‘I got in, didn’t I?’
‘But not while you were pushing half a ton of banknotes in front of you and it’s impossible for any vehicle to get through that gate until it’s been thoroughly checked. Something of a problem, I should have thought.’
‘Sorry I haven’t time to discuss it now,’ Chavasse said. ‘But don’t fail to buy an evening paper. They’ve promised to print the solution for me.’
He produced a large piece of sticking plaster and pasted it over the cashier’s mouth before he could reply. ‘Can you breathe all right?’ Crabtree nodded, something strangely like regret in his eyes, and Chavasse grinned. ‘It’s been fun. Somehow I don’t think you’ll be on your own for long.’
The door closed behind him with a click and Crabtree sat there in the silence, waiting, feeling more alone than at any other time in his life. It seemed an age before he heard heavy feet pounding along the corridor and the anxious knocking started on the door.
The previous Wednesday when it all started, was a morning of bright sunshine and Chavasse had chosen to walk through the park on his way to Bureau headquarters. Life, for an intelligence agent, is a strange and rather haphazard existence compounded of short, often violent, periods of service in the field followed by months of comparative inactivity, often spent in routine anti-espionage investigations or administration.
For almost half a year Chavasse had clocked in each morning as ordered, to sit behind a desk in a converted attic in the old house in St John’s Wood to spend the day sifting through reports from field sections in all parts of the globe – demanding, highly important work that had to be done thoroughly or not at all – and so damned boring.
But the sun was out, the sky was blue, the dresses were shorter than he’d ever known them, so that for once he took his time and strolled across the grass between the trees smoking a cigarette, discovering and not for the first time in his life, that after all, a man didn’t need a great deal to be utterly and completely happy – for the moment, at any rate. Somewhere a clock struck eleven. He glanced at his watch, swore softly and hurried towards the main road.
It was almost half past the hour when he went up the steps of the house in St John’s Wood and pressed the bell beside the brass plate that carried the legend Brown & Co – Importers and Exporters.
After a few moments, the door was opened by a tall greying man in a blue serge uniform and Chavasse hurried past him. ‘I’m late this morning, George.’
George looked worried. ‘Mr Mallory was asking for you. Miss Frazer’s been phoning down every five minutes for the past hour.’
Chavasse was already half-way up the curving Regency staircase, a slight flicker of excitement moving inside him. If Mallory wanted him urgently, then it had to be for something important. With any kind of luck at all the pile of reports that overflowed from his in-tray were going to have to be passed on to someone else. He moved along the landing quickly and opened the white-painted door at the far end.
Jean Frazer turned from a filing cabinet, a small, attractive woman of thirty who wore a red woollen dress of deceptively simple cut that made the best of her rather full figure. She removed her heavy library spectacles and shook her head.
‘You would, wouldn’t you?’
Chavasse grinned. ‘I went for a walk in the park. The sun was shining, the sky was blue and I seemed to see unattached young females everywhere.’
‘You must be getting old,’ she said and picked up the telephone.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Skirts are shorter than ever. I was often reminded of you.’
A dry, remote voice cut in on them. ‘What is it?’
‘Mr Chavasse is here, Mr Mallory.’
‘Send him in. No calls for the next hour.’
She replaced the receiver and turned, a slight mocking smile on her mouth. ‘Mr Mallory will see you now, sir.’
‘I love you too,’ Chavasse said and he crossed to the green baize door, opened it and went in.
‘Prison escapes have always been a problem,’ Black said. ‘They never average less than two hundred and fifty a year.’
‘I must say that seems rather a lot.’ Mallory helped himself to a Turkish cigarette from the box on his desk.
Although by nature a kindly man, as a Detective Chief Superintendent with the special Branch at New Scotland Yard, Charlie Black was accustomed to his inferiors running to heed his slightest command. Indeed, there was a certain pleasure to be derived from the sudden nervousness noted in even the most innocent of individuals when they discovered who and what he was. But we are all creatures of our environment, moulded by everything and anything that has happened to us since the day we were born and Black, branded by the years spent below stairs in the mansion in Belgrave Square where his mother, widowed by the first world war, had been cook, stirred uneasily in his chair for he was in the presence of what she, God rest her soul, would have termed his betters.
It was all there – the grey flannel suit, the Old Etonian Tie, the indefinable aura of authority. Ridiculous, but for the briefest of moments, he might have been a small boy again returning the old Lord’s dog after a walk in the park and receiving a pat on the head and sixpence.
He pulled himself together quickly. ‘It’s not quite as bad as it looks. About a hundred and fifty men each year simply walk out of open prisons – nothing to stop them. I suppose you could argue that the selection procedure has been faulty in the first place. Another fifty are probably men released on parole for funerals and weddings and so on, who simply take off instead of coming back.’
‘Which leaves you with a hard core of about fifty genuine escapes a year.’
‘That’s it – or was. During the past couple of years there’s been an increase in the really spectacular sort of escape. I suppose it all started with Wilson the train robber’s famous break from Birmingham. The first time a gang had actually broken into a prison to get someone out.’
‘Real commando stuff.’
‘And brilliantly executed.’
‘Which is where this character the Baron comes in?’
Black nodded. ‘To our certain knowledge he’s been responsible for at least half a dozen big breaks during the past year or so. Added to that he runs an underground pipeline by which criminals in danger of arrest can flee the country. On two occasions we’ve managed to arrest minor members of his organisation – people who’ve passed on men we’ve been chasing to someone else.’
‘Have you managed to squeeze anything out of them?’
‘Not a thing – mainly because they honestly hadn’t anything to say. The pipeline seems to be organised on the Communist cell system, the one the Resistance used in France during the war. Each member is concerned only with his own particular task. He may know the next step along the route, but no more than that. It means that if one individual is caught, the organisation as a whole is still safe.’
‘And doesn’t anyone know who the Baron is?’
‘The Ghost Squad have been trying to find out for more than a year now. They’ve got nowhere. One thing’s certain – he isn’t just another crook – he’s something special. May even be a Continental.’
Mallory had a file open on the desk in front of him. He examined it in silence for a moment and shook his head. ‘It looks to me as if your only hope of finding out anything about him at all would be to get a line on one of his future clients which in theory should be impossible. There must be something like sixty thousand men in gaol right now – how do you find out which one it is?’
‘A