that a man’s back was as familiar to him as his face. For when he
studied his enemies, his study was a very thorough and complete one.
Moreover, Gurther ran with a peculiar swing of his shoulder.
He turned suddenly to the master of Rath Hall.
“May I speak with you privately for a few minutes, Mr. Lee?” he asked.
He had taken a sudden resolution.
“Certainly,” said the other courteously, and tapped his way into the
hall and into his private study.
For ten minutes Leon was closeted with him. When he came out, Meadows
had gone down to his man at the gate, and Washington was standing
disconsolately alone. Leon took him by the arm and led him on to the
lawn.
“There’s going to be real trouble here to-night,” he said, and told him
the arrangement he had made with Mr. Johnson Lee. “I’ve tried to
persuade him to let me see the letter which is in his safe, but he is
like rock on that matter, and I’d hate to burgle the safe of a friend.
Listen.”
Elijah Washington listened and whistled.
“They stopped the lawyer coming,” Gonsalez went on, “and now they’re
mortally scared if, in his absence, the old man tells us what he
intended keeping for his lawyer.”
“Meadows is going to London, isn’t he?”
Leon nodded slowly.
“Yes, he is going to London—by car. Did you know all the servants were
going out to-night?”
Mr. Washington stared at him.
“The women, you mean?”
“The women and the men,” said Leon calmly. “There is an excellent
concert at Brightlingsea to-night, and though they will be late for the
first half of the performance, they will thoroughly enjoy the latter
portion of the programme. The invitation is not mine, but it is one I
thoroughly approve.”
“But does Meadows want to go away when the fun is starting?”
Apparently Inspector Meadows was not averse from leaving at this
critical moment. He was, in fact, quite happy to go. Mr. Washington’s
views on police intelligence underwent a change for the worse.
“But surely he had better stay?” said the American. “If you’re expecting
an attack . . . they are certain to marshal the whole of their forces?”
“Absolutely certain,” said the calm Gonsalez. “Here is the car.”
The Rolls came out from the back of the house at that moment and drew up
before the door.
“I don’t like leaving you,” said Meadows, as he swung himself up by the
driver’s side and put his bag on the seat.
“Tell the driver to avoid Lawley like the plague,” said Leon. “There’s a
tree down, unless the local authorities have removed it—which is very
unlikely.”
He waited until the tail lights of the machine had disappeared into the
gloom, then he went back to the hall.
“Excuse me, sir,” said the butler, struggling into his greatcoat as he
spoke. “Will you be all right—there is nobody left in the house to look
after Mr. Lee. I could stay——”
“It was Mr. Lee’s suggestion you should all go,” said Gonsalez briefly.
“Just go outside and tell me when the lights of the char-à-banc come
into view. I want to speak to Mr. Lee before you go.”
He went into the library and shut the door behind him. The waiting
butler heard the murmur of his voice and had some qualms of conscience.
The tickets had come from a local agency; he had never dreamt that, with
guests in the house, his employer would allow the staff to go in its
entirety.
It was not a char-à-banc but a big closed bus that came lumbering up the
apology for a drive, and swept round to the back of the house, to the
annoyance of the servants, who were gathered in the hall.
“Don’t bother, I will tell him,” said Leon. He seemed to have taken full
charge of the house, an unpardonable offence in the eyes of
well-regulated servants.
He disappeared through a long passage leading into the mysterious
domestic regions, and returned to announce that the driver had rectified
his error and was coming to the front entrance: an unnecessary
explanation, since the big vehicle drew up as he was telling the
company.
“There goes the most uneasy bunch of festive souls it has ever been my
misfortune to see,” he said, as the bus, its brakes squeaking, went down
the declivity towards the unimposing gate. “And yet they’ll have the
time of their lives. I’ve arranged supper for them at the Beech Hotel,
and although they are not aware of it, I am removing them to a place
where they’d give a lot of money to be—if they hadn’t gone!”
“That leaves you and me alone,” said Mr. Washington glumly, but
brightened up almost at once. “I can’t say that I mind a rough house,
with or without gun-play,” he said. He looked round the dark hall a
little apprehensively. “What about fastening the doors behind?” he
asked.
“They’re all right,” said Leon. “It isn’t from the back that danger will
come. Come out and enjoy the night air . . . it is a little too soon for
the real trouble.”
But here, for once, he was mistaken.
Elijah Washington followed him into the park, took two paces, and
suddenly Leon saw him stagger. In a second he was by the man’s side,
bent and peering, his glasses discarded on the grass.
“Get me inside,” said Washington’s voice. He was leaning heavily upon
his companion.
With his arm round his waist, taking half his weight, Leon pushed the
man into the hall but did not close the door. Instead, as the American
sat down with a thud upon a hall seat, Leon fell to the ground, and
peered along the artificial skyline he had created. There was no
movement, no sign of any attacker. Then and only then did he shut the
door and drop the bar, and pushing the study door wide, carried the man
into the room and switched on the lights.
“I guess something got me then,” muttered Washington.
His right cheek was red and swollen, and Leon saw the tell-tale bite;
saw something else. He put his hand to the cheek and examined his
finger-tips.
“Get me some whisky, will you?—about a gallon of it.”
He was obviously in great pain and sat rocking himself to and fro.
“Gosh! This is awful!” he groaned. “Never had any snake that bit like
this!”
“You’re alive, my friend, and I didn’t believe you when you said you
were snake-proof.”
Leon poured out a tumbler of neat whisky and held it to the American’s
lips.
“Down with Prohibition!” murmured Washington, and did not take the glass
from his lips until it was empty. “You can give me another dose of
that—I shan’t get pickled,” he said.
He put his hand up to his face and touched the tiny wound gingerly.
“It is wet,” he said in surprise.
“What did it feel like?”
“Like nothing so much as a snake-bite,” confessed the expert.
Already his face was puffed beneath the eyes, and the skin was
discoloured black and blue.
Leon crossed to the fire-place and pushed the bell, and Washington
watched him in amazement.
“Say, what’s the good of ringing? The servants have gone.”
There was a patter of feet in the hall, the door was flung open and
George Manfred came in, and behind him the startled visitor saw Meadows
and a dozen men.
“For the Lord’s sake!” he said sleepily.
“They came in the char-à-banc, lying on the floor,” explained Leon, “and
the only excuse for bringing a char-à-banc here was to send the servants
to that concert.”
“You got Lee away?” asked Manfred.
Leon nodded.
“He was in the car that took friend Meadows, who transferred to the
char-à-banc somewhere out of sight of the house.”
Washington had taken a small cardboard box from his pocket and was
rubbing a red powder gingerly upon the two white-edged marks, groaning
the while.
“This is certainly a snake that’s got the cobra skinned to death and a
rattlesnake’s bite ain’t worse than a dog nip,” he said. “Mamba nothing!
I know the mamba; he is pretty fatal, but not so bad as this.”
Manfred looked across to Leon.
“Gurther?” he asked simply, and Gonsalez nodded.
“It was intended for me obviously, but, as I’ve said before, Gurther is
nervous. And it didn’t help him any to be shot up.”
“Do you fellows mind not talking so loud?” He glanced at the heavy
curtains that covered the windows. Behind these the shutters had been
fastened, and Dr. Oberzohn was an ingenious man.
Leon took a swift survey of the visitor’s feet; they wore felt slippers.
“I don’t think I can improve upon the tactics of the admirable Miss
Leicester,” he said, and went up to Mr. Lee’s bedroom, which was in the
centre of the house and had a small balcony, the floor of which was
formed by the top of the porch.
The long French windows were open and Leon crawled out into the darkness
and took observation through the pillars of the balustrade. They were in
the open now, making no attempt to conceal their presence. He counted
seven, until he saw the cigarette of another near the end of the drive.
What were they waiting for? he wondered. None of them moved; they were
not even closing on the house. And this inactivity puzzled him. They
were awaiting a signal. What was it to be? Whence would it come?
He saw a man come stealthily across the lawn . . . one or two? His eyes
were playing tricks. If there were two, one was Gurther. There was no
mistaking him. For a second he passed out of view behind a pillar of the
balcony. Leon moved his head . . . Gurther had fallen! He saw him
stumble to his knees and tumble flat upon the ground. What did that
mean?
He was still wondering when he heard a soft scraping, and a deep-drawn
breath, and tried to locate the noise. Suddenly, within a few inches of
his face, a hand came up out of the darkness and gripped the lower edge
of the balcony.
Swiftly, noiselessly, Gonsalez wriggled back to the room, drew erect in
the cover of the curtains and waited. His hand touched something; it was
a long silken cord by which the curtains were drawn. Leon grinned in the
darkness and made a scientific loop.
The intruder drew himself up on to the parapet, stepped quietly across,
then tiptoed to the open window. He was not even suspicious, for the
French windows had been open all the evening. Without a sound, he
stepped into the room and was momentarily silhouetted against the
starlight reflected in the window.
“Hatless,” thought Leon. That made things easier. As the man took
another stealthy step, the noose dropped over his neck, jerked tight and
strangled the cry in his throat. In an instant he was lying flat on the
ground with a knee in his back. He struggled to rise, but Leon’s fist
came down with the precision of a piston-rod, and he went suddenly
quiet.
Gonsalez loosened the slip-knot, and, flinging the man over his
shoulder, carried him out of the room and down the stairs. He could only
guess that this would be the only intruder, but left nothing to chance,
and after he had handed his prisoner to the men who were waiting in the
hall, he ran back to the room, to find, as he had expected, that no
other adventurer had followed the lead. They were still standing at
irregular intervals where he had seen them last. The signal was to come
from the house. What was it to be? he wondered.
He left one of his men on guard in the room and went back to the study,
to find that the startled burglar was an old friend. Lew Cuccini was
looking from one of his captors to the other, a picture of dumbfounded
chagrin. But the most extraordinary discovery that Leon made on his
return to the study was that the American snake-charmer was his old
cheerful self, and, except for his unsightly appearance, seemed to be
none the worse for an ordeal which would have promptly ended the lives
of ninety-nine men out of a hundred.
“Snake-proof—that’s me. Is this the guy that did it?” He pointed to
Cuccini.
“Where is Gurther?” asked Manfred.
Cuccini grinned up into his face.
“You’d better find out, boss,” he said. “He’ll fix you. As soon as I
shout——”
“Cuccini——” Leon’s voice was gentle. The point of the long-bladed
knife that he held to the man’s neck was indubitably sharp. Cuccini
shrank back. “You will not shout. If you do, I shall cut your throat and
spoil all these beautiful carpets—that is a genuine silken Bokhara,
George. I haven’t seen one in ten years.” He nodded to the soft-hued rug
on which George Manfred was standing. “What is the signal, Cuccini?”
turning his attention again to the prisoner. “And what happens when you
give the signal?”
“Listen,” said Cuccini, “that throat-cutting stuff don’t mean anything
to me. There’s no third degree in this country, and don’t forget it.”
“You have never seen my ninety-ninth degree.” Leon smiled like a
delighted boy. “Put something in his mouth, will you?”
One of the men tied a woollen scarf round Cuccini’s head.
“Lay him on the sofa.”
He was already bound hand and foot and helpless.
“Have you any wax matches? Yes, here are some.” Leon emptied a cut-glass
container into the palm of his hand and looked blandly round at the
curious company. “Now, gentlemen, if you will leave me alone for exactly
five minutes, I will give Mr. Cuccini an excellent imitation of the
persuasive methods of Gian Visconti, an excellent countryman of his, and
the inventor of the system I am about to apply.”
Cuccini was shaking his head furiously. A mumble of unintelligible
sounds came from behind the scarf.
“Our friend is not unintelligent. Any of you who say that Signor Cuccini
is unintelligent will incur my severest displeasure,” said Leon.
They sat the man up and he talked brokenly, hesitatingly.
“Splendid,” said Leon, when he had finished. “Take him into the kitchen
and give him a drink—you’ll find a tap above the kitchen sink.”
“I’ve often wondered, Leon,” said George, when they were alone together,
“whether you would ever carry out these horrific threats of yours of
torture and malignant savagery?”
“Half the torture of torture is anticipation,” said Leon easily,
lighting a cigarette with one of the matches he had taken from the
table, and carefully guiding the rest back into the glass bowl. “Any man
versed in the art of suggestive description can dispense with
thumbscrews and branding irons, little maidens and all the ghastly
apparatus of criminal justice ever employed by our ancestors. I, too,
wonder,” he mused, blowing a ring of smoke to the ceiling, “whether I
could carry my threats into execution—I must try one day.” He nodded
pleasantly, as though he were promising himself a great treat.
Manfred looked at his watch.
“What do you intend doing—giving the signal?”
Gonsalez nodded.
“And then?”
“Letting them come in. We may take refuge in the kitchen. I think it
would be wiser.”
George Manfred nodded.
“You’re going to allow them to open the safe?”
“Exactly,” said Leon. “I particularly wish that safe to be opened, and
since Mr. Lee demurs, I think this is the best method. I had that in my
mind all the time. Have you seen the safe, George? I have. Nobody but an
expert could smash it. I have no tools. I did not provide against such a
contingency, and I have scruples. Our friends have the tools—and no
scruples!”
“And the snake—is there any danger?”
Leon snapped his fingers.
“The snake has struck for the night, and will strike no more! As for
Gurther——”
“He owes you something.”
Leon sent another ring up and did not speak until it broke on the
ceiling.
“Gurther is dead,” he said simply. “He has been lying on the lawn in
front of the house for the past ten minutes.”
_Chapter XVII_ _Written in Braille_
LEON briefly related the scene he had witnessed from the balcony.
“It was undoubtedly Gurther,” he said. “I could not mistake him. He
passed out of view for a second behind one of the pillars, and when I
looked round he was lying flat on the ground.”
He threw his cigarette into the fire-place.
“I think it is nearly time,” he said. He waited until Manfred had gone,
and, going to the door, moved the bar and pulled it open wide.
Stooping down, he saw that the opening of the door had been observed,
for one of the men was moving across the lawn in the direction of the
house. From his pocket he took a small electric lamp and sent three
flickering beams into the darkness. To his surprise, only two men walked
forward to the house. Evidently Cuccini was expected to deal with any
resistance before the raid occurred.
The house had been built in the fifteenth century, and the entrance hall
was a broad, high barn of a place. Some Georgian architect, in the
peculiar manner of his kind, had built a small minstrel gallery over the
dining-room entrance and immediately facing the study. Leon had already
explored the house and had found the tiny staircase that led to this
architectural monstrosity. He had no sooner given the signal than he
dived into the dining-room, through the tall door, and was behind the
thick curtains at the back of the narrow gallery when the first two men
came in. He saw them go straight into the study and push open the door.
At the same time a third man appeared under the porch, though he made no
attempt to enter the hall.
Presently one of those who had gone into the study came out and called
Cuccini by name. When no answer came, he went grumbling back to his
task. What that task was, Leon could guess, before the peculiarly acrid
smell of hot steel was wafted to his sensitive nostrils.
By crouching down he could see the legs of the men who were working at
the safe. They had turned on all the lights, and apparently expected no
interruption. The man at the door was joined by another man.
“Where is Lew?”
In the stillness of the house the words, though spoken in a low tone,
were audible.
“I don’t know—inside somewhere. He had to fix that dago.”
Leon grinned. This description of himself never failed to tickle him.
One of the workers in the library came out at this point.
“Have you seen Cuccini?”
“No,” said the man at the door.
“Go in and find him. He ought to be here.”
Cuccini’s absence evidently made him uneasy, for though he returned to
the room he was out again in a minute, asking if the messenger had come
back. Then, from the back of the passage, came the searcher’s voice:
“The kitchen’s locked.”
The safe-cutter uttered an expression of amazement.
“Locked? What’s the idea?”
He came to the foot of the stairs and bellowed up:
“Cuccini!”
Only the echo answered him.
“That’s queer.” He poked his head in the door of the study. “Rush that
job, Mike. There’s some funny business here.” And over his shoulder,
“Tell the boys to get ready to jump.”
The man went out into the night and was absent some minutes, to return
with an alarming piece of news.
“They’ve gone, boss. I can’t see one of them.”
The “boss” cursed him, and himself went into the grounds on a visit of
inspection. He came back in a hurry, ran into the study, and Leon heard
his voice:
“Stand ready to clear.”
“What about Cuccini?”
“Cuccini will have to look after himself . . . got it, Mike?”
The deep voice said something. There followed the sound of a crack, as
though something of iron had broken. It was the psychological moment.
Leon parted the curtains and dropped lightly to the floor.
The man at the door turned in a flash at the sound.
“Put ’em up!” he said sharply.
“Don’t shoot.” Leon’s voice was almost conversational in its calmness.
“The house is surrounded by police.”
With an oath the man darted out of the door, and at that instant came
the sound of the first shot, followed by desultory firing from the
direction of the road. The second guard had been the first to go. Leon
ran to the door, slammed it tight and switched on the lights as the two
men came from the study. Under the arm of one was a thick pad of square
brown sheets. He dropped his load and put up his hands at the sight of
the gun; but his companion was made of harder material, and, with a
yell, he leapt at the man who stood between him and freedom. Leon
twisted aside, advanced his shoulder to meet the furious drive of the
man’s fist; then, dropping his pistol, he stooped swiftly and tackled
him below the knees. The man swayed, sought to recover his balance and
fell with a crash on the stone floor. All the time his companion stood
dazed and staring, his hands waving in the air.
There was a knock at the outer door. Without turning his back upon his
prisoners, Leon reached for the bar and pulled it up. Manfred came in.
“The gentleman who shouted ‘Cuccini’ scared them. I think they’ve got
away. There were two cars parked on the road.”
His eyes fell upon the brown sheets scattered on the floor and he
nodded.
“I think you have all you want, Leon,” he said.
The detectives came crowding in at that moment and secured their
prisoners whilst Leon Gonsalez and his friend went out on to the lawn to
search for Gurther.
The man lay as he had fallen, on his face, and as Leon flashed his lamp
upon the figure, he saw that the snake had struck behind the ear.
“Gurther?” frowned Leon.
He turned the figure on its back and gave a little gasp of surprise, for
there looked up to the starry skies the heavy face of Pfeiffer.
“Pfeiffer! I could have sworn it was the other! There has been some
double-crossing here. Let me think.” He stood for fully a minute, his
chin on his hand. “I could have understood Gurther; he was becoming a
nuisance and a danger to the old man. Pfeiffer, the more reliable of the
two, hated him. My first theory was that Gurther had been put out by
order of Oberzohn.”
“Suppose Gurther heard that order, or came to know of it?” asked Manfred
quietly.
Leon snapped his fingers.
“That is it! We had a similar case a few years ago, you will remember,
George? The old man gave the ‘out’ order to Pfeiffer—and Gurther got
his blow in first. Shrewd fellow!”
When they returned to the house, the three were seated in a row in
Johnson Lee’s library. Cuccini, of course, was an old acquaintance. Of
the other two men, Leon recognized one, a notorious gunman whose
photograph had embellished the pages of _Hue and Cry_ for months.
The third, and evidently the skilled workman of the party, for he it was
whom they had addressed as “Mike” and who had burnt out the lock of
Lee’s safe, was identified by Meadows as Mike Selwyn, a skilful burglar
and bank-smasher, who had, according to his statement, only arrived from
the Continent that afternoon in answer to a flattering invitation which
promised considerable profit to himself.
“And why I left Milan,” he said bitterly, “where the graft is easy and
the money’s good, I’d like you to tell me!”
The prisoners were removed to the nearest secure lock-up, and by the
time Lee’s servants returned from their dance, all evidence of an
exciting hour had disappeared, except that the blackened and twisted
door of the safe testified to the sinister character of the visitation.
Meadows returned as they were gathering together the scattered sheets.
There were hundreds of them, all written in Braille characters, and
Manfred’s sensitive fingers were skimming their surface.
“Oh, yes,” he said, in answer to a question that was put to him, “I knew
Lee was blind, the day we searched Barberton’s effects. That was my
mystery.” He laughed. “Barberton expected a call from his old friend and
had left a message for him on the mantelpiece. Do you remember that
strip of paper? It ran: ‘Dear Johnny, I will be back in an hour.’ These
are letters,”—he indicated the papers.
“The folds tell me that,” said Meadows. “You may not get a conviction
against Cuccini; the two burglars will come up before a judge, but to
charge Cuccini means the whole story of the snake coming out, and that
means a bigger kick than I’m prepared to laugh away—I am inclined to
let Cuccini go for the moment.”
Manfred nodded. He sat with the embossed sheets on his knee.
“Written from various places,” he went on.
It was curious to see him, his fingers running swiftly along the
embossed lines, his eyes fixed on vacancy.
“So far I’ve learnt nothing, except that in his spare time Barberton
amused himself by translating native fairy stories into English and
putting them into Braille for use in the blind school. I knew, of
course, that he did that, because I’d already interviewed his sister,
who is the mistress of the girls’ section.”
He had gone through half a dozen letters when he rose from the table and
walked across to the safe.
“I have a notion that the thing we’re seeking is not here,” he said. “It
is hardly likely that he would allow a communication of that character
to be jumbled up with the rest of the correspondence.”
The safe door was open and the steel drawer at the back had been pulled
out. Evidently it was from this receptacle that the letters had been
taken. Now the drawer was empty. Manfred took it out and measured the
depth of it with his finger.
“Let me see,” said Gonsalez suddenly.
He groped along the floor of the safe, and presently he began to feel
carefully along the sides.