The Grab: A Classic Crime Novel Page 14

  I was almost through, anyway. I made one last desperate attempt—I went into the open and played suicide with that car. It missed me, and I ran on. For a few seconds I was out of sight of the apes. I went like lightning for the power grab and started to climb.

  I was at the top of the ladder, looking down onto the floodlit vehicle park below. I saw the car skidding round, the apes running among the vehicles. I thought: “I’ve done it. They didn’t see me!”

  And then that damned night watchman came running across to say a piece to the lawyer-man. That watchman figured I was a done man, and aimed to be on the winning side. He would get unpleasant things done to him when Joe P. Heggy returned to circulation!

  If....

  The apes started to come across towards the grab. I went in quickly. Marie sobbed when she saw me, and flung herself into my arms and started to kiss me. I said: “Some other time, honey!” and stabbed for a familiar starter button. The diesels roared into life.

  I could see down onto the apes now as I slid over a long lever. They had halted, uncertain. Now the lawyer-man shouted from the background and urged them to get up that ladder after me.

  But I was thinking. I got the caterpillars turning, and we lurched forward ponderously. The apes came running up behind, catching us easily. I let the grab go biting down into the soft soil, and then started to swing, pulling it up—and with it, five tons of soil and rock between those steel jaws.

  The apes saw what was coming and started to run for it. That big crane-boom could swing like lightning. It started to chase the apes, and I was cheering like a crazy man, up there in the box. Marie was thrilled and excited now, too.

  The apes were trying to get away, and that mighty steel grab was manoeuvring overhead. They almost ran into each other, in their frantic efforts to escape, and I let the jaws open and five tons of earth came crashing down.

  It didn’t make a direct hit, but it sent them sprawling, and it filled them with terror. I swung round and bit off another lump of hill. I could see the lawyer-man in the background. He seemed to be urging his men to get across to that ladder while I was still loading up with dirt. They weren’t moving. That mighty grab had put the fear of death into their souls. I chased them again—all of them, this time. They split up, but I kept swinging from one to the other, and that closed them again. I felt like a sheepdog, herding flock.

  The lawyer-man was running now, and I liked the sight. I even took time off to point it out to Marie. He must have decided now that things were desperate enough to use a gun, even in the presence of witnesses. The windows smashed all around us, and I dragged Marie down.

  I let the grab swing, and sent the muck swooshing out after the five desperately running men. It buried a couple, though they staggered out almost immediately and went streaking after their boss.

  It was then that they all called it a day. Being chased by a mighty, steel mountain-shifter was something they couldn’t cope with. They must have been telling the boss so, too.

  All at once they headed for the car. I went after the car with an empty grab. That really must have terrified them. They piled in, and the car went swinging away instantly...and it crashed into the rear of the workshop. That driver must have had one desperate eye on those long, steel teeth, swooping towards them from the sky.

  Those steel teeth bit around that big sedan. Screams of fear came up to us, high above the noise of diesels in the cabin. They were trapped; the doors wouldn’t open against that grab.

  I pulled back on a lever and threw two across. The grab went swinging skywards. The car went up with it, and we could hear the crushing of metal as the sides collapsed a little under the strain. When they were a hundred and twenty feet up, I switched off. They could spend the night there.

  We went down. Five minutes later someone fell out of the grab and broke his neck. It was the lawyer-man.

  We’d heard shouts from that swinging car in the jaws of the grab, and had guessed that the boys were quarrelling No doubt the terror of their position was sending them a bit crazy. The apes argued afterwards that the lawyer-man tried to climb out of the car and fell and broke his neck. It wasn’t much of a story, and our guess was they’d lost their temper and slung the boss out, but it couldn’t be proved and the affair was hushed up.

  That young Turkish officer didn’t seem bothered by the death, either. Evidently the lawyer-man was a bit of a nuisance to the police. And with his death went this trouble prepared for Marie.

  * * * *

  B.G. said, truculently: “You can quit arguing, Joe. Gissenheim’s are meeting trouble out at Athens. We’re flying there on the noon plane. The hell with it, you’ve had long enough with that dame to satisfy any man....”

  He didn’t know a thing, that B.G. Not about Marie, anyway. I didn’t want to go and leave her, even though she too had to return to Ankara soon. But...this was my job.

  When we were circling the Corinth Canal, B.G. turned his fat face towards me and jeered: “That’s one time I was too cute for you, Joe Heggy.”

  “Meaning?”

  “It was a gag, what I said about trouble in Greece.” He felt so good, because he had outsmarted Joe P., that he grew fatly truculent. “I’d had enough of Istanbul and didn’t want any arguments. For land’s sake, that Dunkley woman nearly got me more than once. Joe, you don’t know what a time I had, trying to keep away from her.”

  I said: “You swab!” because that’s a good way to address the boss. And I was filled with fury, because Marie Konti had begun to mean something in Joe P. Heggy’s life. And then I snarled to myself: “Brother, there’s going to be trouble in Athens—for you!”

  And there was.

  I sent a cable to the Dunkley dame, giving our Athens address.

  And I signed it: “Benny Gissenheim.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Gordon Landsborough was born in 1913 in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, England. On leaving school at fourteen to help support his family, he attended night classes, eventually becoming a chemist with the research department of ICI. Continuing his studies, he turned to journalism and worked on a number of papers and journals in the north of England. In 1938, he started up ARP News, a magazine promoting air raid precautions to a war-nervous England.

  He moved to London in 1939, and in 1940 he started up Reveille as the official newspaper of the Ex-Services’ Allied Association. It was bought by the Mirror Group in 1947.

  In 1940 he joined up with the London Scottish Regiment, serving for a time in the deserts of North Africa. Many years later his experiences would be incorporated into a number of bestselling war novels.

  Returning to London, in 1949 he was appointed editor of Hamilton & Co. (Stafford) Ltd, a very undistinguished lowly publisher of pulp fiction. With Landsborough at the helm, the publisher soon took a turn for the better. In 1951 he rebranded them as ‘Panther Books’, publishing a regular series of all types of genre novels, most notably science fiction, and he also launched the famous British SF magazine, Authentic Science Fiction. As part of his editorial duties, Landsborough wrote numerous westerns, crime, and foreign legion thrillers, mostly under his personal pseudonym of Mike M’Cracken. His own personal memoirs on this period of his career can be found in the book Vultures of the Void: The Legacy by Philip Harbottle.

  In 1954 Panther Books became one of the leading British publishers, switching from original genre novels to paperback reprints of bestselling hardcover novels from other publishers. Their format was improved, and only the finest cover artists were hired, including in particular “Cy Webb” (Reginald Heade) and “Peff” (Sam Peffer), Harold Johns, and Josh Kirby. Nonfiction titles predominated, especially Second World War books, and the fiction titles were by famous bestselling writers, internationally known.

  Landsborough had earlier tsken a break from Hamiltons to pursue his own career as a writer, eventually producing about 100 books over the next thirty-five years. His publishing expertise was well known within the trade, however, and he was employed
as an advisor to several publishing companies

  In 1957 Landsborough started up Four Square Books, backed by Godfrey Phillips, the tobacco company. Michael Geare, who was employed by him in 1957 as sales manager, said of him that “He was a gifted, clever, likeable chap, and really knew everything about book publishing. On one occasion when we were a book short on the list, he took five days off and wrote the book himself. It wasn’t half a bad paperback, either.” Four Square Books was very successful, and were sold to New English Library in 1962.

  Landsborough went on to create several successful imprints, most notably the children’s paperback company, Armada Books (later bought out by Collins Books), The Armada Books list included, somewhat controversially, Enid Blyton, whose books at that time was frowned on by libraries and academics, but still sold in their hundreds of thousands. His list also included his own adaptations for children of the Tarzan and the Beau Geste series of books, and stories written for children based on the popular television series Bonanza.

  Later in the 1960s he started up another children’s publishing company, Dragon Books. This was also acquired by Collins (Armada).

  Always a very generous and public-spirited man, during the 1960s Gordon Landsborough helped several charities and friends set up publishing ventures, including Trust Books, New Zealand Books, and Viking Books.

  During this time he continued writing, including a dozen books under his own name, the best-selling of which in 1956 was Tobruk Commando. In 1956 he also published a book about the Battle of the River Plate with sales revenue going to the survivors’ fund, and in 1961 (under the pseudonym Alan Holmes) the book of Tony Hancock’s film The Rebel. In the 1970s he continued to write, producing another five books, including the popular Glasshouse Gang series.

  In the early 1970s he worked on freelance publishing ventures in Hong Kong and Australia involving tourism and travel.

  In the mid 1970s he returned to England and turned his hand to bookselling, opening up a remainder bookselling business, Bargain Books. This mushroomed into a highly successful business, with four stores.

  Throughout his life, as well as helping friends and family set up publishing and bookselling businesses, Gordon Landsborough spent much of his spare time helping charitable causes, particularly for war veterans. In the late 1970s he bought a large shop in Staines and, at his own expense, turned it into a community centre for senior citizens.

  He held strong views about many social and political issues and actively campaigned for many of them, such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

  Gordon Landsborough died in 1983, aged 70, survived by three sons and two daughters.

  In recent years several English publishers have been reissuing the best of his western and crime and foreign legion novels, and many of his dynamic detective thrillers are being published in the USA for the first time by The Borgo Press.