The Titanic Secret Read Online Free Page B

weakening condition, the man lying on the floor looked puzzled.
    ‘So who is he?’ he demanded.
    ‘Leslie Valiant’s husband is a man named George Mansfield Cumming. You’ve probably never heard of him, because he likes it that way. He keeps a low profile, but he’s one of the most powerful men in Britain. And he employs people like me, and I’m your worst nightmare.’
    ‘Who are you?’
    Tremayne smiled slightly. ‘I’m the man who’s been following your trail for the last week. I’m the man who’s here to take Claire back to her family. And I’m the man who’s going to kill you.’
    ‘No, please, no. I can—’
    But whatever offer or plea the man was going to make was lost in the crash of another shot from Tremayne’s Webley. The man quivered once, and then lay still.
    ‘You can’t, actually,’ Tremayne murmured, tucked the pistol into his jacket pocket and turned away without a second glance.
    There were three doors leading off the landing, and he walked straight across to the one which had a key sticking out of the lock. He turned it, and pushed the door wide open. At first, he didn’t see her, and wondered for a moment if he’d got the right room. Then he heard a faint whimpering sound from the opposite corner, and stepped further into the room.
    The girl was crouched down on the floor beside a small single bed, her eyes squeezed tightly shut and her hands clamped over her ears. She was rocking slightly backwards and forward, clearly traumatized by her experience.
    Tremayne walked across to her and bent down. He rested his hand lightly on her shoulder and she shuddered.
    ‘It’s all right, Claire,’ he said soothingly. ‘It’s all over now. I’ve come to take you home.’
    He didn’t know if it was the tone of his voice, or what he was telling her, but her eyes suddenly opened and she stared at him. And then, with the kind of strength that spoke of her terror and desperation, she grabbed hold of him around the shoulders as if she would never let go, sobbing her heart out.
    ‘It’s all right,’ Tremayne said again. ‘We can go now.’
    ‘They were all so horrible to me,’ she said, when she was capable of speaking. ‘They left me in the dark, and they didn’t feed me very often. The food was horrible too. And all I had to drink was water.’
    Tremayne lifted her up with both hands – she felt fragile, as if her limbs would snap if he squeezed her too tightly – and she was still trembling. He settled her body so that she was sitting on his left forearm and walked across to the door of the small bedroom. He shielded her face as he walked across the landing and past the dead body lying there, and on down the stairs.
    He’d almost reached the bottom when a sudden realization struck him. In the bedroom, Claire had said that they were ‘all’ horrible to her. Why hadn’t she said that they were ‘both’ horrible. She was educated, and that hadn’t sounded to him like a slip of the tongue.
    And as he looked out through the open front door, he saw that the shotgun he’d tossed there was nowhere in sight. He pulled the revolver out of his pocket even as he turned his head slightly to bring his mouth close to the girl’s ear.
    ‘How many men were there?’ he asked her urgently.
    ‘Two for most of the time,’ Claire replied, ‘but sometimes there were three of them here. And then I—’
    She broke off with a sudden squeal of terror as she saw something behind them.
    Tremayne whirled round as a third man stepped into the hall from the door at the end. Like the other two, he was holding a double-barrel shotgun, and bringing it up to point it at Tremayne and the girl.
    Alex Tremayne reacted instantly. He half turned his body to try to shield the girl from the shotgun blast, and at the same time raised the revolver and squeezed the trigger. The double report of the two weapons was almost simultaneous and utterly deafening in the narrow hallway. Tremayne’s bullet hit the man in