TILLIZINI ADDRESSES THE HOUSE
Though it was past midnight the streets of London were alive with
people; shops were open, lights blazed from windows which ordinarily
would have been in darkness. The motor services which carried the
Londoner to and from his home were still running; special editions of
the evening papers were on sale in the streets, and about the House of
Commons, where the crowd grew in intensity, they found a ready sale.
Between Whitehall and Victoria Street some thirty thousand people had
assembled, but the police had no difficulty in controlling the assembly
or in securing a passageway for the constant stream of cars which were
passing to and from the House of Commons. The character of the crowd
was an interesting one. These were no idle sightseers, attracted by the
chance of a little excitement; it was the silk-hatted middle class of
England, overcoated, muffled, bespectacled, waiting patiently for news
which meant all the difference between life and death to them.
For once in its history the House of Commons was sitting in secret
session. At eleven o’clock that night, by the Speaker’s direction, the
galleries had been cleared, and strangers had been excluded not only
from the lobby but from the precincts of the House. Parliament had
resolved itself into a national jury.
At five minutes after twelve a great car, covered with dust, came
slowly along Whitehall. It bore three small lamps on its radiator,
arranged in the form of a triangle. Unchallenged, the car passed Bridge
Street and into Palace Yard. About the entrance of the House were a
crowd of policemen, but they made way for the tall man in the dusty
coat who sprang from the seat by the side of the driver. Two men were
waiting for him: Hilary George, K. C., was one, and Inspector Crocks
the other.
The three passed into the interior of the House and made their way to a
small committee room which had been prepared for them.
“Well?” asked Crocks. His face was of an unusual pallor, and he spoke
with the irritability which is peculiar to the man undergoing a great
nervous strain.
Tillizini slowly divested himself of his greatcoat, laid it across a
chair, and walked to the fire. He stood for awhile, warming his hands
at the blaze; then he spoke.
“I have located them,” he said, “definitely.”
“Thank God!” said Crocks.
“There is no doubt?” asked Hilary.
Tillizini shook his head. He took a book from his inside pocket, opened
it, and extracted three slips of paper. They were advertisements cut
from a newspaper of the week before.
“I don’t know,” he said, “whether you have noticed these?”
They bent over the table, the three heads together, reading the
advertisements.
“I cannot understand it,” said Hilary; “this is an advertisement
offering good prices for pigeons.” He examined the other. “This is the
same,” he said.
“They’re all the same,” said Tillizini quietly. “Do you notice that
they advertise that they want old pigeons?”
Hilary nodded.
“The address is at a place in London. The man who advertised had
thousands of replies, and has made thousands of purchases, too.
Throughout the week basket after basket of birds has come consigned to
him at the various London termini; they have been collected by the
agents of the Red Hand and forwarded to Festini.”
“But why?” asked Crocks, puzzled. “He’s not going to start a
pigeon-shooting competition?”
Tillizini laughed. He had walked back to the fire and was bending over
it, his hands almost touching the flames.
“If you will believe me,” he said, “I have been looking for that
advertisement for quite a long time.” He straightened himself and
stood with his back to the fire, his hands behind him. Then he asked
suddenly: “How is the Red Hand to distribute the germs of this plague?
Has that thought ever occurred to you? How can they, without danger to
themselves, spread broadcast the seeds of the Black Death?”
“Good heavens!” said Hilary, as the significance of the move suddenly
dawned upon him.
“To-morrow morning,” Tillizini went on, “if the premier’s reply is
unfavourable, they will release these thousands of pigeons, and release
also, in a portable form, sufficient of the culture to spread death in
whichever neighbourhood the pigeon lands. Naturally, being old birds,
they will fly straight back to the homes they have left. It is very
ingenious. They might, of course, have done the same thing by post, but
there was a certain amount of risk attached to that. The present
method is one which would appeal to Festini. I arrested a man this
afternoon who has been collecting the birds. He is obviously one of the
Red Hand, though he protests against such an imputation.”
“What is to be done?” asked Hilary. “You had better see the prime
minister at once.”
The door opened and a young man came in hurriedly.
“Is Professor Tillizini here?” he asked.
Hilary indicated the Italian.
“Will you come at once, Professor? The prime minister wishes you to
stand at the bar of the House to explain to the honourable members
exactly the position.”
Tillizini nodded.
He followed his conductor along the broad corridor, across the lobby,
through two swing doors. He suddenly found himself in a large chamber;
it gave him the impression of being dimly lighted. On either side he
saw row after row of faces rising in tiers. At the farther end, behind
a big table surmounted by a gold mace, sat a wigged and gowned figure
on a canopied chair. Near the table on his left a man rose and spoke
to the speaker. Tillizini could not hear the words he said. A moment
later the grave figure in the wig and gown invited him forward.
Tillizini knew something of the august character of this legislative
assembly; he knew, since it was his business to know, with what
jealousy it guarded its doors against the unelected stranger, and he
experienced a feeling of unreality as he walked along the floor of the
House and made his way, at the invitation of the premier’s beckoning
finger, to a place on the front bench.
The House was in silence. A faint murmur of “Hear, hear,” had greeted
him, but that had died away. A strange figure he made, still powdered
with the fine dust of the road, unshaven, grimy.
He sank down on the cushioned bench by the premier’s side, and looked
with curious eyes at the Mother of Parliaments.
Amidst dead silence the prime minister rose and addressed the speaker.
“Mr. Speaker,” he said, “it is within my province, had I so desired,
to have asked you to vacate the chair and for the House to resolve
itself into a committee. Under those circumstances we should have had
extensive powers, one such power being our right to summon any stranger
before us to give evidence.
“But the time is so very short, and the issues are so very serious,
that I have asked you to rule, as an extraordinary ruling, that
Professor Tillizini be allowed to address the House from this place.”
The prime minister sat down, and the bearded man in the chair looked
at Tillizini and nodded again. For a moment the professor did not
understand its significance; then a whispered word from the premier
at his side brought him to his feet, a little embarrassed, a little
bewildered.
He spoke hesitatingly, halting now and then for a word, thanking the
House for its indulgence and for the remarkable privilege it had
granted him.
“The prime minister,” he went on, “has asked me to give you a brief
outline of the history of the Red Hand. He thinks, and I agree, that
you should be made fully aware of one fact only that the Red Hand
threatens to perform.”
For five minutes he traced the history of the organization: its growth
from the famous Three Finger Society of Sicily; he spoke briefly of its
crimes, both on the Continent and in America, for he had the details at
his fingertips, and he himself had been engaged in unravelling many of
the mysteries which had surrounded the work of these men.
“I do not know,” he said, “what plans this Parliament has formed
for ridding the country of so dangerous and so terrible a force. No
plan”--he spoke earnestly and emphatically, and punctuated his speech
with characteristic gestures--“which you may decide upon can be
effective unless it includes some system of physical extermination.
I do not make myself clear, perhaps,” he said hurriedly, “although I
have a very large acquaintance with your language.” He emphasized his
point with one finger on the palm of his hand. “These men are going to
destroy you and your kind. Believe me, they will have no compunction;
the plague will be spread throughout England unless you take the most
drastic steps within the next few hours. There is no existing law on
the statute books which exactly provides for the present situation. You
must create a new method to deal with a new crime, and, Mr. Speaker,
whatever this House does, whatever steps it takes, however dreadful
may be the form of punishment which it, in its wisdom, may devise, it
cannot be too drastic or too severe to deal with the type of criminal
organization which the Red Hand represents. I can, if I wish,” he
said, with a smile, “arrest fifty members of the Red Hand to-night. I
could, with a little care, succeed in assassinating Festini.”
He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, as though assassination were
everyday work, and a little shiver ran through the House. He was
sensible to such undefinable impressions in others.
“You do not like the word,” he said, with a smile, “and neither do I.
I used it because I felt that it was a word which would be more in
keeping with the facts from your point of view. To me, some removals
are justified; they are more: they are necessary. One must meet cunning
with cunning, crime with crime. The law does not adequately meet all
modern crime, even the English law. Science has produced a new type
of criminal; but the modern parliaments of the world have not as yet
devised a new type of punishment. The criminal code requires drastic
revisions, as drastic as those which it received when it erased from
its statute book such awful and vindictive punishments as were accorded
to sheep stealers.”
He went on to tell as much of his later discoveries as he felt it
was expedient to announce to the House. He could never overcome his
suspicion of crowds. The House of Commons, with its serried ranks
of members, was a crowd to him, an intellectual, a sympathetic and
brilliant crowd, but a crowd, nevertheless, which might contain, for
aught he knew, one man who would betray his plans to the enemy.
The House gasped when told the story of the pigeons.
“I understand,” he said, “that you have a bill in contemplation; the
terms of that bill have been briefly communicated to me, and I can
tell you, Mr. Speaker, and the members of this House, that there is no
provision in that measure which is not justified by the circumstances.
Within seven days,” he said solemnly, “this country will be ravaged
by the most malignant form of epidemic disease that has been known
in modern history. The horrors of the great plague of London will be
multiplied, the ports of every foreign country will be closed to your
commerce; you will be shunned by every grain-bearing ship that sails
the sea.
“You are face to face, not only with death in its most terrible
form, but with starvation, with anarchy, with civil war perhaps. And
yet, knowing this, I tell you that you would be false to your great
traditions if you paid one single penny to this infamous confederacy.”
He sat down amidst a murmured cheer. In a few minutes he had walked
out behind the speaker’s chair and was in the prime minister’s sitting
room. That statesman came in soon afterwards.
“The bill will pass to-night,” he said; “the lords are sitting, and I
hope to get the assent early in the morning. Can you rest to-night,
Professor?”
Tillizini shook his head.
“There is no rest for me to-night,” he said.
He looked at his watch. The hands pointed to a quarter after twelve.
An attendant brought in a tray with coffee. After he had retired, the
prime minister asked:
“You are satisfied with such steps as we have taken?”
Tillizini nodded.
“Yes, I think the number will be sufficient.”
“We have sent four infantry brigades by route march to-night,” said the
premier. “The cavalry and artillery are coming from Colchester.”
“The destroyers?” asked Tillizini.
“They left Chatham at sunset to-night with orders to steam slowly up
the river.”
Tillizini nodded again.
“There will be one waiting for you at Tilbury,” said the prime
minister; “that was in accordance with your wishes.”
A few minutes later Tillizini entered his car, wrapped in his
greatcoat, and the limousine sped noiselessly out through the guarded
gate, through the press of people in Whitehall, into Trafalgar Square,
then turned to the right along the Strand. It slowed down to pass a
market van which had emerged from the street leading from Waterloo
Bridge. As it did so a man walked quickly from the sidewalk and leaped
on to the footboard of the car.
He was a middle-aged man, poorly dressed, and he was apparently
Italian, for it was in that language he said:
“Signor Tillizini?”
“Yes,” said Tillizini, in the same language.
The man made no reply. His hand went up with a lightning jerk. Before
his fingers had closed on the trigger, Tillizini’s had grasped the
pistol near the trigger guard. He half rose to his feet and, with a
quick swing of his body such as wrestlers employ, he pulled the man
into the car. It was all over in a second. Before the passers-by and
the loungers about the sidewalk realized what had happened, the man
was in the car, his pistol reposed in Tillizini’s pocket, and the
Italian detective’s foot was pressing lightly but suggestively on his
throat.
“Keep very still,” said Tillizini, bending over. “Put your hands up,
so.”
The man obeyed with a whimper of pain; then something hard and cold
snapped around his wrists.
“Now you may sit up,” said Tillizini.
He dragged the man to his feet and threw him into a corner seat. From
his breast pocket he produced a little electric lamp and flashed it in
the man’s face.
“Oh, yes,” said Tillizini, with a little laugh. “I think I have seen
you before.”
He recognized him as one of the many thousands of agents which the Red
Hand possessed.
“What are you going to do with me, signor?” asked the man sullenly.
“That I will tell you later,” replied the other.
In the East India Dock Road he stopped the car at a police station
and bundled the captive out. The inspector was inclined to resent the
spectacle of a strange-looking foreign gentleman hauling a handcuffed
compatriot into the charge room. But at a word from Tillizini he
became obsequiousness itself.
“Search him,” said Tillizini.
He unlocked the handcuffs, a pair of his own, and two constables,
with scientific deftness born of experience, made a quick but careful
examination of the man’s possessions. He seemed to be well supplied
with money, Tillizini noticed; he had no papers of any kind. A pencil
and two stamps and some unaddressed telegraph forms comprised the sum
of his property.
Tillizini carried the telegraph forms to the inspector’s desk and
examined them carefully. They were innocent of address or writing, but
he saw impressions which showed that another telegram had been written
on top of one of them with pencil. He looked at it closely but he could
detect nothing. From his pocket he took a soft crayon and gently rubbed
the impression over. Gradually the words came to light. The address was
unintelligible. It had evidently been written upon a harder substance.
There were two words in Italian, and Tillizini had little difficulty in
deciphering them.
“Lisa goes,” he read.
He looked at the man.
“Who is Lisa?” he asked. But before the prisoner could shake his head
in pretended ignorance, Tillizini knew, and smothered an exclamation
that came to his lips.
Vera had gone to her sometime lover. Here was a complication indeed.