from the Gembolts. Go and get them.”
Mannering smiled, and picked up his hat and gloves from the table. If Lord Fauntley could have read the working of the mind behind that smile his own would have been blasted from his face.
Jimmy Randall preferred Somerset to London, but he visited London occasionally, always making a point of seeing Toby Plender. Recently the mutual topic had been John Mannering. On the morning of the 9th of October — the date of the Fauntley Carnival Ball at the Five Arts Hall,
Kensington — the topic was still Mannering, but it was viewed more cheerfully and more philosophically than before.
“It amounts to this,” said Plender. “He’s found a winning slant, and he’s following it blindly. I don’t mean horses only; I don’t even mean the tables, although I’ve heard rumours that he’s been doing well at Denver’s Club and one or two private
“In other words,” said Randall cheerfully, “he’s turned his five thousand into fifty, and he can go to hell at his own pace.”
Plender laughed, making his face more like Punch than ever.
“I suppose so. I think he must have had something up his sleeve all the time, Jimmy. Anyhow, if you want to borrow anything, try J.M.”
“Let’s go and drink his health,” said Randall. “Y’know, I think if Marie Overndon had the chance now she’d take it.”
“Let Marie Overndon,” said Plender amiably, “go to perdition. She very nearly . . .”
He broke off abruptly, for one of the first faces he saw as he entered the Junior Carlton was Mannering’s. Mannering waved and moved towards them.
“This,” he said cheerfully, “must be the seventh postmortem in as many months. Are you eating or just drinking?”
“We might eat,” said Toby Plender.
“Idea,” said Kimmy Randall.
“I’ve got a table,” said John Mannering.
The flash of his white teeth against his dark skin, the glint of his hazel eyes, the grace of his lithe body as he moved towards the grill-room of the Junior Carlton, were parts of the Mannering of old, the Mannering of money. The thoughts in his mind were strange and mixed, tinged with a grim humour, coloured by a new devilry and a new purpose.
At that time John Mannering was reputed to be wealthy beyond ordinary measure. While his balance at a certain bank was low, it was well known that he used several banks. While no broker had bought substantially for him in any shares, Klobber Diamonds or others, it was known that he operated through many brokers. While no jewel-merchant had sold him gems of exceptional value, it was known that he traded with many merchants — also, it was rumoured, through Lord Fauntley. Billy Tricker, hearing reports of Mannering’s exceptional winnings on the turf, was glad that he had taken his lucky bets elsewhere. Tricker, being a philosophical bookie, knew that his turn would come.
At that time John Mannering’s assets were one thousand and fifty pounds, an idea that had grown into an obsession now, a belief in his ability to work the idea, and the love of Lorna Fauntley, of which he was unaware.
No one knew, no one dreamed, that they would soon be meeting the Baron. When the gentleman’s exploits grew famous or notorious, according to the point of view, no one dreamed that John Mannering was the Baron.
CHAPTER SIX
DETECTIVE-INSPECTOR WILLIAM BRISTOW WAS A LARGE-BONED man of medium height and middle age. He had spent twenty-five years in the Force — excepting, of course, for four years in Flanders — and those years were beginning to show in the grey of his grizzled hair and the lines in the corners of his eyes. Apart from those two signs he might have been twenty-eight, not forty-eight. His back was as straight as a rod, his stomach flat, his biceps passably hard, even when relaxed, and his eyes, flinty grey beneath almost white brows, were as keen and shrewd as ever. His lips smiled less often, perhaps, but his eyes laughed more.
At times he was called the Philosopher, because he appeared to let nothing worry him. At other times he was called the Posh William, because he dressed fastidiously, and wore a button-hole on every possible occasion. At other times still he was called the Mug, because every Commissioner selected him for the most difficult, tiring, intricate, and unlikely problems. The imagination of his fellow-officers — and subordinates — at Scotland Yard was not, then, as fertile nor as subtle as it might have been.
There was one compensation, however. Certain members of the fraternity that takes its pleasures and earns its living at the expense of more orderly members of society revealed greater subtlety by calling him Old Bill.
It might have been possible for them to have selected a man more antithetical of Bairnsfather’s creation, but few people would have believed it. Bristow’s face was square, tight-skinned, and alert, while his moustache was a neat military-cum-Colman attachment. Bristow fingered it a great deal, as though endeavouring to remove the yellow stains of nicotine that soiled the greyness of it. By habit he smoked cigarettes heavily, drank beer a little and spirits usually by invitation, and shaved night and morning when the trials of his job permitted. The thirty-seven housewives who lived in Gretham Street, Chelsea — excluding his own wife — believed that he was a commercial traveller. He had two sons approaching maturity and a daughter of fifteen. Perhaps one of the most significant things about him was that he adored his wile.
One morning in the August of 1936 Old Bill walked rapidly along Mile End Road, acknowledging an occasional friendly grin from the enemy who were at times his friends, frowning, wishing for winter — or at least for a temperature below seventy-five degrees — and confounding the Dowager Countess of Kenton.
The Countess had lost an emerald brooch valued at seven hundred and fifty pounds. That had been on the Monday, three days before this visit of the Inspector’s to Limehouse. At ten o’clock on the night of the loss she had telephoned Scotland Yard to lodge her complaint, and, allowing for the six hours she apparently slept at night, she
