THE MAN WITH THE CLUBFOOT
The room was lighted only by a green-shaded reading-lamp, which,
standing on the desk between Desmond Okewood and Grundt, threw a dim,
mysterious light on the saturnine visage of the cripple. The bristling
iron-grey hair and low forehead, the hot and fearless eyes under the
beetling brows, were in shadow; but a band of yellow-greenish light,
falling athwart the face, revealed clearly the heavy clipped moustache,
baring the discoloured teeth, and the massive jaw. From the cigar
grasped in the great hairy fist clenched, as though in defiance, on the
desk, a thin spiral of blue smoke rose aloft. The monstrous right boot
was concealed from view.
He had changed but little, Desmond reflected as he looked at him. The
gross body was a little fuller, the iron-grey bristles were perhaps more
thickly sprinkled with white; but there was nothing in the hostile,
challenging attitude of the man that told of the misfortunes that had
overcome his race. He was as before the Prussian beast, unchanging,
unchangeable, revelling in his strength, glorying in his power,
ferocious, relentless, unpardoning.
For a full minute he did not speak. Obviously he gloated over the
situation. It was as though he were reluctant to forgo a moment of his
malicious enjoyment. His dark and cruel eyes, lighted with a spiteful
fire, rested with a look of taunting interrogation upon the young man,
and, when presently he raised his cigar to his mouth, he turned it over
between his thick and pursed-up lips like some great beast of prey
licking its chops.
At last he broke the silence.
“Lieber Freund,” he said in a soft, purring voice, “this is indeed a
pleasure!”
He wagged his head as though in sheer enjoyment of the sight of his
_vis-à-vis_, bound hand and foot, sprawling awkwardly in his chair.
“You always were a disconcerting person, lieber Okewood,” he remarked,
his little finger flicking the ash of his cigar into a tray. “I had not
reached your name on my little list—no, not by a round dozen or so! In
fact, you find me in a considerable quandary. To be perfectly frank with
you, teurer junger Herr, I have not yet decided how I shall put you to
death!”
He placed his cigar between his fleshy lips and drew on it luxuriously.
“For the lad of mettle that I know you to be,” he continued, “you are
remarkably taciturn this evening. If I remember rightly, you were more
talkative in the past! Perhaps, though, the trifling measure of
restraint I have been compelled to lay upon you embarrasses you . . .”
His black-turfed eyebrows bent to a frown and his eyes flashed hotly.
“I am taking no more chances with you, young man!” he said in a voice of
dangerous softness.
Desmond Okewood struggled erect. Instantly a young man appeared from
behind his chair. He was a typical fair young German, his right cheek
scored with a long white duelling scar.
“Let him be, Heinrich!” said Grundt.
“One of your hired assassins, eh, Herr Doktor?” observed Desmond. “I
believe you will find it safer in this country to continue to commit
murder by proxy . . . at any rate for a time!”
A little flush of anger crept into the cripple’s black-tufted cheeks.
“You’re hardly in a position to be sarcastic at my expense!” he said.
Desmond shrugged his shoulders.
“You’ve made a bad blunder, Herr Doktor,” he said. “I greatly fear that
by kidnapping and murdering me you’re going to bring a hornet’s nest
about your ears!”
“That may be!” returned Clubfoot grimly. “It is unfortunate that you
will not be there to see it!”
While they were talking, Desmond had stolen furtive glances about the
room. Furnished unpretentiously enough, it had the look of a
dining-room; but the fumed oak table had been pushed back against the
wall and the chairs that went with it aligned in a row on either side of
the apartment. The obvious newness of the furniture and the cheap and
garish carpet suggested a furnished house or lodgings. The only thing in
the room that had any pretence to good taste was a handsome Jacobean oak
press with perfectly plain panelled doors that stood against the wall
behind Clubfoot’s chair.
The house was as silent as the grave. Strain his ear as he would,
Desmond could detect no sound, not even of the traffic of the London
streets, other than the ticking of a cheap clock on the mantelpiece
which showed the time to be five minutes to eleven.
Now Clubfoot noticed the listening look on the young man’s face.
“Don’t buoy yourself up with false hopes, Okewood!” said he. “My retreat
is truly rural. One never hears a sound here after dark, nor, on the
other hand, does any noise ever penetrate beyond these walls. I’ve
tested it, and I know! When that poor Mr. Törnedahl had a
whiskey-and-soda with me the other afternoon, I was glad to find that,
despite the proverb, _these_ walls have no ears. With deplorable
carelessness I had entirely forgotten that the victims of strychnine
poisoning emit the most distressing screams in their convulsions.
Heinrich, who is less experienced than I am, was quite upset. Weren’t
you, Heinrich? You were quite right, mein Junge, I should have used
cyanide of potassium. As for you, Okewood,” he added in a sudden and
surprising access of fury, “I’m going to hang you! As an example to
other spies! There’s a nice quiet death for you! Heinrich, will you see
to it?”
The young man with the scarred face went out noiselessly. Desmond’s eyes
were fixed on the clock. The hands were creeping past the hour of
eleven.
“At least,” he said, “you’ll let the girl go free, Grundt?”
Clubfoot laughed stridently. “And leave a Crown witness behind?”
He lifted his head. “Heinrich!” he called.
A trap in the ceiling had opened. Two ends of rope, one furnished with a
stout noose, came dangling down. The young German’s face appeared in the
opening.
“Herr Doktor?”
“Let Karl and Grossmann bring up the young lady to witness the
execution!”
“Sehr wohl, Herr Doktor!”
Clubfoot turned to Desmond. “We’ll settle the girl later!”
“You . . . you ruffian,” exclaimed Desmond. “I believe you’ve done it
before!”
Clubfoot, his big body shaking with silent laughter, did not reply, but
stood up. Once again Desmond, despite his desperate plight, marvelled at
the prodigious size of the man, his immensely massive shoulders and his
great arms, as sinewy, as disproportionately long, as the arms of some
giant orang-outang.
The door opened and Heinrich appeared. Behind him, escorted by two other
men, was Vera. Desmond had no time to exchange a word with her, for the
three men, on a sign from Grundt, instantly hustled him under the open
trap and adjusted the noose about his neck. Now Grundt was speaking; but
Desmond did not look at him. His eyes were on the clock.
“To show you that I do not act by proxy,” Clubfoot snarled, “I am going
to hang you with my own hands. And when your cursed brother’s turn
arrives, I shall tell him, before he dies—and his death shall be
terrible, I promise you, because of that bullet he once fired into me—I
shall tell him how you dangled, throttling, from that beam above. I owe
your country a grudge, you snivelling Englishman, and, bei Gott! I’m
going to have my pound of flesh. Every time my vengeance falls, I exult!
Donnerwetter! If you had heard Branxe grunt when I gave him the knife!
If you had heard how that dog Wilbur screamed when I thrust him before
the incoming train! And now, bei Gott! it’s you!”
He grasped the rope. As the long spatulate fingers closed on it, Desmond
saw the bony sinews stretch taut among the black thatch on the back of
the cripple’s hands. He heard his heavy boot thump on the floor . . .
A voice cried from the doorway:
“Hands up, Grundt!”
Then, with a sudden smash of glass, the room was plunged into darkness.
With a deafening explosion a pistol spoke, a woman screamed piercingly,
and a door slammed. Then suddenly the room was brightly lighted. The
place seemed full of men. Francis Okewood, in motor-cyclist overalls
heavily splashed with mud, was at Desmond’s side, swiftly slashing at
the ropes that bound him.
“Good old Francis!” murmured Desmond. “I knew you wouldn’t fail me. But,
dash it all, you cut it rather fine!”
He looked rapidly round the room. His glance took in Vera, pale and
affrighted, and her escort, surrounded by plain-clothes men. But of
Clubfoot and of Heinrich there was no sign. Even as he looked, from the
Jacobean cupboard, the doors of which stood open, a large, red-faced man
hastily scrambled. Desmond knew him of old. It was Detective-Inspector
Manderton, of Scotland Yard. Behind him followed O’Malley.
“I’m very much afraid he’s given us the slip,” the Inspector said. “It’s
a secret passage leading to the next house with a locked steel door
between. Come on, some of you!”
And he hurried out, taking two of his men with him.
“Major Okewood,” Vera cried out suddenly, “won’t you please explain to
these men who I am? They want to handcuff me!”
Desmond walked stiffly, for his legs were yet numb from his bonds, to
the corner where, between two plain-clothes men, the girl was
struggling.
“Vera Sokoloff,” he said, looking sternly at her, “have you forgotten
me?”
Slowly the colour drained out of her cheeks, leaving only a little
grotesque dab of rouge on either side. Valiantly she sought to meet his
eyes.
“What . . . what do you mean?” she faltered. “That is not my name . . .”
“It was your name in 1919 when I knew you as a spy in Helsingfors,”
Desmond retorted. “Fortunately my disguise was a good one or you would
not have walked so easily into the trap I laid for you. My brother and
his men have followed us every step of the way to-night. I could not
expect you to know that I sent that notice to the _Daily Telegram_
myself . . .”
“You sent it?” cried the girl.
“Certainly, in the hope that Clubfoot would use you to decoy me to him
as you lured poor Törnedahl into the trap!”
“It’s not true!” the girl flashed out.
“. . . But,” Desmond continued unperturbed, “I confess I feel rather
mortified that you should have thought me so insanely indiscreet as to
take a stranger like yourself into my confidence!”
“This is an abominable outrage!” stormed the girl. “You’re mad, I think,
with your talk of . . . of spies. I’m English . . . I have powerful
friends . . . I . . .”
Desmond held up his hand.
“You forget,” he said, “that the telephonist at your club is a sharp
little cockney. He was much intrigued to hear two days ago a telephone
conversation between Miss Vera Slade and a certain post-office call-box
in West Kensington beginning and ending with a number. ‘A message for
Number One from Twenty Three,’ you said, and you went on to say that
Törnedahl was lunching with you at one o’clock and that Number One
should come quickly. The car, you added, was round at the back of the
club . . .”
He stopped and looked at her.
“Vera, my dear,” he said, “you were more prudent than that at
Helsingfors. You’re losing your grip! The English are not so stupid as
they look!”
With a convulsive shudder she covered her face with her hands and fell
a-sobbing.
“They threatened me,” she wailed in German. “I could not help myself,
Herr Major!”
The door burst open. Manderton appeared, hot and angry.
“Got clean away!” he cried, “and him with a game leg! Damn it, he’s a
deep one!” And he plumped into a chair.
“Francis, old son,” remarked Desmond to his brother, “do you know what?”
“I’ll buy it, Des.!” grinned Francis.
“The brothers Okewood,” Desmond announced gravely, “are back on the
job!”