presence of the footman. “Monty, isn’t she a bit of a fool? She couldn’t
say boo to a goose. What is the general scheme?”
He was brushing his hair delicately in the mirror above the hall-stand.
“What’s what scheme?” he asked, after the servant had gone, as he
strolled into the drawing-room before her.
“Bringing her here—is she sitting into a game?”
“Don’t be stupid,” said Monty without heat, as he dropped wearily to a
low divan and drew a silken cushion behind him. “Nor inquisitive,” he
added. “You haven’t scared her, have you?”
“I like that!” she said indignantly.
She was one of those ladies who speak more volubly and with the most
assurance when there is a mirror in view, and she had her eyes fixed
upon herself all the time she was talking, patting a strand of hair here
and there, twisting her head this way and that to get a better effect,
and never once looking at the man until he drew attention to himself.
“Scared! I’ll bet she’s never been to such a beautiful house in her
life! What is she, Monty? A typist or something? I don’t understand
her.”
“She’s a lady,” said Monty offensively. “That’s the type that’ll always
seem like a foreign language to you.”
She lifted one shoulder delicately.
“I don’t pretend to be a lady, and what I am, you’ve made me,” she said,
and the reproach was mechanical. He had heard it before, not only from
her but from others similarly placed. “I don’t think it’s very kind to
throw my education up in my face, considering the money I’ve made for
you.”
“And for yourself.” He yawned. “Get me some tea.”
“You might say ‘please’ now and again,” she said resentfully, and he
smiled as he took up the evening paper, paying her no more attention,
until she had rung the bell with a vicious jerk and the silver tray came
in and was deposited on a table near him.
“Where are you going to-night?”
His interest in her movements was unusual, and she was flattered.
“You know very well, Monty, where I’m going to-night,” she said
reproachfully. “You promised to take me too. I think you’d look
wonderful as a Crusader—one of them—those old knights in armour.”
He nodded, but not to her comment.
“I remember, of course—the Arts Ball.”
His surprise was so well simulated that she was deceived.
“Fancy your forgetting! I’m going as Cinderella, and Minnie Gray is
going as a pierrette——”
“Minnie Gray isn’t going as anything,” said Monty, sipping his tea.
“I’ve already telephoned to her to say that the engagement is off. Miss
Leicester is going with you.”
“But, Monty——” protested the girl.
“Don’t ‘but Monty’ me,” he ordered. “I’m telling you! Go up and see this
girl, and put it to her that you’ve got a spare ticket for the dance.”
“But her costume, Monty! The girl hasn’t got a fancy dress. And
Minnie——”
“Forget Minnie, will you? Mirabelle Leicester is going to the Arts Ball
to-night.” He tapped the tray before him to emphasize every word. “You
have a ticket to spare, and you simply can’t go alone because I have a
very important business engagement and your friend has failed you. Her
dress will be here in a few minutes: it is a bright green domino with a
bright-red hood.”
“How perfectly hideous!” She forgot for the moment her disappointment in
this outrage. “Bright green! Nobody has a complexion to stand that!”
Yet he ignored her.
“You will explain to Miss Leicester that the dress came from a friend
who, through illness or any cause you like to invent, is unable to go to
the dance—she’ll jump at the chance. It is one of the events of the
year and tickets are selling at a premium.”
She asked him what that meant, and he explained patiently.
“Maybe she’ll want to spend a quiet evening—have one of those
headaches,” he went on. “If that is so, you can tell her that I’ve got a
party coming to the house to-night, and they will be a little noisy. Did
she want to know anything about me?”
“No, she didn’t,” snapped Joan promptly. “She didn’t want to know about
anything. I couldn’t get her to talk. She’s like a dumb oyster.”
Mirabelle was sitting by the window, looking down into the square, when
there was a gentle tap at the door and Joan came in.
“I’ve got wonderful news for you,” she said.
“For me?” said Mirabelle in surprise.
Joan ran across the room, giving what she deemed to be a surprisingly
life-like representation of a young thing full of innocent joy.
“I’ve got an extra ticket for the Arts Ball to-night. They’re selling at
a—they’re very expensive. Aren’t you a lucky girl!”
“I?” said Mirabelle in surprise. “Why am I the lucky girl?”
Joan rose from the bed and drew back from her reproachfully.
“You surely will come with me? If you don’t, I shan’t be able to go at
all. Lady Mary and I were going together, and now she’s sick!”
Mirabelle opened her eyes wider.
“But I can’t go, surely. It is a fancy dress ball, isn’t it? I read
something about it in the papers. And I’m awfully tired to-night.”
Joan pouted prettily.
“My dear, if you lay down for an hour you’d be fit. Besides, you
couldn’t sleep here early to-night: Monty’s having one of his men
parties, and they’re a noisy lot of people—though thoroughly
respectable,” she added hastily.
Poor Joan had a mission outside her usual range.
“I’d love to go,”—Mirabelle was anxious not to be a kill-joy,—“if I
could get a dress.”
“I’ve got one,” said the girl promptly, and ran out of the room.
She returned very quickly, and threw the domino on the bed.
“It’s not pretty to look at, but it’s got this advantage, that you can
wear almost anything underneath.”
“What time does the ball start?” Mirabelle, examining her mind, found
that she was not averse to going; she was very human, and a fancy dress
ball would be a new experience.
“Ten o’clock,” said Joan. “We can have dinner before Monty’s friends
arrive. You’d like to see Monty, wouldn’t you? He’s downstairs—such a
gentleman, my dear!”
The girl could have laughed.
A little later she was introduced to the redoubtable Monty, and found
his suave and easy manner a relief after the jerky efforts of the girl
to be entertaining. Monty had seen most parts of the world and could
talk entertainingly about them all. Mirabelle rather liked him, though
she thought he was something of a fop, yet was not sorry when she
learned that, so far from having friends to dinner, he did not expect
them to arrive until after she and Joan had left.
The meal put her more at her ease. He was a polished man of the world,
courteous to the point of pomposity; he neither said nor suggested one
thing that could offend her; they were half-way through dinner when the
cry of a newsboy was heard in the street. Through the dining-room window
she saw the footman go down the steps and buy a newspaper. He glanced at
the stop-press space and came back slowly up the stairs reading. A
little later he came into the room, and must have signalled to her host,
for Monty went out immediately and she heard their voices in the
passage. Joan was uneasy.
“I wonder what’s the matter?” she asked, a little irritably. “It’s very
bad manners to leave ladies in the middle of dinner——”
At that moment Monty came back. Was it imagination on her part, or had
he gone suddenly pale? Joan saw it, and her brows met, but she was too
wise to make a comment upon his appearance.
Mr. Newton seated himself in his place with a word of apology and poured
out a glass of champagne. Only for a second did his hand tremble, and
then, with a smile, he was his old self.
“What is wrong, Monty?”
“Wrong? Nothing,” he said curtly, and took up the topic of conversation
where he had laid it down before leaving the room.
“It isn’t that old snake, is it?” asked Joan with a shiver. “Lord! that
unnerves me! I never go to bed at night without looking under, or
turning the clothes right down to the foot! They ought to have found it
months ago if the police——”
At this point she caught Monty Newton’s eye, cold, menacing, malevolent,
and the rest of her speech died on her lips.
Mirabelle went upstairs to dress, and Joan would have followed but the
man beckoned her.
“You’re a little too talkative, Joan,” he said, more mildly than she had
expected. “The snake is not a subject we wish to discuss at dinner. And
listen!” He walked into the passage and looked round, then came back and
closed the door. “Keep that girl near you.”
“Who is going to dance with me?” she asked petulantly. “I look like
having a hell of a lively night!”
“Benton will be there to look after you, and one of the ‘Old Guard’——”
He saw the frightened look in her face and chuckled.
“What’s the matter, you fool?” he asked good-humouredly. “He’ll dance
with the girl.”
“I wish those fellows weren’t going to be there,” she said uneasily, but
he went on, without noticing her:
“I shall arrive at half-past eleven. You had better meet me near the
entrance to the American bar. My party didn’t turn up, you understand.
You’ll get back here at midnight.”
“So soon?” she said in dismay. “Why, it doesn’t end till——”
“You’ll be back here at midnight,” he said evenly. “Go into her room,
clear up everything she may have left behind. You understand? Nothing is
to be left.”
“But when she comes back she’ll——”
“She’ll not come back,” said Monty Newton, and the girl’s blood ran
cold.
_Chapter VII_ _“Moral Suasion”_
“THERE’S a man wants to see you, governor.”
It was a quarter-past nine. The girls had been gone ten minutes, and
Montague Newton had settled himself down to pass the hours of waiting
before he had to dress. He put down the patience cards he was shuffling.
“A man to see me? Who is he, Fred?”
“I don’t know: I’ve never seen him before. Looks to me like a ‘busy.’”
A detective! Monty’s eyebrows rose, but not in trepidation. He had met
many detectives in the course of his chequered career and had long since
lost his awe of them.
“Show him in,” he said with a nod.
The slim man in evening dress who came softly into the room was a
stranger to Monty, who knew most of the prominent figures in the world
of criminal detection. And yet his face was in some way familiar.
“Captain Newton?” he asked.
“That is my name.” Newton rose with a smile.
The visitor looked slowly round towards the door through which the
footman had gone.
“Do your servants always listen at the keyhole?” he asked, in a quiet,
measured tone, and Newton’s face went a dusky red.
In two strides he was at the door and had flung it open, just in time to
see the disappearing heels of the footman.
“Here, you!” He called the man back, a scowl on his face. “If you want
to know anything, will you come in and ask?” he roared. “If I catch you
listening at my door, I’ll murder you!”
The man with a muttered excuse made a hurried escape.
“How did you know?” growled Newton, as he came back into the room and
slammed the door behind him.
“I have an instinct for espionage,” said the stranger, and went on,
without a break: “I have called for Miss Mirabelle Leicester.”
Newton’s eyes narrowed.
“Oh, you have, have you?” he said softly. “Miss Leicester is not in the
house. She left a quarter of an hour ago.”
“I did not see her come out of the house?”
“No, the fact is, she went out by way of the mews. My—er”—he was going
to say “sister” but thought better of it—“my young friend——”
“Flash Jane Smith,” said the stranger. “Yes?”
Newton’s colour deepened. He was rapidly reaching the point when his
sang-froid, nine-tenths of his moral assets, was in danger of deserting
him.
“Who are you, anyway?” he asked.
The stranger wetted his lips with the tip of his tongue, a curiously
irritating action of his, for some inexplicable reason.
“My name is Leon Gonsalez,” he said simply.
Instinctively the man drew back. Of course! Now he remembered, and the
colour had left his cheeks, leaving him grey. With an effort he forced a
smile.
“One of the redoubtable Four Just Men? What extraordinary birds you
are!” he said. “I remember ten-fifteen years ago, being scared out of my
life by the very mention of your name—you came to punish where the law
failed, eh?”
“You must put that in your reminiscences,” said Leon gently. “For the
moment I am not in an autobiographical mood.”
But Newton could not be silenced.
“I know a man”—he was speaking slowly, with quiet vehemence—“who will
one day cause you a great deal of inconvenience, Mr. Leon Gonsalez: a
man who never forgets you in his prayers. I won’t tell you who he is.”
“It is unnecessary. You are referring to the admirable Oberzohn. Did I
not kill his brother . . . ? Yes, I thought I was right. He was the man
with the oxycephalic head and the queerly prognathic jaw. An interesting
case: I would like to have had his measurements, but I was in rather a
hurry.”
He spoke almost apologetically for his haste.
“But we’re getting away from the subject, Mr. Newton. You say this young
lady has left your house by the mews, and you were about to suggest she
left in the care of Miss—I don’t know what you call her. Why did she
leave that way?”
Leon Gonsalez had something more than an instinct for espionage: he had
an instinct for truth, and he knew two things immediately: first, that
Newton was not lying when he said the girl had left the house; secondly,
that there was an excellent, but not necessarily a sinister, reason for
the furtive departure.
“Where has she gone?”
“Home,” said the other laconically. “Where else should she go?”
“She came to dinner . . . intending to stay the night?”
“Look here, Gonsalez,” interrupted Monty Newton savagely. “You and your
gang were wonderful people twenty years ago, but a lot has happened
since then—and we don’t shiver at the name of the Three Just Men. I’m
not a child—do you get that? And you’re not so very terrible at close
range. If you want to complain to the police——”
“Meadows is outside. I persuaded him to let me see you first,” said
Leon, and Newton started.
“Outside?” incredulously.
In two strides he was at the window and had pulled aside the blind. On
the other side of the street a man was standing on the edge of the
sidewalk, intently surveying the gutter. He knew him at once.
“Well, bring him in,” he said.
“Where has this young lady gone? That is all I want to know.”
“She has gone home, I tell you.”
Leon went to the door and beckoned Meadows; they spoke together in low
tones, and then Meadows entered the room and was greeted with a stiff
nod from the owner of the house.
“What’s the idea of this, Meadows—sending this bird to cross-examine
me?”
“This bird came on his own,” said Meadows coldly, “if you mean Mr.
Gonsalez? I have no right to prevent any person from cross-examining
you. Where is the young lady?”
“I tell you she has gone home. If you don’t believe me, search the
house—either of you.”
He was not bluffing: Leon was sure of that. He turned to the detective.
“I personally have no wish to trouble this gentleman any more.”
He was leaving the room when, from over his shoulder:
“That snake is busy again, Newton.”
“What snake are you talking about?”
“He killed a man to-night on the Thames Embankment. I hope it will not
spoil Lisa Marthon’s evening.”
Meadows, watching the man, saw him change colour.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said loudly.
“You arranged with Lisa to pick up Barberton to-night and get him
talking. And there she is, poor girl, all dressed to kill, and only a
dead man to vamp—only a murdered man.” He turned suddenly, and his
voice grew hard. “That is a good word, isn’t it, Newton—murder?”
“I didn’t know anything about it.”
As Newton’s hand came towards the bell:
“We can show ourselves out,” said Leon.
He shut the door behind him, and presently there was a slam of the outer
door. Monty got to the window too late to see his unwelcome guests
depart, and went up to his room to change, more than a little perturbed
in mind.
The footman called him from the hall.
“I’m sorry about that affair, sir. I thought it was a ‘busy’ . . .”
“You think too much, Fred”—Newton threw the words down at his servitor
with a snarl. “Go back to your place, which is the servants’ hall. I’ll
ring you if I want you.”
He resumed his progress up the stairs and the man turned sullenly away.
He opened the door of his room, switched on the light, had closed the
door and was half-way to his dressing-table, when an arm like steel
closed round his neck, he was jerked suddenly backward on to the floor,
and looked up into the inscrutable face of Gonsalez.
“Shout and you die!” whispered a voice in his ear.
Newton lay quiet.
“I’ll fix you for this,” he stammered.
The other shook his head.
“I think not, if by ‘fixing’ me you mean you’re going to complain to the
police. You’ve been under my watchful eye for quite a long time, Monty
Newton, and you’ll be amazed to learn that I’ve made several visits to
your house. There is a little wall safe behind that curtain”—he nodded
towards the corner of the room—“would you be surprised to learn that
I’ve had the door open and every one of its documentary contents
photographed?”
He saw the fear in the man’s eyes as he snapped a pair of aluminium
handcuffs of curious design about Monty’s wrists. With hardly an effort
he lifted him, heavy as he was, threw him on the bed, and, having locked
the door, returned, and, sitting on the bed, proceeded first to strap
his ankles and then leisurely to take off his prisoner’s shoes.
“What are you going to do?” asked Monty in alarm.
“I intend finding out where Miss Leicester has been taken,” said
Gonsalez, who had stripped one shoe and, pulling off the silken sock,
was examining the man’s bare foot critically. “Ordinary and strictly
legal inquiries take time and fail at the end—unfortunately for you, I
have not a minute to spare.”
“I tell you she’s gone home.”
Leon did not reply. He pulled open a drawer of the bureau, searched for
some time, and presently found what he sought: a thin silken scarf.
This, despite the struggles of the man on the bed, he fastened about his
mouth.
“In Mosamodes,” he said—“and if you ever say that before my friend
George Manfred, be careful to give its correct pronunciation: he is
rather touchy on the point—some friends of yours took a man named
Barberton, whom they subsequently murdered, and tried to make him talk
by burning his feet. He was a hero. I’m going to see how heroic you
are.”
“For God’s sake don’t do it!” said the muffled voice of Newton.
Gonsalez was holding a flat metal case which he had taken from his
pocket, and the prisoner watched him, fascinated, as he removed the lid,
and snapped a cigar-lighter close to its blackened surface. A blue flame
rose and swayed in the draught.
“The police force is a most excellent institution,” said Leon. He had
found a silver shoe-horn on the table and was calmly heating it in the
light of the flame, holding the rapidly warming hook with a silk
handkerchief. “But unfortunately, when you are dealing with crimes of
violence, moral suasion and gentle treatment produce nothing more
poignant in the bosom of your adversary than a sensation of amused and
derisive contempt. The English, who make a god of the law, gave up
imprisoning thugs and flogged them, and there are few thugs left. When
the Russian gunmen came to London, the authorities did the only
intelligent thing—they held back the police and brought up the
artillery, having only one desire, which was to kill the gunmen at any
expense. Violence fears violence. The gunman lives in the terror of the
gun—by the way, I understand the old guard is back in full strength?”
When Leon started in this strain he could continue for hours.
“I don’t know what you mean,” mumbled Monty.
“You wouldn’t.” The intruder lifted the blackened, smoking shoe-horn,
brought it as near to his face as he dared.
“Yes, I think that will do,” he said, and came slowly towards the bed.
The man drew up his feet in anticipation of pain, but a long hand caught
him by the ankles and drew them straight again.
“They’ve gone to the Arts Ball.” Even through the handkerchief the voice
sounded hoarse.
“The Arts Ball?” Gonsalez looked down at him, and then, throwing the hot
shoe-horn into the fire-place, he removed the gag. “Why have they gone
to the Arts Ball?”
“I wanted them out of the way to-night.”
“Is—Oberzohn likely to be at the Arts Ball?”
“Oberzohn!” The man’s laugh bordered on the hysterical.
“Or Gurther?”
This time Mr. Newton did not laugh.
“I don’t know who you mean,” he said.
“We’ll go into that later,” replied Leon lightly, pulling the knot of
the handkerchief about the ankles. “You may get up now. What time do you
expect them back?”
“I don’t know. I told Joan not to hurry, as I was meeting somebody here
to-night.”
Which sounded plausible. Leon remembered that the Arts Ball was a fancy
dress affair, and there was some reason for the departure from the mews
instead of from the front of the house. As though he were reading his
thoughts, Newton said:
“It was Miss Leicester’s idea, going through the back. She was rather
shy . . . she was wearing a domino.”
“Colour?”
“Green, with a reddish hood.”
Leon looked at him quickly.
“Rather distinctive. Was that the idea?”
“I don’t know what the idea was,” growled Newton, sitting on the edge of
the bed and pulling on a sock. “But I do know this, Gonsalez,” he said,
with an outburst of anger which was half fear: “that you’ll be sorry you
did this to me!”
Leon walked to the door, turned the key and opened it.
“I only hope that you will not be sorry I did not kill you,” he said,
and was gone.
Monty Newton waited until from his raised window he saw the slim figure
pass along the sidewalk and disappear round a corner, and then he
hurried down, with one shoe on and one off, to call New Cross 93.
_Chapter VIII_ _The House of Oberzohn_
IN a triangle two sides of which were expressed by the viaducts of
converging railroads and the base by the dark and sluggish waters of the
Grand Surrey Canal, stood the gaunt ruins of a store in which had once
been housed the merchandise of the O. & S. Company. A Zeppelin in
passing had dropped an incendiary bomb at random, and torn a great ugly
gap in the roof. The fire that followed left the iron frames of the
windows twisted and split; the roof by some miracle remained untouched
except for the blackened edges about the hole through which the flames
had rushed to the height of a hundred feet.
The store was flush with the canal towing-path; barges had moored here,
discharging rubber in bales, palm nut, nitrates even, and had restocked
with Manchester cloth and case upon case of Birmingham-made geegaws of
brass and lacquer.
Mr. Oberzohn invariably shipped his spirituous cargoes from Hamburg,
since Germany is the home of synthesis. In the centre of the triangle
was a red-brick villa, more unlovely than the factory, missing as it did
that ineffable grandeur, made up of tragedy and pathos, attaching to a
burnt-out building, however ugly it may have been in its prime.
The villa was built from a design in Mr. Oberzohn’s possession, and was
the exact replica of the house in Sweden where he was born. It had high,
gabled ends at odd and unexpected places. The roof was shingled with
grey tiles; there were glass panels in the curious-looking door, and
iron ornaments in the shape of cranes and dogs flanking the narrow path
through the rank nettle and dock which constituted his garden.
Here he dwelt, in solitude, yet not in solitude, for two men lived in
the house, and there was a stout Swedish cook and a very plain Danish
maid, a girl of vacant countenance, who worked from sun-up to midnight
without complaint, who seldom spoke and never smiled. The two men were
somewhere in the region of thirty. They occupied the turret rooms at
each end of the building, and had little community of interest. They
sometimes played cards together with an old and greasy pack, but neither
spoke more than was necessary. They were lean, hollow-faced men, with a
certain physiognomical resemblance. Both had thin, straight lips; both
had round, staring, dark eyes filled with a bright but terrifying
curiosity.
“They look,” reported Leon Gonsalez, when he went to examine the ground,
“as if they are watching pigs being killed and enjoying every minute of
it. Iwan Pfeiffer is one, Sven Gurther is the other. Both have escaped
the gallows or the axe in Germany; both have convictions against them.
They are typical German-trained criminals—as pitiless as wolves.
Dehumanized.”