found that the hands of the police were tied. Only by stretching the law
could the men be deported, and the law is difficult to stretch. To all
appearance they offended in no respect. A woman, by no means the most
desirable of citizens, laid a complaint against one. There was an
investigation—proof was absent; the very character of the complainant
precluded a conviction, and the matter was dropped—by the police.
Somebody else moved swiftly.
One morning, just before daybreak, a policeman patrolling the tow-path
heard a savage snarl and looked round for the dog. He found instead, up
one of those narrow entries leading to the canal bank, a man. He was
tied to the stout sleeper fence, and his bare back showed marks of a
whip. Somebody had held him up at night as he prowled the bank in search
of amusement, had tied and flogged him. Twenty-five lashes: an expert
thought the whip used was the official cat-o’-nine-tails.
Scotland Yard, curious, suspicious, sought out the Three Just Men. They
had alibis so complete as to be unbreakable. Sven Gurther went
unavenged—but he kept from the tow-path thereafter.
In this house of his there were rooms which only Dr. Oberzohn visited.
The Danish maid complained to the cook that when she had passed the door
of one as the doctor came out, a blast of warm, tainted air had rushed
out and made her cough for an hour. There was another room in which from
time to time the doctor had installed a hotchpotch of apparatus.
Vulcanizing machines, electrical machines (older and more used than
Mirabelle had seen in her brief stay in the City Road), a liquid air
plant, not the most up-to-date but serviceable.
He was not, curiously enough, a doctor in the medical sense. He was not
even a doctor of chemistry. His doctorate was in Literature and Law.
These experiments of his were hobbies—hobbies that he had pursued from
his childhood.
On this evening he was sitting in his stuffy parlour reading a
close-printed and closer-reasoned volume of German philosophy, and
thinking of something else. Though the sun had only just set, the blinds
and curtains were drawn; a wood fire crackled in the grate, and the
bright lights of three half-watt lamps made glaring radiance.
An interruption came in the shape of a telephone call. He listened,
grunting replies.
“So!” he said at last, and spoke a dozen words in his strange English.
Putting aside his book, he hobbled in his velvet slippers across the
room and pressed twice upon the bell-push by the side of the fire-place.
Gurther came in noiselessly and stood waiting.
He was grimy, unshaven. The pointed chin and short upper lip were blue.
The V of his shirt visible above the waistcoat was soiled and almost
black at the edges. He stood at attention, smiling vacantly, his eyes
fixed at a point above the doctor’s head.
Dr. Oberzohn lifted his eyes from his book.
“I wish you to be a gentleman of club manner to-night,” he said. He
spoke in that hard North-German tongue which the Swede so readily
acquires.
“Ja, Herr Doktor!”
The man melted from the room.
Dr. Oberzohn for some reason hated Germans. So, for the matter of that,
did Gurther and Pfeiffer, the latter being Polish by extraction and
Russian by birth. Gurther hated Germans because they stormed the little
jail at Altostadt to kill him after the dogs found Frau Siedlitz’s body.
He would have died then but for the green police, who scented a
Communist rising, scattered the crowd and sent Gurther by-road to the
nearest big town under escort. The two escorting policemen were never
seen again. Gurther reappeared mysteriously in England two years after,
bearing a veritable passport. There was no proof even that he was
Gurther. Leon knew, Manfred knew, Poiccart knew.
There had been an alternative to the whipping.
“It would be a simple matter to hold his head under water until he was
drowned,” said Leon.
They debated the matter, decided against this for no sentimental or
moral reason—none save expediency. Gurther had his whipping and never
knew how near to the black and greasy water of the canal he had been.
Dr. Oberzohn resumed his book—a fascinating book that was all about the
human soul and immortality and time. He was in the very heart of an
analysis of eternity when Gurther reappeared dressed in the
“gentleman-club manner.” His dress-coat fitted perfectly; shirt and
waistcoat were exactly the right cut. The snowy shirt, the braided
trousers, the butterfly bow, and winged collar. . . .
“That is good.” Dr. Oberzohn went slowly over the figure. “But the studs
should be pearl—not enamel. And the watch-chain is demode—it is not
worn. The gentleman-club manner does not allow of visible ornament. Also
I think a moustache . . . ?”
“Ja, Herr Doktor!”
Gurther, who was once an actor, disappeared again. When he returned the
enamel studs had gone: there were small pearls in their place, and his
white waistcoat had no chain across. And on his upper lip had sprouted a
small brown moustache, so natural that even Oberzohn, scrutinizing
closely, could find no fault with it. The doctor took a case from his
pocket, fingered out three crisp notes.
“Your hands, please?”
Gurther took three paces to the old man, halted, clicked his heels and
held out his hands for inspection.
“Good! You know Leon Gonsalez? He will be at the Arts Ball. He wears no
fancy dress. He was the man who whipped you.”
“He was the man who whipped me,” said Gurther without heat.
There was a silence, Dr. Oberzohn pursing his lips.
“Also, he did that which brands him as an infamous assassin . . . I
think . . . yes, I think my dear Gurther . . . there will be a girl
also, but the men of my police will be there to arrange such matters.
Benton will give you instructions. For you, only Gonsalez.”
Gurther bowed stiffly.
“I have implored the order,” he said, bowed again and withdrew. Later,
Dr. Oberzohn heard the drone of the little car as it bumped and
slithered across the grass to the road. He resumed his book: this matter
of eternity was fascinating.
* * * * *
The Arts Ball at the Corinthian Hall was one of the events of the
season, and the tickets, issued exclusively to the members of three
clubs, were eagerly sought by society people who could not be remotely
associated with any but the art of living.
When the girl came into the crowded hall, she looked around in wonder.
The balconies, outlined in soft lights and half-hidden with flowers, had
been converted into boxes; the roof had been draped with blue and gold
tissue; at one end of the big hall was a veritable bower of roses,
behind which one of the two bands was playing. Masks in every
conceivable guise were swinging rhythmically across the polished floor.
To the blasé, there was little difference between the Indians, the
pierrots and the cavaliers to be seen here and those they had seen a
hundred times on a hundred different floors.
As the girl gazed round in wonder and delight, forgetting all her
misgivings, two men, one in evening dress, the other in the costume of a
brigand, came from under the shadow of the balcony towards them.
“Here are our partners,” said Joan, with sudden vivacity. “Mirabelle, I
want you to know Lord Evington.”
The man in evening dress stroked his little moustache, clicked his heels
and bent forward in a stiff bow. He was thin-faced, a little pallid,
unsmiling. His round, dark eyes surveyed her for a second, and then:
“I’m glad to meet you, Miss Leicester,” he said, in a high, harsh voice,
that had just the trace of a foreign accent.
This struck the girl with as much surprise as the cold kiss he had
implanted upon her hand, and, as if he read her thoughts, he went on
quickly:
“I have lived so long abroad that England and English manners are
strange to me. Won’t you dance? And had you not better mask? I must
apologize to you for my costume.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But there
was no gala dress available.”
She fixed the red mask, and in another second she was gliding through
the crowd and was presently lost to view.
“I don’t understand it all, Benton.”
Joan was worried and frightened. She had begun to realize that the game
she played was something different . . . her part more sinister than any
rôle she had yet filled. To jolly along the gilded youth to the green
tables of Captain Monty Newton was one thing; but never before had she
seen the gang working against a woman.
“I don’t know,” grumbled the brigand, who was not inaptly arrayed.
“There’s been a hurry call for everybody.” He glanced round uneasily as
though he feared his words might be overheard. “All the guns are
here—Defson, Cuccini, Jewy Stubbs . . .”
“The guns?” she whispered in horror, paling under her rouge. “You mean
. . . ?”
“The guns are out: that’s all I know,” he said doggedly. “They started
drifting in half an hour before you came.”
Joan was silent, her heart racing furiously. Then Monty had told her the
truth. She knew that somewhere behind Oberzohn, behind Monty Newton, was
a force perfectly dovetailed into the machine, only one cog of which she
had seen working. These card parties of Monty’s were profitable enough,
but for a long time she had had a suspicion that they were the merest
side-line. The organization maintained a regular corps of gunmen,
recruited from every quarter of the globe. Monty Newton talked sometimes
in his less sober moments of what he facetiously described as the “Old
Guard.” How they were employed, on what excuse, for what purpose, she
had never troubled to think. They came and went from England in batches.
Once Monty had told her that Oberzohn’s people had gone to Smyrna, and
he talked vaguely of unfair competition that had come to the traders of
the O. & S. outfit. Afterwards she read in the paper of a “religious
riot” which resulted in the destruction by fire of a great block of
business premises. After that Monty spoke no more of competition. The
Old Guard returned to England, minus one of its number, who had been
shot in the stomach in the course of this “religious riot.” What
particular faith he possessed in such a degree as to induce him to take
up arms for the cause, she never learned. She knew he was dead, because
Monty had written to the widow, who lived in the Bronx.
Joan knew a lot about Monty’s business, for an excellent reason. She was
with him most of the time; and whether she posed as his niece or
daughter, his sister, or some closer relationship, she was undoubtedly
the nearest to a confidante he possessed.
“Who is that man with the moustache—is he one?” she asked.
“No; he’s Oberzohn’s man—for God’s sake don’t tell Monty I told you all
this! I got orders to-night to put him wise about the girl.”
“What about her . . . what are they doing with her?” she gasped in
terror.
“Let us dance,” said Benton, and half guided, half carried her into the
throng.
They had reached the centre of the floor when, with no warning, every
light in the hall went out.
_Chapter IX_ _Before the Lights Went Out_
THE band had stopped, a rustle of hand-clapping came from the hot
dancers, and almost before the applause had started the second band
struck up “Kulloo.”
Mirabelle was not especially happy. Her partner was the most correct of
dancers, but they lacked just that unity of purpose, that oneness of
interest which makes all the difference between the ill- and the
well-matched.
“May we sit down?” she begged. “I am rather hot.”
“Will the gracious lady come to the little hall?” he asked. “It is
cooler there, and the chairs are comfortable.”
She looked at him oddly.
“‘Gracious lady’ is a German expression—why do you use it, Lord
Evington? I think it is very pretty,” she hastened to assure him.
“I lived for many years in Germany,” said Mr. Gurther. “I do not like
the German people—they are so stupid.”
If he had said “German police” he would have been nearer to the truth;
and had he added that the dislike was mutual, he might have gained
credit for his frankness.
At the end of the room, concealed by the floral decorations of the
bandstand, was a door which led to a smaller room, ordinarily separated
from the main hall by folding doors which were seldom opened. To-night
the annexe was to be used as a conservatory. Palms and banked flowers
were everywhere. Arbours had been artificially created, and there were
cosy nooks, half-hidden by shrubs, secluded seats and tables, all that
ingenuity could design to meet the wishes of sitters-out.
He stood invitingly at the entrance of a little grotto, dimly
illuminated by one Chinese lantern.
“I think we will sit in the open,” said Mirabelle, and pulled out a
chair.
“Excuse me.”
Instantly he was by her side, the chair arranged, a cushion found, and
she sank down with a sigh of relief. It was early yet for the loungers:
looking round, she saw that, but for a solitary waiter fastening his
apron with one eye upon possible customers, they were alone.
“You will drinke wine . . . no? An orangeade? Good!” He beckoned the
waiter and gave his order. “You must excuse me if I am a little strange.
I have been in Germany for many years—except during the war, when I was
in France.”
Mr. Gurther had certainly been in Germany for many years, but he had
never been in France. Nor had he heard a shot fired in the war. It is
true that an aerial bomb had exploded perilously near the prison at
Mainz in which he was serving ten years for murder, but that represented
his sole warlike experience.
“You live in the country, of course?”
“In London: I am working with Mr. Oberzohn.”
“So: he is a good fellow. A gentleman.”
She had not been very greatly impressed by the doctor’s breeding, but it
was satisfying to hear a stranger speak with such heartiness of her new
employer. Her mind at the moment was on Heavytree Farm: the cool parlour
with its chintzes—a room, at this hour, fragrant with the night scents
of flowers which came stealing through the open casement. There was a
fox-terrier, Jim by name, who would be wandering disconsolately from
room to room, sniffing unhappily at the hall door. A lump came up into
her throat. She felt very far from home and very lonely. She wanted to
get up and run back to where she had left Joan and tell her that she had
changed her mind and must go back to Gloucester that night . . . she
looked impatiently for the waiter. Mr. Gurther was fiddling with some
straws he had taken from the glass container in the centre of the table.
One end of the straws showed above the edge of the table, the others
were thrust deep in the wide-necked little bottle he had in the other
hand. The hollow straws held half an inch of the red powder that filled
the bottle.
“Excuse!”
The waiter put the orangeades on the table and went away to get change.
Mirabelle’s eyes were wistfully fixed on a little door at the end of the
room. It gave to the street, and there were taxicabs which could get her
to Paddington in ten minutes.
When she looked round he was stirring the amber contents of her glass
with a spoon. Two straws were invitingly protruding from the foaming
orangeade. She smiled and lifted the glass as he fitted a cigarette into
his long black holder.
“I may smoke—yes?”
The first taste she had through the straws was one of extreme
bitterness. She made a wry face and put down the glass.
“How horrid!”
“Did it taste badly . . . ?” he began, but she was pouring out water
from a bottle.
“It was most unpleasant——”
“Will you try mine, please?” He offered the glass to her and she drank.
“It may have been something in the straw.” Here he was telling her the
fact.
“It was . . .”
The room was going round and round, the floor rising up and down like
the deck of a ship in a stormy sea. She rose, swayed, and caught him by
the arm.
“Open the little door, waiter, please—the lady is faint.”
The waiter turned to the door and threw it open. A man stood there—just
outside the door. He wore over his dinner dress a long cloak in the
Spanish style. Gurther stood staring, a picture of amused dismay, his
cigarette still unlit. He did not move his hands. Gonsalez was waiting
there, alert . . . death grinning at him . . . and then the room went
inky black. Somebody had turned the main switch.
_Chapter X_ _When the Lights Went Out_
FIVE, ten minutes passed before the hall-keeper tripped and stumbled
and cursed his way to the smaller room and, smashing down the hired
flowers, he passed through the wreckage of earthen pots and tumbled
mould to the control. Another second and the rooms were brilliantly lit
again—the band struck up a two-step and fainting ladies were escorted
to the decent obscurity of their retiring rooms.
The manager of the hall came flying into the annexe.
“What happened—main fuse gone?”
“No,” said the hall-keeper sourly, “some fool turned over the switch.”
The agitated waiter protested that nobody had been near the switch-box.
“There was a lady and gentleman here, and another gentleman outside.” He
pointed to the open door.
“Where are they now?”
“I don’t know. The lady was faint.”
The three had disappeared when the manager went out into a small
courtyard that led round the corner of the building to a side street.
Then he came back on a tour of inspection.
“Somebody did it from the yard. There’s a window open—you can reach the
switch easily.”
The window was fastened and locked.
“There is no lady or gentleman in the yard,” he said. “Are you sure they
did not go into the big hall?”
“In the dark—maybe.”
The waiter’s nervousness was understandable. Mr. Gurther had given him a
five-pound note and the man had not as yet delivered the change. Never
would he return to claim it if all that his keen ears heard was true.
Four men had appeared in the annexe: one shut the door and stood by it.
The three others were accompanied by the manager, who called Phillips,
the waiter.
“This man served them,” he said, troubled. Even the most innocent do not
like police visitations.
“What was the gentleman like?”
Phillips gave a brief and not inaccurate description.
“That is your man, I think, Herr Fluen?”
The third of the party was bearded and plump; he wore a Derby hat with
evening dress.
“That is Gurther,” he nodded. “It will be a great pleasure to meet him.
For eight months the Embassy has been striving for his extradition. But
our people at home . . . !”
He shrugged his shoulders. All properly constituted officials behave in
such a manner when they talk of governments.
“The lady now”—Inspector Meadows was patently worried—“she was faint,
you say. Had she drunk anything?”
“Orangeade—there is the glass. She said there was something nasty in
the straws. These.”
Phillips handed them to the detective. He wetted his finger from them,
touched his tongue and spat out quickly.
“Yes,” he said, and went out by the little door.
Gonsalez, of course: but where had he gone, and how, with a drugged girl
on his hands and the Child of the Snake? Gurther was immensely quick to
strike, and an icy-hearted man: the presence of a woman would not save
Leon.
“When the light went out——” began the waiter, and the trouble cleared
from Mr. Meadows’ face.
“Of course—I had forgotten that,” he said softly. “The lights went
out!”
All the way back to the Yard he was trying to bring something from the
back of his mind—something that was there, the smooth tip of it
tantalizingly displayed, yet eluding every grasp. It had nothing to do
with the lights—nor Gonsalez, nor yet the girl. Gurther? No. Nor
Manfred? What was it? A name had been mentioned to him that day—it had
a mysterious significance. A golden idol! He picked up the end of the
thought . . . Johnny! Manfred’s one mystery. That was the dust which lay
on all thought. And now that he remembered, he was disappointed. It was
so ridiculously unimportant a matter to baffle him.
He left his companions at the corner of Curzon Street and went alone to
the house. There was a streak of light showing between the curtains in
the upstairs room. The passage was illuminated—Poiccart answered his
ring at once.
“Yes, George and Leon were here a little time back—the girl? No, they
said nothing about a girl. They looked rather worried, I thought. Miss
Leicester, I suppose? Won’t you come in?”
“No, I can’t wait. There’s a light in Manfred’s room.”
The ghost of a smile lit the heavy face and faded as instantly.
“My room also,” he said. “Butlers take vast liberties in the absence of
their masters. Shall I give a message to George?”
“Ask him to call me at the Yard.”
Poiccart closed the door on him; stopped in the passage to arrange a
salver on the table and hung up a hat. All this Meadows saw through the
fanlight and walking-stick periscope which is so easily fitted and can
be of such value. And seeing, his doubts evaporated.
Poiccart went slowly up the stairs into the little office room, pulled
back the curtains and opened the window at the top. The next second, the
watching detective saw the light go out and went away.
“I’m sorry to keep you in the dark,” said Poiccart.
The men who were in the room waited until the shutters were fast and the
curtains pulled across, and then the light flashed on. White of face,
her eyes closed, her breast scarcely moving, Mirabelle Leicester lay on
the long settee. Her domino was a heap of shimmering green and scarlet
on the floor, and Leon was gently sponging her face, George Manfred
watching from the back of the settee, his brows wrinkled.
“Will she die?” he asked bluntly.
“I don’t know: they sometimes die of that stuff,” replied Leon
cold-bloodedly. “She must have had it pretty raw. Gurther is a crude
person.”
“What was it?” asked George.
Gonsalez spread out his disengaged hand in a gesture of uncertainty.
“If you can imagine morphia with a kick in it, it was that. I don’t
know. I hope she doesn’t die: she is rather young—it would be the worst
of bad luck.”
Poiccart stirred uneasily. He alone had within his soul what Leon would
call “a trace” of sentiment.
“Could we get Elver?” he asked anxiously, and Leon looked up with his
boyish smile.
“Growing onions in Seville has softened you, Raymondo mio!” He never
failed in moments of great strain to taunt the heavy man with his two
years of agricultural experiment, and they knew that the gibes were
deliberately designed to steady his mind. “Onions are sentimental
things—they make you cry: a vegetable _muchos simpatico_! This woman is
alive!”
Her eyelids had fluttered twice. Leon lifted the bare arm, inserted the
needle of a tiny hypodermic and pressed home the plunger.
“To-morrow she will feel exactly as if she had been drunk,” he said
calmly, “and in her mouth will be the taste of ten rank cigars. Oh,
senorinetta, open thy beautiful eyes and look upon thy friends!”
The last sentence was in Spanish. She heard: the lids fluttered and
rose.
“You’re a long way from Heavytree Farm, Miss Leicester.”
She looked up wonderingly into the kindly face of George Manfred.
“Where am I?” she asked faintly, and closed her eyes again with a
grimace of pain.
“They always ask that—just as they do in books,” said Leon oracularly.
“If they don’t say ‘Where am I?’ they ask for their mothers. She’s quite
out of danger.”
One hand was on her wrist, another at the side of her neck.
“Remarkably regular. She has a good head—mathematical probably.”
“She is very beautiful,” said Poiccart in a hushed voice.
“All people are beautiful—just as all onions are beautiful. What is the
difference between a lovely maid and the ugliest of duennas—what but a
matter of pigmentation and activity of tissue? Beneath that, an
astounding similarity of the circulatory, sustentacular,
motorvascular——”
“How long have we got?” Manfred interrupted him, and Leon shook his
head.
“I don’t know—not long, I should think. Of course, we could have told
Meadows and he’d have turned out police reserves, but I should like to
keep them out of it.”
“The Old Guard was there?”
“Every man jack of them—those tough lads! They will be here just as
soon as the Herr Doktor discovers what is going forward. Now, I think
you can travel. I want her out of the way.”
Stooping, he put his hands under her and lifted her. The strength in his
frail body was a never-ending source of wonder to his two friends.
They followed him down the stairs and along the short passage, down
another flight to the kitchen. Manfred opened a door and went out into
the paved yard. There was a heavier door in the boundary wall. He opened
this slowly and peeped out. Here was the inevitable mews. The sound of
an engine running came from a garage near by. Evidently somebody was on
the look out for them. A long-bodied car drew up noiselessly and a woman
got out. Beside the driver at the wheel sat two men.