Chapter VII“Moral Suasion”
“THERE’S a man wants to see you, governor.”
It was a quarter-past nine. The girls had been gone ten minutes, and Montague Newton had settled himself down to pass the hours of waiting before he had to dress. He put down the patience cards he was shuffling.
“A man to see me? Who is he, Fred?”
“I don’t know: I’ve never seen him before. Looks to me like a ‘busy.’ ”
A detective! Monty’s eyebrows rose, but not in trepidation. He had met many detectives in the course of his chequered career and had long since lost his awe of them.
“Show him in,” he said with a nod.
The slim man in evening dress who came softly into the room was a stranger to Monty, who knew most of the prominent figures in the world of criminal detection. And yet his face was in some way familiar.
“Captain Newton?” he asked.
“That is my name.” Newton rose with a smile.
The visitor looked slowly round towards the door through which the footman had gone.
“Do your servants always listen at the keyhole?” he asked, in a quiet, measured tone, and Newton’s face went a dusky red.
In two strides he was at the door and had flung it open, just in time to see the disappearing heels of the footman.
“Here, you!” He called the man back, a scowl on his face. “If you want to know anything, will you come in and ask?” he roared. “If I catch you listening at my door, I’ll murder you!”
The man with a muttered excuse made a hurried escape.
“How did you know?” growled Newton, as he came back into the room and slammed the door behind him.
“I have an instinct for espionage,” said the stranger, and went on, without a break: “I have called for Miss Mirabelle Leicester.”
Newton’s eyes narrowed.
“Oh, you have, have you?” he said softly. “Miss Leicester is not in the house. She left a quarter of an hour ago.”
“I did not see her come out of the house?”
“No, the fact is, she went out by way of the mews. My—er”—he was going to say “sister” but thought better of it—“my young friend——”
“Flash Jane Smith,” said the stranger. “Yes?”
Newton’s colour deepened. He was rapidly reaching the point when his sang-froid, nine-tenths of his moral assets, was in danger of deserting him.
“Who are you, anyway?” he asked.
The stranger wetted his lips with the tip of his tongue, a curiously irritating action of his, for some inexplicable reason.
“My name is Leon Gonsalez,” he said simply.
Instinctively the man drew back. Of course! Now he remembered, and the colour had left his cheeks, leaving him grey. With an effort he forced a smile.
“One of the redoubtable Four Just Men? What extraordinary birds you are!” he said. “I remember ten-fifteen years ago, being scared out of my life by the very mention of your name—you came to punish where the law failed, eh?”
“You must put that in your reminiscences,” said Leon gently. “For the moment I am not in an autobiographical mood.”
But Newton could not be silenced.
“I know a man”—he was speaking slowly, with quiet vehemence—“who will one day cause you a great deal of inconvenience, Mr. Leon Gonsalez: a man who never forgets you in his prayers. I won’t tell you who he is.”
“It is unnecessary. You are referring to the admirable Oberzohn. Did I not kill his brother . . . ? Yes, I thought I was right. He was the man with the oxycephalic head and the queerly prognathic jaw. An interesting case: I would like to have had his measurements, but I was in rather a hurry.”
He spoke almost apologetically for his haste.
“But we’re getting away from the subject, Mr. Newton. You say this young lady has left your house by the mews, and you were about to suggest she left in the care of Miss—I don’t know what you call her. Why did she leave that way?”
Leon Gonsalez had something more than an instinct for espionage: he had an instinct for truth, and he knew two things immediately: first, that Newton was not lying when he said the girl had left the house; secondly, that there was an excellent, but not necessarily a sinister, reason for the furtive departure.
“Where has she gone?”
“Home,” said the other laconically. “Where else should she go?”
“She came to dinner . . . intending to stay the night?”
“Look here, Gonsalez,” interrupted Monty Newton savagely. “You and your gang were wonderful people twenty years ago, but a lot has happened since then—and we don’t shiver at the name of the Three Just Men. I’m not a child—do you get that? And you’re not so very terrible at close range. If you want to complain to the police——”
“Meadows is outside. I persuaded him to let me see you first,” said Leon, and Newton started.
“Outside?” incredulously.
In two strides he was at the window and had pulled aside the blind. On the other side of the street a man was standing on the edge of the sidewalk, intently surveying the gutter. He knew him at once.
“Well, bring him in,” he said.
“Where has this young lady gone? That is all I want to know.”
“She has gone home, I tell you.”
Leon went to the door and beckoned Meadows; they spoke together in low tones, and then Meadows entered the room and was greeted with a stiff nod from the owner of the house.
“What’s the idea of this, Meadows—sending this bird to cross-examine me?”
“This bird came on his own,” said Meadows coldly, “if you mean Mr. Gonsalez? I have no right to prevent any person from cross-examining you. Where is the young lady?”
“I tell you she has gone home. If you don’t believe me, search the house—either of you.”
He was not bluffing: Leon was sure of that. He turned to the detective.
“I personally have no wish to trouble this gentleman any more.”
He was leaving the room when, from over his shoulder:
“That snake is busy again, Newton.”
“What snake are you talking about?”
“He killed a man to-night on the Thames Embankment. I hope it will not spoil Lisa Marthon’s evening.”
Meadows, watching the man, saw him change colour.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said loudly.
“You arranged with Lisa to pick up Barberton to-night and get him talking. And there she is, poor girl, all dressed to kill, and only a dead man to vamp—only a murdered man.” He turned suddenly, and his voice grew hard. “That is a good word, isn’t it, Newton—murder?”
“I didn’t know anything about it.”
As Newton’s hand came towards the bell:
“We can show ourselves out,” said Leon.
He shut the door behind him, and presently there was a slam of the outer door. Monty got to the window too late to see his unwelcome guests depart, and went up to his room to change, more than a little perturbed in mind.
The footman called him from the hall.
“I’m sorry about that affair, sir. I thought it was a ‘busy’ . . .”
“You think too much, Fred”—Newton threw the words down at his servitor with a snarl. “Go back to your place, which is the servants’ hall. I’ll ring you if I want you.”
He resumed his progress up the stairs and the man turned sullenly away.
He opened the door of his room, switched on the light, had closed the door and was half-way to his dressing-table, when an arm like steel closed round his neck, he was jerked suddenly backward on to the floor, and looked up into the inscrutable face of Gonsalez.
“Shout and you die!” whispered a voice in his ear.
Newton lay quiet.
“I’ll fix you for this,” he stammered.
The other shook his head.
“I think not, if by ‘fixing’ me you mean you’re going to complain to the police. You’ve been under my watchful eye for quite a long time, Monty Newton, and you’ll be amazed to learn that I’ve made several visits to your house. There is a little wall safe behind that curtain”—he nodded towards the corner of the room—“would you be surprised to learn that I’ve had the door open and every one of its documentary contents photographed?”
He saw the fear in the man’s eyes as he snapped a pair of aluminium handcuffs of curious design about Monty’s wrists. With hardly an effort he lifted him, heavy as he was, threw him on the bed, and, having locked the door, returned, and, sitting on the bed, proceeded first to strap his ankles and then leisurely to take off his prisoner’s shoes.
“What are you going to do?” asked Monty in alarm.
“I intend finding out where Miss Leicester has been taken,” said Gonsalez, who had stripped one shoe and, pulling off the silken sock, was examining the man’s bare foot critically. “Ordinary and strictly legal inquiries take time and fail at the end—unfortunately for you, I have not a minute to spare.”
“I tell you she’s gone home.”
Leon did not reply. He pulled open a drawer of the bureau, searched for some time, and presently found what he sought: a thin silken scarf. This, despite the struggles of the man on the bed, he fastened about his mouth.
“In Mosamodes,” he said—“and if you ever say that before my friend George Manfred, be careful to give its correct pronunciation: he is rather touchy on the point—some friends of yours took a man named Barberton, whom they subsequently murdered, and tried to make him talk by burning his feet. He was a hero. I’m going to see how heroic you are.”
“For God’s sake don’t do it!” said the muffled voice of Newton.
Gonsalez was holding a flat metal case which he had taken from his pocket, and the prisoner watched him, fascinated, as he removed the lid, and snapped a cigar-lighter close to its blackened surface. A blue flame rose and swayed in the draught.
“The police force is a most excellent institution,” said Leon. He had found a silver shoe-horn on the table and was calmly heating it in the light of the flame, holding the rapidly warming hook with a silk handkerchief. “But unfortunately, when you are dealing with crimes of violence, moral suasion and gentle treatment produce nothing more poignant in the bosom of your adversary than a sensation of amused and derisive contempt. The English, who make a god of the law, gave up imprisoning thugs and flogged them, and there are few thugs left. When the Russian gunmen came to London, the authorities did the only intelligent thing—they held back the police and brought up the artillery, having only one desire, which was to kill the gunmen at any expense. Violence fears violence. The gunman lives in the terror of the gun—by the way, I understand the old guard is back in full strength?”
When Leon started in this strain he could continue for hours.
“I don’t know what you mean,” mumbled Monty.
“You wouldn’t.” The intruder lifted the blackened, smoking shoe-horn, brought it as near to his face as he dared.
“Yes, I think that will do,” he said, and came slowly towards the bed.
The man drew up his feet in anticipation of pain, but a long hand caught him by the ankles and drew them straight again.
“They’ve gone to the Arts Ball.” Even through the handkerchief the voice sounded hoarse.
“The Arts Ball?” Gonsalez looked down at him, and then, throwing the hot shoe-horn into the fire-place, he removed the gag. “Why have they gone to the Arts Ball?”
“I wanted them out of the way to-night.”
“Is—Oberzohn likely to be at the Arts Ball?”
“Oberzohn!” The man’s laugh bordered on the hysterical.
“Or Gurther?”
This time Mr. Newton did not laugh.
“I don’t know who you mean,” he said.
“We’ll go into that later,” replied Leon lightly, pulling the knot of the handkerchief about the ankles. “You may get up now. What time do you expect them back?”
“I don’t know. I told Joan not to hurry, as I was meeting somebody here to-night.”
Which sounded plausible. Leon remembered that the Arts Ball was a fancy dress affair, and there was some reason for the departure from the mews instead of from the front of the house. As though he were reading his thoughts, Newton said:
“It was Miss Leicester’s idea, going through the back. She was rather shy . . . she was wearing a domino.”
“Colour?”
“Green, with a reddish hood.”
Leon looked at him quickly.
“Rather distinctive. Was that the idea?”
“I don’t know what the idea was,” growled Newton, sitting on the edge of the bed and pulling on a sock. “But I do know this, Gonsalez,” he said, with an outburst of anger which was half fear: “that you’ll be sorry you did this to me!”
Leon walked to the door, turned the key and opened it.
“I only hope that you will not be sorry I did not kill you,” he said, and was gone.
Monty Newton waited until from his raised window he saw the slim figure pass along the sidewalk and disappear round a corner, and then he hurried down, with one shoe on and one off, to call New Cross 93.
Chapter VIIIThe House of Oberzohn
IN a triangle two sides of which were expressed by the viaducts of converging railroads and the base by the dark and sluggish waters of the Grand Surrey Canal, stood the gaunt ruins of a store in which had once been housed the merchandise of the O. & S. Company. A Zeppelin in passing had dropped an incendiary bomb at random, and torn a great ugly gap in the roof. The fire that followed left the iron frames of the windows twisted and split; the roof by some miracle remained untouched except for the blackened edges about the hole through which the flames had rushed to the height of a hundred feet.
The store was flush with the canal towing-path; barges had moored here, discharging rubber in bales, palm nut, nitrates even, and had restocked with Manchester cloth and case upon case of Birmingham-made geegaws of brass and lacquer.
Mr. Oberzohn invariably shipped his spirituous cargoes from Hamburg, since Germany is the home of synthesis. In the centre of the triangle was a red-brick villa, more unlovely than the factory, missing as it did that ineffable grandeur, made up of tragedy and pathos, attaching to a burnt-out building, however ugly it may have been in its prime.
The villa was built from a design in Mr. Oberzohn’s possession, and was the exact replica of the house in Sweden where he was born. It had high, gabled ends at odd and unexpected places. The roof was shingled with grey tiles; there were glass panels in the curious-looking door, and iron ornaments in the shape of cranes and dogs flanking the narrow path through the rank nettle and dock which constituted his garden.
Here he dwelt, in solitude, yet not in solitude, for two men lived in the house, and there was a stout Swedish cook and a very plain Danish maid, a girl of vacant countenance, who worked from sun-up to midnight without complaint, who seldom spoke and never smiled. The two men were somewhere in the region of thirty. They occupied the turret rooms at each end of the building, and had little community of interest. They sometimes played cards together with an old and greasy pack, but neither spoke more than was necessary. They were lean, hollow-faced men, with a certain physiognomical resemblance. Both had thin, straight lips; both had round, staring, dark eyes filled with a bright but terrifying curiosity.
“They look,” reported Leon Gonsalez, when he went to examine the ground, “as if they are watching pigs being killed and enjoying every minute of it. Iwan Pfeiffer is one, Sven Gurther is the other. Both have escaped the gallows or the axe in Germany; both have convictions against them. They are typical German-trained criminals—as pitiless as wolves. Dehumanized.”
The “Three,” as was usual, set the machinery of the law in motion, and found that the hands of the police were tied. Only by stretching the law could the men be deported, and the law is difficult to stretch. To all appearance they offended in no respect. A woman, by no means the most desirable of citizens, laid a complaint against one. There was an investigation—proof was absent; the very character of the complainant precluded a conviction, and the matter was dropped—by the police.
Somebody else moved swiftly.
One morning, just before daybreak, a policeman patrolling the tow-path heard a savage snarl and looked round for the dog. He found instead, up one of those narrow entries leading to the canal bank, a man. He was tied to the stout sleeper fence, and his bare back showed marks of a whip. Somebody had held him up at night as he prowled the bank in search of amusement, had tied and flogged him. Twenty-five lashes: an expert thought the whip used was the official cat-o’-nine-tails.
Scotland Yard, curious, suspicious, sought out the Three Just Men. They had alibis so complete as to be unbreakable. Sven Gurther went unavenged—but he kept from the tow-path thereafter.
In this house of his there were rooms which only Dr. Oberzohn visited. The Danish maid complained to the cook that when she had passed the door of one as the doctor came out, a blast of warm, tainted air had rushed out and made her cough for an hour. There was another room in which from time to time the doctor had installed a hotchpotch of apparatus. Vulcanizing machines, electrical machines (older and more used than Mirabelle had seen in her brief stay in the City Road), a liquid air plant, not the most up-to-date but serviceable.
He was not, curiously enough, a doctor in the medical sense. He was not even a doctor of chemistry. His doctorate was in Literature and Law. These experiments of his were hobbies—hobbies that he had pursued from his childhood.
On this evening he was sitting in his stuffy parlour reading a close-printed and closer-reasoned volume of German philosophy, and thinking of something else. Though the sun had only just set, the blinds and curtains were drawn; a wood fire crackled in the grate, and the bright lights of three half-watt lamps made glaring radiance.
An interruption came in the shape of a telephone call. He listened, grunting replies.
“So!” he said at last, and spoke a dozen words in his strange English.
Putting aside his book, he hobbled in his velvet slippers across the room and pressed twice upon the bell-push by the side of the fire-place. Gurther came in noiselessly and stood waiting.
He was grimy, unshaven. The pointed chin and short upper lip were blue. The V of his shirt visible above the waistcoat was soiled and almost black at the edges. He stood at attention, smiling vacantly, his eyes fixed at a point above the doctor’s head.
Dr. Oberzohn lifted his eyes from his book.
“I wish you to be a gentleman of club manner to-night,” he said. He spoke in that hard North-German tongue which the Swede so readily acquires.
“Ja, Herr Doktor!”
The man melted from the room.
Dr. Oberzohn for some reason hated Germans. So, for the matter of that, did Gurther and Pfeiffer, the latter being Polish by extraction and Russian by birth. Gurther hated Germans because they stormed the little jail at Altostadt to kill him after the dogs found Frau Siedlitz’s body. He would have died then but for the green police, who scented a Communist rising, scattered the crowd and sent Gurther by-road to the nearest big town under escort. The two escorting policemen were never seen again. Gurther reappeared mysteriously in England two years after, bearing a veritable passport. There was no proof even that he was Gurther. Leon knew, Manfred knew, Poiccart knew.
There had been an alternative to the whipping.
“It would be a simple matter to hold his head under water until he was drowned,” said Leon.
They debated the matter, decided against this for no sentimental or moral reason—none save expediency. Gurther had his whipping and never knew how near to the black and greasy water of the canal he had been.
Dr. Oberzohn resumed his book—a fascinating book that was all about the human soul and immortality and time. He was in the very heart of an analysis of eternity when Gurther reappeared dressed in the “gentleman-club manner.” His dress-coat fitted perfectly; shirt and waistcoat were exactly the right cut. The snowy shirt, the braided trousers, the butterfly bow, and winged collar. . . .
“That is good.” Dr. Oberzohn went slowly over the figure. “But the studs should be pearl—not enamel. And the watch-chain is demode—it is not worn. The gentleman-club manner does not allow of visible ornament. Also I think a moustache . . . ?”
“Ja, Herr Doktor!”
Gurther, who was once an actor, disappeared again. When he returned the enamel studs had gone: there were small pearls in their place, and his white waistcoat had no chain across. And on his upper lip had sprouted a small brown moustache, so natural that even Oberzohn, scrutinizing closely, could find no fault with it. The doctor took a case from his pocket, fingered out three crisp notes.
“Your hands, please?”
Gurther took three paces to the old man, halted, clicked his heels and held out his hands for inspection.
“Good! You know Leon Gonsalez? He will be at the Arts Ball. He wears no fancy dress. He was the man who whipped you.”
“He was the man who whipped me,” said Gurther without heat.
There was a silence, Dr. Oberzohn pursing his lips.
“Also, he did that which brands him as an infamous assassin . . . I think . . . yes, I think my dear Gurther . . . there will be a girl also, but the men of my police will be there to arrange such matters. Benton will give you instructions. For you, only Gonsalez.”
Gurther bowed stiffly.
“I have implored the order,” he said, bowed again and withdrew. Later, Dr. Oberzohn heard the drone of the little car as it bumped and slithered across the grass to the road. He resumed his book: this matter of eternity was fascinating.
The Arts Ball at the Corinthian Hall was one of the events of the season, and the tickets, issued exclusively to the members of three clubs, were eagerly sought by society people who could not be remotely associated with any but the art of living.
When the girl came into the crowded hall, she looked around in wonder. The balconies, outlined in soft lights and half-hidden with flowers, had been converted into boxes; the roof had been draped with blue and gold tissue; at one end of the big hall was a veritable bower of roses, behind which one of the two bands was playing. Masks in every conceivable guise were swinging rhythmically across the polished floor. To the blasé, there was little difference between the Indians, the pierrots and the cavaliers to be seen here and those they had seen a hundred times on a hundred different floors.
As the girl gazed round in wonder and delight, forgetting all her misgivings, two men, one in evening dress, the other in the costume of a brigand, came from under the shadow of the balcony towards them.
“Here are our partners,” said Joan, with sudden vivacity. “Mirabelle, I want you to know Lord Evington.”
The man in evening dress stroked his little moustache, clicked his heels and bent forward in a stiff bow. He was thin-faced, a little pallid, unsmiling. His round, dark eyes surveyed her for a second, and then:
“I’m glad to meet you, Miss Leicester,” he said, in a high, harsh voice, that had just the trace of a foreign accent.
This struck the girl with as much surprise as the cold kiss he had implanted upon her hand, and, as if he read her thoughts, he went on quickly:
“I have lived so long abroad that England and English manners are strange to me. Won’t you dance? And had you not better mask? I must apologize to you for my costume.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But there was no gala dress available.”
She fixed the red mask, and in another second she was gliding through the crowd and was presently lost to view.
“I don’t understand it all, Benton.”
Joan was worried and frightened. She had begun to realize that the game she played was something different . . . her part more sinister than any rôle she had yet filled. To jolly along the gilded youth to the green tables of Captain Monty Newton was one thing; but never before had she seen the gang working against a woman.
“I don’t know,” grumbled the brigand, who was not inaptly arrayed. “There’s been a hurry call for everybody.” He glanced round uneasily as though he feared his words might be overheard. “All the guns are here—Defson, Cuccini, Jewy Stubbs . . .”
“The guns?” she whispered in horror, paling under her rouge. “You mean . . . ?”
“The guns are out: that’s all I know,” he said doggedly. “They started drifting in half an hour before you came.”
Joan was silent, her heart racing furiously. Then Monty had told her the truth. She knew that somewhere behind Oberzohn, behind Monty Newton, was a force perfectly dovetailed into the machine, only one cog of which she had seen working. These card parties of Monty’s were profitable enough, but for a long time she had had a suspicion that they were the merest side-line. The organization maintained a regular corps of gunmen, recruited from every quarter of the globe. Monty Newton talked sometimes in his less sober moments of what he facetiously described as the “Old Guard.” How they were employed, on what excuse, for what purpose, she had never troubled to think. They came and went from England in batches. Once Monty had told her that Oberzohn’s people had gone to Smyrna, and he talked vaguely of unfair competition that had come to the traders of the O. & S. outfit. Afterwards she read in the paper of a “religious riot” which resulted in the destruction by fire of a great block of business premises. After that Monty spoke no more of competition. The Old Guard returned to England, minus one of its number, who had been shot in the stomach in the course of this “religious riot.” What particular faith he possessed in such a degree as to induce him to take up arms for the cause, she never learned. She knew he was dead, because Monty had written to the widow, who lived in the Bronx.
Joan knew a lot about Monty’s business, for an excellent reason. She was with him most of the time; and whether she posed as his niece or daughter, his sister, or some closer relationship, she was undoubtedly the nearest to a confidante he possessed.
“Who is that man with the moustache—is he one?” she asked.
“No; he’s Oberzohn’s man—for God’s sake don’t tell Monty I told you all this! I got orders to-night to put him wise about the girl.”
“What about her . . . what are they doing with her?” she gasped in terror.
“Let us dance,” said Benton, and half guided, half carried her into the throng.
They had reached the centre of the floor when, with no warning, every light in the hall went out.
Chapter IXBefore the Lights Went Out
THE band had stopped, a rustle of hand-clapping came from the hot dancers, and almost before the applause had started the second band struck up “Kulloo.”
Mirabelle was not especially happy. Her partner was the most correct of dancers, but they lacked just that unity of purpose, that oneness of interest which makes all the difference between the ill- and the well-matched.
“May we sit down?” she begged. “I am rather hot.”
“Will the gracious lady come to the little hall?” he asked. “It is cooler there, and the chairs are comfortable.”
She looked at him oddly.
“ ‘Gracious lady’ is a German expression—why do you use it, Lord Evington? I think it is very pretty,” she hastened to assure him.
“I lived for many years in Germany,” said Mr. Gurther. “I do not like the German people—they are so stupid.”
If he had said “German police” he would have been nearer to the truth; and had he added that the dislike was mutual, he might have gained credit for his frankness.
At the end of the room, concealed by the floral decorations of the bandstand, was a door which led to a smaller room, ordinarily separated from the main hall by folding doors which were seldom opened. To-night the annexe was to be used as a conservatory. Palms and banked flowers were everywhere. Arbours had been artificially created, and there were cosy nooks, half-hidden by shrubs, secluded seats and tables, all that ingenuity could design to meet the wishes of sitters-out.
He stood invitingly at the entrance of a little grotto, dimly illuminated by one Chinese lantern.
“I think we will sit in the open,” said Mirabelle, and pulled out a chair.
“Excuse me.”
Instantly he was by her side, the chair arranged, a cushion found, and she sank down with a sigh of relief. It was early yet for the loungers: looking round, she saw that, but for a solitary waiter fastening his apron with one eye upon possible customers, they were alone.
“You will drinke wine . . . no? An orangeade? Good!” He beckoned the waiter and gave his order. “You must excuse me if I am a little strange. I have been in Germany for many years—except during the war, when I was in France.”
Mr. Gurther had certainly been in Germany for many years, but he had never been in France. Nor had he heard a shot fired in the war. It is true that an aerial bomb had exploded perilously near the prison at Mainz in which he was serving ten years for murder, but that represented his sole warlike experience.
“You live in the country, of course?”
“In London: I am working with Mr. Oberzohn.”
“So: he is a good fellow. A gentleman.”
She had not been very greatly impressed by the doctor’s breeding, but it was satisfying to hear a stranger speak with such heartiness of her new employer. Her mind at the moment was on Heavytree Farm: the cool parlour with its chintzes—a room, at this hour, fragrant with the night scents of flowers which came stealing through the open casement. There was a fox-terrier, Jim by name, who would be wandering disconsolately from room to room, sniffing unhappily at the hall door. A lump came up into her throat. She felt very far from home and very lonely. She wanted to get up and run back to where she had left Joan and tell her that she had changed her mind and must go back to Gloucester that night . . . she looked impatiently for the waiter. Mr. Gurther was fiddling with some straws he had taken from the glass container in the centre of the table. One end of the straws showed above the edge of the table, the others were thrust deep in the wide-necked little bottle he had in the other hand. The hollow straws held half an inch of the red powder that filled the bottle.
“Excuse!”
The waiter put the orangeades on the table and went away to get change. Mirabelle’s eyes were wistfully fixed on a little door at the end of the room. It gave to the street, and there were taxicabs which could get her to Paddington in ten minutes.
When she looked round he was stirring the amber contents of her glass with a spoon. Two straws were invitingly protruding from the foaming orangeade. She smiled and lifted the glass as he fitted a cigarette into his long black holder.
“I may smoke—yes?”
The first taste she had through the straws was one of extreme bitterness. She made a wry face and put down the glass.
“How horrid!”
“Did it taste badly . . . ?” he began, but she was pouring out water from a bottle.
“It was most unpleasant——”
“Will you try mine, please?” He offered the glass to her and she drank. “It may have been something in the straw.” Here he was telling her the fact.
“It was . . .”
The room was going round and round, the floor rising up and down like the deck of a ship in a stormy sea. She rose, swayed, and caught him by the arm.
“Open the little door, waiter, please—the lady is faint.”
The waiter turned to the door and threw it open. A man stood there—just outside the door. He wore over his dinner dress a long cloak in the Spanish style. Gurther stood staring, a picture of amused dismay, his cigarette still unlit. He did not move his hands. Gonsalez was waiting there, alert . . . death grinning at him . . . and then the room went inky black. Somebody had turned the main switch.
Chapter XWhen the Lights Went Out
FIVE, ten minutes passed before the hall-keeper tripped and stumbled and cursed his way to the smaller room and, smashing down the hired flowers, he passed through the wreckage of earthen pots and tumbled mould to the control. Another second and the rooms were brilliantly lit again—the band struck up a two-step and fainting ladies were escorted to the decent obscurity of their retiring rooms.
The manager of the hall came flying into the annexe.
“What happened—main fuse gone?”
“No,” said the hall-keeper sourly, “some fool turned over the switch.”
The agitated waiter protested that nobody had been near the switch-box.
“There was a lady and gentleman here, and another gentleman outside.” He pointed to the open door.
“Where are they now?”
“I don’t know. The lady was faint.”
The three had disappeared when the manager went out into a small courtyard that led round the corner of the building to a side street. Then he came back on a tour of inspection.
“Somebody did it from the yard. There’s a window open—you can reach the switch easily.”
The window was fastened and locked.
“There is no lady or gentleman in the yard,” he said. “Are you sure they did not go into the big hall?”
“In the dark—maybe.”
The waiter’s nervousness was understandable. Mr. Gurther had given him a five-pound note and the man had not as yet delivered the change. Never would he return to claim it if all that his keen ears heard was true.
Four men had appeared in the annexe: one shut the door and stood by it. The three others were accompanied by the manager, who called Phillips, the waiter.
“This man served them,” he said, troubled. Even the most innocent do not like police visitations.
“What was the gentleman like?”
Phillips gave a brief and not inaccurate description.
“That is your man, I think, Herr Fluen?”
The third of the party was bearded and plump; he wore a Derby hat with evening dress.
“That is Gurther,” he nodded. “It will be a great pleasure to meet him. For eight months the Embassy has been striving for his extradition. But our people at home . . . !”
He shrugged his shoulders. All properly constituted officials behave in such a manner when they talk of governments.
“The lady now”—Inspector Meadows was patently worried—“she was faint, you say. Had she drunk anything?”
“Orangeade—there is the glass. She said there was something nasty in the straws. These.”
Phillips handed them to the detective. He wetted his finger from them, touched his tongue and spat out quickly.
“Yes,” he said, and went out by the little door.
Gonsalez, of course: but where had he gone, and how, with a drugged girl on his hands and the Child of the Snake? Gurther was immensely quick to strike, and an icy-hearted man: the presence of a woman would not save Leon.
“When the light went out——” began the waiter, and the trouble cleared from Mr. Meadows’ face.
“Of course—I had forgotten that,” he said softly. “The lights went out!”
All the way back to the Yard he was trying to bring something from the back of his mind—something that was there, the smooth tip of it tantalizingly displayed, yet eluding every grasp. It had nothing to do with the lights—nor Gonsalez, nor yet the girl. Gurther? No. Nor Manfred? What was it? A name had been mentioned to him that day—it had a mysterious significance. A golden idol! He picked up the end of the thought . . . Johnny! Manfred’s one mystery. That was the dust which lay on all thought. And now that he remembered, he was disappointed. It was so ridiculously unimportant a matter to baffle him.
He left his companions at the corner of Curzon Street and went alone to the house. There was a streak of light showing between the curtains in the upstairs room. The passage was illuminated—Poiccart answered his ring at once.
“Yes, George and Leon were here a little time back—the girl? No, they said nothing about a girl. They looked rather worried, I thought. Miss Leicester, I suppose? Won’t you come in?”
“No, I can’t wait. There’s a light in Manfred’s room.”
The ghost of a smile lit the heavy face and faded as instantly.
“My room also,” he said. “Butlers take vast liberties in the absence of their masters. Shall I give a message to George?”
“Ask him to call me at the Yard.”
Poiccart closed the door on him; stopped in the passage to arrange a salver on the table and hung up a hat. All this Meadows saw through the fanlight and walking-stick periscope which is so easily fitted and can be of such value. And seeing, his doubts evaporated.
Poiccart went slowly up the stairs into the little office room, pulled back the curtains and opened the window at the top. The next second, the watching detective saw the light go out and went away.
“I’m sorry to keep you in the dark,” said Poiccart.
The men who were in the room waited until the shutters were fast and the curtains pulled across, and then the light flashed on. White of face, her eyes closed, her breast scarcely moving, Mirabelle Leicester lay on the long settee. Her domino was a heap of shimmering green and scarlet on the floor, and Leon was gently sponging her face, George Manfred watching from the back of the settee, his brows wrinkled.
“Will she die?” he asked bluntly.
“I don’t know: they sometimes die of that stuff,” replied Leon cold-bloodedly. “She must have had it pretty raw. Gurther is a crude person.”
“What was it?” asked George.
Gonsalez spread out his disengaged hand in a gesture of uncertainty.
“If you can imagine morphia with a kick in it, it was that. I don’t know. I hope she doesn’t die: she is rather young—it would be the worst of bad luck.”
Poiccart stirred uneasily. He alone had within his soul what Leon would call “a trace” of sentiment.
“Could we get Elver?” he asked anxiously, and Leon looked up with his boyish smile.
“Growing onions in Seville has softened you, Raymondo mio!” He never failed in moments of great strain to taunt the heavy man with his two years of agricultural experiment, and they knew that the gibes were deliberately designed to steady his mind. “Onions are sentimental things—they make you cry: a vegetablemuchos simpatico! This woman is alive!”
Her eyelids had fluttered twice. Leon lifted the bare arm, inserted the needle of a tiny hypodermic and pressed home the plunger.
“To-morrow she will feel exactly as if she had been drunk,” he said calmly, “and in her mouth will be the taste of ten rank cigars. Oh, senorinetta, open thy beautiful eyes and look upon thy friends!”
The last sentence was in Spanish. She heard: the lids fluttered and rose.
“You’re a long way from Heavytree Farm, Miss Leicester.”
She looked up wonderingly into the kindly face of George Manfred.
“Where am I?” she asked faintly, and closed her eyes again with a grimace of pain.
“They always ask that—just as they do in books,” said Leon oracularly. “If they don’t say ‘Where am I?’ they ask for their mothers. She’s quite out of danger.”
One hand was on her wrist, another at the side of her neck.
“Remarkably regular. She has a good head—mathematical probably.”
“She is very beautiful,” said Poiccart in a hushed voice.
“All people are beautiful—just as all onions are beautiful. What is the difference between a lovely maid and the ugliest of duennas—what but a matter of pigmentation and activity of tissue? Beneath that, an astounding similarity of the circulatory, sustentacular, motorvascular——”
“How long have we got?” Manfred interrupted him, and Leon shook his head.
“I don’t know—not long, I should think. Of course, we could have told Meadows and he’d have turned out police reserves, but I should like to keep them out of it.”
“The Old Guard was there?”
“Every man jack of them—those tough lads! They will be here just as soon as the Herr Doktor discovers what is going forward. Now, I think you can travel. I want her out of the way.”
Stooping, he put his hands under her and lifted her. The strength in his frail body was a never-ending source of wonder to his two friends.
They followed him down the stairs and along the short passage, down another flight to the kitchen. Manfred opened a door and went out into the paved yard. There was a heavier door in the boundary wall. He opened this slowly and peeped out. Here was the inevitable mews. The sound of an engine running came from a garage near by. Evidently somebody was on the look out for them. A long-bodied car drew up noiselessly and a woman got out. Beside the driver at the wheel sat two men.
“I think you’ll just miss the real excitement,” said Gonsalez, and then to the nurse he gave a few words of instruction and closed the door on her.
“Take the direct road,” he said to the driver. “Swindon—Gloucester. Good night.”
“Good night, sir.”
He watched anxiously as the machine swung into the main road. Still he waited, his head bent. Two minutes went by, and the faint sound of a motor-horn, a long blast and a short, and he sighed.
“They’re clear of the danger zone,” he said.
Plop!
He saw the flash, heard the smack of the bullet as it struck the door, and his hand stiffened. There was a thudding sound—a scream of pain from a dark corner of the mews and the sound of voices. Leon drew back into the yard and bolted the door.
“He had a new kind of silencer. Oberzohn is rather a clever old bird. But my air pistol against their gun for noiselessness.”
“I didn’t expect the attack from that end of the mews.” Manfred was slipping a Browning back to his pocket.
“If they had come from the other end the car would not have passed—I’d like to get one of those silencers.”
They went into the house. Poiccart had already extinguished the passage light.
“You hit your man—does that thing kill?”
“By accident—it is possible. I aimed at his stomach: I fear that I hit him in the head. He would not have squealed for a stomach wound. I fear he is alive.”
He felt his way up the stairs and took up the telephone. Immediately a voice said, “Number?”
“Give me 8877 Treasury.”
He waited, and then a different voice asked:
“Yes—Scotland Yard speaking.”
“Can you give me Mr. Meadows?”
Manfred was watching him frowningly.
“That you, Meadows? . . . They have shot Leon Gonsalez—can you send police reserves and an ambulance?”
“At once.”
Leon hung up the receiver, hugging himself.
“The idea being——?” said Poiccart.
“These people are clever.” Leon’s voice was charged with admiration. “They haven’t cut the wires—they’ve simply tapped it at one end and thrown it out of order on the exchange side.”
“Phew!” Manfred whistled. “You deceived me—you were talking to Oberzohn?”
“Captain Monty and Lew Cuccini. They may or may not be deceived, but if they aren’t, we shall know all about it.”
He stopped dead. There was a knock on the front door, a single, heavy knock. Leon grinned delightedly.
“One of us is now supposed to open an upper window cautiously and look out, whereupon he is instantly gunned. I’m going to give these fellows a scare.”
He ran up the stairs to the top floor, and on the landing, outside an attic door, pulled at a rope. A fire ladder lying flat against the ceiling came down, and at the same time a small skylight opened. Leon went into the room, and his pocket-lamp located what he needed: a small papier-mâché cylinder, not unlike a seven-pound shell. With this on his arm, he climbed up the ladder on to the roof, fixed the cylinder on a flat surface, and, striking a match, lit a touch-paper. The paper sizzled and spluttered, there was a sudden flash and “boom!” a dull explosion, and a white ball shot up into the sky, described a graceful curve and burst into a shower of brilliant crimson stars. He waited till the last died out; then, with the hot cylinder under his arm, descended the ladder, released the rope that held it in place, and returned to his two friends.
“They will imagine a secret arrangement of signals with the police,” he said; “unless my knowledge of their psychology is at fault, we shall not be bothered again.”
Ten minutes later there was another knock at the door, peremptory, almost official in its character.
“This,” said Leon, “is a policeman to summon us for discharging fireworks in the public street!”
He ran lightly down into the hall and without hesitation pulled open the door. A tall, helmeted figure stood on the doorstep, notebook in hand.
“Are you the gentleman that let off that rocket——” he began.
Leon walked past him, and looked up and down Curzon Street. As he had expected, the Old Guard had vanished.