The Final Surprise
It seemed to me that I was struggling up through miles of deep blue
water that gradually turned to lighter emerald. Huge sea monsters swam
lazily about me, staring with curious, lackluster eyes. I fought on,
in a panic to rise above them, and broke surface at last with a
splash. But when I opened my eyes I was lying in a narrow white bed in
a hospital room. An old man with a long beard bent over me, and beside
him stood a nurse clad in white.
I stared at the old fellow curiously and he nodded at me.
“Feeling better, eh?” he asked.
I tried to fill my lungs with air, but desisted hurriedly at the stab
of pain that shot through me. “What’s the matter with me?” I demanded.
The doctor laughed. “Nothing much. You’ve got five broken ribs and a
broken breastbone. You’ve got a bullet wound in the shoulder that you
neglected shamefully and another in the scalp. Otherwise you’re as
healthy as possible.” He shook his head. “You’ve had the narrowest
kind of a narrow escape, young man. You’ll pull through now if you
take care. But no jumping about and no hasty movements until those
ribs grow together again. We put you straight on the operating table
and that’s all done with.” He turned to the nurse. “He’ll do now,
nurse.”
The girl drew him aside and whispered a moment, and presently the
doctor returned to my side.
“There are about nineteen people outside waiting to see you. If I let
one or two of them in, will you keep quiet and be careful?”
“I sure will,” I told him.
He turned away and spoke to the nurse again. “Not more than two,” I
heard him say. Then they both went out.
I lay waiting in a fever of impatience. But in a moment the door
opened again and I was able to feast my eyes on the two prettiest
girls in New York, even if I dared not hug them.
There were a few preliminary remarks on both sides which need not be
repeated here. And then I put a question.
“Peggy, dear, did they treat you pretty well? Are you all right
again?”
“Oh, yes, Jack.” Margaret nodded brightly. “They frightened me a good
deal, and once they beat me, as I told you, but that was all. They
didn’t mistreat us much because they said that we had to keep our
looks.”
I groaned, and in spite of myself my eyes sought Natalie’s face. She
met my glance frankly. “I’m all right too, Jack,” she answered, and
with that answer a great content settled over my heart. They had been
through a terrible experience. But they would both forget!
When the first excitement of our meeting had worn off a little, which
it speedily did under the watchful and reproving eye of the nurse, I
begged the two of them to sit down and tell me some of the news that I
wanted to hear.
So they drew up chairs, possessed themselves of one of my hands apiece
and prepared to be interrogated.
“First of all, I want to know how they captured you in the first
place, Margaret?”
My little sister made a face, wrinkling up her little nose until she
looked entirely adorable. “Why, I went into that store, you know, to
buy you a present. I had only been there a minute when that Mr. Vining
came up to me and said that Mrs. Furneau had sent him for me. He said
that Mrs. Furneau had had to move her car away from the front of the
store and that she would have trouble with the police unless she went
away very soon. He had been passing and she had sent him in, after
describing me to him.
“Of course I didn’t suspect anything, and when he led me out the side
door into a side street, I looked around for Mrs. Furneau’s car. But
he was talking all the time and he led me up to the door of a car
before I ever looked. Then before I could turn back or ask any
questions, he pushed me into the car, another man grabbed me and put
his hand over my mouth and the car started. They kept me bound and
gagged and blindfolded all the time until finally they untied me in
that terrible house. Ever since then I’ve been dancing for them at
their parties. But they treated me pretty well, except for that one
night. And I knew you’d come for me sooner or later.”
I turned to Natalie. “Will you ever forgive me for sending you off in
that taxi?” I asked her.
Her smile was answer enough. “Poor Larry,” she answered. “He did his
best that night. But the taxi stopped in the Park and two men yanked
open the doors before I even knew what was going on. Your man got his
revolver out and fired at one of them a couple of times, but the man
on the other side knocked it out of his hand and they climbed into the
taxi and dragged him out. I tried to get out and run away, but another
man caught me, picked me up and bundled me into another car. Then they
tied me up and gagged me and took me to that awful place. I saw your
sister almost at once, but of course I did not know she _was_ your
sister until afterwards. Oh, Jack——”
But at this point the nurse came up and kindly but firmly informed
them that they must go. Margaret stooped over and kissed me, and, in
spite of a stifled giggle from Margaret, Natalie did the same. A
moment later they were gone.
I was not allowed to see any one the rest of that day, nor the next,
owing to a rise in temperature, induced, according to the doctor, by
my first visitors.
But on the third day I was much better, and the doctor informed me
that arrangements had been made to move me to my own apartment, where
I was to be put in charge of a trained nurse. Mrs. Furneau took charge
of the moving, accompanied by Natalie, Margaret and Moore, but I had
no chance to talk to them till later, as I was pretty tired after the
trip.
The day after the move, however, Moore came in to see me and we shook
hands with expressions of mutual esteem. I guess we were pretty glad
to see each other again.
After the first few remarks, Moore plunged into an account of his
adventures after he had been captured that day. It seemed that he,
too, was taken straight to the house on Long Island and put through a
sort of Third Degree in the room of the voices. It must have been
pretty bad, for he did not want to talk about it much. But I found out
that the Emperor would ask him a question, and when Moore refused to
answer, they turned on some other sort of gas and put him to sleep,
waking him up, violently sick, and questioning him again.
When they realized at last that they could get nothing out of him,
they told Moore, who was pretty well all in by that time, that the
next time the gas was turned on he would not wake up at all. But just
before they turned it on, and while Moore was bracing himself for the
end, his tormentors asked him casually whether he knew anything about
mechanics and electricity.
Grasping at a straw, Moore admitted that he was an electrical
engineer. Whereupon he was put to sleep by the kind of gas used on me,
but woke up again to find himself in a cell in the same building in
which they had locked me up. Later, they let him see part of the
apparatus which worked the cylinder, although he was never allowed to
study the thing sufficiently to get a clear understanding of the
nature of the fierce rays.
However, he was able to make certain adjustments that were needed, and
he was retained as the house electrician after that. A few days later
he was allowed, under supervision, to make the electrical preparations
for a Japanese fête. He was loose in the building with his guard the
night we attacked. His guard was killed at the start and Moore lay low
until things quieted down. Then he came out to try to find me, saw us
start for the room of the cylinder and ran after us to warn us, for he
had discovered the electrical arrangement for blowing up the little
stone house in case of an attack. It had been a bar from one of the
windows of that house that had crushed in my ribs.
But, Moore said, no one had been able to find any trace of the man
Clark, who had disappeared early in the search, of the young man about
town who had given Moore his first clew that night on Riverside Drive,
nor, finally, of Pride. Nor has anything ever been learned of these
three.
The loss of Pride was a bitter blow to all of us. The man gave up his
life, I believe, to trace me that night, probably putting up a fight
after his car smashed up and getting killed in the process. None of us
will ever forget him. Whatever death he died, I know and we all know
that it was a good death. All honor to him and may he sleep soundly.
The Chief and Moore and I have lost a friend that we can never
replace.
Later, when the earlier report of my death had been contradicted, I
had other visitors, and I began to learn more about what had happened
after the big drug raid, as the papers called it.
The whole country rang with the affair for a while, as every one will
remember. But owing to the importance of the people who were at the
house that night, or who were found to be connected with the gang, and
the position of many of the girls who were rescued, very few of the
details got into the papers. The little book I took from Vining’s flat
was found among the Emperor’s papers. The names in it, mostly of
persons in high social positions, referred to people whom the Emperor
had got into his toils, through drugs, and to whom he had been
supplying drugs regularly, to keep them under his thumb. The numbers
after their names referred to supplies of these drugs.
The girls in the gardens, of whom there were some ten or twelve, were
young Russian girls, smuggled into this country, and were mostly
peasants. I never heard what became of them.
As for Mrs. Fawcette, she was taken to her town house and quietly
buried from there. Nothing more was ever said about the manner of her
death, although the others know now.
The girl who was my dinner companion that first night in the Emperor’s
house came to visit me too. And since then she has become a close
friend of Margaret’s and mine, as have some of the others whom
Margaret saw at that house.
The Secret Service alone knew of the extent of the organization which
that strange man, the Emperor, had built up about him. After the
smash, the mortality, through suicide, among men and women prominent
both socially and politically, was simply appalling. But the
Department of Justice kept its own counsel and no one else ever knew
how many of these people were connected with the Emperor’s
organization, and how many were simply his victims who had become drug
addicts and had committed suicide when the supply was cut off. And of
course some of such deaths may have been coincidences. I am not
intending to imply that any one who died suddenly at that time was
necessarily involved. But it is certain that many such people were.
There were many other details, however, which we were all curious to
know. And after some difficulty, Moore at length succeeded in
persuading the Chief to come to a little dinner at my apartment. This
was after I was well enough to sit up.
When the night finally came, there were quite a lot of us gathered
around my table. Of course Natalie, Margaret, Moore and Larry were
there and the Chief. But in addition we had invited Natalie’s aunt and
Mrs. Furneau. I had long since explained to the former the reason for
my rudeness over the telephone.
Natalie had given me permission to announce our engagement that night
at the dinner. I had done so, and relaxed nerves and the lifting of
the cloud of the last few months had made them all pretty noisy and
inconsequential over their congratulations to me. But after Larry had
set the coffee on the table and had at last consented to take a chair
between Margaret and me, for he worshiped my little sister and
positively became her slave, we settled back in our seats and waited
for the Chief’s story. I started him off with a question.
“Chief,” I said, “we’re all pretty anxious to get at the truth of this
queer thing we’ve been up against. But what I want to know more
particularly is what idea the man had, why he called himself an
Emperor, why he dabbled in drugs, and why he stole the girls and ran
that place at all. It seems to me that he was running his neck into a
noose for nothing.”
The Chief laughed.
“Well, I’ll tell you most of the details that we have learned about
the man and his gang, and you can draw your own conclusions.
“In the first place, he was a Russian aristocrat who turned renegade
to his class under the Bolshevik régime, and was given command of a
big commune somewhere in Eastern Russia after the defeat of Kolchak.
We have traced him back that far, through one of his men whom we
captured. The fellow would not talk at all until we assured him that
this Emperor of his was dead. And even then we had to drag the details
out of him. The Emperor, as he called himself, seems to have had a
tremendous personality. My own view is that he was mad.”
“Was the whole thing the dream of a madman then?” asked Natalie.
“Perhaps so, Miss Van Cleef,” answered the Chief. “But there was a lot
of method in his madness, I’ll say that for him.
“It seems that he was a traitor to every one but himself. He was a man
of immense wealth before the Revolution. He saw the Revolution coming
and salted a good deal of his wealth away in the form of valuable
drugs, jewels and minerals. It seems that he had extensive connections
in Siberia before and after the Revolution, and he had built up a
considerable trade in opium smuggled into China. He had also refined
the manufacture of synthetic drugs to an extent that had never been
equaled, importing them from Germany and refining them. Besides all
that, he was a mechanical and electrical engineer of no mean order.
“When the Revolution came, he retained his liberty by joining the
Bolsheviki, even, apparently, gaining a high place in their councils.
Later he came to America, either with affiliations with the Bolsheviks
or actually as their accredited agent, for the purpose of bringing
about a Bolshevik Revolution in this country.”
“Great Scott,” I said, “was that what he was after?”
The Chief laughed. “Wait. It seems that that was only part of it. From
what we can learn from his papers and from the men he had under him,
his dream was a greater dream than that.
“He had no intention of acting as an agent of the Bolsheviks. He was a
man who believed implicitly in the inherent wickedness of mankind—that
every man and woman has his or her price—and he set himself, on that
assumption, to obtain a power which should eventually rival that of
Napoleon. And,” the Chief added, leaning forward in his seat, “he had
gone quite a respectable way toward realizing his dream!”
We stared at him in genuine amazement this time.
“Yes,” the big man went on. “He had two methods, desire and
intimidation. He came to this country originally with immense wealth
in his possession or at his disposal. He brought a big stock of drugs
with him, which we have found, by the way. And since then he had been
importing synthetic drugs into this country from Germany in large
quantities.”
“I noticed an article on that subject in _The Times_ some time in
November,” I interrupted. “I noticed it because it told of the amount
of synthetic drugs being smuggled to America from Germany.”
“Yes,” the Chief nodded. “The Germans perfected the manufacture of
synthetic drugs during the war and they keep our hands full. But this
man did not use, nor intend to use, his drugs merely to gain wealth.
He had a bigger motive. It was power he wanted, colossal power, and he
was in a fair way toward getting it when we finally stopped him.
“He bought that house out there on Long Island, refitted it with all
kinds of luxuries and electrical devices, and prepared to sit back in
his web and wait for his victims. His gang was already organized, and
at least four of his principal lieutenants were men—or women—with a
good social _entrée_. These acted as decoys and brought the
influential people, with whom the Emperor wanted to get in touch, to
the man’s parties. Here they were given a wonderful time and were
skillfully and thoroughly drugged. To give real parties of that kind
he had, of course, to secure beautiful women—hence his method of
kidnaping beautiful girls——” and the Chief bowed very handsomely to
Natalie, who flushed and returned the courtesy prettily.
“Just there is where the man’s personality came in. Sometimes he would
talk to his victims about life as it is to-day, and his idea of what
it should be and could be if a few resolute men made up their minds to
make it so. And in this way he actually enlisted quite a number of
persons, mostly women, in his scheme for establishing a modern Utopia
in these United States, with every man making his own laws and a
free-and-easy life, love and religion for every one.
“Of course he had no such idea in his mind, except perhaps at first,
with himself as head or Emperor. But he got these people eating out of
his hand—Mrs. Fawcette was one of them—and they brought others. And
among the others were often men of real power and influence whom the
Emperor succeeded either in enlisting in his cause, blackmailing or
drugging. If they were men in important political positions, he got
secrets out of them and then blackmailed them. Or he threatened to
destroy their public lives for them unless they did as he wanted.
“But his safest and most effective method was to drug his victims so
subtly and with such skillfully prepared drugs that they acquired the
drug habit and the drug hunger before they were aware of it. Then, as
he was the only source of supply, they would do anything he told them
to, to get some more of the same.”
“But surely,” Moore interrupted, “you don’t believe that he could have
got away with anything like that for long, do you, sir?”
The Chief shook his head, “I don’t know, Moore,” he answered. “Nobody
would have dreamed that Napoleon could get away with what he did get
away with. And immense wealth means immense power in the world of
to-day, as the history of Hugo Stinnes in Germany shows. Without a
doubt this Emperor was a little mad—perhaps more than a little. But
who can say where genius ends and madness begins? And the man was an
organizing genius, an electrical genius, an executive genius in his
power over men, had a genius for making money and was an expert
chemist. What is more, he had a big vision, such as it was. And that
is everything.
“From the rambling versions I have been able to get out of the few of
his men who were left alive, he intended to make his power practically
absolute in this country by the underground methods I have told you.
Then, according to one man, he intended to make himself Emperor of the
World. That was the little plan he had up his sleeve!”
We all laughed. But when I glanced at the Chief’s face I was amazed to
see that his smile was perfunctory. Evidently he did not take this
Russian’s crazy ambition quite as lightly as we did. “He was about the
most dangerous customer I’ve run up against in my career, anyway!” he
added, a moment later.
“Tell me, Chief,” I asked him, “how did he manage to run a place like
that without somebody getting on to it? I’ve been wondering about
that. I should think local people would have noticed all the activity
involved in running such a _ménage_. Think of the supplies and the
power he used for that big house and that huge staff.”
The Chief laughed. “That puzzled me for a while too. But he was too
clever for that. All his supplies were brought in by lighter from New
York and unloaded on the beach at night. You saw one party at it. He
brought coal that way too. And he had a big dynamo brought from New
York in the same way for his electric power. He sent a man to the
village for a few small supplies every little while as a blind.”
“How did he get his supplies, then, into the house?”
“By another underground passage, up that little gully you saw his men
disappearing into. We stopped that hole the night we made the raid. It
was cleverly concealed with growing bushes and brush. But they aren’t
yet through exploring the place, and we expect to find many other
‘earths’ before we get through. Acting as an agent for the Bolshevik
Government gave him practically unlimited men to work for him, and
there was little danger of their talking. These Russians are too good
conspirators for that and so are the Chinese he had brought with him.
They thought that that house was the headquarters of the future
Bolshevik Government in the United States. The Emperor was a wonder at
making people believe what he wanted them to believe.”
“Funny there were no windows in the place.”
The Chief smiled. “That was clever, too,” he answered, “He had had an
inner shell put in the house, so that the windows showed from the
outside but showed no lights. It gave the house a deserted appearance,
which was just what he wanted.”
“By the way,” I asked, “what became of that other car that started out
with us?”
Both the Chief and Moore laughed outright at this. “Well,” said the
former, “there’s been a little feeling about that. It seems that they
had only gone a block or two when they were overtaken by a motor-cycle
cop. He told them that I had sent him with instructions that they were
to proceed at once to Coney Island, as the meeting place had been
changed. What’s more, they went. They waited awhile, and by the time
they suspected that something was wrong and came back, you and I had
gone on. We never caught the cop either.”
“I never heard what happened to the other fellows outside that night,”
said Moore.
“Oh, they had a pretty warm time. Those fellows that tried to blow us
up on the way down came back and reported their failure, and the
Emperor stationed them outside the house to wait for us. But of course
he thought there were only the three of us. When our men came in touch
with them there was a battle-royal, the end of which we saw from the
big hall. It’s a good thing that they drove those fellows in, or our
men might have been a much longer time getting in to us.”
“What became of Vining?” I asked him presently. “Is he going up for
trial soon?”
The Chief stared at me and shook his head slowly. “He’s gone up for
trial already,” he said gravely. “One of the fool cops out there in ——
told him that we had rounded up the gang and that the head of it was
dead. And the next morning they found Vining hanging by his own belt
from the bars of his window. We had enough evidence to send him to the
chair ten times over anyway. He took the easier way.”
The rest of the general conversation that night was of a more personal
nature. The Chief had to leave early and we all trooped out to the
elevator to wish him God-speed. He is a great man, and somehow I feel
that I am destined, perhaps, to work with him again, before I die,
although the thing seems improbable enough. Perhaps what Moore told me
that night just before he left may have something to do with my
feeling.
I had left the others in the sitting-room, intending to take Natalie
and her aunt home later on. I had walked out to the elevator to say
good-night to Moore there. But before he rang the bell he turned and
faced me, smiling a little.
“Clayton,” he said, “I’ve got a confession to make to you. I knew
Margaret quite a while before I knew you!”
“What!—where?” I demanded.
“In town,” he answered. “I met her several times at the house of a
school friend of hers with whom she was staying. And, old man, I made
up my mind that she was the only girl in the world for me!”
I could only stare at him with my mouth open and he hurried on.
“You see, when she disappeared I had been out of the army for some
time and I was looking around for a job. I have independent means and
I was taking my time, but when I heard about Margaret I hurried down
to Washington and began pulling wires. You see I was in the
Intelligence Department in the Service. And finally I got the Chief to
take me on. I knew that you were doing all you could to find her
outside, and I thought I’d try to find her that way, for I knew that
the Department was up in the air about the number of girls that had
disappeared.
“I did not say anything about it to you then, because I could not bear
to talk about her and I saw no need. But later, when I realized the
danger you were in, I got the Chief to agree to offer to take you on.
The rest you know.” He hesitated. “But I wanted you to know,
because——”
I held out my hand to him. “It’s up to her of course, but I don’t know
any one I’d rather have for a brother-in-law,” I told him.
The grip Moore gave my hand caused me to open and shut it two or three
times to see whether anything was broken. But a moment later he turned
to me with a wry grin.
“Old man,” he said, “I’ve got some other news for you that may explain
the fact that the Chief did not laugh much to-night when we were
discussing the Emperor’s chances. It’s mean news too.”
I stared at him. “Mean news?”
He nodded. “You remember that night in the little stone house, just
before it was blown up? I was just behind you when that fellow jumped
into the blazing cylinder, do you remember?”
“Yes, I remember,” I told him.
“Well, you fellows turned away. But I didn’t. And I saw something that
you didn’t—something that I have told to nobody except the Chief as
yet. But I think—and he thinks—that you are entitled to know it too.
And I have his permission to tell you. The man who jumped into the
cylinder turned an agonized face in my direction for a moment just
before he disappeared. And, Clayton, it was not the Emperor!”
“What!” I shouted.
Moore shook his head. “I saw the Emperor—twice. It was the Emperor you
talked to, for the Chief has described him to me. But the man who died
in the cylinder was not he. It was his body servant. The Emperor made
up all that rigmarole about leaving the earth, or whatever it was. And
he hypnotized his servant into going to his death for him, to put us
off the track. I’ve seen the servant too, and I recognized him.”
“But then—where is he?”
Moore shook his head again. “Got away somehow. Nobody knows how. But
he’s free. His gang is broken up for some time to come, but the man
himself is still at large. The Chief is scouring the place for him,
but so far without success. That’s why he looked grave to-night. And—I
don’t blame him.”
“We’ve failed after all then.”
Moore smiled and nodded toward the room we had left. “Hardly that,” he
said. “But—the man who calls himself Emperor has probably taken an
unaccountable dislike to both of us. And—I wanted you to know. That’s
all.”
“Thanks,” I told him simply. And with that Moore took his departure.
He was leaving for Washington the next day.
There are just a few words to add.
Natalie and I were married the following spring. And in the autumn
Margaret came to live with us, having spent her summer with old
friends. Of course Larry, who had simply refused to listen to
suggestions as to finding a better job for him, had been placed in
practical command of our household as soon as Natalie and I settled
down.
Moore gave up his work with the Secret Service about the time of my
marriage, got himself a position with a firm of consulting engineers
in New York, and took to running in to see us two or three times a
week. Of course I am only a brother and these things are hidden from
me. But although Margaret goes out a good deal and has many friends,
she always seems to be at home when Moore calls. I hope I’m right!
Of the Emperor, whom Moore and I often discuss, we have heard nothing
more. He was never captured, so far as we know. But he has never been
heard from since that night.
Possibly he’s gone back to Russia, or some place equally distant. I
hope so!
The End
Transcriber’s Note
The following changes have been made to the published text to correct
what are believed to be unambiguous printer’s errors.
* “le’s” has been changed to “let’s” (Ch. XVIII).
* “ananswered” has been changed to “answered” (Ch. XXIII).
Any other seeming errors have been left unaltered.