The Titanic Secret Read Online Free Page A

had missed the target. Then the man moved quickly. And just as suddenly he stopped.
    Tremayne stilled his breathing, concentrating as hard as he could on just listening, waiting for the first creak on the wooden floorboards of the landing that would indicate precisely where the man above him was.
    For a few seconds, he heard nothing at all – the man must have been standing as still as Tremayne – but then he started to move. And he shouted down at Tremayne, yelled his defiance and made the threat that Tremayne had been fearing ever since he’d stepped inside the building.
    ‘You’re dead, you interfering bastard. And I’ve got the girl. She’s my ticket out of here.’
    Tremayne heard the man’s footsteps quickly crossing the landing, heading for one of the bedrooms, presumably where he’d locked the girl, and knew he had just seconds to act.
    He estimated where the man had to be, aimed his pistol at the floorboards again and fired. Once, twice.
    This time he was rewarded by a scream of agony. Maybe one of the bullets had found its mark. There was a clattering sound from above him – perhaps the shotgun falling – then a heavy thud and a bubbling wail of pain.
    Tremayne knew he had just one round left in the pistol, and it was possible that the man above him was trying to trick him, pretending to be hit so that Tremayne would walk boldly up the stairs, thinking the danger was passed.
    It was worth taking a few seconds to reload. He pressed the catch beside the hammer on the pistol to open the weapon and reveal the rear of the cylinder, shook out all six cartridges – five of them fired, one not – into the palm of his left hand and dropped them into his jacket pocket. Then he quickly slid six more bullets into the cylinder and closed the weapon again.
    Only then did he step forward, the pistol pointing upwards, and begin a slow and cautious ascent of the staircase.
    The man was still moaning, and as Tremayne climbed upwards he discovered that his quarry was certainly injured. The sudden dripping of blood through a gap in the floorboards, the drops splashing fatly onto the floor of the hall below, told its own story.
    But still he was cautious. And as he climbed high enough to see onto the landing, his caution was justified. The shotgun barrel moved slightly towards him.
    Tremayne instantly ducked down, and the blast roared over his head, blowing open a six-inch wide hole in the opposite wall.
    He hadn’t heard the man reload the weapon, but he took no chances. He jumped down a couple of steps, pointed the pistol at the floorboards where he now knew the man was lying, and pulled the trigger twice.
    Only then did he turn round and resume his ascent of the staircase.
    This time, when he reached the landing, the man’s hands were nowhere near the shotgun. Instead, he was still moaning and clutching his stomach and left leg. The dark upwelling of arterial blood from between his fingers was proof enough of his injuries.
    ‘Doctor,’ he said hoarsely, his voice racked with pain. ‘You’ve gotta get me a doctor. I’m hurt bad.’
    Tremayne nodded at him. ‘I hope you are,’ he said. ‘But you forfeited your right to civilized treatment the moment you and your partner snatched that girl off the street. She’s only twelve years old.’
    ‘We ain’t laid a finger on her.’
    ‘That doesn’t matter. You kidnapped her, and then you demanded a ransom. But you made a mistake. In fact, you made two mistakes. You obviously knew the identity of the girl’s aunt – Leslie Marian Valiant, better known as “May” – and you knew she would pay almost anything to get Claire released from your clutches. But what you failed to realize was that your ransom demand wouldn’t be opened by the aunt, but by her husband, because he lives in Whitehall and she doesn’t. Your second mistake was not knowing who her husband is, and what he would be likely to do.’
    Despite the agony of the gunshot wounds, and his steadily