Stranglers' Moon: Family d'Alembert Book 2 by Goldin Stephen & Smith E.E. 'Doc'

Author:Goldin, Stephen & Smith, E.E. 'Doc' [Goldin, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2011-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

Garst was not pleased. Lessin, the man who had been conducting the briefing in the warehouse before the interruption occurred, had gone straight to his boss with the news of the intruder. Now he was not so sure it was the safest thing he could have done.

‘To be spied on is one thing, but to have discovered the spy and let him get away is rank incompetence!’ Garst’s short, corpulent body was trembling with rage. Lessin knew those rages – in fact, had seen them directed at other people. The results were never pleasant, and he mentally braced himself for the punishment he knew would come.

‘We all tried,’ he began to apologize. ‘I’ve never seen a man move like that before. He was like a wild animal—’

‘And you only outnumbered him thirty-three to one,’ Garst sneered. ‘Panna-cats have been caught barehanded at smaller odds than those. Your men are all well-trained and good at their jobs; most of them have been with us for years, yet you could not catch one simple person,’ He banged his palm with his fist in frustration.

Lessin waited in silence for Garst’s rage to blow over. Anything he could say would only add to the fury the other felt.

At length, Garst’s temper subsided a little. He turned his back on Lessin and walked around behind his large desk. ‘The question now is, who was that man? What kind of threat does he represent? Was he acting on his own, or are there others with him?’

‘The men from my Group Two know him. He started working at the docks with them a couple of days ago. He calls himself Georges duChamps and he’s originally from DesPlaines. They had a bit: of a problem with other workers in their outfit and this duChamps intervened a couple of times both for and against them. They can’t figure him out.’

‘A DesPlainian, eh?’ Garst settled himself behind his desk and drummed his fingers impatiently across the top. ‘Well, that may excuse some of your bungling; I’ve heard some pretty impressive things about them. But still – thirty-three to one—’ His voice trailed off and he shot Lessin a meaningful glance.

The subordinate decided to leap into the conversational breach before Garst had much chance to contemplate further on the mishap. ‘I think he was just working on his own. He’d had a few brush-ups with my men, and was curious about them, that’s all. After all, he couldn’t be with the police – they wouldn’t dare interfere with us—’

‘But we can’t be sure!’ Garst banged a fist down hard on the solid wood desk-top. ‘In this business, Lessin, we can’t afford to take any chances at all. Take nothing for granted. There are other constabularies than our own, you know. So far, I grant you, they have not seen fit to intercede in our business, because we’ve been careful not to be too greedy. A little trickle diverted from a wide stream is never missed. But there is always the possibility that we slipped up somewhere and alerted someone.

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