It was plain that the pretty, half-foreign typist had suspected me,
but to my amazement, not as the assassin of Bloomsbury. It was as an
agent of the Criminal Investigation Department I had been suspected.
In that second my whole outlook on life changed.
I saw myself faced with a greater peril than I ever could have
dreamed. By mere mischance, bad fortune following on bad fortune, I
had fallen upon the secret of what was evidently a most desperate gang
of jewel thieves.
In that narrow, shuttered room, with its cheap table piled with gems
of untold value, precious stones that my eyes had never before beheld,
I stood bewildered, and at the mercy of my accusers.
Surely I was innocent of everything concerning them. They knew my
name! They knew, perhaps, that, being interested in criminology, I had
once been able to place the police on the track of one of the greatest
forgers of the present century. They evidently knew me, and, what was
worse--they feared me.
They did not know that I feared them equally. And yet, dared I reveal
why I was in hiding?
I drew a long breath. In a few seconds I passed in review all my
hopes, my life, my fears. At last, however, I blurted out:
“The reason I am here is because the police are hunting me for the
Bloomsbury murder, of which, I swear to you all, I am innocent.”
An ominous silence of a few seconds fell. Then the under-sized little
foreigner, with the black gimlet eyes, laughed derisively and said in
a bad English:
“My friends, we have to deal with a very clever fellow in this Mr.
Hipwell. Certainly he is not the man for whom his police department is
in search. A devilish clever excuse, but when one is faced with
extinction, as he is--for the only way to deal with spies is to close
their blurting lips by death--then any of us would naturally take upon
ourselves any accusation such as he does.”
“I’m innocent! I swear I am!” I shouted, facing the assembly boldly.
“I fled from the police, and only by misadventure have I entered here.
I have heard nothing, neither have I seen anything. I am innocent!” I
cried vehemently.
I could see that they were a desperate gang who, fearing lest I should
betray them, intended to put an end to my existence. Their manner and
their murderous, evil looks showed only too plainly that the threat of
death would be put in execution. Indeed, they were all conversing
excitedly in some language entirely foreign to me.
I implored the girl Hatten, who spoke the tongue as fluently as the
others, to explain to them that I had not been spying, and to assure
them that I would preserve their secret whatever it might be.
But she only turned on me with anger flashing in her eyes, and
replied:
“You are an agent of the police! I suspected it from the first. What
you say about the murder in Bloomsbury is a lie. I only suggested that
you answered to the description which Scotland Yard had circulated in
order to watch your face. The way you answered confirmed my suspicions
that you are a detective! And as you are a spy, we have decided that
you shall pay the penalty.”
I saw that, like her friends, she was fiercely antagonistic and
inexorable. Her face, her manner, her kindly attitude towards me,--all
had entirely changed. From being my friend, she had suddenly become my
worst enemy; and I knew that nothing could save me from the fury of
that desperate gang of foreigners, whose nationality I could not
determine.
I stood there in deadly peril, scarce daring to breathe, watching my
enemies in excited consultation while they decided my fate.
Suddenly the door before me opened and a woman entered.
Our eyes met for an instant. An exclamation froze on my lips.
The newcomer was the woman of the night, Hilda Bennett!
CHAPTER FIVE.
HELD BY THE ENEMY
In an instant I saw that the woman Hilda Bennett had not recognized
me. For that I was thankful.
The pale-faced young Englishman, however, was beside her in a moment,
exclaiming:
“This man has spied upon us! We are deciding what shall be done with
him!”
It was plain that the woman was a member of the criminal gang, and, in
all probability, the man who had lost his life while grappling with me
was also one of its members. In any case, the police had identified
him by his finger-prints, taken after death.
“How has he spied? How did he get in here?” inquired the woman in
surprise.
“He evidently has a false key. He is a detective!” said the girl
Hatten. “He lives in the same house with me, and calls himself Paige.
He pretended to come up from the country, but I’ve been watching him.
He only goes out at night--never in the day.”
“And he tells us a ridiculous story that the reason he is in hiding is
because it was he who shot Monkey Dick!” explained the pale-faced
young man.
“Yes!” cried Lisely, turning to Hilda Bennett. “You know who did that!
Is this the man?” she demanded fiercely, pointing at me.
The woman who in her fury had lied to the police against me, regarded
me steadily, and I feared that my faltering gaze might betray me. She
looked straight into my face for some moments, and then she spoke.
Again I held my breath.
“No,” she said decisively. “He’s a liar! This is not the man who
killed Monkey Dick!”
My heart leapt within me at that declaration, which cleared me of
suspicion, but next second the undersized foreigner, who seemed to be
the chief, remarked in his broken English:
“Ah! Then he must be a police-spy from Scotland Yard! So we are
right!”
“I swear I have no connection with Scotland Yard!” I cried in dismay.
All laughed me to derision, hurling at me epithets in their
inexplicable language, which not till long afterwards did I know to be
Roumanian.
“What shall we do with him?” asked the woman Bennett, whose face was
rouged and powdered, and whose lips were almost vermilion. The shabby,
long, old tweed coat she wore had fallen back, revealing her to be
dressed in a gorgeous evening-gown of shell-pink net, covered with
pearly sequins, a Parisian creation that would have attracted
attention in any West End ballroom.
I had escaped the real charge against me, only to face a greater and
more perilous one.
“Let’s put out the spy’s eyes, so that he’ll never be able to identify
us!” suggested the girl who was my fellow-lodger.
“A good idea!” cried the woman Bennett. “He’s a spy in any case.
Monkey Dick always said that it was far safer to prick a spy’s eyes
than to take on his body for disposal. In the latter, a trace is
always left. Let’s serve him as we did that spy Turner. He never spied
again. I saw him last year, tapping with his stick on the curb in
Waterloo Road.”