CHAPTER XVI.
ON THE UNMORALITY OF PROFESSIONAL
THIEVES
The main building of what had once been Boltover’s Cement Works consisted of four high walls and a slate roof. Here had stood the wash mills and the revolving knives which had reduced the clay and mud from the nearby river into slurry. Leading therefrom was the heating chamber and the kiln house. There was no trace of mill, though the kilns still stood.
All the machinery had been removed, the concrete floor strengthened and the only engine visible was a great Atlantic locomotive which had stood with steam up day and night before the wreckage of two trucks. In each of these was a rough circular hole and the blistered paint and the drops of metal which hung upon the edge or had trickled down its blackened side, told of the terrific heat which had been employed to break through the steel walls.
Near one wall were a number of small packages neatly stitched in canvas and ready for removal, and on these sat Mr. Mulberry, the benignity of whose countenance was somewhat discounted by the fact that a loaded rifle lay across his knees. Leading from the main building was a small office approached through a steel door and in this were seated the seven guiding spirits of the great raid, Francis Stockmar, Gregori, Colonel Westhanger, Colling Jacques, Thomas Stockmar, Mr. Cunningham and Kate.
Gregori was talking. He leant across the table, his hands lightly clasped, his head on one side turned to the girl who sat opposite to him and a little to his right.
“I think, Kate, we finish here,” he was saying. “Crime Street is getting a little too warm.”
“I didn’t expect you to lose your nerve,” she said.
“I’m not losing my nerve,” he said with a scowl. “I am afraid of losing my life, if you want to know the truth. We are watched all the time. They know you are out of town and are searching for you.”
“They found me,” said the girl coolly. “I am staying at Brighton.”
“We have made a big haul and it will take us a year to get rid of it,” Gregori went on, “but when we have got rid of it, we shall have enough to settle down.”
“But why do you want to settle down?” she asked.
“My dear Kate,” said her uncle querulously, “don’t ask absurd questions. You know there is no reason in the world why we should not settle down. We have enough money.”
“Exactly what do you mean by settling down?” she insisted. “I am not being sarcastic. I merely want information. You have taught me that it is the game and not the prize that is worth while. That has been my life’s teaching. Why, you told me if you were a millionaire,” she looked at her uncle under her bent brows, “nothing would induce you to be ‘dull and honest.’ Those were your words.”
“My dear child,” said Colonel Westhanger, “I have told you lots of things which have to be interpreted in a liberal spirit. We have had all the fun we want and now we will—”
He was at a loss in his desire to avoid a tautological repetition of a certain phrase.
“Settle down,” she suggested; “be dull and honest?”
“But, surely, Kate,” said Gregori impatiently, “you don’t want to be a hunted beast all your life?”
“Why not?” she asked in astonishment. “It is just as much fun being hunted as hunting. You have said that a score of times. Does Michael Pretherston—”
“Oh, hang Michael Pretherston,” said Gregori.
“Does Michael Pretherston,” she went on, “get as much fun out of chasing me, as I get out of escaping him? Does Michael Pretherston find the same exhilaration of mind in following on my tracks as I find in keeping ahead of him?”
“Anyway,” said Gregori. “I have had enough of it and I want to go out of the business and I advise you to do the same. And there is another thing, Kate—”
He looked at the Colonel for support, but Colonel Westhanger found it convenient at that moment to be staring at the skylight.
“What is the other thing?” she asked.
“Well, you know I am fond of you,” he said, “and I want to—” he floundered.
“Settle down,” she suggested innocently; “what is all this ‘settling down’ that everybody loves so much? Does it mean we shall never plan another great coup?” She leant her elbows on the table. “Honestly, I am not being wilfully dense. I know money is useful, because it helps one to prepare the way for making more money, but I have not been in this,” she waved her hand, “in all these things for money. I told Michael Pretherston so and he believed me.”
“What have you been telling Michael Pretherston?” asked Gregori suspiciously.
“I told him that,” she said simply.
“But, my dear girl,” said her uncle, “fun and excitement and all that sort of thing are well enough in their way, but you don’t mean to tell me, at this hour, that you have not been working for the ‘stuff’?”
“I will tell you as much at this or any other hour,” she answered immediately.
“I see,” said Gregori with a faint smile, “then really you are what I would call a criminal artist—art for art’s sake, eh?”
“I mean that,” she said again. “One must not judge one’s successes by the amount of money one has made.”
“That is how I joodge it,” said the thick voice of Francis Stockmar; “so much mooney, so much sugsess, isn’t it?”
“I tell you frankly,” said Gregori. “I am in this for the money and so is your uncle. We have taken many risks, some of us have been caught and some of us,” he said significantly, “have been lucky. I’ve got thirty years in front of me, with any luck, and so I am going to—”
“Settle down,” suggested Kate ironically.
“I am going to quit.”
“Come, come, be sensible, Kate,” said the Colonel, patting her on the shoulder. “You have been a very good girl and we owe you almost everything we have. I am sure everyone agrees that you have been the brains of our—er—association. The only time when any of us have been caught is when we have gone out on a side line of our own. Now leave well alone.”
“When hunters have caught the fox,” she said, “do they leave well alone and never hunt again? In war, when a soldier comes through a battle safely, does he leave well alone and never go into action again? Does the huntsman who is nearly caught by a lion leave well, and lions, alone?”
“This is different,” said her uncle doggedly.
“But I don’t understand it. If what you say is right, then I am wrong and have been wrong all my life. I am wrong and the police are right.”
“Of course, they’re right,” said Gregori; “what rubbish you are talking.”
“The police are right?” she asked in open-eyed astonishment.
“Of course they are right. They must protect society. In five years’ time, when I am settled on my little estate in Spain and my house is burgled do you imagine I shall not call in the police?”
“I know they are right in their way,” she said, as if she were speaking her thoughts aloud, “but we are right, too.”
“We cannot both be right,” said Colonel Westhanger.
“I asked you some time ago,” she said, turning to him, “which was the better life—the dull life or ours. They cannot both be better. The elementary conditions cannot change. That life must be the best, or ours.”
“That life is best,” said the Colonel decisively.
She looked at him steadily.
“Then why have you let me live this?” she asked. “You cannot change me. I cannot change. I cannot!” she said with vehemence and the men noted with amazement the emotion she displayed. “Nothing can change me!”
Gregori reached out and took her hand, but she snatched it away.
“I will tell you what can change you, little girl,” he said undeterred by the rebuff, “love can change you. Give me a chance.”
She looked at him and laughed in his face.
“Will you be good or bad, honest or dishonest? You will only be a half man, living two lives. Marry you! And am I to go into witness boxes to testify against your burglar? And prosecute your poachers? I am living now, what I believe to be the truth. I believe I have the right to match my wits against the world and take, by my intelligence, what the old robber barons took by brutal strength. If I pass to the other side I should be a liar, living a life in which I did not believe. I am going on.”
“Then you will go on by yourself.”
“Will I?” she asked softly.
“Go out and find somebody who thinks as you think if you can,” sneered Gregori; “you will be obliged to live a lie, anyway. You will never meet a man who believes in stealing, who believes in fraud and who will go on so believing, until he is an old man. You will never meet a man on the other side of life who would trust you if he knew you, and he would know you unless you—went on lying.”
He laughed.
“You are in a cleft stick, my little friend, and if you take my tip you will stick to the friends who know you.”
He laughed again.
“Suppose I come down into Spain and burgle your house—” her eyes lit up—“and I would do it! Or, suppose, when you have—settled down—and when you have all deposited your symbols of success in your banks, I planned a little coup and smashed your banks? I could do it easily and I would do it,” she said. “What would you do?”
Their faces were a study. The Colonel was stroking his white moustache. Francis Stockmar was scowling horribly. Mr. Cunningham was staring blankly at the opposite wall.
“Naturally you would not play such a low-down trick upon your old friends,” said the Colonel soothingly; “nobody believes you would, Kate. I mean, it would be tragic for some of us, after spending years of our lives accumulating a little nest egg to find we had become beggars in a night. Of course, speaking personally, I should consider myself exonerated from any responsibility I had in regard to our relationship and I should have to tell the police—”
“You would call the police, too, would you? Would you, Stockmar?”
“Yas,” said the stolid Austrian, “of goorse. The mooney to recover, ain’t it?”
“And you?”
“I don’t think you would do anything so treacherous,” said Mr. Cunningham; “naturally, we would not take that sort of thing lying down.”
“Naturally,” said Colling Jacques, “the whole matter is this, when we go back to the respectable world and obey the laws, we, as citizens, are entitled to the protection which the laws give us.”
“I see. You are, so to speak, touching wood. The wood is the law.”
“That is it,” he said.
Kate got up and walked to the one window of the room and looked out upon the dreary yard with its tangle of twisted machinery, its rusted boilers, its chaos of rotting cement bags.
“Well, you can all do as you like,” she turned on them, “but I tell you this, that if you think you are going to—settle down—at my expense, and if you think I have been planning and scheming and play-acting and lying in order that you might all become respected parish councillors, you have made a mistake. You talk about my friends, if you are my friends, God help me! There is one man in the world who is worth the whole crowd of you.”
She was interrupted by a crash as though a heavy body had been thrown against a door. Somebody fumbled with the lock and Gregori jumped up and threw it open. They half carried, half pushed a gagged and bound man through the doorway. Behind him peered the saturnine, malignant face of his captor, Doctor Garon.
“Got him,” he said triumphantly.
“Who is it?” asked Gregori, staring at the half conscious man.
The girl did not ask. She went suddenly cold, for she knew it was Michael Pretherston.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE INDEPENDENT STRATEGY OF SEÑOR
GREGORI
It is a fact worth remarking upon, that in all her career, though she had been associated with the most desperate of criminals, and though she had been surrounded on all sides by men who would stop at nothing to gain their ends, Kate had never witnessed an act of violence. Such arrests of members of the confederation as she had seen had been very humdrum affairs. The arrival of two strangers, a consultation carried on in a low tone by a pleasant detective officer, an urgent call to somebody to “get my hat” and the disappearance, very often for a long time, of the member affected. She had never seen a fellow creature man-handled nor did she believe that there was in her confederates the tigerish malignity which was now displayed. She looked from face to face in amazement and horror as they crowded round the handcuffed figure and flung him into a chair.
Michael had been choked to insensibility at the first attack. With the loosening of the rope, he had recovered consciousness and put up a fight, and had been hammered back to insensibility by the three men who had watched him from the moment he had crossed the open ground to the east of the railway, and had lain in wait for him. They had manacled him with his own handcuffs. This he realized, as he came back to consciousness, with his head throbbing and every bone in his body aching.
He leant his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands, striving to collect his thoughts. It was the cold steel of the handcuff against his nose which was the starting point from whence he unravelled the situation. The blow which had felled him had fortunately been broken by his soft felt hat and he raised his hand and gingerly felt the bump which Dr. Garon’s loaded cane had raised.
“Now then, wake up,” said Gregori’s voice roughly, “let’s have a look at you.”
Michael raised his head and looked at the speaker.
“Hello, Gregori,” he said dully. He looked round the room and caught the girl’s eyes and for a moment held them.
“You seem to have tumbled into it, my young friend,” said Colonel Westhanger.
Michael slowly shifted his eyes to the speaker and smiled.
“We all seem to have tumbled into it, you worse than anybody. This means a life sentence for you, Colonel.”
The old man’s face went white.
“It is only bluff,” said Garon; “he is here by himself. I have been watching him for an hour. You tried to pull off the job on your lonely!”
“Alone,” said the Colonel and the girl watching him saw his face go hard. “Alone! Are you sure?”
“Absolutely sure,” said the doctor.
He sat straddle-legged on a chair leaning on the back and puffing the cigar he had just lighted.
“It would be rather a serious business if you had made a mistake, wouldn’t it?” drawled Michael. He was recovering his scattered senses and something of his good spirits. “You fellows had better make the best of a bad job.”
“What is your idea of the best of a bad job,” sneered Gregori,—“to take the handcuffs off you and put them on me and the Colonel? If it means a ‘lifer’ for the Colonel! what does it mean for me? You don’t suppose I am going back to Dartmoor to build walls for the moor farmers, do you?”
“What is the alternative?” asked Michael.
“I’ll tell you what is the alternative,” hissed the other thrusting his face into the detective’s, “it is the only alternative that will give me any satisfaction—and it is to put you out.”
“Dot is id,” nodded Stockmar.
The girl’s heart almost stopped beating and for a moment she closed her eyes and gripped tight to the edge of the table. She felt physically sick and her knees were trembling under her. Fortunately their attention was fully occupied with Michael and nobody noticed that she had grown of a sudden peaked and grey. She bit her lips and by sheer effort of will regained control of herself. She looked at Michael: that little smile of his still played about the corners of his mouth and the eyes that were lifted to Colling Jacques were full of good humor.
“It is you or us, Pretherston,” the engineer was saying; “you don’t suppose we have been working for this stuff and taken all the risk, only to see ourselves standing in the dock of the Old Bailey?”
“Winchester,” corrected the detective, “it is a very pretty assize court—the vaulted ceiling will appeal to you, Jacques. It is in the Gothic style.”
“One moment,” said the Colonel suddenly.
With a nod he called the men to a corner of the room and for five minutes there was a whispered consultation. The girl and Michael were left alone and obeying some impulse which she could not define, she suddenly turned her back upon him and walked to the window, a proceeding which Gregori noticed out of the corner of his eye. Presently the little conference broke up and the Colonel came back with the others.
“Look here, Pretherston, I am going to make a proposition to you. You are not a rich man, I take it.”
“My private affairs don’t concern you,” said Michael calmly, “and I certainly am not prepared to discuss them with you.”
“This job is worth two and a half millions and there are ten of us in it. Help us to make a getaway and there is not far short of a quarter of a million for you.”
The girl swung round and looked at Michael. How would he take this offer? She knew how great was the appeal which money made to men, especially money easily earnt. She waited in breathless, almost painful, suspense.
“Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds,” said Michael—“that is a lot of money. But, why do you put such a proposition to me?”
“It is a lot of money,” repeated the Colonel significantly.
Michael laughed.
“I suppose there was a time in your life,” he drawled, “when if somebody had offered you money to do a dishonest act, you would have knocked him down? But perhaps there never was such a time,” he said, searching the other’s face.
“I no more want to discuss my affairs, than you want to discuss yours,” said the Colonel gruffly; “here is the proposition,” he thumped the table, “do you take it?”
Michael shook his head.
“I won’t be rude to you,” he said, “because you are an older man and because you are going to end your life rather miserably in a very short time.”
He saw the man wince.
“I am not saying that with the object of offending you,” Michael continued. “I am just telling you what is the truth. Suppose you get away from here, how are you going to make your escape from England? By this time every port is closed to you.”
“I will tell you how we are going to get out of England,” said Gregori, “we are going to leave by the only route possible, by ship from London.”
“By ship from London?” it was the surprised voice of the girl.
“We have done a little planning on our own, Kate,” said Gregori with a grin; “this is our last job. We didn’t tell you because we didn’t think it was worth while upsetting you. Everything was arranged last week.”
“Without my knowledge,” she said.
He nodded.
“What do you say, Pretherston? It is your last chance.”
“It isn’t my last chance,” said the other cheerfully.
“What do you mean?”
“That you will find out,” said Michael with a sudden sternness. “I warn you that your time is very short.”
“Your time will be shorter,” said Gregori with a sinister smile.
“We will give him half-an-hour to think over it,” suggested Jacques; “put him in the engine room.”
The engine room was the uncomfortable little shed which had been built on to the mixing shop to accommodate a dynamo. It was now empty save for a truckle bed on which one of the gang had slept. Padlocked iron doors led to the mixing room and to the outer world, but to make doubly sure, Garon volunteered to stand outside the building and keep guard. Michael was thrust into the little room and the door slammed upon him.
“Now,” said Gregori when they were back again in the office, “we have to decide and decide quickly. If we can be sure that this fellow is alone he has got to be killed.”
“Killed?” said Kate. “Oh, no, no!”
He turned on her with a snarl.
“This is our job. You keep out of this, Kate,” he said. “I tell you it must be done, for all our sakes.”
“The first thing,” said the Colonel, “is to get the gold away.”
“It will be loaded on to the trucks to-morrow morning,” said Gregori, “and we had better keep this fellow alive until it is gone.”
“Are we using our own trucks?”
Gregori shook his head.
“Oh, no,” he said, “that would be too dangerous. I have hired ten, from a man in Eastbourne who is used to handling machinery. He has no idea what sort of factory this is and I have told him it is a preparation of lead we are shipping to the docks. Young Stockmar will meet the convoy in London. Our own men are on board the ship and will load the stuff.”
“It is a bit risky,” said Colling Jacques shaking his head, “sending all that money through London without a guard.”
“It would be more risky to guard it,” said the other calmly, “our only chance lies in not rousing the suspicion of the contractor who has promised to come down himself to superintend the carriage to the docks. His people won’t be allowed to handle any of it and I have told him especially that it is dangerous to touch the packages—now, Kate, you must be sensible about this business of Pretherston.”
She shrugged her shoulders and leant back against the window-sill, her hands behind her.
“I suppose it is necessary,” she said in her cool even tone and the Colonel heaved a sigh of relief.
“Gad, that’s the way to look at it, my girl,” he said admiringly. “I knew you wouldn’t fail us.”
She said nothing.
“You said there were ten shares,” she asked presently, “do you count me—as one who is sharing?”
“You stand in with me, my dear,” said the Colonel, patting her on the shoulder, “don’t you be afraid. I have never denied you anything, have I?”
She shook her head.
“I have never been aware that you denied me anything,” she said absently.
“When is this—” she could not find words to complete the sentence.
“Pretherston,” said Gregori,—“oh, we can’t do anything yet. I think you will agree, Colonel. We must make absolutely sure that he is not being followed and that he has not half the Metropolitan police force within call. I shall do nothing at all till to-morrow night.”
She inclined her head.
“I see,” she said simply and then, “I think I will go to my room.”
They had made her comfortable quarters in what had been once the foreman’s office. She passed through the great sheds slowly and stopped for a moment to look at the powerful engine which stood near the closed doors, a tiny feather of steam at its safety valve, then she went into her room.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE COLONEL WAS A GENTLEMAN AT
THE LAST
It was ten o’clock the following morning before any of the gang saw the girl. She had spent a sleepless night revising her philosophies and arranging the future as she saw it.
Mulberry who had put away his rifle and was appearing in the capacity of an urbane general-manager greeted Kate with a nod.
He was superintending the transference of the ingots to the waiting trolleys which stood on the road at the top of the chalk pit and were approached by a zig-zag path which had been cut in the face of the bluff by the original owner of the property.
Later Mr. Mulberry climbed up the path to interview the stout contractor.
“I will pay you in advance,” said Mr. Mulberry beaming benevolently and producing a wad of notes from his pocket book. “You have full instructions as to where these packages are to go?”
“Yes, sir,” said the man. “To the Thames Docks and I am to hand them over to the gentleman who engaged me the day before yesterday.”
“Mr. Stockmar,” said Mulberry.
“That is the name, sir. Are these things valuable?”
Mulberry shook his head.
“Scientifically they are of the greatest value, commercially they are of no value. You have probably heard of dioxide of lead, the heaviest metal that the earth holds?”
“I can’t say that I have, sir,” said the contractor frankly. “I am not much of a scientist.”
“It is a very useful element,” lied Mr. Mulberry glibly, “in the creation of paper. It is highly inflammable but not explosive so long as it is handled by experts like my men here,” he waved his hand to the procession of swarthy labourers who were coming up the hill, each bearing a package on his shoulder.
“They are Italians, aren’t they, sir?”
Mr. Mulberry nodded.
“They are the only people who can handle this chemical,” he explained.
“I see, sir,” said the master carman wisely, “some of these foreigners are wonderful chaps with chemicals.”
He looked down into the hollow.
“Mighty nice young lady that, sir,” he said respectfully, not knowing whether Kate, who had just emerged from the building and was wandering aimlessly across the yard, was an employee or a friend.
“Oh, yes, that is my confidential secretary,” said Mr. Mulberry.
“Mighty nice, if I may be allowed to say so, very lady-like.”
“Yes, yes,” said Mr. Mulberry.
He lingered long enough to see the last packages laid on the floor of the last truck, shook hands with the contractor with great affability and strode nonchalantly down the slope and none to see him would have imagined that he had just entrusted nearly three million pounds’ worth of gold, to the tender mercies of a chance carman.
He was half way down the first of the slopes when he met Kate coming up.
“Kate,” he said in a low voice, “if you are going up to the top and that fellow asks you who you are, you must tell him you are my confidential secretary. I hope you don’t mind, I had to explain you.”
She nodded and continued her slow walk until she came to the road. The cars were now buzzing preparatory to making a start. The contractor, whom she had met before, gave her a cheery nod.
“Have you a piece of paper?” she asked.
“I’ve a card, miss,” he said.
“That will do,” she said; “lend me your pencil.”
She wrote a few lines and handed them to the man.
“I am the managing director’s confidential secretary,” she said.
“I know, miss,” replied the man.
He looked at the card with a frown.
“You are to take the trucks first of all to this address and see the gentleman whose name I have written.”
“But I was told to go straight to the docks.”
She smiled and nodded.
“I know,” she said, “but my chief thinks you had better go here. His lordship will either accompany you to their destination or he may store your chemicals for the night.”
He looked at the address.
“The Earl of Flanborough,” he read; “suppose he isn’t there, miss?”
This was a contingency which she had overlooked.
“Ask for Lady Moya Felton—that is his daughter,” she said; “you had best see her first in any circumstances.”
“I see, miss,” said the man a little impressed. “I know his lordship. I have often seen him at Seahampton.”
“Now I think you had better go,” said Kate, “before you receive any fresh instructions.”
The man chuckled, swung himself into the seat of the second car beside the driver and first one and then the other of the great lorries, moved slowly down the white road. She watched them until the last one had passed the crest of the hill, then she slowly descended the zig-zag path.
She met Gregori in the doorway.
“Where have you been, Kate?” he demanded.
“I have been to see the loot off,” she said flippantly.
“The less you are seen, the better,” he grumbled. “I told that ass, Mulberry, not to let the man catch a glimpse of you. Don’t go in, I want to talk to you.”
He was ill at ease and evidently found it difficult to make a beginning.
“You know, Kate, I am very fond of you,” he said.
“You have every reason to be.”
“I still have,” he said.
“I am not so sure of that,” she interrupted, “but go on.”
“What do you mean by that?” he asked suspiciously.
“Go on,” she demanded; “where does your fondness lead?”
“It leads to your marrying me,” he said; “your uncle does not object and we will be married as soon as we reach South America.”
“South America!” she stared at him. “So that is our destination, is it?” she said slowly. “And I am to marry you when we arrive, by arrangement with my uncle?”
“That’s about the size of it,” replied Gregori.
“And suppose I make other arrangements?”
“There are no other arrangements you can make,” he said with easy confidence; “the fact is, Kate, that you have to drop these high and mighty manners of yours. We stood them very well because it paid us to stand them, I suppose. But we are all in the same boat—and shall be literally.” He laughed aloud at the sally. “You hold some queer views, you know, and we can’t afford to let you run loose.”
She jerked up her head and turned abruptly away and would have left him but he caught her by the arm and pulled her back.
“When I say you must marry me,” he said, “I mean just what I say.”
“Have I a voice in this arrangement?” she asked, slowly disengaging her arm.
“You have a voice in it if you agree. You have no voice if you cut up rough.”
“I see,” she said. “I will think about it. This is not a decision which I can arrive at in a minute.”
She went to her room and locked the door.
At five o’clock that evening her uncle came for her.
“Have you been to sleep?” he asked.
It was curious, she thought, how the manner and even the tone of these men had changed in the past few hours. She was so used to an attitude of deference, almost sycophantic, which they ordinarily displayed, that the change had come in the nature of a shock. And there was a change. Even her uncle had dropped his mask of good-nature and now treated her as a child, and a child that needed to be disciplined.
“I have been thinking,” she said.
He grunted something and walked back with her to the office.
“This fellow, Michael Pretherston, has to be settled with. Do you understand that?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“The cars will be on the road in half an hour and you and I will be the first to leave.”
“Do you think so?”
“What do you mean?” he asked sharply. “I warn you, Kate, that I am not going to stand any monkey tricks from you.”
To this she made no answer but pushed at the iron door that led to the meeting place and entered. To her surprise, Michael was present. In addition to his handcuffs his arms had been drawn back by the insertion of a short stick and secured with ropes. Gregori was sitting on the table and made no attempt to stand up, which was another piece of evidence that the hold she thought she had over these men had gone, if it had ever existed.
“Kate, you can use your persuasion on this fellow,” said Gregori wearily; “it is his last chance. He has had a night to think it over and he’s still obstinate.”
The girl walked up to the detective.
“Michael,” she said softly, “would nothing induce you to become—one of us?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“Nothing that we could give you—that I could give you?”
He looked at her steadily.
“Nothing that I would take from you at that price,” he said quietly.
“Don’t you love your life?”
“ ‘As dearly as any alive,’ ” quoted Michael.
“Don’t you love anything in the world? Isn’t there a girl?” she asked with a little break in her voice.
He nodded.
“There is a girl,” he said and looked past her.
It seemed as though an icy hand had gripped her heart and for a while she could not frame the next question.
“Isn’t she worth it?” she said, recovering her balance at last.
“She is worth many things,” said Michael, “but not that.”
She looked down at the floor.
“Poor girl,” she said.
“Having tried sentiment,” sneered Gregori, “we will now try a little practical argument—Pretherston you have got about an hour to live.”
“I shall die in very bad company,” said Michael with a wry face. “I had hoped at the least that I might die at the hands of a lawful hangman, as you will die. To be butchered by a cheap cutthroat half-breed is not a pleasant prospect.”
“Damn you,” said Gregori with passion and struck him in the face.
He would have repeated the blow but the girl slipped between them.
“Michael, you shall die in good company,” she said in so matter of fact a tone that none of them realized immediately what she was saying; “that is, if you think I am good company.”
“What do you mean?” gasped the Colonel.
“Why, I think you will kill me, too,” she said with a serenity which to Michael was wonderful, “because I have betrayed you all.”
Garon came flinging through the door.
“They haven’t turned up,” he screamed, “the wagons have gone.”
“Gone,” said Gregori huskily, “gone where?”
“I have just been on the ’phone,” gasped the doctor; “they went to Lord Flanborough’s. He has got the stuff.”
There was a dead silence broken by the girl.
“They went to Lord Flanborough’s,” she repeated nodding her head. “I know that. I sent them there.”
The tension was dreadful, no man spoke, then suddenly Gregori swung round on the girl and his face was the face of a devil.
“You!” he grated and leaped at her throat.
In that one moment all the scattered atoms of race, of pride, of kinship united in the distorted brain of Colonel Westhanger. His lean arms shot out and Gregori fell headlong to the floor.
“Back, you dog!” roared the old man.
It was the last word he uttered. There was a stinging report from the floor and Colonel Westhanger fell limply across the table with a bullet through his heart.
The girl who was half fainting with terror shrank back against the wall as Gregori rose, his still smoking pistol in his hand.
“You are a prophet,” he said harshly; “you said you would die with Michael Pretherston and by God! you spoke the truth. Put them together,” he said, “I want to think things out.”
CHAPTER XIX.
MICHAEL DEVELOPED A FONDNESS FOR THE
CRIMINAL CLASSES
The girl rose up from the chair where she had been sitting and crossed to where Michael lay on the floor where they had thrown him.
He looked up and smiled.
“Why, Kate,” he said faintly, “always… meeting… you.”
She sat down at his side and lifting his head laid it upon her lap.
“That’s nice,” he murmured.
“Why is it nice?” she asked curiously, “because I make a softer pillow than the stone?”
“That and something more,” he answered.
“What more?” she insisted.
“Oh—because it is you, I suppose,” he said vaguely.
Her lips twitched in amusement.
“But it would be just the same if it were any other person,” she said, “wouldn’t it, Mike?”
He looked up at her.
“Put your hand on my forehead,” he said.
“Like this?”
She laid her soft palm against his throbbing head.
“What does that do?” she asked after a long interval of silence.
“It just makes my head better—don’t ask a lot of questions.”
Her fingers stole down his face and she gently pinched his nose.
“Oh, Kate,” he murmured sleepily, “I was just going to sleep.”
“Then don’t,” she said, “what is the use of dozing—you’ll be dead soon and so will I.”
She said this very calmly, in the same matter-of-fact tone in which she might have announced that there would be a roast chicken for dinner.
“I hope they kill you first,” she said thoughtfully.
“You’re a bloodthirsty little beggar,” said Michael indignantly; “why do you wish that?”
She shrugged her shoulders and went on pressing back the hair from his forehead, never taking her eyes from his face.
“I don’t know,” she said at last, “only I want to make sure that you’re gone and nobody else can have you—and then I shan’t care.”
He did not move; for a second she saw his eyelids quiver, but he lay still staring past her to the dingy roof of the engine house.
“Say that again,” he whispered.
“Say what again? That I want you to be killed first?” she asked innocently.
“Mike,” she said suddenly, “who was the girl?”
“Which girl?”
“You know,” she said, “the girl you—care about.”
“Why, you of course,” he said in surprise.
Her hands slipped down from his forehead covering his eyes.
“Say that again,” she mimicked.
“You,” he repeated. “You see I am more obliging than you were.”
“And you would not come in with us, not even for me?”
“Not even for you.”
She did not speak for some time.
“How did you know we were here?” she asked.
“I knew you could be nowhere else,” he said.
“You are an awfully arrogant young man, aren’t you? Do you know how it was all done?”
He nodded.
“The train ran into the tunnel where you had a long motor-car mounted with flanged wheels and having three green lamps on the front and two red tail lamps behind. That was the ‘train’ which the signalman saw dashing through the rain and you had a horrible siren.”
She laughed softly.
“It was terrible, wasn’t it?” she admitted. “Do you remember that day you were in Crime Street? You heard it.”
He recalled the uncanny sound which had then excited his curiosity.
“When you got to the level crossing gates, the car was lifted off the rail and went on to the road. It followed the tram lines for some distance where it turned into a convenient garage, which I suppose you had already arranged for?”
“That’s right,” she nodded.
“The train went no farther than the tunnel. It then backed on to a side track. Gregori had his Italian workmen ready and fixed up the buffer which had been dropped—you know the rest. The hole behind the buffer and the green scum—that was your idea, I suppose.”
“It was cunning, wasn’t it, and did you see the rust I made?”
“It is a fortunate thing you are dying young, Kate,” he said; “you have a criminal mind.”
“But I haven’t a criminal mind,” she protested; “it is a game, a sort of highly complicated jigsaw puzzle. Do you ever read detective stories?”
“Very seldom.”
“But you have read them?” she persisted.
“I have read one or two,” he confessed.
“Did the men who wrote those have criminal minds? It was a game to them. It was a game to me. I know it is all wrong, horribly wrong, but I never thought I should realize that much. I thought nothing would turn me.”
“And what has turned you?” he asked.
She hesitated.
“I don’t know what it is,” she said shaking her head. “It is a curious feeling that I get when I meet one man in the world. A feeling that makes my heart turn to ice and makes me tremble. That is all it is, Mike—how do you think they are going to do it?”
Her thoughts had gone back to the approaching end.
“Heaven knows,” said Michael. “I haven’t any time to think of it. I am thinking of something else. Why do they keep the steam up in that engine?” he asked.
“It was Gregori’s idea,” she said; “he had the hole filled in to-day and the buffer taken down. He thought it might be useful to let the engine run on to the main line and block it. That is, if we had word that they were sending a lot of police down to search this part of the country.”
“Here they are,” said Michael; “help me to sit up.”
She raised him to a sitting position as the door opened and a dim figure appeared silhouetted against the dusk. It struck a match and lit a candle and Dr. Garon was revealed. He placed the candle carefully upon the floor just behind the half-closed door and passed slowly over to where Michael lay.
“Well, my young sleuth,” he said pleasantly, “the best of friends must part.”
“Fortunately,” said Michael, “I do not fall into the category of your friends.”
The doctor hummed a little tune as he took a small leather case from his pocket.
“You have seen a hypodermic syringe before, I suppose?” he held up the tiny instrument. “I am going to give you a slight dope, which won’t hurt you.”
“One moment,” said Michael, “do I understand that this dope is—final?”
The doctor bowed. From his heightened colour and his unsteady hand Michael guessed he had been drinking, either to give himself nerve for his task or to drown the memory of his misfortune.
“Very good,” said Michael. He looked up at the girl and raised his face and Kate stooped and kissed him on the lips.
“That is it, is it?” said the doctor unpleasantly. “Gregori will be pleased.”
He caught the manacled wrists of the prisoner and pulled back his sleeve and the girl’s heart almost ceased to beat.
It was at that moment that the light went out.
“Who is there?” said the doctor releasing his grip on Michael’s arm and turning quickly.
He took a groping step forward through the darkness.
“Who’s there?” he said again and they heard a soft thud followed by the sound that a body might make, when it struck the ground.
Michael caught his breath. Suddenly a beam of light danced in the room and focused upon the prostrate figure of Dr. Garon.
“Got him,” said a well-satisfied voice.
“Barr,” whispered Michael, “where did you spring from?”
“I came through the door,” said the voice. “Did you see it open? That is what knocked the candle over.”
He flashed the light on his superior.
“They have got the bracelets on you, sir,” he chuckled softly, took a key from his pocket and with a few deft turns released the other. His pocket knife finished the work.
Michael stretched his cramped limbs.
“I tried to get in last night but they had too many sentries—I couldn’t come here or get back to a telephone. I have been lying on that hillside all last night and all to-day,” said Detective-Sergeant Barr. “I dared not move until it was dark. I tell you, sir, I had a bit of a fright. I thought they would get away.”
“Have you a revolver?” asked his chief.
The man slipped a weapon into his hand. They made their way softly back through the room where the engine was still smoking, through the little steel door of the office. It was empty save for a shrouded figure which lay beneath the table. There was a second door in the room. Michael tried this. It was locked. He heard voices and tapped at the door.
“Who is there?” said Gregori.
“Open the door,” said Michael.
“Who is there?” demanded Gregori again.
“Open, in the name of the law,” said Michael.
He heard a shuffle of feet and an oath and stood waiting, his pistol extended but the door did not open. A sudden silence came.
“Is there any way out of here?”
“There is a door leading into the shed where the engine is,” said the girl. She was white and trembling… that shrouded figure under the table had been the last straw.
Michael dashed out into the shed but it was too late.
As his feet crossed the foothold a bullet struck the steel door and ricochetted to the roof. In the dim light offered by an oil flare he saw Mulberry and Stockmar hoisting the inanimate figure of Dr. Garon to the cab of the engine. He fired twice and Cunningham stumbled but was dragged into the cab. Then with a mighty “schuff!” which reverberated through the building the engine began to move toward the closed door. It gathered speed in the dozen yards or so it had to traverse and then with a crash it struck the gate, splintering and sending it flying.
Michael flew the length of the shed and arrived at the outer gates in time to see the engine disappearing round the edge of the bluff. Barr was at his side and the two men stood helpless, as their enemies gradually receded into the grey dusk.
“There is a telephone here,” said Michael quickly, “but it is probably laid for their own purpose.”
“I left my motor-bike on the top of the hill somewhere, sir,” said Barr.
“Get on to it,” said Michael.
He stood listening to the sound of the locomotive going faster and faster. A hand touched his timidly.
“Did they get away?”
He slipped his arm round the girl.
“I am afraid they have,” he said.
He was turning back to the shed when the roar of an explosion set the building trembling.
“What was that?” whispered the girl.
They walked back to the end of the bluff. There was no need for him to speculate as to the direction from whence the explosion had come, for a bright red glow two miles away illuminated the whole countryside.
“Something has happened to the engine,” he said.
He did not know till an hour later that running at full speed the Atlantic had dashed into a down goods train and that the blaze he witnessed was the blaze of a burning petroleum tank which the wrecked Atlantic had crushed in its death flurry.
“We have not been able to recognize any of them,” said T.B. “Do you think Kate Westhanger was with them?”
“Kate Westhanger is no more,” said Michael gravely, and he spoke the truth for Kate Pretherston was at that moment on her way to France, where her husband intended joining her just as soon as his resignation was accepted.
“But why give up the work, Michael?” said T.B.
“I found, sir,” said Michael, “that it was sapping my moral qualities.”
“Your moral qualities?” said his puzzled chief. “I didn’t know that you had any. What particular form did the sapping take?”
“I found, sir,” said Michael, “that I was developing a fondness for the criminal classes.”
THE END
ENDNOTES
[1] Tolmini made a mess of it] See Rex v. Tolmini (Notts. Assizes). This was evidently the big mail robbery which failed, owing to the precipitancy of one of the criminals.—Editor.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. drawing-room/drawing room, fireplace/fire-place, motor-car/motor car, etc.) have been preserved.
Alterations to the text:
Convert footnote to endnote.
Standardize the time formatting to use the colon. (The source text used both periods and colons.)
[Chapter II]
Change “Her mother was a wholesome parson’s wife, her father was a rascal who was kicked out of the army” to daughter.
[Chapter IV]
“But what I mean to say is this; there was a time when you” change the semicolon to a colon.
[Chapter V]
“across the streaming brass pots and the blistering hot plates” to steaming.
[Chapter VI]
(“I am sending you two tickets for the theatre tonight.) to to-night.
[Chapter VIII]
(“That, Princess.” he said, “is Lady Moya Felton.”) change the first period to a comma.
[Chapter XII]
“pulled it back until he felt the snap of the rotten hand as it broke” to handle.
“And Daddy, if you are rude to Fonso, I shall be very rude to Ralph.” add comma after And.
[Chapter XIII]
(“Well, you couldn’t open them from the box,” said the man) add a period to this sentence.
[Chapter XIX]
(“Did you see it open. That is what knocked the candle over.”) Change the first period to a question mark.
[End of text]