LURKING SHADOWS
A sanguine sun broke through the Holland mists as Fay strode briskly
from the docks and quays and entered the ancient city.
He took the first street which would lead him in the direction of a
little hotel, at one time patronized by international celebrities of the
underworld.
This hotel had fallen upon better days. The paint and woodwork about the
door were new. A smug respectability beamed from the windows and out of
the courtyard. A motor car, sans rubber tires, stood within this
courtyard. It had been made in Germany before the war. It was still
doing service for the Dutch proprietor.
Fay stood across the narrow street, set his bag at his feet and studied
the hotel from a score of angles. He could cross the wide Dutch cobbles
and register. It was most certain that the police would have his name,
native country, and prospective business within the time it would take
to attend to such matters.
He glanced about with the ranging eye of a tourist who would go on. The
street and two narrow mews or lanes echoed and reëchoed with the clank
of wooden sabots, the squeak of poorly oiled wagon axles, and the voices
of market people who were streaming toward the quays and the canals.
Fay studied the situation and decided there was nothing to be gained by
waiting. He knew of no other hotel in the city. It would serve as a
lodging for the day and the night. It was clean, quiet and somewhat out
of the beaten track of those who administered the laws in that quaint
lowland capital.
There is that in the super-cracksman which is close to the actor. Fay
played his part to perfection as he finished his stare toward the hotel,
reached down and lifted the bag and crossed the street at a brisk walk.
He banged the door open like a British traveler who had been to the
continent before. He advanced to a tiny opening in a side wall, set down
his bag and called for the Hôtelier.
The broad face of the Maître d’Hôtel was thrust through this opening
like a harvest moon in sight of plenty.
“A room!” said Fay incisively. “Something for a day or two. I came on
the Flushing. I’ll never go back on that damn boat, sir! It’s an
outrage—the North Sea service!”
The proprietor was impressed. He knew that all Englishmen swore. Some
swore more than others. He put down Fay’s name—which he gave as “Dr.
Crutcher of London”—his vocation—which was stated to be “a doctor”—and
his probable stay in Holland as “less than a fortnight.”
Fay followed a maid up to a second floor back room which overlooked the
courtyard and the steel-tired German car. He closed the door, tried to
lock it, then moved over a chair and pressed the top rung up and under
the knob.
He removed his coat, tossed his cap on the floor and lay back on the bed
with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand pressing against his
eyeballs.
He had much to do and little time to do it in. He reviewed the trip to
Holland. It was a wild project, if ever there was one. The only real
thing in the entire matter was the crinkling Bank of England notes in
his pockets and the knowledge that he was free to pass the door which
led from his room. He rose swiftly, crossed the floor, and pulled away
the chair. The binding bars of Dartmoor were still about him. The
constriction of closed places got on his nerves.
He summed the situation up as he stood behind a lace curtain and stared
at the courtyard. His keen, gray-crowned head was poised like a quick
bird as the events of the two days flashed over his brain.
From the moment of his release he had been haunted by the thought of
shadows. They reached and groped for him despite every effort he had
made to throw them off. He knew of the wide-flung power of Scotland
Yard. It never let a man go!
Then, for what reason, he argued, had they let him run scot-free? Had a
net already been spread into which he was bound to stumble? Or was it
the flicker of fortune’s wheel that had turned his way at last?
He examined the lock of the little black bag, reached for his cap and
overcoat, and strode out of the room. The yielding door was so unlike
the iron horror at Dartmoor! He whistled gayly as he ran down the
ancient steps and burst out and into the glad light of day.
The actor in him came to the fore. He thought the part he was playing.
It was no matter of studied gestures and halting steps. He was English
of the English! He strode into the town’s better part with the step of a
conqueror. He looked the British tourist to perfection. His plaid cap,
his well-fitting overcoat, his square-toed shoes were his passport.
He modified his walk to a saunter. His eyes fixed upon nothing in
general, but they saw everything with that vividness which is given to
prisoners on parole and those who have been denied the wine of life and
living.
The feeling still remained within him that somewhere in that
stolid-faced crowd a shadow lurked. It was the same sinister hand which
had come out with him through the guarded gates of Dartmoor. It was the
long arm of the Yard, reaching, reaching. He felt its fingers and turned
swiftly. He went on. No one of all that throng showed a familiar face.
He retraced his steps by rounding a square and doubling back almost to
the little hotel. He searched each figure, in passing. He saw few
English in that throng.
Spies, commercial agents of the seven governments, oversea soldiers on
furlough, interned or invalided troops—the backwash and the riffraff of
a war that was over—filled the ancient streets.
He threw off the feeling of being shadowed, and took the shady side of a
broad avenue. It would lead him past the embassy wherein was the
strong-box and the key to the dye cipher.
More bold, now, and decidedly English, he advanced with head thrown
back, and that keen smile upon his lips which brought answering warmth
from the passers-by.
It was nice to be alive upon that glad day. The bright sun had doubled
its grandeur when freed from the grip of the morning fog. The long lines
of trees, the well-clipped hedges, and the rare bulbs of Holland were
out in their spring clothing.
“Gad!” said Fay to himself. “This is living!”
He drew out his cigarette-case, removed a cigarette, tapped it on the
palm of his hand and struck a match with a quick jerk of his heel. It
came to him, as he inhaled the rich Turkish fumes, that the action of
lighting a match on his heel was foreign to the country of Holland and
even to the English. It was a flaw in his disguise!
“Trifles!” he said, half aloud. “That was a slip. I must be careful.”
He went on and crossed the avenue at the square below the embassy. He
drank in its details as he passed along. He photographed the front so
that he could have made a drawing of every detail—the long windows, the
high marble steps, the flunky in purple and knee-breeches, the insignia
near the great door, the semi-basement with its iron-grilled apertures.
A crossing above the embassy’s building drew him back over the avenue
and down through the low houses of a side street. He found a passage
that passed parallel to the brick barrier which fenced in the
ambassador’s grounds. He estimated the height of this wall as he hurried
by it. He turned the corner, and bounded the building as he glided out
into the avenue and retraced his steps toward the hotel. He now had a
plan of the project. It looked like clear sailing in the night to come.
A back glance, as he lighted a cigarette by striking the match upon a
stone, showed a figure descending the embassy’s steps and limping in his
direction. He waited and dragged at the cigarette. The man who passed
was English. He had been through the war.
“I say,” said Fay, hurrying after the cripple. “Would you mind putting a
chap straight? Is that the Hôtel de Ville?”
Fay pointed his cigarette at the embassy building as the soldier turned.
“Is it?” he repeated. “I hope I haven’t troubled you.”
“Blyme no!” answered the Tommy. “Hit’s the royal muckers wot do a man
dirt, it his! Neutral embassy, wot? Wot satisfaction his there in that?
Says I, to myself, I’ll look up my brother ’Arry who was lost at Wipers.
Took by the Germans, ’e was! They told me to go to Switzerland, they
did. ’Ow ham I goin’ to Switzerland on three bob, six?”
Fay fell into stride with the soldier, and walked at least five squares
with him. He twisted the conversation around from ’Arry to a general
outline of the floor plan of the embassy and the number of guards. He
left his man near the British embassy. The two sovereigns he pressed
into a protesting palm were well earned, although the cockney was
unaware of it.
“Hope you find ’Arry,” said the cracksman, hurrying toward the hotel.
The information he had gained coincided, in the main, with the diagram
which Saidee Isaacs had given to him. The additional details of the day
guards, and the disposition of the embassy clerks, were sufficient to
lay out the entire plan of action.
Fay wasted no time. He reached the hotel, called for mail which he knew
he did not have, then hurried upstairs and entered his room. He emptied
the black bag of its contents, placed the surgical tools about his
pockets and under his vest so that they would not bulge, then examined
the revolver.
It was loaded. It was a perfect weapon of its kind. He thrust it in the
side-slit of his overcoat where his hand could reach readily. He rose.
It came to him with sudden force that he had burned his bridges, save
for the little silver greyhound. It would not do to have this on in case
of capture.
His eyes roamed the room. A cake of very thin soap attracted his
attention. Taking this, and pressing the insignia deep within the edge,
he moved to the window and examined the hiding place. An opening showed,
which he smoothed over by washing his hands and softening the soap. He
tossed the bar behind the wash-stand where it would never be noticed.
The bag caught his eye as he stepped toward the door. He returned,
picked up a few charred sticks and coals from the fireplace and dropped
them inside the instrument case. He locked it and tested its weight. A
maid or the Maître d’Hôtel would be satisfied with the substitution
providing they did not force the lock.
“All set,” said Fay with American accent. “When I come back to this
place, it’ll be with the key to the cipher or handcuffed. The coppers in
this burg know where everybody lives.”
He went down the stairs and out into the street. This time he did not
glance behind as he hurried toward the center of the city and the
railroad station by which a number of trains could be taken out of the
Lowland country.
It was his intention to ride some little distance toward the German
border, get off the train, and double back on foot so as to throw off
any possible pursuit.
He found a map near the booking-office. The station was thronged with
Germans and commercial travelers who were expecting the final lifting of
the great embargo against the Mittel nations. England and the States
were cursed in Low Dutch.
Fay made a note of the train time on his cuff with a tiny lead-pencil.
He had over thirty minutes to catch the first train eastward. He passed
through the station and stood on the curb whereat decrepit motor cars
and thin horses clattered up with passengers.
Suddenly, with the intuition given to the hunted, he saw a familiar form
dodge out of his sight and behind a corner where the traffic swirled. He
acted swiftly. Crossing the street, he hurried down the sidewalk and
away from the station.
Fay went on with eyes darting to left and right. He passed an open
doorway. In it stood two forms. They had attempted to dodge out of
sight, but were held by outpouring customers of the store where they had
taken refuge.
Fay photographed them on his mind without turning his head in the
slightest. He glided on with swift steps. A bitter smile crossed his
lips as he sprang over the curb and darted between two vehicles.
One of the two men was MacKeenon! There could be no doubt of this at
all. Fay had caught a side view of the Scotch inspector. His companion
was a little old man with a bundle.
“And may your own bungling undo you!” Fay exclaimed as he turned a
corner and darted out of sight. “I’m done,” he added. “I’ll never trust
another copper.”
He was deeply in earnest. The sight of MacKeenon had stirred every drop
of blood in his body. It was not enough that Sir Richard would send him
after the cipher-key. The oily chief of the Identification Bureau had
seen to it that the bloodhounds of the law went along in case of a
change of heart.
Fay had changed his heart. It was steeled now against the project. He
flashed a plan over his mind in the time of seconds. He would abandon
the quest, make for the quays, take a boat for the north, and join the
two card swindlers. In this manner the Yard would be foiled, and the
cipher-key could rot in the safe.
Sir Richard had underestimated his man. Fay had the memory of five years
in that Dartmoor hell to spur his heels. The chief had stated that he
was to go scot-free. The bitterness of this came home to him at the
memory of MacKeenon’s long keen face. The hollow eyes and sharp features
of the inspector—the gaunt, trained-to-the-last-ounce of energy and
cunning stamped there, was a whip held over the felon.
“Au revoir,” Fay said bitterly, as he dodged and twisted and turned in
his path toward the quays. “Follow me now if you can, Mac!”
There was no sign behind of pursuit or a shadow. Fay took every
precaution. He approached the quays and the canals by lowland paths as
the sun dipped below the western sea-mist. He leaped a causeway, went
over a thin plank, and drew this ashore after him. The way ahead was
narrow. The way behind was closed to all save a good swimmer.
He came to a paved road beside which was a long row of tall poplars. A
windmill with crossed arms, like two combs on a pepper box, reared
toward the sea. Another showed beyond gray-stucco houses and lean barns.
The flat-green of Holland merged into a pea-soup fog which was rising.
A rusty steamer of the smaller class lay at a quay. Drifting smoke
poured from her one squat funnel. The gangplank was down. A stream of
stolid Dutch was mounting this plank. They seemed, in the gloom, like
cattle going to slaughter.
Fay found a boatman who was cleaning fish at the side of the canal. The
cracksman drew his coat around his thin shoulders and pointed toward the
steamer.
“I want to go on that,” he said.
The boatman laid down a fish-knife, tossed a fish into the bottom of the
boat, and rose with his scale-clustered hand to his cap.
“Ein thaler,” he said. “I go with you over there for ein thaler.”
Fay drew out four silver shillings and handed them down to the boatman.
He sprang to a thwart of the boat and waited as the fisherman got out
two clumsy oars, cast off the painter and shoved the boat from the edge
of the canal.
“Hurry,” said Fay, muffling his face in the stern of the boat.
The rower nodded and dipped the oars into the dark water. The boat
glided toward the ship. A voice called across the canal. Fay rose and
stared back over the course they had come. Muffled shadows moved on the
bank. A match was struck. This went out and left a flare still burning
in his eyes. He touched the boatman’s shoulder.
“Faster,” he said. “Row faster!”
The boat reached the end of a rotting pier. Fay stretched his arms
upward, grasped a string-piece and lifted himself to the cross planks.
He did not glance at the boat or the boatman as he hurried ashore and
along the bank of the canal toward the quay where the ship was taking
aboard the cattle-like passengers. A horn blared the night as he reached
the gangplank.
He was one step advanced up this plank when a rattle and the thin honk
of an auto horn caused him to turn his head over his shoulder.
The rubberless and decrepit motor car from the hotel thrust a pair of
pale lights through the gloom. On the driver’s seat of this car crouched
a chauffeur who was staring at his steaming radiator.
A woman, with her form hidden by a long coat and her face masked beneath
a broad-brimmed hat, sprang from the tonneau of the car, said something
to the driver in a low voice and hurried in the direction of the
gangplank.
Fay turned his head completely, grasped the handrail of the plank, and
stared at this woman. Her figure, even under the coat, was familiar to
him. He frowned slightly, let go his grip on the rail and backed down to
the quay.
“You?” he said almost bitterly as he reached the woman’s side. “What are
you doing here, Saidee?”
“I came after you.” Her face lifted under her hat. Her eyes were dark
and purposeful. The tightening of her lips drew down the corners of her
mouth.
“You came after me. Seems as if everybody’s coming after me. I’m going
to take this boat.”
“No, you’re not! You’re going back, after—” She half turned and stared
over the quay. “You’re going back after the cipher, Chester,” she said
in a whisper. “You’re the only one who can get it. Come on with me.” Her
gloved fingers pressed lightly on the sleeve of his coat. Her grip
became firmer. “Please come,” she added hastily. “You haven’t any time
to lose. You’re not going away—for my sake, Chester.”
He tore loose her grip with an angry jerk. “You,” he said, “are no
better than the others—MacKeenon, that hell-hound, and Sir Richard. Why
didn’t you let me take the trick alone? I didn’t need any help. Now the
job is queered—for good. I’m going to take this ship!”
“Oh, but Chester, you’re not. Remember your promise?”
“Promise?”
“Yes—to Inspector MacKeenon and Sir Richard.”
Fay stepped back a foot or more. He stared at the slight form of Saidee
Isaacs as if he would crush her. His hands raised. His fingers clutched
deep within his palms.
“I remember,” he said evenly, “that they were the ones who made the
promises. They said ‘good by, good luck and God bless you,’ and sent me
on my way, scot-free, so I thought. Today—tonight—I saw that hell-hound
from the yard—MacKeenon! Then along you came. Does the world know that I
came here after that crib? Has it been shouted to the housetops? I’m
done!”
Saidee Isaacs blazed back with sudden fire. Her voice raised as she
said:
“You’re only on parole! You can’t escape them, Chester! Please do what
they want you to do. Do what I want you to do. Then everything will come
out right.”
Fay turned his head away and stared toward the boat. The last passenger
was mounting the gangplank. The shore-lines were being cast off. A plume
of white steam issued from the pipe aft the squat funnel.
“I’m off!” he said with final resolution. “I’ll take the old, old
trail—away from you and those hell-hounds. They can’t catch me if they
try.”
“And me?” asked Saidee, with none of her old fire.
“And you can tell them I was with them till they rounded on me. They
know me! A crook has got to be trusted if you want him to play square.
They’ve shadowed me from London. They’re still sniffing on my trail. But
water breaks it, and Saidee, it’s good-by!”
“Don’t go, Chester. You’ll be sorry.”
Her voice had taken on an open threat. He caught the note and smiled
bitterly.
“You weren’t that way once,” he said, thrusting his hands in his pockets
and drawing his coat about his knees. “Once, you were a pal. The best
pal a fellow ever had. Now you’re hooked-up with MacKeenon and Co.
You’re working for the Yard. How did you get that house—that little
motor—those clothes? How did you get them?”
The old fire flamed her eyes. She backed away and motioned for him to
go. Her hand dropped to her side. She waited.
“Good-by!” he said, turning. “Tell your friends of the Yard it’s no use
looking for me. I’ll be in—”
“Dartmoor in three days!” she exclaimed, walking toward the decrepit
motor car without glancing back.
Fay hesitated the fractional part of a second. He was of two minds.
Saidee had hurt him with her last thrust. It was like her to say that.
It was also a dare. He took it by swinging, striding for the gangplank
and dashing up its slope as two deck hands seized the handles to draw it
aboard.
The propeller throbbed. A hoarse blare awoke the birds on the bank of
the quay. A small group gathered and watched the ship ware out and take
the channel toward the sea. It clamped down the dark waters and rounded
a point upon which was a blue light.
Fay climbed up the forbidden ladder leading to the pilot-house. He
strained his eyes. The motor car with its twin cones of white fire was
still on the quay. In the tonneau of this he saw Saidee Isaacs standing.
Her hands were at her sides. Her veil was lifted up and over the brim of
her hat.
Suddenly, with a quick gesture, she drew down the veil. The car turned
clumsily and made for the dark aisles of the town.
Rolling mist blotted out both shores of the channel. The ship passed
painted buoys from which she sheered like a frightened sow in a pen. The
way ahead was found by reversing and keeping bare steerage-way. A
projector of yellowish light stabbed from the pilot-house. This was
turned on and off as each buoy was raised.
Windmills loomed above the low lines of the dykes. Fishing boats with
furled sails and quaint deck-houses astern swung at anchor. Once the fog
lifted sufficiently to reveal a long road running over a causeway which
stabbed like a white dagger through the night.
Fay descended the ladder and stood in the gloom of the forward starboard
boat which was drawn aboard and lashed to the davits. He allowed his
right hand to coil over the butt of the American automatic. Its cold
chill struck through his body. He was in no mood to be thwarted by
MacKeenon or the Yard. The bitterness of a vain project distilled black
thoughts in his brain.
He refused to allow himself to think of Saidee Isaacs. She was gone, and
forever, he thought. He steeled himself against his better judgment. He
wanted the wide places where he would be free from shadows and reaching
hands. Then, and afterwards, he could consider the entire matter. It had
been too soon since leaving Dartmoor for him to have found himself. He
knew this with the intuition of the released felon. A man’s mind was a
delicate thing. It could not adjust itself over night or during the
period of a few days. It wanted weeks and months.
A plan took form and substance as he waited by the boat. He did not even
know the ports of call of the ship he was on. Any question toward
finding out would excite suspicion. The purser would be around for the
fare. Fay wondered, with a light laugh, what port he would name. Any one
would do as a guess and then if the ship did not touch at that port, he
could explain that a mistake had been made. A fugitive was safer without
a set plan.
A Dutch village was passed to port. The low roofs of this settlement had
scarcely been swallowed by the mist when Fay felt the ship swing her bow
and reverse the propeller. Bells clanged in the engine-room. A stolid
head appeared through the dark opening of the pilot-house. Deep-sunken
eyes, beneath a cloth cap, stared forward and over the vessel’s bow. A
denser mass showed there. This mass took the form of another ship which
was passing in the night.
Two blasts sounded from the siren aft the squat funnel. These were
answered as both ships hugged the banks of the canal. They glided by,
starboard to port, with a scant fathom’s distance between the rails.
Fay leaned outboard, grasped a davit-stay and studied the faces of the
passengers on the boat. He ran his eyes down the line. He felt the
answering stares. Broad faces and keen ones were there. Flashily dressed
travelers were sandwiched between burly burgers. Children stood on the
high places of the crowded deck with their bow legs supporting grotesque
bodies.
It came to Fay, with a pang, that these were refugees and passengers
from England. Some were returning to the invaded districts of Belgium.
Others had been sent back to claim their own. They were the last wave
receding from the war. They would land at the Lowland city he had
quitted so hastily.
He searched anew for the name of the boat. It had undoubtedly left a
northern British or Scotch port that morning. The stern passed. Fay
leaned further outboard and squinted his eyes. He made out the name.
Harwich of Newcastle.
His eyes lifted to the taffrail. A lone figure stood there. A pair of
gleaming eyes flashed over the distance between the passing ships. A
heavy brow was pulled down by a muscular contraction.
Fay closed his lips in a hard firm line. He drew himself back and into
the shadow of the boat. He peered out from this position until the ship
had merged within the pea-soup fog.
The man at the stern had lived too long. He was Dutch Gus!
Minutes passed with Fay in the same crouching position. He had received
a facer. There was no denying the fact that Dutch Gus was alive. That
individual was bound to the Holland port for no good reason. He had
escaped from the Thames and had come on to settle accounts. Perhaps he
was after the key to the dye cipher.
Fay straightened himself with an effort. He sauntered around the stern
of the life-boat, drew out his cigarette-case, removed a cigarette,
lighted this with a swift scratch of a match along the rail and went aft
with his eyes searching for a deck steward.
He found one in the doorway of a midship cabin.
“Beastly,” he drawled. “Beastly awkward of me, wasn’t it?” he added.
“I’ve gone and left Holland without my luggage. Can you tell me where I
can get off this ship?”
The steward pocketed the shilling Fay pressed into his reaching palm. He
pointed toward a darker mass in the fog.
“There,” he said in heavy English. “There, in ten minutes, sir. We put
in at Swartzburg for any cargo that may be on the quay.”