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Authors: Colin Forbes

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BOOK: The Power
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That's High Tor. I once climbed—' She broke off. 'I
wonder who that is? There's a man on a horse at the
summit of the tor.'

Tweed looked up. Too far away even to guess at what he
looked like, the horseman remained stationary for a
brief interval and Tweed had the impression he was
studying them through field-glasses. Then he was gone.

'Saw you, mate,' Butler said with unconcealed satis
faction.

Tweed and Paula swung round. Butler was holding a
small slim monocular glass, another sophisticated device
created in the basement at Park Crescent. It operated
like a high-powered telescope.

'A big chap,' Butler continued. 'Wearing a deerstalker
hat. That's all I observed before he vanished.'

'You really are a wizard,' Paula commented. 'The
equipment concealed among your clothes.'

She turned round, started walking, stopped and grab
bed Tweed by the arm.

'Up there, midway down High Tor. I saw the sunlight
flash off something. More binoculars.'

'That horseman again,' Tweed suggested.

'No, it's someone else. Look at the bottom of the tor.'

On the level, a long way below the summit, a horse
man was riding off at a furious gallop. Tweed frowned as
Butler came alongside them, Walther in his right hand.

'This is sinister,' Tweed said. 'We have the massacre at the manor, which I'm convinced was supposed to include us. The killer was probably instructed to wipe
out the whole lunch party without knowing his targets -
with the exception of Julius Amberg. And now we are
under surveillance. Then there was the Park Crescent
bomb.'

'I can't see any one outfit - however large and well
organized - synchronizing both atrocities so close
together. Not one in London and the other in Cornwall.
Amberg only phoned you this morning,' Paula reminded
him.

'Except that is what appears to have happened,'
Tweed rejoined.

'A motorcade is approaching the manor,' Butler
warned.

They all turned round and looked down on the distant
road snaking over the moor towards the entrance. Three
police cars and one private car leading the procession.

'Better get back,' Tweed said. He looked at Paula. 'How are you feeling now?'

Tons better.' She patted her stomach. 'All's well. That
dried toast Cook made me was just what I needed.

'That's a terrible thing which happened at Park Cres
cent,' she went on as they hurried back down the sandy
track. 'At least no one was injured or killed. I don't
understand what's going on.'

'A wholesale and frighteningly professional attempt to
wipe us all out. And I have only two clues as to who is
behind this extermination campaign.'

'Which are?' Paula asked, not expecting Tweed to tell
her.

The fact that so few people know the location of our HQ, that so few knew we were due to arrive at Tresillian
Manor. Those go together. The other clue is Joel
Dyson...'

He stopped speaking as they neared the entrance and
out of the front of the private car, a Volvo station wagon, a
tall, lean and lanky figure stepped. The last man on earth Tweed wanted to meet at this juncture.

'No one mentions the Park Crescent outrage,' he
warned. 'Not unless someone else mentions it first. We
don't know about it.'

'What's the matter?' Paula enquired.

'Don't you recognize him? That's our old friend and my
sparring partner, Chief Inspector Roy
Buchanan of the
Yard.'

* * *

Tweed. Miss Grey.' Buchanan was formal in his greeting.
As though we were mere acquaintances, Paula thought.
'And who, may I ask, is this?' Buchanan demanded.

'You just did,' Tweed told him in a neutral tone. 'Harry
Butler, one of my staff. There are two more inside. Pete
Nield and Philip Cardon - guarding the place and looking
after the staff of four, who are in a state of shock. It's a blood bath,' he warned.

'Which is why I flew down here in a helicopter. At the
request of the Commissioner.'

What's going on? Tweed wondered. The Commissioner
of Police. As high up as you could go. Why? Buchanan was
a calm and highly efficient detective. Detached in manner,
his thick brown hair was neatly trimmed, as was his
moustache. His grey eyes were alert and shrewd. He took
charge immediately.

'Let's walk up the drive, give me a chance to get an idea
of the surroundings. What were you doing out on the
moor?' He asked suddenly as they neared the manor,
followed by the cars. A typical thrusting question aimed at
catching off guard Buchanan's target.

'We went for a walk to get the atmosphere of what's
inside there out of our minds,' Paula replied.

'I was addressing Tweed.'

'Same answer,'Tweed said.

'I gather from what you told Exeter,' Buchanan con
tinued, 'this Swiss banker, Julius Amberg, invited you
down to lunch and you arrived late. I spoke to Exeter
myself before boarding the helicopter at Battersea.'

'You gathered correctly,' Tweed replied.

'Look, Tweed, I understand there are eight bodies
inside the mansion, shot to death ...'

'Seven. The butler was stabbed.'

'A detail. You're answering questions like a suspect.. .'

'A detail!' Paula burst out. 'It wasn't a detail to Mounce the butler. It was his life. In his forties, I'd guess.'

Tweed smiled to himself. Paula had vented her
indignation to give him time to cope with Buchanan.

'Possibly not the best way of phrasing it,' Buchanan agreed. 'But this is a murder investigation.'

'Why has the Commissioner intervened?' Tweed
snapped, using Buchanan's surprise question tactic against
him.

'Well...' Buchanan was thrown off balance. 'First there
is the scale of the crime. Then an important foreigner is
involved. Amberg was a member of the BIS which meets in
Basle. The Bank for International Settlements.'

'We
are
aware of what the initials stand for,' Paula told
him drily.

'Is that your only explanation for this unprecedented
intervention of the Commissioner?' Tweed pressed.

'It's the only one you're going to get,' Buchanan
snapped.

He paused. Paula guessed he was annoyed at losing his
cool. He stood staring at the manor, with its curved
Dutch-style gables surmounting the towers at either end.
He studied the large window? behind which was located the
Great Hall. The grey, mellow stone and the mullion
windows showed up at their best in the sunlight.

'It's beautiful,' Buchanan remarked and Tweed recalled that one of his interests was architecture. To think such a
tragedy should take place in such an ideal setting. Who
owns it?' he asked suddenly.
'Amberg?'

'No. A man called Gaunt. The locals call him Squire
Gaunt. He's rented it to Amberg before,' Paula replied.

'How do you know that?' Buchanan demanded.

They were walking again. As they approached the
mansion Philip Cardon came out of the front door, waited
for them on the terrace.

A small well-built man of thirty, Cardon was the most
recent recruit to join the SIS. Clean-shaven, he had an
amiable expression, An expert linguist, he had penetrated
the inner fastnesses of China, speaking Cantonese and
passing for a native.

'That's Philip Cardon,' Tweed remarked.

'I asked you how you knew this Squire Gaunt owns this
little jewel,' Buchanan persisted.

'Because Julius Amberg told me,' Paula replied. That was just before lunch was served, the lunch the poor devils never got a chance to sample.'

'Wait a minute.' Buchanan paused at the foot of the
steps leading up to the terrace.
'You
were here before this
massacre took place? I understood you all turned up later.'

'You understood wrong,' she rapped back. 'And can we go inside before I explain? It's cold out here.'

'Yes. And you've got a lot of explaining to do,'
Buchanan informed her grimly.

An hour later Buchanan had taken separate statements
from Paula and then Tweed. Scene of the Crime teams
were still swarming over the manor, mainly in the dining-room. A doctor who had arrived with them had officially
pronounced that all eight corpses
were
corpses. Photo
graphers and fingerprint men were still busy with their different tasks.

Cook had supplied umpteen cups of tea, secretly
grumbling to Tweed at the amount of sugar they put in a
cup.

'It's bad for them. Don't they know anything?'

'Only their own jobs,' Tweed had replied wearily.

Buchanan's interrogations had been intensive. At the
end he felt sure Tweed and Paula were concealing informa
tion but he realized he'd never break them. On each he
sprang his bad news near the end of the interrogation.

'Miss Grey, something strange is going on.'

'It most certainly is.'

'I have grim tidings from London. Your headquarters at

Park Crescent has been totally destroyed by the most
massive bomb. Not a stone left standing.'

He waited. She saw the trap and nodded her head.
Crossing her shapely legs she responded.

'Isn't it dreadful?'

'I'd have expected you to ask whether there were ser
ious casualties.'

'Oh, we know all about it - and no one was even
injured, thank heavens. Bob Newman happened to be
talking to Monica in Tweed's office. They noticed the Espace parked outside and evacuated the building just in
time.'

'And how do you come to know that?' Buchanan asked
in his most persuasive tone.

'Because Bob - Newman - phoned the news to us.'

'He knew you were down here, then?'

'Only because Monica told him. She had the phone number of Tresillian Manor and Bob phoned in the hope we were still here.'

BOOK: The Power
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