Meantime, four husky specimens, who looked like farm hands in London for the day, had drawn up in line before the station entrance, teetering somewhat unstably on their heels, and had commenced to regale the man on duty at the door with Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag—a subtle jest which was not appreciated until later. After enduring their immelodious advice for some minutes, the doorkeeper descended the steps and invited the four bards to move on. The man who seemed to be the leader of the troupe failed to understand.
"Move on?" he hiccuped, swaying slightly. "Norra bi'vit hic! Thish—thish, of'cer—thish"—-he tapped the Law solemnly on the thorax—"hic! thish commun'ty singin'. Finesthingin—hic!—England. Go 'way. Don' spoil gai'ty vnations." He turned to his waiting choir. "Nowthnboys—sh-show thish of'cer wotchen hic! do. Now. Al'gether."
Whereon the welkin of Marlborough Street rang with a cacophonous interpretation of Three o'Clock in the Morning, the chronological inaccuracy of which ancient ditty they appeared to perceive, for they made of it an apologetically discordant dirge. After three more unavailing efforts to make them cease their serenade, or to inflict it on another thoroughfare, the door-keeper arrested them, and they were marched into the station still wailing the refrain of that touching ballad Bye Bye, Blackbird.
And now a problem arose. No police station has more than seven cells, and by then all those at Marlborough Street were occupied. Appealed to for instructions, the Divisional Inspector scratched his head, for more than one prisoner cannot be placed in the same cell except during riots. The four songsters, having been roughly searched and charged, were now lined up at one end of the charge room abiding the Inspector's decision on this knotty point, and their persistent warbling was not helpful.
"... When somebaaaady waits for meee
(Shoogar's sweet, saow is sheee),
Baaaye-baaaye, blackburrrd.
Naowone used to laave 'rr understaaand meee,
Naowone knows——"
"SHUT UP!" bellowed the frantic Inspector, whom this ghastly vocalism was rapidly driving to the verge of insanity, and added a virulent commination.
He telephoned to Vine Street, only to learn that the more aristocratic police station was already full. Unwisely, he chose to exercise his own authority without appealing to headquarters.
"... Make maaye bed 'n' laaaight the laaaight,
Aiyull be home late to-naaight,
Blackburrrd, Baaaye-baaaye!"
The lullaby howled on to an appallingly strident conclusion, and the chanticleers, without tarrying for applause, swept on to an ear-splitting prayer that they might be permitted to join their lost loves upon the bonny, bonny banks of Loch Lomond.
"If this doesn't constitute a riot, God knows what does," squealed the Inspector in anguish. "TAKE 'EM AWAY!!"
The four were sent to join their fellow-choristers in the bonny, bonny cells of Marlborough Street. Even that did not end the torment of C Division, for within the next half-hour they accumulated three more psalmists and two men who had endeavoured to capture a policeman's helmet. Towards ten o'clock, a man in a small two-seater car drove down Marlborough Street, turned his car at right angles across the road, and shouted to the constable at the station entrance to stand clear, explaining that he was going to drive right in. He even tried to carry out his threat, and when they went out to him they found that he was very drunk. What was more, he was the only one of the night's captures whom the Divisional Inspector knew by sight.
"You're James Mattock," he said reproachfully. "Jimmy, we thought you'd gone respectable."
Mattock shook his head, staggering a little. There was a fatuous grin on his face.
"James—sh—nothin'!" he protested loudly. "Lis'en. Tell you ... secret. I'm Queen 'f Sheba."
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself—an old man like you," said the Inspector sadly. "Take him away."
With that the influx ceased, and when a humdrum burglar was brought in the Inspector sent him on to Vine Street, feeling that his own preserves were already overstocked. There were now sixteen men divided in between the six vacant cells, and that their lubrication had been thorough was proved by the fact that muffled yelps of carolling still came through the charge room door. It was impossible to subdue the uproar, and the reserve P.C., whose duty it is to make a round of the cells at half-hour intervals, was pleading to be allowed to use chloroform.
About two a.m., when the vociferation was become slightly hoarse and rather less enthusiastic, the reserve constable was making the round when from one of the further cells came a shuddering cry and the thud of a heavy fall. Running down the corridor, the constable found that it came from one of the cells where three men were herded together. One of them lay twitching on the ground, and the other two were watching him helplessly.
"'Ad a fit," one of them muttered; and, seeing the gaoler, added: "Fetch a doctor—Bert 'as these fits. 'Orrible, it is."
It was just at this moment, as far as one can gather, that a powerful lorry drew up by the kerb, almost opposite the station but on the other side of the road, and one of the men descended and lifted the bonnet as though to investigate a breakdown. The constable at the station entrance saw the incident, but thought nothing of it.
The reserve P.C., meanwhile, not knowing what to do, called the relief Inspector, and together they entered the cell.
Both were promptly killed.
The three man who were guarding Mecklen rushed down the passage at the sound of the shots and were faced by the three prisoners—the epileptic having made a miraculous recovery—and threatened with automatic pistols. They were brave men, these three constables. Or else, perhaps, they did not expect the three toughs to shoot. Be that as it may, they continued to advance, and were shot down in cold blood.
The prisoners now moved swiftly. They took the cell keys from the dead bodies and released the other prisoners, all of whom were armed. Already there was a tumult in the charge room, and the sixteen, with Mecklen, burst in upon a dozen or so officers, only two of whom had had the time or forethought to arm themselves. The two died in their tracks before they had time to fire a shot, and the others paused aghast. In another second the seventeen men were streaming across the road to the waiting lorry, the hind-most firing random bullets backwards to discourage pursuit. They piled in, and the lorry moved off, gathering speed, to the accompaniment of a final volley from the escaped prisoners. Before the pursuing constables, who were now armed, could return the fusillade, the lorry had turned a corner and disappeared.
The Flying Squad and all reserves of every Division were called out, and those first on the scene commandeered cars and taxis and dashed off in chase, but the seventeen, with their lorry, got clean away. As has been stated, the P.C. at the door had not taken much notice of the lorry, and its number plates had been so caked with mud as to be indecipherable from across the road, in the dim light. And, standing midway between two street lamps, at night, one big lorry looks very much like another—the doorkeeper was unable even to identify the make with certainty, although he thought it looked like a Rossleigh.
But the most remarkable feature of the crime was its execution. For one thing, it proved that the Alpha Triangle had an unusually accurate knowledge of police station routine. In the first place, ordinary "drunks and disorderlies," being apparently harmless and charged only with minor offences, are not perfunctorily "fanned." As was demonstrated at the subsequent inquiry, it would have been possible for a man not suspected of carrying arms to have concealed a small automatic pistol in a holster strapped to the small of his back, with little risk of it being discovered in a more or less formal search; and in the absence of definite information this theory is the one which is now universally admitted satisfactorily to account for the Triangle's success. Secondly, the locks of the cell doors, and those of the doors leading from the charge room to the cells, can only be opened by a special manipulation of the keys which is a police secret; yet the prisoners had clearly been well instructed in this trick beforehand by someone with an intimate knowledge of that secret, for there was no delay in liberating the occupants of the other cells.
The third curious point was that Mattock was found in his cell efficiently gagged and bound with strips of his own shirt. His explanation that he had been set upon and trussed by the two who shared his confinement, just before the prisoners made their escape, was accepted. Experts declared that he could not possibly have tied himself up so thoroughly, and no one had seen him in the affray; furthermore, the head waiter of the Leroy swore that Mattock had entered the bar late that evening, already more than a trifle "oiled," and had imbibed continuously until closing time. Mattock was fined for being drunk in charge of a motor-car, and was discharged on the other count.
It was a verdict which did not please Inspector Teal, for he could have sworn that the ghost of a wink trembled on Mattock's right eyelid as the clerk left the court.
CHAPTER XVII
BIRDIE RECEIVES ORDERS
"We don't want to lose you," said Mr. Brome carefully, "so we think you ought to go."
His pale blue eyes bored inexorably into Mecklen's. Before that stony stare the gunman's gaze fell, and his truculent protest, that had framed itself instinctively, died unvoiced.
"Aw—guess you're right, Chief," he muttered sheepishly. "But, naow I'm hyar——"
"What is it?"
"Et's thet skirt. Chief, haow c'n I look af-ter thet li'l' one-way sweedie when every goldurned bull in this hyar burg is out gunnin' fer mine? I'll say it ain't no cinch. Arden's too fly, an' he's her lovin' sugar-daddy. I reckon he's gotten every lallapaloozer in this deck skinned a mile."
Snooper regarded him contemptuously.
They were in the gorgeous sitting-room of Joan Sands' Cornwall House flat, and the magnificent furnishings were in strange contrast to the group of men who sat around the table. Snooper Brome was the only one of that down-at-heel and flashy convocation who could by any stretch of imagination be said to fit—despite his vulgarian notions of waistcoat design, he had a certain dignity which carried them off rather well. For all his bulk, he had not much superfluous flesh, and he was anything but gross; his big features were clean cut—with his flowery vest and white hands, and the mane of dank black hair that swept back from his high forehead, he resembled a prosperous exponent of Impressionism.
The others were less favoured. Mecklen, standing by the door twisting a greasy tweed cap in his grimy hands, unshaven and coarse of face, was a repulsive sight. The rest of the men, who sat at the long board over which Brome presided, were divided between the extremes of shabbiness and overdressedness.
"Are you getting panic too?" demanded Snooper, grittily speculative.
"Yew said a canful," agreed Mecklen complacently. "Let me give Arden his fer a start, an' then I'll tackle thet Jane—but while thet perambulatin' hunk of sudden death's still millin' round, this chile's gonna stick close home. Tell yuh what, Chief, ef yew'll give the word I'll glom the first freight fer Ardensville, an' when I git home they'll be liftin' him inter his Kingdom-Come-box wit' a derrick, he'll be thet leaded up. An' af-ter thet, I'll go chase yore Jane."
"What is the answer to that?" asked Snooper, turning to Morini.
Gat looked at his friend.
"The answer, Lew, is," he said, "when Hell snows over. Big Chief Triangle wants to save that little baby boy, and what Big Chief Triangle says goes."
Mr. Brome extracted a cigar from a pocket of his flamboyant waistcoat and cut the tip from it with a gold pen-knife. Then he looked up at Mecklen.
"You heard?"
"I heard, Chief, but what I wanna say is——"
"What you're going to do, is—go home, Lew," remarked Eddie sharply. "Go home, and stick close home like you said you were going to. When I want you I'll send for you. Go to Buckingham Gate, and if I hear of you showing your nose outside again unless I give the word—it won't be only the bulls who'll be out gunning for yours. Beat it!"
Mecklen glared. He was not a man of equable temper, and the wintry scorn of Snooper's tone, no less than the consciousness of mastery that literally crackled about the words, got right up under Mecklen's pachydermis and rasped on his vanity. He started forward with a torrid word on his lips and brazen defiance in his mien.
"Yew see hyar..."
Brome did nothing, said nothing. He was lighting his cigar, and he never even looked up. His superiority wrapped him round like a sheet of defensive fire. It was a way of meeting rebellion which Mecklen had never encountered before, and before the Unknown the fear of the brute killer roused. If Snooper had met ferocity with ferocity, if his right hand had dropped the match it held and slid down towards his hip, the Alpha Triangle might have been smithereened at that instant. It was a peril the leaders of the Triangle faced daily—hourly—from minute to minute. Under them were killers, ruthless and inhuman tigers, with the ungovernable passions of the wild beasts; and these a mere handful of men essayed to rule and direct. They did it by setting themselves aloof, enveloping themselves in an aura of superiority, and before their caustic hauteur their hired butchers shrank back in perplexity. Snooper, calm and self-assured, dealt with Lew Mecklen in just that fashion. He ignored him. He appeared to have forgotten his existence, and certainly he gave no sign of considering him seriously. The gunman's words trailed away. He was up against something he couldn't understand, and the ingrained instinct of self-preservation flared a red danger signal before his eyes.
"Guess yew said it, boss," he muttered angrily.
Snooper did not look up until the door had closed behind the baffled Lew. And when he spoke he made no mention of the incident; but its effect was not lost on his audience. Only Morini was not awed—but then, Gat Morini was nearly as intelligent as Snooper himself.
"The bomb goes off in about two hours," said Mr. Brome. "So keep clear of Piccadilly Circus on your way home. It'll be the crowning stroke—and the beauty of it is that we can go on dealing out crowning strokes for weeks. We've fought off the police, we've rescued prisoners twice, and we're killing those we've threatened as well. At midnight we shall have caused an explosion which will startle the country."
He stopped, intent on the vision of power that retrospection gave him. The others, only half understanding, waited for him to speak again.
"Arden must go—and the girl. Those are the Apex's orders. I'll arrange that to-morrow—they're dangerous."
He tugged at the ornate fob which graced the southwest of his abdomen, and brought into view a gold repeater.
"The Triangle's about due to speak to you himself. I've heard all he's got to say, and I've got some work to do to-night, so I'll move off. I'll be back later. Morini can fix the telephone."
He departed, and Morini rose to obey.
The telephone stood on a small corner table. Morini took up the instrument and pulled out the flex from the wall plug into which it fitted. He carried it over to a side shelf and brought back instead a polished box lidded with ebonite, on the surface of which was an engraved dial and two frosted bulbs. From the centre protruded the curved horn of a loud-speaker. He plugged the terminals of a piece of flex, which ran from the rear of the box, into the slots at the end of the permanent telephone wiring, and connected two other wires between the amplifier and an accumulator which he fetched from a cupboard. The ordinary installation had now been converted into a loud-speaking telephone, and the flat nickelled button of a small but supersensitive microphone let into the front of the amplifier case acted as the receptive part of the instrument.
Then the men sat round the table, conversing desultorily, to await the voice of their leader. It is a good example of the cautious foresight of the Apex, that orders which, if they were definitely traced to him, would be of great assistance to the Public Prosecutor, were invariably given by a palpably disguised voice speaking to his subordinates from none knew where.
Presently the loud-speaker broke into that sizzling mumble which denotes the opening of the circuit, and a moment later it spoke, with the muffled harshness that is inseparable from electrically transmitted speech.
"Who is there?"
They gave their names, one by one, and the numbers they held in the organisation. There followed a pause, as though the speaker was checking the list. Then:
"To the sixteen men who accomplished the rescue of Mecklen"—here followed their names, read twice over—"a bonus of one hundred pounds per man. It will be paid in a few days by Brome. I add my congratulations on the efficiency with which the man[oe]uvre was carried out."
A second interval, while the loud-speaker hissed quietly.
"Arden must be taken to-morrow. Brome has all instructions. The following will report to him at Church Street, Kensington, at eight a.m. to-morrow, to receive their orders: Lanzani, Sacco, Coles, Horring, Manuelo, Liebessohn. I'll repeat that. Church Street, Kensington, eight to-morrow morning: Lanzani, Sacco, Coles, Horring, Manuelo, Liebessohn. Arden will be taken to Number Two. As soon as that has been done, the same men will be instructed how to proceed with the removal of Hawthorne. Is that perfectly clear, Lanzani—Sacco—Coles?——"
One by one the six answered in the affirmative, and then there was another silence.
"Sands!"
Birdie looked up with a start.
"Yessir?"
"Go to the cupboard between the windows. Are you there? Right. Open it. Inside you will find a small copper vessel. Take it out—and handle it carefully, because if you dropped it Cornwall House would be seriously damaged. Got it?"
Birdie, after a moment's hesitation, had gingerly removed a little calorimeter, and was holding it as far away from his body as possible. He passed his tongue across his lips nervously.
"Yessir," he croaked.
"You have nothing to be afraid of as long as you're careful," the Voice went on. "I have chosen you specially on account of your delicate fingers—-I shouldn't trust any of the others to move that stuff with safety. Don't be scared. If you tremble it may slip out of your hand. Now look at it. There's a tiny bottle inside, isn't there, and the space between the bottle and the calorimeter is filled with chipped ice? Good. I'll tell you why that is. That phial contains the highest explosive known to science, but by a special process it has been made less dangerous than it is in the ordinary way. The only things that will detonate it now are heat—that is the reason for the ice—or a severe shock, such as you might give it if you let it fall. Is that clear?"
"Yessir."
"Very well. You know the Daily Record offices?"
"Yessir."
"You have made yourself familiar with the appearance of John Cardan, the editor, as you were told to—you are sure you can recognise him?"
"Yessir."
"Excellent. Then you will go at once to Ludgate Circus, taking a ninety-six 'bus, and wait outside the office. Take the calorimeter with you. He leaves the office between half-past eleven and midnight. When he comes out, take the little bottle out of the ice, and slip it into his pocket. Then walk quietly away—the explosive will take a little time to warm, and that'll give you as long as you need to get out of range without attracting attention. Have you got hold of all that?"
"Yessir."
"You can keep the stuff in your pocket—the ice will make it perfectly safe unless you should happen to fall down. Now please tell me exactly what you are going to do."
Birdie licked his lips again, and then recited his orders haltingly. Once or twice he was pulled up, and he was not allowed to go until he had mastered every detail. At last the rehearsal seemed to satisfy the Voice, and he was dismissed. He put the calorimeter with its deadly burden into his jacket pocket, keeping his fingers round it to prevent the ice spilling, and shuffled to the door, white-faced and shaking.
"So long, mates," he chattered with a rickety attempt at jauntiness. "See you all later...."
Then he was gone.
"Martinez will drive Morini down to the Embankment immediately," continued the Voice. "You will try to remove Inspector Teal. Morini will shoot, and Martinez will then drive back to Buckingham Gate via Blackfriars Bridge and Road, Lambeth Road, Lambeth High Street, Broad Street, Prince's Road, Kennington Street, Upper Kennington Lane, Vauxhall Bridge, Grosvenor Road, Chelsea Bridge Road. Go through Hammersmith, circle back via Chiswick, go north through Hampstead, and get to Buckingham Gate by way of Tottenham Court Road, Charing Cross Road, and the Mall. I'll repeat that. Take down the important points on a scrap of paper. Ready? Blackfriars Bridge, Lambeth, Vauxhall Bridge, Chelsea, Hammersmith, Cheswick, Hampstead, Tottenham Court Road. Right. One other thing. Wait till you get Teal alone. If he comes out with Arden, follow and watch your chance. The usual bonuses will be..."
"Teal! Isn't radio wonderful!" murmured a flippant voice.
Every man in the room spun round. With their backs to the door, they had been so absorbed in the words of their Chief that they had never noticed the faint creak of the opening door, nor the two soft paces that had brought Storm and Teal into their presence.
They jerked round as though hot needles had been run into them, half rising from their seats, with groping amazement in their faces. The microphone had proved its utility, and the loud-speaker had suddenly gone dead. The men who had been listening to it stood rooted to the ground, petrified, while they strove to whip their minds into grasping the situation. Storm watched them, smiling, a cigarette between his lips, his hands deep in his pockets. Beside him, the torpid avoirdupois of Mr. Teal leaned against the door, expressionless of face, motionless except for the intermittent oscillation of his inferior maxilla.
Storm's lazy grey eyes swept their blank faces.
"I hope we don't intrude!" he drawled politely.
CHAPTER XVIII
PESSIMISM OF MR. TEAL
Morini was the first to recover his equilibrium. He swept a deep bow.
"You're welcome," he said. "Come right in—how did you get in, by the way?"
"The door was open," said Storm. "So, as we meant to pay you a call, we thought we wouldn't put you to the trouble of locking and bolting it."
Teal was inspecting with interest the playing cards and markers that lay on the table.
"What's the game?" he asked inquisitorially, addressing the redoubtable Horring; but that holdup expert was less suave than his confrère.
"I'd like to know the meaning of this intrusion," he broke out heatedly. "I don't know what sort of a country you call this, if a few friends can't get together for a round of cribbage without policemen——"
Teal cut short his protest with one raised reproving hand.
"I shan't argue," he stated mildly. "I suppose -age does enter into it."
He could be subtle on occasions, could Mr. Teal.
Storm wandered over to the loud-speaking telephone and examined it curiously. Eventually he traced the flex which contacted with the telephone plug, and disconnected it. He looked round for the telephone proper, and, locating it, fetched it over and connected it up.
"2 LO seems to have closed down," he remarked. "A pity—I love listening in!"
He looked at Morini with a quizzical smile, as though expecting the obvious rejoinder to come from that quarter; but, if this was his hope, he was disappointed. Then he lifted the receiver and waited with it held to his ear.
"Exchange? ... I've just been called, and I think we've been cut off. Can you tell me where the ring came from? ... What's that? ... Are you stone-cold certain? ... Well, pass me on to Supervisor ... Supervisor? ... I'm Captain Arden of Criminal Investigation Department. I want you to make absolutely certain whether any call has been put through to this number during the last hour...." There was a longer delay, and then he got his answer. "Thanks very much. Good-bye."
He turned his back to the table and lounged against it, his eyes narrowing.
"I'm told," he said, "that this number hasn't been called since this morning. Broadcasting with an ordinary telephone is a joke I'm not going to buy!"
Their dumbfounded faces were his answer. It was as clear as anything ever has been that they were no more able to account for the facts than he was. Even Morini's composure suffered a jar, and the pucker that appeared between his eyebrows indicated that he was endeavouring to reach an explanation.
Storm examined the wall plug, and found two insulated wires running down the wainscot and stretching along the floor in the groove between the ceil and the carpet. They led him halfway round the room and then right-angled round the frame of a door. Trying the handle, Storm found that it was locked.
"I'll have the key, please," he requested.
"We haven't got it." It was Morini who made the disclaimer. In the absence of any acknowledged leader, he automatically answered for all.
"Explain!" Storm rapped back.
Morini shrugged.
"You want a whole lot of help, Captain," he gibed. "I thought you were Mother's Infant Prodigy. If you don't know, I'll tell you that door opens into a flat that's really part of this one, but the dame who lives there's gotten very proper notions about ladyhood, and we poor common folks aren't allowed to go in. She's just the obliging owner who lets us use this room to talk in—there's two entrances, and she keeps her own one private."
"What name?"
"Ask me again, Doc. We've never seen her."
Storm reached to his hip and took out a compact wallet from which he selected a skeleton key of a type appropriate to the make of lock. He was successful at the first attempt, and the door creaked open on unoiled hinges.
"Look after these gay birds, Teal," he ordered, and passed into the other flat.
He found himself in a tastefully furnished sitting-room in the decoration of which the work of a woman's hand was evident. He only stopped to glance behind and under the chesterfield, and then went through the door which faced him. He arrived in a light airy double bedroom, and here again the signs of feminine habitation were not lacking; but this, too, was empty, though he peered under the bed and tentatively prodded the dresses which hung in the wardrobe in quest of a cached fugitive. He moved on to the bathroom, but discovered no one lurking there.
After that futile search he recollected the telephone wire, and went back to trace it. It ran around the sitting-room and disappeared over the sill of a window. Leaning out, he saw that it hitched over a common porcelain insulator—from which it swept off to join the junction of other telephone wires. The result dissatisfied him, and he tracked the wire a second time, and on this journey he found that it was tapped very neatly, the secondary wires running under the carpet out of sight. Without compunction he shifted all the furniture which stood in the way, and rolled back the rugs, disclosing twin threads that crossed the floor. Following them up, he trailed them to a bookcase, and saw that they vanished into a hole trimly bored in the base.
He stood up and scrutinised the shelves. One row of leather-bound volumes struck him as being rather too good to be true, and he essayed to open the glass-fronted door in order to make a closer study, but found that it was fastened. Once again he had recourse to his wallet, and after a few minutes' work with a small steel instrument he had the case open. He now found that the row of books was simply a range of dummy backs, which he could pull wide like a second door, revealing a small cupboard. Within he brought to light what he had more or less expected—a phone transmitter mounted on a bracket, and a pair of radio headphones. These he removed, and then pushed back the secret door and, after some difficulty, relocked the case over it. The rest would keep; and he left the instruments on a chair and went back into the larger sitting-room, closing the partition door behind him.
"What're we going to do with these people?" he interrogated the detective, and Teal spread out his hands.
"Suspected of conspiracy—Vine Street pro tem. We didn't hear much of that broadcast sermon, but we did hear somebody telling 'em to express me to a better world," he added with grim amusement.
Morini's hand went to his hip, and in answer to that movement Teal shifted something in his hand so that the light caught it. He did not seem to have stirred a fraction—his jaw still vacillated mechanically, and his tired eyes showed little sign of animation. But the fact remained that a wicked-looking Webley had flown into his right hand and was even then focused upon the gunman.
To his concealed surprise, Morini smiled, and brought up his hand with nothing in it more lethal than a cigarette-case.
"You're too suspicious, officer," Gat observed. "Shooting you with Captain Arden for a witness would be foolish. No. I was just about to point out that police stations and Flying Squad vans haven't exactly proved to be the real original cat's pyjamas so far, have they?"
Storm conferred aside with the detective.
"Would conspiracy to murder be a sound charge?"
"Granted it only gets two of 'em—you've got special powers, haven't you?"
"I doubt if my special powers'd be superior to a writ of habeas corpus" Storm objected.
Teal shrugged.
"It's worth trying," he said. "The only thing is, we'd have to send 'em to Pentonville right away—stations don't seem to hold 'em. Even if we put 'em in stir straight off, I shouldn't bet on their staying put—the Triangle might turn up with an amateur Army Corps and besiege the jail," he added morosely, and Storm laughed.
"Pollyanna—you little ray of sunshine—shut up!"
The Triangle menace was festering to a head, and for all the lightness of his tone he knew it. It was the season for striking swift blows, here, there, and everywhere. From then onwards the gang must be attacked and raided wherever and whenever the dimmest spook of half an opportunity showed its tail. The risk of lowering police prestige still further by giving the Triangle the chance to make yet another daring coup must be taken. The Triangle must be set on the run, and kept there—hazed, harassed and bulldozed into confusion, till they didn't know whether they were coming or going.
Storm telephoned the prison and ordered a van with double escort to be sent immediately. It would take some time to arrive, and he followed the order with a call to Vine Street asking for a dozen men to guard the prisoners meantime. He had seen the microphone attached to the loud speaker. Already the Big Triangle knew of his presence, and he did not put it above the capabilities of that stupendous brain to organise a lightning sortie to rescue their captives before a conveyance could reach Cornwall House.
"Put your hands high over your heads and face along that wall," he commanded the prisoners, and they obeyed without demur.
Their position did not seem to trouble them at all, and this earnest of their confidence in the Apex was somewhat disquieting. Storm and the detective watched them, cat-eyed, until the men from Vine Street arrived. Then the captives were searched, and Storm sat down to smoke a cigarette while he waited for the prison van. It came surprisingly quickly. The prisoners were rushed down the stairs into the street, loaded into the Maria, and three of the Vine Street plain-clothes men crammed in on top of them to reinforce the warders. All the captives were handcuffed together in a string and the end handcuffs were locked over staples on the inside of the van.
"They'll be blistering miracles if they get out of that mess!" said Storm, watching the red tail-light speed down Piccadilly.
After that the other detectives were dismissed, and Storm and Teal returned to make a more thorough search of the inner flat. They stopped en route to look over the assembly room, and it was while they were there that Storm distinctly heard the sound of a door closing in the next flat.
Teal's ears intercepted the dull click at the same time, and the two jumped for the partition door. The sitting-room was empty, but in that cursory glance round Storm saw that the headpieces and transmitter he had left on a chair had vanished. He jerked open the bedroom door and ran through into the bathroom, but there was no one to be seen. And then a second door slammed, and he whipped round with a frown. Almost at once he grasped his mistake.
"Je-rusalem—the hall!" he snapped, and led the way back through the sitting-room.
Besides the door into the bedroom there was another which he had missed, masked behind a heavy curtain. He flung it open and entered a tiled lobby furnished only with a hat-stand and an occasional table. Opening the farther door, he found himself in the corridor, and sprinted for the stairs.
He overtook nobody in his headlong descent, and he saw nobody he recognised in the street. The porter's cubicle at the entrance was empty, and while Storm stroked his chin in perplexity that worthy toiler came across the road singing a little tune.
"I run out of fags," he replied to Storm's brisk query. "I just went over to a slot machine up the street. No, not five minutes ago—shortly after all those men came out."
"Have you seen any other guys come out or go in?" asked Storm, and the man shook his head.
Kit climbed the stairs again with a frown, and found Teal ruminating torpidly in the bedroom. The detective was dangling a flimsy article of feminine underwear in one of his vast paws.
"This is embroidered 'J.S.'," he said. "Sounds like my old friend Joan to me."
Storm scowled.
"D'you know we're a couple of dyed-in-the-wool mutts?" he demanded. "I'm willing to bet the Big Triangle was lying doggo in the vestibule all the time I was making that first search—I never spotted the hall. And when I went back to the big room he must have padded back and listened to everything we said.... God's Glory!"
The oath cracked out like the lash of a stock-whip, and Teal's eyes opened wide at the sibilant intensity of it.
Storm had picked up a brass candlestick, and he smashed it into the glass front of one of the compartments of the bookcase. He wrenched Open the dummy line of books, and then stepped back with his lips lifting from his white teeth.
The headphones and mouthpiece were back in their places, connected up.
"Great Thor in hell!" he breathed.
In an instant he was back to the outer sitting-room. He grabbed up the telephone and gave a number even as Teal, moving with astonishing speed, arrived behind him.
"Hullo," snapped Arden. "Hullo ... Pentonville? ... How long have you been on duty? ... Right. Then what time did you get my order for the prison van? ... I see." Storm's voice suddenly became gentle. "You're absolutely certain no call could have come through and been taken by someone else? ... Oh—about half an hour ago.... Arden, Central Office, five-double-seven—you poor fish. Why not think of asking before? ... Well, get me the Governor.... My dear good soul, I don't care if he's asleep—I don't care if he'll be furious—I don't care if he's dying! Get—me—the—Governor.... Thank you."
A lengthy pause, and then a querulous growl:
"Yes?"
"Colonel Dayne?"
The affirmative was unprintable.
"I called you up about half an hour ago and ordered your van to Cornwall House. A van came, but apparently it was a fake. I want you to send a man down to your garage and find out if your van is there."
Storm got his answer in about ten minutes, and then he set down the receiver and whistled musically, strolling up and down the room. The expression on his face made it unnecessary for Mr. Teal to ask any questions.
The Triangle had scored again, right under their noses. The fake van must have been waiting for just such an emergency, and the Apex had had all the odds in his favour—he had heard Storm and Teal come, heard their plans, and was already tapped in on the telephone to waylay their message and send a totally different one along to his confederates. The luck of the game had been his down to the last milligramme.
"The only consolation is that the Press won't hear about our wiped eyes," said Teal gloomily, and Storm stopped whistling to grin.
"Don't bet on it," he recommended. "The Triangle might mail a graphic account to all the News Agencies. If I were the Apex, and I'd scooped the kitty like that with a pair of deuces, I'll say I'd sing about it!"
It took a lot to upset Storm. The inevitable cigarette lofted heavenwards between his smiling lips, his hands were deep in his pockets—that boyish enthusiasm, which nothing could damp, shone in his eyes. It was an attribute of his which, delightful in the ordinary way, could be incredibly aggravating in moments of stress, and Inspector Teal glared at him moodily.
Zzzzzzing! ... Zzzzzzing-zing! ...
Through the other flat the hall bell jingled shrilly.
"One rings!" said Storm brightly. "Teal, be a good boy and come greet the visitor!"
He went through to answer the door, Teal following. As he flung it wide the corridor light outside showed up a stumpy, rotund form surmounted by a chubby pink face which split in a jovial beam as it recognised the two men who stood in the hall surveying it.
Teal reached out a languid arm and took the newcomer by the wrist, drawing him inside and kicking the door shut behind him.
"Come right in, Uncle Joe," said Mr. Teal with savage cordiality. "Come right in and open your sweet heart to old Uncle Claud Eustace. He wants to hear a little fairy tale about loud-speaking telephones!"
CHAPTER XIX
NCl3
Joe Blaythwayt waddled into the sitting-room. He turned and gaped at the detective.
"Loud Speaking Telephones?" he repeated in an awed whisper. "My dear sir—my Very Dear Sir—I—er—I—I—I——" His fishlike mouth closed with a smack. "Why, what a coincidence! Finding you here, I mean. I didn't know you were friends of Jimmy's."
A gargantuan grin overspread Teal's homely features with the slow ponderous momentum of an incoming tide. Jimmy; James Norman Mattock. The connection with Joan Sands had eluded Mr. Teal, but now it had been suggested to him his mind invested it with all the immutable actuality of proven fact. The truth sounds almost sacrilegious, but it is that Claud Eustace Teal, flushed with the joy of discovery, was composing a little song on the lines of a well-known nursery rhyme. It ran something like this—
Mattock had a little Joan
Whose soul was blushing poor,
And everywhere lamb Mattock went
His Joan went on before.
Mr. Teal was not a great poet, but he had a wonderful knack of getting a stranglehold on axioms.
"Funny that Jimmy never occurred to me," he said. "Let's take another look at that flat."
A novel lay on one chair, and when Storm picked it up to read the title a thin yellow envelope fell out. It was addressed to J.N. Mattock, and the postmark showed that it had been mailed in Putney at 2 p.m. the previous day. Storm smoothed put the slip of expensive creamy notepaper which it contained.
Raegenssen having disappeared, the office can probably dispense with your services for a few hours.
You and Sands will take the Torbay Limited from Paddington on the morning you receive this. You will go to Torquay and stay at the Spa Hotel. You will return to London by the noon express the next day.
£15 is enclosed for your expenses.
The signature was the device of the Alpha Triangle.
Storm passed the letter over to Teal, and when the detective had read it he pursed his lips.
"He's the sort of snake who would have an alibi handy," was Mr. Teal's sour comment.
The voice they had heard over the telephone was certainly that of a man—but whose? Mattock's? Blaythwayt's? Teal could arrive at no plausible solution. And an odd dozen little Triangles had slithered through their fingers that night, winning clear on the blindest, most hopeless bluff that had ever been put up in the history of New Scotland Yard. The detective was anything but satisfied with his evening's work, and proceeded to vent his spleen on the unhappy Joe.
"Who told you to come butting in here?" he wanted to know. "I'll tell you, Joe, you dillytanty bloodhounds rile me. Now, just you warble me that little fairy tale I asked you for—and put in an opening chorus saying why you come rubing round this manor at twenty to midnight."
"Really, there's no need for you to be so offensive, Teal," Blaythwayt protested miserably. "I happened to be in court when Mattock was brought up after the Triangle got Mecklen away from the station—I go round the police courts when I've got any time to spare. It's the best method of seeing Life in the Raw." Joe's tone suggested the suppression of nameless horrors witnessed in the metropolitan courts of summary jurisdiction. "And I'm interested in this case, as you know, so I shadowed Mattock home. Then I had to hurry away, but I wanted to ask him a few questions, so I came along to-night."
"What questions?"
Blaythwayt waggled a podgy hand.
"Material for Writing," he explained unctuously. "One should strive for Accuracy. I wanted to know what it felt like to be set upon by two scoundrels, how it was to be up before a magistrate, and so on. I have never been before a magistrate, nor have I ever been molested by armed desperados, and so I resolved to get my sensations at least at second hand."
Storm lounged into a settee and put his feet up. His glance commanded Teal to cut short the persecution, for Storm had his own idea of the right way to deal with l'affaire Blaythwayt.
"You go steady, uncle!" he warned. "If you aren't careful you'll be sampling sensations at first hand. Teal loves arresting people—if I wasn't here, I'll bet he'd pull you in on the spot!" he added, to the detective's annoyance.
"Arrest me?" gasped Blaythwayt as though he could not believe his ears.
"You!"
Storm's manner differed from Teal's as much as the attack of a tiger differs from the onslaught of an elephant. Storm's voice was buttered and honeyed. His words came guilelessly, but there were little knobs and spikes sticking out all over them under the glossy varnish.
"You! Blaythwayt, you're playing around with matches in a gunpowder factory! I'll speak to you plainly, because you're the uncle of a very great friend of mine. And my advice to you is—slide! Light out over the horizon and stay lit until this Triangle cyclone has gone past. You'll be safer. Mess about with yeggs and kiters, if you like. Even plain ornery murderers are fairly safe. But steer wide of Triangles! Triangles have got death dope on every point; they've got edges like Kropps; and there's a big bomb packed up in the Alpha. I don't want any dead uncles-in-law—it kind of pancakes the marriage festivities, to go off on your honeymoon hung round with black crepe. I'll tell you something: you're next on the list! You know too much. Now, be a sensible fellow, and pass on what you know, and then vamoose for the duration. Why did you go to Billingsgate?"
Blaythwayt twiddled his fingers round his umbrella uneasily. Once or twice his mouth opened, and then gold-fished shut again. Storm's tone had been very gentle, disarmingly so, but even the innocent Joe had felt the tang of one or two of those tiny needle-points that prickled through the velvet.
"I—er—well, I'll tell you. Teal told me that Raegenssen was under suspicion. At least, he was mixed up in the business somehow; and even if that 'somehow' was only being one of the men the Triangle was out to kill, finding out more about him might have given me a line on the Apex himself."
"And how did you hear of Billingsgate?"
Joe hesitated, sucking the crook of his umbrella. One podgy hand went up and tilted his pot hat back from his forehead.
"Can I speak without prejudice?" he compromised.
"More or less."
"Er—um!" Blaythwayt scratched his head. "Um!" He caught Teal's dissecting eye upon him, and dithered. "To tell you the truth, I was the second burglar at Raegenssen's," he blurted.
Storm was tapping a cigarette on his thumbnail. Teal was probing for a piece of gum which had lodged in one of his molars. The effect of the revelation was that Teal bit his finger.
"And did you recognise anyone at Billingsgate?" asked Storm calmly, and Joe shook his head.
"Only Susan," he confessed.
"And you didn't get your line on the Big Triangle?"
"No. But I learnt something else, and you know what it was. Susan saw it—I only heard of it from her," Blaythwayt dropped his voice impressively. "The Tunnel!"
Storm looked up.
"Oh, yes! Into the Tube. Did either of you find out where it left the Tube again?"
"No."
"Just by the Bank of England!" said Storm coolly, and the Teal and Blaythwayt jaws sagged limply. "The Alpha Triangle was going to smash the Bank of England—they'd got it all mapped out to a hair! But there was just one place where they got snookered. Tell me that one, Joe."
Blaythwayt nodded sagely.
"The vaults are flooded at night."
Storm struck a match and applied it to his cigarette. He looked at the other two through a long wisp of blue smoke.
"Yeh!" he murmured. "They ought to have tried an easier crib. It must have been ... peeving to have a bloomer like that in your calculations—even if it does compensate for having the whole balloon burst by a police raid!"
He climbed off the settee and stretched himself. His face was reserve itself.
"Just one other thing," he remembered. "How did you find out that 'Raegenssen' was 'Sud-Scandinavia Wood'?"
Blaythwayt smiled.
"That was easy. I mean to say, I couldn't be sure, but I Had My Ideas. Susan told me that you had been talking about a mysterious sawmill, and, as Raegenssen's banker, I knew that he had frequently passed cheques made payable to the Sud-Scandinavia. So I knew he had some connection. I found the address in the street directory."
"Thanks very much," said Storm casually. "I think that's all. Are you going to take my tip?"
"Er—um!" Joe looked mournful.
Storm flicked a short cylinder of ash into a flower-pot. His cigarette twirled skywards, his shoulders squared, his hands went deep into his trouser pockets. He looked down at Blaythwayt with a metallic hardness in his eyes, and the other shuffled his feet uncertainly.
"That's my last word—skid!" drawled Storm in a friendly tone under which only an ear attuned to his mood would have detected the cast-iron core. "Give her the gun, prospective uncle-in-law, and hit her up on all six. Chase yourself, and touch the ground in spots. Go rubbering round Canada, or hunt butterflies in Peru—go any place where they never see Triangles except in geometry books or on beer-labels or the rear wings of autos! Don't forget that warning. I'm serious! During the next two days there're going to be special trains running to Gehenna for everyone who's got a line on the Big Triangle, or who's ever had the chance to get a line on him. The Big Triangle himself included—that's my contribution. You come right into that catalogue, Blaythwayt. Give Sherlock II a rest. I guess he needs it."
Never for one moment had that undercurrent of command broken surface; but Joe felt rather than heard it, and a flush of half-hearted obstinacy stole into his plump cheeks.
"Now, when do you leave?" said Storm.
"I—er—um!" Blaythwayt was dubious. "I really don't see, Captain Arden, that you've——"
Zzzzzzing! ... Zzzzzzing! ... Zzzzzzing!
For the second time that evening the clarion summons of the hall bell jazzed into insistence, and Teal ceased mastication for a couple of seconds to frown. Followed the clattering thump of a knocker plied by no patient hand, and then a short pause....
Zzzzzzing! ... Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzing!
Something quite unrelated to any surmise about the identity of the testy one outside prodded the conscience of Mr. Teal, to his discomfort. The foundation of the fact in his misgivings was not long in receiving demonstration.
"More callers!" murmured Storm. "I wonder who this is."
He opened the front door.
"Thank you," said Joan Sands coldly, and marched past him into the sitting-room.
She stood aside to allow Storm to enter, and then placed herself across the threshold.
"Inspector Teal, I believe?" she said, looking straight at the portly detective.
"That's right," said Teal.
Flabbergasted as he was, he could not deny her dignity. She stood with her legs slightly astride, her white hands loosely holding the belt of her simple tweed costume, and a glacial inclemency had come into her baby blue eyes.
"Captain Arden, I presume?"
"Sure!" Storm bowed.
Her gaze shifted to Joe Blaythwayt, who had suddenly become conspicuous by his efforts to efface himself.
"Who's this, Arden?" she demanded. "Is he a split too?"
Storm smiled.
"He'll bless you in his prayers if you call him that. Let me introduce you," he said easily. "Mr. Blaythwayt—Miss Sands. I expect he knows your name. He's Teal's father confessor."
She looked at him suspiciously.
"What's he here for?"
"I think he dropped in for a chat with Jimmy. Isn't that it, Joe?"
"I—er—um!" began Joe confusedly. "The fact is, Miss Sands, I was especially anxious to have a Private Conversation with your—your—um!"
He broke off and looked about him wretchedly, as though his mind was clawing round desperately for a straw of assistance. His embarrassment, which increased with every second of that awkward hiatus, was positively painful. He almost wriggled in his distress, and for the first time Joan smiled.
"My lover?—I suppose that's the word you're jibbing at?" she prompted without a tremor. "You're unlucky."
"We thought you were away, too," said Storm brazenly, and she swung round on him.
"So that's why you came?"
"Hardly! We didn't think you were away until we'd come."
She looked at him with a frown, as if she thought he was being facetious. He appreciated the genuineness of her scepticism, and took the yellow envelope from his pocket and gave it to her. She read it through, and then opened her bag and took out a telegram.
"I've been spending the last two days at Hindhead," she said. "I got this wire this afternoon, and that's all I knew of Jimmy going away. Read it."
"Thank you."
Sorry dear shan't be home when you return sent Torquay important business back to-morrow.
JIMMY.
Storm folded the flimsy and handed it back.
"I see. The Apex must have thought you were in town." Storm whistled out a long jet of smoke. "Who knew you were going?"
"Only Jimmy," she replied, and then once more she was on her high horse. "But I'm not here to be cross-examined. I take it you've been searching my flat. That being so, I'd like to see your warrant."
There was an interlude of silence. Joe had succeeded in retiring to the ample background afforded by Mr. Teal. The detective, having had the guiltiness of his conscience materialised, chewed stolidly and was tongue-tied. Arden coaxed his cigarette to the other corner of his mouth and met the girl's imperious gaze levelly.
"We haven't got one," he said. "Like Mr. Blaythwayt, Teal and I were going to pay a little call on Jimmy, only we got in the wrong door and found a little mothers' meeting in progress. We were in time for the agenda, and stopped to—er—vote upon the motion."
"Don't be funny," she snapped.
"I'm as serious as double pneumonia," he assured her gravely. "Joan, don't pretend to be dense!"
"I'm only Joan to my friends, Arden," she cut him, but he refused to be high-handed.
"I'm your friend, Joan," he said imperturbably. "Whether you call me Captain Arden or plain Arden doesn't bother me any, because I'm not talking for myself—there's every mite of every law in this country, and all the power behind the Law, concentrated in my two hands! You may or may not be as innocent as you seem. We'll argue that later. But come a little tour of inspection and learn things!"
He led her into the outer sitting-room, and she followed impatiently. He pointed to the chairs drawn up round the long table, and the marks of recent occupation in the ash-trays and scattered cards. He exhibited the loud-speaking telephone, and then indicated the wire which ran into her private flat. He took her back and traced for her its route across the floor, under the rugs, to the ornate bookcase.
She did no more than cast a bored glance at each of the damning beacons of incrimination he picked out for her enlightenment. Her lips were tightened up, her face a mask, her bearing inscrutable.
Then he made her look at the bookcase. She obeyed pettishly, and turned to him again with a mutinous tilt to her small chin.
"Well?" she said. "Is that all?"
"Not quite! You've seen the loud-speaking telephone and you've seen the tapped wires. You've seen how anyone knowing the secret of that bookcase could speak through to the other room. Teal and I arrived in that other room in time to hear two men detailed to murder our one and only Inspector Teal. We think those orders were given from your flat. So we're healthily curious!"
"Well?"
"Anything but! It isn't every day you hear the order given for your own execution!"
She faced him boldly.
"Do you think I was the speaker?"
"I don't," said Storm. "For one thing, the voice I heard was too deep for the best woman mimic on earth to have produced. For another, you hadn't a key—you had to ring for us to let you in. Why did you come back if you knew Jimmy was away? Who was going to let you in?"
"I forgot I hadn't a key. Jimmy lost his the other day, and as I was going away I left him mine. He was going to have another key cut."
"Uh-huh. Rather absent-minded of you! What'd you have done—slept on the doorstep?"
She pulled off her hat and shook out her hair. Walking over to a side table, she helped herself to a cigarette from a silver box. She turned round with the lighted match in her hand.
"My God—are you still here?" she exclaimed.
"That's real Mattock," Teal said, addressing Storm. "He tried that on me the other day."
"I'm sorry—we are," said Storm. "Now hear me, Joan! Who else had keys besides you and Jimmy?"
"No one that I know of."
Storm took a promenade up and down the room. She had rested against the table, and he stopped in front of her, eyeing her steadily and forcing her to meet his gaze. He said nothing, simply riveted her with that thoughtful stare. And he saw that tense silence rasp her nerves—saw her go a little paler under the paint and powder, and saw the quick straining heave of her bosom. Saw her mouth twitch ever so slightly, and saw the reflex, spasmodic jerk of her hand.
He smashed through her barricade of haughtiness by the sheer relentless battering of his will, and at last she turned her head away with a short shaky laugh and put a little distance between them, placing herself on the opposite side of the table as though to break away from that intangible attack.
"I hate talking like a detective story," Kit Arden said slowly, "but—if you've told me the truth—it looks ... bad ... for Jimmy, doesn't it?"
The blow that her intuition had sensed, namelessly and without logic, had fallen. He saw her wince and grip the edge of the table for support.
"I don't ... understand..."
"I'm sorry." Storm relaxed. The bombardment was lifted. His smile was as light and care-free as if there had never been an Alpha Triangle mentioned in that room. "That's all there is to be said, then. Except that I'll ask you to pass on to Jimmy the advice I gave Blaythwayt just before you came in. And that advice is, let up! Play with fire if you must get a kick out of life, but never do acrobatics on the chute of a blast furnace!... We'll move along now—I expect you're tired."
Blaythwayt, squirming and panting for relief from those taut surroundings into which he had stumbled, was in the van of that withdrawal. He made for the door as a scared rabbit scuttles to its burrow. Inspector Teal, more phlegmatically constituted, followed him with less speed and more self-possession.
Kit was the last to go, and he stayed behind for half a minute. He went up to Joan and held out his hand. She looked up at his face in uncomprehending surprise, and saw that the hard lines had gone and the flinty glitter was no longer in his eyes.
She put her hand in his, and he gave it a little squeeze.
"Kid," he said, "there's a lot of good in you. And one hell of a big brick of courage. I won't preach—I know you'd hate that. But you know what I mean."
How infinitely sweet and gentle his voice could be!
"I am sorry—honest!" said Storm. "But there's quite a way to go between saying you're sorry and coming round with a wreath. In a very few days the Triangle's going to smash, and you don't want to be part of the bang. So don't be silly. Get Jimmy away.... Good luck!"
From the doorway she watched him stride down the corridor. She was conscious of a vague, indescribable feeling deep within her. Something that troubled her, that she could not understand and yet was on the brink of understanding, seemed to have awakened against her volition. Something pleasant and yet rather frightening. Something that kindled up with the promise of a sweeping flame ... something that had died, was reborn.
"Captain Arden!" she called, and he stopped.
"Hullo?"
"Captain Arden." Her speech was a little faltering, a little tremulous. "You—you're the only busy I've ever met who was—pure white—all the way through."
He smiled and waved his hand cheerily; and then he turned to the stairs and ran down.
He found Teal and Blaythwayt waiting for him in the street, and the detective had his friend's arm in an ominously professional grip.
"Joe and me," said Teal, oblivious of grammar, "is going to have words!"
"I hope you won't be rude to each other!" said Storm piously.
They walked down Piccadilly together, and they had almost reached Burlington House when all three of them saw an amazing sight.
Down in Piccadilly Circus, where the statue of Eros once stood, there flickered into being for an instant a terrific blinding blaze of violet light. It seemed to lurch up from the roadway in one colossal wave of whirling, jagged, eye-tormenting luminance—a Cyclopean flood of flaring amethyst which stunned vision and paralysed the brain. In a thousandth of a second it was gone, splintering into a star-searing burst of intolerable dazzling white radiance shot with zigzagging streaks of orange fire. And right in the flash of that fearful disintegration came a shattering, detonating thunder that rocked the very earth under their feet and pounded and pulverised the senses into an agony of quivering helplessness. And then, on the heels of the awful reverberation, followed a mighty rushing wind which reeled them out of all equilibrium and hurled them dazed and breathless to the ground.
CHAPTER XX
MECKLEN IS DISOBEDIENT
On a hot summer night the library of Terry Mannering's house in Brook Street was a cool alluring room.
Susan sat there, cosily stretched out in a deep armchair placed by an open window. At the big centre table Terry was engaged in the arduous task of selecting the probable winner of the St. Leger; and a litter of sporting journals, both pink and white, a much-thumbed copy of Racing Up-to-Date, an open volume of Ruff's Guide to the Turf, and sheets upon sheets of notepaper covered with abstruse calculations involving such weird factors as weights, lengths and seconds—testified to his earnestness. His wife was sewing in the chair opposite Susan. At times Terry would sit up abruptly and explode into a concentrated malignant malediction upon every congenital imbecile who ever had, ever did, or ever intended to essay the unravelling of equine form; at other moments he would lean back with a resigned look of martyrdom on his face, heave a long sigh, and offer a fervent prayer to be caught up to heaven in a fiery chariot before he reached the stage of dementia where it would be necessary for him to be hailed to a lunatic asylum—which anguished vociferations only served to convulse his audience with unsympathetic hilarity.
Susan had been trying to read, but her mind refused to converge on the printed word. It kept straggling off into other channels, and she would recall herself with a start to find she had skimmed through half a dozen pages without taking in the meaning of a single line. At length this continual absentmindedness forced her to admit that the effort of literary assimilation was, for that evening at least, a hopeless failure. She looked at her watch. It was nearing midnight—in spite of her abstraction, the time had flown past unnoticed—yet she felt in no mood for sleep. Following another outbreak of blood-curdling fulmination from Terry, she laid her book down on her knees, clasped her hands behind her head, and decided to give her imagination the rein it was straining for.
Her thoughts sped instantly to Storm. She strove to picture him in her mind's eye, and discovered to her surprise that she could form only the vaguest possible image. Little mannerisms of his, his swinging gait, snatches of his staccato conversation, vivid expressions he had invented—these were all the material she found to her hand. The complete design eluded her. Even the attempt to visualise his face resulted only in a mental blur. Being no psychologist, this disability irritated and puzzled her.
But at least she could remember nearly every word of their exchange that afternoon, and a soft smile curved her lips. Yes, she loved him—loved him with all her heart and every atom of her being.... But her smile was not of motherly affection. (God help the man who inspires that watery form of love!) It was a smile of pride, of clean, wholesome, exuberant joy that he was hers and she his. He was so fine, so sunny, so eminently sane and vital, so masterful—and yet without any artificial, self-conscious, diluted, drawing-room, flapper-thrilling, synthetic-cavemanishness about him—so dynamic, so fresh and savoury—both intellectually and physically.... And she was going to marry him. That pride she felt whenever she was with him was to be hers always....
And so, after moments of delicious day-dreaming, her fantasy carried her reluctantly to his immediate work—the Alpha Triangle. When would the menace of that dread organisation be lifted from the city? What was the secret of the Apex, that secret which if broadcast would mean the lightening of the shadow which loomed over London—the secret to preserve which the Apex was prepared for murder? The thought recalled to her his threat to have her arrested unless she married him that day. She had believed at first that he was joking. The idea was too preposterous.... And yet, was anything preposterous in those days, when a gang of killers such as one expects to encounter only in the pages of the sensational novelist were trying to blackmail the Centre of the World to the tune of fifteen million pounds sterling—and were, moreover, almost daily giving convincing evidence of their mercilessness and their ability to carry out every threat they made? But why arrest her? The answer was easy: that she might be more efficiently guarded than she could be in a private house. And the alternative, marriage to Storm, would make her nearly as secure. But the day he had given her for making up her mind had gone by, and she had not married him—he had left the choice open to her as if he expected her to ring him up and say: "Kit, old man, I've changed my mind. D'you think you could spare the time to drop into a registry office with me this afternoon?" Everything that was romantic in her revolted from the cold-bloodedness of the idea. It was unthinkable, and yet there had been a substratum of seriousness underlying his light tone. What was the second condition? "If a certain gentleman now in custody escapes..." Of course—but no; even that didn't exceed the bounds of possibility, when already the Triangle had rescued thirteen of its members from the Flying Squad van in which they were being hustled to a police station. Who was this man who might escape? And what was his particular importance?
She had no data for the solution of that problem, and branched from it on to another tack.
Why should she be in danger at all, from any member of the Triangle? What did she know, or what had she had the chance of deducing, which might imperil the secret of the Apex? Here at least she had a little knowledge to train on the question. She knew some people who were connected with the mystery: Lord Hannassay, Mattock, Raegenssen, and—Uncle Joe. The inclusion of her uncle amused her; but she left him in the list because he had received one of the Triangle cards. Now, what did she know about each? She took them one by one. Lord Hannassay? The Triangle had murdered him. She knew little about him, except that he held a minor position in the Home Office. Was he connected with any of the other three? ... The recollection of his interest in Mattock, to which Storm had attached some import, came to her in a flash. She wrestled with the circumstances of that case. Mattock had been Hannassay's secretary, and had forged his employer's name to a cheque; Hannassay had prosecuted him without mercy, and Mattock had gone to prison. Therefore Mattock had a grudge against Hannassay. Then how did the others fit in? She was certain that Raegenssen belonged somewhere in that complicated jig-saw—she had a distinct recollection of the afternoon when the Hirondel had skidded into him. Raegenssen had been knocked half unconscious, and she had heard him speak as he was coming round: if he had been partially stunned, his brain would have functioned without the restraint which his caution imposed upon it in ordinary life, and he might have let fall a hint of Something. And that Something had had an astounding effect on Storm, Mattock, and Uncle Joe. She could even picture their different expressions—Storm's tense inscrutability, Mattock's passion, and Uncle Joe's excitement. What was it Raegenssen had mumbled? Some girl's name ... Sylvia! That was it. Then where did Sylvia come in, and who was Sylvia—why should she have such an incredible influence upon three men brought together practically by a fluke?