“The things they teach you in the Commandos,” said Ronnie admiringly.
“Commandos!” said McCann. “I learnt that at my prep. School – now let’s start rehearsing.”
The next three hours were in some ways the most singular McCann had ever spent in his life. What little they could do by way of preparation had been completed. There was nothing else to do but wait.
He himself was physically not uncomfortable. He was sitting on the blankets, his shoeless foot tucked under him, his armed right hand lying under his coat. Experiments had shown that from a sitting start he could reach the door in just under two seconds. After that everything would have to be left to chance. But his mind was desperately perturbed.
At three o’clock and again at five o’clock a face had peered at them through the grating. McCann thought he had recognised the Jew. No word had been said and the door had remained shut.
Ronnie was sitting against the wall now, ready to get into position. His face was very white and it was difficult to say what he was thinking. Attempts at conversation had been given up long since.
The minutes crawled by.
Supposing they don’t come at all tonight, he thought. Perhaps Mr. Brown was just pulling my leg – it would be well in keeping with his sadistic soul. God, if I could get my fingers on him once – just once.
“Someone coming, sir,” said Ronnie. He stood up quickly, and flattened himself. “Only one, I think.”
“More than one,” said McCann. “Two at least.”
His heart was thumping and the blood was hammering in his head.
Normal, you fool, Angus; look normal. Stop scowling. Take a grip of yourself. This is it.
What followed seemed to McCann to happen in the slow motion of a nightmare.
Eyes looked through the grating. There was a mutter of conversation. It was impossible even at that point to say with certainty whether there were two or three men outside.
The lock clicked, the door swung open, and the Scotsman, Jock, stepped quickly into the room.
“Stand well back, and aim for the temple,” McCann had said.
The heavy shoe seemed to hover interminably. Then there was a sound such as a leather cricket ball makes as it meets the soft surface of a cricket bat.
Jock crumpled forward.
McCann saw Ronnie drop the shoe and leap quietly through the doorway.
Then he found himself on his feet.
He didn’t know whether Jock was finished or not, and there was certainly no time to find out.
As the Scotsman tumbled forward, he hit him square in the face.
In the passage some desperate action was obviously going on, but it took McCann a vital second to clear the body of his adversary in the doorway.
Outside, things were not going well. McCann had seen all along that the tiny delay necessary for Ronnie and himself to get through the doorway and into the passage would give the opposition side just enough time to square up to the attack. There was only one man there, but it was the big Jew and he knew the ropes.
Ronnie had simply thrown himself at him and had succeeded in getting his hands round his throat. Nine men out of ten would have wasted time trying to tear those hands away. The Jew was the tenth. Steadying his broad back against the wall he had shifted his weight on to one foot, and then brought down the heel of his other boot hard on to Ronnie’s stockinged foot.
There was a horrid crunch and a noise, half gasp, half yell, as Ronnie collapsed. As he went down some merciful instinct caused him to maintain his grip on his adversary’s throat.
It was at this moment that McCann arrived.
The Jew was bending half forward under Ronnie’s sagging weight and his attention was distracted. McCann pivoted on to his left foot and put all his weight and strength and skill into one wholehearted uppercut.
The Jew buckled to his knees and his head sagged forward. McCann kicked him hard in the throat.
The fight was over.
From beginning to end it had taken almost exactly ten seconds. McCann found himself gasping for breath as if he had run a mile. His right hand was swollen and thick with blood – some of it his own. He noticed that two of the coins were still in place, and slowly picked them out and dropped them into his pocket.
Someone said: “Quick. No time to waste.”
He was never quite sure whether it was himself or Ronnie.
Stooping, he grasped the Jew’s ankles and dragged him along the passage and into the room. Jock was lying where he had fallen. He went back and, getting an arm round Ronnie, he half carried him back and sat him down against the wall.
“It’s no good,” said Ronnie, with a very white face. “I can’t move. If I put any weight on this foot I shall pass out. For God’s sake clear out quick and get help.”
“All in good time,” said McCann. His mind was working again now.
A rapid search produced one gun – a German automatic with a full clip of nine – a cosh, a pair of steel “knuckles” and the door key. He pulled the two bodies over to where Ronnie was sitting and laid them face downwards on the floor on either side of him.
“Tie their wrists together,” he said. “Use their ties and handkerchiefs and belts. Start with Jock. I think the Jew’s dead – but don’t risk it. Tie him just the same.”
“Okay,” said Ronnie, “but hurry.”
“I’m just going,” said McCann. “Take this—you’ll need it.” He passed over the gun. “I’m going to lock the door on the outside. There’s just a chance that this is the only key. Anyway, if you sit well back you’ll be out of range from the spy-hole. Good luck.”
Thirty seconds later he was creeping down the stairs.
As he reached the first floor landing he heard steps coming up and Mr. Brown’s voice said: “Jock—Benny. What the hell’s wrong with everyone tonight.”
McCann opened the first door he saw and slipped inside. It was a bedroom, he saw, and mercifully empty.
He waited until he heard the footsteps starting up the second flight to the floor above. It was a fair drop, with what looked, in the dark, like a flower-bed.
He threw one leg over the window-sill, turned on to his stomach, slid out the full length of his arms, and let go. The flower-bed, he discovered, was full of standard rose bushes.
As he picked his way painfully to his feet he heard a shout from inside the house, high up. And then the slam of an automatic.
The machinery was running at full throttle now. Hazlerigg sat in his room at Scotland Yard and listened to the reports coming in.
Throughout the metropolitan area and out into the fringes of the home counties hundreds of policemen, squad men, uniformed and plainclothes detectives, searched and patrolled and asked questions – and listened.
They were looking for Leopold Goffstein, late of Flaxman Street, and they had several excellent photographs to assist them. They were looking for Benjamin Kraftstein (“Benny” the Jew had been identified at last). They were looking for a youth “name unknown, aged approximately nineteen years, height five feet nine inches, hair brown, no distinguishing marks” – and all they had to help them in that case was a seven-year-old photograph taken from a boxing group.
They were looking, too, for Sergeant Catlin and Major Angus McCann, the last as the result of a panic-stricken telephone call from Miss Carter which had reached the Yard at four o’clock that afternoon.
“I sat in the North-West Auction Rooms today,” said Hazlerigg to Pickup, “and watched the Demarest diamonds being sold by Curliers. I don’t think they knew who they were really acting for—I did.”
“Couldn’t you have stopped the sale?” said Pickup. He knew that he was talking nonsense and the telephone bell saved Hazlerigg from the necessity of answering.
The instrument cackled for nearly a minute.
“No,” said Hazlerigg at last. “I’m sorry. Yes, I quite agree. It’s not definite enough to act on. Keep him under observation.”
“Who’s seen who—and where, sir?”
“Goffstein’s been seen in Whitechapel.”
“And Birmingham and Welshpool and—oh, yes. Saffron Walden.”
“He gets about,” agreed Hazlerigg.
The phone bell went again.
“A resident of Highgate,” said Hazlerigg at last. “Whereabouts?—Oh, the Holly Lodge Estate—yes, wait whilst I get a map, please. Go on. I see. Yes, all right. You can take that up. Report back here.”
To Pickup he said: “Highgate police have had a man in who reports hearing revolver shots. He says they sounded like an automatic. He also says that he fought in the infantry for six years and knows an automatic when he hears one.”
“That’s not saying it’s anything to do with this case, sir, even supposing he’s right.”
“Of course not,” said Hazlerigg. “Go and get some dinner, there’s a good chap. I’ll have mine when you get back—hold on, here’s another.
“Hello—hello. Yes. Who?” Something in the Chief Inspector’s voice halted Pickup at the door.
“Oh, well done, Major,” said Hazlerigg. “Well done indeed. Yes. Hold on, we’re coming.”
At the foot of Highgate West Hill, Hazlerigg issued his operation orders. The few citizens who were about at that hour gaped at the concourse of squad cars which had materialised so softly and now seemed to fill the road. Pickup was talking to the Superintendent from Highgate. He ran across to the Chief Inspector.
“They’ve got the man here, sir,” he said, “—the one who was going to investigate the shooting when your message came through. He says he knows the house well.”
“All right,” said Hazlerigg. “He can come with us as a guide. One car ahead now, to block the driveway. The rest of you on foot from here.”
The Superintendent said: “My men are coming down from the top, Inspector. They ought to be in position in a minute.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Hazlerigg. “Other cars to follow in three minutes.”
The stage emptied.
At the corner of the private roadway was the driver of the squad car which had gone ahead to block the entrance. He had some disquieting news for them.
“Just a matter of a split second,” he said. “As I brought the car over, out he came – on a motorbike. Missed my bumper by an inch. Turned up the hill.”
“Did you recognise him?” asked Hazlerigg.
“Young chap, sir. Slim sort of build – and a white face. That’s all I could see. I’d have stopped him if I could, sir—”
“All right,” said Hazlerigg, “I’m sure you did your best. The Superintendent’s men will probably have picked him up at the top.”
The Superintendent loomed in front of them.
“We’re all round the house now,” he said. “Shall I give them the word to close? I’m leaving this part to you.”
“Thank you very much, sir,” said Hazlerigg politely. “I think I’ll give the house a knock first in the routine way.”
As he spoke, the clouds which had been thinning for some time shredded away, and the clear cold full moon rode out.
Hazlerigg walked up the path alone. The click of the garden gate as it shut behind him was startlingly loud. His footsteps crunched on the gravel. From the house no gleam of light showed. As far as McCann could make out from his vantage point in the laurel hedge, all the downstairs windows were shuttered.
“It’s Lombard Street to a china orange they’re all away,” he thought. “When Mr. Brown found that I was gone, he must have known – that gave him a clear ten minutes to get cracking – unless he stopped to deal with Sergeant Catlin.”
McCann’s eyesight, as has been said, was good, particularly at night. He saw the shutter of the front room swinging back and caught the flicker of moonlight on steel.
Three voices shouted at once.
Hazlerigg, whose hand was outstretched to the door, flung himself sideways, rolling as he fell, so quickly that the action seemed to synchronise with the opening of the shutter and the burst of fire.
McCann was deafened by the crack of an automatic from almost behind him and, turning his head, he became aware that M. Bren was standing in the edge of the shadows, a gun in either hand.
As he looked the Frenchman fired again. It was good practice, at thirty yards, and at night. Every shot was hitting the steel shutter and the man behind the shutter was clearly afraid to open it further.
Hazlerigg, apparently unhurt, had taken advantage of this diversion to disappear into the line of hedge nearest the house.
“Flip me,” said a cheerful voice from behind the wall, “talk about the battle of flipping Sidney Street – this is it.”
“Keep yer head down, Nobby. Remember you’re only six months orf y’ pension.”
“Keep those men quiet. Sergeant.”
Outside in the road McCann found the Superintendent and Inspector Pickup. A moment later M. Bren joined them.
“They mean business, all right,” said the Superintendent.
“I hope—no, here comes the Inspector. He looks all right.”
“Thanks to Monsieur Bren,” said Hazlerigg. He, like McCann, seemed to have encountered a painful number of rose bushes in his escape, and was wiping blood from his cheek.
“I have never understood before,” said M. Bren, “why the British policeman does not carry a weapon. Now I comprehend. Had they been armed tonight”—he indicated the line of excited constables behind the wall—”nothing could have saved you.”
“What’s the next move?” said the Superintendent. “Have to wait for the military, I suppose.”
“They won’t be long, sir,” said Hazlerigg. “I gave Colonel Hunt the word before I started—just in case. And talk of the devil—”
An unmistakable figure had materialised beside them.
“I have a section of the Brigade of Guards in two trucks at the end of the road,” said Colonel Hunt. “I heard firing as I came up—”
“They fired on the Chief Inspector,” said the Superintendent.
“Splendid,” said Colonel Hunt, “splendid. That regularises the situation at once. This is Lieutenant Sir William Carpmael, who commands the section. He will have the actual handling of the troops of course.”
Lieutenant Sir William Carpmael plucked at his long blond moustache and then said: “Well, now, perhaps you could put me in the picture.”
“We shall have to rush the house,” said Hazlerigg. “Since none of my men are armed, I propose to keep them well back, as a cordon. Lessen the chance of accidental casualties that way.”