“You’re my passenger, I think,” he said to Desmond. “We’re all ready for you!”
He shot an enquiring glance at the girl. Desmond remarked that she was to accompany them on their journey. The pilot seemed put out. The machine was a two-seater, he protested; and he had been warned to expect only the one passenger. Besides, the girl couldn’t travel in evening dress; she would perish of cold.
Desmond swept aside these objections. The girl, he announced with a humorous side-glance at her, would sit on his knee.
“As for the cold,” he went on, “that extra coat on your arm, which is doubtless intended for me, will do very well for her. I’ve got my overcoat!”
And he tapped his ulster bulging with the packet of precious stones.
The pilot made no further comment, but led the way to the machine. Rather sullenly he helped the girl into the belted leather jerkin he had brought with him, while Desmond swung himself up the short ladder into the passenger’s seat, protected by a curving shield of talc, behind the pilot.
The girl, helped from above and below, clambered after, her hat in her hand. Almost before they knew that the pilot was at the joy-stick, the propellers began to roar, the driver raised his hand, and all the world except the lucent moon and the glittering stars in the wide sky above them seemed to slide away—the flares, the sheds, the trees, the twinkling lights of Brussels in the distance.
Desmond gave a little sigh. “Safe!” he murmured, and patted that comforting bulge in his overcoat.
They had, indeed, he told himself, made a clean escape, shaken old Clubfoot right off their track. Since leaving the theatre they had seen nothing of him or of any of his men. If this were the last episode in the master spy’s career, it had ended, the young man reflected, in his signal discomfiture. Desmond felt his heart swell within him as the icy night air smote his cheek and, hundreds of feet below, the dim chessboard of the Low Countries swayed and heeled over beneath the moon.
Perched demurely on his knee, the girl remained very still. Speech was impossible; the deafening roar of the propellers saw to that—but Desmond’s quick intuitiveness told him she was uneasy. Perhaps she was nervous, he told himself; night-flying is always something of an ordeal.
The channel was yet a silvery streak below them when the pilot, crouched over the wheel in front, turned and made a vague gesture with his gauntleted hand. With his huge goggles and furry helmet he looked like some gesticulating goblin. He seemed to be pointing downwards. At the same moment the rush of air increased, a long black ridge, far below at first, seemed to rise and rise at them while, with a suddenness that was pain, the roar of the propellers abruptly ceased.
“Engine missing!”—the pilot’s voice came to them in a muffled roar—“hang on! Forced landing!”
Out of the blackness, sweeping up at them with hideous velocity, a light winked and blinked. Coughing and spluttering, the engine picked up again. Suddenly they were bumping wildly over the fleeting ground past a handful of stunted trees and bushes and, in hard, black silhouette against the moon, the dark shapes of some scattered houses.
The engine was shut off again and they careered to a standstill, the machine trembling to the gentle jar of the earth. The pilot heaved himself up in his cockpit and pushed the goggles back from his eyes.
“Sorry,” he said, and began some technical explanation to which Desmond Okewood paid no attention. His thoughts were busy with the next step. He did not relish the idea of wandering about the country-side at dead of night with some hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of jewels in his overcoat pocket. He looked at his watch. Its hands marked ten minutes to one on the luminous dial.
“Have you any idea where we are?” Desmond asked. “I am positive,” he added, “that I saw a light as we were planing down, but there’s no sign of it now.”
The pilot, who had jumped down and was fussing with the landing-wheels, turned round.
“Distance is very deceptive at night,” he said. “That light is probably five or six miles away. It’s devilish fortunate,” he went on. “I know exactly where we are. This is the War Office rifle ground at Stoke Bay, about six miles out of Lympne. I was at Dover during the war and know the whole of this country like my pocket. So, when the engine started petering out over the Channel just now, I steered straight for this spot.”
“How long is it going to take you to put things right?” asked Desmond.
The pilot shook his head sadly at the plane. “Can’t say. At any rate, I’ll never get up here again in the dark. We’d break our necks most likely. You’ll have to go on to London in the morning.”
Desmond swore under his breath. It seemed to him that the airman was taking things very lightly.
“That’s all very well,” he remarked with some heat. “But I’m on duty, and it is essential that I should get on to town without delay. And in any case Miss Brewster can’t spend the night in the open, you know. What are we going to do about it? Isn’t there anybody we can knock up?”
“It’s just occurred to me,” answered the pilot, wiping his hands on a wisp of cotton waste, “that I know a fellow who lives close at hand. Magnus is his name, a very sound chap. He has a bungalow a piece down the beach road. We’ll knock him up. I’ve no doubt when we’ve explained things to him he’ll be pleased to give us a shake-down for the night. He’s on the telephone, too. Just let me turn off the juice!”
He clambered back into the cockpit and busied himself with the engine. Desmond and Miss Brewster alighted. Suddenly the former felt his sleeve plucked. He turned round to find Mary Brewster’s big eyes staring at him. With an upward glance at the machine, she drew her companion unobtrusively aside.
“Don’t trust him!” she whispered. “He’s . . . he’s got a dishonest face! How do you know that this landing isn’t a plant? He cut off the engine on purpose; I’m sure he did. He meant to land here all along. Look at the ground! It’s perfectly smooth. It’s an aerodrome . . .”
“Aerodrome?” broke in the pilot. He had descended from the machine and was standing behind them. “Of course it’s an aerodrome, an experimental ground. That’s why I steered for it.”
Desmond looked at him. Certainly the fellow had a shifty eye. Now that he regarded the pilot more closely, he noticed that he seemed to be labouring under some excitement. The man saw that the other had remarked his distress.
“It’s a nervy business, landing in the dark!” he was quick to explain.
Desmond felt that his suspicions were ungenerous. He knew how airmen loathe night-flying.
“You made a devilish good landing!” he said. “I’m afraid you must have thought us very unappreciative. Now, what about your friend Magnus?”
The girl said no more and they set off in silence across the moonlit grass. In front of them a black shape loomed immensely out of the darkness. As they drew nearer, Desmond saw, to his astonishment, that it was an aeroplane, a huge machine with metal wings on which the moonbeams glinted.
Desmond stopped. “What’s that plane doing here?” he demanded.
The pilot shrugged his shoulders. “They’re trying out machines all the time,” he replied. “We’re getting too much to the left,” he added. “We want to bear more to the right or we’ll miss the gate!”
But Desmond was walking in the direction of the machine.
“I say!” the pilot called out. “They don’t like strangers monkeying about with . . .”
Desmond heard no more. He had reached the machine. Mary Brewster was just behind him. It was a tremendous machine and its immense spread of wing quite dwarfed them. A blast of warm air smote them on the cheeks.
“Why,” cried Desmond, “the engine’s warm. This machine has been out this very night . . .”
He turned swiftly round to the girl. As his eyes fell on her face, it blanched with terror.
“Behind you! . . .” she gasped; but, before he had time to defend himself, a cloth fell across his face from the back and was pulled taut, an iron grip clutched his throat and he was borne to the ground. A guttural voice said close to his ear: “A sound and I blow out your brains!”
Out of the darkness rang a woman’s scream.
CHAPTER XX
IN WHICH MISS MARY BREWSTER SPEAKS HER MIND
Blind and helpless, gagged and bound, his eyes bandaged, Desmond felt himself lifted up and carried swiftly along. Presently he heard the sound of the sea and his bearers’ feet grinding on shingle. Then through his bandage he was conscious of a brilliant light. He was flung violently down and the cloth removed from his face.
Silhouetted against the garish light of an acetylene hurricane lamp in the cheaply furnished living-room of a seaside bungalow, Clubfoot stood before him. A hideous tweed cap pulled down until it rested on the tips of his large projecting ears lent him a horribly grotesque appearance. He looked like a great ape dressed in man’s clothes. Mary Brewster, trussed up even as Desmond was, reclined in a chair. She had lost her hat and her soft brown hair was disordered by the wind. Her small face, pale and piquant, was enigmatic in its absolute serenity.
“He has not got the jewels, either, Herr Doktor!” said a voice.
Desmond could not turn to see the speaker. He glanced down at the pocket of his overcoat where the packet had been. The parcel had vanished. It had certainly been there when they had set out to walk to the bungalow. Had that rascally pilot stolen it? It didn’t matter much now what had become of it.
Clubfoot snarled out an order in German. Rough hands brutally searched the Englishman’s clothes. Clubfoot looked on impassively.
“Nothing!” reported the voice.
“It must be there!” thundered Grundt, “unless one of you has stolen it.”
“The Herr Doktor was himself present when we seized the Englishman,” the voice protested. “The Herr Doktor knows that nothing was found.”
“Ungag them!” ordered Clubfoot. “And clear out! Warn the pilot to have the machine ready for instant departure!”
The order was obeyed, a door was softly closed, and Desmond nerved himself to face what he divined was to be the crucial ordeal of his career. Never had he been in so tight a place. It wanted hours to daylight, and he was bound and helpless in a lonely district in the hands of a ruthless and remorseless enemy.
“A false trail, eh?” said Grundt slowly, his nostrils twitching ominously. “You’d play tricks with me, would you, you dog? Do you know what I’m going to do with you, Okewood? I’m going to kill you, yes, and the girl as well!”
Desmond felt his throat grow dry. “Not the girl,” he said in a low voice. “She’s not even of the Service, Grundt!”
“It shall be a lesson to her to mind the company she keeps!” said Grundt grimly, and produced an automatic from his pocket. He bent to examine the magazine. Slowly he raised the pistol.
Then the girl spoke. “I shouldn’t do anything hasty!” she said. “Kill us and your career is at an end. You speak of retiring voluntarily. One shot and your retirement will be compulsory. And Stauber takes your place!”
Clubfoot recoiled. “Stauber!” he muttered, frowning.
“You’ve made a mess of things in England, Grundt,” the girl continued serenely. “Your employers, the big industrialists, granted you this last chance. It rests with you whether you give your employers your own version of this affair, or whether they take it from the English newspapers. Do you understand me?”
Clubfoot stared at her like a man hypnotized.
In the same business-like manner Mary Brewster proceeded: “Kill us and there’ll be such a rumpus that the echoes of it are bound to reach Germany. You can’t suppress murder in England, Grundt. You’ve missed your chance of getting the jewels, and what you’ve got to do now is to put up the best explanation you can. I know that you have the reputation of being the man that commands success. If you touch us, that reputation is gone forever, for, you can take it from me, the whole story, the true story, will then come out and you’ll be saddled with the greatest failure of your career. And your rival, Stauber, gets your job . . .”
“That Schafskopf!” muttered Grundt. He seemed half dazed by the vigour of the girl’s onslaught. Then, “What have you done with the jewels?” he roared suddenly, recovering himself.
“They’re out of your reach!” said Mary Brewster.
“But you’re not!” snarled Clubfoot. “And you shall tell me where they are. Herr Gott! You’re not the first woman whose tongue I’ve loosened!”
But it seemed to Desmond that, for all his bluster, much of Clubfoot’s wonted assurance had disappeared.
The girl never flinched. “Make the best of a bad job, Grundt,” she said. “Leave things as they are and return to Germany and you will hear no word from us to dispute or disprove any story you like to tell those who sent you. I repeat: You can kill us, you can torture us, but you’ll never recover the jewels. Make up your mind to that and go—while you can!”
The hairy hand that clutched the pistol faltered and slowly dropped to the cripple’s side. Of a sudden he seemed to have grown older. For a full minute he stood and glowered at Desmond—the girl he ignored. As the two men faced each other, it seemed to the Englishman as though the scroll of the years were unrolled and that, like him, Grundt was telling over in his mind the many bouts which these two had fought out between them. Then slowly, listlessly, the great hand went up and he thrust the Browning into his breast pocket.
“I told your Chief, Okewood,” he said in his deep, stern voice, “that this would be my last case. Though he has taken this trick, I think I may let my decision stand. But tell him this from me—that, though he has gained this trick, he has not won the game. The cards have been against me throughout. I have played a losing hand, dealt me by the blinded, besotted fools”—his voice hissed with anger—“who, in overthrowing my master, destroyed our country. But do not forget that in politics nothing is stable, that the enemies of to-day may be the friends of to-morrow, and vice versa, Okewood—vice versa!”
He broke off, and for an instant the dark, expressive eyes rested on the young man’s face.
“Do not fall into the error of believing that I am grown sentimental in my old age, my young friend,” he resumed. “I have always been a Realpolitiker, and in this instance I have bowed my head to the unanswerable logic of your companion just as in different circumstances, should my interest, or the interest of those I serve, have required it, I should have had no hesitation in putting the pair of you to death. Your luck is in to-night, Herr Major. You can tell your Chief that you owe your life to a woman’s tongue!”
On that he turned and left them, and limped, a lonely defiant figure, to the door, where the night received him and swallowed him up.
“My dear,” cried Desmond when the door had closed behind him, “you’re a marvel! In all the years I’ve known him such a thing has never happened before. You beat him fair and square! It was like a miracle the way you laid him low! How on earth did you come to think of it?”
“The man’s a mass of vanity like the rest of you,” little Miss Brewster ejaculated scornfully. “A little knowledge, a little intuition, a little bluff”—she smiled rather wanly. “You men take each other too seriously, anyway . . .”
“But what has become of the chamois leather packet with the jewels?” demanded Desmond.
“It is in a rabbit-hole by that German aeroplane,” said Miss Brewster. “When you would not heed my warning about that odious-looking pilot, I took the packet out of your overcoat pocket—I thought the jewels would be safer with me than with you. And as that man attacked you from behind, I let the packet slide into a rabbit-hole at my feet and they saw nothing in the dark. It seemed to me it was time I took charge. They’ll never find that packet in the dark. But I know the spot, and when it’s light and we’re free, we’ll . . .”
Her head drooped suddenly forward. She had fainted. Out of the night resounded, loud and challenging, the roar of propellers . . .
At noon next day the Chief received Desmond Okewood and Mary Brewster. They found Francis Okewood in the office with a grey-haired man of distinguished appearance who was in the last stage of restless anxiety. It was to him that the Chief, having received it from the hands of Mary Brewster, presented the chamois leather packet sodden with damp and stained with Kentish marl. With trembling hands he examined the seal, and, having found it intact, muttered a broken phrase of thanks and fairly bolted from the room, carrying the packet under his arm. The Chief shook his head and laughed.
“Cabinet Ministers have great responsibilities,” he remarked, “only they are too fond of shoving them off on other people’s shoulders. And now, Miss Brewster, to hear your story.”
But Mary Brewster, who had faced The Man with the Clubfoot unabashed, was tongue-tied in the Chief’s rather forbidding presence. It was Desmond who ultimately narrated their adventures of the night ending with their release at dawn by an astonished fisherman who, on his way to inspect his lobster pots, had answered Desmond’s cries for help.
“They drugged and kidnapped the pilot I had engaged for you,” the Chief said after Miss Brewster had taken her leave, “and slipped their man in his place. I have here a telegram from Brussels about it. There’s been a leakage somewhere which,” he added grimly “is being investigated. In the mean time, thanks to you, Okewood, and to this young lady, with whom I intend to hold some converse regarding her future career, we’re rid, it would seem—for the present at any rate—of Clubfoot and his gang.”
His manner grew reflective. “I wonder,” he said, “when and where we shall see him again!”
A silence fell on the three men. Each felt that a fourth was present, invisible save in the mind’s eye—a vast figure of a man who, with misshapen foot drawn up beside him, leaned on his crutch-stick and glared at them defiance from savage, cruel eyes . . .
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes
- Copyright notice provided as in the original—this e-text is public domain in the country of publication.
- Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and dialect unchanged.
- In the text versions, delimited italics text in _underscores_ (the HTML version reproduces the font form of the printed book.)