Chapter XXXJoan a Prisoner
DAZED with grief, not knowing, not seeing, not caring, not daring to think, Joan suffered herself to be led quickly into the obscurity of the side-street, and did not even realize that Oberzohn’s big limousine had drawn up by the sidewalk.
“Get in,” said the woman harshly.
Joan was pushed through the door and guided to a seat by somebody who was already in the machine.
She collapsed in a corner moaning as the door slammed and the car began to move.
“Where are we going? Let me get back to him!”
“The gracious lady will please restrain her grief,” said a hateful voice, and she swung round and stared unseeingly to the place whence the voice had come.
The curtains of the car had been drawn; the interior was as black as pitch.
“You—you beast!” she gasped. “It’s you, is it? . . . Gurther! You murdering beast!”
She struck at him feebly, but he caught her wrist.
“The gracious lady will most kindly restrain her grief,” he said suavely. “The Herr Newton is not dead. It was a little trick in order to baffle certain interferers.”
“You’re lying, you’re lying!” she screamed, struggling to escape from those hands of steel. “He’s dead! You know he’s dead, and you killed him! You snake-man!”
“The gracious lady must believe me,” said Gurther earnestly. They were passing through a public part of the town and at any moment a policeman might hear her shrieks. “If Herr Newton had not pretended to be hurt, he would have been arrested . . . he follows in the next car.”
“You’re trying to quieten me,” she said, “but I won’t be quiet.”
And then a hand came over her mouth and pressed her head back against the cushions. She struggled desperately, but two fingers slid up her face and compressed her nostrils. She was being suffocated. She struggled to free herself from the tentacle hold of him, and then slipped into unconsciousness. Gurther felt the straining figure go limp and removed his hands. She did not feel the prick of the needle on her wrist, though the drugging was clumsily performed in the darkness and in a car that was swaying from side to side. He felt her pulse, his long fingers pressed her throat and felt the throb of the carotid artery; propping her so that she could not fall, Herr Gurther sank back luxuriously into a corner of the limousine and lit a cigar.
The journey was soon over. In a very short time they were bumping down Hangman’s Lane and turned so abruptly into the factory grounds that one of the mudguards buckled to the impact of the gate-post.
It must have been two hours after the departure of her companion, when Mirabelle, lying on her bed, half dozing, was wakened by her book slipping to the floor, and sat up quickly to meet the apprising stare of the man whom, of all men in the world, she disliked most cordially. Dr. Oberzohn had come noiselessly into the room and under his arm was a pile of books.
“I have brought these for you,” he said, in his booming voice, and stacked them neatly on the table.
She did not answer.
“Novels of a frivolous kind, such as you will enjoy,” he said, unconscious of offence. “I desired the seller of the books to pick them for me. Fiction stories of adventure and of amorous exchanges. These will occupy your mind, though to me they would be the merest rubbish and nonsense.”
She stood silently, her hands clasped behind her, watching him. He was neater than usual, had resumed the frock-coat he wore the day she had first met him—how long ago that seemed!—his collar was stiffly white, and if his cravat was more gorgeous than is usually seen in a man correctly arrayed, it had the complementary value of being new.
He held in his hand a small bouquet of flowers tightly packed, their stems enclosed in silver foil, a white paper frill supplying an additional expression of gentility.
“These are for you.” He jerked out his hand towards her.
Mirabelle looked at the flowers, but did not take them. He seemed in no way disconcerted, either by her silence, or by the antagonism which her attitude implied, but, laying the flowers on top of the books, he clasped his hands before him and addressed her. He was nervous, for some reason; the skin of his forehead was furrowing and smoothing with grotesque rapidity. She watched the contortions, fascinated.
“To every man,” he began, “there comes a moment of domestic allurement. Even to the scientific mind, absorbed in its colossal problems, there is this desire for family life and for the haven of rest which is called marriage.”
He paused, as though he expected her to offer some comment upon his platitude.
“Man alone,” he went on, when she did not speak, “has established an artificial and unnatural convention that, at a certain age, a man should marry a woman of that same age. Yet it has been proved by history that happy marriages are often between a man who is in the eyes of the world old, and a lady who is youthful.”
She was gazing at him in dismay. Was he proposing to her? The idea was incredible, almost revolting. He must have read in her face the thoughts that were uppermost in her mind, the loathing, the sense of repulsion which filled her, yet he went on, unabashed:
“I am a man of great riches. You are a girl of considerable poverty. But because I saw you one day in your poor house, looking, gracious lady, like a lily growing amidst foul weeds, my heart went out to you, and for this reason I brought you to London, spending many thousands of pounds in order to give myself the pleasure of your company.”
“I don’t think you need go any farther, Dr. Oberzohn,” she said quietly, “if you’re proposing marriage, as I think you are.”
He nodded emphatically.
“Such is my honourable intention,” he said.
“I would never marry you in any circumstances,” she said. “Not even if I had met you under the happiest conditions. The question of your age”—she nearly added “and of your appearance,” but her natural kindness prevented that cruel thrust, though it would not have hurt him in the slightest degree—“has nothing whatever to do with my decision. I do not even like you, and have never liked you, Mr. Oberzohn.”
“Doctor,” he corrected, and in spite of her woeful plight she could have laughed at this insistence upon the ceremonial title.
“Young miss, I cannot woo you in the way of my dear and sainted brother, who was all for ladies and had a beautiful manner.”
She was amazed to hear that he had a brother at all—and it was almost a relief to know that he was dead.
“Martyred, at the hands of wicked and cunning murderers, slain in his prime by the assassin’s pistol . . .” His voice trembled and broke. “For that sainted life I will some day take vengeance.”
It was not wholly curiosity that impelled her to ask who killed him.
“Leon Gonsalez.” The words in his lips became the grating of a file. “Killed . . . murdered! And even his beautiful picture destroyed in that terrible fire. Had he saved that, my heart would have been soft towards him.” He checked himself, evidently realizing that he was getting away from the object of his call. “Think over this matter, young lady. Read the romantic books and the amorous books, and then perhaps you will not think it is so terrible a fate to drift at moonlight through the canals of Venice, with the moon above and the gondoliers.”
He wagged his head sentimentally.
“There is no book which will change my view, doctor,” she said. “I cannot understand why you propose such an extraordinary course, but I would rather die than marry you.”
His cold eyes filled her with a quick terror.
“There are worse things than death, which is but sleep—many worse things, young miss. To-morrow I shall come for you, and we will go into the country, where you will say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ according to my desire. I have many—what is the word?—certificates for marriage, for I am too clever a man to leave myself without alternatives.”
(This was true; he had residential qualifications in at least four counties, and at each he had given legal notice of his intended marriage.)
“Not to-morrow or any other day. Nothing would induce me.”
His eyebrows went almost to the top of his head.
“So!” he said, with such significance that her blood ran cold. “There are worse men than the Herr Doktor,”—he raised a long finger warningly,—“terrible men with terrible minds. You have met Gurther?”
She did not answer this.
“Yes, yes, you danced with him. A nice man, is he not, to ladies? Yet this same Gurther . . . I will tell you something.”
He seated himself on a corner of the table and began talking, until she covered her ears with her hands and hid her white face from him.
“They would have killed him for that,” he said, when her hands came down, “but Gurther was too clever, and the poor German peasants too stupid. You shall remember that, shall you not?”
He did not wait for her answer. With a stiff bow he strutted out of the room and up the stairs. There came the thud of the trap falling and the inevitable rumble of the concrete barrel.
He had some work to do, heavy work for a man who found himself panting when he climbed stairs. And though four of his best and most desperate men were waiting in his parlour drinking his whisky and filling the little room with their rank cigar smoke, he preferred to tackle this task which he had already begun as soon as night fell, without their assistance or knowledge.
On the edge of the deep hole in his grounds, where the wild convolvulus grew amidst the rusty corners of discarded tins and oil barrels, was a patch of earth that yielded easily to the spade. When the factory had been built, the depression had been bigger, but the builders had filled in half the hole with the light soil that they had dug out of the factory’s foundations.
He took his spade, which he had left in the factory, and, skirting the saucer-shaped depression, he reached a spot where a long trench had already been dug. Taking off his fine coat and waistcoat, unfastening cravat and collar and carefully depositing them upon the folded coat, he continued his work, stopping now and again to wipe his streaming brow.
He had to labour in the dark, but this was no disadvantage; he could feel the edges of the pit. In an hour the top of the trench was level with his chin, and, stooping to clear the bottom of loose soil, he climbed up with greater difficulty than he had anticipated, and it was only after the third attempt that he managed to reach the top, out of breath and short of temper.
He dressed again, and with his electric torch surveyed the pit he had made and grunted his satisfaction.
He was keenly sensitive to certain atmospheres, and needed no information about the change which had come over his subordinates. In their last consultation Gurther had been less obsequious, had even smoked in his presence without permission—absent-mindedly, perhaps, but the offence was there. And Dr. Oberzohn, on the point of smacking his face for his insolence, heard a warning voice within himself which had made his hand drop back at his side. Or was it the look he saw on Gurther’s face? The man was beyond the point where he could discipline him in the old Junker way. For although Dr. Oberzohn contemned all things Teutonic, he had a sneaking reverence for the military caste of that nation.
He left the spade sticking in a heap of turned earth. He would need that again, and shortly. Unless Gurther failed. Somehow he did not anticipate a failure in this instance. Mr. Monty Newton had not yet grown suspicious, would not be on his guard. His easy acceptance of the theatre ticket showed his mind in this respect.
The four men in his room rose respectfully as he came in. The air was blue with smoke, and Lew Cuccini offered a rough apology. He had been released that morning from detention, for Meadows had found it difficult to frame a charge which did not expose the full activities of the police, and the part they were playing in relation to Mirabelle Leicester. Evidently Cuccini had been reproaching, in his own peculiar way and in his own unprincipled language, the cowardice of his three companions, for the atmosphere seemed tense when the doctor returned. Yet, as was subsequently proved, the appearance of discord was deceptive; might indeed have been staged for their host’s benefit.
“I’ve just been telling these birds——” began Cuccini.
“Oh, shut up, Lew!” growled one of his friends. “If that crazy man hadn’t been shouting your name, we should not have gone back! He’d have wakened the dead. And our orders were to retire at the first serious sign of an alarm. That’s right, doctor, isn’t it?”
“Sure it’s right,” said the doctor blandly. “Never be caught—that is a good motto. Cuccini was caught.”
“And I’d give a year of my life to meet that Dago again,” said Cuccini, between his teeth.
He was delightfully inconsistent, for he came into the category, having been born in Milan, and had had his early education in the Italian quarter of Hartford, Connecticut.
“He’d have tortured me too . . . he was going to put lighted wax matches between my fingers——”
“And then you spilled it!” accused one of the three hotly. “You talk about us bolting!”
“Silence!” roared the doctor. “This is unseemly! I have forgiven everything. That shall be enough for you all. I will hear no other word.”
“Where is Gurther?” Cuccini asked the question.
“He has gone away. To-night he leaves for America. He may return—who knows? But that is the intention.”
“Snaking?” asked somebody, and there was a little titter of laughter.
“Say, doctor, how do you work that stunt?” Cuccini leaned forward, his cigar between his fingers, greatly intrigued. “I saw no snakes down at Rath Hall, and yet he was bitten, just as that Yankee was bitten—Washington.”
“He will die,” said the doctor complacently. He was absurdly jealous for the efficacy of his method.
“He was alive yesterday, anyway. We shadowed him to the station.”
“Then he was not bitten—no, that is impossible. When the snake-bites,”—Oberzohn raised his palms and gazed piously at the ceiling—“after that there is nothing. No, no, my friend, you are mistaken.”
“I tell you I’m not making any mistake,” said the other doggedly. “I was in the room, I tell you, soon after they brought him in, and I heard one of the busies say that his face was all wet.”
“So!” said Oberzohn dully. “That is very bad.”
“But how do you do it, doctor? Do you shoot or sump’n’?”
“Let us talk about eventual wealth and happiness,” said the doctor. “To-night is a night of great joy for me. I will sing you a song.”
Then, to the amazement of the men and to their great unhappiness, he sang, in a thin, reedy old voice, the story of a young peasant who had been thwarted in love and had thrown himself from a cliff into a seething waterfall. It was a lengthy song, intensely sentimental, and his voice held few of the qualities of music. The gang had never been set a more difficult job than to keep straight faces until he had finished.
“Gee! You’re some artist, doctor!” said the sycophantic Cuccini, and managed to get a simulation of envy into his voice.
“In my student days I was a great singer,” said the doctor modestly.
Over the mantelpiece was a big, old clock, with a face so faded that only a portion of the letters remained. Its noisy ticking had usually a sedative effect on the doctor. But its main purpose and value was its accuracy. Every day it was corrected by a message from Greenwich, and as Oberzohn’s success as an organizer depended upon exact timing, it was one of his most valuable assets.
He glanced up at the clock now, and that gave Cuccini his excuse.
“We’ll be getting along, doctor,” he said. “You don’t want anything to-night? I’d like to get a cut at that Gonsalez man. You won’t leave me out if there’s anything doing?”
Oberzohn rose and went out of the room without another word, for he knew that the rising of Cuccini was a signal that not only was the business of the day finished, but also that the gang needed its pay.
Every gang-leader attended upon Mr. Oberzohn once a week with his pay-roll, and it was usually the custom for the Herr Doktor to bring his cash-box into the room and extract sufficient to liquidate his indebtedness to the leader. It was a big box, and on pay-day, as this was, filled to the top with bank-notes and Treasury bills. He brought it back now, put it on the table, consulted the little slip that Cuccini offered to him, and, taking out a pad of notes, fastened about by a rubber band, he wetted his finger and thumb.
“You needn’t count them,” said Cuccini. “We’ll take the lot.”
The doctor turned to see that Cuccini was carelessly holding a gun in his hand.
“The fact is, doctor,” said Cuccini coolly, “we’ve seen the red light, and if we don’t skip now, while the skipping’s good, there’s going to be no place we can stay comfortable in this little island, and I guess we’ll follow Gurther.”
One glance the doctor gave at the pistol and then he resumed his counting, as though nothing had happened.
“Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty . . .”
“Now quit that,” said Cuccini roughly. “I tell you, you needn’t count.”
“My friend, I prefer to know what I am going to lose. It is a pardonable piece of curiosity.”
He raised his hand to the wall, where a length of cord hung, and pulled at it gently, without taking his eyes from the bank-notes.
“What are you doing? Put up your hands!” hissed Cuccini.
“Shoot, I beg.” Oberzohn threw a pad of notes on the table. “There is your pay.” He slammed down the lid of the box. “Now you shall go, if youcango! Do you hear them?” He raised his hand, and to the strained ears of the men came a gentle rustling sound from the passage outside as though somebody were dragging a piece of parchment along the floor. “Do you hear? You shall go if you can,” said the doctor again, with amazing calmness.
“The snakes!” breathed Cuccini, going white, and the hand that held the pistol shook.
“Shoot them, my friend,” sneered Oberzohn. “If you see them, shoot them. But you will not see them, my brave man. They will be—where? No eyes shall see them come or go. They may lie behind a picture, they may wait until the door is opened, and then . . . !”
Cuccini’s mouth was dry.
“Call ’em off, doctor,” he said tremulously.
“Your gun—on the table.”
Still the rustling sound was audible. Cuccini hesitated for a second, then obeyed, and took up the notes.
The other three men were huddled together by the fire-place, the picture of fear.
“Don’t open the door, doc,” said Cuccini, but Oberzohn had already gripped the handle and turned it.
They heard another door open and the click of the passage light as it had come on. Then he returned.
“If you go now, I shall not wish to see you again. Am I not a man to whom all secrets are known? You are well aware!”
Cuccini looked from the doctor to the door.
“Want us to go?” he asked, troubled.
Oberzohn shrugged.
“As you wish! It was my desire that you should stay with me to-night—there is big work and big money for all of you.”
The men were looking at one another uneasily.
“How long do you want us to stay?” asked Cuccini.
“To-night only; if you would not prefer . . .”
To-night would come the crisis. Oberzohn had realized this since the day dawned for him.
“We’ll stay—where do we sleep?”
For answer Oberzohn beckoned them from the room and they followed him into the laboratory. In the wall that faced them was a heavy iron door that opened into a concrete storehouse, where he kept various odds and ends of equipment, oil and spirit for his cars, and the little gas engine that worked a small dynamo in the laboratory and gave him, if necessary, a lighting plant independent of outside current.
There were three long windows heavily barred and placed just under the ceiling.
“Looks like the condemned cell to me,” grumbled Cuccini suspiciously.
“Are the bolts on the inside of a condemned cell?” asked Oberzohn. “Does the good warden give you the key as I give you?”
Cuccini took the key.
“All right,” he said ungraciously, “there are plenty of blankets here, boys—I guess you want us where the police won’t look, eh?”
“That is my intention,” replied the doctor.
Dr. Oberzohn closed the door on them and re-entered his study, his big mouth twitching with amusement. He pulled the cord again and closed the ventilator he had opened. It was only a few days before that he had discovered that there were dried leaves in the ventilator shaft, and that the opening of the inlet made them rustle, disturbingly for a man who was engaged in a profound study of the lesser known, and therefore the more highly cultured, philosophers.
Chapter XXXIThe Things in the Box
HE heard the soft purr of engines, and, looking through the hall window, saw the dim lights of the car approaching the house, and turned out the hall lamp. There he waited in the darkness, till the door of the limousine opened and Gurther jumped out.
“I respectfully report that it is done, Herr Doktor,” he said.
Oberzohn nodded.
“The woman of Newton—where is she?”
“She is inside. Is it your wish that I should bring her? She was very troublesome, Herr Doktor, and I had to use the needle.”
“Bring her in—you!” He barked to the chauffeur. “Help our friend.”
Together they lifted the unconscious girl, but carried her no farther than the steps. At this point Oberzohn decided that she must return to the prison. First they sent the chauffeur away; the car was garaged at New Cross (it was one of Oberzohn’s three London depots), where the man also lived. After he had gone, they carried Joan between them to the factory, taking what, to Gurther, seemed an unnecessarily circuitous route. If it was unnecessary, it was at least expedient, for the nearest way to the factory led past the yawning hole that the doctor had dug with such labour.
There was no mistaking Oberzohn’s arrival this time. The trap went up with a thud, and Mirabelle listened, with a quickly beating heart, to the sound of feet coming down the stone stairs. There were two people, and they were walking heavily. Somehow she knew before she saw their burden that it was Joan. She was in evening dress, her face as white as chalk and her eyes closed; the girl thought she was dead when she saw them lay her on the bed.
“You have given her too much, Gurther,” said Oberzohn.
Gurther?
She had not recognized him. It was almost impossible to believe that this was the dapper young man who had danced with her at the Arts Ball.
“I had to guess in the dark, Herr Doktor,” said Gurther.
They were talking in German, and Mirabelle’s acquaintance with that language was very slight. She saw Gurther produce a small flat case from his pocket, take out a little phial, and shake into the palm of his hand a small brown capsule. This he dissolved in a tiny tube which, with the water he used, was also extracted from the case. Half filling a minute syringe, he sent the needle into Joan’s arm. A pause, and then:
“Soon she will wake, with your kind permission, Herr Doktor,” said Gurther.
Mirabelle was not looking at him, but she knew that his hot eyes were fixed on her, that all the time except the second he was operating, he was looking at her; and now she knew that this was the man to be feared. A cold hand seemed to grip at her heart.
“That will do, Gurther.” Oberzohn’s voice was sharp. He, too, had interpreted the stare. “You need not wait.”
Gurther obediently stalked from the room, and the doctor followed. Almost before the trap had fastened down she was by the girl’s side, with a basin of water and a wet towel. The second the water touched her face, Joan opened her eyes and gazed wildly up at the vaulted ceiling, then rolling over from the bed to her knees, she struggled to her feet, swayed and would have fallen, had not Mirabelle steadied her.
“They’ve got him! They’ve got my boy . . . killed him like a dog!”
“What—Mr.—Mr. Newton?” gasped Mirabelle, horrified.
“Killed him—Monty—Monty!”
And then she began to scream and run up and down the room like a thing demented. Mirabelle, sick at heart, almost physically sick at the sight, caught her and tried to calm her, but she was distracted, half mad. The drug and its antidote seemed to have combined to take away the last vestige of restraint. It was not until she fell, exhausted, that Mirabelle was able to drag her again to the bed and lay her upon it.
Montague Newton was dead! Who had killed him? Who were the “they”? Then she thought of Gurther in his strange attire; white dress-front crumpled, even his beard disarranged in the struggle he had had with the overwrought woman.
In sheer desperation she ran up the steps and tried the trap, but it was fast. She must get away from here—must get away at once. Joan was moaning pitiably, and the girl sat by her side, striving to calm her. She seemed to have passed into a state of semi-consciousness; except for her sobs, she made no sound and uttered no intelligible word. Half an hour passed—the longest and most dreadful half-hour in Mirabelle Leicester’s life. And then she heard a sound. It had penetrated even to the brain of this half-mad girl, for she opened her eyes wide, and, gripping Mirabelle, drew herself up.
“He’s coming,” she said, white to the lips, “coming . . . the Killer is coming!”
“For God’s sake don’t talk like that!” said Mirabelle, beside herself with fear.
There it was, in the outer room; a stealthy shuffle of feet. She stared at the closed door, and the strain of the suspense almost made her faint. And then she saw the steel door move, slowly, and first a hand came through, the edge of a face . . . Gurther was leering at her. His beard was gone, and his wig; he was collarless, and had over his white shirt the stained jacket that was his everyday wear.
“I want you.” He was talking to Mirabelle.
Her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth, but she did not speak.
“My pretty little lady——” he began, and then, with a shriek, Joan leapt at him.
“Murderer, murderer . . . ! Beast!” she cried, striking wildly at his face. With a curse, he tried to throw her off, but she was clinging to him; a bestial lunatic thing, hardly human.
He flung her aside at last, and then he put up his hand to guard his face as she leapt at him again. This time she went under his arm and was through the door in a flash. He heard the swift patter of her feet on the stairs, and turned in pursuit. The trap was open. He stumbled and tripped in the dark across the floor of the gaunt factory. Just as she reached the open, he grabbed at her and missed. Like a deer she sped, but he was fleeter-footed behind her; and suddenly his hand closed about her throat.
“You had better go out, my friend,” he said, and tightened his grip.
As she twisted to avoid him, he put out his foot. There was a grating snap, something gripped his legs, and the excruciating pain of it was agonizing. He loosened his hold of her throat, but held her arm tightly. With all his strength he threw her against the wall and she fell in a heap. Then, leaning down, he forced apart the cruel jagged teeth of the man-trap on to which he had put his foot, and drew his leg clear. He was bleeding; his trouser leg was torn to ribbons. He stopped only long enough to drag the girl to her feet, and, throwing her across his shoulder as though she were a sack, he went back into the factory, down the stairs, and threw her on to the bed with such violence that the spring supports broke. It had a strange effect upon the dazed woman, but this he did not see, for he had turned to Mirabelle.
“My little lady, I want you!” he breathed.
Blood was trickling down from his wounded calf, but he did not feel the pain any more; felt nothing, save the desire to hurt those who hunted him; wanted nothing but the materialization of crude and horrid dreams.
She stood, frozen, paralysed, incapable of movement. And then his hand came under her chin and he lifted her face; and she saw the bright, hungry eyes devouring her, saw the thin lips come closer and closer, could not move; had lost all sentient impressions, and could only stare into the eyes of this man-snake, hypnotized by the horror of the moment.
And then a raging fury descended upon him. Narrow fingers tore at his face, almost blinding him. He turned with a howl of rage, but the white-faced Joan had flown to the furnace and taken up a short iron bar that had been used to rake the burning coals together. She struck at him and missed. He dodged past her and she flung the bar at him, and again missed him. The iron struck the green box, behind the furnace, there was a sound of smashing glass. He did not notice this, intent only upon the girl, and Mirabelle closed her eyes and heard only the blow as he struck her.
When she looked again, Joan was lying on the bed and he was tying one of her hands to the bed-rail with a strap which he had taken from his waist. Then Mirabelle saw a sight that released her pent speech. He heard her scream and grinned round at her . . . saw where she was looking and looked too.
Something was coming from the broken green box! A black, spade-shaped head, with bright, hard eyes that seemed to survey the scene in a malignant stare. And then, inch by inch, a thick shining thing, like a rubber rope, wriggled slowly to the floor, coiled about upon itself, and raised its flat head.
“Oh, God, look!”
He turned about at the sight, that immovable grin of his upon his face, and said something in a guttural tongue. The snake was motionless, its baleful gaze first upon the sinking girl, then upon the man.
Gurther’s surprise was tragic; it was as though he had been confronted with some apparition from another world. And then his hand went to his hip pocket; there was a flash of light and a deafening explosion that stunned her. The pistol dropped from his hand and fell with a clatter to the floor, and she saw his arm was stiffly extended, and protruding from the cuff of his coat a black tail that wound round and round his wrist. It had struck up his sleeve. The cloth about his biceps was bumping up and down erratically.
He stood straightly erect, grinning, the arm still outflung, his astonished eyes upon the coil about his wrist. And then, slowly his other hand came round, gripped the tail and pulled it savagely forth. The snake turned with an angry hiss and tried to bite back at him; but raising his hand, he brought the head crashing down against the furnace. There was a convulsive wriggle as the reptile fell among the ashes.
“Gott in himmel!” whispered Gurther, and his free hand went up to his arm and felt gingerly. “He is dead, gracious lady. Perhaps there is another?”
He went, swaying as he walked, to the green box, and put in his hand without hesitation. There was another—a bigger snake, roused from its sleep and angry. He bit twice at the man’s wrist, but Gurther laughed, a gurgling laugh of pure enjoyment. For already he was a dead man; that he knew. And it had come to him, at the moment and second of his dissolution, when the dread gates of judgment were already ajar, that he should go to his Maker with this clean space in the smudge of his life.
“Go, little one,” he said, grinning into the spade-face. “You have no more poison; that is finished!”
He put the writhing head under his heel, and Mirabelle shut her eyes and put her hands to her ears. When she looked again, the man was standing by the door, clinging to the post and slipping with every frantic effort to keep himself erect.
He grinned at her again; this man of murder, who had made his last kill.
“Pardon, gracious lady,” he said thickly, and went down on his knees, his head against the door, his body swaying slowly from side to side, and finally tumbled over.
She heard Oberzohn’s harsh voice from the floor above. He was calling Gurther, and presently he appeared in the doorway, and there was a pistol in his hand.
“So!” he said, looking down at the dying man.
And then he saw the snake, and his face wrinkled. He looked from Mirabelle to the girl on the bed, went over and examined her, but did not attempt to release the strap. It was Mirabelle who did that; Mirabelle who sponged the bruised face and loosened the dress.
So doing, she felt a hand on her shoulder.
“Come,” said Oberzohn.
“I’m staying here with Joan, until——”
“You come at once, or I will give you to my pretty little friends.” He pointed to the two snakes on the floor who still moved spasmodically.
She had to step past Gurther, but that seemed easier than passing those wriggling, shining black ropes; and, her hand in his, she stumbled up the dark steps and eventually into the clean, sweet air of the night.
He was dressed for a journey; she had noticed that when he appeared. A heavy cloth cap was on his curious-shaped head, and he looked less repulsive with so much of his forehead hidden. Though the night was warm, he wore an overcoat.
They were passing between the wall and the factory when he stopped and put his hand before her mouth. He had heard voices, low voices on the other side of the wall, and presently the scrape of something. Without removing his hand from her face, he half dragged, half pushed her until they were clear of the factory.
She thought they were going back to the house, which was in darkness, but instead, he led her straight along the wall, and presently she saw the bulk of the barge.
“Stay, and do not speak,” he said, and began to turn a rusty wheel. With a squeak and a groan the water-gates opened inwards.
What did he intend doing? There was no sign of a boat, only this old dilapidated barge. She was presently to know.
“Come,” he said again.
She was on the deck of the barge, moving forward to its bow, which pointed towards the open gate and the canal beyond.
She heard him puff and groan as he strained at a rope he had found, and then, looking down, she saw the front of the barge open, like the two water-gates of a lock. Displaying remarkable agility, he lowered himself over the edge; he seemed to be standing on something solid, for again he ordered her to join him.
“I will not go,” she said breathlessly, and turning, would have fled, but his hand caught her dress and dragged at her.
“I will drown you here, woman,” he said, and she knew that the threat would have a sequel.
Tremblingly she lowered herself over the edge until her foot touched something hard and yet yielding. He was pushing at the barge with all his might, and the platform beneath her grew in space. First the sharp nose and then the covered half-deck of the fastest motor-boat that Mr. Oberzohn’s money could buy, or the ingenuity of builders could devise. The old barge was a boat-house, and this means of escape had always been to his hand. It was for this reason that he lived in a seemingly inaccessible spot.
The men who had been on the canal bank were gone. The propellers revolving slowly, the boat stole down the dark waters, after a short time slipped under a bridge over which street-cars were passing, and headed for Deptford and the river.
Dr. Oberzohn took off his overcoat and laid it tenderly inside the shelter of the open cabin, tenderly because every pocket was packed tight with money.
To Mirabelle Leicester, crouching in the darkness of that sheltered space, the time that passed had no dimension. Once an authoritative voice hailed them from the bank. It was a policeman; she saw him after the boat had passed. A gas-lamp showed the glitter of his metal buttons. But soon he was far behind.
Deptford was near when they reached a barrier which neither ingenuity nor money could pass; a ragged nightbird peered down curiously at the motor-boat.
“You can’t get through here, guv’nor,” he said simply. “The lock doesn’t open until high tide.”
“When is this high tide?” asked Oberzohn breathlessly.
“Six o’clock to-morrow morning,” said the voice.
For a long time he saw, stricken to inactivity by the news, and then he sent his engines into reverse and began circling round.
“There is one refuge for us, young miss,” he said. “Soon we shall see it. Now I will tell you something. I desire so much to live. Do you also?”
She did not answer.
“If you cry out, if you will make noises, I will kill you—that is all,” he said; and the very simplicity of his words, the lack of all emphasis behind the deadly earnestness, told her that he would keep his word.
Chapter XXXIIThe Search
“ ’WARE man-traps,” said Gonsalez.
The white beam of his lamp had detected the ugly thing. He struck at it with his stick, and with a vicious snap it closed.
“Here’s one that’s been sprung,” he said, and examined the teeth. “And, what’s more, it has made a catch! There’s blood here.”
Manfred and Digby were searching the ground cautiously. Then Manfred heard the quick intake of his breath, and he stooped again, picked up a strip of braided cloth.
“A man’s,” he said, and his relief betrayed his fear. “Somebody in evening dress, and quite recent.” He looked at his finger. “The blood is still wet.”
Digby showed him the ventilator grating through which he had smelt the incense, and when Leon stooped, the faint aroma still remained.
“We will try the factory first. If that draws blank, we’ll ask Dr. Oberzohn’s guidance, and if it is not willingly given I shall persuade him.” And in the reflected light of the lamp George Manfred saw the hard Leon he knew of old. “This time I shall not promise: my threat will be infinitely milder than my performance.”
They came to the dark entry of the factory, and Manfred splashed his light inside.
“You’ll have to walk warily here,” he said.
Progress was slow, for they did not know that a definite path existed between the jagged ends of broken iron and debris. Once or twice Leon stopped to stamp on the floor; it gave back a hollow sound.
The search was long and painfully slow: a quarter of an hour passed before Leon’s lamp focussed the upturned flagstone and the yawning entrance of the vault. He was the first to descend, and, as he reached the floor, he saw, silhouetted in the light that flowed from the inner room, a man, as he thought, crouching in the doorway, and covered him.
“Put up your hands!” he said.
The figure made no response, and Manfred ran to the shape. The face was in the shadow, but he brought his own lamp down and recognized the set grin of the dead man.
Gurther!
So thus he had died, in a last effort to climb out for help.
“The Snake,” said Manfred briefly. “There are no marks on his face, so far as I can see.”
“Do you notice his wrist, George?”
Then, looking past the figure, Gonsalez saw the girl lying on the bed, and recognized Joan before he saw her face. Half-way across the room he slipped on something. Instinctively he knew it was a snake and leapt around, his pistol balanced.
“Merciful heaven! Look at this!”
He stared from the one reptile to the other.
“Dead!” he said. “That explains Gurther.”
Quickly he unstrapped Joan’s wrists and lifted up her head, listening, his ear pressed to the faintly fluttering heart. The basin and the sponge told its own story. Where was Mirabelle?
There was another room, and a row of big cupboards, but the girl was in no place that he searched.
“She’s gone, of course,” said Manfred quietly. “Otherwise, the trap would not have been open. We’d better get this poor girl out of the way and search the grounds. Digby, go to——”
He stopped.
If Oberzohn were in the house, they must not take the risk of alarming him.
But the girl’s needs were urgent. Manfred picked her up and carried her out into the open, and, with Leon guiding them, they came, after a trek which almost ended in a broken neck for Leon, to within a few yards of the house.
“I presume,” said Gonsalez, “that the hole into which I nearly dived was dug for a purpose, and I shouldn’t be surprised to learn it was intended that the late Mr. Gurther should find a permanent home there. Shall I take her?”
“No, no,” said Manfred, “go on into the lane. Poiccart should be there with the car by now.”
“Poiccart knows more about growing onions than driving motor-cars.” The gibe was mechanical; the man’s heart and mind were on Mirabelle Leicester.
They had to make a circuit of the stiff copper-wire fence which surrounded the house, and eventually reached Hangman’s Lane just as the head-lamps of the Spanz came into view.
“I will take her to the hospital and get in touch with the police,” said Manfred. “I suppose there isn’t a near-by telephone?”
“I shall probably telephone from the house,” said Leon gravely.
From where he stood he could not tell whether the door was open or closed. There was no transom above the door, so that it was impossible to tell whether there were lights in the passage or not. The house was in complete darkness.
He was so depressed that he did not even give instructions to Poiccart, who was frankly embarrassed by the duty which had been imposed upon him, and gladly surrendered the wheel to George.
They lifted the girl into the tonneau, and, backing into the gate, went cautiously up the lane—Leon did not wait to see their departure, but returned to the front of the house.
The place was in darkness. He opened the wire gate and went silently up the steps. He had not reached the top before he saw that the door was wide open. Was it a trap? His lamp showed him the switch: he turned on the light and closed the door behind him, and, bending his head, listened.
The first door on the right was Oberzohn’s room. The door was ajar, but the lamps were burning inside. He pushed it open with the toe of his boot, but the room was empty.
The next two doors he tried on that floor were locked. He went carefully down to the kitchens and searched them both. They were tenantless. He knew there was a servant or two on the premises, but one thing he did not know, and this he discovered in the course of his tour, was that Oberzohn had no bedroom. One of the two rooms above had evidently been occupied by the servants. The door was open, the room was empty and in some confusion; a coarse night-dress had been hastily discarded and left on the tumbled bedclothes. Oberzohn had sent his servants away in a hurry—why?
There was a half-smoked cigarette on the edge of a deal wash-stand. The ash lay on the floor. In a bureau every drawer was open and empty, except one, a half-drawer filled with odd scraps of cloth. Probably the cook or the maid smoked. He found a packet of cigarettes under one pillow to confirm this view, and guessed they had gone to bed leisurely with no idea that they would be turned into the night.
He learned later that Oberzohn had bundled off his servants at ten minutes’ notice, paying them six months’ salary as some salve for the indignity.
Pfeiffer’s room was locked; but now, satisfied that the house was empty, he broke the flimsy catch, made a search but found nothing. Gurther’s apartment was in indescribable disorder. He had evidently changed in a hurry. His powder puffs and beards, crepe hair and spirit bottles, littered the dressing-table. He remembered, with a pang of contrition, that he had promised to telephone the police, but when he tried to get the exchange he found the line was dead: a strange circumstance, till he discovered that late that evening Meadows had decided to cut the house from all telephonic communication, and had given orders accordingly.
It was a queerly built house: he had never realized its remarkable character until he had examined it at these close quarters. The walls were of immense thickness: that fact was brought home to him when he had opened the window of the maid’s room to see if Digby was in sight. The stairs were of concrete, the shutters which covered the windows of Oberzohn’s study were steel-faced. He decided, pending the arrival of the police, to make an examination of the two locked rooms. The first of these he had no difficulty in opening. It was a large room on the actual ground level, and was reached by going down six steps. A rough bench ran round three sides of this bare apartment, except where its continuity broke to allow entrance to a further room. The door was of steel and was fastened.
The room was dusty but not untidy. Everything was in order. The various apparatus was separated by a clear space. In one corner he saw a gas engine and dynamo covered with dust. There was nothing to be gained here. The machine which interested him most was one he knew all about, only he had not guessed the graphite moulds. The contents of a small blue bottle, tightly corked, and seemingly filled with discoloured swabs of cotton-wool, however, revived his interest. With a glance round the laboratory, he went out and tried the second of the locked doors.
This room, however, was well protected, both in the matter of stoutness of door and complication of locks. Leon tried all his keys, and then used his final argument. This he carried in a small leather pouch in his hip pocket; three steel pieces that screwed together and ended in a bright claw. Hammering the end of the jemmy with his fist, he forced the claw between door and lintel, and in less than a minute the lock had broken, and he was in the presence of the strangest company that had ever been housed.
Four electric radiators were burning. The room was hot and heavy, and the taint of it caught his throat, as it had caught the throat of the Danish servant. He put on all the lights—and they were many—and then began his tour.
There were two lines of shelves, wide apart, and each supporting a number of boxes, some of which were wrapped in baize, some of which, however, were open to view. All had glass fronts, all had steel tops with tiny air-holes, and in each there coiled, in its bed of wool or straw, according to its requirements, one or two snakes. There were cobras, puff-adders, two rattlesnakes, seemingly dead, but, as he guessed, asleep; there was a South Americanfer-de-lance, that most unpleasant representative of his species; there were little coral snakes, and, in one long box, a whole nest of queer little things that looked like tiny yellow lobsters, but which he knew as scorpions.
He was lifting a baize cover when:
“Don’t move, my friend! I think I can promise you more intimate knowledge of our little family.”
Leon turned slowly, his hands extended. Death was behind him, remorseless, unhesitating. To drop his hand to his pocket would have been the end for him—he had that peculiar instinct which senses sincerity, and when Dr. Oberzohn gave him his instructions he had no doubt whatever that his threat was backed by the will to execute.
Oberzohn stood there, a little behind him, white-faced, open-eyed with fear, Mirabelle Leicester.
Digby—where was he? He had left him in the grounds.
The doctor was examining the broken door and grunted his annoyance.
“I fear my plan will not be good,” he said, “which was to lock you in this room and break all those glasses, so that you might become better acquainted with the Quiet People. That is not to be. Instead, march!”
What did he intend? Leon strolled out nonchalantly, but Oberzohn kept his distance, his eyes glued upon those sensitive hands that could move so quickly and jerk and fire a gun in one motion.
“Stop!”
Leon halted, facing the open front door and the steps.
“You will remember my sainted brother, Señor Gonsalez, and of the great loss which the world suffered when he was so vilely murdered?”
Leon stood without a quiver. Presently the man would shoot. At any second a bullet might come crashing on its fatal errand. This was a queer way to finish so full a life. He knew it was coming, had only one regret; that this shaken girl should be called upon to witness such a brutal thing. He wanted to say good-bye to her, but was afraid of frightening her.
“You remember that so sainted brother?” Oberzohn’s voice was raucous with fury. Ahead of him the light fell upon a face.
“Digby! Stay where you are!” shouted Leon.
The sound of the explosion made him jump. He saw the brickwork above the doorway splinter, heard a little scuffle, and turned, gun in hand. Oberzohn had pulled the girl in front of him so that she afforded a complete cover: under her arm he held his pistol.
“Run!” she screamed.
He hesitated a second. Again the pistol exploded and a bullet ricochetted from the door. Leon could not fire. Oberzohn so crouched that nothing but a trick shot could miss the girl and hit him. And then, as the doctor shook free the hand that gripped his wrist, he leapt down the steps and into the darkness. Another second and the door slammed. He heard the thrust of the bolts and a clang as the great iron bar fell into its place. Somehow he had a feeling as of a citadel door being closed against him.
Dr. Oberzohn had returned unobserved, though the night was clear. Passing through the open water-gate he had tied up to the little quay and landed his unwilling passenger. Digby, according to instructions, had been making a careful circuit of the property, and at the moment was as far away from the barge as it was humanly possible to be. Unchallenged, the doctor had worked his way back to the house. The light in the hall warned him that somebody was there. How many? He could not guess.
“Take off your shoes,” he growled in Mirabelle’s ear, and she obeyed.
Whatever happened, he must not lose touch of her, or give her an opportunity of escape. Still grasping her arm with one hand and his long Mauser pistol in the other, he went softly up the steps, got into the hall and listened, locating the intruder instantly.
It all happened so quickly that Mirabelle could remember nothing except the desperate lunge she made to knock up the pistol that had covered the spine of Leon Gonsalez. She stood dumbly by, watching this horrible old man fasten the heavy door, and obediently preceded him from room to room. She saw the long cases in the hot room and shrank back. And then began a complete tour of the house. There were still shutters to be fastened, peep-holes to be opened up. He screwed up the shutters of the servants’ room, and then, with a hammer, broke the thumb-piece short.
“You will stay here,” he said. “I do not know what they will do. Perhaps they will shoot. I also am a shooter!”
Not satisfied with the lock that fastened her door, he went into his workshop, found a staple, hook and padlock, and spent the greater part of an hour fixing this additional security. At last he had finished, and could put the situation in front of four very interested men.
He unlocked the door of the concrete annexe and called the crestfallen gunmen forth, and in a very few words explained the situation and their danger.
“For every one of you the English police hold warrants,” he said. “I do not bluff, I know. This afternoon I was visited by the police. I tell you I do not bluff you—me they cannot touch, because they know nothing, can prove nothing. At most I shall go to prison for a few years, but with you it is different.”
“Are they waiting outside?” asked one suspiciously. “Because, if they are, we’d better move quick.”
“You do not move, quick or slow,” said Oberzohn. “To go out from here means certain imprisonment for you all. To stay, if you follow my plan, means that every one of you may go free and with money.”
“What’s the idea?” asked Cuccini. “Are you going to fight them?”
“Sure I am going to fight them,” nodded Oberzohn. “That is my scheme. I have the young miss upstairs; they will not wish to do her any harm. I intend to defend this house.”
“Do you mean you’re going to hold it?” asked one of the staggered men.
“I will hold it until they are tired, and make terms.”
Cuccini was biting his nails nervously.
“Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, boss,” he growled. “I’ve got an idea you’ve roped us into this.”
“You may rope yourself out of it!” snapped Oberzohn. “There is the door—go if you wish. There are police there; make terms with them. A few days ago you were in trouble, my friend. Who saved you? The doctor Oberzohn. There is life imprisonment for every one of you, and I can hold this house myself. Stay with me, and I will give you a fortune greater than any you have dreamt about. And, more than this, at the end you shall be free.”
“Where’s Gurther?”
“He has been killed—by accident.” Oberzohn’s face was working furiously. “By accident he died,” he said, and told the truth unconvincingly. “There is nothing now to do but to make a decision.”
Cuccini and his friends consulted in a whisper.
“What do we get for our share?” he asked, and Oberzohn mentioned a sum which staggered them.
“I speak the truth,” he said. “In two days I shall have a gold-mine worth millions.”
The habit of frankness was on him, and he told them the story of the golden hill without reservations. His agents at Lisbon had already obtained from the Ministry an option upon the land and its mineral rights. As the clock struck twelve on June 14, the goldfield of Biskara automatically passed into his possession.
“On one side you have certain imprisonment, on the other you have great monies and happiness.”
“How long will we have to stay here?” asked Cuccini.
“I have food for a month, even milk. They will not cut the water because of the girl. For the same reason they will not blow in the door.”
Again they had a hasty consultation and made their decision.
“All right, boss, we’ll stay. But we want that share-out put into writing.”
“To my study,” said Oberzohn promptly, “march!”
He was half-way through writing the document when there came a thunderous knock on the door and he got up, signalling for silence. Tiptoeing along the passage, he came to the door.
“Yes—who is that?” he asked.
“Open, in the name of the law!” said a voice, and he recognized Meadows. “I have a warrant for your arrest, and if necessary the door will be broken in.”
“So!” said Oberzohn, dropped the muzzle of his pistol until it rested on the edge of the little letter-slit and fired twice.