A WAY OF TILLIZINI’S
Tillizini was sitting in his room, examining a number of photographs
that he had received that morning from Florence, when the note came to
him.
He opened and read it.
It was brief and to the point:
We have taken your spy. You will give us five hundred English pounds,
and he shall be released.
By order of
THE RED HAND.
He folded it carefully.
“Is the messenger still waiting?” he asked.
“No, sir,” said the servant. “It was a boy who handed it in.”
Tillizini examined the note again and smiled. He rose from the table
and went to the telephone which stood on a small bracket near the wall.
He gave a Treasury number which is not in the telephone book--it is
only to be found in the small volume issued to cabinet ministers and to
public officials--and in a few seconds he was connected with Inspector
Crocks.
“They have taken my man,” he said; “at least they say they have, and I
suppose they are speaking the truth. They demand £500 for his immediate
release.”
“What are you going to do?” asked the inspector’s voice.
“I’m going to release him,” said the other. “Though I have my doubts as
to whether they really want the money.”
In a few minutes they were driving to Carter’s lodgings. The landlady
gave him all the information he required, and another hour’s search
revealed the place where his man had been captured. As he thought, it
was on the wharf whence he usually sent his make-believe flash signals.
There were signs of a little struggle. Some children, playing in the
dark street from which the wharf was gained, had seen four men, very
drunk as they thought, staggering to a waiting motor car.
* * * * *
There is a little club in Soho where men with certain political views
may be found between the hours of eleven at night and five in the
morning.
At a quarter to twelve the stout man Pietro, who had formed the third
at the Deptford conference, entered the club and, after a fruitless
inspection of its members, came out again.
He walked through Soho, crossed Oxford Street, and entered one of the
slummy thoroughfares which abound in the neighbourhood of Tottenham
Court Road.
He let himself into a gloomy house with a key and closed the door
behind him.
His room was on the ground floor. He unlocked the door, went in, and
again closed and locked it before he struck a match.
His hands were fumbling with a matchbox when there was a quick,
blinding flash, and he found himself standing in a circle of light
thrown by an electric light.
“Don’t move,” said a voice, “or I will kill you.”
The intruder spoke in Italian.
“You may light the gas,” said the unknown. The circle of light followed
the alarmed man as he moved to the centre of the room, reached up, and
ignited an incandescent burner.
“Tillizini!” he gasped.
“It is I,” said the other easily. “Your doors are shut--yes. Your
windows are shuttered, of course. Sit down.”
Shaking in every limb, the man obeyed. The revolver in the professor’s
hand was an excellent excuse for obedience.
“Where have you been to-night?”
“That is no business of yours,” growled the other. “You have no right
to come into my room. What have you stolen?”
“Don’t be foolish,” said Tillizini calmly. “Stand up again. Put your
hands above your head. Thank you, signor.”
His deft fingers searched the other, removed a revolver from the hip
pocket and a knife from inside the waistband of his trousers. These
he laid on the table, first jerking open the chamber of the revolver
scientifically. There was a little clatter of cartridges as they fell
on the floor.
“Now I want your hand,” he said. “Hold it out.”
Hesitatingly, the other man obeyed, his fearful eyes fixed upon the
calm face of the other.
Tillizini leaned over and raised the hand to his face. His sensitive
nostrils dilated. He had no difficulty in detecting the scent of the
attar of roses with which his spy’s papers had been impregnated.
“Yes,” he said, “you are the man I want.”
The fear deepened in the stout man’s eyes.
“What do you mean?” he gasped.
He had a superstitious dread of this undefeatable man. With the
ignorance of his kind he had endowed him with powers which were almost
supernatural.
“I want the man you helped to kidnap to-night, or if you did not help
to kidnap, assisted in searching,” said the Italian pleasantly.
“It’s a lie,” said the other. “I know nothing about a kidnapped man.”
“The man you searched to-night,” continued Tillizini unemotionally,
“whose pockets you ransacked, whose papers you examined. Where is he?”
The look of fear in the man’s face was ludicrous.
“How do you know?” he gasped.
“I know,” said Tillizini. “That is sufficient.”
He waited for the stout man to speak, but in whatever fear he stood of
the detective, his terror of reprisal from his comrades was a greater
factor.
“I can tell you nothing--nothing,” he said sullenly.
“Then you shall come on a little journey with me,” said Tillizini. “We
will leave the light, if you don’t mind. Get up.”
He went to the door and, standing with his back against it, unlocked it.
“You will go first,” he said.
Outside the street was deserted, save for a number of children who were
playing noisily in the roadway.
“To the right,” said Tillizini curtly.
The man obeyed.
Drawn up by the opposite side of the pavement a little way along was a
pair-horse brougham. Opposite this Pietro waited till Tillizini’s voice
stopped him.
“Get in.”
Again the man obeyed and Tillizini followed. He closed the door, and
the prisoner noted that he gave no instructions as to where the man
was to drive. Evidently that had already been arranged. His wonder
was dissipated when he found the carriage driving along the Thames
Embankment. He was going to Tillizini’s house. He pulled himself
together. He was half losing his nerve. After all, Tillizini could not
torture him here, in the heart of London, and he a government official.
It was to Adelphi Terrace that the carriage drove and pulled up before
the detective’s house.
“Get out.”
The man followed his instructions. Tillizini’s ring was instantly
answered by a servant. The two men stepped into the hall.
“Has anybody been?” asked the detective, in English.
“No, sir, except a man called with a parcel for you.”
“A parcel?” He looked thoughtful. “A large parcel?” he asked idly.
“No, sir, a smallish parcel,” replied the man. “He would not leave it
until I signed for it.”
“I see,” said the detective, “and so you left him at the hall door
whilst you went down to get a pencil?”
The man smiled.
“Oh, no, sir, I took the parcel from him--there it is on the hall
table. I wouldn’t leave the door.”
Tillizini’s lips twitched. In the most tragic moments of his life he
could find sources of amusement. He scarcely gave the parcel more
than a passing glance. Instead, his eyes rapidly surveyed the floor.
He opened the door and looked at the lock. It was a patent lock with
a small catch. From the slot into which the bevelled snap caught he
extracted two little threads. He examined them briefly and kept them
between the finger and thumb of his left hand. All the time he kept his
hold upon his revolver, though the servant did not observe it.
“Very good, Thomas,” he said, as he closed the door again, “you may go.
_Marchez, mon amí._”
This last was to his prisoner. Pietro obeyed. He mounted the broad
staircase to the dark landing above, and Tillizini stepped close to his
prisoner.
“Go through that door,” he said.
Pietro did so.
He flung the door open, hesitated a moment, then stepped in. When his
prisoner’s hand was on the knob of the door, Tillizini spoke. He was
addressing, apparently, a person below.
“All right, Thomas,” he said loudly, “you may bring up that parcel now.”
Then he pushed Pietro into the room. It was in complete darkness, as he
expected. The captive stood hesitating in the doorway for a fraction
of a second, Tillizini behind him, waiting. He had only to wait for an
infinitesimal space of time. From the darkness in the room four shots
rang out in rapid succession and Pietro pitched forward on his face, a
dying man.
Tillizini had moved swiftly under cover of the doorway. He offered
no view of himself to his hidden enemy. He heard the quick steps of
Thomas. In the hall below were governing switches by which any room in
the house could be illuminated. A quick order from Tillizini, and the
lights blazed up in his room.
He sprang in, leaping over the twitching form of the fallen man. The
room was empty; it offered no cover to any person in hiding. There was
no need to search beyond the open window. The man who had waited there
had already prepared and carried into effect his escape.
Tillizini turned off the switch and the room was in darkness again.
He flew to the window. A slender rope had been fastened to the leg of
his heavy writing table. It extended across the room, through the open
window, and now swung to and fro in the breeze below.
The street was empty. There was no profit in searching further. He
closed down the window and phoned the police.
The man on the floor was too far gone for help. He was dying when
Tillizini reached his side. With the help of the servant and a hastily
summoned policeman he was laid on the settee, where a few nights
before the helpless and innocent victim of the Red Hand’s plotting had
lain.
Tillizini’s busy hands plucked phial after phial from his medicine
chest.... The man revived a little, but it was evident, long before the
police surgeon came, that he had no chance. He looked up at Tillizini’s
emotionless face with a faint smile.
“Signor,” he said, in Italian, “I ought to have known better--it was
thus you trapped others. I have certain moneys at the bank”--he named
the institution--“I wish that money to go to my sister, who is a widow
at Sezzori.”
“That I will send, Pietro.”
“You know my name,” said the dying man.
“I know you very well,” said Tillizini.
The man looked at him bleakly.
“Some day,” he said, at last--his voice was growing fainter--“they
will have you, our brave Red Hand, signor, and there will be a great
killing.”
He checked himself and looked round at the uncomprehending policeman,
who could not understand the language, and at the servant, obviously
English and agitated by the extraordinary character of the evening.
Then he half whispered:
“There is something I wish to tell you, signor.”
His voice was now difficult to hear. Tillizini bent his head to catch
the words, and in that moment the dying man mustered his last reserve
of strength; by sheer effort of malignant will he called into play all
the vital forces which were left alive within him. As Tillizini’s head
sank lower and lower, Pietro’s hand crept to his side.
“Signor,” he whispered, “take that!”
Quick as he was, Tillizini was quicker. As he whipped round, his
vise-like grip held the other’s wrist, and the gleaming knife fell with
a clatter to the polished floor. Then with a quick jerk he flung the
man’s hand down on the settee and stood up, smiling.
“How like a rat, Pietro, how like a rat!”
And the dying man, unrepentant of his many villainies, of the sorrow
and the suffering he had brought to so many people, saw, with the glaze
of death filming his eyes, the lips of Tillizini part in an amused and
contemptuous smile.
* * * * *
An hour later Tillizini sat in the private office of Inspector Crocks,
of Scotland Yard.
“It was a narrow squeak for you,” said the inspector admiringly.
“There were two,” said Tillizini dryly. “Which one do you mean?”
“The first, I think, was the most serious,” said the Englishman.
“Now it’s strange that you should say that,” said Tillizini. “I think
the second was--the dagger was poisoned. I discovered that soon after.”
“Poisoned?”
“Yes, with a poison that is not a particularly pleasant one--tetanus,”
he said.
“Good God!” said the inspector, genuinely shocked. “That’s the germ of
lockjaw, isn’t it?”
Tillizini nodded.
“That is it,” he said cheerfully. “A pleasant end especially planned
for me. I tell you these men are scientists in a crude way. I knew he
was upstairs waiting, the first man. An old trick that; you’ve probably
had it played on innocent suburban folk of this city hundreds of times.”
The inspector agreed with a gesture.
“When the amiable Thomas closed the door, our friend who delivered the
parcel quickly put up a piece of canvas paper backed with a strong silk
fabric. The door caught in the staple, but so did the strong silk. When
he considered the coast was clear and he judged Thomas to be out of
the way, he had but to pull the projecting end----”
“I know the trick,” said the inspector. “I’ve seen it done a score of
times.”
“I suspected something of the sort,” said Tillizini, “but mostly I
suspected a parcel. I thought, too, that the kidnapping of Carter was a
ruse to get me out so that a warm welcome might be prepared for me when
I came back.”
“Have you found the man?”
“He’ll be found,” said Tillizini, “by to-morrow morning.”
“I’ve got men out now hunting for him,” said Crocks. “It’s rather a
difficult job, Tillizini, dealing with your people.”
Tillizini smiled.
“They are somewhat different from the average English criminal,” he
said. “One of these days when you are in Florence, Inspector, you must
come to my museum and I’ll show you the skulls of typical criminals of
all countries. I will explain then to you just why our Southern men
are more dangerous to handle, and if you would be patient with me”--he
favoured the policeman with his little bow--“I would then as briefly as
possible give you the basis by which you may forejudge men’s actions.”
“In other words,” said the inspector jovially, “you’ll give me
elementary lessons in necromancy.”
“Something of the sort,” said Tillizini.
He had had half an hour with Crocks and with the commissioner. Another
crime had been laid at the door of the Red Hand. A worrying business
for the English police, however satisfactory it might be to Tillizini.
He rose from his chair and looked at his watch; it was nearly twelve.
The inspector followed his example.
“Where are you going now?”
“I’m going back to my house,” he said. “Will you come?”
“I have an hour to spare,” said the other, “and I like your room; it’s
rather restful. If I shan’t be in the way, I’ll come round and get a
few particulars at first hand.”
“Come along,” said Tillizini.
He passed through the broad corridors of Scotland Yard, down the stone
stairway, and out by the entrance near the arch. The policeman on duty
at the door saluted him respectfully.
They strolled together leisurely back to the house in Adelphi Terrace.
Tillizini rang; it was an act of laziness on his part that he did not
find his key. There was no reply, and he rang again. Then he opened
the door himself and stepped in. The two hall lights were burning, but
there was no sign of Thomas.
Tillizini closed the door behind him. Thomas was usually to be found in
the basement. He walked to the end of the passage and called over the
stairs, but again without reply. Neatly folded on a little dumb-waiter,
placed for better security beneath a glass, was a note. Tillizini
pulled it out, took it up and read it. It explained much. It was
addressed to the man, Thomas:
I have been arrested in connection with to-day’s crime. Please bring my
overcoat at once to Bow Street.
It was signed, “Antonio Tillizini.”
Without a word he handed the wire to the English detective.
“We will now go and discover things,” he said, and led the way upstairs.
He did not trouble to arm himself because he knew the ways of the Red
Hand too well to believe that any of the organization were present.
They had probably had half an hour after Thomas had hurried away with
the necessary overcoat. They would do what they wanted to do in ten
minutes.
He opened the door of his room and walked in without fear. He switched
on the light. The room was in confusion. There had been a diligent and
damaging search. The drawers of his desk had been ripped open and the
floor was covered with papers and splinters of rosewood.
Not even the chairs and the settee had escaped attention. They had been
cut open and their stuffings pulled out. The legs of one chair had
been lopped off as by a machete. Strangely enough, the little case of
medicines, which still stood open on his desk, had been left intact.
The Red Hand had too great a respect for Tillizini’s knowledge of
chemistry, and they had had such illuminating lessons of his knowledge
of high explosives, that they had left this severely alone, excepting
that there was plenty of evidence that each phial had been carefully
and cautiously lifted from its velvet-lined well and examined.
With a quick glance at the damage done, the Italian walked with
rapid strides across the room, lifted up one corner of the carpet,
and slipped back a narrow panel in the floor. It had been cunningly
constructed by Tillizini’s own hand. It would be almost impossible for
anybody not in the secret to know that such a receptacle existed. He
thrust in his hand, and felt for a little while with a grim smile, then
his hand slowly withdrew. The detective saw that he held a paper. He
read:
For the locket, thanks. Now you shall hear from us, Tillizini.
The Italian said nothing. He stood in the middle of the room, his hands
clasped on his breast, his head sunk in thought.
“They have taken the locket,” said Inspector Crocks, aghast.
Tillizini did not reply.
There came a knock at the door, and Thomas, still with his master’s
overcoat on his arm, entered.
“I’m sorry, sir; did you----?” he began.
Tillizini raised his head.
“Thomas,” he said, “I have told you under no circumstances must you
leave this house. Your failure to carry out my instructions, however,
is mainly my fault. To-morrow I will draw you a little sign which you
will see on any letter or wire I send, and know that it comes from me.”
“I’m very sorry, sir,” said Thomas.
Tillizini waved his apologies away.
“It is nothing,” he said, “all this; rather,” he smiled, “I owe you an
apology. You have a little child, have you not?”
“Yes, sir,” said Thomas wonderingly.
“You carry his portrait in a locket, do you not?”
“Oh, yes, sir,” replied Thomas. “Why, you know I do, sir. I brought you
the locket to see the other day.”
“I am sorry to say, Thomas,” said Tillizini gravely, “that I have lost
it--I hope it may be recovered. I put it in a safe place, I assure you.”
“Oh, it’s nothing, sir,” said Thomas. “I can get another. It wasn’t
worth half a crown.”
“A token of a father’s love is invaluable,” said Tillizini, the corners
of his lips turning up.
He took his revolver from his pocket, pressed a spring near the trigger
guard, and a little silver lid flew open in the butt. He held his hand
under it and shook it, and something fell out wrapped in silver tissue.
He unrolled the paper and handed the contents to Crocks.
“I am almost inclined to ask you to keep this in Scotland Yard,” he
said, “yet I don’t think they will burgle me again.”
It was the medallion!
“As for that which they have stolen,” Tillizini went on, “it is
regrettable.” He turned to Thomas. “I feel I shall never forgive myself
for losing that charming locket of yours.”
His voice was filled with gentle mockery, and the servant grinned a
little sheepishly, mumbling his depreciation of any fuss at so small a
loss.
“I’m not at all annoyed, sir,” he said awkwardly.
What was true of Thomas was not true of the two leaders of the Red Hand
who at that moment were sitting in a little room in Deptford examining
with consternation and chagrin the plump and smiling features of a
healthy child of two.