Panic! by John Creasey

Author:John Creasey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ipso Books

15

Operation B

‘Preposterous,’ said the Home Secretary.

‘Absurd!’ said the Minister of Defence.

‘Fantastic,’ said the Minister of Labour.

‘Quite beyond reason,’ opined the First Lord.

‘What kind of evidence is there?’ asked the Rt. Hon. Jonathan Bryce-Scott, the Foreign Secretary.

‘Very little,’ admitted Wishart. The Premier’s face looked drawn, his eyes lack-lustre. He was not yet sixty but he seemed to bear a burden far greater than his years could carry. ‘But the very suggestion is frightening, gentlemen.’

‘My dear Prime Minister,’ boomed Sir Oscar Willingham, Minister of Transport, ‘Craigie has raised a mare’s nest this time,’ Big, bluff and genial, Willingham shook a large forefinger. ‘Man can’t always be right, after all. Er—is there anything we can do?’

‘We can have all thickly-populated areas watched,’ said Wishart, ‘and of course that is being done.’

‘If the public gets this idea’—Bryce-Scott’s downright manner made him the least popular man in the Cabinet, but did not affect his efficiency—’it will cause a lot of trouble. I …’

‘I have made the necessary approach to the press,’ Wishart assured him. ‘Well, gentlemen, we can only hope that this is a grotesque blunder, but I shall be happier after midnight. For the moment, however, there is another thing. Just as important, in its way.’ Wishart was right below par, thought Bryce-Scott who liked and pitied the Premier. ‘Despite German denials, official confirmation comes from Lagrade of troop concentrations on the Lagra frontiers. The latest figures are …’

As Wishart went on, the minds of twenty-two Ministers of State left home affairs for foreign ones—and things happened up and down the country.

* * *

The Errols found no trace of Myra, Rogerson or Nebton on the Isle of Wight, and the police could not assist them.

The remaining six men mentioned by Anson steadfastly refused to admit that they knew anything about the coming conference, even when the question was put to them officially.

Anson hovered between life and death.

Neil Clarke did not appear at his flat during the night, nor at his office next morning.

Mr Eustace Jaffrey had broken a dinner engagement with some difficulty, and wondered whether it was worth it, until Fay arrived at his Anne’s Gate house in a wine-coloured evening gown which threw her loveliness into a vivid relief that sent his doubts to the four winds.

Mr Benjamin Morely, managing director of the biggest firm of armament manufacturers in Canada, who was staying at the Lenster Hotel in Piccadilly, received a visit during the afternoon from a pert, raven-haired, frivolous-looking woman named Dora—a fact which interested Wally Davidson, who was watching the hotel very much.

Dora had been followed by a young agent named Bramley—otherwise Bimbo—to a two-roomed flat at the top of a Chelsea mansion block, and had not stirred until she had started out again for Morley’s hotel. Wally went into the hotel in her wake and, without arousing her attentions, saw her enter Morley’s rooms without knocking, which indicated a certain degree of familiarity. It was a three-roomed suite, and in the room next that into which Dora had disappeared, Wally found a communicating door.

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