THE PASSING OF PHADRIG
In all London, or, indeed, in any capital of Europe, there were no more
angrily puzzled men than Nicol Hendry and his colleague and
subordinates. He was perfectly certain now that Phadrig Amena held the
key to the conspiracy which had resulted in the disappearance of Prince
Zastrow. Oscarovitch had vanished. He had been traced to Copenhagen, and
then absolutely lost sight of. Three agents, all picked experts, had
been put on to watch Phadrig and the Pentanas, as they were known to
him, and within a fortnight they had all died. One had fallen down
crossing the north side of Trafalgar Square: the verdict had been heart
failure. Another threw himself into the river from the Tower Bridge; and
the third, a woman who was one of the most skilful spies in the service
of the International, had made his acquaintance and had dinner with him
at the "Monico," and was found dead the next morning with an empty
morphia syringe in her hand and a swollen puncture in her left arm.
Thus four more or less valuable lives had been lost, and not a shred of
tangible evidence obtained against the Egyptian. Convinced as he was
that this man was as responsible for their deaths as he had been for
that of Josephus, neither he nor his colleagues could find the slightest
grounds for applying for a warrant for his arrest, and meanwhile things
were going from bad to worse in Russia. The Romanoff dynasty was
tottering to its fall. The responsible leaders of the Revolution, angry
and bewildered by the loss of the man whom they had practically chosen
to rule over them, were distributing thousands of copies of an unsigned
manifesto which could not have come from any one but "the new
Skobeleff." What was left of the army and the navy was rallying to the
nameless standard of the still unknown saviour of Russia. Von Kessner
and Captain Vollmar had apparently ceased to exist, and the Princess
Hermia was living with her lady-in-waiting in the strictest retirement
in Dresden.
"It seems to me that things are at an utter deadlock," said Nicol Hendry
to the Chief of the German section, who had come over to London to
confer with him. "Four of our best agents have died in a fortnight, and
the others are getting shy. Really, we can't blame them. This is not
like fighting the ordinary sort of anarchist or regicide, who, after
all, does content himself with physical means. This infernal scoundrel,
as I must confess I was warned to begin with, is quite independent of
the rules of the game. He kills people by their own hands, not his, and,
literally, there seems no way of catching him."
"There must be a way, my dear Hendry," replied the German, who was the
very incarnation of mechanical officialism. "You look at these things as
consequences, I regard them only as rather extraordinary coincidences.
If this is anything like what you seem to think it, it is supernatural,
and I don't believe in that."
"There is a very easy way to convince yourself, my dear Von Hamner,"
replied Hendry, with a slight shrug of his shoulders. "Suppose you go
and interview this modern Mephistopheles yourself?"
"Will you come with me if I do?" asked the German, with a straight stare
through his spectacles.
"Certainly. In our profession it is necessary to take risks. The thing
has gone far enough. Here we are in my room at New Scotland Yard, the
centre and stronghold of the British police system, and there is this
man or super-man, if you like, making no sign, doing nothing that will
give us a hold upon him, and yet killing our agents as fast as we send
them to find out what he is working at, and we know just as much to-day
as we did three weeks ago. Now, what is your idea?"
"Just this: if the English law won't touch him, do as we do in Germany,
take the law into your own hands. We know where the fellow is to be
found down in that slum near the Borough Road. Send a few of your
plain-clothes men there this afternoon, and we will follow in a cab.
Bring your bracelets with you, and I shall take my revolver. We don't
want any nonsense this time. If it goes on much longer we shall be the
laughing-stock of the whole force from end to end of Europe, and that
will not do us any good. Shall it be for this afternoon?"
"It will be better done now. He has worked mischief enough, and if we
are going to do it we may as well bring the thing to a head at once, as
they say in the States. Now I will give the instructions, and we will go
to lunch. It may be the last that either of us will eat, you know."
"Poof!" exclaimed Von Hamner, who was feeling not a little nettled at
this quiet challenge to test his personal courage. "You are the last man
on earth that I should have suspected of superstition, my dear Hendry.
But, there, give your orders, and we will go to lunch, and then about
four o'clock we may make our call in Candler's Court."
While the two Chiefs of the International were talking, Phadrig was
reading a cypher telegram, of which the meaning was this:
"REVAL.--Professor fell overboard three days ago. Body not
recovered. Horus Stone did its work. N. consents. I marry her at
Oscarburg. Russia ready. Fool International for a few days and come
to Viborg when you have done with them.
O."
"That is good news," said Phadrig, in a confidential whisper to himself;
"for a man on the lower plane of existence the Prince is wonderfully
clever. This is a master-stroke. If he really has the Queen in his power
all the rest will be easy."
"There's two gentlemen to see you, Mr Amena." The door opened, and his
landlady's dirty little daughter put her towsled head through the little
space behind the doorpost. "They're down below; shall I send 'em up?"
"Certainly, Jane. Tell the gentlemen that I shall be pleased to see
them."
The dirty face vanished as the door closed. Phadrig shut down the top of
the big escritoire and locked it. Heavy treads sounded on the rickety
stairs. There was a shuffle of feet on the little landing, a sharp knock
at the door, and he said in a low tone:
"Come in, gentlemen. I have been expecting you."
The door opened and Nicol Hendry entered, followed by his German
colleague. Practised as they were in all the arts of their profession,
they looked about the mean, miserably appointed room with curious eyes.
Phadrig, dressed in the same shabby semi-Oriental costume in which he
had received Isaac Josephus, salaamed, and said:
"Gentlemen, although this is but a poor room to receive you in, I am
pleased that you have come. You are officers of the International, if I
am not mistaken."
Then his speech changed to German, and he went on:
"You, sir, are M. Nicol Hendry, and your friend is the Herr von Hamner,
Chief of the Berlin Section. What can I do to serve you?"
It was anything but the greeting that they expected. They thought that
they had tracked the real criminal to his last hiding-place. They had
established the identity between Phadrig, the poor seller of curios, and
Phadrig Amena, the worker of miracles, whom all the smart set in London
was talking about; and here he was in this miserable, shabby room,
dressed in clothes that no pawnbroker would advance a couple of
shillings on, smiling and bowing before them as though they were lords
of the earth, and he--the man who had sent three men and a woman to
their deaths by, as it were, a mere word of command--a worm beneath
their feet. Nicol Hendry managed to keep his self-possession, but Von
Hamner was already sorry that he had come, and his face showed it.
"We have come to ask you, Mr Amena," said Hendry, thinking it best to
come to the point at once, "why you found it necessary to kill those
people. I needn't mention names. You know them as well as we do."
"I did not kill them, gentlemen. They killed themselves, according to
the newspaper reports. And now, may I ask you why you found it necessary
to set these spies of yours to watch my every movement night and day?
What have I done to bring myself within the four corners of your English
law?"
"Nothing, unfortunately, that we can get a warrant for," replied Hendry,
trying not to look into his eyes, "and so we have taken the law into our
own hands. Come, Mr Amena, the game is up. We know all about your share
in the conspiracy to remove Prince Zastrow in order to make room for
your patron Prince Oscarovitch. We have copies of his manifesto at
Scotland Yard, and we know that you received a telegram in cypher from
him to-day."
"Ah!" said Phadrig, in a tone whose smoothness was intensely
aggravating, "that is very interesting. May I ask if you have translated
the cypher?"
"No, damn you and your Prince!" burst in Von Hamner. "If we had done
that we should know even more about you than we do now--and that ought
to be enough to hang you."
He had spluttered the words out before Hendry had time to stop him. He
expected a tragedy there and then, but it did not happen. Phadrig took
the telegram out of his coat pocket, handed it to Von Hamner with a
graceful bow, and said:
"Your information is quite correct, gentlemen. That is the telegram, and
this is the meaning of it."
Then as they read the unintelligible jumble of words, he repeated the
meaning of them as though they formed the most ordinary message, instead
of a dispatch that might, as they well knew, shake Europe to its social
and political foundations within the next week or so.
"Then this is another of your devilries, I suppose," snarled Von Hamner.
"So you have killed the great Professor Marmion, the most gifted genius
in the whole world, as you killed the others, to promote your infernal
schemes; and you have helped that scoundrel Oscarovitch to abduct his
daughter. Well, law or no law, this shall be the end of your doings. You
will come with us as our prisoner, or you will not leave this room
alive."
"Those are hard words, mein Herr," said Phadrig, still speaking in
German. "I your prisoner! Why? What have I done to make this outrage on
English law possible?"
"You will do better to come, Mr Amena," said Hendry, in his quiet
official tone; "it will save a good deal of trouble both to you and us.
It must be the same in the end, you know. We have got you, and we don't
mean to let you do any more mischief. You have done quite enough
already. Now, will you come quietly, or shall we take you? We shall
charge you at Lambeth as a receiver of stolen goods: you will be
remanded for a week in custody, and by that time we shall have your
Prince in safe keeping in St Petersburg."
"Will you, really?" asked Phadrig, lifting his eyelids for the first
time during the interview. "I should have thought that a man of your
European experience would have called the Russian capital by its proper
name. Surely you know that only newspaper people make that mistake. It
is the city of Peter the Great, not Saint Peter the apostle. The
fortress of Petro-paulovsky is not named after saints--only after
Tsars."
There was a sneer in his voice as he made this trivial correction which
roused both Hendry and Von Hamner to anger. The German pulled his
revolver out of his hip pocket, and Hendry produced a beautiful pair of
polished handcuffs from his left trouser pocket.
"Ah, I see that you have come prepared, gentlemen!" said Phadrig, with a
laughing sneer in his low-voiced whisper. "Those are what you call the
bracelets in England, are they not? Well, since you are determined to
take the law into your hands--here are mine. Put them on M. Hendry, and
then your friend may not think it necessary to try and shoot me."
He held his hands out. The way in which he said "try and shoot me" did
not sound well in their ears, but Nicol Hendry thought that the work had
to be put through now or not at all. He took a couple of steps towards
Phadrig, and a couple of sharp snaps told Von Hamner that their prisoner
was safe. But the prisoner did not seem to think so. He raised his hands
and looked at the handcuffs. He seemed to examine them as though they
were curiosities.
"Are these really what you take criminals to prison with? They don't
seem very strong. I could break them as though they were thread."
"That will do, Mr Amena. You've got them on now, and we don't want any
more of your conjuring tricks. Come along, and take it quietly like a
sensible man."
Hendry was fast losing patience, and Von Hamner was doing all he could
to keep his finger off the trigger of the revolver.
"Ah yes, conjuring tricks you call them, you ignorants! Now look. You
have put the handcuffs on to my wrists. Is this a conjuring trick? See!"
He held his arms out towards them, his two hands chained together.
"Mr Hendry, be good enough to take my right hand, and you, Herr von
Hamner, my left. So; now shake my hands. You see, there are the
handcuffs on the floor."
It was only a shake of the hands, but the clink of the steel followed as
the bracelets dropped from his wrists. He stooped down, and inside ten
seconds they were clipped round Von Hamner's. In the same instant he had
twitched the revolver out of his hand and pointed it at Hendry's face.
"Now, gentlemen, you were talking about taking the law into your own
hands. I, you see, have taken it into mine. What do you propose to do? I
am quite at your service. Your idea of arresting me on a charge of
receiving stolen goods is, if you will allow me to say so, absurd. You
could no more make me guilty of that than you could hang me for the
deaths of those foolish spies of yours. Now, what is it to be? Pardon
me, Herr von Hamner: the bracelets inconvenience you. Allow me." He took
the handcuffs between his finger and thumb, shook the chain, and they
dropped into his hand. "You will feel more comfortable now."
"Yes, and I'll make you less comfortable in Hell, where you should have
been long ago," shouted Von Hamner, jumping at him the moment his hands
were free, and snatching the revolver out of his hand. The pistol went
up before Hendry could get hold of his arm, and he fired. Phadrig put
his hand up, and when the smoke had drifted away, he held it out to Von
Hamner, and said:
"I think that is your bullet, mein Herr."
The bullet was lying in the palm of his hand, a little out of shape
through passing the rifling, but still the same bullet.
The German's face turned a reddish-grey, and Nicol Hendry, with all his
courage, was not feeling particularly well. As a matter of fact, he was,
for the first time in his life, absolutely frightened. A man who could
deal with handcuffs as though they were made of cotton, and catch a
bullet in his hands, was not the sort of criminal he had been trained to
hunt. As for Von Hamner, he was in a state of utter collapse. He dropped
upon a chair, a pitiable spectacle of craven fear, looking about half
his real size so physically shrunken did he seem.
"Let the devil go, Hendry," he mumbled. "He is more than man. What is
the use? If you cannot shoot him, you cannot hang him, and if handcuffs
won't hold him, prison doors won't. Let us go and leave the devil to
himself. I've had enough of it."
"But perhaps the devil has not," said Phadrig, with a politeness which
was infuriating in its mildness. "You gentlemen will understand that I
do not wish to have this espionage going on any longer. If you cannot
promise that it shall stop at once I shall, for my own protection, have
to suggest to you that you shall remove yourselves, as the others have
done."
"No, no, not that, man, not that!" shouted Von Hamner, springing from
his seat and making for the door. "I have done with the whole business,
curse it! Let me go, let me go! Hendry, do as you like, but do it alone.
I have finished."
Before Hendry could reply, or before Von Hamner could reach it, the door
was flung open, and Franklin Marmion strode into the room. Von Hamner
crawled back to his chair. He did not like the look of a dead man who
had come to life again. Nicol Hendry held out his hand, and said:
"And is it really you, Professor? Mr Amena here has just had news that
you were dead--'fallen overboard in the Baltic from Prince Oscarovitch's
yacht. Body not recovered,' is what the telegram says."
"The body is here right enough, M. Hendry. I did not fall overboard. I
was bound hand and foot, had a mass of iron tied to my feet, and was
thrown out of a port-hole by the Prince and his captain. Of course, I
got rid of the rope and the iron even more easily than this man got rid
of your handcuffs a short time ago, and after keeping myself afloat for
half an hour or so, I was picked up by a fishing-boat which took me to
Stralsund. I got a change of clothes there, and came home _viâ_ Hamburg
and Ostend. My daughter has gone on in the yacht to Oscarburg, where
the Prince expects to make her his wife, and where she will make a very
considerable fool of him. That is all, and now I suppose I had better
deal with this man."
"Mercy, mercy, Thou Who Knowest! Pity, pity!"
Phadrig raised his hands above his head, turned round thrice slowly, and
sank in a heap on the floor.
"Thou who wast once High Priest in the House of Ptah: thou who hast held
the Doctrine: thou darest to ask for mercy, knowing well that there is
no forgiveness of sins: thou hast taken innocent lives, believing
thyself above human law. A wasted life is behind thee: see that thou
doest better for thy soul's sake in the next. Die now! The High Gods
have spoken, and the penalty of sin is death--and the life beyond. Die!"
And Phadrig died. His eyes glazed and his flesh withered; his lips and
his gums dried up and shrivelled away from his jaws. His clothes fell
away from his body in rotting shreds, and before Nicol Hendry and Von
Hamner had quite grasped the full meaning of the horror that was
happening before their eyes, all that was left of him was a little heap
of yellow bones with a few fragments of cloth clinging to them.
"Gentlemen," said Franklin Marmion, "there are some things which cannot
be told. I think you will agree with me that this is one of them. Mr
Amena has left the world for the present. Those bones will be dust in a
few minutes. It will only be another mysterious disappearance, and I
don't think that any one except the Pentanas and Prince Oscarovitch will
trouble much about him. The Pentanas are now deprived of all power for
harm, and the Prince will probably be a harmless lunatic when he comes
back into the world. I should sweep that dust up and put it into the
fireplace, if I were you. In that desk you will find documents giving
the whole history of the Affaire Zastrow. They will be useful to you.
You will have to excuse me now. Europe is on the brink of war, and I
must go and remove the cause. I rely upon your discretion as to the
events of this afternoon. Au revoir. I shall have the pleasure of seeing
you again shortly."
The door closed, and they were left to their somewhat gruesome task.