorna Fauntley came out of the bedroom. Her face was pale, her tone almost listless.

“He’ll have to have a doctor,” she said.

Bristow motioned to the telephone. Tanker, not unaware of the woman’s beauty, clambered up with rather clumsy courtesy and muttered: “I’ll get one along, miss.”

Bristow stared at the girl, who eyed him more than a little wearily.

“Well?” she said.

“I don’t like it,” muttered Bristow, “but it’s got to be done. Did he bring a case with him last night?”

Lorna’s lip tightened obstinately. Bristow passed a hand across his forehead.

“For heaven’s sake don’t make it difficult!” he snapped. “It’ll be the same in the long run. We’re bound to find it.”

She hesitated, and then nodded. Her voice was dull.

“All right,” she said. “It’s in there — the bedroom. He’s still unconscious — don’t make a noise.”

Bristow grunted, and walked heavily towards the room, feeling no satisfaction.

Lorna waited until the door closed behind him. She glanced at Tanker Tring, whose back was towards her, and who was saying “hallo” deliberately and tirelessly into the mouthpiece. If either of them had looked at her at that moment they must have known that something was wrong. But neither of them did. She slipped a key into the lock of the bureau-drawer, opened it quickly and silently, and took the little bundle of pearls that was there, wrapped in cottonwool, with Mannering’s blue mask. The Rosa pearls. Mannering had told her of them a few minutes before, and she was making a last effort; even now it might fail.

She slipped the things into the “V” of her dress, and pushed the drawer back. Tring muttered into the telephone for a moment, and replaced it, turning round and seeing the girl learning wearily against the bureau, motionless. He grunted again. Something was certainly wrong, and she’d had a nasty turn, that he knew.

Bristow opened the bedroom door at that moment, and came out.

There was a twisted smiled on his lips as he stared at Lorna, but her face was set. She looked completely beaten and hopeless. Bristow’s smile changed slowly to an expression of bewilderment. Surely it wasn’t possible that he’d been wrong?

He knew that it wasn’t. He knew that Mannering and the Baron were one and the same.

But he couldn’t prove it! The bullet was gone, and the brown suit-case in the bedroom was filled with the costume of a Charles II beau! There were no jewels!

“Turn this place inside-out,” he snapped to Tring.

Tanker shrugged his shoulders, deciding that it was not a moment to speak, and started his job.

Lorna Faundey had never seen the police at work before. She was surprised by the thoroughness of the search. Drawers, pictures, carpets, furniture, everything was moved and turned inside-out, and everything was replaced in its exact position.

But there was nothing there which could interest them, and Lorna’s heart was beating fast.

Bristow called enough at last. He looked at the girl, and he was uncertain whether there was triumph in her eyes or whether it was sheer relief. He was inclined to think that it was relief. He shrugged.

“I don’t know how he did it,” he muttered, half to himself, “but he did.” He glared at Tring. “Why the blazes don’t you stop staring?” he snapped. “Get out, can’t you?”

Tring was saved from the necessity of a retort by the arrival of the doctor. Bristow’s last sight of Lorna Fauntley that day was of her hurrying into the bedroom, followed by the portly, grey-haired physician.

Gerry Long was satisfied to do what he was asked and to show no curiosity. He owed Mannering his life, and there was little that he would not do to pay the debt. When, after the affair of the morning — he had dropped the bullet into the Thames at Westminster — he received a telephone-message from Lorna Fauntley, he made no bones about doing what she asked.

It was a simple enough task. He had to go to the New Arts Hall and ask for the attaché-case which had been left in a private cubicle on the previous night. The initials on the case were J. M. The job was accomplished successfully, and Long, still on Lorna’s instructions, took it to the Waterloo cloakroom and left it there under the name of James Mitchell. It was not until six months later that he realised that he had taken the Ramon jewels and Mannering’s gas-pistol to the station. Gerry Long was to learn a great many things in the next six months, but for the time being he was content to remain in the dark.

At his flat Mannering leaned back on his pillow and smiled at Lorna Fauntley.

The doctor had gone. After the straining it had received the wound was nasty, but it would yield to treatment, and neither of them was worried about it. Lorna was still worried, however, about the possibility of trouble from Bristow, but Mannering doubted whether it would come.

“He didn’t like his job after the window episode, my dear. I’ll be surprised if we hear anything more from him over this business. But that doesn’t mean we can do as we like in future. He’s a good fellow, but he’ll stick to his job. God,” he added, “but it was close ! If you hadn’t managed to get the pearls, Lorna, it would have been all up. Tring didn’t notice you?”

“No more than Bristow noticed you weren’t unconscious,” said Lorna, and her smile was bright.

Mannering closed his eyes for a moment, going over the affair in his mind.

He had known that apart from the bullet the only possible source of trouble was the Rosa pearls, and when he had regained consciousness and had seen Lorna alone with him he had told her where to find the key and the pearls. She had done the rest, coolly and capably. The Ramon jewels he had left at the New Arts Hall; the case had been locked, and was safer there than anywhere else. He did not think that Bristow was likely to look for them there.

So he had those gems and the Rosas. They would bring enough to keep him going for several months; if he could sell the Rosas, enough for a year or more. But in future he’d be more careful.

More careful!

He opened his eyes suddenly. A shock that was almost physical ran through him. He had realised, almost without thinking about it, that he had no thought of giving up the game: the idea hadn’t occurred to him. . . .

The Baron was still free.

But there was Lorna, he realised, and he smiled at her, speaking slowly of the things he had been tempted to ask many times before, until: “If I drop it,” he asked, “will you marry me?”

There was a short, tense silence. Her eyes, dark, sometimes mocking and mysterious, held nothing but deep sorrow.

“But I can’t,” she said, in a voice which he could hardly hear. “I’d give half my life to, John, but I can’t.”

As she finished speaking there was an absolute silence in the room for a period that seemed as if it would never end. Then Mannering stretched out his arms and took her hands in his. There was a soft smile on his lips, and a gleam in his eyes that she had seen so often and loved so much.

He was thinking, as he looked into her face, of the things she had said and done in the last few months — since the day when they had first met and she had appealed to him as “different”. He remembered her reputation; he knew that no men had interested her, that Fauntley had despaired of her ever marrying. Then he reminded himself of the hopelessness that had shone from her eyes sometimes, of the fits of depression she had, even though she had managed to lose them when they had been together. He recalled the time when he had discovered that she wanted money badly, yet dared not approach her father.

And now she said, “I’d give half my life to, John, but I can’t.”

It could mean only one thing, he knew, and now he felt that he had suspected it for a long time. He spoke at last, slowly, smiling, and giving her a confidence enough to repress the tears that were so close to the surface.

“So — you’re married?”

Lorna nodded, and said nothing. What could she say?

“And you’re paying — him — money to keep the marriage secret ?”

She nodded again, but spoke this time.

“Yes.” Her voice was very low, but he heard every word clearly. “I’ve been married for a long time. Oh, it seems a century ago! He went away soon afterwards, and we agreed to keep it a secret until he returned . . . God, what a fool I was!”

“Steady,” murmured Mannering, and his pressure on her hands increased.

“Thanks,” she said, and a smile flashed in her eyes, to disappear swiftly. “I don’t know what the past year would have been like without you, John. He came back just after I’d met you. He wanted money, and he was prepared to keep silent if I gave it to him. So” — she shrugged her shoulders, and her smile was gone now; she looked tragic, he told himself, but more beautiful than he had ever seen her — “I did all I could. That’s why I tried to take the Overndon necklace . . .”

Mannering had told himself a few minutes before that he knew all there was to know. Now, as her words came out slowly, they took several seconds to impress themselves on his mind. She had tried to take the Overndon necklace!

“Good God!” he gasped. “At the wedding — so the dummy pearls were yours!”

“Yes,” she said steadily; her gaze did not move. “I even bought the dummy pearls to match the real ones as near as I could. I’d been with Emma to buy them in the first place, and I knew what they were like. But when I was there my nerves went. I slipped the dummies into Gerry’s pocket never dreaming there would be any trouble. . . .”

She broke off, and there was silence for a few minutes, Mannering was trying to get this new fact out of his mind; it was amazing enough, but it didn’t matter now. True, it cleared up the mystery of the dummies, but everything other than the fact of Lorna’s marriage was unimportant.

“It’s all right,” he said at last. “Nothing happened that wasn’t soon put right. But. . .”

She flung her head back and ran her fingers through her hair.

“The marriage can’t be put right,” she said. “Oh, I could let it be known; I could get a divorce. But it would break Dad — he’s so scared of scandal. Mother too. Somehow I don’t think I could find the courage to — to let it come out.”

“You’d rather pay him — and have your life a misery,” said Mannering, but there was no sting in his words, and his voice strengthened suddenly. “We’ll find a way out, my dear. We must find one. A year or two won’t matter, while we’re waiting; and meanwhile we can work.”

Lorna smiled; her eyes held real humour, and he marvelled at the way she could forget the thing that must have made her wish, often enough, that she was dead.

“The Baron can work,” she said, and they laughed together.

THE END