ROBBERY UNDER ARMS
The ship had no sooner touched the dock than Fay leaped ashore and
hurried toward a yellow light which marked a half-hotel, half-tippling
place of doubtful aspect.
He pressed the door open and glided inside the single ground-floor room.
A group of burgers and broad-hipped Dutch girls were sitting at the
tables. A Holland maid was bending over the tap to a huge cask of beer.
She straightened, pressed back her hair and stared at Fay as if he were
a ghost. Her eyes dropped under his level scrutiny. He turned toward the
drinkers.
“Is there a motor car anywhere about this town?” he asked. “I must have
one!” His voice was keen and demanding.
A German deserter from Hindenburg’s shattered armies rose, set down a
stein, and threw back his head.
“Engländer?” he asked drunkenly. “Du bist ein Engländer?”
“Worse than that!” declared Fay. “I’m American! I want a motor car or a
fast wagon. I must go back!” Fay pointed toward the east. He dipped his
hand into his right-hand trousers pocket and brought forth a palm-full
of English shillings and sovereigns.
“Here, Fräulein,” he said to the girl at the beer-cask. “Drinks all
around. You join me, bitte?”
Fay’s knowledge of German was limited. He knew no Dutch at all. He
labored under the delusion that the language of the Fatherland would
serve for Holland. The presence of the German soldier had seemed to
carry this out.
The maid’s stupid stare told him that he had not been understood. He
turned toward the German deserter. It seemed irony that he should use
such a man for the furtherance of his purpose.
“Here, Heinrich,” he said, passing over a gold piece, “get busy! Drinks
all around and then a motor car. Ask these people if there is one in the
burg.”
The German was not too drunk to know the color of gold. He said
something to the girl in Dutch, snatched up his stein, drained it and
hurried out through the doorway. Fay tasted the bitter beer brought to
him by the maid, lifted his eyes over the edge of the stein and strained
his ears.
A hoarse siren blared the night. The ship was leaving the quay. The hour
was not yet ten. Fay darted swift glances over the drinkers. He studied
a picture which might have been painted by Rubens or Franz Hals. A slow
fire burned in a great open fireplace. The crude tables, the broad-faced
roisterers, the silent girls with their long pig-tails and meek eyes
held him until a sound was driven through a quarter-open window. This
sound was the exhaust from an open muffler. It had an American
suggestion in its sharp notes.
Fay carefully avoided the nearest table, bowed to the maid as he drew
his coat about his knees, and pressed open the door. He stood under the
front thatch of the inn. He smiled with quick appreciation as the round,
moon-like discs of two headlamps burned through the fog, shot off across
the Lowland, then steadied and grew brighter.
“A flivver!” he exclaimed. “By all that’s holy—it’s from the States.”
A Dutch boy in an impossible make-up of leathern coat and bright, peaked
cap drove up and almost catapulted the drunken German to the road’s
cobbles as the brake went on with a protesting squeak.
Fay lifted the German soldier from the dashboard and steadied him on his
wobbling legs, where he stood like a limp mannikin ready to topple over.
The Dutch boy slowed the engine by putting up the throttle lever, under
the wheel. He stared blankly from Fay to the German.
“All right,” said the cracksman as the door of the inn opened and let
out a mellow light. “I paid him. I’ll pay you, too, when you land me
over there.” Fay pointed toward the east through the night fog.
The boy twisted the wheel, partly pressed his pedal and advanced the
throttle. The flivver spun and almost struck the German with the rear
mud-guard. Fay leaped aboard and showed the boy a shining yellow
sovereign in the hollow of his palm.
“Drive like hell!” he said. “I’ll show you the way—along the canal.”
The soldier shouted something as the tiny car rattled over the cobbles
and darted into the one street of the town. Fay drew his cap down over
his eyes and leaned out. He blinked as he noted the kind of tires the
auto was equipped with. They were sections of rubber hose bound with
wire and rope. They bumped and clattered. They drove a series of shivers
up his spine.
“England’s embargo!” he groaned.
The Dutch boy pressed the pedal through to second speed. The car rumbled
over a causeway and turned into a white road which was lined with
stem-like trees of a species Fay had never seen. He held tight to the
bouncing seat and peered through the cracked windshield. The two
searchlights rose and fell with the engine’s revolutions. One moment the
road was dark and pit-like; the next, the way was clear for a full
hundred yards.
The boy knew his business. This much Fay had decided. The light car
roared with open muffler through sleeping towns. It swerved at a bend of
the canal and struck off across a dyke-country beyond which glowed the
lights of a city.
Low barns and houses, crowned with the gaunt arms of silent windmills,
flashed by. A shout struck out from a crossing. The boy went on with his
blue eyes fixed on the road and his hand on the throttle-lever.
Fay dragged out his watch by the chain and attempted to find the time.
He bent down, struck a match and held it to the crystal. It was close to
eleven o’clock. The fog had lifted from the dyke-land.
A squeak of brakes and the smell of hot oil announced the first turn
leading into the city. Fay rose, after replacing his watch, and stared
over the windshield. He recognized the quays in the distance. He saw the
tall spire of the Hôtel de Ville.
“Right here!” he told the boy as the car stopped. “You can go back. Take
these and buy a set of tires!”
Fay handed over the sovereign capped with a second one. He shot a keen
glance at the driver. The boy had removed his cap and was bowing with
his broad face distended into a broader smile.
“S’long!” said Fay, hurrying off.
He heard the roar of the engine and the rattle of loose mud-guards and
clattery wheels. He did not glance back. The time was short. It was some
little distance to the embassy building.
To a man who had prowled the South Kensington Museum and gotten away
with its choicest jade and jasper—to the first cracksman then living—the
problems of the dye cipher and of opening the embassy’s safe were not
impossible. Fay had taken harder boxes without leaving a trace. The
stethoscope he carried was twenty times more delicate than the drum of a
human ear. The combination-locks were fitted with pads, but these would
not prevent some slight sound when the tumblers dropped into their
designated notches. The Hatton Gardens affair had proved the truth of
this.
There was also a little affair in Paris in the old days before the war.
Fay recalled its details as he glided through the dark streets in the
general direction of the embassy.
Dutch Gus, of dire memory, had boosted him up to a window from an alley.
The German crook had waited outside in the guise of a drunken
night-rounder—a part he often played in real life. Then the German’s
eyes had popped at the sight of swag, loot and plunder obtained in the
time of minutes,—not more than fifteen.
Fay chuckled at this job which had been so easy. He had gone through a
vault door, a day door and the steel-ribbed keister by means of a
stethoscope. This enterprise, of course, had been on an ancient French
combination box whose tumblers, to him, were like piano-keys to a
virtuoso.
And now, Sir Richard had picked him as the best man handy. The chief had
cunningly played upon the heart cords of patriotism without slopping
over. The humor of the situation was its saving point. The chief had
failed by a double-play. Dutch Gus had appeared from out of the murky
waters of the Thames. Fay knew in the bottom of his heart that the
reason which was urging him on was the old one of jealousy. The
protection of the Yard, the call from Saidee Isaacs, the honor of the
enterprise which might save a world from a galling monopoly, all were
less than the quick flash of the German crook at the taffrail of the
inbound steamer.
Fay reviewed these things and smiled bitterly. He nursed no delusions.
He was going to take that box for the reason that a lesser crook and a
stool-pigeon was embarked on the same enterprise. It was hardly likely
that Dutch Gus, and any of his mob he might have with him, would strike
on the first night. He resolved to leave them an empty keister, as far
as the key to the cipher was concerned.
In all the thoughts which flashed through his brain as he neared the
embassy there was none of the right or the wrong of the matter. No
maudlin sympathy for a fallen felon had ever quite reached his heart. He
was steeled against an ordinary assault from that direction. The five
years at Dartmoor had taught him caution on a desperate enterprise.
Possessed with superior education and the keen wits of a modern stock
broker or man about town, he regarded crime as the natural outlet for
his energy. It had not paid, but this had been on account of the
trifles. There was the thumb-print in London which had brought the
braying bloodhounds of the Yard down upon him. There was a dropped hotel
key in Chicago. There was a legion of mistakes.
He went on cautiously and set his mind on the problem ahead of him. He
was muffled to the eyes. The tools were safe about his clothes. The
American automatic was in his right-hand coat pocket. Also, he had not
neglected the rubber gloves which were to protect his fingers. The
matter looked promising. Already the great clock in the Hôtel de Ville
had struck the maximum. It was after twelve!
A light mist swirled through the streets with a promise of more. He
watched it wrap the staid, snug-nested houses in gossamer folds. A thin
troop of stragglers wound homeward—German merchants out at elbows since
the Great Embargo, roisterers and women in yellow skirts who had
followed the armies until they walked like grenadiers, burgers with
pot-bellies and torches, who took the middle of the streets from force
of habit during the desperate days of the war.
Fay disappeared down through the gloom of a well-remembered lane, waited
a moment, then tiptoed his way over stones till he reached a narrow
alley which cut between the embassy and a cloth merchant’s somber
exterior. The high-barred windows on both sides of him were dark and
staring.
Glancing back for a final test, Fay reached upward and waited with his
arms extended to their limit. He narrowed his eyes as objects stood out
in the gloom of the passage.
A skulking form passed the entrance to the alley. This form had
hesitated for the fractional part of a minute. Then it had disappeared,
going in the direction of the Hôtel de Ville.
A low oath dropped from Fay’s lips. The skulker might have been a guard
to the embassy. Again, it might have been a drunken roisterer. Whoever
it was, there was danger of detection.
Fay clinched his teeth with much of the old nerve surging through him,
grasped the top of the wall with his fingers and was up and over like a
quick alley cat.
Gripped with the game, he worked swiftly. The garden wherein he stood
was filled with well-trimmed bushes and the scent of spring blossoms. He
crossed a soft bed by stepping on stones. He stooped at a low window and
tested his weight against the sash. Rising then, and listening, he drew
on a pair of rubber gloves and curled his fingers.
The window might be connected with an alarm. He decided to take no
chances. The panes of glass were large enough for a man to squeeze
through. He chose one at the bottom and rapidly cut through the putty
with the point of a knife. It flaked off and fell at his feet. The glass
came out with a prying attempt at the upper edge. A breath of moist air
greeted him. He had broken through to the basement of the embassy.
Canting his head, he listened. Hearing nothing, he thrust an arm through
the opening he had made and worked his body after the arm. His
rubber-covered fingers touched a rug on the floor. He half turned,
squirmed without sound and sat down with his face toward the window.
He kept this in view as a possible get-away as he moved over the floor
without rising to his feet. A faint yellowish light marked the outlines
of the removed pane. All else within the basement room was black.
The ticking of a clock sounded at his right. He stared in this direction
and waited with every sense alert. It was like receiving a warning of
the presence of life.
He moved on with both hands outstretched. He reached the edge of the
rug. His fingers coiled over the fringe. Beyond this was polished wood
which felt smooth to the rubber gloves.
Then, suddenly, he became aware of the muffled breathing of one in
torture. Groans sounded in low agony.
Fay had no light save wax matches. He sensed the general direction of
the sounds and moved slowly in their direction. Every nerve of him was
alert. The heavy drag of the automatic was reassuring. It could be used
at an instant’s notice.
The gasps and groans were nearer now. He reached out and touched a man’s
form. About this form were many turns of heavy cord. Across the man’s
mouth was a stick held in place behind the ears by a sash.
Fay leaned down and strained his eyes. The yellowish light from the open
pane sifted through the room. Its details came out like figures on a
fogged photograph-plate.
The man, trussed like a stuffed partridge, moved both legs and rolled
over. Fay saw a pasty countenance alongside a cap upon which was gold
braid. Purple waves mounted up this man’s neck. The gag was a clever
one.
“The embassy’s night-guard,” said Fay in a whisper. “Poor chap, I was
worried about you all along. Somebody’s beaten me to it.”
He realized with quick thought that the guard had been set upon by a
number of men who were now at work on the great strong-box upstairs in
the embassy. They had entered the building in some manner, surprised the
watchman, trussed and bound him and carried him down into the basement
where he would be safe.
Fay leaned over the guard and hissed into his ear:
“Vas has happened?”
This was as near the language of the Lowland country as he would ever
get.
“Brumm! Brumm!” choked the guard through the gag. “Brumm! Brumm! Brumm!”
“All right, old fellow,” said Fay, “if that’s the way you feel about the
matter. I’ll leave you right here and go on. Cheaters have been cheated
before. I’m going to take a lone hand.”
Fay reached toward his pocket, drew out the American automatic and
pressed the cold muzzle against the guard’s purpling neck. He backed
away, crawled around the obstruction and started toward the flight of
steps at the front of the basement. He heard a slight movement above
him. Plaster or dust fell to the floor.
The craftsman took stock of the situation. He now could see every corner
of the room. The yellow light from the window aided his
cell-strengthened eyes. The five years at Dartmoor had made his sight
keen as a hawk’s.
He touched the first step with his hand, rested his weight on his palm,
and grasping the automatic, started upward toward the ground floor of
the building. He took his time and worked on the edge of the steps. Here
he knew the least sound would be made by a prowler. It was a little
trick stolen from the old days.
Coming to the next but the last step, he pressed his body against a side
wall, moved back the cocking mechanism of the automatic and advanced its
barrel, inch by inch.
There were certain sounds in that vast room which told him that the safe
was being ripped apart. Metal rasped against metal. Rivets were being
drawn. Asbestos or plaster of Paris fell to the floor. Also, there was
the squeaky swinging of a great door.
Fay peered around the corner and studied the view with dry smiling. It
was as if someone else was doing the work cut out for him. Forms moved
in the faint light. Oaths in German rolled from out the vault. A tool
clinked against another.
The light swung and revealed the picture. Fay studied it keenly. It was
framed in the mellow age of tapestries and portières and heavy
draperies. Portraits of former ambassadors stared from the walls.
The great outer door of the strong-box was open. The day door hung on
one hinge. A candle glowed within the safe. A man stood on a pile of
books. He was jabbing viciously at the keister door, which had resisted
his stoutest efforts.
Fay realized that this man was Dutch Gus. There was that in his burly
form and thick-lipped oaths to prove the fact. Two others of the German
mob were arranged about the strong-box. They were gathering up tools in
the belief that their leader would soon succeed in opening the inner
compartment.
The professional smile which changed upon Fay’s face to supreme disgust
would have caused Dutch Gus considerable concern had he seen it. Fay
hated a bungler worse than a squealer. The wreckage about the embassy’s
strong-box would have disgraced a gang of blacksmiths. It was the work
of tyros at the game.
He waited and watched. The hour was no later than one. There was ample
time to checkmate the Germans. It was evident that they had made a hasty
descent upon the embassy by order of someone high in authority. The
German Government was vastly interested in getting the key to the
cipher. Heaven and earth would be moved to keep it away from the English
or American agents.
The swaying light of the candle inside the vault went out with a sudden
puff from Dutch Gus’s lungs. A rattle of gravel sounded on the window
panes at the front of the room. This rattle was repeated. A pane
cracked.
There appeared at the doorway of the strong-box a face aglow with
suspicion. Eyes darted toward the windows. An oath struck through the
room.
Fay raised his automatic and stared forward. He had sensed with the
divination of the professional what had happened. The skulker in the
street was the lookout for the mob inside the embassy. He had rounded
the square and thrown gravel against the windows as a prearranged signal
of danger.
His voice rose on the outside. It was a tipsy call in South German:
“Du bist verrücht, mein Kind.”
There was a warning in the simple words. Fay crouched beside a desk and
watched Dutch Gus. The German bungler was of two minds. He turned toward
his confederates. One of these grasped him by the arm and pointed toward
the door.
“Schnell!” he exclaimed. “Ja, das ist Hugo!”
“Yes,” said Fay, tersely. “Yes, the jig is up!”
Dutch Gus snarled as he hurtled toward the desk. Fay dodged him nimbly
and glided to a deeper shadow of the room. More gravel struck the
windows. It was insistent!
The action which followed was blurred. Fay held his position and watched
the three Germans stagger toward the front door. They dropped tools on
the way. Dutch Gus turned as the knob was turned. He stared backward
like a baffled boar that scented a trap.
Fay heard shouts outside. There followed a clatter of heavy heels on the
steps leading to the street. A jimmy came hurtling through the air and
dug a hole in the plaster of the wall. It was Dutch Gus’s parting shot.
His burly form squeezed through the opening and was gone with a parting
snarl which sounded like “Suchen sie Schutz!”
Acting swiftly now, Fay leaped over the floor of the room, slammed the
front door, bolted and locked it, then glided toward the shattered outer
doors of the safe.
He had scant time to work in. Already shouts and calls echoed the
streets. Wooden sabots clacked over the cobbles. A whistle shrilled the
night. An alarm bell started to ring.
“Curse you, you Dutch bungler!” said Fay, springing to the pile of books
and feeling over the plate of the keister. His rubber-covered fingers
found the combination-dial. This had not been injured. He whirled it
rapidly four times to the right as he thrust his free hand under his
vest and drew forth the stethoscope.
Working with every sense alert, he clapped the diaphragm of the delicate
instrument over the dial’s spindle and thrust the ear-pieces into his
ears. He listened as he spun the dial three times to the left and then
moved it notch by notch.
A click, as faint as a dropping feather, sounded. He reversed the
direction of rotation and listened for a second click. It came as a
rattle outside the door of the room denoted that guards were attempting
to enter. A stout cry rolled through the embassy.
Fay did not hear this sound. His every effort was strained on opening
the door to the keister where the cipher-key was located.
He turned the dial to the left and caught the third click. He needed now
but one more to open the keister.
Slowly his fingers moved, with his brain centered on catching the faint
sound. It seemed a century of time. He was on the point of giving up and
repeating the entire operation when the last tumbler fell.
Dropping the stethoscope where it dangled from his ears, he grasped the
handle of the door and pulled it down. It caught and then went into its
socket.
Fay opened the door and reached for a match. The floor shook with the
tramp of feet. The air was vibrant with menace. Fingers seemed to reach
for him through the gloom. Lights flashed beyond the windows.
He scratched the match on the wall of the keister and shaded it with his
palm. Inside was a dusty row of yellow envelopes, each bound with soiled
ribbons. Above these, on a shelf, stood the many seals of the embassy.
Over these and alone was a packet bound with string.
Fay let the match singe his gloves as he eyed this package. It could be
no other than the one left by the agent who had fled to Holland and
there met with a sudden death.
He reached and brought down this packet, held the last glow of the match
to its top and read the name scrawled there:
“Otto Mononsonburg.”
He dropped the charred stick and wheeled. Already the front door of the
embassy was giving. The way seemed blocked. He took his time, however.
He pocketed the stethoscope, crammed the packet into his left-hand
coat’s slit and closed his hand over the butt of the automatic as he
glided out and into the room.
Faces appeared at the windows. They seemed like pumpkins on racks. The
door opened slightly. A long-barreled rifle was thrust through. Fay
stepped to one side and toward the stairway which led to the basement.
He paused then and glanced for a last time at the windows, turned toward
the front door, then sauntered over to the basement steps and went down.
The trussed guard had raised himself to a sitting position. The bandage
was still across his mouth. Each end of the stick stuck out like a
quill. Fay took care to avoid him, stepped to the window, threw the
catch and lifted the sash. He glanced out.
The garden was deserted. The sounds which came from the front of the
embassy had not yet reached the side alley. There were any number of
these sounds. They reminded Fay of an aroused bee-hive.
He passed through the window, pressed down the sash gently, removed his
gloves, and stood erect. The glueyness of the fog prevented any view of
the clock in the tower of the Hôtel de Ville. It also shrouded his
movements.
He sprang over a garden bed, grasped the coping of the stone wall and
vaulted the obstruction with a half effort. He landed in a crouching
position on the alley pave.
His hand raised, with the automatic held before him. He felt his
overcoat pocket with his left hand to see if the package was still
there. He rose to an erect position and started to saunter up the alley
and away from the embassy building.
A shout behind him told that he had been detected. He turned his head
and glanced over his shoulder. He dropped into a swift run. Two burgers,
coming abreast, were hot on his trail. Their threats in Dutch echoed and
reëchoed. Fay hurried on.
He came to a corner around which he turned. His eyes swept the street.
The way ahead was clear. To one side, however, and deep within a hallway
a form stood wrapped to the chin in a long coat.
Fay darted by this form with every muscle straining. He expected a shot
or a cry to stop him. He turned his head as he was half-way down the
first block. His eyes were bright now.
He saw the two burgers puff around the corner. They were running as one.
Their legs were out-thrust when the muffled figure in the doorway
extended a cane, tripped them up neatly and hurried away.
Fay chuckled and went on. He was safe! It had been the reaching arm of
Scotland Yard that thrust out the cane. No one but MacKeenon could have
done that thing half so cleverly.