POLTAVO LEAVES HURRIEDLY
In an instant the road was filled with men; they must have been
crouching in the shadow of the grassy plateau, but in that same
instant Poltavo had leapt back to the cover of the garden. A
revolver banged behind him; and, as he ran, he snatched his own
revolver from his pocket, and sent two quick shots into the thick of
the surrounding circle. There was another gate at the farther end of
the garden; there would be men there, but he must risk it. He was
slight and had some speed as a runner; he must depend upon these
gifts.
He opened the gate swiftly and sprang out. There were three or four
men standing in his path. He shot at one point-blank, dodged the
others, and ran. He judged that his pursuers would not know the road
as well as he. Shot after shot rang out behind him. He was an easy
mark on the white road, and he turned aside and took to the grass.
He was clear of the houses now, and there was no danger ahead, but
the men who followed him were untiring.
Presently he struck the footpath across the sloping plain that led to
the shore, and the going was easier.
It was his luck that his pursuers should have missed the path. His
every arrangement worked smoothly, for the boat was waiting, the men
at their oars, and he sprang breathlessly into the stern.
It was a circumstance which might have struck him as strange, had he
been in a condition for calm thought, that the horsemen who were of
the party that surrounded him had not joined in pursuit.
But there was another mystery that the night revealed. He had been
on board the _Doro_--as his little ship was called--for an hour
before he went to the cabin that had been made ready for him.
His first act was to take his revolver from his pocket, preparatory
to reloading it from the cartridges stored in one of his trunks.
Two chambers of the pistol were undischarged, and, as he jerked back
the extractor, these two shells fell on the bed. He looked at them
stupidly.
Both cartridges were blank!
* * * * * * *
Had he heard T. B. Smith speaking as he went flying down the road,
Poltavo might have understood.
"Where's the dead man?" asked T. B.
"Here, sir," said Van Ingen cheerfully.
"Good." Then, in French, he addressed a figure that stood in the
doorway.
"Were you hurt, mademoiselle?"
Catherine's little laugh came out to him. "I am quite safe," she
said quietly.
He was going away, but she called him.
"I cannot understand why you allowed him to escape----" she began.
"That you should desire blank cartridges to be placed in his revolver
is not so difficult, but I do not see----"
"I suppose not," said T. B. politely, and left her abruptly.
He sprang onto a horse that was waiting, and went clattering down the
hill, through the Sôk, down the narrow main street that passes the
mosque; dismounting by the Custom House, he placed his horse in
charge of a waiting soldier, and walked swiftly along the narrow
wooden pier.
At the same time as the count was boarding the _Doro_, T. B. and Van
Ingen were being rowed in a cockleshell of a pinnace to the long
destroyer which lay, without lights, in the bay.
They swung themselves up a tiny ladder onto the steel deck that rang
hollow under their feet.
"All right?" said a voice in the darkness.
"All right," said T. B.; a bell tinkled somewhere, the destroyer
moved slowly ahead, and swung out to sea.
"Will you have any difficulty in picking her up?" He was standing in
the cramped space of the little bridge, wedged between a quick-firing
gun and the navigation desk.
"No--I think not," said the officer; "our difficulty will be to keep
out of sight of her. It will be an easy matter to keep her in view,
because she stands high out of the water, and she is pretty sure to
burn her regulation lights. By day I shall let her get hull down and
take her masts for guide."
It was the strangest procession that followed the southern bend of
the African coast. First went the _Doro_, its passengers serenely
unconscious of the fact that six miles away, below the rim of the
horizon, followed a slim ugly destroyer that did not once lose sight
of the _Doro's_ mainmast; behind the destroyer, and three miles
distant, came six destroyers steaming abreast. Behind them, four
miles away, six swift cruisers.
That same night, there steamed from Funchal in the Island of Madeira,
the _Victor Hugo_, _Condé_, _Gloire_, and the _Edgard Quinet_ of the
French Fleet; the _Roon_, _Yorck_, _Prinz Adalbert_, and the
battleship _Pommern_ of the German Navy, with sixteen destroyers, and
followed a parallel ocean path.
After three days' steaming, the _Doro_ turned sharply to starboard,
and the unseen fleets that dogged her turned too. In that circle of
death, for a whole week, the little Spanish steamer twisted and
turned, and, obedient to the message that went from destroyer to
cruiser, the fleets followed her every movement. For the _Doro_ was
unconsciously leading the nations to the "Mad Battleship." She had
been slipped with that object. So far every part of the plan had
worked well. To make doubly sure, the news of Zillier's escape from
Devil's Island had been circulated in every country. It was
essential that, if they missed the _Maria Braganza_ this time, they
should catch her on the first of June at "Lolo."
"And where that is," said T. B., in despair, "Heaven only knows."
Wearing a heavy overcoat, he was standing on the narrow deck of the
destroyer as she pounded through the seas. They had found the
southeast trade winds at a surprisingly northerly latitude, and the
sea was choppy and cold.
Young Marchcourt, the youthful skipper of the _Martine_, grinned.
"'Lolo' is 'nowhere,' isn't it?" he said. "You'll find it charted on
all Admiralty maps; it's the place where the supply transport is
always waiting on manoeuvres--I wish to Heaven these squalls would
drop," he added irritably, as a sudden gust of wind and rain struck
the tiny ship.
"Feel seasick?" suggested T. B. maliciously.
"Not much--but I'm horribly afraid of losing sight of this
Looker-ahead."
He lifted the flexible end of a speaking-tube, and pressed a button.
"Give her a few more revolutions, Cole," he said. He hung up the
tube. "We look like carrying this weather with us for a few days,"
he said, "and, as I don't feel competent to depend entirely upon my
own eyesight, I shall bring up the Magneto and the Solus to help me
watch this beggar."
Obedient to signal, two destroyers were detached from the following
flotilla, and came abreast at dusk.
The weather grew rapidly worse, the squalls of greater frequence.
The sea rose, so that life upon the destroyer was anything but
pleasant. At midnight, T. B. Smith was awakened from a restless
sleep by a figure in gleaming oilskins.
"I say," said a gloomy voice, "we've lost sight of that dashed
_Doro_."
"Eh?"
T. B. jumped from his bunk, to be immediately precipitated against
the other side of the cabin.
"Lost her light--it has either gone out or been put out. We're going
ahead now full speed in the hope of overhauling her----"
Another oilskinned figure came to the door.
"Light ahead, sir."
"Thank Heaven!" said the other fervently, and bolted to the deck.
T. B. struggled into his clothing, and, with some difficulty, made
his way to the bridge. Van Ingen was already before him. As he
climbed the little steel ladder, he heard the engine-bell ring, and
instantly the rattle and jar of the engines ceased.
[Illustration: T. B. Smith]
"She's stationary," explained the officer, "so we've stopped. She
has probably upset herself in this sea."
"How do you know she is stationary?" asked T. B., for the two faint
stars ahead told him nothing.
"Got her riding lights," said the other laconically.
Those two riding lights stopped the destroyer; it stopped six other
destroyers, far out of sight, six obedient cruisers came to a halt,
and, a hundred miles or so away, the combined French and German
fleets became stationary.
All through the night the watchers lay, heaving, rolling, and
pitching, like so many logs, on the troubled seas. Dawn broke
mistily, but the lights still gleamed. Day came in dull greyness,
and the young officer, with his eyes fastened to his binoculars,
looked long and earnestly ahead.
"I can see a mast," he said doubtfully, "but there's something very
curious about it."
Then he put down his glasses suddenly, put out his hand, and rang his
engines full ahead.
He turned to the quartermaster at his side.
"Get the Commodore by wireless," he said rapidly; "the _Doro_ has
gone."
Gone, indeed, was the _Doro_--gone six hours since.
They found the lights. They were still burning when the destroyer
came up with them.
A roughly built raft with a pole lashed upright, and from this was
suspended two lanterns.
Whilst the fleet had watched this raft, the _Doro_ had gone on.
Nailed to the pole was a letter. It was sodden with spray, but T. B.
had no difficulty in reading it.
"_Cher ami_," it ran, "much as I value the honour of a naval escort,
its presence is embarrassing at the moment. I saw your destroyer
this morning through my glasses, and guessed the rest. You are
ingenious. Now I understand why you allowed me to escape.
"My respectful salutations to you, oh, most admirable of policemen!"
It was signed, "POLTAVO."
* * * * * * *
The court-martial held on Lieutenant-Commander George Septimus
Marchcourt, on a charge of "neglect of duty, in that he failed to
carry out the instructions of his superior officer," resulted in an
honourable acquittal for that cheerful young officer. It was an
acquittal which had a far-reaching effect, though at the time it did
not promise well.
T. B. was a witness at the trial, which was a purely formal one, in
spite of the attention it excited.
He remained at Gibraltar, pending further developments. For the
affair of the Nine Men had got beyond Scotland Yard--they were an
international problem.
T. B. was walking over from La Linea, across the strip of neutral
ground which separated Gibraltar from Spain, with Van Ingen, when he
confessed that he despaired of ever bringing the Nine to justice.
"The nations cannot stand the racket much longer," he said; "these
Nine Men are costing civilisation a million a week! Think of it! A
million pounds a week! We must either capture them soon or effect a
compromise. I am afraid they will make peace on their own terms."
"But they must be caught soon," urged the other.
"Why?" demanded T. B. irritably. "How can we hope to capture one of
the fastest war vessels afloat when the men who control her have all
the seas to run in?"
They had reached the water-port, and T. B. stopped before his hotel.
"Come in," he said suddenly. The two men passed through the paved
vestibule and mounted the stair to T. B.'s room. "I'm going to look
again at our clue," he said grimly, and extracted from his portfolio
the drawing of the little cross with the circular ends.
T. B. himself does not know to this day why he was moved to produce
this disappointing little diagram at that moment. It may have been
that, as a forlorn hope, he relied upon the application of a fresh
young mind to the problem which was so stale in his, for Van Ingen
had never seen the diagram.
He looked and frowned.
"Is that all?" he asked, without disguising his disappointment.
"That is all," responded T. B.
They sat looking at the diagram in silence. Van Ingen, as was his
peculiarity, scribbled mechanically on the blotting pad before him.
He drew flowers, and men's heads, and impossible structures of all
kinds; he made inaccurate tracings of maps, of columns, pediments,
squares, and triangles. Then, in the same absent way, he made a
rough copy of the diagram.
Then his pencil stopped and he sat bolt upright.
"Gee!" he whispered.
The detective looked up in astonishment.
"Whew!" whistled Van Ingen. "Have you got an atlas, Smith?"
The detective took one from his trunk.
Van Ingen turned the leaves, looked long and earnestly at something
he saw, closed the book, and turned a little white, but his eyes were
blazing.
"I have found 'Lolo,'" he said simply.
He took up his pencil and quickly sketched the diagram:
[Illustration: Van Ingen's first diagram]
"Look," he said, and added a few letters:
[Illustration: Van Ingen's second diagram]
"Longitude, nought; latitude nought--L. o, L. o!" whispered the
detective. "You've hit it, Van Ingen! By Jove! Why, that is off the
African coast." He looked again at the map.
"It is where the Greenwich meridian crosses the Equator," he said.
"It's 'nowhere'! The only 'nowhere' in the world!"