Free An Affair For the Baron by John Creasey Page A

ROOMS
APPLY: OFFICE IN LOBBY
    The Chrysler convertible had been left in a parking space at the side of the forecourt. Mannering strolled past it, and saw a small, discreet sticker on the windscreen: FOUR SQUARE RENTALS. He was mildly surprised that this was a hire car. He turned in the direction of the main entrance, remembering idly the driver’s amusement. None of this situation was really funny, but it had amusing overtones; the way the young man with the sing-song voice had behaved had been almost farcical.
    But Enrico Ballas hadn’t been farcical, in life or in death.
    Nor was Professor Arthur Alundo.
    Nor was the obvious danger to Ethel.
    And Mannering found it difficult to believe there was anything funny about the microfilm. Why, he kept asking himself, should a specialist in jewels and objets d’art, switch to microfilm?—unless, of course, the film showed the mechanism of some safe or strong-room.
    And why had he limited the Fentham theft to one necklace and bracelet? Until Mannering had found the answer to these questions, he would not, he knew, be at ease over this affair. But how could he find out more without questioning Alundo? And who in England would know if any important microfilm was missing; and whether Alundo was suspected, had ever been suspected, of spying.
    In the cold light of what he already knew, this possibility did not seem ludicrous.
    All of these thoughts flashed through Mannering’s mind as he approached a doorman in a uniform resplendent enough for the Waldorf-Astoria.
    â€œCan I help you, sir?”
    â€œI think my daughter just came in,” Mannering said easily. “I was to meet her here but I can’t remember the number of the apartment. She was with a man in a pale brown mohair suit—”
    â€œYou mean they just came in, sir?”
    â€œTwo or three minutes ago.”
    â€œThat was Mr. Ricardi, sir – with the blonde young lady.”
    â€œThat would be her.”
    â€œApartment 1701, sir – the seventeenth floor and turn right.”
    â€œThank you,” Mannering said, handing the man a dollar bill. “I’d like to surprise them.”
    He stepped into the elevator, pressed the button marked seventeen, and was taken up at a soundless speed; he was surprised when it stopped and the doors slid open.
    He stepped into a wide, opulently furnished passage, coloured in blue and gold. As he did so, a man came out of a door three or four rooms along, on the right. He was tall and heavily built, and wore a tightly fitting suit, and under his left arm he carried Ethel Alundo’s briefcase.
    It was the man with the Irish look about him – the man Mannering had passed in the corridor of the Broadway Limited the night Enrico Ballas had been murdered.
    Mannering stepped swiftly into an alcove, averting his face, but the Irishman passed without a glance in his direction, turning quickly into the elevator the other had just left. Mannering heard the doors slide to behind him. On that instant, he had a decision to make which was frightening in its possible importance.
    He must either follow the man, or go to the apartment to find out what had happened there.
    Texas Tommy – alias Ricardi – might simply have handed the briefcase over; or the big man might have been waiting, unsuspected.
    He might be a knife-artist, too.
    Mannering pressed the button of the second elevator, and heard a bell ‘ding’ almost at once. There was no time to go to the apartment; the doors slid open and he stepped inside, the elevator sinking swiftly to the lobby floor. The doorman was loitering in the hall, but there was no sign of anyone else. Seeing a notice marked CAR PARK AND GARAGE, Mannering went towards it. He spotted his quarry at once, climbing into a green Chevrolet Impala, which stood near the Chrysler convertible in which Ethel and the young Westerner had arrived. Mannering leapt into the convertible – and saw his taxi