THE IKON OF SMOLENSK
Since his dramatic reappearance in the affair of the purple cabriolet,
Dr. Grundt had passed wholly from Desmond Okewood’s ken. The villa, on
the outskirts of Harlesden, to which Desmond had been carried, together
with the house next door, had been taken furnished in the name of a
certain Mr. Blund, which alias covered the identity of a gentleman only
too well known to Scotland Yard; but neither he nor Grundt had returned
to it. Though the Chief and his young men remained on the constant
alert, though the police kept watch at all the ports, there was no sign
either of Clubfoot or of his associates.
The Special Branch at Scotland Yard took the view that Grundt had fled
the country. It was, indeed, remarkable that, easily identifiable as he
was by reason of his monstrous deformed foot, he should have contrived
to vanish without trace. In corroboration of the police theory was the
circumstance that Clubfoot’s campaign of vengeance against the British
Secret Service, its agents and helpers, which had already claimed some
half a dozen victims, was undoubtedly suspended.
Francis Okewood was disposed to believe that Grundt’s narrow escape from
justice on the last occasion had disinclined him from further
adventures; but Desmond was sceptical.
“Clubfoot intends to get back on you and me, Francis,” he said, “and if
he’s quiescent it means only that he’s planning some fresh deviltry or
that he’s short of funds!”
After their startling discovery of Süsslein’s suicide, Desmond asked his
brother to escort Miss Maxwell home.
“I’m going to borrow your ikon for an hour or two,” he told the girl,
“and, if it won’t shock your sense of propriety, to ask you to put
Francis up for the night . . .”
Patricia let her bright brown eyes rest inquiringly on Desmond’s face.
“Why not both of you? There’s plenty of room . . .”
“Maybe I shan’t want a bed at all!” replied the other enigmatically.
“You think something’s going to happen?” she challenged.
“Ever since you bought this ikon, Miss Maxwell,” was Desmond’s impassive
reply, “I’ll venture to say there has not been a minute in which your
life has not been in danger!”
“Oh, shucks!” she exclaimed. “What about your famous British police? Do
you mean to tell me that foreign gunmen like this Madjaroff guy are
allowed to run round and scare folks into hanging themselves? I expect,
if the truth were known, Süsslein was in money difficulties, poor little
man . . .”
“This is not a matter for the police, Miss Maxwell,” said Desmond. “If
you’d left this ikon hanging up in your boudoir, I’d lay a small shade
of odds that you wouldn’t have found it on your return!”
With a glint of strong white teeth Patricia Maxwell laughed outright.
“Now you’re trying to scare me!” she affirmed.
“Not at all,” returned Desmond. He pointed to the desk. “There’s the
telephone. Just for the fun of the thing, call up your house and see
whether anything has happened in your absence!”
His perfect self-possession and matter-of-factness sobered the girl. She
looked at him curiously, then went slowly to the telephone. The two
brothers, talking in undertones by the window, caught broken fragments
of the conversation. When Patricia Maxwell replaced the receiver and
faced them again, her self-assurance seemed somewhat shaken.
“Well?” said Desmond.
“I . . . I guess I don’t rightly understand,” she answered in a puzzled
tone. “Some one’s been in and ransacked my boudoir. The butler says a
man, claiming to come from the electric-light company, called this
afternoon to look at the wall-plugs or something. Barton—that’s the
butler—left him alone in the dining-room, which is separated from the
boudoir only by a curtain, while he went to the back hall to answer the
telephone. He was at the instrument for two or three minutes, he says,
and when he returned he found the boudoir window open, the place upside
down, and the man gone. Say, who is this clubfooted man, anyway?”
But, before Desmond could answer, a sharp “pss-t” from Francis called
him over to the window. Kneeling at the sill, his brother was peering
through the blind.
“I think they’re watching the house,” he said. “Did you notice if you
were followed when you came here, Patricia?”
“I drove in a taxi,” the girl answered, “so I can’t really say.”
On the opposite side of the street a young man was pacing nonchalantly
up and down, his face raised to the houses across the way. Even as they
watched, they saw him lift his hand. Something white fluttered . . .
“Wait a minute!” said Desmond, and hurried into the adjoining bedroom.
The block of flats, of which he occupied the top floor, stood at the
corner of a turning and the windows of the bedroom gave on the side
street. Before the shop occupying the opposite corner a man was
lounging. For an instant the light from the shop front fell on his face,
a pale narrow face with a long white scar running horizontally beneath
the right eye.
“Heinrich’s at the corner!” announced Desmond, returning to the
living-room.
“Clubfoot’s aide, do you mean?” queried Francis.
Desmond nodded. “Which his other name is Kriege. Since he made that
lucky get-away with Grundt in the affair of the purple cabriolet we have
been looking up his record. He is said to be a first-class linguist and
a marvellous hand at disguises. I shouldn’t wonder if he were not Miss
Maxwell’s friend, Saumergue.”
He turned to the American.
“Would it bore you frightfully to stay and dine with us?” he asked.
“Why, no!” she replied. “But I thought you two boys were coming home
with me!”
“It will be out of the question to leave the house for the present—at
any rate, by the front door,” said Desmond, and picked up the telephone.
“I want to speak to Mr. Krilenko,” he said when he got the number he had
asked for. “Is that you, Professor? Desmond Okewood speaking. I want you
to come round here at once. You can’t? You’re in bed with lumbago? Damn!
Well, I’ll just have to come to you, that’s all. Yes, I’ll be along in
twenty minutes.”
“It’ll have to be the overhead route,” he said to his brother as he
replaced the receiver.
Francis looked anxiously at him.
“Call up the Chief,” he said in an undertone, “and get help. You’re so
devilish reckless, Des. What are you up to now?”
“If Miss Maxwell will lend me her holy picture for an hour or so,” his
brother retorted, smiling graciously at the American, “I’m going to make
a few inquiries. No need to worry the Chief—at least, not yet. Bolt the
front door, will you, old boy? And if I were you I shouldn’t answer the
bell while I’m away.”
The little lobby between Desmond Okewood’s bedroom and the bathroom was
surmounted by a skylight to which a ladder gave access. When not in use
the ladder was hoisted out of reach by means of a rope and pulley.
Having buttoned the ikon beneath his waistcoat, Desmond lowered the
ladder and mounted to the skylight. With a wave of his hand to Francis
and Patricia looking up at him from below, he pushed up the skylight and
scrambled through, pulling the ladder up after him; they heard the
glazed trap slam and he was gone.
With the sure gait of one who treads a familiar path, Desmond made his
way across the black leads, a mere shadow dimly seen between the
soot-encrusted chimney-pots. The wind blew keen and lusty across the
roofs, rattling a loose trap here and there and merrily spinning the
chimney-cowls. Above the prowler’s head the sky glowed redly with the
reflection of the London lights.
Desmond descended a rusty iron fire-ladder, clambered over a chimney
buttress, scaled a railing, and at length halted in front of a low grey
door. His hand glided along the stone cornice below until it came upon
what he was seeking. Within the house a bell trilled faintly twice, then
thrice. Then the door opened. A grey-haired woman, shielding against the
draught a candle in her hands, stood on the narrow stair.
“Why,” she exclaimed, “you’re quite a stranger, sir! It must be fully
three years since you last used the overhead route.”
Desmond grinned. “I thought I was out of the profession, Mother Howe,”
said he, “but, dash it, I’m beginning to think they’ve brought me back!”
“Won’t you take a little something, Major?” said the woman, backing down
the stairs, “just for old times’ sake?”
“I can’t stop!” Desmond answered. “I’m in the deuce of a hurry, Mother
Howe, and that’s a fact!”
Two minutes later he stood in Saint James’s Street, waiting at the kerb
for the taxi he had summoned from the rank. Sixty yards farther along
two dim figures still kept their silent watch beneath the lighted
windows of Desmond Okewood’s flat.
Six o’clock was ringing out from the clock-tower of Saint James’s
Palace, that authentic witness of the pageantry of four centuries of
English history, when Desmond Okewood crept away across the roofs.
Francis and Patricia returned to the sitting-room. Francis suggested
double-dummy bridge to pass the time of waiting. But Patricia shook her
head.
“I’m thinking about poor little Süsslein,” she said. “I wonder why he
committed suicide!”
“He’s not the first that Clubfoot has frightened into destroying
himself!” said Francis.
“But why? What had Süsslein done?”
“I don’t know. But I imagine he was ordered to get the ikon out of you
and he simply couldn’t face the consequences of his failure. Old
Clubfoot has a devilish long arm, Patricia!”
“Tell me about this man Clubfoot,” she said.
So Francis gave her, as far as he knew it, the history of the man of
power and mystery who, in the heyday of the Hohenzollerns, had wielded
an influence second only to that of his Imperial master. He drew for her
a picture of the man, ruthless, resourceful, vigilant, with the strength
of an ox, the courage of a lion, and the cunning of a rogue elephant.
“If he wants a thing,” said Francis, “he’ll stop at nothing to get it.
There’s only one man who has ever got the better of him, and that’s my
brother Des. He’s a crazy devil, that brother of mine. He simply can’t
live without taking risks. Ever since he left the Secret Service he’s
been perfectly miserable. The reappearance of Clubfoot has made another
man of him. But I’m haunted by the fear that Clubfoot will get him one
day. That’s what makes me so anxious when he goes off suddenly like
this.”
Patricia smiled rather incredulously.
“To hear you boys talk,” she remarked, glancing down at her pinky
polished nails, “you’d think we were living in Ruritania or one of those
exciting places in Booth Tarkington Land. I admit I was a bit taken
aback to find that some one had rifled my boudoir; it may have been your
clubfoot man, or it may just have been a common sneak-thief. But, for
land’s sakes, what can happen to your brother in a city like London?”
The telephone pealed suddenly. The bell jangled noisily through the
silent flat. The man and the girl exchanged a glance. There are moments
when the sudden clamour of a telephone bell has an oddly frightening
effect. Francis went to the instrument.
“Hullo! No, he’s not here. Who wants him? Oh . . .”
His manner became slightly more _empressé_.
“This is Francis Okewood speaking. Very good. Tell the Chief I’ll come
right along.”
He rang off and turned to Patricia.
“It’s an urgent call from the office,” he said. “I believe I’ll have to
go along at once. It’s a quarter to eight. Des. must be back any minute
now. Do you mind being left alone for a little?”
“Of course not! You run right along and don’t mind about me.”
“You’re not frightened . . . or anything?”
“Frightened . . . nothing!” retorted Miss Maxwell with considerable
emphasis. “Say, if that old dot-and-carry-one shows up, I’ll vamp him so
hard he’ll just beat it back to Deutschland!”
Francis laughed. “Good for you. If you want anything, just ring for
Batts, will you? I’ll be back as soon as I can. Bye-bye.”
The front door slammed.
As if struck by a sudden idea, Patricia went to the window and peered
beneath the blind. The watcher still lounged on the opposite pavement.
She observed him for a full two minutes. Then she saw him turn suddenly
and walk swiftly down the street.
“That’s for Francis!” she said to herself.
She took up the cards and began to play Canfield. But she could not keep
her mind on the game; her thoughts were busy with the strange and
sinister figure who, that very morning, had loomed so large in her
dainty drawing-room. She threw down the cards and went to the telephone.
She would ring up the house and tell Barton she was dining out.
But now she could get no answer from the exchange. The line remained
completely dead. She depressed the hook repeatedly without any result.
At last she hung up the receiver, and going to the fire-place, pressed
the bell-push in the wall beside it. Then she went back to the
telephone.
No sound of life came to her over the wires. The line must be out of
order, she thought. But then she remembered that Francis Okewood had
used the instrument only a few minutes before. And no one came in
response to her ring. A little feeling of fear crept over her like a
trickle of ice-water running down her back. Why were both telephone and
bell out of order?
Suddenly she heard the sitting-room door behind her open. Ah! the valet
at last.
“I rang,” she said, speaking over her shoulder, at the same time
depressing the hook of the telephone instrument, “to ask you what is the
matter with the telephone. I can’t get a reply from the . . .”
The silence in the room made her turn.
At the table Dr. Madjaroff, her visitor of the morning, stood looking at
her.