PRISONER AND ESCORT.
Dick presented to the expectant three the same disreputable and
truculent aspect which had so deeply offended Charles of Mayfair--an
aspect so extraordinary as to strike speechless for a moment even the
three so deeply interested in his advent.
"That chair with arms," said Dick to the sergeant, "or he'll fall off."
The sergeant brought it, and Dick pushed the still tipsy wretch, a
bundle of false elegance deflowered, into its embrace.
Then Randal, with beaming face, caught his brother by the shoulders.
"You grisly scallywag!" he cried.
Finucane had risen, turning his own chair for the new-comer.
"Sit down, sir," he said.
And Dick, seeing only those who addressed him, dropped into the seat.
"Don't hurry yourself, Mr. Bellamy. What'll you have?" asked Finucane.
"Brandy--whisky?"
"Tea," interrupted Dick. "A potful--and awfully strong."
"See to that, will you, sergeant?" said Finucane.
The man left the room, and Dick spoke again.
"There are things I must tell you before I slack off." Then, a little
more alert, he looked round him, and for the first time saw Caldegard
glowering at him across the table with fierce curiosity.
"I didn't see you, sir," he said, his heart warming to the old man's
piteous face, "or I'd have told you before I spoke to anyone else that
Miss Caldegard is perfectly well, though she's a bit done up."
"Where is she?" asked the father, new lines of joy making havoc of a
mask scored by inelastic sorrow.
"In bed, I think. Asleep, I hope. If you'll let me get a few bits of
information off my chest for the police, I'll tell you all about it--how
I found her, how brave and clever she's been--lots of things."
Then the bright spark came into the tired eyes again, as they searched
the face of the father of Amaryllis--the spark which Amaryllis says,
comes always just before he says something nice.
But Caldegard spoke first.
"You've had a devilish bad time of it, my boy," he said.
"Nothing to what you've been through, sir. It's hell, I know, when one
can't do anything."
Caldegard stretched his hand across the table. Dick turned from his
grasp to see Randal pouring terrific black tea into a thick white cup.
When he had swallowed three burning gulps of it, he began:
"That's Melchard," he said, pointing. "This bundle of letters I took off
him. Amongst them you'll find useful information. Read 'em now,
superintendent. You'll find there's a flat in Bayswater, where two or
three of his crowd in the illicit drug traffic are expecting him
to-morrow morning. That's the important one--the thick mauve paper."
And he drank more tea, while Finucane ran eager eyes over the letter.
"Good God!" he said, rising. "Go on with your tea, Mr. Bellamy--not your
story. Back in three minutes."
He pushed an electric button, and almost ran from the room.
"You see, sir," said Dick to Caldegard, "as we were coming home in the
train from our little day out, poor Miss Caldegard was so tired that she
said I must find her a fairy godmother directly we reached town. So I
took her straight to the only lady of that rank whom I know. I dare say
you know her too--it's Lady Elizabeth Bruffin. George Bruffin's an old
friend of mine--Mexico--and his wife's a connoisseur in pumpkins and
rat-traps."
Since all London that season was talking of the two Bruffins, and every
newspaper, in direct ratio to the badness of its paper and print, was
scavenging for paragraphs, true or false, concerning the "palatial home"
in Park Lane, neither Caldegard nor Randal Bellamy could conceal
round-eyed astonishment.
"But Amaryllis? Did she look--well, anything like----"
"Like me?" asked Dick, grinning all over the better side of his twisted
face. "Well, sir, she hasn't been knocked about, you know. But her rig
did her certainly less justice than mine does me. Nothing on earth could
make her look like a tough, and the sun-bonnet certainly had an----"
But Finucane was with them again.
"Excuse me behaving like Harlequin in the pantomime, gentlemen," he
said. "Now, Mr. Bellamy."
"Can you take advice?" asked Dick.
"From you, Mr. Bellamy," said Finucane, "who wouldn't?"
"I'm so sleepy that if I don't give it now, I may forget it. Properly
handled, that dirty thing in the chair there will give his show away.
Keep him to-night as a drunk and disorderly. Better have a doctor to
him. I tasted the stuff. Tomorrow I'll swear a dozen charges against
him--burglary, abduction, instigation to murder, attempts to kill; and
when he hears 'em read over, he'll be putty in your fingers."
"Thanks," said Finucane.
"Next: ring up the police and the station-master at Todsmoor. Tell 'em
to keep tight hold of the man who fell out of the train between
Harthborough and Todsmoor at five-forty p.m. and of the bloke that was
with him, suspected of throwing him out."
Finucane paid his guest the compliment of obeying without question.
As he hung up the receiver,
"The man's in hospital, all right," he said, "broken collar-bone. I was
just in time to prevent them from letting the other go. They're to hold
him on a charge of throwing his pal out."
"I did that," said Dick. "At least, I scared the bird off his perch."
Again Finucane rang.
"And I'll send this one," he said, "to his nest."
When Melchard had been removed, Dick gave his three listeners a rapid
and, as their faces and exclamatory comment testified, a vivid sketch of
his adventure from his detection of the perfume which pervaded the
alcove in Randal's study and the corroboration of his suspicions given
by Melchard's attempted alibi in the letter to Amaryllis, to the time
when his train pulled out of Todsmoor station; and, in the course of his
narrative, he laid on the table, each at its historic point, his _pièces
de conviction_.
Having told how Amaryllis had fainted at the sight of Ockley with the
knife-point protruding from the back of his neck, he extracted the
Webley from his overcrowded pocket.
"That," he said, "is the man's gun, which Miss Caldegard found for me."
Later, he produced Mut-mut's baag-nouk, laying it, talons upward, beside
the Webley.
"That was strapped to his hand. I gave him the first of my two shots
before he jumped, the second I put through his head as he lay scrabbling
in the car."
At this point there entered the room a stout, bearded man with careworn
face and irritable expression. Finucane rose respectfully, but the
new-comer made a motion waiving ceremony, sat in the nearest chair, and
became one of the audience.
Dick, never observing the addition, continued his tale in a voice
monotonous with fatigue.
In their turn he added to the display the Malay's revolver, with which
he had captured Melchard, and Melchard's automatic.
And, after telling them how he had forced his prisoner to drink,
"I couldn't bring the bottle--no room," he said, patting his shrinking
pocket. "The tangle-foot all went down the pussyfoot's neck, so I left
'Robbie Burns' in the car. By the way, don't forget to ring up about
that car. Old Mut-mut cut the cushions to ribbons; that bit of evidence
might save my neck."
Finucane smiled pleasantly.
"You seem to have left a trail of coroner's inquests behind you," he
said.
"All in the day's work," said Dick. "But not, thank God! in to-night's."
And when he had carried his audience past Todsmoor station,
"That's all," he said. "Can't I go home to bed now, superintendent?"
But the bearded stranger intervened.
"One of your clever young officers, I presume," he said to Finucane.
"I wish to God he were, Sir Gregory," replied the superintendent.
"A clever, and, I gather, somewhat high-handed amateur. The young lady,
I hope, is safe."
"She is, Sir Gregory--thanks entirely to the extraordinary rapidity of
Mr. Richard Bellamy's intuition and action," said Finucane, speaking
with unruffled respect, which yet did not hide, nor was intended to
hide, a note of reproof. "Without him the Department would have been too
late for the show. As it is, we are acting effectively--on information
supplied by Mr. Bellamy."
Now Dick stood in no awe of potentates, and he liked his superintendent.
"It was my luck to be on the spot," he said. "There's nothing more in
it."
"Pardon me if I differ from you, Mr. Bellamy," said Sir Gregory. "There
is this more in it: if the police had been given your opportunities they
would not have limited their action to the rescue of this unfortunate
young lady, but would have devoted themselves also to the recovery of
what is, for the country--I might almost say for the world--of vastly
greater importance. You are possibly aware that a sample of a new drug
of great potentiality for good and ill was the object of the outrage
which led to the abduction."
The great man's beard and the great man's manner annoyed Dick Bellamy,
stimulating him even through his shroud of somnolence.
He rubbed his eyes and yawned; then looked up at Sir Gregory.
"I don't know who you are, my good man," he said, "nor why you come
barging into this. What more d'you want? Your Napoleon of crime is in
the oubliette, two of his dastard accomplices are in clink at Todsmoor,
three more are being tracked to their doom in Bayswater, two are
dead----"
Here Dick produced from inner pockets a small white packet and an
envelope.
"And these," he concluded, "are the dope and the book-o'-the-words."
Both Finucane and Sir Gregory started forward as if to take possession,
but Dick drew back.
"No," he said, "I didn't go looting for my country's sake, nor the
world's. I just happened to pick up two little things belonging to a
friend of mine." And, turning, he put the Ambrotox and the formula into
Caldegard's hand, smiling his crooked smile.
"That's the lot," he murmured, and laid his head on his arms, folded
upon the table.
An uncomfortable pause was broken by the entrance of a constable with a
card.
"Gentleman wishes to know if Mr. Richard Bellamy is here," he said to
the superintendent.
But Dick did not move.
His brother bent over him.
"The boy's fast asleep," he said.
Finucane passed the card to Randal.
"'George Bruffin,'" he read out. "Better ask him up, superintendent, if
you don't mind."
Sir Gregory had been feeling himself pushed aside. He had taken the sow,
it seemed, by the wrong ear. And now, the great Bruffin and his
millions!
George came in, ponderous and unsmiling; picked out the superintendent
at once, and thanked him gruffly for admission to the "sanctum"; a word
which George chose to please him--and succeeded.
Sir Gregory pressing himself forward, Finucane was obliged to mumble an
introduction.
George replied vaguely, saying, "Oh, ah--yes, of course!"
And then, his eye falling on Randal, he came alive.
"You're Dick's big brother," he said.
"I can't help that," responded Randal, holding out his hand.
"Some people do have all the luck," said George. Then, looking down at
the sleeper, he continued: "My car's outside. My wife's waiting till I
bring him. You'd better come with us, Sir Randal, and help us tuck him
up in bed."
Sir Gregory tried again.
"Game to the last!" he said, joining the group; "but not, I suppose,
very robust. Evidently a case of complete nervous exhaustion."
Caldegard had spoken little since Dick's entrance. He now rose as if
shot from his chair by a spring, and spoke with a vigour that reminded
Randal of their youth.
"Five hundred miles--driving your own car in the dark! Climb the side of
a house. Break in--save one woman from being knifed by another. Fight
five armed men with your fists and boots. Knock out four of them. Run a
mile, dragging a girl--from a man chasing you, and shooting at you with
a revolver. Kill a murderer with a murderess's dagger. Nurse a girl with
an attack of hysteria. Drive a coach, humbug a woman, a parson, a
railway porter, a guard and a station-master. Kill a man armed with that
steel-clawed thing there, steal a car, knock a man off a train, and
bring home the exhausted woman alive and your chief enemy drunk and a
prisoner--do all that without sleep for thirty-six hours, Sir Gregory;
then, if you can drop off to sleep like that, instead of having your
head packed in ice and babbling pink spiders and blue monkeys, you may
call your constitution cast-iron. All exhaustion is nervous, Sir
Gregory, and the man who can stand the biggest dose of it is the
strongest man."
"Oh, from that point of view--yes--of course," bleated the bearded
politician.
But George covered his final discomfiture.
"I wish you'd tell me your name, sir," he said to Caldegard.
Caldegard told him.
"Thought so," exclaimed George, almost with enthusiasm. "We have the
immense pleasure of looking after Miss Caldegard. My wife won't be happy
unless you come round with me and feast your eyes on what she says is
the prettiest sight in London--Miss Caldegard asleep."
This time the father's countenance did him justice.
Finucane told his wife that night that he had at last seen an old man
perfectly happy.
The potentate saw that flash of glory, and put himself "on-side."
He went round to Caldegard, and saying, "Let me congratulate you," took
the hand offered him, and went out.
"Nothing in this meeting became him like----" began Randal.
But Caldegard cut him short.
"He meant it, Randal," he said.
"Exactly. Requiescat. Let's see if we can get this neurasthenic down to
the car without waking him."