John Creasey - Meet The Baron

Bristow grunted, hardly knowing whether to be pleased or offended. He decided on the former.

“I wouldn’t recognise him again,” he said, looking absently round the room. “But that’s by the way, too. I came along” — he laughed a little and coloured — “because I thought a chat with you would do me good, Mannering. The A.C. will be short-tempered again, and I thought . . .”

Bristow stopped, and the pleasant expression went from his face. In that moment Mannering’s fears returned, only to lose themselves in anxiety for Lorna. That second place . . .

But the detective’s voice was very hard, and a warning that something had gone wrong ticked through Mannering’s mind.

“You’ve read about the business, of course?”

Mannering tried to assume that the other was evading the matter of the two places at the table. He nodded, and wished Bristow would stop looking. For the detective was still staring at the one spot, and there was an expression on his face that puzzled the cracksman.

“He was surprised by a watchman, wasn’t he?” he asked with a big effort. “There was some shooting . . .”

“There was one shot,” said Detective-Inspector Bristow in a curiously stilted voice. “It was from a Webley thirty-two, Mannering, and we can’t find the bullet. The obvious solution to that little problem is that it lodged in the Baron.”

“Yes,” said Mannering, and his mouth was dry. Bristow was dangerously near the truth now.

“So we think,” said Bristow.

He was still staring at the table. Mannering felt that he must make some comment, or some move, that would cause the detective to shift his gaze. Bristow wasn’t being discreet. He needn’t make it so pointed that he’d seen the two places.

Of course, thought Mannering, I’m all on edge, or I probably wouldn’t have noticed anything. But he is staring, there’s no doubt about it. Why?

He moved in his chair abruptly, and at last Bristow’s gaze shifted. Mannering, jerking his shoulder suddenly, winced with pain, and started to move his left hand towards the wound. He stopped quickly, but Bristow saw it.

“Hurt yourself?” asked the Inspector. His voice seemed a thousand miles away, as though he was in a world of his own.

“Slipped last night at the Ramon Ball,” said Mannering, with a short laugh. He was very wary, very much afraid. It almost seemed that Bristow knew something; the man was getting at him.

“At the Ramon Ball, eh ?” said Bristow. He still seemed a long way off, and his expression was certainly strained, almost incredulous. “Er — it wasn’t that which hurt you, was it?”

“That?” Mannering echoed the word, and turned round.

And then the colour drained from his face. He realised now that Bristow had not been looking at the second place at the table after all. He had been looking at the bullet, which was lying next to the morning paper!

“It looks like a Webley three-two,” said Bristow, like a man in a dream. “Let me see it, Mannering . . .”

The door of the bedroom was not quite closed, and Lorna Faundey could see the spruce figure of Bristow as he sat opposite Mannering. She was glad that she had seen the detective before and could recognise him, for it enabled her to judge the position at a glance.

She could estimate the peril of that visit.

Mannering was not at his best. He had suffered considerably from loss of blood, and although his recovery had been speedy, and he had shown little sign of his overnight ordeal, the fact remained that he was less likely to be able to outwit the detective than if he had been uninjured. For a few moments Lorna felt really afraid. She knew nothing of the co-operation between Mannering and the police, and she could conceive of no reason for the early-morning visit, excepting a connection with the burglary at the Ramons; house. Her heart was beating as she stared tensely through the narrow opening of the door.

Alter a few seconds she breathed more easily. She could see that Bristow was friendly, and that Mannering was not perturbed. The conversation between the two men came to her ears. She realised for the first time that Mannering had been helping the detective, and the realisation made her eyes dance. It was a situation that Mannering would use to perfection, and that few other men would have dared to try.

Satisfied that there was no need for alarm, she turned back into the bedroom. She looked rather sad and rather weary for a moment, very much as she had looked just before Bristow had entered the flat. She thought, with a wry smile, that Mannering would have known the truth — the worst — if the detective had delayed the visit for another five minutes.

Did she want him to know?

Until that morning she had not. But now she felt that it would be wiser if he did. He would understand, she believed; he was remarkable for his power of understanding. And he would say nothing, and make no protest against things as they were. He would wait

Wait. . .

She felt that she had been waiting for ever, instead of for five years. She felt, as she had a few days before, when she had taken the money from Mannering, and as she had felt when she had persuaded Lady Kenton to buy that picture for three hundred pounds, that she would know nothing of happiness. Just now and again, with Mannering, she had forgotten the truth, but memory came back all too swiftly; and if memory failed there was fact.

She shivered a little, and went back to the door.

What she saw now made her eyes widen in alarm, and filled her with sudden dread. Her body went rigid.

Bristow was staring towards the table. He was speaking in a hard, dry voice, which had little or no friendliness in it Of course, it was possible that he had realised that there was someone else in the flat, and that he had drawn his own — and the wrong — conclusions. There were men who would have looked askance at another who had been caught out in an affaire. Many men, in fact.

But she doubted whether Bristow would be affected by that.

Then she looked at the table, and her heart seemed to stop. She heard Bristow’s voice, stiff and far away.

“It looks like a Webley three-two. Let me see it, Mannering.”

And she knew that it was the bullet. She remembered that John had asked for it, and that she had brought it from the bathroom, intending to give it to him. And then she had seen the papers, which he had placed so that she would have to see the headlines, and she had put the tell-tale bullet down, forgetting it, thinking only of herself and Mannering, an association which she knew might end abruptly one day, or else which would go on and on, if their patience was everlasting.

And the bullet was on the table.

Her mind worked quickly. She saw Bristow stand up, saw his very jerky movements as he took the bullet and examined it. She saw Mannering’s expression too, and she realised that Mannering knew that he was caught

He was caught. The police would be able to test that bullet, and prove that it had come from the revolver of the man who had been guarding the Ramon house on the previous night. That and the bullet-wound in Mannering’s shoulder would be all the proof that the police would need to make their case sound.

The doors of prison seemed to be closing round John Mannering at that moment. Lorna Fauntley hardly knew how to think. But there must be something she could do — there must be some way out. . . .

Her eyes narrowed suddenly as an idea came.

There was a way, difficult, perhaps, dangerous enough to implicate her as well as Mannering if it tailed. But if it succeeded both of them would be sale, and she was prepared to take the risk; it did not even make her stop to think.

The whole affair rested on that bullet. It was concrete evidence. It could be shown in court and could be matched up with the revolver, the turning-point of the evidence against Mannering. If there was no bullet, she reasoned, there was no evidence. Bristow could think what he liked, but thinking was no use in a court of law. She could swear that Mannering had been with her at the New Arts Hall from nine o’clock until half-past twelve, and others would support her, believing it to be the truth; the papers recorded the time of the crime as half-past eleven, and the alibi would be sufficient; but it would be useless in the face of that bullet. So it must go.

Very suddenly, and with a smile on her face that baffled Mannering and puzzled Bristow, she opened the door of the bedroom and entered the living-room.

Mannering paled. Bristow looked round in surprise.

Lorna stopped, as if startled to find two men instead of one. Just for a moment she looked alarmed, and Mannering was forced to admire her self-control. Then her smile returned, and she looked at Bristow.

“I didn’t know we had company,” she said. “Has John suggested tea, or don’t you believe in two breakfasts ?”

Bristow could not think of anything to say. His mind had been jerked away from contemplation of the bullet between his fingers, and he hardly realised that it was still there as he stared at Lorna.

“Two breakfasts?”

Lorna laughed lightly. Mannering, for all his admiration of her self-possession, could not for the life of him understand what she was driving at. But he knew she was playing with an idea. She looked at him once, quickly, but with a wealth of meaning. The helplessness that had surged through him when Bristow had seen the bullet and picked it from the table disappeared. There was a chance, faint perhaps, but definitely there. And Lorna was playing her hand confidently. If anyone could work the miracle she could. He felt his pulse quicken.

“I assume you’ve eaten once,” said Lorna, still smiling. She seemed blissfully unaware of the tension in the air, and looked at Bristow, who hesitated for a moment. Mannering caught his eye, and flashed an appeal to the policeman. He realised that Lorna wanted him to back her up; she wanted him to persuade Bristow not to broach the subject while she was there. It was expecting a great deal, but there was a faint possibility that Bristow could be induced to drop it, if only for a short while, and thus save Mannering from being unmasked in front of a woman.

Bristow fingered his moustache awkwardly. He read the appeal, and nodded slowly, while Lorna took another cup and saucer from a small cupboard, asked him how much sugar and whether any milk. He answered automatically. The seconds seemed to drag like hours.

Lorna filled three cups, and handed one to him, as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

Mannering marvelled again at her self-possession, but he was still puzzled. She knew about the bullet, and she must realise the situation, but she was carrying herself superbly. Bristow couldn’t know for certain whether she had overheard any of the conversation.

The detective reached for the cup, and then realised that he couldn’t take it while the bullet was in his hand. He didn’t know that Lorna was gambling on the belief that he would not give up the evidence he held, and he drew back quickly. But he was a fraction of a second too late. Lorna uttered a little cry of alarm. . . .

Mannering saw that she actually pushed the cup and saucer against the detective’s hand; it was the crucial moment, and he almost cried out in suspense. The cup tilted and went over. The tea, scalding hot, poured over Lorna’s fingers and over Bristow’s.

The detective gasped, and dropped the bullet as the tea stung his flesh. It wasn’t until a moment later that he realised that he had been tricked.

Lorna bent down like a flash, and Mannering realised what she was doing. He seemed to be laughing to himself, irrationally, at the cleverness of the ruse. And she was still playing a part, still fighting.