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COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 1947, 1953 by John Russell Fearn
Copyright © 2005 by Philip Harbottle
Originally published in the Toronto Star Weekly, September 20, 1947, under the pen name Frank Russell.
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
DEDICATION
For Derek Thompson
CHAPTER ONE
SNATCH-AND-GRAB
Six years of war, and two decades of rebuilding and redevelopment, might have changed the face of London, but it had not changed the Bachelors’ club. It was still as austere as it had been in l939—gray-fronted, stone-pillared, its heavy oak doors surmounted by the Gothic archway, which is the delight of the antiquarian and the despair of the modernist. It lay to the rear of what once had been prosperous residences and which now were nothing but rubble heaps—a squat, invincible building looming with a certain air of aloof complacency amidst a spider’s web of alleys, small jewelers’ shops, second-hand dealers and light industries. The glory that had been was no more; this disgusting element of commercialism had crept in and around the Bachelors’ club, a product of the post-war era.
“Once,” Perry Lonsdale said pensively, “I was actually content with all this—proud to consider myself a member of this august community. Surprising sometimes how one’s views can change, isn’t it?”
“I presume, sir,” the bartender said as he saw Perry Lonsdale looking with sour interest at the distant vision of gray and bald heads over the backs of chairs, “you find it a bit—slow?”
“Slow!” Perry laughed shortly. “Man alive, it’s dead and doesn’t know it! I can’t think how I ever came to join as a member. Even less can I imagine why I was once perfectly satisfied with it all.”
Perry Lonsdale was tall and narrow when seen sideways, yet when seen from the front or back he was broad across the shoulders. Fair hair lay firmly brushed so as to accentuate a surprisingly high left temple, of which he was secretly extremely proud. The fingers holding the whiskey glass were sensitive; the sharp-featured face was smiling somewhat wryly. It was the expression of a man suffering from intense uncertainty engaged in the relentless struggle of trying to adjust his mind from the hectic life of a pilot to that of a very moneyed but diabolically lonely civvy street.
“I had the time of my life in the R.A.F.” he said, smiling half to himself. “I’ve tried everything I can think of to squeeze a bit of juice out of life and all I’ve got is the pip. As for this place....”
He shook his head finished the drink and stood regarding the glass in his hand.
“How long have you been back in civvy street, sir?” the bartender inquired, folding a napkin swiftly and laying it neatly on one side.
“Six weeks. Long enough to realize that I’m sorry I left.”
“One thing has not changed....” The bartender was solemn and profoundly sure of himself. “I mean women. A woman might buck you up, sir.”
Perry Lonsdale grinned widely. “I know girls by the truckload and they bore me completely....” He sighed and shook his head again. “No, I shall have to go abroad or something. Or I might even consider joining the Foreign Legion. Whatever happens, you won’t see me in here again in a hurry, unless it’s to be embalmed. I’ve got to do something—anything.”
Trailing vague conjectures behind him like a garment, Perry Lonsdale went across to the check clerk, took his hat and coat and donned them slowly because there was no conceivable reason why he should hurry. Nobody was waiting for him; nobody cared what in blazes he did. Finally, with a liberal tip and a languid nod, he stepped beyond the oak doors into the dark reek of the London night.
Suddenly the blur of sounds that made up this moment of 10:30 in London’s nightlife was shattered by one savage and unmistakable noise—shattering glass. Perry Lonsdale turned his head sharply and finished buttoning his overcoat. The noise had come from somewhere on his left, somewhere in that dark, tangled jungle of second-hand dealers, jewelers and light industrial factories—all of which were closed.
A car appeared, moving at high speed. Its headlights blazed with a bewildering brilliance down a side street. They swung, rounded a corner, and shone full upon Perry Lonsdale for a moment, and vanished as the big car roared away into the night.
Footfalls—suddenly. Swift, pattering, emphatic, coming nearer and nearer, running, filling the wide, deserted street with echo and re-echo. Perry Lonsdale finished his descent of the three steps of the Bachelors’ club entrance and looked at the slender figure of the woman hurrying toward him. She was leaning slightly to one side, weighted down by a large suitcase. She glanced backwards and bumped clean into Perry.
“Oh!”
“Sorry,” Perry said, raising his hat. “Very sorry. I hope I didn’t hurt you?”
“No—no, of course you didn’t. I’m all right.... I suppose it was my own fault, really. Silly of me not to look where I was going.”
The girl turned to move on, but hesitated as the shrill blast of a constable’s whistle smote the air.
“In trouble?” Perry asked quietly.
“No.” But the girl was breathing hard and it did not seem to be entirely from the exertion of running. “You see, I—”
She did not finish her sentence. The gleaming cape of a constable loomed out of the night and a powerful torch blazed inquisitively. Perry Lonsdale glared.
“Confound it, officer, is your sight bad or what?” he inquired. “Can’t you see me—or rather us?”
“Sorry, sir.” The voice was gruff and the light was extinguished. “Maybe you can help me.... Seen anything of a smash-and-grab party round here tonight?”
The girl put down her heavy suitcase and the eyes of both the constable and Perry strayed to it. Then Perry looked up again.
“I did hear glass being smashed,” he confessed. “Then I saw a big black closed car moving as though it were trying to beat the world’s speed record. Came right past me on the road here and seemed to come from one of those alleys.”
“And you, miss?”
“I saw an attempted smash-and-grab.” The girl spoke without hesitation and seemed in full possession of her wits. “In the lamplight I could see three men in that car. One threw a brick or some sort of object as he jumped out of the car. Another man followed him. They dived for the window they’d broken. Then when they saw me watching they just made a hasty grab at the brick again, dived back to the car and drove off. I—I sort of got scared and started running—until I collided with this gentleman.”
“Perry Lonsdale,” Perry murmured, raising his hat again. “Good evening.”
“I’m Moira Trent.”
Two more gleaming capes and helmets appeared from the distance. A squad car with its purple police sign on the roof, pulled up at the curb.
“Well, Miss Trent, that’s
