A long, grey, hundred-horse-power racing motor-car with its two glaring
head-lamps drew suddenly up in the falling darkness before the big house
in Berkeley Square, and from it stepped Sir Felix Challas in his heavy
fur coat, cap and goggles. He was a motor enthusiast, and declared that
his runs on his high-power racer cleared the cobwebs from his brain, and
braced up his nerves.
He had started forth soon after breakfast, lunched at the Mermaid at
Wansford, eighty miles away up the Great North Road, and was now home
again, just as darkness had set in.
He had sat beside his chauffeur in silence while being whirled along the
great northern highway, for he always thought out the most ingenious of
his schemes while travelling thus.
Ere he had ascended the steps of the house, the splendid car, which only
a few weeks before had made a record on the Brooklands track, moved off
to the well-appointed garage, where he kept his three other cars.
On entering his own luxurious little den on the left of the hall, he
found Jim Jannaway comfortably ensconced before the fire, smoking one of
his choicest cigars and with a whisky and soda at his elbow.
“Hulloa!” exclaimed Sir Felix surprised. “I thought you were on your
way out to the East? You were to have left this morning, weren’t you?”
And he threw off his heavy coat and stood with his back to the fire.
“Yes. But I’ve remained, because I’ve discovered something,” replied
the other. “I’ve found out the reason why that girl Griffin got away.”
“Oh! Why?” asked Challas quickly. “It was a great misfortune for us.
She’s evidently discovered who we are, and why we wanted the
information.”
“Well--he played us false.”
“Who--Mullet?”
“Yes. The girl appealed to his honour, and all that, and he found out
that she was a friend of that Doctor Diamond, the fellow who attended
Holmboe before he died and got hold of a portion of his papers. This
man, it appears, had befriended Mullet in some way--so he, like a fool,
let her go.”
“Fool--idiot!” cried Challas. “Then the brute’s betrayed us!”
“Absolutely!”
“By letting the girl go, he’s exposed us. Griffin now knows that we are
working against him. And he is, according to old Erich, the only man we
have to fear.”
“Except that man Farquhar, partner with Sir George Gavin, the newspaper
owner.”
“Ah! I forgot him. But surely he doesn’t count?”
“Yes, he does,” protested Jannaway. “He’s in love with the girl. Hence
we must see that he turns his back upon her, or there may be further
trouble. I foresee pretty awkward complications in that direction.”
“Very well, my dear boy, all that I leave to you,” answered Sir Felix,
with a heavy, thoughtful look.
“But it does not lessen our danger. If we’re not careful we’ll lose the
thing altogether,” Jannaway pointed out. “I’ve been a full fortnight
making careful investigations. The Doctor called on Griffin the day
before yesterday, and what’s more, the girl has written to Charlie,
asking him to meet her.”
“How have you found that out?”
Jim Jannaway smiled.
“No matter,” he laughed. “Except that Laura, the parlour-maid at
Pembridge, is a friend of mine. I took her to the Tivoli last Thursday.
Told her I was a lawyer’s clerk.”
“By Jove, Jim,” exclaimed the Baronet, “you’re always ingenious when
you’ve set your mind on worming out a secret.”
“A little love costs nothing,” laughed the nonchalant adventurer, “and
very often does a lot.”
“Well, we must know what’s going on between them, that’s quite plain,”
remarked Challas. “I never expected Charlie to give us away.”
“Bah! he always was chicken-hearted where women were concerned. He must
have been in love once, I fancy, and hasn’t got over the attack yet.”
“We must be very watchful, Jim.”
“That’s why I didn’t leave for Constantinople, as you suggested,” was
the other’s reply, as he tossed the end of his cigar into the fire and
lazily rose from his comfortable chair. “My own idea, Felix, is that
Charlie is growing far too scrupulous. One day we shall have him in a
fit of remorse making some nasty confession or other, taking the
consequences, and putting us both into a confounded hole. Think what it
would mean for you!”
“By Jove, yes!” gasped the other, turning pale at the very suggestion of
exposure. “We can’t afford to risk that.”
“I maintain that if Charlie lets the girl escape us and give us away, as
he has done, then he’ll do something worse before long,” exclaimed the
crafty man with a curious glance at the Baronet, whose back was at that
moment turned to him.
Challas was silent. He clearly saw the drift of the man’s argument.
“Well?” he asked at last, lowering his voice. “What do you suggest?”
“Suggest? Why there’s only one course open, my dear fellow,” replied
the other, glancing apprehensively at the door. “Get rid of him while
there’s yet time.”
“He might retaliate.”
“Not if he’s arrested over in France,” Jannaway exclaimed. “The French
police won’t bother over any information that he may give concerning us.
Your reputation stands too high. They’ll only regard him as a type of
gentlemanly blackmailer such as every wealthy man has to contend with.
If we don’t do that, then good-bye to all our hopes concerning Holmboe’s
secret,” he added.
“I fear I must agree with you, Jim,” said the other, very slowly. “He
was a fool for not allowing you to force the truth from the girl. I had
intended that she should assist us, and--”
“And by Heaven! she shall do so, even now, if you will only leave
matters to me,” interrupted the clever, good-looking adventurer, leaning
his back easily against the table.
“I leave them entirely to you,” the Baronet answered quickly. “Act just
as you think fit, only remember there must be no exposure. I can’t
afford that!”
“The secret discovered by that fellow Holmboe shall be ours,” declared
Jim Jannaway, slowly and determinedly.
“It might be, if only Erich could discover the key to that infernal
cipher. He told me yesterday that he suspected Professor Griffin had
already solved the problem.”
“If he has, then I’ll compel the girl to obtain it for us. You
understand!” he exclaimed quickly.
“Even though Charlie has become a weak fool, moved to penitence by some
tub-thumping revivalist perhaps, I intend to carry through the scheme I
devised. The secret of the treasure of Israel shall be ours, my dear
Felix. You shall be the great benefactor to the Jewish race, and
discover the sacred relics so long concealed.”
“Benefactor!” echoed the red-faced man with a short dry laugh. “Oh yes,
I’ll show the Jews how I can repay them in their own coin. Only be
careful--do, I beg of you. Charlie is not the man to take a blow lying
down, you know.”
“You ought to know me well enough to be fully aware that I never act
without consideration,” the younger man protested. “Jim Jannaway is no
fool at a game of checkmate, I think.”
“There was that affair in Bordeaux,” remarked the Baronet in a rather
hard voice.
“You believe that Red Mullet knows something of that!” laughed Jim,
admiring the fine diamond ring upon his finger. “Bah, he is in entire
ignorance. It was an unfortunate incident, I admit. But under the
circumstances couldn’t be helped. But there--why need we recall it?
You’re so fond of dwelling upon unpleasant themes,” he laughed. “You
gave an extra five thousand to the Hospital Saturday Fund as a
conscience-soother, didn’t you?”
The Baronet turned upon his heel, and walked to his writing-table,
whereon stood an electric lamp shaded with green silk. Then, after
turning over some letters, he asked suddenly:
“When does that girl meet Charlie?”
“To-night.”
“At her request?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. I leave everything to you,” Sir Felix said with a
mysterious smile. “It would not be against our interests--if--well, if
we had her in our hands again.”
Jim Jannaway nodded. He understood the suggestion perfectly.
“Charlie ought, I think, to be sent back to the Continent, don’t you
agree?” he asked. “A timely warning that the police had learned of his
return here, and he’d skip across by the next Channel service. Once
over there, matters would be quite easy. The Leleu affair has never
been cleared up, you know!” he added in a lower voice.
“I leave it entirely in your hands,” declared the plutocrat whom the
public believed to be a high-minded philanthropist. “Whatever you do
must be on your own responsibility, recollect.”
“But with your money. I want a couple of hundred.”
“Ah! hard up again, Jim,” sighed the other. But unlocking the safe
opposite, the safe that contained the typed copy of the dead man’s
document, the Baronet took out some banknotes and handed them to his
cat’s-paw.
They were French notes. They were safer than English to give to persons
like Jannaway, for the numbers could not be traced in cases of
inquiries, while they could always be at once exchanged at any of the
tourist offices. Sir Felix Challas, though compelled to employ men of
the racing-tout stamp like Jim Jannaway, and unscrupulous
concession-hunters like “Red Mullet,” was ever upon his guard.
He trusted his men, but in “Red Mullet” he had confessed himself sadly
disappointed.
“Revivalists and missionaries have a lot to answer for,” was one of his
pet phrases.
Jim Jannaway, slipping the notes into his pocket-book without troubling
to count them, put on his smart overcoat and well-brushed silk hat, and
wishing his employer an airy “good-evening,” strolled out into the damp
chilliness of Berkeley Square, where he hailed a hansom and drove away.
He had given the man an address in Knightsbridge, but as the cab was
turning from the misty gloom of Berkeley Street into the brightness of
Piccadilly several persons were waiting at the left-hand kerb in order
to cross the road.
Among them he apparently recognised somebody, for in an instant he drew
back and turned his head the other way.
Next second the cab had rounded the corner and was on its way along
Piccadilly. Yet he knew that he had sat there for several moments in
the full glare of the electric lights in front of the Ritz Hotel, and he
felt convinced that he had been recognised by the very last person in
the world that he desired to encounter.
Jannaway sat there breathless, staring straight before him into the
yellow mist, his eyes glaring as though an apparition had arisen before
him.
He tried to laugh away his fears. After all, it must be only fancy, he
reflected. Somebody bearing a strange resemblance. It could not be
she! Impossible. Utterly impossible.
But if it had been she in the flesh--if she had in that instant actually
recognised him! What then!
He huddled himself in the corner of the cab, coward that he was, and
shuddered at the recollections that crowded through his mind.
Would he ever have entered that hansom if he had known that it would
carry him into such exposure--and worse?
But from Jim Jannaway’s lips there fell a short bitter laugh. Was not
his life made up by narrow “shaves?” Had not he been in hundreds of
tight corners before, and with his wonderful tact and almost devilish
cunning wriggled out of what would have meant ruin and imprisonment to
any other man.
He had been a born adventurer, ever since his day as a stable-lad down
at Newmarket, and he had the habit of laughing lightly at his own
adventures, just as he was laughing now.
Would he have laughed, however, if he had but known how that chance
encounter was to result?