The full, deep voice was courteous, even genial, and a jovial smile played about the full lips. Desmond took the proffered chair, but waved aside the box of Partagas which the fat man pushed in his direction. He felt his hands growing cold. By bitter experience he knew that Clubfoot was never so dangerous as in these moments of expansion.
“The fortune of war!” Grundt resumed. “You played your cards admirably . . . up to a point, lieber Okewood! I have always said you were an opponent worthy of my steel. Perhaps, in this instance, you were just a trifle . . . shall we say over-confident? . . .”
Desmond, who had been taking stock of his surroundings, pulled himself resolutely together. The bland self-assurance of Grundt, he noticed, was far from being shared by his companions. The Jew was a mass of nerves, rapaciously tearing at his yellow, deeply bitten finger-nails, the little pig eyes of the fat man were restless with apprehension, and there was an air of tension about the very rigidity of the enigmatical greybeard across the table.
“You and your rather unsavoury accomplices are playing a dangerous game, Herr Doktor,” he said as bravely as he might. “The riff-raff of international espionage”—he paused and gazed with cool deliberation first at the Jew at his side and then at Greybeard—“live from hand to mouth, as we all know, and cannot be over-scrupulous. But I must say I wonder what an Englishman”—he stared pointedly at the fat man as he spoke—“is doing in your ill-favoured company!”
The fat man struggled up in his chair with malice depicted in every feature of his leaden-hued face.
“You keep a civil tongue in your ’ead, d’jeer?” he spluttered.
But Clubfoot laid a hairy paw on his sleeve. “Let us make allowances for Major Okewood’s natural chagrin,” he counselled. “Believe me, he is full of common sense. He will presently recognize the value of being polite and . . . and obliging with us . . . otherwise”—he paused and looked amiably round the board—“otherwise we shall have to teach him manners, eh, Tarock?”
“A gord round the head, with some hardt knots, tvisted vith a baionette vould be a good lesson to him,” muttered the grey-bearded man.
“Don’t be hasty, Tarock,” said Grundt gently.
“Not Tarock, of Cracow?” exclaimed Desmond. “Why, now, isn’t that interesting? I’ve heard of you so often, and we’ve never met. Let’s see, you commanded a company once in the Deutschmeister Regiment in Vienna, didn’t you? And were cashiered for stealing the company money . . .?”
Greybeard moved uneasily in his seat.
“What a pity that the white-slave traffic laws interfered with your new career at Cracow!” Desmond resumed impassively. “So many of your colleagues regard them as the most unfair restriction of trade! Dear, dear! Was it five or seven years Zuchthaus they gave you?”
“Herr!” thundered Tarock, springing to his feet.
The fox-grin had again appeared about the thin lips of Mr. Mandelstamm. Clubfoot, too, appeared to be enjoying the scene.
“Personally, I always admired your versatility as a spy,” Desmond went on, leaning back out of reach of Tarock’s threatening fist, “though the Austrians didn’t. They sacked you for double-crossing, didn’t they, Tarock? And the Russians followed suit a year later. You were too dirty even for the Okhrana to touch . . .”
“Kreuzsakrament!” roared Greybeard, “I’ll have your life for that!”
His chair overturned with a crash. Everybody had sprung to his feet, talking at the same time. Suddenly the door of the room burst open and three men came tumbling in. Two of them were grappling with a third, who, though gagged and bound and bleeding, was plunging wildly and uttering stifled shouts of rage.
CHAPTER XI
THE CONSTANTINOPLE COURIER
An ear-splitting report sent them all reeling back. The air stank with the fumes of burnt cordite. Then Clubfoot’s voice went booming through the room. A great automatic was smoking in his hand.
“The next shot will go through your head, Bewlay,” he roared at the prisoner who, on the report of the pistol, had momentarily ceased struggling. “Stand back there, Tarock,” he thundered. “I’ll have no brawling here. Sit down, all of you! Heinrich!”
The young German appeared in the doorway.
“Take Major Okewood on one side, and, if he attempts to escape, shoot him! Max, you look after Bewlay! Have you got the bags? Bring them in!”
The dominating personality of the man was extraordinary. Complete silence fell upon the room. The men at the table resumed their seats. Heinrich led Desmond into a corner while Max unceremoniously pitched the other prisoner on to a window-seat, where he lay motionless. He looked like an Englishman, young and of athletic build, with close-cropped fair hair, now stiff with matted blood from a great cut across the head.
A man staggered into the room, his arms piled high with white and green canvas bags sealed with red wax. With a sickening heart Desmond recognized them. They were the valises of the King’s Messenger. “Bewlay,” Grundt had called this fresh prisoner. Desmond remembered the name now. Paul Bewlay was the Constantinople courier.
The bags were tumbled in a heap on the table. With scissors and knives Grundt and his companions busied themselves with cutting the strings that bound them. Soon the table was heaped high with a litter of letters, documents, newspapers, and packages.
Presently Clubfoot looked up from the work. “You’ve searched him, Max?”
“Jawohl, Herr Doktor!”
The man took from his pocket a red bandana handkerchief, heavily weighted down, and handed it to Tarock. The Austrian spilled out a mixed assortment of objects, a watch and chain, a gold cigarette-case, a pencil, and a little silver brooch—the Silver Greyhound, the messenger’s badge.
“You’ve looked in the lining of his clothes, Max?”
“Ja, Herr Doktor. There is nothing there!”
The opening of the packages revealed some curious things. There was an old brass lamp, a pair of Jodhpore breeches, a couple of Samarcand rugs, and some boxes of Turkish Delight, enjoying, in strange promiscuity, the hospitality of the diplomatic valise. In the way of odd commissions, a King’s Messenger is as useful as the village carrier.
The rummaging went on. Then Desmond heard Mandelstamm’s reedy lisp.
“Your customary good fortune has failed you again, Herr Doktor!”
“Unsinn!” came the angry retort. “It must be here. He has been under observation every step of the way. Patience, my friend! We shall find it!”
The work was resumed in silence until at length Mandelstamm left the table.
“It’s useless!” he cried, his voice shrill with vexation. “You’re wasting our time, Herr Doktor!”
Tarock, too, had left his seat and was whispering to Blund, the fat Englishman, in a corner. Grundt remained alone at the table. His bulging brows were furrowed in thought. Then, as though struck by a sudden idea, he picked up one of the round boxes of Turkish Delight, raised the lid and shook the contents out upon the table. A second, a third, and a fourth box he treated in the same manner, and then, with a whoop of joy, he plunged his hand into the sticky pile of sweetmeats before him. When he withdrew his hand he held a number of sheets of white flimsy paper between finger and thumb. Dusting the fine sugar off them, he held them up for all to see.
“Herr Mandelstamm,” he said cuttingly, “perhaps this will teach you that Dr. Grundt does not promise what he cannot fulfil!”
But a ringing voice from the window-seat broke in upon his words. “You damned scoundrel!”
The King’s Messenger was standing erect. The soiled scarf that had gagged him had slipped aside. He was bound round with rope like a mummy in its wrappings, and his face was almost irrecognizable with the smother of dried blood that had welled from the wound in his head. But he stood up and shouted his defiance into the room as though he, and not Clubfoot, were the master there.
Grundt looked up slowly. “Max,” he said, without raising his voice, “take him away and get rid of him. He is of no further use to us,” he explained to the men at the table, while Max fell upon his victim.
With alacrity Tarock scrambled to his feet, drawing something from his hip pocket.
“I’ll attend to him!” he said in a voice hoarse with pleasurable excitement. And he hurried from the room behind Max and his prisoner.
As he passed, Desmond, covered by Heinrich’s automatic, saw that the Austrian carried in his hand a long Norwegian knife.
Mandelstamm extended talon-like fingers towards the paper in Clubfoot’s hand.
“L-l-let me s-s-see.” He stuttered with excitement.
“It’s in code,” said Grundt.
And all eyes turned to Desmond.
Grundt heaved himself up and, grasping his rubber-shod stick, hobbled awkwardly across the room to where Heinrich guarded the prisoner. The cripple waved the guard back.
“Okewood,” he said, “you are clever enough to know when you are beaten. I am well aware that your motto has ever been, ‘While there’s life there’s hope!’ but let me assure you that in this instance you can derive very little solace from that saying. The position of this house is so remote, its precincts are so well guarded, that, even if your friends were to discover your hiding-place—which is most unlikely—and were in hot cry hither, I should have ample leisure to devise and carry out even the most lingering form of death for you.” He paused and scrutinized the young man’s face. “I offer you your life on one condition.”
Desmond remained silent.
“Does it interest you?”
A long-drawn-out, gurgling scream, high-pitched and shrill with the extremity of agony, suddenly broke the brooding stillness of the house. It was followed by a little muffled cry from the room. From behind a typewriter placed on a desk in the corner a young girl had risen hesitatingly, one hand clutching her cheek, terror in her eyes. Desmond had not noticed her before.
“Xenia!” Mandelstamm cried harshly.
Listlessly the girl sank back into her seat.
Desmond looked straight into Clubfoot’s eyes. “What was that? Who screamed?” he asked, knowing full well the answer to his question.
“I think it must have been Bewlay,” calmly replied Grundt; and asked again: “Does my proposition interest you?”
Desmond shrugged his shoulders.
“Believe me, lieber Okewood,” Clubfoot resumed persuasively, “murder in cold blood is not one of my hobbies. One has to kill at times, but it is always a messy business unless one has the resources of a well-stocked laboratory at one’s back. Listen to me. I have here a message in your Secret Service code number 3A. If you will decipher it for us, you shall go free. We are willing to give you any reasonable guarantee of your life . . .”
“And if I tell you that I know nothing of this code?”
“That would not be true, my friend! Besides yourself, there are only two persons who, before the Foreign Office adopted it, were acquainted with its cipher . . . your revered Chief (a remarkable man, my dear Okewood, and a credit to our profession!) and his confidential clerk, by name Collins, I believe, who lives at Hatfield. Am I correct? No, no, my friend, you won’t try to deceive me. Old Clubfoot knows too much!”
“And if I reject your offer?”
Again that terrible scream rang out, suddenly checked this time and dying away in a strangling gurgle.
With an expressive movement of eyes and head Grundt indicated the upper regions of the house, now plunged once more into silence, as much as to say: “You wouldn’t drive us to that?”
Desmond Okewood put out his hand. “Let’s see the despatch!” he said brusquely.
But Clubfoot held up a deprecating paw. “No, no, my friend, not so fast,” he laughed. “You might tear it or . . . or drop it in the fire. I’ve been at a deal of trouble to get it.” He raised his voice. “Fräulein Xenia!”
The girl came slowly over from her corner. She was a slender, graceful creature, with slim hands and feet, glossy hair of jet-black brushed smoothly down to conceal her ears, and the clear, wide-open eyes of a child. As she stood before the big cripple waiting to hear his bidding, she let her black eyes rest for a moment on Desmond’s face. They were honest eyes, dark and appealing. Somehow he drew comfort from them.
Grundt handed her the despatch. “Sit down over there at the machine and make me one copy of this. Be very careful and check the ciphers carefully! Verstehen Sie?”
“Ich verstehe, Herr Doktor!” she answered in a low voice, pleasant of timbre, but lifeless and toneless.
As she crossed the room the door opened. Tarock had returned. He was red in the face and out of breath, and there was an air of stealthy guilt about him that chilled Desmond to the very marrow. He could not save now, but only avenge poor Bewlay. If his own hour were near, as he had a shrewd suspicion it was, he meant, so he promised himself, to risk all, if needs be, to send the Cracow souteneur to precede him at the Judgment Seat.
The brisk rattle of the typewriter fell upon the quietness of the room. How matter-of-fact it sounded! They might have been in a lawyer’s office, not in this house of twilight death, whence time and the daylight were excluded.
The girl had finished her typing. Her black head was bowed over her table. She was revising the long list of numbers. In a minute, Desmond told himself, he must make up his mind how to act.
Now she had crossed the room: now she was giving the despatch and the copy to Clubfoot. Was Bewlay really dead? Or would he scream again? . . .
Clubfoot was speaking: “. . . Which is it to be?”
Desmond cleared his throat. All his senses were alert now. Those dreadful cries had stung him into action. He must gain time—time. By this the Chief and Francis, his brother, than whom there were no greater masters of their craft alive, would be busy with plans for his rescue. But they must have time to get on his track, unless he were too securely hidden away for them ever to find him . . . time, time . . .
“Give me the despatch!” Desmond exclaimed suddenly. Silently, his suspicious eyes searching the other’s face, Clubfoot handed over the typewritten sheets. Desmond studied them. Then, with a shake of the head: “I can’t decipher it like this,” he said. “Have you any dictionaries here?”
A glimmer of triumph shot into Grundt’s face. “What dictionary do you want?” he asked.
“Peereboom’s English-Dutch Dictionary, the edition of 1898,” Desmond answered promptly.
“I’ll send for it. It’ll be in your hands within the hour!” Clubfoot retorted and clapped him, almost affectionately, on the shoulder.
Then they took Desmond back to his room. In the corridor on the first floor they passed the body of the courier, lying, still swathed in his bonds, lifeless, in a welter of blood.
CHAPTER XII
XENIA
Dictionary codes are familiar in the Secret Service as furnishing a cipher which, without the key, defies detection. By asking for a dictionary at random, without reference to the cipher before him, Desmond had hoped to gain a respite of several hours; for he had reckoned that the little-known and out-of-date work which he had requested would not easily be forthcoming. Clubfoot’s glib promise that the book would be on hand within the hour dashed his hopes considerably, and he reëntered his prison seriously revolving in his head his chances of escape.
Of chances, properly speaking, he had none. He had no knowledge of the geography of the house or its location; he had no arms; he had no accomplices. But the murder of Paul Bewlay had made him reckless. The sight of the body of that defenseless man, done to death in his bonds, filled his soul with rage. He must try to fight his way out. But how?
He heard the door grate. Heinrich was there with a tray.
“I’ve brought your dinner!” he said. His tone was infinitely more genial than before.
Desmond stared at him blankly. “The mince you served me for lunch was cold,” he grumbled presently. “What have you got there? Poached eggs? Hmph! And how am I going to eat eggs without salt or pepper? Good God, if I’m going to work for you, can’t I be decently served?”
“Herr, Herr,” stammered Heinrich, “the cruet is outside. A little minute and I bring it!”
Desmond grunted and turned away. But not so that he could not keep the door under observation. In a moment Heinrich was back with the cruet.
“So, Herr!” he remarked and dumped it down on the table.
But the Herr was still not satisfied. “You’ve brought me tea to drink!” he protested. “Do you take me for a teetotaller or what? Where’s Grundt? Send for Grundt . . .”
“Herr, Herr,” wailed Heinrich in an agony of apprehension, “anything he wished for, the Herr was to have, said the Herr Doktor! What can I get you, Herr?”
“That’s better!” said Desmond. “You can get me a large whiskey-and-soda. And not too much soda, d’you hear? . . .”
Obediently Heinrich galloped from the room. The moment his back was turned Desmond was at the cruet. He whipped out the pepper castor, rapidly screwed the top off, and tiptoed swiftly to the door.
“A dirty trick!” he murmured to himself. “A dirty Apache trick! Okewood, I’m ashamed of you!”
Then the door swung back. On the threshold stood Heinrich beaming, a brimming club tumbler in his hand. Suddenly, with a shrill gasp of agony, the youth snatched at his eyes and the glass shattered on the floor. Desmond flung the empty pepper-pot away and dashed through the door.
Running on the points of his toes he bolted along the corridor making in the direction of the staircase. Just as he reached it, he heard a heavy step mounting the stairs and the shining bald pate of Mr. Blund, the Englishman, appeared on a level with the landing.
The collision was as violent as it was inevitable. By the force of the impact Mr. Blund was flung back against the stair-rail. But he had thrown his arms about Desmond and now clung to him like grim death, screeching in a voice wheezy with fear and excitement: “’Elp! ’Elp! ’E’s escaping!”
With a savage twist Desmond wrenched himself loose. But there is a dogged strain in even the worst Englishman, and Mr. Blund came at him again. With open hand Desmond struck upwards at the other’s double chin that sagged in heavy folds to the thick neck. The violence of the blow, half slap, half push, threw the fat man off his balance. He reeled away, slipped on the polished boards, and, with a hoarse cry, toppled backwards over the banisters into the well of the staircase, and, with a horrid, soft thud, landed on the tiles of the hall.
But the other gave him not a thought. From the corridor behind him resounded the angry bellowing of Heinrich. Without considering where he was going, Desmond plunged down the staircase and came to the hall where, loose, like a sack of bottles, the sprawling hulk of what had once been Mr. Blund was lying.
Somewhere in the distance a door banged. A curtain hung across one side of the hall. In a flash Desmond parted it. Facing him he found the front door with an immense lock and no vestige of a key. He tried the door. It was locked!
Behind him now all the house was in an uproar. A hubbub of angry voices came from the upper floors and heavy footsteps thundered above him. Stealthily he peered out from behind the curtain and came face to face with Mandelstamm.
The Jew was standing there listening, his head half inclined to the stairway. He was not two feet away, a magnificent mark, and, to simplify matters, he turned his head precisely at the right moment to bring the point of his jaw in contact with Desmond’s fist as, without hesitation, the young man drove at him. Mandelstamm collapsed instantly in a sitting position, then flopped over, grunted once, and lay still.
Clubfoot’s stentorian voice went booming through the house, shouting orders. Save for Blund and Mandelstamm, the whole of the party seemed to have been collected on one of the upper floors. Now they all came trooping noisily down.
The little hall with the locked door behind him was, Desmond realized, a cul-de-sac, a veritable death-trap. Three doors faced him across the hall. With one stride the young man was across the Jew’s body and, choosing the middle door at random, opened it swiftly and slipped through.
He found himself in the room where, less than an hour before, he had confronted Clubfoot and his confederates. Seated at the oval table in the centre was the girl they had called Mademoiselle Xenia.
Loud exclamations from the hall, showing that the party had discovered their casualties, warned Desmond of the urgent danger of his position. There was a key on the inside of the door. He turned it and slipped it in his pocket.
“I heard the fat Englishman cry out”—the girl was speaking in her dull, listless voice—“I wondered if you were free. But there is no escape from him. Why, oh, why, did you come here?”
A hand pounded noisily on the door.
“Xenia, Xenia!” came in Tarock’s gruff voice.
Desmond turned swiftly to the girl. “Will you help me?” he said.
With wonder in her mournful black eyes she nodded.
“Is there no way out of this room except by the door?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“The windows?”
“They are shuttered and barred with steel!”
“Then help me to barricade the door!”
Already some one outside was hurling his weight against it. But the oaken panels were solid and held well. With great difficulty Desmond and the girl dragged a tall black cupboard across the room and stood it before the door, subsequently reënforcing the barricade with a steel filing-cabinet, the heavy mahogany table laid on its side, and an intricate zareba of chairs.
Something cold was laid in Desmond’s hand. It was a Browning pistol.
“It has seven shots,” said Xenia. “I used to think I might use it one day, but . . .” She shrugged her shoulders and relapsed into her habitual mournful silence.
“By George!” exclaimed Desmond. “This puts new heart into the defence. The name of Tarock, of Cracow, is written on one of these bullets, did you know that, Mademoiselle Xenia?”
For the first time the girl became animated. A little warmth stole into her olive cheeks and her dark eyes brightened.
“Kill him!” she said passionately. “Kill him for me! Deliver me from this man and I will kiss your feet! Kill him slowly, make him suffer as he has made me and my family suffer! . . .”
“We’ll do what we can!” said Desmond cheerfully. The cold caress of the automatic had raised his spirits a hundred per cent.
A desperate assault was being delivered on the door. It groaned and creaked and the barricade before it rocked and swayed.
“This won’t do!” said Desmond, furrowing his forehead. With an anxious glance at the door, he crossed to the window. The steel bars were deep-sunk in the face of the shutter and padlocked in the centre.
“A shot would burst that lock!” remarked the young man, fingering his gun.
“Useless!” replied the girl. “The window is barred outside. There is no escape!”
And then the light went out.
“Ah!” said Desmond. “Clubfoot would think of that.”
The room was pitch-dark.
“Xenia,” he called softly, “where are you?”
“Here,” said her soft voice in his ear. And her hand was gently laid on his arm.
“You must try to be brave,” he encouraged her. “I think they’re going to rush us! The door will go in a minute!”
Already a broad chink of light showed that, though the lock yet held, the upper part of the door was yielding to the savage battering.
“I am not frightened,” Xenia made answer—and her voice was quite steady—“I shall be glad to die! You will make it easy for me. It is long since I knew a man without fear!”
She placed her hand, small and warm and soft, in his.
“My mother, my little sister, my two brothers, they are all in the prisons of the Tcheka,” she said. “I am hostage for them. Tarock was the commissary who denounced them. He brought me here as his secretary. For almost a year now I have been in his power. So you see I am happy to die . . .”
Then the door gave. There was a crash as the topmost pile of chairs hurtled to the ground. A broad beam of light clove the darkness about the barricade.
“Okewood”—the challenge came in Clubfoot’s deep voice—“the game’s up! Come out quietly before you’re hurt!”
Desmond’s hand squeezed hard the little hand that lay in his palm. “Courage!” he whispered. “And listen! Do you hear anything outside?”
Above the hubbub in the hall outside there fell upon their ears the distant throb of a car.
Then he raised his voice. “Grundt,” he cried out distinctly, “Grundt, you can go to hell!”
A bearded face with dangerous, bloodshot eyes appeared in the chink between door and jamb. Desmond shot so swiftly that the roar of the report, Tarock’s sharp exclamation, and the thud of the body sounded almost as one.
“Herr Gott!” bellowed Clubfoot. There was a loud explosion and a bullet “whooshed” above the heads of the man and girl. The door was forced wider and the barricade was split in twain.
Desmond pressed the girl to her knees. “Keep your head down!” he whispered, and fired again. The yellow flame from his pistol lit up the darkened room. The odour of burnt powder hung on the stale air. A volley of shots from without answered him.
But now loud knocking resounded from the outer hall. Instantly the light beyond the door went out. There was the scuffle of feet and Clubfoot’s voice crying aloud: “Turn on the light again. The front door is solid. If we go, we’ll take the Englishman with us. Ah, you miserable hounds! you . . .!”
For one brief, terrible instant a brilliant orange glare lighted the dark gap between the barricade and the door. Then there came the deafening roar of an explosion immediately followed by the sound of splintering wood and the tinkle of broken glass. The whole house seemed to shudder and settle down again. Then came a moment of absolute silence, and in the stillness the girl heard a stealthy clip-clop, clip-clop across the tiles of the hall.
And then came shouts and the sound of the crunching and smashing of wood under heavy blows. A voice without cried twice: “Desmond! Desmond!”
In the darkness the girl sought the companion at her side. “Hark!” she whispered. “We are saved!”
There was no reply. She stretched out her hand, groping in the place where Desmond Okewood had stood. But he was no longer there. Outside resounded the trampling of heavy feet, and with a sudden crash the barricade before the door was flung down. A beam of white light from an electric torch clove the darkness. In its ray Xenia saw Desmond Okewood lying motionless at her feet.
CHAPTER XIII
IN WHICH CHECK PROVES TO BE CHECKMATE
When Desmond came to his senses he was propped up in a limousine that was slowly threading a broad street crowded with trams and other traffic. The Chief was at his side and, on the opposite seat, Francis with the girl whose pale face, dark eyes, and glossy black hair were vaguely familiar.
With a bewildered expression the young man looked from one face to the other.
“Where am I?”
“You’re in the Mile End Road, old man, going home,” said his brother, patting him on the knee.
“And Clubfoot?”
“Escaped down the river by launch!”
Desmond took the girl’s hand. “I remember it all now,” he said. “It was this brave girl that saved us. She gave me the automatic with which I was able to keep them off until you came. Without that gun . . .”
“I shouldn’t talk any more now if I were you,” the Chief counselled.
“I’m all right,” said Desmond, “except that my head is buzzing like a beehive. What happened to me exactly?”
“You were hit by a ricochet off your precious barricade,” his brother replied. “Actually it only grazed your temple, but it put you down for the count . . .”
Desmond was silent for a moment. “Escaped by launch, did he?” he remarked presently. “Francis, where was this house to which they took me?”
“Down on the Thames flats, between Rainham and Purfleet,” said his brother; “about as lonely a spot as they could find.”
“But how on earth did you locate me?”
“Okewood,” interposed the Chief with finality, “you are talking too much. That story, like yours, will have to keep!”
Actually it only kept until the following day, when Desmond, his head romantically bound up in a bandage, entertained the Chief and Francis to lunch at his chambers.
“For our providential arrival,” remarked the Chief, neatly spearing the cherry in his cocktail as they stood round the fire, “you can thank this brother of yours! Two nights ago you vanished off the face of the earth. We had no description of the man who kidnapped you beyond that of old Clubfoot; we had no particulars at all of the car, no inkling of the route you took. And how do you think Francis here grappled with that situation? Tell him yourself, man!” The Chief chuckled and drained his glass.
“Well,” said Francis slowly, “it was a long shot, for I reckoned the odds at about a hundred to one on Clubfoot murdering you right off. But I thought there was a chance he might hold you to ransom or something of the sort; in that case he would have to have a secure retreat to which he could convey you. That retreat, I figured to myself, must be within a reasonable distance of London, for Clubfoot’s business is here. So, within an hour of your disappearance, I arranged for an inquiry to be sent by telephone or telegram to every house and estate agent within a radius of fifty miles of London as to whether a house had recently been let to any one answering Clubfoot’s description. I offered a reward of five hundred pounds for the information.
“By noon I had my answer. They rang up from Marlow and Wadding’s, the big West-End agents, to say that one of their clerks had an important statement to make. In due course the man arrived. He had gone down one day last week to inspect on behalf of a client a property close to the river some miles from Purfleet, a place called Rushdene Grange. When he reached the house, he found that it showed evident signs of occupation, for smoke was rising from the chimneys, though all the windows were shuttered.
“He supposed that the house had been placed in the hands of more than one agent for disposal and had been let without the knowledge of his firm. He was standing at the front door when a car came up the drive. A big lame man, answering in every particular to the description of our friend Grundt, got out. He told the clerk very gruffly that the place was let and vanished into the house.
“From inquiries my informant made locally he ascertained that the house had been let furnished to a man named Fitzroy, which, the police tell me, is one of the various aliases of Schmetterding, alias Blund, an old friend of ours, Des., for, if you remember, it was he who took that place at Harlesden for Grundt in the affair of the purple cabriolet. When we picked up the poor gentleman with his neck so picturesquely broken at the foot of the staircase at Rushdene Grange, Manderton recognized him at once. He’s an Englishman of German extraction, with a fine list of convictions against him at the Yard.”
Francis looked at his brother and smiled. “A little rough with him, weren’t you, Des.?”
“He came butting in when I was trying to escape,” replied Desmond, “so I landed him a punch, and he went backwards over the stairs.”
“And there was Tarock on his face in the hall with a bullet in his temple . . .”
“Dead?”
“As dead as a door-nail!” Francis replied.
“I’m glad I nailed him,” Desmond remarked, and added, addressing the Chief, “Tarock, of Cracow, you know, sir!”
The big man nodded. “He’s no loss,” he remarked. “He’d lived too long, anyway.”
“From what my house agent friend told me,” Francis resumed, “we guessed that the house would be a regular fortress. So I took a charge of guncotton with the cutting-out party the Chief let me organize and blew the lock off the front door. How Clubfoot escaped being killed by the explosion I don’t know. When we got in, we found the nest empty except for that choice specimen, Mandelstamm, who was spitting teeth into the basin in the bath-room out of the most beautiful mouth you ever saw. Whew, Des., you must have fetched him a clip!”
“He walked into my fist,” his brother retorted, grinning. “But what about Grundt?”
“I’m afraid he got away through my fault. The shooting inside the house rather rattled me . . . on account of you, you know . . . and I blew the lock before our men had got into their stations at the back. Clubfoot must have escaped through the basement and got down to the river, for we discovered afterwards that an electric launch he used to keep up a creek had disappeared. I presume he took Max and Heinrich with him. They left poor Bewlay where they killed him upstairs.”
“He died well,” said Desmond, giving him his epitaph. He turned to the Chief. “And this treaty, sir? Clubfoot has got away with it, I suppose?”
“He has!” replied the big man grimly.
“He was under the impression that it was coded in 3A,” Desmond went on. “It wasn’t, you know, though I didn’t disabuse his mind, of course. It was in no code I had ever seen before.”
“Or will ever see again. The only two keys in existence, one in Constantinople and the other in London, were destroyed by my orders within twenty-four hours of the courier being kidnapped. The F.O., you see, changed their minds about 3A and used a special cipher. Do you know that the Bolsheviks offered twenty-five thousand pounds for a copy of that treaty en clair? The Secretary of State has been in a perfect agony of mind about it, for the party who negotiated this document, with certain influential Turks behind the scenes at the Porte, was not an official emissary. And if Parliament had got wind of the affair at this stage . . .” He broke off and whistled.
“Chief,” said Desmond, “we must do something for this girl Xenia. Her people are all in prison in Russia, and now that Tarock is dead . . .”
“That’s already seen to,” replied the big man. “Mademoiselle Xenia is being cared for by some friends of mine, and in a little while, when she has got over this shock, I think I ought to be able to utilize her knowledge of Russian at one of our report centres in the Baltic States. In any case, I mean to remove her as soon as possible out of Clubfoot’s reach.”
“He’s vanished into thin air, I suppose?” Desmond remarked.
“A perfect Vidocq!” the Chief observed. “But never fear: he’ll be after us again, if only to pay us back for checkmating him this time!” And he grinned with great contentment.
“And what’s our next move to be, sir?” asked Desmond.
“You and that brother of yours,” replied the Chief, “will, each and severally, equip yourselves with a bag of golf-clubs and report to-morrow morning at a course not too far removed from London and devote yourselves, until further orders, to reducing your respective handicaps.”
“But Clubfoot . . .” the two young men broke out.
“Clubfoot will keep. But you’ll not beat him with your nerves frayed out at the ends. You two get out into the fresh air and forget all about him. And in the mean time . . .”
“Luncheon is served,” announced Desmond’s man.
“As good an occupation as any,” observed the Chief, “in the intervals between the rounds!”
CHAPTER XIV
THE GIRL AT THE HEXAGON
That the Okewoods obeyed the Chief’s instructions to the letter I can testify, for I happened to be drinking my after-luncheon in the lounge of the hotel at Broadstairs when they arrived with suitcases and golf-bags. Desmond was wearing a bandage about his head, and, after we had exchanged greetings, I asked him what he had been doing to himself.
“I got a crack on the head from a ball playing racquets at Queen’s,” unblushingly replied this master of improvisation, “and so I’ve decided to revert to golf. We think it’s less dangerous, don’t we, Francis?”
“Sure,” rejoined his brother, who likes to flavour his speech at times with certain exoticisms acquired from his American wife, “but a heap less exciting, eh, old man?”
At this time, naturally, I had no idea of the hidden meaning of these seemingly innocent remarks. There was certainly nothing to suggest their secret significance in the blandly smiling countenances of the two brothers. That is the Okewood pair all over. Their team-work is wonderful. They always remind me of two acrobats on a trapeze: one is invariably there when he is required to catch or support the other. I can imagine no more devastating combination than these two quiet but supremely competent young men on any mission requiring a blend of excessive tact and sublime audacity.
“Are you down here for long?” Desmond asked me.
I told him I expected to stay for a month.
“Splendid!” he retorted. “That means there’ll always be a partner for Francis or me when we’re sick of playing against each other.”
“It means nothing of the sort,” I replied, indignant at such shameless opportunism. “I’ve come down here to finish a book. I’m not in the War Office, you know: I have to work for my living.”
“‘The Industrious Apprentice Rebukes His Idle Companion,’” quoted Francis. “He’s being smug, Des. Let’s sit on his head!”
The conversation degenerated into a most undignified wrestling match, which ended, after I had been nearly smothered by a cushion, by my consenting, as a rare and notable exception, to accompany them forthwith to the North Foreland for a three-ball match before tea.
Looking back, I find it hard to realize that my light-hearted and amusing companions on that blustery February afternoon were living under a grave and terrible menace. Even now I can scarcely bring myself to believe that Desmond, as debonair, as bright and as sparkling as ever, had only just emerged from such nerve-racking experiences as the affair of the purple cabriolet and the case of the Constantinople courier. Now that I come to think of it, I remarked that his nervous air which had attracted the attention of old Erasmus Wilkes had completely vanished. I can well believe Francis when he says that the one thing his brother cannot stand is inaction and that danger is his best tonic.