A RETURN STROKE
Vivid memories remained in Fay’s mind as he reached the great Hôtel de
Ville and turned toward the hostel where he had left the little silver
greyhound.
The key to the dye cipher was safe with him. The blundering attempts of
Dutch Gus and the German crooks to obtain this key showed that pressure
had been applied from some quarter. The attack upon the embassy’s safe
on the same evening of arrival proved that the German gang had wind that
Scotland Yard was on the case.
Dutch Gus had failed and the matter was closed, thought Fay. He felt
rather kindly for MacKeenon’s fortunate trip-up. He glanced over his
shoulder as he passed out of the shadow of the Hôtel de Ville. He heard,
as he walked on tiptoes, the far-off braying of the police who had most
certainly lost his trail.
A bell still tolled within the city. A light showed here and there. For
the most part, however, the way was through dreaming street and
snug-wrapped houses whose drawn shutters seemed like night-caps.
Fay sniffed the morning fog and found it laden with promise. It served
as a mantle and a cloak. It would be hours before the Lowland sun broke
through the mist. By then, he figured on being far from the scene of the
robbery. There was nothing whatsoever to be gained by remaining in
Holland. He had decided to deliver the cipher-key to Sir Richard
Colstrom at the house of the Two Lions in West London. At that same time
he would demand a full pardon and the freedom to live by no man’s leave
as long as it was within the law.
Old scores would be paid. The way was bright. He searched his mind for
any overlooked trifles. There seemed none. He went on, turned a corner
and crossed a dark street. He knocked boldly upon the stout door of the
hotel.
A second and a third knock brought no answer. A fourth, however, was
followed by footfalls inside and then the sudden lifting of a sash. Fay
stepped back to the curb-line and glanced upward. The moon-broad face of
the proprietor was beaming down upon him. A night cap was on his head.
“The doctor!” said Fay with easy assurance. “Come, let me in!”
Fay heard an exclamation concerning the British and the hours they kept.
The sash went down. The proprietor appeared at the door with his great
keys jingling like some grotesque St. Nicholas.
“Beastly night,” said Fay, passing him and climbing the stairs.
He opened his door and stepped into his room. He found a candle near the
wash place where he had burned Sir Richard’s note. Shading his eyes, he
stooped and glanced beneath the bureau. The thin cake of soap, wherein
he had pressed the silver greyhound, was within the dust. He reached and
secured this with a swift motion. He stood in the center of the room and
turned it in his fingers.
There was much to do and little time to do it in. The police of the city
could not be rated as total fools. The work at the embassy showed a
foreign mind. No man in Holland was capable of opening an inner keister
without leaving a trace. Fay broke the cake of soap, took out the
insignia and pinned it to his left lapel. He moved toward the bed. It
was his intention to place the tools he carried in the bag, wait until
the proprietor was slumbering, and then make his way out into the
streets and away from the town. There were the quays. Ships sailed and
steamed for many ports. Freedom went to the bold!
He had stepped half across the room when a sound in the hall caused him
to poise on his toes with his hand held rigid before him. He waited with
every sense alert. The sound was repeated. It was the soft fall of
steps. There was also the swish of skirts. They rustled silkily and out
of place in that hotel.
The door opened slightly. Fay cursed himself for not locking it. Another
trifle had come up. He whipped his hand down to his right coat pocket
and coiled his fingers about the butt of the American automatic as he
lifted its barrel inch by inch.
The door kept opening. It revealed the edge of a purple hat, a shoulder
and then the olive features of Saidee Isaacs. She stepped in and pressed
the door shut. She turned with her skirts swishing.
“Did you get it?” she asked.
Fay was mute for once in his life. He figured the turn of events as he
watched her eyes change color and grow soft. She had hired the auto
belonging to the hotel upon her arrival in Holland. It was natural that
she should stop at the same hotel after her vain appeal on the quay.
Perhaps she had hoped against hope that he would return to the cipher
quest.
“Did you turn the trick, Chester?”
He uncoiled his fingers from the automatic revolver and laid a finger
across his lips. He nodded with a faint smile as her hand came to him
impulsively.
“I got it,” he said. “Dutch Gus was on the steamer coming in. I couldn’t
let him take the safe. As it was, he came near getting away with it. Sit
down, Saidee, and I’ll tell you what happened.”
He waited as she turned toward the bed and glanced at it. Her chin swung
back and upward. Her eyes shimmered over with a moist glaze.
“We must leave here, right away,” she said. “If you got the cipher-key
Sir Richard sent you for, my work and your work is done. We’re fearfully
rich and respected. Why, Chester, the police will bow every time they
see us.”
Fay lowered his voice as he said:
“Not the ones in this town. You’re right—let’s get out of here. Have you
any luggage?”
“Just a small bag.”
“Go back to your room and get it.”
“It’s outside your door. I heard you come in, and dressed.” She glanced
at her reflection in the mirror over the wash place. She tilted her hat
as he crossed the room, removed the tools from his pockets and breast,
opened the little surgical bag and dumped them inside.
“I’ve got everything,” he said, turning. “We’ll tiptoe downstairs and
make for the Schwartz Canal. There we can wait till I get a line on the
boats.”
“MacKeenon and another are in town. Hadn’t you better try and connect
with them for protection? It’s wonderful to have the police with you,
Chester.”
Fay darted her a sudden look of suspicion. He had not yet learned to
trust the police. They were his natural enemies. The five years in
Dartmoor had not quenched his old fire. She sensed this as he dropped
his hand to his pocket and turned his face toward the door.
“They were only helping you,” she said. “Sir Richard was so interested
in the cipher, he thought, perhaps, you might need assistance. That was
all there—”
“We’ll drop that subject, Saidee. Drop it now. Sir Richard is like them
all—he can’t be trusted. He told me I could come here alone—scot-free.
He’d get better results if he’d trust a man. We fellows from the inside
are not as black as some people imagine we are.”
“But this cipher-key is so fearfully important, Chester. Where have you
got it?”
Fay tapped his left overcoat pocket. “Right there!” he said, glancing
from the door to her. “Right where it stays, too, Saidee, till I see Sir
Richard.”
“What is it like?”
“I didn’t open the package. I’m not going to. Let Sir Richard do
that—after I have a word or two with him.”
She frowned, with faint lines showing at the corners of her mouth.
“It might be something we can memorize,” she suggested.
“It’ll keep.”
“But Dutch Gus and all those Germans are after the clue. Why, Chester,
you don’t know how I’ve worked—in Geneva and Zurich, and in Austria
before it surrendered. Three or four men were killed over the cipher.
You may lose the key. Let me see it.”
He reached upward and buttoned his overcoat by twisting the buttons with
his finger. He lifted the surgical bag and turned toward the candle.
“When you explain everything,” he said seriously, “we’ll be pals again.
As it is now—you are too close to Scotland Yard and the hounds to suit
me. You knew when I was coming out of—that place. You knew I was with
Sir Richard in London. You knew I was bound for Holland. You got here
almost as soon as I did. You left a mighty nice little house in the West
End. Who paid for that house? Who bought you that motor? You say, ‘Be
pals,’ but you are not the Saidee Isaacs I used to know. Come on! We’re
going out of this trap. The police may hammer on the street door any
minute. Dutch Gus ripped the big box in the embassy wide open. He made
more ‘rumble’ than an old-time German Prince plundering a French
chateau.”
Fay stooped and pinched the candle’s wick with his fingers.
He backed across the floor and found that she had barred the way to the
door. He could see her face from the light that sifted in through the
curtain.
“Let’s go,” he said as her breath fanned his cheek. “Open the door,
Saidee.”
“Wait.”
He felt some pity for her at that instant. The lines about her mouth had
softened perceptibly. He had heard that a man who knows little or
nothing about a woman—idealizes her.
“What’s the matter?” he asked pityingly. “Are you going to cave in and
cry on account of the cipher-key? I’d give it to you, Saidee, but there
is still danger.”
“It isn’t that,” she said as she twisted the knob and peered out into
the hall. “I wanted to see if you were really in earnest about taking it
to Sir Richard. I don’t want you to take it—anywhere else—Germany, for
instance.”
“Never,” whispered Fay as he seized her arm and guided her through the
hallway.
“Now on tiptoes,” he said as they reached the stairs. “Hold your bag
high and walk on the side of the steps. That’s right, Saidee. Now back
toward a window I saw. The door is locked toward the street. I heard him
lock it.”
Fay unclasped his fingers from her arm and tried the window. It led out
into the courtyard. He raised the sash, guided her through the narrow
opening, turned and backed out with both bags. He drew down the sash
until the window was closed. Then he stepped to her side in the gloom.
“This way, pal,” he said with a world of quiet assurance. “There’s the
old auto you hired. And there’s the way out. I don’t believe we got a
rumble. We’re like two actors beating a board-bill, aren’t we?”
She nodded her head, the plumes of her hat bobbing. She did not do any
of the things which might displease him. She walked at his side with
swift strides. Her glance was before her without the furtive back-stare
of the amateur. Her voice was natural and pitched in a low key. They
passed a sleepy burger or two. Once a watchman stepped out and glanced
at them. Fay remembered this and took a side street to throw the police
off his trail.
They reached the first of the taverns and the quays. Murky, yellow fog
wrapped the dykes and lowland. Spars and masts showed. Funnels and
ventilators were thrust over the roofs of the warehouses. Sails hung in
buntlines and gaskets. Fisher craft loomed through the mists. The tang
of the sea was there in that inland port.
“Four o’clock,” said Fay, listening to the strokes of the bell in the
Hôtel de Ville. “The police drag-net will be spread. We’ll go this way,
Saidee.”
He grasped her arm and led the way down between two storehouses whose
ends were thrust like fingers out into the wide pool of the Schwartz
Canal. A small boat with oars was moored to the left-hand pier. Fay
dropped into this, reached and caught the bags as she tossed them down,
then assisted her to a damp seat in the stern of the boat. He cut the
painter with his knife, listened a moment as the boat drifted with the
tide, then he got out the oars and started rowing toward the opposite
bank.
A winding shroud dropped around them. A billowing mass of wet sea fog
rolled over the city and blotted out the view of the shore and the
shipping. There was no sound save the rattle of the oars in the locks.
Fay bent his back and leaned close to the girl.
“We’re getting on,” he said. “We’ll carry high, Saidee, and go over the
top of this cipher matter.”
She shivered slightly and drew her skirt about her knees. Her head
turned toward the shore they had quitted. She attempted to pierce the
gloom. It was opalescent and filled with strange lights.
“The police,” said she, “will miss this boat.”
“I’ll kick it out when we land.”
“Holland Yard will coöperate with Scotland Yard.”
“Let them. I’m going to take the cipher-key to Sir Richard, in person.
He had no right sending MacKeenon on my trail.”
“You still have it, Chester?”
He rested an oar against his knee and drew out the package. “I’ve still
got it,” he said. “Otto Mononsonburg left it in a safe place—for a
German. There were three doors to take before this package could be
gained.”
He glanced up into her eyes. To him they had hardened, despite her
weariness. There was an eagerness there he did not like. Calculation had
been foreign to her in the old days.
Replacing the packet and taking up the oar, he said:
“You’ve changed, Saidee. If I thought you were going to double-cross me,
I’d sink this boat. Your heart, your mind, your soul is in getting the
package. What does it mean to you?”
She bit her lip and granted him a wan smile. “It doesn’t mean so much to
me, Chester, as it does to others. You really don’t know what you have
done tonight. You don’t know!”
Fay swung at the oars and tried to sight the shore of the canal. He
sheered the boat and started rowing vigorously.
Between strokes he said:
“Come out with the truth, Saidee. Remember the old days. What have you
been doing since then? How did you happen to get mixed up with the Yard?
Don’t you know you can’t trust the police?”
“Your viewpoint will change, Chester.”
“Never!”
“Yes—it will. It will if I ask you to change it.”
He was silent at this. He rowed on until the bow of the boat struck a
sunken pier close to the shore. He rose, braced his knees against a
gunwale and glanced upward. A rotting quay was close at hand. There was
a ladder coming down from this quay. He reached, waited, then grasped a
rung of the ladder. The boat steadied as he drew it alongside the pier.
“I’ll go up first,” he said. “You hand me the bags and then come up.
Push the boat away when you get on the ladder. Push it hard, so it’ll
float a long way before the police find it.”
He saw her nod her head. He climbed upward, being careful to avoid the
broken rungs of the ladder. He turned at the top and reached down to
her. She passed up the two bags which he took and laid on the edge of
the pier. Her hand grasped his extended fingers. She thrust out the boat
as she leaped the gap and trusted herself to him. They stood in the
gloom at the brink of the dark canal.
“All clear,” he said, after listening. “There goes the boat out toward
the sea. We’ll hurry inland and find a quiet spot. You’re damp. The
feathers of your hat look like Avenue A.”
She drew her jacket about her breast. Her eyes were bright as she turned
and pointed toward the two bags.
“Carry them,” she said. “Lead and I’ll follow. It’s almost dawn.”
“We’ll find a dry spot,” said he, lifting the bags and starting over the
quay. “We’ll lay low till noon, then we’ll figure out the best get-away
from Holland. I think the railroads will be watched.”
“I could carry the package to London without being suspected.”
He squared his shoulders and walked on. His hands gripped the bags with
white strength. She realized that she had not gained his confidence in
the matter of the cipher-key. Her feet dragged. She glanced back now and
then.
He came, after taking a long detour, to another canal which roughly
paralleled the one they had crossed. There was a tiny wooded isle in the
center of this canal. A narrow bridge of planks stretched from the shore
to the island.
“A summer place,” he said. “That’ll do, Saidee.”
She held her hand up toward the sky. A mist was falling. An opal vapor
was beyond this mist. The world seemed wrapped in a great yellow
blanket.
“Beastly morning,” he said as he dropped the bags to his feet. “Suppose
they could follow us to here?”
“I don’t know. I wish the sun would come out. I’m soaked.”
“Come on,” he said, lifting the bags and starting over the plank bridge.
“We’ll pull one of these up and then we’ll be safe for a time. Where are
we?”
She tiptoed over the bridge and watched him go back and remove the
center plank. This he pulled ashore. They walked up through dew-laden
grass and entered an open summer-house whose quaint carvings and low
benches, made from natural wood knots, showed the hand of a Holland
builder.
He sat down, drew his coat around his knees and thrust out his shoes.
“I’ll wager, Saidee, we’ve beat the coppers,” he said, fishing for a
cigarette and lighting it with a sputtering match. “Now you come clean
with what you know and we’ll go back to London together. I’ll see Sir
Richard, get an unconditional pardon, and we’ll go to the States. The
war is nine months over.”
“But another begins,” she said as she stood before him. “Don’t you know
the most terrible struggles are the silent ones—the commercial ones that
go on in the dark?”
“Like the underworld against the police.”
“Please don’t mention the underworld. I’ve been out of it for five
years—so have you. We’ve squared it. You know my people. I know yours.
It’s time we’re living up to our blue china. Thievery is worse than
cheating at cards. You should use your talents within the law. Let’s
play the game according to the rules.”
He watched her and puffed at his cigarette. She walked back and forth
over the planks of the summer-house. The soles of her high-heeled
gun-metal shoes were wet. Her skirt hung dejectedly. The ruching about
her neck had lost its starch. The crowning touch of the drooping
feathers was pathetic.
“I’ve dragged you through hell,” he said, indicating that she should sit
down. “I could make a fire, but someone might smell it.”
She went to a rail and stared up the canal. A lighter gray indicated
that the sun was breaking through the clouds to the eastward. The rattle
of blocks and the creak of a sail going up floated down to them. She
turned away and sat down with her hands folded in her lap. She twisted
her finger-rings.
“What happened to you when you joined Scotland Yard?” he asked
point-blankly. “Did they pinch you for something?”
“No, they did not! They wanted something done and I was about the only
one who could do it. The war gave me an opportunity to show them what
real good I could do. They paid me for it—paid well. England never
forgets!”
Fay thought of Dartmoor. “You’re right!” he exclaimed, tossing the
cigarette butt away. “England never does. So they adopted you and you
squared it and you acted as their agent in Zurich and other places!”
“Their agents never admit they are their agents.”
“Well put!” said Fay. “I’ve guessed right, though?”
“Yes.”
“And you had something to do with getting that cipher out of
Switzerland?”
“I had a lot to do with getting it to England.”
“And when you got it to Sir Richard—the key was missing?”
She laid her hand over his left overcoat pocket. “You’ve finished what I
couldn’t,” she said.
Fay leaned back. He listened, then drew out his cigarette-case and
selected a cigarette. She watched him intently.
“It’s after six o’clock,” he said as he struck a match. “See, it’s
cracking dawn everywhere. The fog will go and leave us sitting in the
open. Suppose we plant the bags, walk ashore, and try the north bank of
the Schwartz Canal for a ship out of Holland. We don’t care where it
goes, if it gets us to England.”
“It would be better for me to look for MacKeenon and give him the
package. He will give us a receipt which you can show to Sir Richard.
That receipt will free you from the five years hanging over your head,
Chester.”
“I don’t play the game that way!” he said, rising and staring down at
her. “I’ll be my own messenger. I was sent after a thing, and I got it.
That hound, MacKeenon, might claim the credit. He might say I fell down
on the job. He’s looking for a reputation.”
She realized that he was not to be moved from his purpose. Her eyes
blazed defiance as she sprang up.
“Have it your own way!” she said. “But, Chester, you’re foolish! Don’t
you know that Germany would give a million pounds out of the Spandau
Tower—to keep England and the States from solving the cipher? It means
Germany’s financial ruin in the dye industries. The world learned how to
make potash, during the war—it hasn’t learned how to make good dyes
cheaply. The whole thing is in that cipher.”
“I saw it, Saidee. There were hundreds and hundreds of sheets of paper
with letters on them. The letters seemed to be grouped—three to a
group.”
“Oh, I worked on it. We all worked on it! I even got little Danny Nugent
from Soho to try his hand. Remember Danny? He used to stay awake nights
working out ciphers so the police couldn’t read them. He says the dye
cipher is impossible—that it follows no known rule.”
“Sir Richard told me that,” said Fay. “Well, we got the answer,” he
added, glancing keenly around. “We got it, Saidee, and we’re going to
deliver it in person. We—”
She clutched his arm at that moment.
“What is that moving up the canal?” she asked tensely. “See it, Chester!
Is it a boat, close to the bank?”
He drew her down and stared through the latticed bars of the
summer-house. A shadow moved within the bank’s shadow. A ripple showed
like the gleam of a silver wing. Sounds of oars in locks floated to
them. Then, and suddenly, all was still. A murky billow rolled over the
lowland and blotted out the canal from view.
He reached and drew the bags to him. He thrust his fingers within a
crack and lifted a sodden plank. Leaves and moss were beneath the
flooring. A toad hopped away.
“There’s room here,” he said, pressing down the two bags. “We’ll come
back for them when we find a ship.”
Replacing the plank, he rose and stared toward where he had seen the
shadow. The fog had thickened. He could see nothing save the dark
surface of the canal.
They crossed to the shore, after he had closed the little bridge with
the board. They glanced back, then hurried on toward the Schwartz Canal.
The pathway they took was winding and long.
It was a mile below where they had first crossed the Canal in a boat,
before he stopped and pointed ahead.
“A ship,” he said. “See the masts?”
They went on through the lowland path and came to a bridge. The draw was
closed. Burgers and lorries passed from bank to bank. The smell of fish
and clams was in the air. The fog had not yet cleared from the surfaces.
Above the fog, windmills and spires showed in spectral outlines.
Fay led the way to the gangplank of the ship. He paused there and
studied its outlines. It was a rusty tramp, engaged in the North Sea
trade. Its one funnel bore the Blue-D mark of the Holland line. A row of
white doors on the boat deck indicated that passengers were carried.
He told Saidee Isaacs to wait as he turned and climbed up the plank. A
sovereign pressed into the hand of a Dutch steward, who stood at the
head of the plank, gained an instant ear. Fay took two staterooms on the
starboard side after ascertaining that the ship would steam within an
hour, and that her destination would be Stavanger, with Lemvig, in
Denmark, as a port of call.
“You go aboard and wait,” he said as he descended the plank and moved to
her side. “I’ll get the bags and be right back. The ship sails in an
hour for Stavanger. From there we can double to Scotland by the Aberdeen
Line. From Aberdeen we can catch the Royal Scotch Mail for London.”
“Be careful,” was all she said as she started up the plank.
He hurried back to the bridge, crowded between two burgers who were
carrying nets, and gained the opposite bank of the canal. He took the
path with his head held high, his arms down at his sides. The fog was
thick. There were sounds ahead, of creaking windmills and of lowland
cattle.
He went on, picking the dry places between the puddles. He came to a
marsh with white stones in a row, across it. The fog hung heavily. The
way ahead was through a clinging veil.
Suddenly a whistle shrilled the damp air. A blare sounded behind him.
Fay leaped to the bank of the marsh and started running down the narrow
path which would take him to the plank bridge and the little
summer-house where the bags were.
He struck, with sudden force, a taut wire which was stretched across the
trail. He went forward and down upon his knees. His hands were deep in
mire. He tried to raise himself, and twisted sideways. His feet were
snared.
Out of the fog, on either side of him, there burst two muffled figures.
Each had an arm over his face. Both clutched revolvers. One was Dutch
Gus!
A blow from a stone thrown by a third enemy drove the cracksman’s head
down into the swamp. He attempted to reach his right hand back for his
automatic. He felt his senses go, after a whirling struggle to retain
consciousness. A second stone spattered mud at his side. A voice
cautioned moderation.
Hands crept over his overcoat and then under his vest. The stethoscope
and the surgical tools were drawn out. The packet in his pocket decided
the searchers. Dutch Gus had found what he was after. He rose and called
the name.
“Otto Mononsonburg! Here it is, boys!”
A second whistle shrilled within the fog. Fay lay still as the patter of
feet sounded and then died to echoes. He drew up his arm and passed it
over his head. Blood was on his fingers. He lifted himself slowly on his
right elbow. He stared about and then staggered to his feet. He went
through his pockets. Everything had been taken. His hand lifted to the
lapel of his coat. The greyhound was still there.
“They left that,” he said slowly. “They left that. Which way did they
go?”
He gathered himself together with a final effort. Hot blood surged to
his cheeks. He found his cap and pulled it on. He searched the pathway
in the direction of the summer-house. The footprints pointed the other
way. He retraced his steps and reached the edge of the marsh.
A Bank of England note lay between two stones. It had been dropped by
Dutch Gus. Fay picked it up, folded it, and went on toward the Schwartz
Canal like an Apache after scalps.
He reached the bridge and stepped into the stream of burgers. He saw
them eyeing him. The reason lay in his blood-stained face and muddy
overcoat. He crossed to the south bank and turned toward the ship.
Grimly determined to have the thing out, he decided to tell Saidee
Isaacs what had happened, and then take up the search for Dutch Gus and
the cipher-key. He passed the first of the shore lines. A seaman in a
torn blouse was standing by these. A voice was bulling from the
ridiculously high bridge of the freighter. The screw churned.
Fay shouted and leaped for the gangplank. He climbed upward and reached
the deck. There was still time to get Saidee Isaacs ashore. He would
need her now.
A face that was stamped with unforgettable memory stared out from a
cabin. A door closed with a slam. Fay backed against the rail of the
ship and passed his hand over his forehead.
Dutch Gus had fled to the same ship! They would make the passage to
Stavanger together.