CHAPTER XXVII
MR. TEAL BUTTS IN
The Assistant Commissioner did not leave immediately after Storm had gone. Instead Bill Kennedy and Mr. Teal sat in the Albany talking over many things. And it was when Mr. Kennedy was taking up his gloves preparatory to departure that the telephone bell rang. The Assistant Commissioner took up the receiver.
"Is that Captain Arden?" asked a voice.
"Yes," said Bill, to save trouble.
"I'm speaking from St. George's Hospital. We've got a man here who wants to speak to you urgently. I'm afraid he's dying—they picked him up in Buckingham Gate last night with eight inches of knife in his lungs. He's only just recovered consciousness."
"What's his name?"
"Sands."
Bill Kennedy whistled softly.
"Any idea what he wants to say?"
"Not much. He'll only speak to you personally. But he keeps muttering something about a triangle and a girl."
"I'll be there in eight minutes, laddie," Kennedy stated crisply.
As he replaced the instrument he saw that Teal was struggling off the sofa.
"Never," said Teal solemnly, "never in my life have I missed anything that was going on worth being present at. If you try to make me break that record, sir, I shall resign this morning. Don't say anything about my shoulder, because there's no bones broken—it's just a flesh wound I'd rather be without, but it doesn't mean I'm going to be tied down in a bath-chair."
Bill Kennedy was an excellent judge of time and space. Exactly eight minutes after he had hung up the receiver he was standing beside the death bed of Birdie Sands, that funny, wizened little man. Teal was with him, and they were hidden from the rest of the ward by the screens which in hospitals are placed about the beds of those whose hours are numbered.
The whizzer looked up with a wry smile. He was pale from loss of blood, but in no pain. His breath came in long, slow, wheezing draughts which scarcely stirred his shallow chest. The clear luminosity of the Beyond was in his eyes, and a strange serenity had smoothed out the wrinkles on his pinched face.
"Where's ... Arden?" he asked, faintly.
Bill Kennedy sat down on the bed, Teal remaining erect.
"Captain Arden's gone to look for Miss Hawthorne," said Bill. "He wanted to settle the Triangle alone and we had to promise not to interfere unless he failed. I don't know how he was going to set about it, but he had some plan or other in his head."
Birdie was silent. Then:
"I never met 'im," he whispered. "But they s'y 'e was a good busy. Listen, Kennedy."
Sands raised himself on one elbow. The effort caused him a fit of hoarse coughing, but he shook off Bill's restraining hand impatiently.
"Yer gotta brike yer promise. Not only fer 'is sike. There's the 'Awthorne girl. She's there—in that 'ouse in Buckingham Gate. They'll kill 'er, sure. Or worse.... That Lew's a swine ... blarst 'im. Dunno w'y, but I 'ate Lew ... poison! More'n Morini, even—an' Morini knifed me. Throws knives like a bloke in a circus.... Oh, yer needn't shike yer 'ead. I know.... I'm not much ter look at—not much ter think of—I'm just a cheap crook, an' a little one at that. But I 'ad a sister once.... Joan.... She's married ter Mattock—strite an' proper, swelp me. She's clean. Teal—yer was always an honest dick—get 'er out of the mess—ter make a man 'appy yer won't never see agine?"
"Yes," said Mr. Teal.
Birdie pawed weakly at his throat, then held out a thin hand. Gravely Inspector Teal took it in a firm grip and held it for a moment.
There was a silence. And then Birdie spoke again. Quickly and breathlessly, his voice growing a shade stronger, for the end was very near.
"Get ter that 'ouse. Black 'ouse. Now. Wiv all the flatties yer can lay yer 'ands on. No time ter lose. Arden can't never win—'e don't know what I know. The Triangle's got a card Arden'll never beat. There's a tunnel—another blow-up, an' it's bigger'n Piccadilly! 'Urry! ... There's no other w'y ... ter get 'is girl ... out.... Never mind yer promise.... Will yer go?"
Birdie clutched Bill's sleeve earnestly; and, quietly, Bill nodded.
"Yes."
"Then go! Ain't no ... time.... Don't wait fer me—I alw'ys lived alone.... S'pose I can die alone ... I'd rather...." A shrill, feeble cackle of laughter broke eerily from the dry lips. "Oh, yer damned Triangle! I got yer—Birdie, little crook Birdie.... An' I got yer ... smashed yer!... Blarst... yar!" ...
And then the voice fell so low that Bill Kennedy had to lay his ear almost on Birdie's mouth to catch the gasping words.
"Put on the lights.... I'm afraid of ... the dark...." Birdie's hand went groping for Kennedy's fingers. "Joan ... Joan ... Birdie's goin'.... Never was much use to yer ... But yer ... all ... right ... Joan! ... It's cold.... Kiss me...."
"We'll get in through the mews—most of these old houses have back entrances that way," said Teal.
Unostentatiously a cordon had ringed round the gaunt, sinister house in Buckingham Gate, and the mews behind was thronged with armed men whose rubber-soled shoes had made no sound on the cobbles. Bill Kennedy was in charge of the men in Buckingham Gate itself, and Teal was left to direct the opening of the attack.
A minute study of the tire tracks showed that, although there were six lock-ups along the west side of the mews, all the cars which had recently passed in and out of the garage had entered and left by one particular door. Teal made a careful examination of the lock, and also tested the resistance to a steady, cautious push.
"One bar across the centre," was his expert verdict.
Then he drew up his men and gave them their instructions. There was an odd furtiveness about the proceedings—the thirty men mustered in the mews might have been conspirators meeting at dead of night to hatch some nefarious plot, instead of burly, stolid plain-clothes men with nothing more sensational about them than the police automatic and truncheons with which they were armed. Even Teal, an unemotional law-enforcing machine, found himself speaking in hushed tones, although their danger lay far more in being seen than in being overheard. Nevertheless, all the men were pressed close up against the garage doors on the west side, to minimise the risk of being observed by anyone who chanced to look out of one of the upper windows.
"... And if any perishing sinner falls over his own feet this time, like one adjective noun did in Billingsgate not so long ago," Mr. Teal concluded, with whole seas of incandescent vitriol bubbling up in his measured delivery, "I promise him he won't only wish he'd never been born—he'll pray that there's no such thing as reincarnation, when I've finished with him!"
With which horrific prognostication Mr. Teal moved off to take up his position.
He glanced round, and made certain that the twelve men whom he had detailed to assist in the breaking in of the door were stationed ready on his heels; and then he took a Smith-Wesson from his hip pocket and thumbed back the hammer.
"Ready?"
The question ripped out in sibilant warning, and a second later things happened.
Teal's revolver thundered, and the heavy bullets shredded the lock completely out of existence. Simultaneously, Central Inspector Teal and his twelve good men and true hurled their total three-quarter ton of bone and brawn against the barred door. And, with one prolonged, rending, splinting crash, the door simply was not....
They burst panting into the garage, and might have come to a check there among the miscellaneous assortment of trucks and cars but for the spectacled man who happened precisely at that moment to be emerging from the secret panel behind the tire cupboard. In an instant he was whisking back, like a startled mouse which has peeped out of its hole and looked straight into the eyes of a hungry cat; but Mr. Teal, moving at a rate of knots which his weight and inertia made to seem positively supernatural, crossed the concrete flooring like a whiff of smoke. He reached out a long arm and grabbed the horn-rimmed gentleman before that blushing violet could obscure himself behind the closing slide.
"Carl, darling," hissed Teal, "why did you leave your happy home? And how's Mr. Nitrogen Trichloride this merry morning?"
Before Mr. Schwesen could utter a suitable reply, Teal had yanked him halfway across the place and smothered him in a stifling bear-hug. And thereafter, while practised hands clicked gyves upon floundering wrists, the eminent Austrian chemist found it necessary to reserve all his energies for the task of avoiding suffocation. It was all over in a trice, and, even as the remainder of the thirty poured in through the broken door, Mr. Schwesen was on his way to the police van which waited in Petty France.
The fat being thoroughly in the fire by now, speed became the order of the day. Headed by Teal, whose injured shoulder was by this time troubling him far more than he would ever have admitted, the constables rushed through the cupboard and down the short tunnel to the cellars. Two men were left to guard the end of the passage, and the rest raced up the stairs.
The hall was deserted.
Moving as silently as they could, the detectives opened each door in turn, finding large volumes of vacancy at every attempt. Two doors only were left for investigation when Teal, issuing his orders in a hoarse whisper, detached half his force to make a round of the upstairs rooms and guard against an escape, similar to the getaway the Triangle had brought off in Billingsgate, by means of an opening into an adjoining house. At the same time, the front door was unbolted without noise, and Bill Kennedy, together with some of those who were watching Buckingham Gate, came in soundlessly.
And then Teal silently turned the handle of the first of the two remaining ground-floor doors. A dark, narrow corridor fronted him, and he signalled for only six men to accompany him. There was no window or light of any sort in the runway, and when they had gone twenty paces the faint light which filtered in from the gloomy hall ceased to be of any assistance. As quietly as he could manage, Teal kindled a match, and found that the passage terminated in a dead end, the only outlet being a low door which opened off on the right.
Teal laid a cautious hand on the knob, and suddenly a tremor ran up his spine, for the handle was turning of itself under his light grasp....
Breathlessly he mouthed his men back out of the passage, and flattened himself against the blind wall so that the opening door would hide him from whoever came out. The oak swung back by inches, nervously, and it was nearly half a minute before it closed again and Teal saw a stocky, crouching shape silhouetted against the nimbus of twilight which came from the hall.
Holding his breath, Teal leapt silently as any pard. His big hand tightened round the man's throat before so much as a whimper could disturb the stillness, and Teal lifted the furtive one bodily from the ground and padded down the corridor with him.
"There's a long, long jail a-waiting—for you—dearie!"
Teal's voice stole to the man's ear drums in a husky pianissimo, and Teal's ungentle fingers forced a scared face round to meet the light.
And then Inspector Teal, that sedate apostle of tranquillity, let out an involuntary gasp of amazement, for the man he carried was Joe Blaythwayt!
CHAPTER XXVIII
LAST ROUND
Storm's face was bleak, but his two guns might have been gripped in vises mounted on rock-based foundations for all the quivering they showed. He thought that the colossal impact of Morini's bullet must have broken a rib, for, although no revolver in the world loaded a charge heavy enough to penetrate that wonderful steel-chain armour, the imperviousness of it was no defence against the sheer shock of the blow. Every breath he took stabbed an excruciating pang through his lungs. Yet his gay, reckless fighting smile was on his lips; and, when he spoke again, his voice was still deadly even, still rippling so deceptively smoothly over jagged slivers of quartz.
"Free Tip Number Two—straight from the stable—Big Triangle: When you flick out the king of trumps, never start in gloating until you're dam' sure the other man hasn't got the ace tucked away in his fist some place! This is where you look round for your umpteenth guess! All of you. And listen—just bat so much as an eyelid, one of you frogricked horse thieves, and you'll find out where fleas go when they've dined off a dope-soaked suicide! Anybody care to try it? No? Nobody curious? I'll say you're a crew of unenterprising sons of a Port Mahon baboon! And I'll bet less than twelve hours ago you were all scratching each other's backs and telling yourselves what a tough lot of hell-for-leather fire-eaters you were. Je-rusalem! You make me tired. What about it—huh? Can't you even raise one lone cuss-word among the lot of you? Tough? Gosh! I'd like to have the whole boiling of you aboard a good old-fashioned windjammer with a hard-case bucko mate to help me teach you real toughness."
They said nothing. One or two were on their feet, but even they remained safely motionless, having apparently no wish to court the certain death which lurked in the breech of the automatic that roamed so hopefully from head to head. And Storm went on baiting them, playing for a few minutes' grace in which to recover slightly from the stunning results of the shot he had taken and to formulate some scheme for getting Susan loose from the ropes without exposing himself to attack.
"You poor wet fish!" The tang of his whiplash contempt bit tellingly into the raw ends of their vanity with every measured stroke. "A suckling could boss a gang of white-livered slum rats like you! Hold up London itself for fifteen million? Take an expert's advice and go off and practice on hen-rabbits till you get stringy enough to hold up a hysterical old woman for fifteen cents and get away with it. I'm disappointed. I'm a plain ornery fighting machine—I'll fight anyone, any time, any place, and any old how—and I thought I'd landed the goods when I picked on you. Instead of which I find I'm bullyragging a grown-up Sunday School. This is my second guess! After grubstaking a stumer like this, I'm going fishing for tadpoles next time I feel bored. It's more exciting, and a heap more dangerous."
He had them writhing under the scourge, knew that every iota of the smart sank right in where it was meant to go—but still they stayed their hands. Tenacity of life, for the moment, held them at bay. Only for the moment. Storm knew that it couldn't last. It was only a question of time before someone gave the cue for the next movement of the ballet, and that time wasn't likely to be over-long elapsing. Very soon they must realise their strength, just as he realised his weakness. He was alone in the house, and no one knew where he was. No rescue party had been arranged for at the critical moment. If they attacked him in one concerted mob, he might kill half a dozen of them if he were lucky, but after that they'd have their revenge. And Susan would be left to face the final racket....
Zero hour.
Already he had pondered every detail of the room. As far as he knew, there was only the one exit—the door through which he had entered. There might be others—in fact, there probably were—but those hangings which surrounded the room were as bad as a fog. There wasn't a hope of gaining sufficient time to poke round all the four walls until one spotted the necessary bolt-hole. Therefore....
"Big Triangle, this is a private bus," Storm said. "Get off! Go and play with your friends in the audience."
One gun motioned him away from the platform, and then returned to aim on Surcon's heart. The Apex hesitated, but there was a flaring menace in Storm's grey eyes which brooked no refusal.
"And keep those hands of yours miles away from everything!" added Storm.
Slowly the Apex stepped off the daïs and walked towards one wall in the body of the room. Then Storm dropped one gun into his coat pocket, stooped swiftly, and gained possession of his knife. Backing in front of the silver sign to which Susan was bound, he felt for the cords which held her. Once found, a couple of rapid slashes, and she was free....
His luck had held—incredibly—but he had no leisure to waste on applauding his good fortune. Quick as light, he slipped the automatic from his pocket again and placed the knife in her hand; and even as he did so he saw that the pent-up torrent was on the point of breaking. The men were looking to the Apex, waiting tensely, keyed up for the signal to let fly. Storm could almost see the squall careering up to engulf him. Only a few seconds more—if that—but Heaven grant him the respite of those few seconds!
"Big Triangle!" Arden's voice clipped out again, and this time he glutted into it every fierce, rampaging demon of savage command he could concentrate on the words. "You're my hostage. Freeze on to that! It's no bluff this journey! The first man who makes a threatening movement'll finish it after you're dead! I've got you covered, and I never miss. Look!"
And then Storm diced everything on an even chance. Either his action would win the few seconds' cowed stillness he needed, or it would be as a spark to the over-dried tinder which was only waiting for its opportunity to blaze up and wipe him off the earth.
He made the gamble without a flicker of an eye.
Two vicious little tongues of orange flame spat out of his automatics, and the two shots rattled like the sharp rat-tat of a drum.
And Storm was sidling towards the door with Susan following him. And Ezra Surcon had sprung back a pace, clapping shaky hands to his ears, for Storms' bullets had grazed under the lobes like two hot searing irons scraped across the skin.
"That'll show you whether I've handled gats before!" Storm challenged, frostily as a Siberian zephyr. "And next time it won't be fancy shooting you'll see demonstrated. Now think again, all of you, before you cut up crusty with me!"
Susan's hand was already on the door, and in the tingling silence Storm heard her catch her breath. The next moment she was whispering in his ear.
"There're men moving about outside—creeping around. I can hear them."
"Hell!"
The word murmured almost inaudibly in Storm's throat. More mess! When he had heard the Apex summon to that room all the men who were in the house, he had naturally assumed that the order would be obeyed. With the only exit he knew ruled out, they were in the most ghastly blind alley two people could have strayed into. And once again the effect of his arrogant threatening was wearing off—more quickly than before, now that the men he was dealing with had grasped their own danger as well as the precariousness of his position. They would never let him get away if they could possibly prevent it, even though they ran the risk of being shot down in the attack. Each one of them would hope to be lucky and escape the few rounds Kit could loose off before they reached him, and each would be aware of the havoc which would be running amok once he got in touch with Scotland Yard. The Apex most of all. Surcon's hands were coming slowly down from his face, and a fiendish lustre burned in his pale blue eyes. His voice rang out suddenly, breaking in on the sizzling intensity of Storm's thought.
"Wait, Captain Arden!"
Surcon, too, could move like an arrow. And the shock of Susan's discovery had taken that last, infinitesimal perfection of keenness off Storm's alert brain—such an all but imperceptible blunting, yet great enough to make an incalculable difference.
Ezra Surcon had flung up his hands and parted the hangings behind him. They saw that screwed to the wall was a small switchboard of porcelain from which protruded two six-inch levers of ebonite. And the Apex had one of these firmly gripped in each of his upraised hands.
"Now listen to me," he shouted. "Haven't forgotten Piccadilly Circus, have you? Well, try to imagine twice that amount of NCl3 under—Buckingham Palace! Why else should I make my headquarters here? There's a tunnel from the cellars—or was, before the explosive was tamped in—and the Palace isn't far. The stuff's packed in huge blocks of ice, but when I pull down this switch it'll close a circuit, and this heat's a network of platinum wires among the charge. Shoot me, and the weight of my body'll pull down the switch. I'll prove to you I'm not bluffing, either. See the other switch? That connects with a tiny tube of nitrogen trichloride upstairs. Show you——"
He dragged down the second lever. From over their heads came a dull, ear-numbing thud. The ceiling cracked, and little fragments of plaster broke away and crumbled to the floor....
The explosion, small as Surcon had said the charge was, shook the house. Came a hoarse exclamation outside the door, and someone barked out two words ... then, the muffled patter of feet stumbling up the stairs.... The Apex looked drawn and haggard suddenly, and an almost childlike puzzlement crept into his eyes.
"What was that?"
"More of your friends, I expect," remarked Storm coolly, for he had recognised the voice outside in the hall. "Susan, get the door open—hustle!"
"It's locked!" screamed Surcon. A mad triumph shook him. "Locked—locked—locked! No escape! Get after him, men! Get on—get on—what're you waiting for? Watch, Captain Arden!"
Storm saw the knuckles of Surcon's right hand whiten over the lever they still held. Storm blazed away—carelessly, with one gun, into the ugly surge of men who hurled themselves at him; accurately, with the other, at Ezra Surcon. And Storm thanked all his pagan gods that his boast had been a sound one—that he never missed. Three bullets sped like three crashing thunderbolts into Surcon's right wrist, smashing flesh and bone and sinew to a spurting crimson pulp.
Storm saw the Apex drop his hand, and then Captain Christopher Arden, trouble-hunter, was slap in the middle of as big a slice of trouble as any Hotspur could desire. With two empty guns clenched in his hands to add weight to his blows, he was battling for dear life against a horde of raging maniacs who, fortunately for him, were too closely packed to be able to use their weapons without risk of killing each other, were hampered by their own numbers ... men who used tooth and talon like wild beasts ... men, like animals, thirsting for blood....
No giant of legend could have stood up to that terrible onslaught for more than three minutes. Human muscle and nerve, however willing, were physically incapable of sustaining the fearful pace of such a fight. Storm slogged away with the powerful precision of the fighting machine he had called himself, but he felt his strength going and the sog of his sledge-hammer blows into contorted faces growing less potent with every punch. His fists catapulted out from all angles—he still smiled, but grimly—and all the time he knew it couldn't last. A red mist shot with eddying whirls of black and silver swam before his eyes nauseatingly; his chest was a hive of toiling agony; he wondered wearily how long it could last. But he never let up. He knew he was going out, knew that his hour had struck ... a great and worthy end to so wildly glorious a life. He knew no fear—only a strange, primitive exaltation.
Battered, bruised, and torn, thereafter he fought on in silence. He knew that he had been fighting for no more than half a minute, yet in that short space he felt as if he had lived through an eternity. As though separated from his body, his mind stood out clear as a crystal globe in sunlight. He could think coldly, calmly, and work out exactly how much longer he could keep going. Another half-minute, perhaps, and then—finis....
And then a new voice broke into the tempest. A familiar voice, preternaturally excited. Teal! How had Teal got in? Had he found the secret entrance, or broken through the locked door? Funny, that—Storm hadn't expected rescue. All the odds had been against Teal getting in before it was too late. But it was Teal's booming bass all right—no doubt about that—and Teal himself, ploughing like a cruiser towards him.
"Hold on, Captain Arden! ... Hold on! ... Come on, boys!"
And Storm managed to cheer back:
"Atta baby, Teal! Give 'em Hell!"
CHAPTER XXIX
BREAK AWAY
They got him away. Somehow, after a second eternity of effort, he was free of the swaying, cursing throng. Leaning against the wall, panting, drawing a bleeding, aching hand across his filming eyes. Susan clutching his hand, straining herself against him. Teal's arm around his shoulders, supporting him.
Out of the Valley of the Shadow.... Homeric....
Men were still pouring through a door which had been knocked off its hinges, struggling in scattered knots to overpower the last stand of the Triangle. The Apex himself was not among them.
"The Big Triangle!" gasped Storm. "Teal—get him! Black mask ... he's gone!"
"It's all right," soothed Teal clumsily, and Storm shook him off with an impatient shrug.
"It's all wrong! You've got to get him! Tear down the hangings! There must be another exit."
Teal obeyed, Storm helping as best he could. Other detectives were at work immediately.
And so they saw that at the end of the room where the dais was, the curtains hung three feet off the wall, leaving a hidden alley at the end of which was a door. Teal was the first through, and when he saw where he was he nearly choked, for it was the narrow passage where he had caught Blaythwayt.
When they reached the hall they found it deserted, for every man on the job was by then crowded into the throne room to help the fight. In a sudden flash of intuition Teal raced for the cellar stairs, and, as he opened the door, he distinctly heard the clatter of shoes on stone slabs die away.
"Through the garage!"
They could be but a little way behind. Teal pounded down the steps, with Storm hard on his heels. Even as they reached the cellar level, they caught a glimpse of a tall figure sprinting down the gloom of the short passage towards the now open panel in the tire cupboard. Storm kept up with Teal in that hectic chase—how, he never knew. He was tired unto death, but a superhuman will-power kept him going when every fibre of his body shrieked for rest. And they were in the tunnel when they heard the roar of a racing car's exhaust.
An instant later a second exhaust stammered into life!
Storm remembered the two silver racing cars he had seen when they brought him into the garage in the taxi.
"Who in glory's that?" Teal's amazed ejaculation as he ran.
Then they burst into the garage itself. The first car was already in the mews, and they were in time to see the tail of the second disappear round the smashed door of the lock-up. There was no chance of starting up another of the cars to follow in pursuit—even assuming that one of those which were left would be capable of overtaking either of the first two lean, speedy super-cars, which was unlikely. Teal and Storm sprinted down the mews, Teal dragging his revolver from his pocket as he went.
They saw the hinder car turn right as they entered the mews, and as they reached the end they saw it skid round into Buckingham Gate, with the driver hunched up over the wheel in an attitude of desperate concentration.
Then they were in Buckingham Gate themselves, and, standing on the kerb, they witnessed a play which might have been lifted from a sensational movie scenario.
The first car had a lead of about fifty yards, and was increasing it. And then they heard a hideous, clanking grind. The driver had missed his gears. The racking, tortured noise went on, mingling with the deafening drone of the racing engine, as the masked man strove frenziedly to force the cogs to engage. And while he did so he turned in the seat and they saw a gun in his hand. The second car was gaining ground rapidly now, and then the revolver cracked, and the second driver's cap went spinning. Again the masked man fired—twice—and Storm and Teal heard the whine of the bullets passing over their heads.
"Je-rusalem—he's shooting at us!" Storm exclaimed, and began running towards the two cars.
The leading racer was slowing down, for the almost continuous grating which came from it showed that the masked man had still failed to get in gear again. The distance between the two speedsters was lessening swiftly—twenty yards ... fifteen ... ten ... and the second car moving like a streak of light. For the last time the masked man fired, practically at point-blank range, but although his bullet might have stopped a charging man it could not stop a charging car. And charging the second car was, heading straight for the decelerating racer.
And the pursuing car must have been travelling at over sixty miles an hour....
Teal and Storm came up some minutes after the collision. A mangled wreck of twisted machinery and rent and crushed aluminium—that was all. With two bodies jammed in the ruins, weltering in a spreading pool of petrol tinted with something red.
It was some time before they could get at the two men. One was James Norman Mattock—dead, with the masked man's bullet through his brain. Death had wiped the hard lines from his thin face, taken the prison bitterness out of his glazing eyes. It seemed as if a faint, peaceful smile lay on his lips.
Mechanically Inspector Teal doffed his hat in the presence of death—for the first time in his life. It was not because of James Norman Mattock.
"Poor Joan—poor kid," he muttered under his breath.
And then they turned to the second body. The black felt hat had fallen off, and they saw the greying hair which had once been Saxon yellow.
Storm, knowing that the man was dead, turned and walked slowly away.
It was the detective who bent and unfastened the black silk handkerchief. And one long, dazed exhalation whistled through the teeth of Mr. Teal, that bored and placid man.
"Great Kippered Herring!" he breathed. "Lord Hannassay!"
CHAPTER XXX
TIME!
Four people went back to the Albany that night, and sat in Kit's snug den smoking and clearing up the odd threads which remained of the Triangle mystery. Bill Kennedy; Inspector Teal, once more phlegmatic and somnolent; Susan, a trifle pale but very lovely; and—Christopher Arden Bulsaid, Storm, Lord Hannassay.
"Curtain—and an effective tab, too," murmured Storm.
His face was considerably damaged, and every limb ached, but he felt supremely happy. He smiled. Between his bruised lips a cigarette canted skywards at the old optimistic, devil-may-care angle.
"Yeh! Lord Hannassay the late was the Alpha Triangle. You all know how he got the bug of revenge in his brain, and you can all imagine how it grew up till it filled his whole mind with ideas of making himself a tyrant over all London. He might've done it, given complete sanity to add to his genius. Lombroso'd tell you that wasn't possible. I hope Cesare's right—it's lucky for all concerned if he is. Hannassay couldn't put his scheme into practice till he had money. He got that when his father died in India, leaving him the title and bags of cash. Then Hannassay got busy. Created a Mr. Brome, in which rôle he got in touch with the underworld; and an Oscar Raegenssen to handle the financial side of the organisation. Things got a shade too warm around Lord Hannassay, so we had Fake Death Number One. Later on, things began to hum around Siegfried the Pelican too, so Hannassay trotted out Fake Death Number Two and just carried on as Snooper. You can write in most of the rest for yourselves. Among other things, you'll be keen to know why Hannassay fainted when he saw me the day—night, rather—Morini went gunning for Miss Hawthorne. You remember there was only the reading-lamp on in the library? The shade was turned up, and the light came on my face. He thought he was seeing the ghost of his wife, Sylvia Mattock, Jimmy's sister. Hannassay started off his campaign of revenge by shopping Mattock over a forged cheque. Hannassay was rather a brute to my mother, so when Jimmy came out of stir he had a double grudge to settle off his own bat. Hannassay made his second bloomer when he took Mattock on in Raegenssen's. His idea was, of course, to stop him again, since the first shopping hadn't functioned strong enough. But Mattock got wise to a thing or two—one of them was when Raegenssen got in the way of my auto and spoke with Lord Hannassay's voice. That leaves only the Alpha part of it—a bit of supplementary evidence. You mayn't know it, but the Greek alpha was supposed in its original form to represent the head and horns of an ox. Bulsaid—bull's head.... Got it?"
Storm stretched himself.
"And I think that's the complete rehash, according to Cocker," he remarked after a pause. "Oh, except for Uncle Joe."
"There's a great detective lost in Uncle Joe," said Teal sadly. "D'you know, he cut the wires connecting with the charge of nitrogen trichloride under Buckingham Palace? He heard the Apex threatening you with it and crept along behind the hangings till he found 'em. Uncle Joe's got nerve—he'll be able to write a wonderful book after to-night. By the way, somebody's going to have a ticklish job digging all that H.E. out before the ice melts off it," added Mr. Teal lusciously.
"I'll tell you how I figure it out that Uncle Joe found the house," said Storm. "Mattock, I think, must've joined up in the Triangle, once he got a line on the big boss, in the hope of finding out enough to put Hannassay in the Awful Place. Hannassay'd 've been glad to have him in, as it'd make shopping him easier. Matter of fact, Hannassay didn't go on with that scheme—he was too busy trying to get his fifteen million thick 'uns out of the Treasury. Before that, he'd also got Joan Sands in, to give him a bigger hold over Mattock than ever. That was all done through Snooper. Snooper had the telephone tapped and the bookcase put in, and told each of 'em separately not to touch it or talk about it. Mattock didn't associate Snooper with the Triangle at that time, or we'd have been saved a lot of trouble, so he obeyed orders. God knows why! Anyway, after the Piccadilly Circus explosion, Mattock got less dumb. He put two and two together and made—Snooper! So he went chasing Snooper last night, and Uncle Joe trailed him. They went down Buckingham Gate in procession, and all landed up in the right place. If we owe something to Uncle Joe, we owe a darn sight more to Jimmy! I said he was going to kill Raegenssen, and, by hookey! he did. What's happened to Uncle Joe, by the way?"
Teal grimaced.
"Last time I saw him, he was rushing round to talk to Joan. He's been talking to her and pulling the sympathy gag nearly all day. How any man can be so keen on studying criminology," said Mr. Teal, wilfully dense, "beats me."
The four of them had dined together, and the silent-footed Cork had not long cleared the table and taken his departure. The coffee cups in front of them were still warm, and yet already a subtle restraint had forced itself into the air. Two of the guests began to wonder if, even in that short time, they had not overstayed their welcome.
Mr. Assistant Commissioner William Kennedy glared at Mr. Central Detective-Inspector Teal, and Mr. Teal stared sombrely back at Mr. Kennedy with sleepy eyes. Solemnly each of them nodded to the other.
As one man, they rose to their feet.
"I've got a lot of work to get through before I can seek my well-earned rest," said Bill gravely. "Your own particular jaunt may be over, but crime goes on for ever."
"I," said the drowsy Teal, "have been working all day, and I'm very tired."
In the sacred cause of Accuracy, one must put it on record that Storm lapsed lamentably from strictly good manners. He expressed no regret that they could not stay longer, nor did he beg them to remain. In fact, he bade them farewell in haste, as if he were afraid that they might change their minds. Only when they were irrevocably hatted and gloved did he become aware of his duties as a host.
"Not even a quick one before you go?" he suggested half-heartedly.
Mr. Teal shook his head, shifting his gum to the other side of his mouth.
"It's bad for the heart," he said. "Fat men didn't ought to drink...."
Storm closed the door and came back into the sitting-room. He sat on the table, swinging his legs and singing a little tune. Deliberately he crushed out the stump of his cigarette in the ash tray.
Susan got up.
"I suppose I ought to be going, too," she said.
But she did not go.
THE END