INTEREST IN "H"
Making a closer examination with the aid of her flash, she realised
her good fortune, for a heavy circular door hung back against the
tiling of the tube tunnel. Swinging it cautiously, she found that
when closed it fitted snugly into the round gap where the
Sud-Scandinavia burrow debouched into the City and South London
Railway, so that without a minute study of the surface it was
impossible to know that a door existed at all. Remembering that
between the hours of two and five ack emma, when the Tube is closed,
there are repair gangs moving about its subterranean ways, she
realised the necessity for some such camouflage, and guessed that the
door had only been left open by an oversight. Scrutinising the
inside of it, she found that it was fitted with a strong iron bolt.
There was nothing to be gained by remaining, and she retraced her
steps with all speed. On the return journey she noticed that two
irregular ruts ran on either side of the earthen floor of the boarded
lane. Some heavy-wheeled vehicle had made that trip frequently, but
what it might be she had no notion.
As she went, her head was whirling like a ball-race. A clean-cut
tunnel down which ran power cables, which came to a dead end in the
Tube! The enigma was to her temporarily insoluble, and she had no
time to sit down and make a calm, collected study of the facts from
all their angles. All she knew was that she had stumbled on the
trail of something big, and the most imperative thing at that moment
was to get clear with her knowledge and pass it on to more brilliant
and capable heads. At least, she would have a short laugh over
Storm--he would have to admit that even in circumstances of the
magnitude of the Alpha Triangle she had her uses. But, after that
brief period of exasperation on the one side and self-congratulation
on the other, she had no doubt that Storm was the one man to deal
with the situation accurately and efficiently. The steel-keen
precision of his mind, no less than the steel-strong virility of his
physique, brooked no uneasiness on that score. If she got out, of
course, and when....
At the top of the stairs she paused, but it was only a momentary
hesitation.
There remained still that intriguing door, and, anyway, she was
fairly and squarely in the swim by now. "When you're in the soup,
get all the nourishment out of it you can," was another of Smiler's
adages, and on it she acted. Having commenced the reconnaissance in
such style, one might as well conclude it thoroughly.
The door opened so lightly to her touch that for a second she was
suspicious. An instant later she was reproving herself in no
uncertain terms for this tentative sign of waning determination, and,
taking a grip on the butt of her little automatic, she pushed the
door wide and entered. And then she had her work cut out to suppress
an exclamation.
The room in which she stood was spacious and roughly square. The
walls were hung from ceiling to floor with luxurious curtains of
royal purple velvet embroidered with golden arabesques. The orange
carpet underfoot had a wealth of soft pile that was indescribably
pleasant to tread upon. A double rank of cushioned chairs ran the
length of the room, and a broad gangway paved with costly furs led
between them towards the far end. The restful half-light which
showed her all these things was supplied by three magnificent
chandeliers ranged overhead. It was a room like nothing she had ever
seen or even imagined, something that in its splendour suggested a
mingling of the essentials of a temple and of an Oriental palace. It
was an outrage at the same time--an outrage against all preconceived
standards, against all logic and all norms. It was a concrete
paradox that mocked comprehension and yet was fascinating by sheer
daring originality. Its gorgeous simplicity--its ascetic
voluptuousness--its Philistine reverence--these were contradictions
which numbed understanding and defied criticism.
Dumb with wonder, she simply stared. Her awed gaze travelled again
and again over every detail, and then she looked at the opposite
wall--the one facing the door--towards which she had not yet looked.
And there she saw something which harmonised so perfectly with the
atmosphere that it was evident that the room had been designed and
decorated to house it, and which at the same time explained the
perplexing counter-impressions.
At that end of the room, facing the banks of seats, was a daïs hung
with black, and in the centre of it stood a huge gilded throne. And
to the right of this throne was the keystone which held the whole
architectural monstrosity together and gave its reason and its
justification.
It was a gigantic equilateral triangle of silver which seemed to be
suspended in vacancy without material support, being probably braced
by brackets concealed behind the hangings. It must have been fully
five feet of base, and in the centre of it was a Greek _alpha_,
similarly made of silver.
She was in the council chamber of the Triangle--that exotic room
which nothing but the brain of a madman could have visualised and
brought to substance--the cathedral of a megalomaniac....
And then she saw something else, which up to then had not caught her
eye, for the shadows at that end of the room were deeper and the
interior of the throne itself was shrouded in gloom. But he moved,
and she saw him--the man who lounged on the throne--and then he spoke.
"Hullo, Susan--what do you want?"
Her eyes dilated, for although the figure and face of the man were
the figure and face of the tousled scoundrel who had invited her to
play _chemin-de-fer_, the voice was the voice of Joe Blaythwayt.
"Uncle--Joe?" she breathed.
He lumbered ponderously off the daïs and came towards her.
"I recognised you in that other room," he said, "and I've been
looking for you. What on earth did you want to come here for?"
"What did you want to come for?" she parried.
He waved a hand.
"Men are Different," he said grandly. "How did you get in? Oh, I
suppose you were the little devil who pinched my badge?" He wagged a
fat forefinger at her. "Naughty! I had no end of a job getting in
without it."
"Have you seen the tunnel?" she asked.
"Only a bit of it. I was exploring down there when I heard someone
padding towards me, and beat it back. It must have been you.
Tunnel? That's interesting. Where does it go to?"
"I haven't the foggiest." Her amazement abated, she took command of
the situation automatically. "What we've got to do is to get out of
here quick, and talk afterwards. Rustle! Storm's got to hear of
this at once."
"And Teal," put in Blaythwayt loyally.
"And Teal, if you like. Come along--behind me," she directed
impatiently, and the docile Joe followed her.
They were nearing the door when there came heavy footsteps behind
them, and the light of a hand lamp swept the corridor just behind
them. There were men talking, also, in a language she did not
understand. Blaythwayt stopped in his tracks, apparently frozen with
terror, and she gripped his arm.
"Into that room!" she whispered. "They know us there."
She was opening the door when the approaching rays veered upwards and
fell full on herself and the trembling Joe. A hoarse challenge
echoed down the passage. Unconcernedly the girl took her yellow
packet of gaspers from her pocket and began to light one as she
waited for the men to come up with them. And then, as they arrived
and grouped themselves about the door, she returned the box of
matches to her right-hand jacket pocket--and kept her hand there.
The bright light searched their faces.
"Who are you?" demanded a cultured voice with only a slight accent.
"I don't know you."
"I know 'em," said another, and added a few words she could not
interpret.
The frosted bulb overhead woke to life, and they were relieved of the
merciless glare of the interrogator's spotlight. She looked about
for the one who had claimed to know them, but none of that
dishevelled dozen seemed likely to possess so smooth a voice. And
then he spoke again--a man clad only in his trousers and a greasy
singlet, who stood half a head above the rest.
"They are special messengers of the Apex. Who admitted them?"
"I did." It was the janitor, whom she had not recognised through the
smears of engine oil which disfigured his face, who spoke. "Zat was
'ow zey zemselves called. Ze beeg one 'ave ask for Morini, and ze
mignon for Prestaire Jean."
"That's in order. John and Morini won't be here to-night--I know
where to find them. You'd better go."
It was a miracle to Susan, for the man's face was unknown to her.
And yet there was something vaguely familiar about the cast of it.
Just that indefinable carriage of the broad shoulders, the lithe
swing of the powerful arms--and yet the lank, oily black hair struck
no chord in her memory. She looked at his eyes more closely ...
_gun-metal grey_....
Surely only one man in the world had eyes of the curious tint, and,
taken with the other resemblances in poise of head and general
bearing....
He met her gaze calmly, and she could have sworn that the flicker of
a smile feinted at the corners of his mouth.
"I'll go with you, if you like to wait a minute," he said. "I'll
just get my coat."
A few seconds later he was back, folding a scarf round his bare
throat and buttoning his coat tightly around it. Only one man
returned with him, as if receiving his final instructions, and now
that she had caught an answering "_Si señor_," she gathered that they
were speaking in Spanish.
The man unbarred the front door for them, and they passed out, Storm
going last. A curt exchange of "_Buenos noches_," and the bolts
slithered home on the inside.
Storm led them briskly to the corner of the block and halted.
"Now," he ordered, "you can get in a taxi and go home, and thank your
gods you're going to bed alive!"
"There's a tunnel," Joe began excitedly, but Storm cut him short.
"I know all about the tunnel, and about the synthetic mosque, and
about the power plant, _and_ about the doss-house crew, and about the
arsenal," was his categorical retort. "I also know that there isn't
going to be a second Battle of Sidney Street if I can help it. Our
separate bluffs may be shown up at any moment, and then there'll be
Hell to pay! I've got to get busy, and you'll hinder me. Step on
it!"
"But can't I stay and see the----"
"Nope! Vamos!"
Joe looked hurt.
"This is the first time I've ever been near any excitement," he
protested weakly.
"_Get--in--a--taxi--and--beat it_," snarled Storm, and Blaythwayt
moved aggrievedly away.
The girl had watched this brief encounter in amusement blended with
annoyance. After all, it was only luck that had put Storm on the
spot at the same time as herself, and it wasn't fair. She had taken
exactly the same risks as if he had been a hundred miles away, and
she wasn't going to be cheated out of her reward.
"All right--we'll beat it," she said defiantly. "But we'll come
back!"
"Let me see you, and you'll spend the night in a police station!"
Storm flung at them over his shoulder as he strode away.
From the Custom House he phoned the nearest Division and rapped out
his requirements in terse, staccato sentences. Then he got through
to the Yard, and tried to get Inspector Teal, but Teal, tired of
waiting, had gone home to bed. Storm called a third number, and
presently the detective's drowsy grumble answered him.
"Come right down to the Sud-Scandinavia Sawmill in Lower Thames
Street," he directed. "There's going to be fun!"
"Is that Raegenssen's place?" Teal's voice took on a more alert note.
"Yeh! I've sent a man round to take him, though I doubt if Olaf's
still rooted in Finchley. Flying Squad and all divisional reserves
are on their way. Bring a gun. The mill's like a fort, and there's
over a hundred roughnecks inside. Now burn the roads!"
In less than half an hour the first detachment of urgently summoned
men had arrived, and thereafter reinforcements kept coming in
batches--broad-shouldered, phlegmatic men who took the unusual
circumstances with great philosophy, as though it were merely a
slight deviation from routine. Some were in uniform--these had been
hurriedly called in from minor duties--the rest were in plain
clothes. All were armed, in accordance with Storm's telephoned
warning.
Knowing that precipitancy might be fatal, he waited until he had
mustered a hundred men. Seventy of these he told off to draw an
inconspicuous cordon round the whole block, and thirty he sent down
to cover the Tube bolt-hole at London Bridge Station. A batch of
twenty of the Flying Squad arriving in a van at that moment, he sent
them on to occupy a similar position at Bank Station. The mention of
the word flashed a blaze of inspiration across his mind.
"Bank!" he repeated to himself. "Jerusalem, what a man!"
It would be some time before the men could take up their stations,
and he filled in the period of inaction by smoking a cigarette with
calm enjoyment, and discussing the probable result of a local
bye-election with a night watchman.
On the stroke of 3.45 he trod out his cigarette end, bade the
watchman a cheery good-night, and made a supplementary disposition of
the men who had reached the Custom House in the meanwhile. He was
just leaving when Inspector Teal dashed up in a taxi, the disarray of
his attire testifying to the haste of his start.
"In time?" queried that officer swiftly, and Storm nodded.
"To the tick. We are now going into action."
They walked together to Raegenssen's block. It was just getting
light.
Storm paused before the door and lighted another cigarette. Then he
jerked back the jacket of his automatic, slipped the safety catch,
and pushed Teal to one side.
"No use both of us being shot up," he said, and pressed the bell.
This time there was little delay. The muffled foot-steps of the
French janitor came down the passage; the three-inch bars swished
back in their steel grooves; the lock clicked. As before, the door
swung back a bare, suspicious two inches.
Storm moved so that the light from the gas jet overhead fell across
his face, and the door opened wider as the man recognised him.
Storm pushed into the gap, blocking the door open with his foot. The
surprised janitor felt a sinewy hand grasp his windpipe caressingly,
and a menace he understood equally well glinted before his eyes.
"_Sois sage--et vis!_" hissed Storm in his ear, and the man signified
his acceptance of this advice.
He was handed back to Mr. Teal, who in turn passed him on to a bulky
shadow which rose from the ground.
Storm, with Teal hard on his heels, led the way into the building,
and a number of dim shapes materialised from the adjoining alley and
followed them. So far, all had been admirably plain sailing, but
luck was not with them that night. Storm was groping round for the
switch which controlled the corridor light, when an over-eager
constable tripped over the doorstep and crashed down among his
fellows. The thud sounded like a detonation in the silence, and Teal
turned and cursed the offender in pregnant whispers. Storm found the
lever he sought, and pulled it down.
"Teal--left-hand door," he called. "This way, some of you boys!"
He himself turned the handle of the right-hand door and kicked it
open. The men were pouring into the passage behind him.
He saw how much that fall had cost them, and sprang into the room.
There was another door to it, and most of the roughnecks had already
passed through it. Scarcely half a dozen were left, scrambling to
get through. Storm caught the hindmost and tripped him. A couple of
burly forms promptly sat on the prostrate one.
The next instant something banged close to Storm's head, and he felt
the wind of the bullet and jumped back, drawing as he did so.
The panic had stopped suddenly. The half-dozen who had been fighting
to get through the second door were now filing out in an orderly
manner, and every one of them was armed. The men behind Storm
hesitated for a second, for the London bobby is not anxious to use
firearms, and it seemed to be the only course left open. They were
waiting for orders, and Storm, having none of their scruples, roared
them on.
"Feet--first round--don't hit 'em!" he snapped, and a volley rang out.
The retreating men retaliated on the echo, shooting in deadly
earnest, and Storm heard the cries of the stricken men behind him.
He fired back himself, gunning now to wound, and saw a man drop with
a scream. But the retaliatory salvo had done its work; and in the
momentary consternation, before the officers could return the fire,
those who were left of the half-dozen won through the door.
Storm reached it a second late, and it slammed in his face. On the
other side a bar thudded home.
"The table--smash it in!" he ordered.
While they battered at the thick wood he left the room and crossed
the passage to see how Inspector Teal was faring. Teal had been
more, and at the same time less, fortunate. He had no casualties,
but the reason was that those who had occupied the room had escaped
too swiftly for him, and the way of pursuit was barred by a door on
which his men were already working.
"Heaven knows where these let out," said Storm. "It may be the
tunnel, of course. Here--bring three of your men and we'll go and
see."
They sprinted down the corridor, and so bore the brunt of the flank
attack which the Triangle, with amazing daring and presence of mind,
had organised. Just as they turned the angle of the passage an armed
mob streamed from a side door and let fly at them on sight.
The five dodged back behind the bend, and, leaning over each other,
fired from cover. The police were shooting to kill now, and in the
face of that withering hurricane of death the assault faltered and
broke.
The survivors retreated to the door through which they had come, and
Storm caught Teal by the arm.
"Great stuff! Go back and get the others; just leave a few on guard
in the rooms. Oh, and whistle more men in from the outside."
Teal departed obediently, and Storm coolly reloaded. He was
breathing evenly, and there was hardly a flush on his face. On an
impulse he decided to reconnoitre upstairs, and thereby saved his
life.
He was half-way up when the door below him opened and a man appeared.
In a moment the apparition had vanished again, but Storm had seen the
round black object that had been flung towards the angle he had just
quitted. He yelled a warning, and at the same time fired through the
door. He heard a bellow of pain, and gathered that his random shot
had found a billet. Then the bomb exploded.
Lying flat on the stairs, he blazed between the banisters at the
second mass which crowded out to attack, until his automatic clicked
on an empty magazine. By this time a fresh contingent had arrived
under Inspector Teal, and once again the onslaught was repulsed with
losses on each side. But now, instead of retiring to their door,
most of the party broke for the stairs, running the gauntlet of the
police fire.
Storm leapt up ahead of them, for there was no hope of resistance:
there must have been fully eighty men in that solid pack. He had
hoped for a single door which he could have held against them, but a
long passage fronted him as he reached the top. A side door which
was ajar showed a bare room, and he dodged into it, barring the door
behind him, and heard the mob go pounding past. Reloading at speed,
he opened the door again and fired low as the last of them
disappeared through another opening, and two fell to his shooting.
Then Teal and a number of men arrived, and he led them in a rush to
the door and tried the handle. It was locked.
"There may be another bomb coming, so look out!" he warned, and
promptly disregarded his own advice.
The lock burst out under the impact of a bullet, and they charged in.
The place was beautifully empty.
"This is annoying," said Teal with staggering restraint, and walked
to the only window.
Hanging out, he looked to his left and saw that the wall continued
over to the next block, with an archway below at the street level.
He pointed this fact out to Storm, thereby annoying that young man
considerably.
"The place is marked as an island site on the surveyor's plans," he
said. "They must have sent me an old set. You can see the bridge is
newer than either building. I suppose there's a secret panel
somewhere, but we needn't waste time looking for it now. What about
the birds who didn't get away?"
"The boys have got 'em--thirteen. They were unlucky, all right."
"And eighty-odd have slipped the cordon, you long-tailed land-ape!"
snarled Storm with pardonable heat. "Your sense of proportion makes
me want to scream!"
His first thought was for the men under him, but he found that an
ambulance had been sent along by a thoughtful authority, and Red
Cross men were already tending the casualties. Six of the constables
were killed, and a number were more or less seriously wounded. Then
he went along to the room where the thirteen unlucky ones were under
guard awaiting the arrival of a van. Their spirit left nothing to be
desired.
"You might as well let us go, guvnor," said one hefty specimen.
"It'll only mean trouble if you take us to the station."
"Yeh!" agreed Storm ironically. "And the trouble will be right up
under your hats!"
The man looked at him queerly.
"D'you really think you'll get us to the station?" he asked, and
Storm showed his teeth.
"I'll think more than that, for your benefit," he said unpleasantly.
"I think in about two months' time you will all hang by your necks
until you are dead!"
Teal, on a round of inspection, stopped Storm to air a theory. The
detective was taking the set-back with great patience. He stripped
the wrapping from a wafer of chewing-gum and inserted the sweet in
his mouth with care.
"Has it occurred to you," he said, "that even a lot of thugs like
that bunch wouldn't be armed to the teeth, every man of 'em, in the
ordinary way, if they'd thought they were all snug and chummy?"
This was a far-fetched suggestion, Storm opined, but Teal's
confidence was undamped. He went to the telephone in the hall and
called Exchange.
"Central-Inspector Teal," he introduced himself. "Has this number
been called in the last hour? ... Thank you.... Ah! ... public call
box at Monument Station you said? ... Thanks."
"Three bluffs were put over in this shack to-night," Storm murmured
thoughtfully as Teal replaced the receiver. "I don't think it
matters which one that call gave away." He looked at the detective
sombrely. "Teal! This is Hell's own song and dance act! They were
waiting for us, and they guessed they could make a slick enough
getaway when the time came; they just stayed on to liven things up a
bit for us. That's nerve! I wish the swine didn't seem so damned
sure of themselves."
"You surprise me--after that speech of yours at the Enquiry," Teal
said drily.
Shortly afterwards one of the Flying Squad's vans arrived with the
detachment which had guarded the Bank Station. The officers were
unloaded, and the captured members of the Triangle shipped instead,
with two armed men for company. A third armed man rode beside the
driver.
Huge drays with their attendant school of porters were already about,
blocking the narrow street, and the van made slow progress. Storm
watched it go with a frown, for the confident words of one of the
prisoners stuck in his head. A second van arriving at that moment,
he sent it on the trail of the first for additional security, but by
that time there was a thick jam of slow traffic between the two, and
in those circumstances he had some doubts of the efficiency of his
precaution.
"If they do get away, I'll believe I'm dreaming a detective story,"
he told himself.
Nevertheless, the prisoners did escape, and by a ruse so simple that
it was almost certain to succeed.
The leading van made for Headquarters via Tower Hill and Eastcheap,
to avoid the obstructions of Lower Thames Street as much as
possible--a move which the strategist would have foreseen. At the
turn into Tower Street it encountered a lorry laden with men, who to
the casual eye were navvies on their way to work, but who must almost
certainly have been a section of the crowd which had made its getaway
through the secret door in the upper storey of the sawmill. As the
van containing the prisoners took the bend, its escort being still
held up in the wedge of Billingsgate traffic, the lorry seemed to get
out of hand, and swerved across the road. It caught the Flying Squad
van squarely across the bonnet, throwing the whole vehicle round in a
complete circle which fetched up in a smash against a lamp-post. The
driver of the police van and the man who sat beside him were thrown
out and dangerously injured; the two armed men inside, half-stunned
by the shock, were quickly overpowered by the "navvies" who swarmed
from the lorry. The rescue party and their friends then reëntered
the lorry, which in the meantime had been backed out of the wreckage,
and which by reason of its superior weight and the angle of impact
had suffered no great damage, and were driven off. The rescue was
conducted with such well-organised speed that it was obvious that
some such contingency had been feared and prepared for, and the
proceedings rehearsed beforehand. From start to finish the incident
took no longer than three minutes, and the lorry was rushing away
through the deserted streets before any of the few spectators could
recover from their astonishment. The lorry was driven round the
Tower and across Tower Bridge, and later in the day was found
abandoned outside a builder's yard in Bermondsey.
All this, of course, neither Storm nor Inspector Teal heard until
some time afterwards.
"There's two more bits of news for you," Teal said in his homeward
taxi. "One is that Miss Hawthorne's slipped her man and disappeared."
"I knew that," said Storm, although for the first time since the
opening of that brief, hectic battle he remembered Susan's threat to
return. "What else?"
"This." Teal fished in his pocket and brought out a grubby scrap of
paper on which a message was typewritten. "Birdie tried to get this
put in the _Era_ agony column. The clerk smelt rats and phoned us."
Storm read:
Allay contemptible inanity. Groan in it ping, correct, a a a, ping,
a a a. Attaboy consuming, brass band ping, a, loving wine. Cry
alas, glory me, ping. Alone. Weeping, days are long, 2. Try again,
a ping, presumably futility. A ping a ping. It is hope, frustrated,
pong sadly, ping, drying tears. Inside, to see pong ping, a, come
and be blest.
"Has Birdie taken to free verse," he asked mildly, when he had
perused the amazing document a second time, "or are we both mad?"
Teal shook his head.
"Nor is Birdie in love, as far as I can make out," he said.
At the Albany, Storm invited the detective upstairs, for he felt like
anything but endeavouring to put in a few hours' sleep before
commencing the next day's work.
"You may as well wait a bit and have breakfast with me," he said as
they went in. "Has anyone else been getting busy on this little
puzzle?"
"It's a code, of course," said Teal unnecessarily, and Storm stopped
in the hall to wring his hand in mute admiration.
"You're a genius!" he declared brokenly when he had found his voice.
Comfortably ensconced in a deep armchair, with one of Storm's cigars
between his teeth, the somnambulous Mr. Teal became less trite.
"Our tame expert's on the job, but he's nowhere near it yet. Said it
was like nothing in his experience. It's something absolutely new.
I suppose it's simple enough really, but these experts have such
conventionally eccentric minds that the obvious always gets by them."
"Thank God I'm not an expert," said Storm fervently.
He mixed himself a drink, carried the cigarette box over to the
centre table, lighted a smoke, and began to work.
He was silent for a long time, and then he leaned back, staring at
the ceiling. The pencil in his hand drummed against his teeth, began
to beat out a meditative tattoo. The sound interested him,
apparently, to the exclusion of everything else, and then suddenly he
brought his chair back to the vertical and permitted himself a soft
"Jerusalem!" of satisfaction. He wrote swiftly for a few moments,
and then turned to the expectant Teal.
"Who are the H's we know in this case?" he asked.
Teal pondered.
"There's Harry the Toff--I think he's in. And Horring, the hold-up
man--he's reformed lately, which always makes me think of Triangles
these days. Oh, and Hannassay; but Hannassay's dead and buried.
That's all I can remember off-hand."
"I can add one to that list," said Storm, and crossed to the
telephone.
There was a short silence, and then he was speaking into the
instrument.
"Hullo--Terry? What on earth are you up for at this hour? ... Oh, I
see.... Yes, I'll bet there was some vertical breeze! Got home all
right, though? ... Mmm--alone? ... Not even Uncle Joe? ... Lazy
piker! Look here, can I speak to her? Is she up still? ... Right."
He covered the transmitter with his hand while he waited, and
addressed Teal. "This is the H you couldn't remember off-hand," he
remarked. "I want another man to watch her, and I'll have the coats
off their backs if she slips 'em again!"
"Miss Hawthorne?" queried Teal, mildly interested.
"That same.... Hullo. Yes.... Splendid! But listen, Susan, I'm
coming round right after breakfast, and I'm going to get your goat!
... No, but you've got to play the game! Now look here, where did
Joe leave you? ... Tower Hill? ... So you didn't keep your promise?
... Jerusalem--who? ... Damn it.... Oh, all right. S'long!"
He hung up the receiver.
"Saw the getaway and recognised someone," he explained as he came
back. "This code, now. It's Morse. Short and long syllables equal
dots and dashes. But some of the signals are too long to get into
one word, so _ping_ or _a_ equals _dot_, and _pong_ equals _dash_.
When more than one word or letter goes to make up a signal the phrase
is enclosed in commas. Groan in it ping, for instance, is
_dash-dot-dot-dot_. The words are easy. _Allay:
dot-dash--contemptibly: dot-dash-dot-dot_--and so forth. Here's the
whole shoot, in case you can't read Morse."
He tossed over a slip of paper, and Teal read the scribbled words
with interest.
"_All bases. Urgent. Take A. No. 2. Kill H. Urgent. Apex._"
"Clever," was Teal's grudging comment. "What do we do about it,
Chief?"
"Give it back to Birdie and try to kid him you've decided it was
innocent. That'll be a job, but it'll have to be done. If the
orders don't go out through the Era, they'll go out some way else,
and knowing their code 'll be useful if they try it on again. I'm A,
of course, and I'm to be taken. But who is 2--or is it a place?"
"Most likely another nest of theirs. There are probably several--the
Triangle wouldn't risk everything on one being unsuspected."
"Probably," Storm agreed. "And H is to die--being apparently more
dangerous than me. There's a bouquet!"
It was nearing seven, and he went up the outside stairs to call his
manservant and order breakfast. Cork was already astir, and in an
astonishingly short time steaming coffee and delicate slices of
golden-brown toast were on the table, and a great dish of fried eggs
and bacon was set before them, still sizzling seductively from the
pan.
"This will about save my life," Teal said appreciatively, and heaved
himself from his chair.
Across the food Storm regarded him.
"If Miss Hawthorne is the H referred to," he said, "there're going to
be a whole lot of three-cornered funerals in the near future. And
the Big Triangle 'll be among those present! From now on I'm going
gunning for Triangles!"
The detective stared, for if he had seen the words in cold print he
would have refused to believe that they could be invested with such a
crisp, arctic, incisive malevolence. Storm's voice was very quiet,
very suave--but the quietness was like that which comes between the
flash of lightning and the answering crackle of its destruction; and
the suaveness was not of velvet, but of polished metal....
"The Law," began the respectable Mr. Teal feebly, and then stopped,
having met the frosty gaze of those level grey eyes.
"Skunkrot the Law!" said Storm, very gently.