John Creasey - Meet The Baron

“Not a thing. Levy was out as much as you, and if it hadn’t been for that old woman who went in to pop a pair of boots you might have been there for hours. I shouldn’t smoke just yet, chief,” Tanker went on. “The innards are made for some things and not for others.”

“You go to hell!” said Bristow snappily. “Well, we know something now. Send a call through for the Baron — T. Baron — to every station; get that pawn-ticket run over for fingerprints . . .”

“There ain’t no pawn-ticket,” said Tanker. He brightened perceptibly as he made the statement, for he was a man cheered by bad news and depressed by good tidings. “He took it.”

Bristow stared and then swallowed hard. His brow was black, and he started to speak in a way that Tanker had rarely heard before.

“One day I’ll . . .” he growled; and then suddenly and absurdly he laughed.

It was a remarkable thing to do, but Tanker had known his superior for a long time, and was prepared for anything. The sergeant shrugged his shoulders and looked out of the window of Bristow’s small office at the Yard. A tall, lanky, dolelul-looking man was the sergeant, dressed in shiny blue serge, patched but well-polished boots, and, even in the office, a bowler-hat two sizes too large for him. Tanker’s hat was an institution at the Yard.

Bristow was still laughing, and his assistant decided that there was such a thing as too much of a joke. He grunted.

“Levy said you’d got the brooch in your pocket, chief, so we had a look. Nowt, of course. We tested everything in the pockets for prints, but there was none of them there, either.”

“Next time you want to look in my pockets,” said Bristow, checking his laughter, “wait until I’m awake. Has her ladyship been through this morning yet?”

“Twice,” said Tanker.

The smile left Bristow’s face, and he frowned. The cool effrontery of the trick had appealed, suddenly and unfailingly, to his sense of humour, but the task of making a report to the effect that he had actually had possession of the Kenton brooch sobered him. If the Dowager learned that, she would cause a great deal of bother and annoyance. He grew brisk.

“Well,” he said, “what are you standing there for, Tanker?” (Only Superintendents and higher officials called Sergeant Jacob Tring by his real name.) “Get that call out, man.”

The sergeant hurried out of the room, and for a while Bristow brooded alone. Then he took a deep breath and left his office for that of Superintendent Lynch. He found the Superintendent in, and made his report verbatim. Lynch, large, red-faced, placid, and cheerful, grinned slowly.

“Caught for a sucker, Bristow,” he said; “but what’d he stage a show like that for, I wonder ?”

“If I knew,” muttered Bristow, “I . . .”

“Ever seen the man before, or anything like him ?” asked Lynch, who rarely wasted time, especially at the start of a case.

You’ll find a dozen in any high street east of London.”

“Eyes? Complexion? Hair?”

“Eyes and hair covered, complexion dark.”

“Voice?”

“Harsh. I’d recognise it if I ever heard it again.”

“There seems to be a meaning behind that,” said Lynch placidly. “What is it. Bill?”

“He disguised his voice as easily as he did his handwriting,” said Bristow, “and he took them both away with him when he went.”

“Naturally,” said Lynch. “You don’t seem quite at your best, Bill. What did you say he called himself?”

“Baron. T. Baron,” said Bristow.

There was a sudden tightening of the lines at the Superintendent’s eyes, and a sudden pursing of his generous lips. Bristow frowned.

Lynch did not speak at once, but his brooding eyes contemplated the Inspector for several seconds.

“Now that,” he said at last, “is a very funny thing.”

“Levy thought so too,” said Bristow.

“But he wasn’t thinking what I’m thinking,” said Lynch slowly. “Are you feeling all right?”

Old Bill’s smile returned to his lips and eyes. He needed no telling that there was an idea at the back of Lynch’s mind, and he had a great regard for the Superintendent’s ideas.

“Ye-es. Injured more in the pride than the abdomen. Why?”

Lynch stood up and picked his hat from the peg on the door, placed his thumb and forefinger behind Bristow’s neck, and urged the detective into the passage. As they walked along — the Big and Little of It, according to those members of society who had thought of calling Bristow Old Bill — Lynch was saying, in his curiously gentle voice: “It’s a funny tiling, a very funny thing, Bill, that we pulled Charlie Dray inside this morning for trying to pass some of the stones from the Kia bracelet. You’ve heard of the Kia bracelet, Bill ?”

“Ye-es,” said Bristow, and then racked his brains. He did not recall the circumstances of the affair, although the name was familiar enough.

“Removed, so cleverly removed,” said Lynch, who had a bad habit of trying to be lyrical, “from Mrs Chunnley at the Pertland House Ball last February. Now we come to think of it, the lights went out, Mrs Chunnley felt the bracelet slip from her wrist, and, sesame, the lights came on again.”

I gather,” said Bristow, “that you think there’s a connection between the Kia bracelet and the Kenton brooch ?”

“How liberally you were endowed, Bill, with the power of reasoning! Yes, I do. Now we come to think of it — I’m generous, Bill, and include you — the two jobs were as near identical as any we’re likely to come across.”

“That’s true enough,” admitted Bristow, frowning.

“Thank you,” said Superintendent Lynch with heavy wit. “Now we go back to Charlie Dray — he’s at Bow Street, time being — who was trying to pass some of the stones from the Kia bracelet this morning. He said a thing that makes Mr Baron sound very funny.”

“Well,” said Bristow, when they had tucked themselves into a taxi — Lynch was notoriously lazy — and were humming towards Bow Street, “what about Dray’s story?”

“Will you keep quiet a minute?” demanded Lynch testily.

Bristow grinned and was silent. Lynch said nothing more until they were confronting Charlie Dray in the charge-room at Bow Street some twenty minutes later.

Charlie Dray was a weedy, pale-faced, ginger-haired man who had once earned fame as a cracksman of exceptional ability. No lock had been too cunning for his art, and only a domestic quarrel had led to his undoing, for Charlie had been shopped for nearly being unfaithful. After five years’ penance he had forsworn married life and his profession, and he earned a living by selling lozenges to football crowds during the winter and ice-cream to race crowds during the summer. Not once during the three years of his freedom had he trespassed against the law, so far as Superintendent Lynch knew. Yet that morning . . .

“Charlie,” said Lynch gently, “I’ve no wish to see you in uniform again, so I want you to spill your story again, and fully, to Old Bill and me. Don’t laugh, Charlie!”

Dray chuckled; his good-humour was notorious.

“You will have yours, woncha — little joke I mean? Now, listen, if I strike me dead I speak the truth . . .”

“Pardon?” said Lynch politely.

Charlie guffawed. “But, joking apart, sir, wot I told you was the nothing but, strike me, Superintendent. Bloke comes to me a month ago and says, “Charlie, I’ve heard it said you know something about locks.” “Then,” says I, “you looked up an out-of-date reference-book, mister.” “Now,” says he, “I wouldn’t disturb your morals . . .” ”

“Did he say morals, Charlie?” asked Lynch severely. “Did I tell you I was telling you the nothing but?” demanded Charlie aggrievedly. “Morals he says, and morals I says, because, if you look at it that way, sir, it’s a laugh. Howso. “For anything in the world,” he says, “but I’ve just bought a lot of old safes, and some of ‘em are locked, and I want to open them.” “On the level ?” asks I. “If so I’ll do ‘em.” “On the level,” says he, so we goes along to a place in Brick Street. . .”

“Can you remember the place?” said Lynch. “Eyes shut and three parts over,” said Charlie, “and the Izzy who was selling him the safes. “There they are,” he says, “so you can see I’ve bought ‘em. Now I’m going to take them, and you, to a little place in Lambeth, and you can open them for me.” ”

“And you can remember the Lambeth place?” asked Lynch.

“Would I recognise my mother? Sir, we went there, and I opened the safes, and then he takes the locks out . . .”

“Out?” echoed Bill Bristow, who had been listening with an increasing sense of wonder and perturbation.

“I can see,” said Charlie, with dignity, “that you ain’t used to assorting with gentlemen, Inspector. Yes. They were his property, weren’t they, and he could do what he liked. “How’d you do it?” he says, and I shows him, and he tries it a bit himself, and one way and another he picks it up pretty quick.”

“Meaning,” said Bristow heavily, “that you taught him how to pick locks, did you?”

Charlie Dray’s eyes were pools of innocence. “His own locks, Mr Bristow.”

“What kind?” asked Lynch.

“Well,” said Charlie cheerfully, “there was a pretty good selection. Eight, I think. There was a Chubb Major and a Yale 20 and half a dozen combinations. He was a dab at ‘em by the time we’d finished. Howso. Two quid, he gives me, and them little things you lifted this morning, Mr Lynch.”

“He gave them to you ?” asked Lynch.

Charlie sniffed, but there was a crafty glint in his eyes.

“On the up-and-up and the nothing but, mister. A present, he said, and may there be many more! Now ‘ow was I to know — W was any honest man to know . . .”

“Charlie,” said Lynch gently, “you’re a god-damned liar, and if you don’t know what that means you ought to.”

The little man’s eyes narrowed.

“S’elp me,” he muttered uneasily, “I never lifted ‘em, mister. I ain’t done a job since I came out.”

“Seven years,” said Lynch dreamily, “for the Kia bracelet. You wouldn’t get off with anything less. But I’d do what I could for you, Charlie, if you’ll take us to the place where he bought the safes and the place where you unlocked them for him.”

“Now, listen,” said Charlie Dray earnestly, “I’d do that for a friend like you any day, Mr Lynch.”

Lynch turned to a local sergeant, an interested and amused spectator.

“Let me have a man, will you,” he said, “to tote this along with us?” As the man turned Lynch grinned at Bristow. “See what I’m driving at?” he asked.

Bristow nodded, and took a case from his pocket.

“Smoke ? If you’ve done what you always do — left the thing that matters out. . .” he said, “the name of Charlie’s friend was Baron.”

“So logical,” sighed Lynch, “you ought to have been a Frenchman. Ta. Give Charlie one, Bill; give Charlie one.”

Several hours later a weary Bristow and a worn-out Lynch returned to Scotland Yard. The temperature during the afternoon had topped the eighty mark, and both men were hot, dusty, thirsty, and disappointed. Charlie Dray’s story had been substantiated — up to a point. The second-hand-safe-dealer had certainly sold the safes to a Mr T. Baron, whose description tallied with that of the man in the tweed cap at Levy’s shop. The office-building where the safes had been unlocked and the lessons in lock-breaking had been given was in the hands of house-breakers, and the firm of agents which had let the rooms to the man Baron remembered the man well, but only by name. All the business had been done by post and telephone.

“And Charlie Dray,” mused Lynch, “either can’t or won’t remember much about Baron’s face. H’m. Y’know, Bill, I don’t believe in hunches, but I’ve a nasty tickle in the diaphragm over this bloke Baron. He’s cool. He’s clever. He’s well educated . . .”

“But yet he sounded . . .” Bristow hesitated and shrugged. “His voice was . . .”

“You’re not well,” said Lynch gently. “His voice and his handwriting were disguised. Out of your own mouth, Bill.”

Bristow thought, but he did not say what he thought, and it did not altogether concern Mr Baron.

John Mannering told himself that he had every reason to be satisfied with the way things were going. The comparative failure of the raid on the Fauntley strong-room was a thing of the past now, and the thefts of the Kia bracelet and the Kenton bauble had been perfectly managed; others, too, had gone through as easily, and if occasionally he felt the pricking of conscience at the fact that he was robbing men and women whose company and trust he enjoyed, he Forced it away from him. The risks he stood more than made up for the way in which he was playing his double role.

Certainly he did not feel the slightest awkwardness when he met and talked with the Dowager Countess of Kenton; in fact, he told himself that he had given the Dowager such grounds for complaint and discussion that she was in his debt.

At one of the Fauntley dinner-parties-growing larger and more comprehensive week by week — Lady Kenton spied him, unaccompanied, and buttonholed him. There was nothing she liked better than an attentive male audience, and Mannering was perfect in that respect. His smile as he approached her made her forget her loss, but she remembered it before long.

“And these policemen,” she mourned, “they’re so helpless, Mr Mannering. That man Bristow — I’m convinced he said something under his breath when I saw him this evening.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” admitted Mannering, smiling, “but he’s probably doing his best. He’s after a clever rogue, and . . .”

“Clever!” snorted Lady Kenton. “Clever! A sneaking, cowardly cat-burglar who robs a poor, helpless woman! Clever! The scoundrel! If I could only find him, Mr Mannering, I’d — I’d . . .”

“Cocktail, m’lady?” said her ladyship’s footman. “Dinner in half an hour, m’lady.”

Lady Kenton lifted her glass to Mannering, and told herself that he had quite the most fascinating smile she had ever seen. What a lucky girl Lorna Fauntley was, if Loma only knew it!

Lorna moved from a small group of people gathered round the television-set in the corner of the room; her dark hair was still a little unruly, her eyes were still mutinous and still probing, although they cleared as she reached the Dowager and Mannering.

“I was just saying . . .” began the Dowager.

“I believe with a little prompting I could almost guess,” laughed Lorna. “It’ll be something to do with a burglary . . .”

Lady Kenton looked offended, John Mannering laughed, until the Dowager’s frown cleared. Lorna squeezed the older woman’s hand and accepted a cocktail.

CHAPTER SEVEN

A TALK WITH A GENTLEMAN

OTHER RUMOURS FLOATED INTO SCOTLAND YARD ABOUT THE man who called himself Baron. An expert safe-breaker whose fingers were still nimble but who was nearing the end of his career volunteered the information that a man in a tweed cap and a long mackintosh had asked for lessons in the cracksman’s art. Of course, the old lag said virtuously, he’d called at the wrong house; but Bristow doubted it. Then Red Flannagan, who preferred the modern method of cracking safes with the use of gelignite, admitted that a man in a black suit, wearing a trilby hat pulled down over his eyes, had called on him and suggested lessons. “An’ at no correspondence-school prices, neither,” said Red. “I told ‘im where to go, Bill.”