“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
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.”
“Don’t be familiar,” snapped Bill Bristow; “and if you haven’t been working and you didn’t take his money, how is it you’re so flush lately?”
“Yer can’t prove nothin’,” snarled Red.
That tells me a lot,” said Bristow thoughtfully.
He grew a little closer to Baron when Flick Leverson was caught trying to smuggle a little packet of precious stones out of the country. All the gems were stolen property, and Bristow knew that Flick was a fence of high degree. He was elated when he discovered that the bigger stones from the Kia bracelet and the Kenton brooch were in Flick’s packet.
“It’ll go easier for you,” Bristow told the fence, “if you’ll give me a description of the man you bought those two things from — and tell me everything you know about him.”
“Then it won’t go easier for me,” said Flick philosophically. “He wore a mask, Bill, a tweed cap, a mackintosh, and rubber-soled shoes. I’ve never seen him before nor since. I don’t know where he came from.”
“What kind of mask?” asked Bristow.
“A handkerchief over his mouth and nose.”
“Colour?”
“Blue or black. It was after dark when I saw him.”
“How did he know about you ?”
“No idea,” said Leverson, and Bristow knew that the fence would not talk a great deal.
“Voice ?” he snapped.
“Up in the air,” said Flick. “Squeaky and . . .”
