doctor.
“I cannot say what action the police will take over this providential
snake-bite, Oberzohn, but I’ll make you this offer: I and my friends
will stand out of the game and leave Meadows to get you in his own way.
You think that means you’ll go scot-free? But it doesn’t. These police
are like bulldogs: once they’ve got a grip of you, they’ll never let
go.”
“What is the price you ask for this interesting service?” Newton was
puffing steadily at his cigar, his hands clasped behind him, his feet
apart, a picture of comfort and well-being.
“Leave Miss Leicester alone. Find a new way of getting the money you
need so badly.”
Newton laughed.
“My dear fellow, that’s a stupid thing to say. Neither Oberzohn nor I
are exactly poor.”
“You’re bankrupt, both of you,” said Manfred quietly. “You are in the
position of gamblers when the cards have run against you for a long
time. You have no reserve, and your expenses are enormous. Find another
way, Newton—and tell your sister”—he paused by the door, looking down
into the white lining of his silk hat—“I’d like to see her at Curzon
Street to-morrow morning at ten o’clock.”
“Is that an order?” asked Newton sarcastically.
Manfred nodded.
“Then let me tell you,” roared the man, white with passion, “that I take
no orders for her or for me. Got swollen heads since you’ve had your
pardon, haven’t you? You look out for me, Manfred. I’m not exactly
harmless.”
He felt the pressure of the doctor’s foot upon his and curbed his
temper.
“All right,” he growled, “but don’t expect to see Joan.”
He added a coarse jest, and Manfred raised his eyes slowly and met his.
“You will be hanged by the State or murdered by Oberzohn—I am not sure
which,” he said simply, and he spoke with such perfect confidence that
the heart of Monty Newton turned to water.
Manfred stood in the sidewalk and signalled, and the little car came
swiftly and noiselessly across. Leon’s eyes were on the entrance. A tall
man standing in the shadow of the hall was watching. He was leaning
against the wall in a negligent attitude, and for a second Leon was
startled.
“Get in quickly!”
Leon almost shouted the words back, and Manfred jumped into the machine,
as the chauffeur sent the car forward, with a jerk that strained every
gear.
“What on——?” began Manfred, but the rest of his words were lost in the
terrific crash which followed.
The leather hood of the machine was ripped down at the back, a splinter
of glass struck Leon’s cap and sliced a half-moon neatly. He jammed on
the brakes, threw open the door of the saloon and leaped out. Behind the
car was a mass of wreckage; a great iron casting lay split into three
pieces amidst a tangle of broken packing-case. Leon looked up;
immediately above the entrance to Oberzohn & Smitts’ was a crane, which
had swung out with a heavy load just before Manfred came out. The steel
wire hung loosely from the derrick. He heard excited voices speaking
from the open doorway three floors above, and two men in large glasses
were looking down and gabbling in a language he did not understand.
“A very pretty accident. We might have filled half a column in the
evening newspapers if we had not moved.”
“And the gentleman in the hall—what was he doing?”
Leon walked back through the entrance: the man had disappeared, but near
where he had been standing was a small bell-push which, it was obvious,
had recently been fixed, for the wires ran loosely on the surface of the
wall and were new.
He came back in time to see a policeman crossing the road.
“I wish to find out how this accident occurred, constable,” he said. “My
master was nearly killed.”
The policeman looked at the ton of debris lying half on the sidewalk,
half on the road, then up at the slackened hawser.
“The cable has run off the drum, I should think.”
“I should think so,” said Leon gravely.
He did not wait for the policeman to finish his investigations, but went
home at a steady pace, and made no reference to the “accident” until he
had put away his car and had returned to Curzon Street.
“The man in the hall was put there to signal when you were under the
load—certain things must not happen,” he said. “I am going out to make
a few inquiries.”
Gonsalez knew one of Oberzohn’s staff: a clean young Swede, with that
knowledge of English which is normal in Scandinavian countries; and at
nine o’clock that night he drifted into a Swedish restaurant in Dean
Street and found the young man at the end of his meal. It was an
acquaintance—one of many—that Leon had assiduously cultivated. The
young man, who knew him as Mr. Heinz—Leon spoke German remarkably
well—was glad to have a companion with whom he could discuss the
inexplicable accident of the afternoon.
“The cable was not fixed to the drum,” he said. “It might have been
terrible: there was a gentleman in a motor-car outside, and he had only
moved away a few inches when the case fell. There is bad luck in that
house. I am glad that I am leaving at the end of the week.”
Leon had some important questions to put, but he did not hurry, having
the gift of patience to a marked degree. It was nearly ten when they
parted, and Gonsalez went back to his garage, where he spent a quarter
of an hour.
At midnight, Manfred had just finished a long conversation with the
Scotland Yard man who was still at Brightlingsea, when Leon came in,
looking very pleased with himself. Poiccart had gone to bed, and Manfred
had switched out one circuit of lights when his friend arrived.
“Thank you, my dear George,” said Gonsalez briskly. “It was very good of
you, and I did not like troubling you, but——”
“It was a small thing,” said Manfred with a smile, “and involved merely
the changing of my shoes. But why? I am not curious, but why did you
wish me to telephone the night watchman at Oberzohn’s to be waiting at
the door at eleven o’clock for a message from the doctor?”
“Because,” said Leon cheerfully, rubbing his hands, “the night watchman
is an honest man; he has a wife and six children, and I was particularly
wishful not to hurt anybody. The building doesn’t matter: it stands, or
stood, isolated from all others. The only worry in my mind was the night
watchman. He was at the door—I saw him.”
Manfred asked no further questions. Early the next morning he took up
the paper and turned to the middle page, read the account of the “Big
Fire in City Road” which had completely gutted the premises of Messrs.
Oberzohn & Smitts; and, what is more, he expected to read it before he
had seen the paper.
“Accidents are accidents,” said Leon the philosopher that morning at
breakfast. “And that talk I had with the clerk last night told me a lot:
Oberzohn has allowed his fire insurance to lapse!”
_Chapter XVI_ _Rath Hall_
IN one of the forbidden rooms that was filled with the apparatus which
Dr. Oberzohn had accumulated for his pleasure and benefit, was a small
electrical furnace which was the centre of many of his most interesting
experiments. There were, in certain known drugs, constituents which it
was his desire to eliminate. Dr. Oberzohn believed absolutely in many
things that the modern chemist would dismiss as fantastical. He believed
in the philosopher’s stone, in the transmutation of base metals to rare;
he had made diamonds, of no great commercial value, it is true; but his
supreme faith was that somewhere in the materia medica was an infallible
elixir which would prolong life far beyond the normal span. It was to
all other known properties as radium is to pitch-blende. It was
something that only the metaphysician could discover, only the patient
chemist could materialize. Every hour he could spare he devoted himself
to his obsession; and he was in the midst of one of his experiments when
the telephone bell called him back to his study. He listened, every
muscle of his face moving, to the tale of disaster that Monty Newton
wailed.
“It is burning still? Have you no fire-extinguishing machinery in
London?”
“Is the place insured or is it not?” asked Monty for the second time.
Dr. Oberzohn considered.
“It is not,” he said. “But this matter is of such small importance
compared with the great thing which is coming, that I shall not give it
a thought.”
“It was incendiary,” said Newton angrily. “The fire brigade people are
certain of it. That cursed crowd are getting back on us for what
happened this afternoon.”
“I know of nothing that happened this afternoon,” said Dr. Oberzohn
coldly. “You know of nothing either. It was an accident which we all
deplored. As to this man . . . we shall see.”
He hung up the telephone receiver very carefully, went along the
passage, down a steep flight of dark stairs, and into a basement
kitchen. Before he opened the door he heard the sound of furious voices,
and he stood for a moment surveying the scene with every feeling of
satisfaction. Except for two men, the room was empty. The servants used
the actual kitchen at the front of the house, and this place was little
better than a scullery. On one side of the deal table stood Gurther,
white as death, his round eyes red with rage. On the other, the short,
stout Russian Pole, with his heavy pasty face and baggy eyes; his little
moustache and beard bristling with anger. The cards scattered on the
table and the floor told the Herr Doktor that this was a repetition of
the quarrel which was so frequent between them.
“Schweinhund!” hissed Gurther. “I saw you palm the King as you dealt.
Thief and robber of the blind——”
“You German dog! You——”
They were both speaking in German. Then the doctor saw the hand of
Gurther steal down and back.
“Gurther!” he called, and the man spun round. “To my parlour—march!”
Without a word, the man strode past him, and the doctor was left with
the panting Russian.
“Herr Doktor, this Gurther is beyond endurance!” His voice trembled with
rage. “I would sooner live with a pig than this man, who is never normal
unless he is drugged.”
“Silence!” shouted Oberzohn, and pointed to the chair. “You shall wait
till I come,” he said.
When he came back to his room, he found Gurther standing stiffly to
attention.
“Now, Gurther,” he said—he was almost benevolent as he patted the man
on the shoulder—“this matter of Gonsalez must end. Can I have my
Gurther hiding like a worm in the ground? No, that cannot be. To-night I
will send you to this man, and you are so clever that you cannot fail.
He whipped you, Gurther—tied you up and cruelly beat you. Always
remember that, my brave fellow—he beat you till you bled. Now you shall
see the man again. You will go in a dress for-every-occasion,” he said.
“The city-clerk manner. You will watch him in your so clever way, and
you shall strike—it is permitted.”
“Ja, Herr Doktor.”
He turned on his heels and disappeared through the door. The doctor
waited till he heard him going up the stairs, and then he rang for
Pfeiffer. The man came in sullenly. He lacked all the precision of the
military Gurther; yet, as Oberzohn knew, of the two he was the more
alert, the more cunning.
“Pfeiffer, it has come to me that you are in some danger. The police
wish to take you back to Warsaw, where certain unpleasant things
happened, as you well know. And I am told”—he lowered his voice—“that
a friend of ours would be glad to see you go, hein?”
The man did not raise his sulky eyes from the floor, did not answer, or
by any gesture or movement of body suggest that he had heard what the
older man had said.
“Gurther goes to-morrow, perhaps on our good work, perhaps to speak
secretly to his friends in the police—who knows? He has work to do: let
him do it, Pfeiffer. All my men will be there—at a place called
Brightlingsea. You also shall go. Gurther would rob a blind man? Good!
You shall rob one also. As for Gurther, I do not wish him back. I am
tired of him: he is a madman. All men are mad who sniff that white snuff
up their foolish noses—eh, Pfeiffer?”
Still the awkward-looking man made no reply.
“Let him do his work: you shall not interfere, until—it is done.”
Pfeiffer was looking at him now, a cold sneer on his face.
“If he comes back, I do not,” he said. “This man is frightening me.
Twice the police have been here—three times . . . you remember the
woman. The man is a danger, Herr Doktor. I told you he was the day you
brought him here.”
“He can dress in the gentleman-club manner,” said the doctor gently.
“Pshaw!” said the other scornfully. “Is he not an actor who has postured
and painted his face and thrown about his legs for so many marks a
week?”
“If he does not come back I shall be relieved,” murmured the doctor.
“Though it would be a mistake to leave him so that these cunning men
could pry into our affairs.”
Pfeiffer said nothing: he understood his instructions; there was nothing
to be said.
“When does he go?”
“Early to-morrow, before daylight. You will see him, of course.”
He said something in a low tone, that only Pfeiffer heard. The shadow
who stood in stockinged feet listening at the door only heard two words.
Gurther grinned in the darkness; his bright eyes grew luminous. He heard
his companion move towards the door and sped up the stairs without a
sound.
* * * * *
Rath Hall was a rambling white building of two stories, set in the midst
of a little park, so thickly wooded that the house was invisible from
the road; and since the main entrance to the estate was a very
commonplace gate, without lodge or visible drive beyond, Gonsalez would
have missed the place had he not recognized the man who was sitting on
the moss-grown and broken wall who jumped down as Leon stopped his car.
“Mr. Meadows is at the house, sir. He said he expected you.”
“And where on earth is the house?” asked Leon Gonsalez, as he went into
reverse.
For answer the detective opened the gate wide and Leon sent his car
winding between the trees, for close at hand he recognized where a
gravel drive had once been, and, moreover, saw the tracks of cars in the
soft earth. He arrived just as Mr. Johnson Lee was taking his two guests
in to dinner, and Meadows was obviously glad to see him. He excused
himself and took Leon aside into the hall, where they could not be
overheard.
“I have had your message,” he said. “The only thing that has happened
out of the ordinary is that the servants have an invitation to a big
concert at Brightlingsea. You expected that?”
Leon nodded.
“Yes: I hope Lee will let them go. I prefer that they should be out of
the way. A crude scheme—but Oberzohn does these things. Has anything
else happened?”
“Nothing. There have been one or two queer people around.”
“Has he showed you the letters he had from Barberton?”
To his surprise the inspector answered in the affirmative.
“Yes, but they are worse than Greek to me. A series of tiny
protuberances on thick brown paper. He keeps them in his safe. He read
some of the letters to me: they were not very illuminating.”
“But the letter of letters?” asked Leon anxiously. “That which Lee
answered—by the way, you know that Mr. Lee wrote all his letters
between perforated lines?”
“I’ve seen the paper,” nodded the detective. “No, I asked him about
that, but apparently he is not anxious to talk until he has seen his
lawyer, who is coming down to-night. He should have been here, in fact,
in time for dinner.”
They passed into the dining-room together. The blind man was waiting
patiently at the head of the table, and with an apology Leon took the
place that had been reserved for him. He sat with his back to the wall,
facing one of the three long windows that looked out upon the park. It
was a warm night and the blinds were up, as also was the middle window
that faced him. He made a motion to Mr. Washington, who sat opposite
him, to draw a little aside, and the American realized that he wished an
uninterrupted view of the park.
“Would you like the window closed?” asked Mr. Lee, leaning forward and
addressing the table in general. “I know it is open,” he said with a
little laugh, “because I opened it! I am a lover of fresh air.”
They murmured their agreement and the meal went on without any
extraordinary incident. Mr. Washington was one of those adaptable people
who dovetail into any environment in which they find themselves. He was
as much at home at Rath Hall as though he had been born and bred in the
neighbourhood. Moreover, he had a special reason for jubilation: he had
found a rare adder when walking in the woods that morning, and spent ten
minutes explaining in what respect it differed from every other English
adder.
“Is it dead?” asked Meadows nervously.
“Kill it?” said the indignant Mr. Washington. “Why should I kill it? I
saw a whole lot of doves out on the lawn this morning—should I kill
’em? No, sir! I’ve got none of those mean feelings towards snakes. I
guess the Lord sent snakes into this world for some other purpose than
to be chased and killed every time they’re seen. I sent him up to London
to-day by train to a friend of mine at the Zoological Gardens. He’ll
keep him until I’m ready to take him back home.”
Meadows drew a long sigh.
“As long as he’s not in your pocket,” he said.
“Do you mind?”
Leon’s voice was urgent as he signalled Washington to move yet farther
to the left, and when the big man moved his chair, Leon nodded his
thanks. His eyes were on the window and the darkening lawn. Not once did
he remove his gaze.
“It’s an extraordinary thing about Poole, my lawyer,” Mr. Lee was
saying. “He promised faithfully he’d be at Rath by seven o’clock. What
is the time?”
Meadows looked at his watch.
“Half-past eight,” he said. He saw the cloud that came over the face of
the blind owner of Rath Hall.
“It is extraordinary! I wonder if you would mind——”
His foot touched a bell beneath the table and his butler came in.
“Will you telephone to Mr. Poole’s house and ask if he has left?”
The butler returned in a short time.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Poole left the house by car at half-past six.”
Johnson Lee sat back in his chair.
“Half-past six? He should have been here by now.”
“How far away does he live?”
“About fifteen miles. I thought he might have come down from London
rather late. That is extraordinary.”
“He may have had tyre trouble,” said Leon, not shifting his fixed stare.
“He could have telephoned.”
“Did anybody know he was coming—anybody outside your own household?”
asked Gonsalez.
The blind man hesitated.
“Yes, I mentioned the fact to the post office this morning. I went in to
get my letters, and found that one I had written to Mr. Poole had been
returned through a stupid mistake on my part. I told the postmaster that
he was coming this evening and that there was no need to forward it.”
“You were in the public part of the post office?”
“I believe I was.”
“You said nothing else, Mr. Lee—nothing that would give any idea of the
object of this visit?”
Again his host hesitated.
“I don’t know. I’m almost afraid that I did,” he confessed. “I remember
telling the postmaster that I was going to talk to Mr. Poole about poor
Barberton—Mr. Barberton was very well known in this neighbourhood.”
“That is extremely unfortunate,” said Leon.
He was thinking of two things at the same time: the whereabouts of the
missing lawyer, and the wonderful cover that the wall between the window
and the floor gave to any man who might creep along out of sight until
he got back suddenly to send the snake on its errand of death.
“How many men have you got in the grounds, by the way, Meadows?”
“One, and he’s not in the grounds but outside on the road. I pull him in
at night, or rather in the evening, to patrol the grounds, and he is
armed.” He said this with a certain importance. An armed English
policeman is a tremendous phenomenon, that few have seen.
“Which means that he has a revolver that he hasn’t fired except at
target practice,” said Leon. “Excuse me—I thought I heard a car.”
He got up noiselessly from the table, went round the back of Mr. Lee,
and, darting to the window, looked out. A flower-bed ran close to the
wall, and beyond that was a broad gravel drive. Between gravel and
flowers was a wide strip of turf. The drive continued some fifty feet to
the right before it turned under an arch of rambler roses. To the left
it extended for less than a dozen feet, and from this point a path
parallel to the side of the house ran into the drive.
“Do you hear it?” asked Lee.
“No, sir, I was mistaken.”
Leon dipped his hand into his side pocket, took out a handful of
something that looked like tiny candies wrapped in coloured paper. Only
Meadows saw him scatter them left and right, and he was too discreet to
ask why. Leon saw the inquiring lift of his eyebrows as he came back to
his seat, but was wilfully dense. Thereafter, he ate his dinner with
only an occasional glance towards the window.
“I’m not relying entirely upon my own lawyer’s advice,” said Mr. Lee. “I
have telegraphed to Lisbon to ask Dr. Pinto Caillao to come to England,
and he may be of greater service even than Poole, though where——”
The butler came in at this moment.
“Mrs. Poole has just telephoned, sir. Her husband has had a bad
accident: his car ran into a tree trunk which was lying across the road
near Lawley. It was on the other side of the bend, and he did not see it
until too late.”
“Is he very badly hurt?”
“No, sir, but he is in the Cottage Hospital. Mrs. Poole says he is fit
to travel home.”
The blind man sat open-mouthed.
“What a terrible thing to have happened!” he began.
“A very lucky thing for Mr. Poole,” said Leon cheerfully. “I feared
worse than that——”
From somewhere outside the window came a “snap!”—the sound that a
Christmas cracker makes when it is exploded. Leon got up from the table,
walked swiftly to the side of the window and jumped out. As he struck
the earth, he trod on one of the little bon-bons he had scattered and it
cracked viciously under his foot.
There was nobody in sight. He ran swiftly along the grass-plot, slowing
his pace as he came to the end of the wall, and then jerked round, gun
extended stiffly. Still nobody. Before him was a close-growing box
hedge, in which had been cut an opening. He heard the crack of a signal
behind him, guessed that it was Meadows, and presently the detective
joined him. Leon put his fingers to his lips, leapt the path to the
grass on the other side, and dodged behind a tree until he could see
straight through the opening in the box hedge. Beyond was a rose-garden,
a mass of pink and red and golden blooms.
Leon put his hand in his pocket and took out a black cylinder, fitting
it, without taking his eyes from the hedge opening, to the muzzle of his
pistol. Meadows heard the dull thud of the explosion before he saw the
pistol go up. There was a scatter of leaves and twigs and the sound of
hurrying feet. Leon dashed through the opening in time to see a man
plunge into a plantation.
“_Plop!_”
The bullet struck a tree not a foot from the fugitive.
“That’s that!” said Leon, and took off his silencer. “I hope none of the
servants heard it, and most of all that Lee, whose hearing is
unfortunately most acute, mistook the shot for something else.”
He went back to the window, stopping to pick up such of his crackers as
had not exploded.
“They are useful things to put on the floor of your room when you’re
expecting to have your throat cut in the middle of the night,” he said
pleasantly. “They cost exactly two dollars a hundred, and they’ve saved
my life more often than I can count. Have you ever waited in the dark to
have your throat cut?” he asked. “It happened to me three times, and I
will admit that it is not an experience that I am anxious to repeat.
Once in Bohemia, in the city of Prague; once in New Orleans, and once in
Ortona.”
“What happened to the assassins?” asked Meadows with a shiver.
“That is a question for the theologian, if you will forgive the
well-worn jest,” said Leon. “I think they are in hell, but then I’m
prejudiced.”
Mr. Lee had left the dining-table and was standing at the front door,
leaning on his stick; and with him an interested Mr. Washington.
“What was the trouble?” asked the old man in a worried voice. “It is a
great handicap not being able to see things. But I thought I heard a
shot fired.”
“Two,” said Leon promptly. “I hoped you hadn’t heard them. I don’t know
who the man was, Mr. Lee, but he certainly had no right in the grounds,
and I scared him off.”
“You must have used a silencer: I did not hear the shots fully. Did you
catch a view of the man’s face?”