before Leon’s lamp focussed the upturned flagstone and the yawning
entrance of the vault. He was the first to descend, and, as he reached
the floor, he saw, silhouetted in the light that flowed from the inner
room, a man, as he thought, crouching in the doorway, and covered him.
“Put up your hands!” he said.
The figure made no response, and Manfred ran to the shape. The face was
in the shadow, but he brought his own lamp down and recognized the set
grin of the dead man.
Gurther!
So thus he had died, in a last effort to climb out for help.
“The Snake,” said Manfred briefly. “There are no marks on his face, so
far as I can see.”
“Do you notice his wrist, George?”
Then, looking past the figure, Gonsalez saw the girl lying on the bed,
and recognized Joan before he saw her face. Half-way across the room he
slipped on something. Instinctively he knew it was a snake and leapt
around, his pistol balanced.
“Merciful heaven! Look at this!”
He stared from the one reptile to the other.
“Dead!” he said. “That explains Gurther.”
Quickly he unstrapped Joan’s wrists and lifted up her head, listening,
his ear pressed to the faintly fluttering heart. The basin and the
sponge told its own story. Where was Mirabelle?
There was another room, and a row of big cupboards, but the girl was in
no place that he searched.
“She’s gone, of course,” said Manfred quietly. “Otherwise, the trap
would not have been open. We’d better get this poor girl out of the way
and search the grounds. Digby, go to——”
He stopped.
If Oberzohn were in the house, they must not take the risk of alarming
him.
But the girl’s needs were urgent. Manfred picked her up and carried her
out into the open, and, with Leon guiding them, they came, after a trek
which almost ended in a broken neck for Leon, to within a few yards of
the house.
“I presume,” said Gonsalez, “that the hole into which I nearly dived was
dug for a purpose, and I shouldn’t be surprised to learn it was intended
that the late Mr. Gurther should find a permanent home there. Shall I
take her?”
“No, no,” said Manfred, “go on into the lane. Poiccart should be there
with the car by now.”
“Poiccart knows more about growing onions than driving motor-cars.” The
gibe was mechanical; the man’s heart and mind were on Mirabelle
Leicester.
They had to make a circuit of the stiff copper-wire fence which
surrounded the house, and eventually reached Hangman’s Lane just as the
head-lamps of the Spanz came into view.
“I will take her to the hospital and get in touch with the police,” said
Manfred. “I suppose there isn’t a near-by telephone?”
“I shall probably telephone from the house,” said Leon gravely.
From where he stood he could not tell whether the door was open or
closed. There was no transom above the door, so that it was impossible
to tell whether there were lights in the passage or not. The house was
in complete darkness.
He was so depressed that he did not even give instructions to Poiccart,
who was frankly embarrassed by the duty which had been imposed upon him,
and gladly surrendered the wheel to George.
They lifted the girl into the tonneau, and, backing into the gate, went
cautiously up the lane—Leon did not wait to see their departure, but
returned to the front of the house.
The place was in darkness. He opened the wire gate and went silently up
the steps. He had not reached the top before he saw that the door was
wide open. Was it a trap? His lamp showed him the switch: he turned on
the light and closed the door behind him, and, bending his head,
listened.
The first door on the right was Oberzohn’s room. The door was ajar, but
the lamps were burning inside. He pushed it open with the toe of his
boot, but the room was empty.
The next two doors he tried on that floor were locked. He went carefully
down to the kitchens and searched them both. They were tenantless. He
knew there was a servant or two on the premises, but one thing he did
not know, and this he discovered in the course of his tour, was that
Oberzohn had no bedroom. One of the two rooms above had evidently been
occupied by the servants. The door was open, the room was empty and in
some confusion; a coarse night-dress had been hastily discarded and left
on the tumbled bedclothes. Oberzohn had sent his servants away in a
hurry—why?
There was a half-smoked cigarette on the edge of a deal wash-stand. The
ash lay on the floor. In a bureau every drawer was open and empty,
except one, a half-drawer filled with odd scraps of cloth. Probably the
cook or the maid smoked. He found a packet of cigarettes under one
pillow to confirm this view, and guessed they had gone to bed leisurely
with no idea that they would be turned into the night.
He learned later that Oberzohn had bundled off his servants at ten
minutes’ notice, paying them six months’ salary as some salve for the
indignity.
Pfeiffer’s room was locked; but now, satisfied that the house was empty,
he broke the flimsy catch, made a search but found nothing. Gurther’s
apartment was in indescribable disorder. He had evidently changed in a
hurry. His powder puffs and beards, crepe hair and spirit bottles,
littered the dressing-table. He remembered, with a pang of contrition,
that he had promised to telephone the police, but when he tried to get
the exchange he found the line was dead: a strange circumstance, till he
discovered that late that evening Meadows had decided to cut the house
from all telephonic communication, and had given orders accordingly.
It was a queerly built house: he had never realized its remarkable
character until he had examined it at these close quarters. The walls
were of immense thickness: that fact was brought home to him when he had
opened the window of the maid’s room to see if Digby was in sight. The
stairs were of concrete, the shutters which covered the windows of
Oberzohn’s study were steel-faced. He decided, pending the arrival of
the police, to make an examination of the two locked rooms. The first of
these he had no difficulty in opening. It was a large room on the actual
ground level, and was reached by going down six steps. A rough bench ran
round three sides of this bare apartment, except where its continuity
broke to allow entrance to a further room. The door was of steel and was
fastened.
The room was dusty but not untidy. Everything was in order. The various
apparatus was separated by a clear space. In one corner he saw a gas
engine and dynamo covered with dust. There was nothing to be gained
here. The machine which interested him most was one he knew all about,
only he had not guessed the graphite moulds. The contents of a small
blue bottle, tightly corked, and seemingly filled with discoloured swabs
of cotton-wool, however, revived his interest. With a glance round the
laboratory, he went out and tried the second of the locked doors.
This room, however, was well protected, both in the matter of stoutness
of door and complication of locks. Leon tried all his keys, and then
used his final argument. This he carried in a small leather pouch in his
hip pocket; three steel pieces that screwed together and ended in a
bright claw. Hammering the end of the jemmy with his fist, he forced the
claw between door and lintel, and in less than a minute the lock had
broken, and he was in the presence of the strangest company that had
ever been housed.
Four electric radiators were burning. The room was hot and heavy, and
the taint of it caught his throat, as it had caught the throat of the
Danish servant. He put on all the lights—and they were many—and then
began his tour.
There were two lines of shelves, wide apart, and each supporting a
number of boxes, some of which were wrapped in baize, some of which,
however, were open to view. All had glass fronts, all had steel tops
with tiny air-holes, and in each there coiled, in its bed of wool or
straw, according to its requirements, one or two snakes. There were
cobras, puff-adders, two rattlesnakes, seemingly dead, but, as he
guessed, asleep; there was a South American _fer-de-lance_, that most
unpleasant representative of his species; there were little coral
snakes, and, in one long box, a whole nest of queer little things that
looked like tiny yellow lobsters, but which he knew as scorpions.
He was lifting a baize cover when:
“Don’t move, my friend! I think I can promise you more intimate
knowledge of our little family.”
Leon turned slowly, his hands extended. Death was behind him,
remorseless, unhesitating. To drop his hand to his pocket would have
been the end for him—he had that peculiar instinct which senses
sincerity, and when Dr. Oberzohn gave him his instructions he had no
doubt whatever that his threat was backed by the will to execute.
Oberzohn stood there, a little behind him, white-faced, open-eyed with
fear, Mirabelle Leicester.
Digby—where was he? He had left him in the grounds.
The doctor was examining the broken door and grunted his annoyance.
“I fear my plan will not be good,” he said, “which was to lock you in
this room and break all those glasses, so that you might become better
acquainted with the Quiet People. That is not to be. Instead, march!”
What did he intend? Leon strolled out nonchalantly, but Oberzohn kept
his distance, his eyes glued upon those sensitive hands that could move
so quickly and jerk and fire a gun in one motion.
“Stop!”
Leon halted, facing the open front door and the steps.
“You will remember my sainted brother, Señor Gonsalez, and of the great
loss which the world suffered when he was so vilely murdered?”
Leon stood without a quiver. Presently the man would shoot. At any
second a bullet might come crashing on its fatal errand. This was a
queer way to finish so full a life. He knew it was coming, had only one
regret; that this shaken girl should be called upon to witness such a
brutal thing. He wanted to say good-bye to her, but was afraid of
frightening her.
“You remember that so sainted brother?” Oberzohn’s voice was raucous
with fury. Ahead of him the light fell upon a face.
“Digby! Stay where you are!” shouted Leon.
The sound of the explosion made him jump. He saw the brickwork above the
doorway splinter, heard a little scuffle, and turned, gun in hand.
Oberzohn had pulled the girl in front of him so that she afforded a
complete cover: under her arm he held his pistol.
“Run!” she screamed.
He hesitated a second. Again the pistol exploded and a bullet
ricochetted from the door. Leon could not fire. Oberzohn so crouched
that nothing but a trick shot could miss the girl and hit him. And then,
as the doctor shook free the hand that gripped his wrist, he leapt down
the steps and into the darkness. Another second and the door slammed. He
heard the thrust of the bolts and a clang as the great iron bar fell
into its place. Somehow he had a feeling as of a citadel door being
closed against him.
Dr. Oberzohn had returned unobserved, though the night was clear.
Passing through the open water-gate he had tied up to the little quay
and landed his unwilling passenger. Digby, according to instructions,
had been making a careful circuit of the property, and at the moment was
as far away from the barge as it was humanly possible to be.
Unchallenged, the doctor had worked his way back to the house. The light
in the hall warned him that somebody was there. How many? He could not
guess.
“Take off your shoes,” he growled in Mirabelle’s ear, and she obeyed.
Whatever happened, he must not lose touch of her, or give her an
opportunity of escape. Still grasping her arm with one hand and his long
Mauser pistol in the other, he went softly up the steps, got into the
hall and listened, locating the intruder instantly.
It all happened so quickly that Mirabelle could remember nothing except
the desperate lunge she made to knock up the pistol that had covered the
spine of Leon Gonsalez. She stood dumbly by, watching this horrible old
man fasten the heavy door, and obediently preceded him from room to
room. She saw the long cases in the hot room and shrank back. And then
began a complete tour of the house. There were still shutters to be
fastened, peep-holes to be opened up. He screwed up the shutters of the
servants’ room, and then, with a hammer, broke the thumb-piece short.
“You will stay here,” he said. “I do not know what they will do. Perhaps
they will shoot. I also am a shooter!”
Not satisfied with the lock that fastened her door, he went into his
workshop, found a staple, hook and padlock, and spent the greater part
of an hour fixing this additional security. At last he had finished, and
could put the situation in front of four very interested men.
He unlocked the door of the concrete annexe and called the crestfallen
gunmen forth, and in a very few words explained the situation and their
danger.
“For every one of you the English police hold warrants,” he said. “I do
not bluff, I know. This afternoon I was visited by the police. I tell
you I do not bluff you—me they cannot touch, because they know nothing,
can prove nothing. At most I shall go to prison for a few years, but
with you it is different.”
“Are they waiting outside?” asked one suspiciously. “Because, if they
are, we’d better move quick.”
“You do not move, quick or slow,” said Oberzohn. “To go out from here
means certain imprisonment for you all. To stay, if you follow my plan,
means that every one of you may go free and with money.”
“What’s the idea?” asked Cuccini. “Are you going to fight them?”
“Sure I am going to fight them,” nodded Oberzohn. “That is my scheme. I
have the young miss upstairs; they will not wish to do her any harm. I
intend to defend this house.”
“Do you mean you’re going to hold it?” asked one of the staggered men.
“I will hold it until they are tired, and make terms.”
Cuccini was biting his nails nervously.
“Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, boss,” he growled. “I’ve
got an idea you’ve roped us into this.”
“You may rope yourself out of it!” snapped Oberzohn. “There is the
door—go if you wish. There are police there; make terms with them. A
few days ago you were in trouble, my friend. Who saved you? The doctor
Oberzohn. There is life imprisonment for every one of you, and I can
hold this house myself. Stay with me, and I will give you a fortune
greater than any you have dreamt about. And, more than this, at the end
you shall be free.”
“Where’s Gurther?”
“He has been killed—by accident.” Oberzohn’s face was working
furiously. “By accident he died,” he said, and told the truth
unconvincingly. “There is nothing now to do but to make a decision.”
Cuccini and his friends consulted in a whisper.
“What do we get for our share?” he asked, and Oberzohn mentioned a sum
which staggered them.
“I speak the truth,” he said. “In two days I shall have a gold-mine
worth millions.”
The habit of frankness was on him, and he told them the story of the
golden hill without reservations. His agents at Lisbon had already
obtained from the Ministry an option upon the land and its mineral
rights. As the clock struck twelve on June 14, the goldfield of Biskara
automatically passed into his possession.
“On one side you have certain imprisonment, on the other you have great
monies and happiness.”
“How long will we have to stay here?” asked Cuccini.
“I have food for a month, even milk. They will not cut the water because
of the girl. For the same reason they will not blow in the door.”
Again they had a hasty consultation and made their decision.
“All right, boss, we’ll stay. But we want that share-out put into
writing.”
“To my study,” said Oberzohn promptly, “march!”
He was half-way through writing the document when there came a
thunderous knock on the door and he got up, signalling for silence.
Tiptoeing along the passage, he came to the door.
“Yes—who is that?” he asked.
“Open, in the name of the law!” said a voice, and he recognized Meadows.
“I have a warrant for your arrest, and if necessary the door will be
broken in.”
“So!” said Oberzohn, dropped the muzzle of his pistol until it rested on
the edge of the little letter-slit and fired twice.
_Chapter XXXIII_ _The Siege_
BUT Meadows had already been warned to keep clear of the letter-box,
and the bullets eventually reached one of the railway viaducts, to the
embarrassment of a road ganger who happened to be almost in the line of
fire.
Meadows slipped down the steps to cover. Inside the wire fence a dozen
policemen were waiting.
“Sergeant, go back to the station in the police car and bring arms,” he
said. “This is going to be a long job.”
Gonsalez had made a very careful reconnaissance of the ground, and from
the first had recognized the difficulties which lay ahead of the
attacking party. The wall rose sheer without any break; such windows as
were within reach were heavily shuttered; and even the higher windows,
he guessed, had been covered. The important problem in his mind was to
locate the room in which the girl was imprisoned, and, making a mental
review of the house, he decided that she was either in the servants’
apartment or in that which had held Gurther. By the light of the lantern
he made a rapid sketch plan of the floors he had visited.
Meadows had gone away to telephone to police head-quarters. He had
decided to re-establish telephone connection with the doctor, and when
this was done, he called the house and Oberzohn’s voice answered him.
The colloquy was short and unsatisfactory. The terms which the doctor
offered were such as no self-respecting government could accept.
Immunity for himself and his companions (he insisted so strongly upon
this latter offer that Meadows guessed, accurately, that the gang were
standing around the instrument).
“I don’t want your men at all. So far as I am concerned, they can go
free,” said Meadows. “Ask one of them to speak on the ’phone.”
“Oh, indeed, no,” said Oberzohn. “It is ridiculous to ask me that.”
He hung up at this point and explained to the listening men that the
police had offered him freedom if he would surrender the gang.
“As I already told you,” he said in conclusion, “that is not the way of
Dr. Oberzohn. I will gain nothing at the expense of my friends.”
A little later, when Cuccini crept into the room to call police
head-quarters and confirm this story of the doctor, he found that not
only had the wire been cut, but a yard of the flex had been removed. Dr.
Oberzohn was taking no risks.
The night passed without any further incident. Police reserves were
pouring into the neighbourhood; the grounds had been isolated, and even
the traffic of barges up and down the canal prohibited. The late
editions of the morning newspapers had a heavily head-lined paragraph
about the siege of a house in the New Cross area, and when the first
reporters arrived a fringe of sightseers had already gathered at every
police barrier. Later, special editions, with fuller details, began to
roll out of Fleet Street; the crowd grew in density, and a high official
from Scotland Yard, arriving soon after nine, ordered a further area to
be cleared, and with some difficulty the solid wedge of humanity at the
end of Hangman’s Lane was slowly pushed back until the house was
invisible to them. Even here, a passage-way was kept for police cars and
only holders of passes were allowed to come within the prohibited area.
The three men, with the police chief, had taken up their head-quarters
in the factory, from which the body of Gurther had been removed in the
night. The Deputy Commissioner, who came on the spot at nine, and
examined the dead snakes, was something of a herpetologist, and
pronounced them to be veritable _fers-de-lance_, a view from which
Poiccart differed.
“They are a species of African tree snakes that the natives call
_mamba_. There are two, a black and a green. Both of these are the black
type.”
“The Zoo mamba?” said the official, remembering the sensational
disappearance of a deadly snake which had preceded the first of the
snake mysteries.
“You will probably find the bones of the Zoo mamba in some mole run in
Regent’s Park—he must have been frozen to death the night of his
escape,” said Poiccart. “It was absolutely impossible that at that
temperature he could live. I have made a very careful inspection of the
land, and adjacent to the Zoological Gardens is a big stretch of earth
which is honeycombed by moles. No, this was imported, and the rest of
his menagerie was imported.”
The police chief shook his head.
“Still, I’m not convinced that a snake could have been responsible for
these deaths,” he said, and went over the ground so often covered.
The three listened in polite silence, and offered no suggestion.
The morning brought news of Washington’s arrival in Lisbon. He had left
the train at Irun, Leon’s agent in Madrid having secured a relay of
aeroplanes, and the journey from Irun to Lisbon had been completed in a
few hours. He was now on his way back.
“If he makes the connections he will be here to-night,” he told Manfred.
“I rather think he will be a very useful recruit to our forces.”
“You’re thinking of the snakes in the house?”
Leon nodded.
“I know Oberzohn,” he said simply, and George Manfred thought of the
girl, and knew the unspoken fears of his friend were justified.
The night had not been an idle one for Oberzohn and his companions. With
the first light of dawn they had mounted to the roof, and, under his
direction, the gunmen had dismantled the four sheds which stood at each
corner of the parapet. Unused to the handling of such heavy metal, the
remnants of the Old Guard gazed in awe upon the tarnished jackets of the
Maxim guns that were revealed.
Oberzohn understood the mechanism of the machines so thoroughly that in
half an hour he had taught his crew the method of handling and sighting.
In the larger shed was a collapsible tripod, which was put together, and
on this he mounted a small but powerful searchlight and connected it up
with one of the plugs in the roof.
He pointed to them the three approaches to the house: the open railway
arches and the long lane, at the end of which the crowd at that moment
was beginning to gather.
“From only these places can the ground be approached,” he said, “and my
little quick-firers cover them!”
Just before eleven there came down Hangman’s Lane, drawn by a motor
tractor, a long tree-trunk, suspended about the middle by chains, and
Oberzohn, examining it carefully through his field-glasses, realized
that no door in the world could stand against the attack of that
battering-ram. He took up one of the dozen rifles that lay on the floor,
sighted it carefully, resting his elbow on the parapet, and fired.
He saw the helmet of a policeman shoot away from the head of the
astonished man, and fired again. This time he was more successful, for a
policeman who was directing the course of the tractor crumpled up and
fell in a heap.
A shrill whistle blew; the policemen ran to cover, leaving the machine
unattended. Again he fired, this time at the driver of the tractor. He
saw the man scramble down from his seat and run for the shelter of the
fence.
A quarter of an hour passed without any sign of activity on the part of
his enemies, and then eight men, armed with rifles, came racing across
the ground towards the wire barrier. Oberzohn dropped his rifle, and,
taking a grip of the first machine-gun in his hand, sighted it quickly.
The staccato patter of the Maxim awakened the echoes. One man dropped;
the line wavered. Again the shrill whistle, and they broke for cover,
dragging their wounded companion with them.
“I was afraid of that,” said Leon, biting his knuckles—sure evidence of
his perturbation.
He had put a ladder against the wall of the factory, and now he climbed
up on to the shaky roof and focussed his glasses.
“There’s another Maxim on this side,” he shouted down. And then, as he
saw a man’s head moving above the parapet, he jerked up his pistol and
fired. He saw the stone splinters fly up and knew that it was not bad
practice at four hundred yards. The shot had a double effect; it made
the defenders cautious and aroused in them the necessary quantity of
resentment.
He was hardly down before there was a splutter from the roof, and the
whine and snap of machine-gun bullets; one slate tile shivered and its
splinters leapt high in the air and dropped beside his hand.
The presence of the girl was the only complication. Without her, the end
of Oberzohn and his companions was inevitable. Nobody realized this
better than the doctor, eating a huge ham sandwich in the shelter of the
parapet—an unusual luxury, for he ate few solids.