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    His Own Theft: (Writing as Anthony Morton)
    His Own Theft: (Writing as Anthony Morton)
    His Own Theft: (Writing as Anthony Morton)
    Ebook221 pages3 hours

    His Own Theft: (Writing as Anthony Morton)

    By John Creasey

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    About this ebook

    John Mannering (aka ‘The Baron’) is a retired jewel thief and cracksman who now runs a respectable antique business, Quinns, in London’s Mayfair. He buys and sells objet d’art and also provides safe-keeping for many precious items – gold, silver and especially jewellery. A new generation of criminals see him as an obvious target – can they outsmart the man who was a legend amongst their fraternity in his time? They find, however, that robbing their ‘man’ isn’t quite as easy as they might have hoped, although ‘The Baron’ does come perilously close to disaster in a tale that has an unexpected twist. Unless he acts, at least two people will be condemned to a life of unhappiness.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHouse of Stratus
    Release dateMay 1, 2015
    ISBN9780755137428
    His Own Theft: (Writing as Anthony Morton)
    Author

    John Creasey

    Born in Surrey, England, into a poor family as seventh of nine children, John Creasey attended a primary school in Fulham, London, followed by The Sloane School. He did not follow his father as a coach maker, but pursued various low-level careers as a clerk, in factories, and sales. His ambition was to write full time and by 1935 he achieved this, some three years after the appearance of his first crime novel ‘Seven Times Seven’. From the outset, he was an astonishingly prolific and fast writer, and it was not unusual for him to have a score, or more, novels published in any one year. Because of this, he ended up using twenty eight pseudonyms, both male and female, once explaining that booksellers otherwise complained about him totally dominating the ‘C’ section in bookstores. They included: Gordon Ashe, M E Cooke, Norman Deane, Robert Caine Frazer, Patrick Gill, Michael Halliday, Charles Hogarth, Brian Hope, Colin Hughes, Kyle Hunt, Abel Mann, Peter Manton, JJ Marric, Richard Martin, Rodney Mattheson, Anthony Morton and Jeremy York. As well as crime, he wrote westerns, fantasy, historical fiction and standalone novels in many other genres. It is for crime, though, that he is best known, particularly the various detective ‘series’, including Gideon of Scotland Yard, The Baron, The Toff, and Inspector Roger West, although his other characters and series should not be dismissed as secondary, as the likes of Department ‘Z’ and Dr. Palfrey have considerable followings amongst readers, as do many of the ‘one off’ titles, such as the historical novel ‘Masters of Bow Street’ about the founding of the modern police force. With over five hundred books to his credit and worldwide sales approaching one hundred million, and translations into over twenty-five languages, Creasey grew to be an international sensation. He travelled widely, promoting his books in places as far apart as Russia and Australia, and virtually commuted between the UK and USA, visiting in all some forty seven states. As if this were not enough, he also stood for Parliament several times as a Liberal in the 1940’s and 50’s, and an Independent throughout the 1960’s. In 1966, he founded the ‘All Party Alliance’, which promoted the idea of government by a coalition of the best minds from across the political spectrum, and was also involved with the National Savings movement; United Europe; various road safety campaigns, and famine relief. In 1953 Creasey founded the British Crime Writers’ Association, which to this day celebrates outstanding crime writing. He won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his novel ‘Gideon’s Fire’ and in 1969 was given the ultimate Grand Master Award. There have been many TV and big screen adaptations of his work, including major series centred upon Gideon, The Baron, Roger West and others. His stories are as compelling today as ever, with one of the major factors in his success being the ability to portray characters as living – his undoubted talent being to understand and observe accurately human behaviour. John Creasey died at Salisbury, Wiltshire in 1973. 'He leads a field in which Agatha Christie is also a runner.' - Sunday Times.

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      Book preview

      His Own Theft - John Creasey

      Chapter One

      The Plot

      Two men sat in a small, inexpensive car in Hart Row, a narrow street in Mayfair, London, a few doors away and across the road from one of the most famous shops in the world, which was known as Quinns. Quinns was famous first for its rare antiquity as a building in the heart of a great city, for it was over four hundred years old, each timber, each tile, each wooden beam as it was when it had first been built, for this house had been owned by men who loved it ever since it had first been occupied, and had been as well-cared for as a favourite mistress, a beloved wife or a doted-on child. True, there had been some changes, even running water and a bathroom were now upstairs, but nothing had been changed or wasted and a few beams which had been cut or sawn had been preserved, as relics from a tomb.

      Quinns was also famous because it was an antique shop owned by John Mannering.

      Yet ‘antique’ and ‘shop’ were not quite the right words. In the first place, rare paintings and objets d’art, old jewellery as well as jewelled pieces, changed hands in the narrow and often shadowy building itself, the lighting designed to create the greatest effect: to show small pieces of priceless furniture, or miniatures perhaps by Watteau, or an ikon from a Russian church long since destroyed, or even on a single ring or a jewelled scabbard. Or there might be a piece of porcelain designed and made by a master a thousand years ago, having a lustre which had to be subtly brought out, to make it glow, rather than have a light shining upon it harshly, so that the brightness hid both blemishes and beauty.

      The two men in the car were father and son, who had more than blood in common. They were criminals.

      True, they were clever enough never to have been caught and to the best of their knowledge never even suspected; but they lived off the proceeds of crime and lived very well; in fact, in comparative luxury.

      It was a bright spring day. Window boxes at the first floor windows of some of the other shops, mostly describing themselves as salons, were filled with daffodils and late crocuses, a few had primroses or polyanthuses in a great variety of colours, which caught the sun. Yet it was cold. The driver’s window of the car was open only a crack, and although the two men talked, not a word was heard by passers-by. There was the trim, middle-aged woman with her small poodle not quite small enough to be a ‘toy’ and the two elderly women who turned into the milliner’s nearly opposite Quinns, the young couple who stood outside a window where Indian and Persian carpets were on dignified display, the film starlet and her eager long-haired manager turning into a photographer’s who was becoming famous. All these, as well as men and women walking briskly to or from a huge new building of reinforced concrete which had two garage floors underneath. This building occupied a bombed-out site which had been empty for years and where Mannering and many of his clients as well as some of his staff had parked their cars.

      Since the huge block had gone up there, parking had been much more difficult in the area, and cars were more often seen unlawfully parked or standing – as was the little red one now – in Hart Row. By some accident of architectural design the new building was not visible from Hart Row, which was completely unspoilt, with no place in it newer than a hundred years old.

      A policeman turned the corner from Bond Street, and the man at the wheel, Jonathan, the son, saw him in the driving mirror.

      ‘The Law’s approaching,’ he remarked laconically.

      ‘They’ll do no more than move us on,’ said David, the father. ‘Have you seen enough, do you think?’

      ‘For the time being, yes. But are you sure …?’ the son broke off.

      ‘In that shop Mannering never keeps less than half a million pounds’ worth of stock,’ the father asserted. ‘And in the strong room there is at least another million pounds’ worth.’

      After a pause, Jonathan Cleff conceded, ‘I’ve never known you wrong.’

      ‘I’m not wrong about this, either.’

      ‘Good. The Law is about to descend,’ announced Jonathan.

      He pretended to start in surprise when there was a tap at his window, and he turned his head and saw a youthful face beneath a curiously foreshortened policeman’s helmet at the window. He wound it down hastily, and said, ‘Oh, Lord! Am I breaking the rules?’

      ‘I’m afraid so, sir. Only dropping and picking up is allowed along here it’s so narrow. You must have seen the double yellow line. Are you going to be long?’

      ‘If my wife could make up her mind more quickly we would have been away by now,’ said David Cleff. ‘I quite expected her to be out.’

      ‘They do take their time, sir, don’t they?’

      ‘Is there anywhere near where I can wait?’

      ‘If you drive into the forecourt of Hart House, that’s at the end of Hart Row, sir, you’ll probably be all right for a while,’ the policeman advised. ‘So long as you’re not here for more than another five minutes.’ He smiled his apologetic smile and walked on with the slow gait acquired very early in a policeman’s life, while Jonathan wound up the window until it was open only a crack, and placed a hand on the gear lever.

      ‘No point in annoying him,’ he remarked. ‘But the piece about a wife won us five minutes!’ He looked across at Quinns, was silent for a few moments before going on. ‘One and a half million pounds’ worth. Problem one: how to get it? Problem two: what to do with it once we have it? Problem three: how to make sure no one knows who took it? Dad – may I be frank?’

      ‘You’ll have changed if you’re not!’

      ‘This is too big a job for us.’

      ‘On our own it would be,’ David Cleff said quietly.

      ‘But we always work alone!’ Jonathan sounded alarmed.

      ‘We always have a buyer,’ David pointed out. ‘So we can never be entirely alone. This time we need an expert of a different kind as well as a very big buyer. I don’t think selling the goods will cause us much trouble. In fact I think we could find the market in advance.’

      ‘Dad,’ said Jonathan. ‘I hate to say it but I think you’re wrong about this.’

      ‘Do you?’ asked David the father. ‘Drive up to Hart House, will you?’

      His son obeyed, and immediately they passed Quinns, where a grey-haired man with very regular features was placing a jewelled casket on to a velvet-covered plinth in the window. This man was ex-Detective Chief Superintendent Bristow, now the manager of Quinns. A younger man stood behind Bristow, visible only in vague outline. Neither father nor son appeared to glance towards Quinns but soon they turned out of Hart Row into the forecourt of the mammoth building.

      Huge though this was, it did not seem out of place. There was a simplicity about the lines, about the puckered stonework and the countless windows which was strangely mellowing. The forecourt itself was large and a dozen or so cars stood neatly parked, each space meticulously marked with a name except a spot saying Visitors Parking, which was close to another sign reading Garage. As Jonathan turned towards the Visitors Parking his father said: ‘Go the other way round.’

      ‘Into the garage, you mean?’

      ‘Past the garage entrance,’ said the father.

      ‘You are being very mysterious this morning.’ Jonathan’s voice had a slightly exasperated edge. ‘What have you got up your sleeve?’

      ‘I’ll tell you in a moment. Drive slowly past and look for anything unusual.’

      Jonathan did as he was told.

      Anyone observing them would have known at a glance they were father and son. Full-face, this was not particularly obvious, but as they glanced towards the garage ramp their profiles, caught in the same light and at the same angle, might have been carved from the same model. High foreheads, sharp recesses at the eyes, long but not over-long noses, short upper lips, full lower lips, sculptured chins. Jonathan’s hair was raven black and his father’s iron grey; and Jonathan had a leaner look at the cheek and beneath the chin where his father had a hint of a jowl. Otherwise, they were startlingly alike.

      Jonathan looked away.

      ‘The bulge in the wall?’

      ‘Yes,’ David answered.

      ‘Behind Quinns?’

      ‘Yes. There is a double reinforcement of concrete there to protect Quinns’s strong room.’

      Jonathan pulled the car up near the Visitors Parking sign, turned and looked at his father with unfeigned admiration, all exasperation gone.

      ‘How did you find out?’

      ‘I checked the plans.’

      ‘Where?’

      ‘At the Westminster City Hall,’ answered the older man. ‘A property is falling vacant in Hart Row, two doors away from Quinns, and I said I was interested in buying and wanted to know what restrictions there were in the conveyance and whether I could build in the small yard – I said I needed a warehouse for television and radios. So they let me see the plans to prove there was no chance of going an inch beyond the present wall. The young man in the surveyor’s department pointed out where the construction engineers had been forced to make the garage ramp too narrow at one place because they couldn’t disturb Quinns, which is a historic building and preserved under the Act, whatever it is. So I wanted to check on Mannering’s application to have Quinns registered as a building that has to be kept in its present condition.’

      Jonathan breathed, ‘And you didn’t say a word of this to me!’

      ‘I never do talk about a project until I’m sure it’s practicable,’ his father reminded him drily. ‘Mannering had to deposit plans, of course, and the section closest to the Hart House garage ramp isn’t part of the old building, it’s an underground addition or extension. What else could it be but Quinns’s strong room?’ David glanced at his son and laughed suddenly and with obvious satisfaction. ‘It’s almost certain that we couldn’t get into Quinns from Hart Row, but we can get into that strong room at a weekend, Jon. The new building is an office block, there isn’t even a penthouse. Most of the offices are closed from Friday evening until Monday morning, all of them are closed from one o’clock on Saturday. There are two night watchmen, both on duty on week-nights, only one on Saturday and Sunday. We would have to deal with them and get through the concrete.’

      Jonathan barked, ‘How?’

      ‘We’ll have a builder’s lorry painted with the name of the contractors who built Hart House,’ answered his father. ‘And we’ll hire a pneumatic drill. Have you ever handled a pneumatic drill?’ he inquired.

      ‘I can learn,’ replied Jonathan.

      ‘You’re going to have to be a builder’s labourer for a week or two,’ David told him. ‘You need to be an expert. Once we’re through we’ll bring everything two people can carry out of the strong room and put it in the truck. There’s no way of estimating how long it will take but with luck we shall be in and out by Saturday evening.’

      Jonathan moistened his lips, was silent for a few moments, and then asked in a hoarse voice, ‘What about the things in the shop?’

      ‘If we can get into the shop easily, we’ll take them. If we can’t, we’ll leave them.’

      Jonathan gulped.

      ‘And—and what about a buyer?’

      ‘I think I know a buyer, as I told you,’ answered David Cleff. ‘But that’s one of the things it’s better for you not to know about yet.’

      For a moment it looked as if Jonathan would argue, but he raised no protest and instead sat farther away from his father and looked at him with that unfeigned admiration, marvelling. David raised his hands palms upwards, and shrugged. They were still there when the young policeman appeared from an alley on the far side of the new building, a short cut to Piccadilly and to Park Lane. If he recognised them he showed no sign but walked at a much faster gait than when he had first passed them. And he did not appear even to glance at them.

      Suddenly, Jonathan blurted out, ‘When, Dad?’

      ‘Within the month, I should say.’

      ‘Must we wait as long as that?’

      ‘You have to learn how to use a pneumatic drill,’ David reminded his son.

      ‘And you have to find that buyer!’

      There was something else which David Cleff had to do, but he did not dwell on it then although he had already mentioned it in passing. He had to ‘take care’ of the night watchmen, and in some ways this would be the most difficult as well as the most distasteful of it all. David did not wish to kill them. He had on occasions used violence but only to save himself never as a means of pulling off a coup. He did not yet see how he could handle the men without violence, and so far all he knew was that they existed; he did not know who they were nor where they lived.

      Certainly it would be a month before everything was ready. That would be in early May, say early to middle May. He must find a way to make sure that Jonathan did not get too impatient, and probably the best way would be to find one or two smaller – much smaller – assignments to do. He knew his son extremely well. In another two or three years the boy might have to go off on his own, but until that day came they would continue to make a perfect team.

      The Quinns job might even work a miracle, might even make it possible for them both to get out of ‘the game’ forever.

      He was not really a believer in miracles. He would probably be too restless, anyhow; having plenty of money and so being able to lead an idle life would not of itself appeal to him for long. He did not think it would appeal to Jonathan, either, but Jonathan hadn’t yet met the girl he wanted to marry. Once he did, his attitudes might change radically. If he were wealthy from the Quinns haul then the chances of his leading a happy life were surely much the greater.

      The one thing which did not seriously occur to David Cleff was that the Quinns affair might fail.

      As they passed the narrow-fronted shop with the name in Elizabethan lettering on the dark fascia board, a man approached, tall, lean, quite outstandingly handsome even at a distance, startlingly so when at close quarters. He paused for a moment to look at the jewelled casket and then turned into Quinns briskly. He shot one glance at the little red car before disappearing.

      ‘Dad!’ exclaimed Jonathan, almost gasping.

      ‘Yes,’ David Cleff said. ‘I know. That was John Mannering.’

      Chapter Two

      John Mannering

      John Mannering noticed the little red car as he recognised the similarity of the two men in it, on the perimeter of his vision. That was how he noticed most things, although he could pull many sharply into focus whenever he wanted to, provided they had registered firmly enough in the beginning. At that moment he also noticed the young couple coming out of the oriental carpet shop, recently the scene of some violent crimes, and the attractive girl in stockinged feet who was taking a hat off a stand in the milliner’s window. He never ceased to marvel at the amount of money women would pay for the ephemeral value of a hat. He was not marvelling this morning, however, but was deeply preoccupied; even his glance at the Egyptian casket which Bristow had put in the window was cursory. Bristow was talking to a girl at the back of the shop. Two of the younger assistants at Quinns, virtually apprentices, were dusting stock; the sight of young men in immaculate neo-Edwardian dress, hair beautifully combed and brushed, using dusters like a parlour-maid was always incongruous. A third young man was standing by the side of a frail-looking youth in front of four miniatures: gems by an unknown Dutch artist.

      The girl turned from Bristow, anxiety obvious in a pretty face.

      ‘Oh, Mr. Mannering. I can’t

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