Free Shadow The Baron by John Creasey Page A

Josh?”
    “Well . . .”
    “Go and make peace with Hetty over bacon and eggs,” Mannering said. “Then slip out, and stay away until I send for you. Have you decided where to stay yet?”
    “At the Grayville – a small place in Dover Street, sir. I know the management and can have a room with a telephone.”
    Alone again, Mannering drank hot tea and smoked a cigarette, keeping an ear cocked for the front door bell. It didn’t ring. He shaved and bathed, and had breakfast, and it was half past ten before he had finished. By then, Larraby had gone.
    The telephone bell rang, suddenly.
    Mannering lifted the receiver warily. “John Mannering speaking.”
    “Hold on, please, I’ve a call from Salisbury for you.”
    Salisbury meant Lorna. He leaned back, beaming.
    “Darling.” Lorna’s voice was faint
    “I’ve been waiting for the past hour for this,” said Mannering, with reproach that became genuine the moment he had voiced it.
    “Darling, are you all right?”
    “Of course I’m all right.”
    “Why aren’t you at the shop?”
    “I woke up too late.”
    “John, have you seen the newspapers?”
    “I have, indeed.”
    “John, were you out late last night?”
    “Not so late apparently as the Shadow.”
    There was a pause, and then Lorna said in a more definite voice: “I wish I knew whether to believe you or not.”
    “It’s not worth the effort, my dear, believe me in that. How’s your mother?”
    “Not too good,” Lorna said, “I can’t leave her, otherwise, of course, I’d be in London with you. I don’t trust you on your own. John, be careful. Don’t take any risks.”
    “I’m growing older and wiser,” Mannering said.
    “Older, certainly. Telephone me sometime tonight.”
    “I will,” promised Mannering. “And if you think I ought to come to Salisbury . . .”
    “I would like you to, though I can’t pretend it’s a matter of life and death,” Lorna said. “Just be careful.”
    She rang off, abruptly. Mannering replaced the receiver, seeing his wife in his mind’s eye. He sat back for ten minutes, with the same thoughtful expression on his face, then picked up the newspapers, and read them thoroughly for the first time. He scanned them for the slightest detail that might help, and then threw them aside. He felt restless, anxious to know what had transpired at Buckley Street, in one way glad that the desk safe had been empty. If the police had found a haul there, Smith and the girl would by now be lodged at the police station. The papers said nothing about an arrest.
    Why hadn’t he heard from Bristow?
    Could he have been wrong about the identity of the man who had been watching the flat?
    He would have assumed that he had, but for the memory of the uniformed figure who had joined the other two. Bristow knew he had been out; Bristow was probably certain that he was the burglar of Buckley Street. Mannering checked over all that had happened and what he had said to the girl; he could find no weak link. He’d left no prints, nothing with which he could be identified. Bristow would be furious, the constables he had bowled over would probably be even more so, but there was nothing the police could do.
    Bristow wasn’t likely to ask for his help again in a hurry.
    Then the front door bell rang.
    He listened, as Hetty plodded heavily across the hall. Her words were indistinct. But he recognised the voice of the man who spoke; it was Bristow.
     
    Bristow came in, smiling broadly. He crossed the study and shook hands. The gardenia in his buttonhole was fresh, his suit was newly pressed, he seemed to be at peace with the world; this wasn’t the harassed and mortified policeman Mannering had pictured in his mind’s eye.
    “Hallo, John. Feeling off colour?”
    “I’m fine,” said Mannering cautiously.
    “If tactlessness might be forgiven an old friend, you certainly don’t look it,” said Bristow. “Thanks.” He lit a cigarette and sat down carefully adjusting the crease of his