Page
THE CHINA MAIL," "THURSDAY, JANUARY 17, 1957.
LITTLE MAN LOST
"I
WANT. you to find my husband," the plain woman in a mud-coloured frock said, and Francis Quarles
Most hus stifled a yawn. bands who disappear do so voluntarily. They
are middle-aged, tired of their dull lives and their dull wives.
Was Charles Laurence
Auch a man? Looking at his photograph, the small head with thin hair care- fully brushed, the anxious eyes, the nent clothes, the stiff collar, Quarles thought that probably he Was. Charles Laurence looked almost too respectable to be true,
by JULIAN SYMONS
Now it was Thursday after- noon, and he had not come back. The police? Mrs Laurence shuddered. "Charles would never forgive me. I am sure he has a good reason or perhaps You he has lost his memory. don't think anything bad can have happened? Poor Charles. you know, he relies on me so much, he's such a quiet, harm. less little man. W you try to find him for me, Mr" Quarles?”
Buaints was slack and EO
Quarles took the case.
With Mrs Laurence's authority he checked on Laurence's bank account, and found that there had been no substantial with- drawals recently.
Then he went to see Ress and Leverion, the im for whom Laurence worked. They said that he was on a routine auditing job at a firm of marine en- gineers named Townsend and Gulch, So far as they knew, he common for him not to come in should be there. It was quite to the office when he was
on an auditing job,
Telephone call
PRIVATE DETECTIVE
FRANCIS
QUARLES
FINDS OUT
with dust thick on the sheivos a does Mr Townsend use for man with broad shoulders and clients?" thick eyebrows confronted hini. He looked like the chucker-out at a pub.
"I'm looking for Mr Towns- end. Or Mr Lourence," Quarles added.
"Laurence? You mean the chap who does the bookca, Hasn't been here for a day or two. Anything I can do? My name's Philpott."
In a hat slond Blood an umbrella with a gold hendio. A light overcoat hung above it. Quarles put his hand on a door marked "Private,"
He listened to what Mrs Laurence, Angela Laurence, had to say. It fitted the usual pattern. Charles was an auditor working for A firm of accountants. He had been with them five years and had apparently done very well there. At least they had been able to but he was a good, conscientious He always took that Umbrella move from their flat in worker. "He's not a partner?" about with him." Croydon into a house they Quarles had built for themselves in Purley.
"Oll-fired
central heat- ing." Mrs Laurence said enthusiastically. They had always been very happy-to- gether, although unfortun- ately there were no child- ren.
Lost his memory?
On Tuesday morning, two days ago. Charles Laurence had loft as usual, wearing his blue chalk-stripe suit and a light overcoat because the evenings were chilly, carrying the gold- handled umbrella which he took about with him everywhere, rain or shine.
Mr Ross said that Laurence was not a qualified accountant,
asked. Mra Laurence
"What are you doing?" Phil- pott shouted. "Can't you read?" "Laurence has disappeared.
Mr
trad given him that impression. Lauzelse?" Quarles asked the
Mr Ross laughed. "No, he's more than an audit nothing clerk, but a very good one, Nice the man. hope nothing's wrong."
I
Quarice said he hoped so too,
and went to see Townsend and Gulch, marine engineers. Their offices were on the upper floor of a warehouse neur Queen Victoria Street.
"Mr Townsend?" Quarles usked a wheezing, watery-eyed that he old clerk, and learned was not in.
"When did you last sce
old clerk,
was
"Tuesday, sir, that
the last day. And we haven't seen Mr Townsend since Tuesday either."
List of names
Quarles
The telephone rang. picked it up. A woman's voice spoke, high and shrill,
I
"That you, Don? I thought you'd gone. This is Kewple, must have some stuff, Don, you understand. I must Can you be here in half hour?"
have dt.
"The usual place?" "That's right, the club. be waiting."
"Mr Gulch, then?”
The wheeze was evidently not meant for a tough, “Mr Gulch, he's been dead 10 years."
"I'll come In and wait," Quarles said. In a small office at the
TIME WAITS
Quarles turned
ald man!
FOR NO
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un
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veecher Building
-
club
off Cork Street,"
"The Scrambled Egg, sir, just
On the office desk Quarles aniling fair man whom he took found a photograph of a burly,
to be Townsend. a locked drawer was what he expected, a list of clients' names and several packets of dope,
In the Scrambled Egg, Quarles asked for Kewpie. The waller Jerked a thumb at a scraggy blonde who sat tapping ber high heels in a corner. She looked at him distrustfully. "Where's Don?"
"I've brought what you want," Quarles asid, "But I want some information in return.
"On the telephone you said you thought Townsend had gone. What made you say that?"
Her words tumbled out. "You swear you'll give it to me after I've told you? All right, then, it wasn't Don, it was his girl Molly Mitchell. She told me she was skipping the country. Going on a little banana boat or some- thing, called the Lady Dane.
Now- Tonight it is, she said. give me the stuff."
Tumbled to it
Quarles handed her one of the white packets and turned away, When he looked at her again her eyes were bright, her hands hod stopped shaking.
"Mind you," she said. “I don't know that Molly was going with Don. As a matter of fact she was two-timing him with some- body--I don't know who. What's your hurry, big boy? Buy me a drink."
"It works out," young Inspec- tor Dipper said to Quarles while they were on their way to the docks in the car. "From what I gather this Laurence was a simple soul He tumbled to it that Townsend was dealing in dope, said he was going to the police, and Townsend killed him. Probably buried the body in that warehouse. We'll get him all right."
At the dock they saw the cap- fain of Lady Dane and Quarles showed him photograph. Yes, the captain said, that was the man. He had come on board last night with his wife, They want- ed him? The captain shrugged his burly shoulders, “Go and get him. Cabin three.”
Inspector Dipper turned the handle of cabin three and the door opened. Inside a woman
lay on a bunk reading, and a man had his hands in an open suitcase.
REGULAR CUSTOMERS
ONLY:
HUH! MUSTA
BEEN LOOKING A
TOO MANY MOVIES..
TEXAS.— WAITING FOR THE GUSHER
Warid Copyright by arrangement with the Sfanchester Guardian
Don Iddon
flies to Texas and meets the
JILLIONAIRES
T
U.S. Oil Men deny putting the screws
Dallas..
HIS is the place where the oil comes from. The song "The eyes of Texas are upon you all the live long day, the eyes. of Texas are upon you, you cannot get away" should be changed. Now the eyes of the Western World are ол Texas.
This has been a fabulous State of oil tycoons and titans for almost two decades.
They are kings
BUT now a little group of men are so
rich and getting richer that a new name has been coined. It is jillionaire, a jillionaire being a man who owns a batch of billions.
*
The Texas barons have become kings lusty, ruthless, and generous.
Are they making money out of the Suez crisis? They are. But stories of their holding Britain and Europe to ransom are wide of the mark
as wide as this huge nation within a nation.
Million
was "Gas People's suffering."
a week!
One of the first signs I and got Nasser. from New York saw when I got off the plane to make money out of other his few failures,
20 cents."
I don't think they do. Texans are not tricky, devious, or fair- Gas is petrol. Twenty weather friends. cents is a fifth of a dollar,
Wo`don't aim for President, which was one of
men of many
Even so, the
out for themselves and the
on Britain.
But Richardson is a popular latter-day WHI Rogers and, incidentally, friend of President Elsenhower and members of the Cabinet
He says: "I sure like that Ike and he likes me,”
Although he owns two big private planes and a feet of cars, he lives astonishingly modestly in hotels and clubs, and when he drives he passes himself off as a chauffeur."
His credo is: "Do right and fear no man, don't write and fear no woman."
It Richardson had his way, which he obviously hasn't, he would give Britain the oil and the petrol for free,
He has known poverty and. has been flat broke. He claims that he turned four ten-dollar bills into his billion by, pulling, himself up by his own boot straps.
He gives away milions every. year, but not so much as a third billionaire, Hugh Roy Cullen.
Here is another ollman who, according to, friends in Dallas, has handed over $200,000,000 to universities, schools, and hospitals,
He also admires Senator Mc-
Cullen, fiercely independent the Carthy, but since the twilight and another bellever in and then the midnight closed bootstrap technique, left school over McCarthy the admiration at 12, began his rainbow ride to hundreds of millions by earning bas dwindled.
£1 a week, and worked as caiton plcker.
A dollar is worth around millions now churn the dollars Carthy whipped Washington he
In the old days when Me 7s.
giant headquarters back in New and Hunt went on hunting "I am a police officer, Dipper "You're practically giving run the world's mint,
I said to the driver: York and New Jersey as if they trips together and he was a
guest at Hunt's main house.
sald. "And I must ask you—”
The woman screamed. The man took a revolver from the uitcase and put it to his head. In the small cabin the ex- plosion seemed very loud.
Blackmail
"It had 10 be blackmail," Quarles 'sald when Molly
I travelled down with a party that's 1s. 6d, a of rich men, and I have met come even richer since I got to Dallas,
Ho
almost as far Right as
Hunt.
Oil first,
THERE
the stuff away. In English
Hunt is a six-footer, but he has small tongue, He is not talking about the Texas pil-lift money
for gallon."
Europe and the sudden
are others, blg-rich boost in prider
Labd little rich, ranging. from, the billionaire through the He said: "There's a price
The billionaires of Texas hit He is extreme Rught in multi-millionaire to the mere war on. Has been for you like a bludgeon. The richest polllies and has used a trickle millionaire,and: you are not months. But that 20-cents of all and probably the richest of his fortune to finance radio considered, A millionaire fr deal is only the little fellers mun In America is Haroldson and television stations and Texas it you have less than Lafayetto Hunt, who has newspapers which call for 10,000,000. And all the money fighting each other.
$50,000,000 a year,
super-Americanism and the hell made out of oil and cattle, and with everyone and everything also blood and sweat.
Hunt literally makt, $1,000,- else,
Mitchell had been taken away established places, same as 000 a week. Sounds Incredible,
"Laurence was only an audit clerk. Where would he have. earned enough money to bulid and maintain a house with oll- fred central heating and all the ather etceteras? Lourenco must have learned Townsend was in
probably
"You pay 30 cents at the
New York'
Overdue
TODAY however, I see that the price of petrol, or gasoline, in Texas has gone
but it is true.
Hunt shuns the spotlight and has rarely been photo- graphed or interviewed. He is 67, with a heavy, good-looking but eyes of chilling coldness,
Unlike many Texans, he
fol
A rival
W
They tell me in Dallas; "They used to say In Texas the cattle come first, then tho men, and last the women.'”
Now, and Suez underlines it ROWDING. Him, but not too
close, is Sid Richardson in thick black, ell comes first, who thinks he might be os rich. anHunt because, although Hunt's companies produce mora oil, his own oil reserves are bigger.
He
the drug racket when he int started doing the hooks, and he saw immediately that the know- ledge was worth money, I should guess he'd been Townsend's up a cent a gallon, and the doesn't talk about his money, pariser for two or three years. war is now only a skirmish. but admits; "I'm, plenty rich.
Richardson, once known 13 the billionaire bachelor, "Then he met Townsend's
This will put more mil- He began his dollar-spangled climated to girl, Molly Mitchell, and began
own properLY career running a table in an worth $1,500,000,000. to think about malding a new lions in the multi-million- Arkansas gambling house and life. That's what they all think aires' pockets, but they has been gambling ever since. Some Texans tell me: "Ia a of those respectable little men. claim that they've been But now in hundreds of cinch he's got more than that," He tried to put the screw more over-producing, and, any millions. And always winning. firmly on Townsend,
and his pal Clint asked for à lump
sum down.way, the price of oil itself
Ho says: "If I'm a fabulous Murchison, another Texas utan, They quarrelled and well, there hasn't gone up, for three character it's because I've never closed опо deal Involving you are. No doubt the body's in years, while wages,
main sald anything about myself, I $2,000,000 to back railcomman the warehouse as you salch
nover tako any interest in Robers. Young, yet another Alvo-minulo money, except to meet my next Texan, payroll.
telephone convetnation. › Said Richardson; “Sure, put mo, down for 20,000,000." |
"Later, when someone, asked ND the payroll is for the oil-reckless, he said: "Well, it was 32 thing was nob" 6.2 little wells, the great blocks of Clint's fault. Ho mumbles #0 property, the sprawling *anches,
"Molly Mitchell liked his money, but she must have Iliked him 100, or she wouldn't have promised to go away with him. Can't see the attraction, cab
tenance and materials have. Robert Wood, president of the Independent Potro- léum Association of Ameri- ca, says: "A general price increase has been · overdue From the cabin floor, primly for a long time." rospectable, even, in death, thi
You?”
Avalanche
still white collar Immaculate Io: "Isn't that putting and they bring a continually and his blue chalic-stripe suit the screws on England unspotted by blood, Charles Europei 1 Laurenco slaved up at them, th
Next Tuesday, MURDAR IN KAVIR
ins
זיל.
And back in Texas "he" sald: and increasing avalanche of dollars. Say what was that railroad puma Clint", "and me got; for," "Bob?" Hunt will atimiḥ, pv was a Escapes my mind. It mate doce The British; haven't got better anart man. Leave If at that.” ching this follatices and friends anywhere than m Taxan os
The answer in Dallas is: anart kla and I hope I'm a topenk E
PORN VARsty behind the grizzled, sealed,
but your hould have done the Hunt's hero General Mac and not unpleasant face is a joki propotly, dot, the Canal Arthur." He backed MacArthur: 20sl=tran. mind,
POCKET CARTOON by OSBERT LANCASTER
·How dari li feet the President. Baer young man,/
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