The Doors Open (21 page)

“It’s about a couple of hundred yards from the Bell down to the trolleybus stop – quite a lonely bit of road. I was strolling along, enjoying the night air and thinking about nothing in particular when a man stepped out of a side turning and stopped me. There was another chap with him. The first man asked me if I could oblige him with a light. Of course, I said yes, why not, and started to put my hand in my pocket. Well, it’s odd how things occur to you, but suddenly I realized that the man with him was smoking, and a little voice in my brain said ‘something phoney here. If he wanted a light for his cigarette why didn’t he get it off his pal. Why did he have to stop me?’ Then something else happened. We were all standing near a lamp standard, and I could see both these chaps’ faces quite clearly. And by a fluke I recognized them. Yes. I’d seen them both before, and I’d seen them together. They were the two men who had been sitting, with a middle-aged woman, at the next table to me, in the smoking-room at the Pike and Eels, that night I went there with Mr Britten. All this has taken a bit of time to explain, but it didn’t take a second to happen. One minute I was standing under the lamp, feeling for a box of matches. The next moment I was running. If I’d been taken entirely unawares, I’d have been sunk. It was just the chance in a million of my recognizing them that startled me. I only just moved in time.

“Number two had moved up behind me whilst number one was talking to me, and the cosh or whatever it was he was using only missed my head, and nearly broke my shoulder, and at the same time number one kicked me in the groin.

“The next minute I was running up the road and they were running after me. I think I knew that I was for it, because I was pretty dazed, and they were both fitter than I was. Luckily, without thinking, I had turned round and was running back towards the Bell, and we ran full tilt into Ronnie and Harry and Duggie coming out.

“That really must have been worth watching. The funny part was they all jumped to the conclusion that the chaps who were chasing me were Crusaders or Crusader supporters, so they weighed into them with the best will in the world. Then one of the types kicked Duggie on the knee, and Duggie got angry. Well, you know what Duggie’s like.

“There was a most terrific schemozzle, which was complicated by half a dozen more people coming out of the pub and joining in on both sides. My shoulder was hurting like hell, and what with one thing and another I spent most of the time sitting quietly in the gutter being sick, but it was a first-class show, viewed from any angle.”

“And they got the two men,” said Nap. “That’s excellent.”

Paddy looked a bit surprised and said, “What do you mean–”

“They told me on the phone last night,” said Nap, “that two men had been brought with you to hospital.”

“Lord, no,” said Paddy. “That’s Duggie and Ronnie. I told you – they thought the whole thing was a rag. All we’ve got of the other two types is their trousers – the silly asses debagged them.”

The third member of the trio was in action that evening as well.

Lord Cedarbrook, when he left the Bankruptcy Buildings, made his way straight to Pall Mall, to the more respectable of his two clubs.

It is probable that he was being followed.

Condemn the fellow, he thought. Who would have imagined that he would come to court himself. And yet – one ought to have foreseen it. It was so well in character. One knew a good deal about Legate now and really almost his most salient characteristic was that he was a good hater. A man who nursed his dislikes almost to the point of madness. No – that was the wrong word. There was nothing in the least mad about Legate. To the point of fanaticism. But you had to hand it to him. He was a brilliant organizer, and had shown himself desperately quick on the riposte.

With such an opponent, the loss of twenty-four hours might be serious.

Lord Cedarbrook took possession of one of the private telephone rooms at the club and asked for a line to be put through.

First he rang up the legal assistant to the Director of Public Prosecutions, missed him at his office, and found him at home, changing for dinner. He talked to him for nearly half an hour, and finished by making an appointment for eleven o’clock on the following morning.

Then he tried Hazlerigg’s code number, and found the Inspector at his desk. Here the conversation was shorter, and it, also, concluded with the arrangement of a rendezvous.

Finally he telephoned his own house and told Cluttersley that he would be dining at his club.

Cluttersley said in a resigned voice, “The dinner is already in the hoven.”

“Then heat it – I mean, eat it – yourself,” said His Lordship. “And – oh – Cluttersley–”

“Yes, my Lord.”

“Have you got someone you could take out to the cinema.”

“Not to the cinema, my Lord. The housekeeper at number five shares with myself a taste for the classical in music–”

“Then this is your opportunity to gratify it,” said Lord Cedarbrook. “Take her to a concert. Take a box at the Albert Hall. Only I must have you out of the house by eight – and don’t come back before midnight. I’ll let myself in.”

“Very good, my Lord. I will connect the electric coffee percolator to the plug in the library.”

After a solitary dinner, Lord Cedarbrook left the club, and took a taxi to Charing Cross Station. Before he got into the taxi he considerably astonished its driver by making a very careful test of the door handle to ascertain that it was not one of those cabs, well-known to readers of thrillers, the doors of which only open from the outside.

From Maze Hill station he walked home, keeping conscientiously to the middle of the road.

It was not that he anticipated any immediate trouble but he had had very considerable experience of violence and he had learnt that it never paid to take obvious and avoidable risks.

He reached his house as the church clock on the corner struck nine and made his way straight to the library. This was the room into which Nap had been shown when he had come to visit his uncle some months before. It was a finely proportioned room, and occupied the full depth of the building. Its northern windows looked down to the river, while at the other end its French windows opened on to the terrace and the strip of garden behind the house.

Cluttersley had left the curtains open, but now, although it was not yet quite dusk, Lord Cedarbrook drew them across.

Then he turned on the desk lamp which was so arranged that it also acted as reading light to the big leather armchair beside the fireplace.

Finally he switched on the coffee percolator, and made a cup of strong coffee, which he drank slowly, black and sugarless.

Then he settled down in his chair to wait. His face was in shadow, and it was not possible to be certain, but he seemed to be smiling. Possibly he was thinking of the time only three days before – it seemed much longer – when Mr Watson alias Wilson had sat in very different surroundings, also waiting on providence.

Ten struck, and eleven, before he heard the sound he had been listening for.

It was a light slurring of metal on metal, followed by a tiny click.

Then, for some minutes, nothing more. But he knew that there were men in the house.

So deft and quiet were they that he never heard the handle of the door turning.

Then, quite suddenly, he seemed to become aware that two men were in the room.

As they moved towards him, Lord Cedarbrook got to his feet. He saw that they were young men. The front one, with his clipped hair and light blue eyes, had the unmistakable look of a soldier. He was grinning. His companion, Lord Cedarbrook thought, was a plain lout.

“Who are you?” he said.

“District visitors,” said the front one. “You’re Lord Muck-a-muck, I take it.”

His Lordship had a sudden inspiration.

“And you,” he said, “are Conlan, I think.”

“S’ right,” said Conlan. He seemed unperturbed that his identity was known, and Lord Cedarbrook realized that this was a very bad sign indeed. “You all alone?” he went on.

“There’s no one else in the house.”

“Keep an eye on His Lordship, Ted. If he gets restless, sing to him.”

Ted grinned.

Really, thought Lord Cedarbrook, Ted was one of the most unpleasant-looking persons he had ever seen. He had a large, raw face, pinhead eyes, and a mouth with an underslung lower lip like a pike. As a boy he had, no doubt, enjoyed pulling the wings off butterflies.

Patsy Conlan went out, and a few seconds later they heard his footsteps as he left the carpeted hall and went down the service stairs which led to the kitchen and to Cluttersley’s domain.

“Well, Ted,” said Lord Cedarbrook, “you haven’t introduced yourself.”

Ted neither replied to this, nor moved from where he was standing.

“You’re Bates, aren’t you?”

“And what if I am,” said the other. He seemed a little less sure of himself now that Conlan was gone.

‘Nothing,” said His Lordship. “Nothing. A fine old English name – really quite Shakespearian. One of your ancestors was at Agincourt. Are you an admirer of Henry the Fifth?”

Bates came a step or two nearer and said, “Do you want a slap on the kisser?”

Even at that distance Lord Cedarbrook could smell that he had been drinking. He wondered where he managed to get the whisky from. He thought that he ought to prod him a little further: bring him perhaps one step nearer.

“Wasn’t it you and Conlan,” he said very gently, “who killed poor old Doctor Potts.”

“Doctor – look here, what are you calling me–”

“I’m calling you a murderer.”

Bates hit Lord Cedarbrook a chopping slap across the face.

Then Lord Cedarbrook hit Bates.

It was a magnificent blow. It came straight up from the floor, not swung, but pushed, as an upper cut should be, with a last second curl to it, brought about by a twist of the elbow. It had every pound of weight and strength which Lord Cedarbrook possessed, and Lord Cedarbrook had boxed with Lonsdale.

Bates folded up.

It all happened so smoothly that an onlooker might have wondered whether it had taken place at all. At one moment Bates was on his feet, the next moment he was lying on the Axminster carpet, his great red face cradled over his arm in an absurdly childlike attitude of repose.

Lord Cedarbrook stood over him for some seconds, listening hard. Then he walked over to the desk, opened the middle drawer, and picked out a revolver. It was a huge weapon, of .455 calibre, and a last-war model; but it had obviously been tenderly cared for. After a little thought Lord Cedarbrook broke the gun, inserted one bullet, rotated the cylinder until the round lay next to be fired, clicked it shut again and laid it ready on the desk.

Bates had not stirred. From the sound of his breathing it seemed probable that it would be some time yet before he started to sit up and take notice.

Conlan came back along the passage. Confident, it seemed, that the house was unoccupied, he was no longer troubling to walk quietly – in fact he was whistling happily to himself.

He was well inside the room before he quite grasped the changes which had taken place during his absence. Then he stopped whistling.

“Come in,” said Lord Cedarbrook. “Don’t trouble to shut the door. Just keep walking forward.”

The gun in his hand was a powerful argument. But it was not the gun alone. Patsy Conlan was used to guns. It was something altogether different. Something in the size and authority of the man who held it. Something in the unpromising lines of the mouth. More than anything it was the voice. Patsy had once attended in the gallery at the Old Bailey and had heard the judge say, “That you be taken hence to the place from which you came, thence to a place of execution–”

“All right. Now stop.”

Conlan stood still.

“I’ve got three questions to ask you. Whether you answer them or not is entirely your own affair.”

“You’re telling me.”

“But before you indulge in any more pert answers I’d better perhaps explain to you that you’re not in a very happy position. You and Bates broke into my house tonight. The Law entitles me to protect my property. Not to put too fine a point on it, it entitles me to shoot you – if I must.”

“You can’t shoot me if I don’t attack you,” said Conlan. But he didn’t sound very confident.

“Exactly,” said Lord Cedarbrook gently. “But who is to say whether you attacked me or not – once you yourself are no longer with us.”

There was a short silence before he went on:

“I don’t know why I should tell you this, and I doubt if you’ll understand it. I’ve had a lot of loves in my life but only one of them’s lasted. That’s my love for England. I’d shoot you gladly, now, and risk hanging if I thought it would help her in any way at all. That’s the mistake you people make. You sell yourselves for the first dirty money that offers. Well, that’s all right as far as it goes, but when you’ve done it once or twice you begin to think that nothing else matters except money. And the joke is, if you choose to think of it, that time and time again, throughout this affair, you’ve come to grief by running against people who weren’t working for money at all. I hope you’ll find the thought a comfort in the long days that lie ahead. Now. First, did you know where the money came from that you’ve been getting for these jobs?”

“And suppose I don’t want to answer your questions.”

“It will be my sad duty,” said Lord Cedarbrook, “to shoot you in the right knee. A .455 bullet at this range is going to make a horrible mess of your kneecap. The pain will be exquisite and I guarantee that you will never walk unaided again.”

The barrel of the revolver descended slowly.

“No,” said Conlan thickly.

“No what?”

“No. I don’t know where the money was coming from. We got paid by Capelli. He got the money from someone called Legate. That’s all I know.”

“Very well. Was tonight to be the last of these particular jobs?”

“Yes, it was. We got five hundred each. You had to be hurt – you and the other two – then that was the end of it.”

“I see.” Lord Cedarbrook was under no delusion as to what ‘hurt’ meant.

“A last and most important question. Was it to be any part of your job, you or your friends, to help Mr Legate to get away?”

“No. He had it all fixed. It was nothing to do with us. I don’t know anything about it. I just did what I was told. I don’t know anything more.”

“All right,” said Lord Cedarbrook. He touched the desk lamp off and on again and the room suddenly seemed to be full of policemen. There must have been a dozen waiting in the garden.

When Bates and Conlan had been taken away, Lord Cedarbrook said to Chief Inspector Hazlerigg, “I don’t know how much you managed to overhear of those last exchanges but it seems obvious enough that Legate’s preparing to run.”

“I think,” said Hazlerigg cautiously, “that he has already flitted. He never went home tonight. He was last seen leaving the Stalagmite building at half past two.”

“He spent the afternoon at the Bankruptcy Court.” Lord Cedarbrook gave the Chief Inspector a brief résumé of what had passed.

“He’s a quick mover, isn’t he?” said Hazlerigg. “I mean, up to the moment he saw you in court he probably thought he was pretty safe. I think he’d been preparing his getaway for some time, but until this afternoon he had no idea the red light was showing. And on that subject, what about your nephew and his friend–”

“I
expect they can look after themselves,” said His Lordship. “They both took bigger risks during the war. No. It’s Legate I’m worried about. He’s got six hours start, and for a man with his political connections that’s six hours too much.”

“We shall catch him,” said Hazlerigg with conviction. “He can’t fly, you know.”

“Can’t he, though,” said Lord Cedarbrook slowly. “Can’t he, by God? I knew there was something – it happened when I was playing at Watson – Wilson. On the last day. I told you how I went out on the Underground to meet a certain Mr Bernard Rose who turned out to be Colonel Vassilev. And I told you how we waited on the platform for him. Well, that was when it happened. I asked Rubinstein, the fellow with me, ‘How will he come?’ and Rubinstein said ‘By train. Did you think he was going to–’ and then he broke off. It was obvious that he had meant to say ‘Did you think he was going to fly’; but it suddenly struck him that it might be – well, perhaps an injudicious expression. You see?”

“You mean,” said Hazlerigg, “that Colonel Vassilev
does
fly? He keeps a private plane somewhere?”

“Well, he must have got into the country somehow. I don’t think that he passed the ports – not after his Canadian efforts. He was an ace pilot during he war. In the first two years of the war – before he turned to special service – he was credited with thirty-two ‘certains’. Suppose he came in by plane. It would need some arranging, but it could be managed. Suppose also that it’s a two-seater. And remember that even for a small civilian plane it’s only about four hours’ flying time to Russian-occupied Germany.”