“My dear!” she cried joyously, “I’ll be as mute as the silent wife. That’s settled, then? Now I’m going to take a taxi to Curzon Street and change my frock. I’ll be back here with the car in half an hour if you’ll wait for me in the hall.”
The thought of a long drive through the night with such a charming girl as Vera Slade seemed to please Desmond Okewood, for he was smiling happily to himself as he sat in the “Nineveh” lounge awaiting her return.
Within forty minutes the hall porter fetched him out. The purple cabriolet stood throbbing at the door, Vera, in a chic little felt cloche and a blanket coat, at the wheel. It was a damp, raw night, and in the Mile End Road the tram-lines were so greasy that the girl, without hesitation, turned off into a network of side streets.
“I know my way round here,” she explained. “I used to drive a car in these parts during the war.”
But at last she slowed down, peering out of the open window at her side.
“I think I must have missed the turning just now,” she said. “This doesn’t seem to be right!”
In front of them, through the rain-spotted driving-glass, the blank wall of a cul-de-sac was discernible. Vera stopped the car. She was busy with the gears. Suddenly the doors on either side were plucked violently open. Desmond caught a glimpse of the girl torn bodily out from behind the driving-wheel, then a heavy woollen muffler fell over his face from behind and strong arms pulled him backwards.
A voice whispered in his ear:
“Not a sound, or you’re a dead man!”
But he was unable to speak; indeed, he was almost choking with the thick cloth that invisible hands thrust into his mouth. He felt the sharp rasp of cords on his wrists and ankles; his eyes were blindfolded; he was raised up; for an instant the raw night air struck chill on his cheek, then he was thrown down unceremoniously into another car, which immediately began to move.
For the best part of an hour, so it seemed to him, the journey lasted. The frequent changing of gears and the many stops told him that they were going through traffic. It meant, therefore, that they had returned to London. Then came a halt longer than the rest. He heard the car door open; he was once more lifted and carried upstairs, or so he judged by the laboured breathing of his unseen bearers. He heard a key turn in a lock; he was dropped in a chair. Then the gag was pulled out of his mouth and the bandage removed from his eyes.
Before him, at a low desk, The Man with the Clubfoot was sitting.
CHAPTER III
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!”
CHAPTER IV
THE STRANGE EXPERIENCE OF MISS PATRICIA MAXWELL
Desmond and Francis Okewood faced each other across the table in the snug living-room of Desmond’s little service flat in Saint James’s. The curtains were drawn, for it was five o’clock of a winter evening; and the tantalus, siphon, and glasses which filled the tray between them suggested that the two brothers were prepared to celebrate, in their peculiar fashion, the rites of the hour. However, a tea-wagon, appropriately decked out, that stood near the window, indicated that a visitor of less masculine tastes was expected.
“Well,” remarked Desmond, resuming his train of thought which he had interrupted to light a cigarette, “if old Clubfoot, as you say, has any money, I’d like to know where he gets it from, that’s all!”
Francis grunted. “He’s got it all right, don’t worry,” he retorted, “as Patricia Maxwell will tell you in a minute . . .”
“Provided she hasn’t forgotten the appointment,” said Desmond, looking at the clock.
“She’ll be here to the tick,” his brother replied, “unless she has altered from what she used to be when I knew her in the States!”
“A friend of Monica’s, didn’t you say she was?”
(Monica was Francis Okewood’s American wife.)
Francis nodded. “They went to the same school in America. We met her again last year in California. That’s why she came to me with this extraordinary story of hers. But here she is, I think!”
Old Batts, the valet of the flats, appeared at the door.
“Miss Maxwell!” he announced.
Patricia Maxwell was of that not uncommon type of American girl who in the daytime looks as though she had stepped out of the current number of a fashion paper, and in the evening as though she would appear in the forthcoming issue. From the crown of her little brown hat to the sole of her neatly shod foot she was absolutely flawless, perfectly coiffed, perfectly dressed, perfectly gloved, perfectly shod. An orphan, her more than comfortable means enabled her, through frequent visits to Europe, to appreciate her country to the full, besides permitting her to admit with impunity her real age which was on the right side of thirty. Her little London house, within a stone’s throw of the Park, was, like herself, a gem of good taste. She knew everybody and liked almost everybody, and everybody liked her.
“So this is the famous brother?” she said when Francis introduced Desmond. “If you only knew how perfectly thrilled I am to meet you two together! But you’ll have to promise not to laugh at my story, Major Okewood! I dare say it’ll seem just silly to you!”
“On the contrary, Miss Maxwell,” Desmond answered with his rather languid air, “I am honestly quite extraordinarily curious to hear it. Believe me, a yarn that’ll interest this brother of mine must be something well out of the ordinary!”
And over the tea-cups in that tranquil room, while outside the cars and taxis purred and hooted up and down the slope of Saint James’s Street, she told her story. Long before she had done, Desmond, nursing his knee, his eyes fixed on the speaker’s face, had let his cigarette go out as it dangled from his lips.
“I expect your brother has told you,” she said, “that I’m a collector of enamels. I guess it’s a kind of hobby of mine. Every time a special piece comes up for sale in London or Paris or Vienna, one of the dealers is pretty sure to notify me, and if it’s any way possible, I go along and see it.
“Well, the other day a dealer friend of mine called me on the ’phone and told me that a Russian ikon—you know, one of these sacred pictures you see in Russian homes and churches—was to be sold at Blackie’s. It was a beautiful piece, he said, with the figures of the Madonna and Child in green-and-blue enamel under a silver sheeting—probably twelfth or thirteenth century work. He thought it would fetch under a hundred pounds and wanted to bid for me. But I like auctions and I said I’d go myself. I went into Blackie’s the day before the sale and fell in love with the ikon at once. It was quite small, not above about nine inches by six, I guess, and heavy for its size, the silver covering cut out so as to show the enamel figures underneath—you know the way it is—black with age.
“Well, yesterday was the day of the sale, and Süsslein, my little dealer, went along with me. The ikon was part of the collection of some Russian Count—I forget the name—one of the émigrés from the Russian Revolution who had served with Denikin against the Bolsheviks. We sat there all through the afternoon and by the time the ikon came up the hall was three-quarters empty.
“One of the dealers started the bidding at ten guineas, and between three or four of us we ran it up to seventy-five. Then the others began to drop out, and by the time we’d got to a hundred there were only three of us left—Harris, who buys for Lord Boraston, me, and a funny-looking little runt of a man with a grey chin-beard and spectacles. He wasn’t one of the ordinary dealers, so I sent Süsslein to find out just who he was. When he came back he whispered to me he was a man called Achille Saumergue, who was believed to be a Frenchman. Nobody had ever seen him before.
“At two hundred guineas we topped Harris’s limit, and he passed away, leaving me and old Saumergue to it. He and I kept on quietly tossing the ball to and fro until—I’m cutting this all short, you know—I brought him up all standing with an advance of fifty guineas on his three hundred and fifty. I jumped the price up a bit because Hermann, the auctioneer, who’s an old friend of mine, kept looking at the clock, and I knew the poor man was dying to shut down and go home.
“Then old Saumergue asked if he might telephone—I suppose he’d reached his limit. As he went out, I noticed that Süsslein went after him. He’s pretty slick, and I guessed he meant to pick up what he could outside the telephone box.
“But, my gracious! in two minutes my little friend was back in no end of a way. Why, the man was so white I thought he was ill! He started telling me a long story about old Saumergue buying in the ikon for some Russian family where it was an heirloom, that it was really a rather inferior specimen, and a lot of stuff like that. That’s the line of talk dealers always hand out when they want to shoo you off a piece.
“But it didn’t go any with me, Major Okewood. I wanted that little old ikon, and I meant to have it. But do you think what I wanted mattered? Say, for about five minutes that little Jew never let up knocking that holy picture, saying the price was ridiculous, and how I must be plumb crazy to bid four hundred guineas for a thing that wasn’t worth above forty!
“As Hermann picked up his hammer again, I just waved the dealer aside. That old skate and I went at it once more. Everybody in the place was crowded round us now, sort of in two camps—you know the way it is—and it was so quiet you could almost hear a pin drop, I guess.
“‘May I say four hundred and fifty guineas? It’s a lovely piece,’ Hermann calls out in his soft voice, and the old man nods. He was standing up, very serious, blinking through his spectacles, but I could see his hands shaking with excitement.
“‘Five hundred!’ I said from my place just under the desk—they had given me a Heppelwhite chair from the Zossenberg sale next week to sit in.
“‘And twenty-five!’ says the old man with a kind of gasp.
“‘Fifty?’ asks Hermann, looking at me. I nodded.
“Süsslein pulled my sleeve. ‘Let him have the ikon!’ he whispered. ‘It don’t matter any to you, a common old thing like that! For God’s sake, let him have it, Miss Maxwell!’
“I shook my head.
“‘Six hundred!’ I said.
“‘Any advance on six hundred?’ asks Hermann, and brings his hammer down pretty sharply. ‘Six hundred guineas I’m bid. For the first time! It’s getting late, and we all want to go home, I’m sure. For the second time . . .’
“‘Seven hundred!’ says the old Frenchman faintly.
“All this time Süsslein was whispering in my ear. The man was all worked up. ‘You’ve got to let him have it,’ he kept on saying. ‘Take my advice, Miss Maxwell, and let the thing be. It’ll bring you no luck! Believe me, I know what I’m saying!’ His voice was shaking and his eyes were starting out of his head.
“But I meant to have that ikon, though, by this, the price was ’way beyond my figure. The end came quick.
“‘Shall we say eight hundred?’ asks Hermann.
“I nodded. With that the old man turned on his heel and walked straight out of the place. The ikon was mine.
“Süsslein didn’t say any more. He left me there. He seemed a changed man. And I took the ikon home. As I told Süsslein, I had it all planned out where I was going to hang it in the little space between the panels over the desk in my boudoir.
“This morning, before I was up, Süsslein was round at the house. He said he wanted to speak to me urgently. He had come, he told me, on behalf of a client to offer me a thousand pounds for the ikon. I told him I wasn’t selling. He asked me what I would take. I told him I didn’t intend to part with my treasure.
“‘My client,’ he said, ‘is most anxious, for family reasons, to acquire the ikon,’ and he offered me two thousand guineas, and then three.
“By this time I was getting pretty peeved, and I told Süsslein so. ‘If your client can prove to my satisfaction,’ I told him, ‘that this ikon really is an heirloom in his family, it’s a different matter. At present it looks to me as though you and he had realized too late that I had got on to something pretty good. I’m not selling, and you can tell your client so!’ And with that I sent him about his business.
“I had a lot of trouble to get rid of him. Like so many dealers, he seemed to think it was all a question of money. He couldn’t realize that I’d never part with anything that went so well with the dull green wainscot of my boudoir unless, of course, they could prove to me that the ikon had been stolen or something of that kind.”
“Your dealer pal didn’t tell you the name of his client?” asked Desmond.
“I asked him, of course, but he said he was not at liberty to reveal it. But it didn’t matter any, for, about an hour later, he arrived in person.”
“The client?”
“Sure. A Russian, a certain Dr. Madjaroff. I was sick and tired of the whole thing, so I told the butler to say I was busy. But he said he’d wait till I was disengaged. So, just to get rid of him, I saw him. My dear, he was the most extraordinary-looking person, a vast man with a great bushy black beard and a clubfoot . . .”
There was a crash from the fender. Desmond Okewood had suddenly dropped the knee he had been hugging and overset the fire irons.
“He spoke in French,” Patricia Maxwell went on. “He said that, through a misunderstanding, Monsieur Saumergue, who had been bidding for him at Blackie’s yesterday, had failed to secure the ikon. ‘But,’ he said, ‘I am prepared to pay handsomely for the mistake. I will now write you my cheque for three thousand five hundred guineas!’ And he actually produced a cheque-book and a fountain pen!
“I told him I didn’t want to sell. But do you think he’d take ‘no’ for an answer? Not on your life! ‘Would I name my own figure?’ he said, and when I stood up and repeated that I meant to keep the ikon and that he was wasting his time, he offered me first five thousand guineas and at last, by stages, six thousand five hundred.
“You know, that man rather frightened me. I’m supposed to be a pretty determined sort of person myself, but never in my life have I run up against such a dominating personality as this Dr. Madjaroff. He was so big and hairy with the vitality of some great animal like a buffalo or . . . or a rhinoceros.
“When I turned down his offer of six thousand five hundred guineas, he bent his dark bushy eyebrows at me.
“‘Miss Maxwell,’ he said, ‘I’ve set my heart on that ikon. You’ve got to let me have it.’
“I told him I was sorry, but it was quite impossible.
“‘I’ve offered you thirty, fifty times its value,’ he returned. ‘Believe me, you will be well advised to accept my offer.’
“‘My mind is made up,’ I replied, and rang to show him the interview was at an end. ‘The ikon is not for sale.’
“Do you know, the queerest change came over that old guy! All his hair seemed to bristle and his eyes just burnt like two hot coals. He raised up his stick—he had a crutch-stick that he walked with—as though to strike me, then turned his back on me and hobbled out of the house. My! I tell you I felt relieved to see him go . . .”
Desmond broke in quickly. “I hope you didn’t leave the ikon hanging up in your house?” he said. His languid air had given way to a brisk and eager manner. His steely blue eyes searched the girl’s face as he spoke.
“Why, no!” said Miss Maxwell. “As a matter of fact, I brought it along to show you!”
So saying she opened her capacious leathern handbag and produced a flat brown paper parcel. Unwrapping it, she drew forth the ikon, which she handed to Desmond.
He bore it quickly to the electric-light bracket by the fire-place and carefully examined it. Once or twice he balanced it in his hand as though appraising the weight.
“Now, why do you suppose,” the American asked, “that this Russian is so dead set on getting hold of this old ikon? It’s beautiful work and all that, of course, but it’s not worth six thousand five hundred guineas or the half or even the quarter of the eight hundred I paid . . .”
But Desmond had turned away and was talking to his brother.
“We want to make sure,” he was saying. “Tell him I’ll come round at once and see him.”
Francis Okewood stepped across to a desk in the corner on which the telephone stood and asked for a number.
“Why,” exclaimed Miss Maxwell, “that’s Süsslein’s number!”
But Francis held up his hand for silence, the telephone receiver to his ear.
“I want to speak to Mr. Süsslein,” he said, and stood listening for a moment.
“I see,” he said presently. “No, I hadn’t heard.”
He hung up the receiver and faced them.
“Süsslein was found dead in his office after lunch!” he said quietly.
“Dead?” exclaimed the American in a shocked voice.
“He had hanged himself,” Francis answered gravely.
“That settles it!” said Desmond, looking up from his study of the ikon. “This means that The Man with the Clubfoot is at his old tricks again!”
CHAPTER V
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.