Produced by Al Haines
THE RETURN OF CLUBFOOT
BY
VALENTINE WILLIAMS
AUTHOR OF
"THE MAN WITH THE CLUBFOOT"
HERBERT JENKINS LIMITED
YORK STREET LONDON S.W.1.
A
HERBERT
JENKINS'
BOOK
POPULAR EDITION.
Printed In Great Britain at the Athenæum Printing Works. Redhill.
WHAT THIS STORY IS ABOUT
Whilst spending a holiday in a small Central American Republic, Desmond
Okewood, of the Secret Service, learns from a dying beachcomber of a
hidden treasure.
With the assistance of a millionaire, he sets out for Cock Island, in
the Pacific. To his astonishment he discovers that the Man with the
Clubfoot, whom he had regarded as dead, has anticipated him. It is
obvious to Okewood that his old enemy is also in search of the hidden
gold, and there ensues a thrilling sequence of adventures, in which the
millionaire's pretty daughter takes a prominent part.
Okewood has the cipher, and the Man with the Clubfoot determines to
secure it, for without that cipher it is impossible to discover the
hiding-place of the treasure; but there is something that the Man with
the Clubfoot does not know, whereas Okewood does.
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
THE MAN WITH THE CLUBFOOT
THE SECRET HAND
THE YELLOW STREAK
THE ORANGE DIVAN
CLUBFOOT THE AVENGER
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. DOÑA LUISA
II. IN WHICH A GENTLEMAN PAYS HIS DEBT
III. THE MESSAGE
IV. A FOOTSTEP IN THE LANE
V. THE GIRL IN THE SMOKE-ROOM
VI. I RECEIVE AN INVITATION
VII. THE VICE-CONSUL'S WARNING
VIII. DR. CUSTRIN
IX. CONCERNING A LONG DRINK
X. THE GRAVE IN THE CLEARING
XI. A VOICE IN THE FOREST
XII. I MEET AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
XIII. EL COJO
XIV. "DIE FÜNF-UND-ACHTZIGER"
XV. MARJORIE'S ADVENTURE
XVI. BLACK PABLO MAKES HIS PREPARATIONS
XVII. THE ESCAPE
XVIII. A FACE AMONG THE FERNS
XIX. WHICH PROVES THAT TWO HEADS ARE BETTER THAN ONE
XX. THE BURIAL CHAMBER
XXI. A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS AND WHAT CAME OF IT
XXII. I INTERRUPT A TÊTE-À-TÊTE
XXIII. CAPITULATION
XXIV. ULRICH VON HAGEL'S TREASURE
XXV. THE END OF A DREAM
XXVI. IN WHICH A BLACK BOX PLAYS A DECISIVE PART
The Return of Clubfoot
CHAPTER 1
DOÑA LUISA
As I was sitting on the verandah of John Bard's bungalow, glancing
through a two-month old copy of _The Sketch_, I heard the clang of the
iron gate below where I sat. I raised my eyes from the paper and
looked down the gardens. At my feet was stretched a dark tangle of
palms and luxuriant tropical verdure, beyond them in the distance the
glass-like surface of the sea, on which a great lucent moon threw a
gleaming path of light.
The night was very tranquil. From the port at the foot of the hill, on
which my old friend, John Bard, had built his bungalow in this earthly
paradise, the occasional screech of a winch was wafted with astonishing
clearness over the warm air. Somewhere in the distance there was the
faint monotonous thrumming of guitars. To these night noises of the
little Central American port the sea murmured faintly a ceaseless
accompaniment.
I heard voices in the garden. Within the house a door swung to with a
thud; there was the patter of slippered feet over the matting in the
living-room and Akawa, Bard's Japanese servant, was at my elbow. His
snow-white drill stood out against the black shadows which the moon
cast at the back of the verandah. He did not speak; but his mask-like
face waited for me to notice him.
"Well, Akawa?" said I; "what is it?"
"Doña Luisa ask for the Señor Commandante, excuse me!" announced the
Jap stolidly.
Comfortably stretched out in a cane chair, a cold drink frosting its
long glass in the trough at my side, I turned and stared at the butler.
I was undoubtedly the Señor Commandante, for thus, in the course of a
lazy, aimless sort of holiday on the shores of the Pacific, had my rank
of Major been hispaniolised.
But what lady wanted me? Who could possibly know me here, seeing that
only the day before one of John Bard's fruit ships had landed me from
San Salvador?
Doña Luisa! The name had an alluring, romantic ring, especially on
this gorgeous night, the velvety sky powdered with glittering stars,
the air heavy with perfumes exhaled from the scented gardens. That
broad strain of romance in me (which makes so much trouble for us
Celts) responded strongly to the appeal of my environment. Doña Luisa!
The distant strains of music seemed to thrum that soft name into my
brain.
I swung my feet to the ground, stood up and stretched myself.
"Where is the lady?" I demanded. "In the sitting-room?"
"No, sir," replied the Japanese. "In the garden!"
More and more romantic! Had some lovely señorita, in high comb and
mantilla, been inflamed by a chance sight of the Inglez as I had walked
through the grass-grown streets of the city with John Bard that
morning, and pursued me to my host's gardens to declare her love? The
thought amused me and I smiled. Yet I don't mind admitting that, on my
way through the sitting-room in Akawa's wake, I glanced at a mirror and
noted with satisfaction that my white drill was spotless, and my hair
smooth. I adjusted my tie and with that little touch of swagger which
the prospect of a romantic rendezvous imparts to the gait of the most
modest of us men, I passed out of the room to the corridor which led to
the door into the gardens.
The passage was brightly lit so that, on emerging into the darkness
again, my eyes were dazzled. At first I could only discern a vast
black shape. But presently I made out the generous proportions of an
enormously stout, coal-black negress.
She was wearing a torn and filthy cotton dress and about her head was
bound a spotted pink and white handkerchief. With her vast bosom and
ample span of hip she looked almost as broad as she was long. On
seeing me she bobbed.
"You'm _Señor Commandante_?" she asked in English in her soft negro
voice.
"Yes," I replied, rather taken aback by this droll apparition. "What
did you want with me?"
"I has a letter for you, suh!"
She plunged a brown hand into the unfathomable depths of her opulent
corsage.
"From Doña Luisa?" I asked expectantly.
The negress stopped her groping and grinned up at me with flashing
teeth. Her eyeballs glistened white as her face lit up with a broad
smile. Then she tapped herself with a grimy paw.
"_I_ is Doña Luisa!" she announced with pride.
I staggered beneath the shock of this revelation. My vision of a
sloe-eyed damsel in a mantilla vanished in smoke.
"I has a fine Spanish name," remarked the lady resuming her spasmodic
searchings of her person, "but I wus riz in N'Awleans. That's how I
talks English so good! Ah!"
With a grunt she fished out a folded sheet of dirty note-paper and
handed it to me.
"You're certain this is meant for me?" I asked, racking my brains to
recall who was likely to send me messages by such an intermediary and
at such an hour.
"I sure is!" responded Doña Luisa with authority.
Stepping back into the lighted corridor I unfolded the note and read:--
"To Major Desmond Okewood, D.S.O.
"Do you remember the beach-comber to whom you did a good turn at San
Salvador a few weeks back? I now believe I am in a position to repay
it if you will accompany the bearer of this note. I wish to see you
_most urgently_ but I am too ill to come to you. Don't dismiss this
note as merely an ingenious attempt on my part to raise the wind.
Perhaps, by the time you have received it, I shall have already escaped
from the disgrace and infamy of my present existence. Therefore come
at once, I beg you.
"And _make haste_."
The note was written in pencil in rather a shaky hand. There was no
signature. But I remembered the writer perfectly and his signature
would have availed me nothing; for I never knew his name.
Our meeting happened thus. I was visiting the jail at San Salvador and
in the prison-yard I remarked among the shambling gang of prisoners
taking exercise a pallid, hollow-eyed creature whose twitching mouth
and fluttering hands betrayed the habitual drunkard recovering from a
bout. I should have dismissed this scarecrow figure from my mind only
that, suddenly evading the little brown warder, he plucked me by the
coat and cried:--
"If you're a _sahib_, man, you'll get me out of this hell!"
He spoke in English and there was a refined note in his voice which,
coupled with the haggard expression of his face, decided me to inquire
into his case. I discovered that the man, as, indeed, he had avowed
himself in the letter, was a beach-comber, a drunken wastrel, a dope
fiend. In short, he was one of the unemployable, and every Consulate
in the Central Americas was closed to him. But he was an Englishman;
more, by birth an English gentleman. One of the officials at our
Consulate told me that he was, undoubtedly, of good family.
Well, one doesn't like to think of one of one's own kith and kin locked
up with a lot of coffee-coloured cut-throats among the cockchafers and
less amiable insects of a Dago calaboose. So I interested myself in
Friend Beach-comber and he was set free. His incarceration was the
result of a tradesman's plaint and a few dollars secured his release.
A few more, as it appeared in the upshot, had ensured his lasting
gratitude; for I gave him a ten dollar bill to see him on his way, the
State stipulating, as a condition of his liberation, that he should
leave the city forthwith.
The outcast's letter was in my hand. I looked at Doña Luisa and
hesitated. Would it not be simpler to give the woman a couple of
dollars and send her about her business? Surely this note was nothing
more than a subterfuge to obtain a further "loan" with which to buy
drink or drugs--the dividing line between the two is none too clearly
defined in the Central Americas.
But I found myself thinking of the beachcomber's eyes. I recalled a
certain wistfulness, a sort of lonely dignity, in their mute appeal. I
glanced through the note a second time. I rather liked its independent
tone. So in the end I bade the woman wait while I fetched my hat. But
as I took down my panama from its peg I paused an instant, then,
running into my room, picked my old automatic out of my dressing-case
and slid it into my jacket pocket. I had long since learnt the lesson
of the Secret Service that a man may only once forget to carry arms.
As soon as I stepped out into the gardens the old negress waddled off
down the path, her bare feet pattering almost noiselessly on the hard
earth. She made no further effort at conversation; but, with a
swiftness surprising in one of her prodigious bulk, paddled rapidly
through the scented night down the hill towards the winking lights of
the port. As we left the pleasant height on which John Bard's bungalow
stood, I missed the cooling night breeze off the Pacific. The air grew
closer. It was steamy and soon I was drenched in perspiration.
Doña Luisa skirted the quays softly lapped by the sluggish,
phosphorescent water, and plunged into a network of small streets
fringed by the little yellow houses. Most of them were in darkness;
for it was getting late, but here and there a shaft of golden light,
shining through a heart-shaped opening cut in the shutters, fell
athwart the cobbled roadway. There was something subtly evil,
something _louche_, about the quarter. From behind the barred and
bolted windows of one such shuttered house came strains of music, fast
and furious, endlessly repeated accompanied by the rhythmic stamp of a
Spanish dance and the smart click of castanettes. Over the door a red
light glowed dully....
But presently we left the purlieus of the port and after passing a long
block of warehouses, black and forbidding, came upon a kind of township
of tumbledown wooden cabins on the outskirts of the city. The stifling
air was now heavy with all manner of evil odours; and heaps of refuse,
dumped in the broken roadway, reeked in the hot night. The houses were
the merest shanties, most of them in a dilapidated condition.
But the place swarmed with life. Black faces grinned at the unglazed
casements; dark figures hurried to and fro; while from many cabins came
chattering voices raised high in laughter or dispute. In the distance
a native drum throbbed incessantly. To me it was like entering an
African village. I knew we were in the negro quarter of the city.
Suddenly Doña Luisa stopped and when I was beside her said in a low
voice:--
"We'm mos' there!"--and struck off down a narrow lane.
Somewhere behind one of the shacks, in a full, mellow tenor, a man,
hidden by the night, was singing to the soft tinkling accompaniment of
a guitar. He sang in Spanish and I caught a snatch of the haunting
refrain:--
"_Se murio, y sobre su cara
"Un panuelito le heche...._"
But the next moment the negress, after fumbling with a key, pushed me
through a big door and the rest of the song was lost in the slamming of
a great beam she fixed across it. The door gave access to a little
square yard with adobe walls, an open shed along one side, a low shanty
along the other. Doña Luisa pushed at a small wooden door in the wall
of the shanty. Instantly a thin, quavering voice called out in
English:--
"Have you brought him?"
The woman murmured some inaudible reply and the voice went on:--
"Have you barred the door? Then send him in! And you, get out and
leave us alone!"
With a little resigned shrug of the shoulders the negress stepped back
into the yard and pushed me into the cabin.