“At this moment they bite their hands in despair.” (He was nearly right
here.)
He peeped over the parapet. There was no policeman in sight. Even the
trains that had roared at regular intervals along the viaduct had ceased
to run, traffic being diverted to another route.
At half-past twelve, looking through a peep-hole, he saw a long yellow
line of men coming down Hangman’s Lane, keeping to the shelter of the
fence.
“Soldiers,” he said, and for a second his voice quavered.
Soldiers they were. Presently they began to trickle into the grounds,
one by one, each man finding his own cover. Simultaneously there came a
flash and a crack from the nearest viaduct. A bullet smacked against the
parapet and the sound of the ricochet was like the hum of a bee.
Another menace had appeared simultaneously; a great, lumbering, awkward
vehicle, that kept to the middle of the lane and turned its ungainly
nose into the field. It was a tank, and Oberzohn knew that only the
girl’s safety stood between him and the dangling noose.
He went down to see her, unlocked the door, and found her, to his
amazement, fast asleep. She got up at the sound of the key in the lock,
and accepted the bread and meat and water he brought her without a word.
“What time is it?”
Oberzohn stared at her.
“That you should ask the time at such a moment!” he said.
The room was in darkness but for the light he had switched on.
“It is noon, and our friends have brought soldiers. Ach! how important a
woman you are, that the whole army should come out for you!”
Sarcasm was wasted on Mirabelle.
“What is going to happen—now?”
“I do not know.” He shrugged his shoulders. “They have brought a
diabolical instrument into the grounds. They may use it, to give them
cover, so that the door may be blown in. At that moment I place you in
the snake-room. This I shall tell our friends very quickly.”
She gazed at him in horror.
“You wouldn’t do anything so wicked, Mr. Oberzohn!”
Up and down went the skin of his forehead.
“That I shall tell them and that I shall do,” he said, and locked her in
with this comfortless assurance.
He went into his study and, fastening the door, took two strands of wire
from his pocket and repaired the broken telephone connections.
“I wish to speak to Meadows,” he said to the man who answered him—a
police officer who had been stationed at the exchange to answer any call
from this connection.
“I will put you through to him,” was the reply.
For a moment the doctor was surprised that Meadows was not at the
exchange. He did not know then that a field telephone line had been
organized, and that the factory head-quarters of the directing staff was
in communication with the world.
It was not Meadows, but another man who answered him, and by his tone of
authority Oberzohn guessed that some higher police official than Meadows
was on the spot.
“I am the doctor Oberzohn,” he barked. “You have brought a tank machine
to attack me. If this approaches beyond the wire fence, I shall place
the woman Leicester in the home of the snakes, and there I will bind her
and release my little friends to avenge me.”
“Look here——” began the officer, but Oberzohn hung up on him.
He went out and locked the door, putting the key in his pocket. His one
doubt was of the loyalty of his companions. But here, strangely enough,
he underrated their faith in him. The very mildness of the attack, the
seeming reluctance of the soldiers to fire, had raised their hopes and
spirits; and when, a quarter of an hour later, they saw the tank turn
about and go out into Hangman’s Lane, they were almost jubilant.
“You’re sure that he will carry out his threat?” asked the police chief.
“Certain,” said Leon emphatically. “There is nothing on earth that will
stop Oberzohn. You will force the house to find a man who has died by
his own hand, and——” He shuddered at the thought. “The only thing to
be done is to wait for the night. If Washington arrives on time, I think
we can save Miss Leicester.”
From the roof Dr. Oberzohn saw that the soldiers were digging a line of
trenches, and sent a spatter of machine-gun bullets in their direction.
They stopped their work for a moment to look round, and then went on
digging, as though nothing had happened.
The supply of ammunition was not inexhaustible, and he determined to
reserve any further fire until the attack grew more active.
Looking over the top of the parapet to examine the ground immediately
below, something hot and vicious snicked his ear. He saw the brickwork
of the chimney behind him crumble and scatter, and, putting up his hand,
felt blood.
“You’d better keep down, Oberzohn,” said Cuccini, crouching in the
shelter of the parapet. “They nearly got you then. They’re firing from
that railway embankment. Have you had a talk with the boss of these
birds?”
“They are weakening,” said Oberzohn promptly. “Always they are asking me
if I will surrender the men; always I reply, ‘Never will I do anything
so dishonourable.’”
Cuccini grunted, having his own views of the doctor’s altruism.
Late in the afternoon, a flight of aeroplanes appeared in the west: five
machines flying in V formation. None of the men on the roof recognized
the danger, standing rather in the attitude and spirit of sightseers.
The machines were flying low; with the naked eye Cuccini could read
their numbers long before they came within a hundred yards of the house.
Suddenly the roof began to spout little fountains of asphalt. Oberzohn
screamed a warning and darted to the stairway, and three men followed
him out. Cuccini lay spread-eagled where he fell, two machine-gun
bullets through his head.
The fighting machines mounted, turned and came back. Standing on the
floor below, Oberzohn heard the roar of their engines as they passed,
and went incautiously to the roof, to discover that the guns of flying
machines fire equally well from the tail. He was nearer to death then
than he had ever been. One bullet hit the tip of his finger and sliced
it off neatly. With a scream of pain he half fell, half staggered to
safety, spluttering strange oaths in German.
The aeroplanes did not return. He waited until their noise had died away
before he again ventured to the roof, to find the sky clear. Cuccini was
dead, and it was characteristic of his three friends that they should
make a thorough search of his pockets before they heaved the body over
the parapet.
Oberzohn left the three on the roof, with strict instructions that they
were to dive to cover at the first glint of white wings, and went down
into his study. The death of Cuccini was in some ways a blessing. The
man was full of suspicion; his heart was not in the fight, and the
aeroplane gunner had merely anticipated the doctor’s own plan.
Cuccini was a Latin, who spoke English well and wrote it badly. He had a
characteristic hand, which it amused Oberzohn to copy, for the doctor
was skilful with his pen. All through the next three hours he wrote,
breaking off his labours at intervals to visit the guard on the roof. At
last he had finished, and Cuccini’s sprawling signature was affixed to
the bottom of the third page. Oberzohn called down one of the men.
“This is the statement of Cuccini which he left. Will you put your name
to his signature?”
“What is it?” asked the man surlily.
“It is a letter which the good Cuccini made—what generosity! In this he
says that he alone was to blame for bringing you here, and nobody else.
Also that he kept you by threats.”
“And you?” asked the man.
“Also me,” said Oberzohn, unabashed. “What does it matter? Cuccini is
dead. May he not in his death save us all? Come, come, my good friend,
you are a fool if you do not sign. After that, send down our friends
that they may also sign.”
A reluctant signature was fixed, and the other men came one by one, and
one by one signed their names, content to stand by the graft which the
doctor indicated, exculpating themselves from all responsibility in the
defence.
Dusk fell and night came blackly, with clouds sweeping up from the west
and a chill rain falling. Gonsalez, moodily apart from his companions,
watched the dark bulk of the house fade into the background with an
ever-increasing misery. What these men did after did not matter—to
them. A policeman had been killed, and they stood equally guilty of
murder in the eyes of the law. They could now pile horror upon horror,
for the worst had happened. His only hope was that they did not know the
inevitability of their punishment.
No orders for attack had been given. The soldiers were standing by, and
even the attack by the aeroplanes had been due to a misapprehension of
orders. He had seen Cuccini’s body fall, and as soon as night came he
determined to approach the house to discover if there was any other way
in than the entrance by the front door.
The aeroplanes had done something more than sweep the roof with their
guns. Late in the evening there arrived by special messenger telescopic
photographs of the building, which the military commander and the police
chief examined with interest.
Leon was watching the house when he saw a white beam of light shoot out
and begin a circular sweep of the grounds. He expected this; the meaning
of the connections in the wall was clear. He knew, too, how long that
experiment would last. A quarter of an hour after the searchlight began
its erratic survey of the ground, the lamp went out, the police having
disconnected the current. But it was only for a little while, and in
less than an hour the light was showing again.
“He has power in the house—a dynamo and a gas engine,” explained
Gonsalez.
Poiccart had been to town and had returned with a long and heavy steel
cylinder, which Leon and Manfred carried between them into the open and
left. They were sniped vigorously from the roof, and although the firing
was rather wild, the officer in charge of the operations forbade any
further movement in daylight.
At midnight came the blessed Washington. They had been waiting for him
with eagerness, for he, of all men, knew something that they did not
know. Briefly, Leon described the snake-room and its contents. He was
not absolutely certain of some of the species, but his description was
near enough to give the snake expert an idea of the species.
“Yes, sir, they’re all deadly,” said Washington, shaking his head. “I
guess there isn’t a thing there, bar the scorps, who wouldn’t put a
grown man to sleep in five minutes—ten minutes at the most.”
They showed him the remains of the dead snake and he instantly
recognized the kind, as the zoological expert had done in the afternoon.
“That’s mamba. He’s nearly the deadliest of all. You didn’t see a fellow
with a long bill-shaped head? You did? Well, that’s fer-de-lance, and
he’s almost as bad. The little red fellows were corals. . . .”
Leon questioned him more closely.
“No, sir, they don’t leap—that’s not their way. A tree snake will hang
on to something overhead and get you as you pass, and they’ll swing from
the floor, but their head’s got to touch the floor first. The poor
little fellow that killed Gurther was scared, and when they’re scared
they’ll lash up at you—I’ve known a man to be bitten in the throat by a
snake that whipped up from the ground. But usually they’re satisfied to
get your leg.”
Leon told him his plan.
“I’ll come along with you,” said Washington without hesitation.
But this offer neither of the three would accept. Leon had only wanted
the expert’s opinion. There were scores of scientists in London,
curators of museums and keepers of snakes, who could have told him
everything there was to be known about the habits of the reptile in
captivity. He needed somebody who had met the snake in his native
environment.
An hour before daylight showed in the sky, there was a council of war,
Leon put his scheme before the authorities, and the plan was approved.
He did not wait for the necessary orders to be given, but, with Poiccart
and Manfred, went to the place where they had left the cylinder, and,
lifting it, made their slow way towards the house. In addition, Leon
carried a light ladder and a small bag full of tools.
The rays of the searchlight were moving erratically, and for a long time
did not come in their direction. Suddenly they found themselves in a
circle of dazzling light and fell flat on their faces. The machine-gun
spat viciously, the earth was churned up under the torrent of bullets,
but none of the men was hit; and, more important, the cylinder was not
touched.
Then suddenly, from every part of the ground, firing started. The target
was the searchlight, and the shooting had not gone on for more than a
minute before the light went out, so jerkily that it was obvious that
one bullet at least had got home.
“Now,” said Manfred, and, lifting up the cylinder, they ran.
Poiccart put his hand on the fence wire and was hurled back. The top
wire was alive, but evidently the doctor’s dynamo was not capable of
generating a current that would be fatal. Leon produced an insulated
wire cutter and snipped off a six-foot length, earthing the broken ends
of the wire. They were now under the shadow of the wall of the house,
and out of danger so far as bullets were concerned.
Leon planted his ladder against the window under which they stopped, and
in a second had broken the glass, turned the catch and sent up the sash.
From his bag he produced a small diamond drill and began to work through
the thick steel plate. It was a terribly arduous job, and after ten
minutes’ labour he handed over the work to Manfred, who mounted in his
place.
Whatever damage had been done to the searchlight had now been repaired,
and its beam had concentrated on the spot where they had been last seen.
This time no fusillade greeted its appearance, and Oberzohn was
surprised and troubled by the inaction.
The light came into the sky, the walls grew grey and all objects sharply
visible, when he saw the tank move out of the lane where it had been
standing all the previous day, turn into the field, and slowly move
towards the house. He set his teeth in a grin and, darting down the
stairs, flung himself against the door of the girl’s room, and his
agitation was such that for a time he could not find the keyhole of the
two locks that held the door secure.
It opened with a crash, and he almost fell into the room in his
eagerness. Mirabelle Leicester was standing by the bed, her face white
as death. Yet her voice was steady, almost unconcerned, when she asked:
“What do you want?”
“You!” he hissed. “You, my fine little lady—you are for the snakes!”
He flung himself upon her, though she offered no resistance, threw her
back on the bed and snapped a pair of rusty handcuffs on her wrists.
Pulling her to her feet, he dragged her from the room and down the
stairs. He had some difficulty in opening the door of the snake-room,
for he had wedged it close. The door was pushed open at last: the
radiators were no longer burning. He could not afford the power. But the
room was stiflingly hot, and when he turned on the lights, and she saw
the long line of boxes, her knees gave way under her, and she would have
fallen had he not put his arm about her waist. Dragging a heavy chair to
the centre of the room, he pushed her down into it.
“Here you wait, my friend!” he yelled. “You shall wait . . . but not
long!”
On the wall there were three long straps which were used for fastening
the boxes when it was necessary to travel with them. In a second one
thong was about her and buckled tight to the back of the chair. The
second he put under the seat and fastened across her knees.
“Good-bye, gracious lady!”
The rumble of the tank came to him in that room. But he had work to do.
There was no time to open the boxes. The glass fronts might easily be
broken. He ran along the line, hitting the glass with the barrel of his
Mauser. The girl, staring in horror, saw a green head come into view
through one opening; saw a sinuous shape slide gently to the floor. And
then he turned out the lights, the door was slammed, and she was left
alone in the room of terror.
Oberzohn was no sooner in the passage than the first bomb exploded at
the door. Splinters of wood flew past him, as he turned and raced up the
stairs, feeling in his pocket as he went for the precious document which
might yet clear him.
_Boom!_
He had not locked the door of the snake-room; Leon had broken the hasp.
Let them go in, if they wished. The front door was not down yet. From
the landing above he listened over the balustrade. And then a greater
explosion than ever shook the house, and after an interval of silence he
heard somebody running along the passage and shake at the snake-room
door.
Too late now! He grinned his joy, went up the last flight to the roof,
to find his three men in a state of mutiny, the quelling of which was
not left to him. The glitter of a bayonet came through the door opening,
a khaki figure slipped on to the roof, finger on trigger.
“Hands up, you!” he said, in a raucous Cockney voice.
Four pairs of hands went upward.
Manfred followed the second soldier and caught the doctor by the arm.
“I want you, my friend,” he said, and Oberzohn went obediently down the
stairs.
They had to pass Gurther’s room: the door was open, and Manfred pushed
his prisoner inside, as Poiccart and Leon ran up the stairs.
“The girl’s all right. The gas killed the snakes the moment they touched
the floor, and Brother Washington is dealing with the live ones,” said
Leon rapidly.
He shut the door quickly. The doctor was alone for the first time in his
life with the three men he hated and feared.
“Oberzohn, this is the end,” said Manfred.
That queer grimace that passed for a smile flitted across the puckered
face of the doctor.
“I think not, my friends,” he said. “Here is a statement by Cuccini. I
am but the innocent victim, as you will see. Cuccini has confessed to
all and has implicated his friends. I would not resist—why should I? I
am an honest, respectable man, and a citizen of a great and friendly
country. Behold!”
He showed the paper. Manfred took it from his hand but did not read it.
“Also, whatever happens, your lady loses her beautiful hill of gold.” He
found joy in this reflection. “For to-morrow is the last day——”
“Stand over there, Oberzohn,” said Manfred, and pushed him against the
wall. “You are judged. Though your confession may cheat the law, you
will not cheat us.”
And then the doctor saw something and he screamed his fear. Leon
Gonsalez was fixing a cigarette to the long black holder he had found in
Gurther’s room.
“You hold it thus,” said Leon, “do you not?” He dipped the cigarette
down and pressed the small spring that was concealed in the black
ebonite. “The holder is an insulated chamber that holds two small icy
splinters—I found the mould in your laboratory, Herr Doktor. They drop
into the cigarette, which is a metal one, and then . . .”
He lifted it to his lips and blew. None saw the two tiny icicles fly.
Only Oberzohn put his hand to his cheek with a strangled scream, glared
for a second, and then went down like a heap of rags.
Leon met Inspector Meadows on his way up.
“I’m afraid our friend has gone,” he said. “He has cheated the hangman
of ten pounds.”
“Dead?” said Meadows. “Suicide?”
“It looks like a snake-bite to me,” said Leon carelessly, as he went
down to find Mirabelle Leicester, half laughing, half crying, whilst an
earnest Elijah Washington was explaining to her the admirable domestic
qualities of snakes.
“There’s five thousand dollars’ worth dead,” he said, in despair, “but
there’s enough left to start a circus!”
_Chapter XXXIV_ _The Death Tube_
LATER, Manfred explained to an interested police chief.
“Oberzohn secured the poison by taking a snake and extracting his
venom—a simple process: you have but to make him angry, and he will
bite on anything. The doctor discovered a way of blending these venoms
to bring out the most deadly qualities of them all—it sounds fantastic,
and, from the scientist’s point of view, unlikely. But it is
nevertheless the fact. The venom was slightly diluted with water and
enough to kill a dozen people was poured into a tiny mould and frozen.”
“Frozen?” said the chief, in astonishment.
Manfred nodded.
“There is no doubt about it,” he said. “Snake venom does not lose its
potency by being frozen, and this method of moulding their darts was a
very sane one, from their point of view. It was only necessary for a
microscopic portion of the splinter to pierce the flesh. Sufficient
instantly melted to cause death, and if the victim rubbed the place
where he had been struck, it was more certain that he would rub some of
the venom, which had melted on his cheek, into the wound. Usually they
died instantly. The cigarette holders that were carried by Gurther and
the other assassin, Pfeiffer, were blowpipes, the cigarette a hollow
metal fake. By the time they blew their little ice darts, it was in a
half-molten condition and carried sufficient liquid poison to kill, even
if the skin was only punctured. And, of course, all that did not enter
the skin melted before there could be any examination by the police.
That is why you never found darts such as the bushmen use, slithers of
bamboo, thorns from trees. Oberzohn had the simplest method of dealing
with all opposition: he sent out his snake-men to intercept them, and
only once did they fail—when they aimed at Leon and caught that
snake-proof man, Elijah Washington!”
“What about Miss Leicester’s claim to the goldfields of Biskara?”
Manfred smiled.
“The renewal has already been applied for and granted. Leon found at
Heavytree Farm some blank sheets of note-paper signed with the girl’s
name. He stole one during the aunt’s absence and filled up the blank
with a formal request for renewal. I have just had a wire to say that
the lease is extended.”
He and Poiccart had to walk the best part of the way to New Cross before
they could find a taxicab. Leon had gone on with the girl. Poiccart was
worried about something, and did not speak his mind until the
providential cab appeared on the scene and they were trundling along the
New Cross Road.
“My dear George, I am a little troubled about Leon,” he said at last.
“It seems almost impossible to believe, but——”
“But what?” asked Manfred good-humouredly, and knowing what was coming.
“You don’t believe,” said Poiccart in a hushed voice, as though he were
discussing the advent of some world cataclysm—“you don’t believe that
Leon is in love, do you?”
Manfred considered for a moment.
“Such things happen, even to just men,” he said, and Poiccart shook his
head sadly.
“I have never contemplated such an unhappy contingency,” he said, and
Manfred was laughing to himself all the way back to town.
THE END
Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.
Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
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