"Be silent. Do as I bid you. It is an emergency. Drop those things and go!
Do you hear, imbecile?"
Completely cowed and cheated, the man obeyed literally, letting his burden
of garments fall to the floor and bounding hurriedly up the stairs.
Another flight was negotiated without misadventure; on this floor as well
servants were flitting busily to and fro, but none favoured the adventurer
with the least attention.
Midway down the third flight he pulled up to one side of the landing, and
reconnoitred. It was on the next floor below, the first above the street,
that Ekstrom had stopped. But in what quarter thereof? The exigency forbade
the risk of one false turn. If Lanyard were to take Ekstrom unawares it
must be at the first cast.
From the ground floor came semi-coherent snatches of surly comment, like
growls of a thunderstorm passing off into the distance:
"_At a time such as this_...."
"... _Secret Service snapping at our heels_ ..."
"... _base on the Vineyard discovered_ ..."
"... _Au Printemps raided, Sophie Weringrode under arrest. God knows
whether she will hold her tongue_!"
"_Trust her! But this ass_ ..."
"_Bringing a woman here, putting all our necks into a halter_ ..."
Immediately opposite the foot of the stairway, on the first storey, a door
opened. O'Reilly came alertly forth, closed the door behind him, paused,
fished in his pocket for a cigarette case, lighted and inhaled with deep
appreciation, meantime eavesdropping on the utterances below with his head
cocked to one side and a malicious smile shadowing his handsome Irish face.
In his own good time he shrugged an indifferent shoulder, thrust his hands
into his pockets, and sauntered coolly on down the stairs.
The moment he disappeared, Lanyard went into action, in two bounds cleared
landing and stairs, in another threw himself upon the door. It opened
readily. Entering, he put his back to it, with his left hand groped for,
found and turned a key, his right holding ready the automatic pistol he had
taken from the lockers of the U-boat.
The room was a combination of administrative bureau and study, very
handsomely if somewhat over-decorated and furnished, with an atmosphere as
distinctively German as that of a Bierstube, the sombreness of its colour
scheme lending weight to its array of massive desks, tables, chairs,
bookcases, and lounges.
Between great draped windows and an impressive chimney-piece opposite,
beside a broad, long desk, in a straight-backed chair sat a woman, gagged,
bound as to her wrists, strips of cloth which had but lately bound ankles
as well on the floor about her feet.
That woman was Cecelia Brooke.
Ekstrom stood behind her, in the act of loosening the knots which held the
gag secure.
For a space of thirty seconds, transfixed by the apparition of his enemy,
he did not stir other than to raise weaponless hands in deference to the
pistol trained upon his head. But the blood ebbed from his face, leaving
it a ghastly mask in which shone the eyes of a man who sees certain death
closing in upon him and is powerless to combat it, even to die fighting for
life. And his lips curled back in a snarl neither of contempt nor of hatred
but of terror.
And for as long Lanyard remained as motionless, rooted in a despondency
of thwarted hopes no less profound than the despair of the Prussian,
apprehending what that one could not yet guess, that once more, and now
certainly for the last time, vengeance was denied him, the fulfilment of
all his labours and their sole purpose snatched from his grasp.
The instincts of a killer were not his. Barring injudicious attempt to
summon aid or take the offensive, Ekstrom was safe from injury at the hands
of Michael Lanyard. His cunning, his favour in the countenance of fortune,
or whatever it was that had enabled him to make the girl his prisoner and
bring her here, bade fair to prove his salvation.
Deep in Lanyard's consciousness an echo stirred of half-forgotten words:
"_Vengeance is mine_...."
The sense of frustration brewed a hopelessness as stark as that of a
brow-beaten child. A blackness seemed to be settling down upon his
faculties. A mist wavered momentarily before his eyes. He gulped
convulsively, swallowing what had almost been a sob.
But he spoke in a voice positively dispassionate.
"Keep your hands up."
Lanyard removed and pocketed the key, crossed to the middle of the room
without once letting his gaze waver from the face of the Prussian,
passed behind him, planted the muzzle of the pistol beneath Ekstrom's
shoulder-blade, and methodically searched him, finding and putting aside on
the desk one automatic, nothing else.
"Stand aside!"
The almost puerile measure of his disappointment was betrayed in the thrust
with which he shouldered Ekstrom out of the way, so forcibly that the man
was sent staggering wildly half a dozen paces.
"Don't move, assassin!... Pardon, mademoiselle: one moment," Lanyard
muttered, with his one free hand undoing the gag.
He made slow work of that, fumbling while watching Ekstrom with unremitting
intentness, hoping against hope that his enemy might make one false move,
one only, by some infatuate endeavour to turn the tables excuse his
killing.
But Ekstrom would not. Recovery of his equilibrium had been coincident with
the shock administered to his hardihood and sense of security by Lanyard's
entrance. He stood now in a pose of insouciant grace, hands idly clasped
before him, disdain glimmering in languid-lidded eyes, contempt in the set
of his lips--an ensemble eloquent of brazen effrontery, the outgrowth of
perception of the fact that Lanyard, being what he was, could neither shoot
him down in cold blood nor, with the Brooke girl present, even attempt to
injure him: compunctions unassembled in the make-up of the Boche, therefore
when discovered in men of other races at once despicable and ridiculous....
The gag came away.
"Mademoiselle has not been injured?" Lanyard enquired, solicitous.
The girl coughed and gasped, shaking her head, enunciating with difficulty
in little better than a husky whisper: "... roughly handled, nothing
worse."
Lanyard's face burned as if his blood were molten mercury. "_Nothing
worse_!" Appreciation of what handling she must have suffered, if she had
resisted at all, before those beasts could have bound her, excited an
indignation from whose light, as it blazed in Lanyard's eyes, even Ekstrom
winced.
The hand was tremulous with which he sought to loose her wrists, so much so
that she could not but notice.
"Don't mind me--look to that man!" she begged. "Leave me to unfasten these
with my teeth. He can't be trusted for a single instant."
"Mademoiselle," Lanyard mumbled, instinctively employing the French
idiom--"you have reason."
For an instant only he hesitated, swayed this way and that by the maddest
of impulses, then resigned himself absolutely to their ascendancy.
"This goes beyond all bounds," he said in an undertone.
Deliberately leaving the Englishwoman to free herself according to her
suggestion--forgetful, indeed, for the moment, that she was not altogether
free--he moved to the desk and left his own automatic there beside
Ekstrom's.
"Mademoiselle," he said mechanically, without looking at the girl, without
power to perceive aught else in the world but the white, evil face of his
enemy, "for what I am about to do, I beg you forgive me, of your charity. I
can endure no more. It is too much...."
He strode past her.
She twisted in her chair, then rose, following him with wide eyes of alarm
above her hands, whose bonds her teeth worried without rest.
Ekstrom had not stirred, though one flash of pure exultation had
transfigured his countenance on comprehension of Lanyard's purpose: thanks
to the silly scruples of this animal, one more chance for life was granted
him.
Nor would the Prussian give an inch when Lanyard paused, confronting him
squarely, within arm's length.
"Ekstrom," the adventurer began in a voice lacking perceptible inflection
... "what is between you and me needs no recounting. You know it too
well--I likewise. It is my wish and my intention to kill you with my
two hands. Nothing can prevent that, not even what you count upon, my
reluctance--to you incomprehensible--to commit an act of violence in the
presence of a woman. But because Miss Brooke is here, because you have
brought her here by force, because you are what you are and so have treated
her insolently ... before we come to our final accounting, you shall get
down upon your knees and ask her pardon."
He saw no yielding in the eyes of the Prussian, only arrogance; and when he
paused, he was answered in one phrase of the gutters of Berlin, couched in
the imagery of its lowest boozing-kens, so unspeakably vile in essence
and application that Lanyard heard it with an incredulity almost
stupefying--almost, not altogether.
It was barely spoken when those lips that framed it were crushed by a blow
of such lightning delivery that, though he must have been prepared for it,
Ekstrom's guard was still lowered as he reeled back, lost footing, and went
to his knees.
Panting, snarling, uttering teeth and blasphemy, the Prussian recoiled like
a serpent, gathered himself together and launched headlong at Lanyard, only
to be met full tilt by a second blow and a third, each more merciless than
its predecessor, beating him down once more.
This time Lanyard did not wait for him to come back for punishment, but
closed in, catching him as he strove to rise, meeting each fresh effort
with ruthless accuracy, battering him into insanity of despair, so that
Ekstrom came back again and again without thought, animated only by
frenzied brute instinct to find the throat of his tormenter, and ever and
ever failing; till at length he crumpled and lay crushed and writhing, then
subsided into insensibility, was quite still but for heaving lungs and the
spasmodic clutchings of his broken and ensanguined fingers....
With a start, a broken sigh, a slight movement of the hand interpreting a
crushing sense of the futility of human passion, Lanyard relaxed, drew back
from standing over his antagonist, abstractedly found a handkerchief and
dried his hands, of a sudden so inexpressibly shamed and degraded in his
own sight that he dared not look the girl's way, but stood with hang-dog
air, avoiding her regard.
Yet, could he have mustered up heart, he might have surprised in her eyes
a light to lift him out from this slough of humiliation, to obliterate
chagrin in a flood of wonder and--misgivings.
When, however, he did after a moment turn to her, that look was gone,
replaced by one that reflected something of his own apprehension; for a
heavy hand was hammering on the study door, and more than one voice on the
other side was calling on "Karl" to open.
Either the servant whom Lanyard had met and victimised on his way
downstairs had given the alarm, or else the noise of the encounter within
the study had brought that pack of spies to the door, wildly demanding
admission.
Steadied by one swift exchange of alarmed glances with the girl, Lanyard
hastily reviewed the room, seeking some avenue of escape. None offered but
the windows. He ran to them, tore back their draperies, and found them
closed with shutters of steel and padlocked.
Simultaneously the din at the door redoubled.
With a worried shake Lanyard crossed to the chimney-piece, ducked his head,
and stepped into its huge fireplace. One upward glance sufficed to dash his
hopes: here was no way out, arduous though feasible; immediately above the
fireplace the flue narrowed so that not even the most active man of normal
stature might hope to negotiate its ascent.
He returned with only a gesture of disconcertion to answer the girl's look
of appeal.
"Can we do nothing?" she asked, raising her voice a trifle to make it heard
above the tumult in the corridor.
"There's no help for it, I'm afraid," he said, going to the desk and taking
up the pistols--"nothing to do but shoot our way out, if we can. Take
this," he added, offering her one of the weapons, which she accepted
without spirit. "If you can't get your own consent to use it, give it to me
when I've emptied the other."
She breathed a dismayed "Yes ..." and wonderingly consulted his face, since
he did not stir other than thoughtfully to replace his pistol on the desk,
then stood staring at his soot-smeared palms.
"What is it?" she demanded nervously. "Why do you hesitate?"
As one fretted by inconsequential questions, he merely shook his head,
glancing sidelong once at the unconscious Prussian, again with calculation
toward the door.
This he saw quivering under repeated blows.
With brusque decision he said: "Get a chair--brace it beneath the
door-knob, please!"--and leaving her without more explanation turned back
to the fireplace.
Motionless, in dumb confusion, the girl stood staring after him till roused
by a blow of such splintering force as to suggest that an axe had been
brought into play upon the door, then ran to a ponderous club chair and
with considerable exertion managed to trundle it to the door and tip it
over, wedging its back beneath the knob.
By this time it had become indisputably patent that an axe was battering
the panels. But the door, in character with the room, was a substantial
piece of workmanship and needed more than a few blows, even of an axe, to
break down its barrier of solid oak.
She looked round to discover Lanyard kneeling beside Ekstrom, insanely--so
it seemed to the girl--engaged in blackening the upper half of the man's
face with a handful of soot.
Unconsciously uttering a little cry of distress she sped to his side and
caught his shoulder with an importunate hand.
"In Heaven's name, Monsieur Duchemin, what are you doing? Is this a time
for childishness--?"
He responded with a smile of boyish mischief so genuine that her doubts of
his reason seemed all too well confirmed.
"Making up my understudy," he said simply. And brushing his hands over the
rug to rid them of superfluous soot, Lanyard rose. "Please go back and
stand by the door--on the side of the hinges. I'll be with you in one
minute."
Resigned to humour this lunatic whim--what else could she do?--the girl
retreated to the position designated, and watched with ever darker doubts
of his sanity, while Lanyard hurriedly drew the shells from his automatic
and carefully placed its butt in the slack grasp of Ekstrom's fingers.
Then, lifting from a near-by table a great cut-glass bowl of flowers, the
adventurer inverted it over Ekstrom's body.
Expending its full force upon the man's chest, that miniature deluge
splashed widely, wetting his face, half filling his open mouth. Some of
the soot was washed away, but not a great deal: enough stuck fast to suit
Lanyard's purpose.
Roused by that cool shock, half strangled as well, Ekstrom coughed
violently, squirmed, spat out a mouthful of water, and lifted on an elbow,
still more than half dazed.
Joining the girl by the door, Lanyard saw the Prussian sit up and glare
blankly round the room, a figure of tragic fun, drenched, woefully
disfigured, eyes rolling wildly in the wide spaces round them which Lanyard
had left unblackened.
Swinging the club chair away from the door, the adventurer placed it with
its back to the room.
"Get down behind that," he indicated shortly, and drew the key from his
pocket. "Don't show yourself for your life. And let me have that pistol,
please."
A bright triangular wedge of steel broke through one of the panels as he
fitted and turned the key in the lock.
His wits clearing, Ekstrom saw him and with a howl of fury staggered to his
feet, clutching the unloaded pistol and endeavouring to level it for steady
aim.
Simultaneously Lanyard turned the knob and let the door fly open, remaining
beside the chair that hid the girl.
A knot of spies, O'Reilly and Velasco among them, whirled into the room,
pulled up at sight of that strange, grim figure, disguised beyond all
recognition by its half-mask of black, facing and menacing them with a
pistol.
O'Reilly fired in the next breath, his shot echoed by half a dozen so
closely bunched as to resemble the rattle of a mitrailleuse.
At the first report the pistol dropped from Ekstrom's grasp. He carried a
hand vaguely to his throat, staggered a single step, uttered a strangled
moan, and fell forward, his body fairly riddled, his death little short of
instantaneous.
While the fusillade was still resounding Lanyard, seizing the girl's wrist,
unceremoniously dragged her from behind the chair and thrust her through
the door, retreating after her with his face to the roomfull, his pistol
ready.
None of that lot paid him any heed, the attention of all wholly absorbed by
the tragedy their violent hands had wrought. Velasco, the first to stir,
ran forward and dropped to his knees beside the dead man. Others followed.
Gently Lanyard drew the door to, locked it on the outside, and at the sound
of a choking cry from Cecelia Brooke, whirled smartly round, prepared if
need be to make good his promise to clear with gun-play a way to the street
though opposed by every inmate of the establishment.
But the first face he saw was Crane's.
The Secret Service man stood within a yard. To him as to a rock of refuge
Cecelia Brooke had flown, to his hand she was clinging like a frightened
child, trying to speak, failing because she choked on sobs and gasps of
horror.
Behind him, on the landing at the head of the staircase, running up from
below, ascending to the upper storeys, were a score' or more of men of
sturdy and business-like bearing and indubitably American stamp. Of
these two were herding into a corner a little group of frightened German
servants.
Lanyard's stare of astonishment was met by Crane's twisted smile.
"My friend," he said, as quietly as anyone could with his accent of a
quizzical buzz-saw, "I sure got to hand it to you. Every time I try to pull
anything off on the dead quiet you beat me to it clean. Everywhere I think
you ain't and can't be, that's just where you are. But I ain't complaining;
I got to admit, if you hadn't staged your act to occupy the minds of those
gents in there, we might've had a lot more difficulty raiding this joint."
Quickly he wound an arm round the waist of Cecelia Brooke when, without
warning, she swayed blindly and would have fallen.
"Here, now!" he protested. "That's no way to do.... Why, she's flickered
out! Well, Monsieur Duchemin-Lanyard-Ember, to a man up a tree this looks
like your job. You take this little lady off my hands and see her home, and
I'll just naturally try and finish what I started--or what you did. For,
son, I got to give you credit: you sure are one grand li'l trouble-hound!"