That Nanette had been hiding in the establishment of M. Pierre, I no longer doubted. And that Milton had some part in the comedy was clear enough. Poor fellow, I regarded him in a more charitable spirit than Jack had at command. Nanette had been using him—for what purpose I could not imagine—and his reward would be small.
Some association between Nanette, at M. Pierre’s, and Milton, in the entrance of the Modern Gallery, seemed to be established. But since Nanette’s photograph was not in the gallery, why this association—and conveying what?
Nothing—in so far as my bewildered brain served me.
So I mused, as I drifted along Pall Mall. I determined to hunt up O’Shea, when, suddenly, I saw something which called me to prompt action.
A taxi turned a corner at the very moment I was about to cross. In it sat Nanette—and Adolf Zara!
It is in such moments of stress as this that vacant cabs magically disappear from the streets. No fewer than five taximen had solicited my patronage during the few minutes that had elapsed since I had left Jack.
Now, with a dangerous agitator wanted by the British Government disappearing in the distance, from end to end of Pall Mall not a taxi was in sight!
When at last one crept into view, pursuit was out of the question.
If I had been perplexed before, perplexity now gave place to consternation. The comedy of Bond Street had been no more than a gay curtain draped before a stage set for drama. I tried in vain to allot the actors their proper rôles. What part did the missing photograph play? How came Zara in the cast? What of Milton? And what of Nanette?
It was not far to my chambers, and I hurried back, with the intention of ’phoning O’Shea.
I met him at the door.
Those who enjoyed the privilege of seeing Edmond O’Shea in action relate that when things were going hopelessly wrong he would fix his monocle immovably in his eye and retain it there, contrary to regulations, throughout the hottest fighting. He was wearing it now.
“Hallo, O’Shea!” I called. “This is lucky! I want to see you badly.”
“I came to see you, Decies,” said he. “There is something I wish you to know.”
Having opened the door and hurried him upstairs:
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” I began. “But Nanette met Zara this afternoon.”
O’Shea stared at me incredulously.
“Where?” he demanded.
“I don’t know where. But I saw them together not ten minutes ago.”
He hesitated for a moment; then:
“Tell me all about it,” he said calmly.
In as few words as possible I outlined the events of the day, terminating with my glimpse of Nanette and Adolf Zara together in Pall Mall.
“It is a blank mystery to me, O’Shea,” I said. “I simply cannot understand what it’s all about.”
“To me,” he replied, “it is equally, but painfully, clear.”
“What do you mean?”
“In the first place,” said he, “our friend the inspector borrowed your negative of Nanette.”
“The inspector! In heaven’s name, what for?”
“Because he happens to be a clever man at his trade. I declined to allow him to insert a paragraph in Nanette’s name. But he was by no means defeated. He employed certain official channels and secured the publication of her photograph.”
“With what object?”
“You recall the words that appeared under the picture?”
“Clearly. But the original was not in Bond Street.”
“Quite unnecessary that it should be, Decies. Our friend the inspector was in Bond Street, however.”
I think I was gaping like an imbecile.
“You are simply confusing me, O’Shea,” I managed to say.
“Yes,” he admitted. “No doubt the scheme is difficult to grasp. You see—the inspector banked on Zara’s infatuation for Nanette. He judged it, no doubt, by the risk that Zara ran in communicating with her.”
“Good heavens!” I cried. “I see it all! He hoped in this way to lure Zara to the gallery?”
“Certainly. He thought that Zara would probably come, first, to secure the picture, and, second, possibly to obtain a glimpse of Nanette in person.”
“And you say the inspector was there? I didn’t see him.”
“I did!” said O’Shea grimly. “He was in an office at the end of the gallery—with the door ajar. The girl in charge knew he was there on some police business, but she did not know that it had any connection with the missing print. I gave him a crisp five minutes. But, officially, he was within his rights—and he knew it, dash him!”
“O’Shea,” I said, “I can’t fit Nanette and young Milton into the picture.”
O’Shea’s expression changed, softened.
“I wonder?” he murmured. “She has a high spirit, and, I am beginning to think, a keen brain. Decies!”—he suddenly grasped my shoulder—“how happy some man is going to be, some day!”
He turned aside abruptly, and walked into the inner room where my modest library formed a haven of refuge. Vaguely, as we had talked, I had grown aware of voices below. My man was one of the speakers; the other voice had been inaudible throughout.
Then I heard the door open behind me. I looked. And there was Nanette!
But, even as I was about to greet her, I checked the words. I had seen Nanette merry; I had seen her sad. I knew her moods of coquetry and of contrition. But, always, save once, I had thought of her as a child. I did not know her as I saw her now.
“I thought you were my friend,” she said. “I thought I could trust you. If I had had one little doubt I would never have told you——”
“Nanette,” I began——
But she checked me with a sad, angry gesture.
“You are no better than he is,” she went on bitterly; “for you helped him. Heavens, what a fool I have been! And he only thinks of me as a bait for his traps!”
“Stop!” I cried. “For heaven’s sake, stop, Nanette!”
“He was right,” she pursued, stonily ignoring me, and looking unseeingly, miserably, before her as she spoke. “Captain Slattery came. But I had arranged to warn him.”
I remembered Milton and his watch upon the window of M. Pierre. Then, abruptly, her mood changed. The blue eyes, which were so sweetly childish, blazed at me.
“No man, however bad he is, shall ever be lured to ruin by me. Tell Major O’Shea that Captain Slattery is laughing at him!”
“He is entitled to laugh, Nanette,” said a grave voice.
O’Shea came out from the recess and stood watching her.
A moment she confronted him, then:
“Good-bye!” she said.
Turning, Nanette ran from the room. I heard the street door slam.
“O’Shea!” I cried. “Why didn’t you tell her?”
“It is better she should think as she does,” he replied. “Fate has done what I failed to do. Now she will forget.”
I have often wondered, since, if he believed it would be so. I have tried, knowing the man’s honesty of soul, to conceive that he hoped it would be so. What I believed or what I hoped I cannot pretend to record. But, at some hour past midnight, I learned that Nanette was unwilling to ignore the promptings of her heart.
Dejectedly, I sat smoking a lonely pipe, when the ’phone bell rang. I took up the receiver. I think I knew who had called me, even before I heard her voice.
“Is that you, Mr. Decies?”
“Yes, Nanette.”
“I am so miserable, because——”
She hesitated.
“Because of what?” I prompted gently.
“Because I never gave you a chance to explain. Oh, Mr. Decies! Tell me—is there something I don’t know?”
“Why, yes—there is,” I replied. “You don’t know that Major O’Shea and I were totally ignorant of the plot to trap the man you call Captain Slattery.”
“Oh!” came, as a sort of sigh, broken by a sob. “And I told him—— Mr. Decies, do you think you can ever forgive me?”
“I do forgive you, Nanette.”
“And do you think—— Good-night!”
“Nanette!” I called. “Nanette!” But there was no answer.
CHAPTER XXIV.
PETER PAN
A delicious haze hung over the Serpentine, by which token I knew that a warm day might be expected. Votaries of Peter Pan were few, for the morning was young as yet, but I sat watching him in his green temple and I thought how puzzled some archæologist of the future was going to be.
Strange to reflect that a Scotsman should add to the ranks of the gods; stranger still that his immortal child should find himself so completely at home upon Olympus. More and more strange the reflection that none of the older gods were jealous.
Children of course came to pay tribute, and I think it was this morning I learned for the first time that there are many juvenile citizens whose day is incomplete unless they have made offering—a laugh, a pointed finger, a fleeting glance—to the god of that dear world which is hidden from most of us behind the gates of innocence. To many an exile under palm and pine, the coming of spring means dreams of crocuses and Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens.
I was suffering from a fit of physical and mental restlessness. I could not clear my mind of the idea that some imminent peril threatened O’Shea. That Nanette was involved, I feared, but tried hard not to believe. Experience of that Red organization known as the S Group had shown its members to be frankly unscrupulous; and Nanette had blindly involved herself with one of them. I knew why she had done it, but the man, Adolf Zara, could not know. For Nanette, Zara had ceased to exist. I doubted that the reverse was true.
The peace of the morning and the beauty of the lake mocked me. In the long encounter between O’Shea and the S Group, honours had gone to the enemy. But the battle was not yet over. Instinct and common sense alike told me that the worst was yet to come.
My ceaseless meditations along these lines had earned me a sleepless night, and I think I had sought out this spot beside the Serpentine with some vague idea of finding peace.
Now, coming out of a brown study and looking up, I observed a figure approaching along the path. It was that of a girl very simply dressed in a gray walking suit, and wearing a tight-fitting hat, which I should have described as claret-coloured but for which the fashion journals no doubt have a better name. Her fingers listlessly interlocked, she came slowly along, looking down at the path and sometimes kicking a pebble aside. Never once did she look up, not even when she arrived before Peter Pan, until:
“Good-morning, Nanette!” said I.
Then she stopped as suddenly as though a physical obstacle had checked her.
“Good heavens!” she replied, tore herself from a land of dreams and stared at me, smiling. But her smile was not exactly a happy one. “It’s like a musical comedy, isn’t it?”
“Why?” I asked.
“Well, everybody turning up at the same place for no reason!”
“Not everybody,” said I.
“Well—no.” Nanette hesitated, and then sat down beside me on the bench. “Not everybody.”
“Curiously enough,” I went on, “I was thinking about you.”
Nanette stared at the point of her shoe.
“Must be telepathy,” she murmured.
“Why? Were you thinking about me?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “I shall never forgive myself for what I have done.”
“You mean—about Adolf Zara?”
“About Captain Slattery, yes.” She turned to me. “You see, I always think of him as ‘Slattery.’ ”
“Does that make you like him any better, Nanette?”
“No,” she admitted; “I have never liked him. But, well—you know how I felt about him? Does Major O’Shea know that I know?”
“You mean,” I suggested, “does he know that you no longer suspect him of using you as a lure?”
Nanette nodded without looking up.
“I have had no opportunity of telling him,” said I. “But I expect to see him to-day.” I rested my hand upon hers, which lay listlessly on the seat beside her. “May I talk to you quite honestly?”
“Of course,” said Nanette, but still did not look up.
“I want to tell you,” I went on, “that the man you call Captain Slattery, but whose real name is Adolf Zara, is not as civilized as he appears to be. He is a member of a very dangerous organization. I hope you will make a point of avoiding him.”
“I am never going to see him again,” Nanette declared.
She spoke abstractedly, and it dawned upon me that her interest was centred less upon this matter of her perilous acquaintance with a member of the S Group than upon the passers-by. I attached little significance to the fact at the time, and:
“I am only anxious about your personal safety,” I said. “Anything you care to tell me, I shall keep to myself. Are you sure that Captain Slattery does not mean to see you again?”
Nanette looked aside at me.
I thought that, since Adolf Zara was human, my question had been rather superfluous. O’Shea, who was no alarmist, had admitted that the secret organization of these people was extensive and efficient. Wild ideas assailed my mind, but:
“Of course, we are no longer in the lonely island of Madeira,” I went on, “but in the capital of a civilized country. All the same, Nanette, I should be glad to know that Zara was no longer in England.”
“So should I,” she admitted, and looked away again.
The words were simple enough, but, from what I knew of Nanette, I detected an unfamiliar note in her voice. I was not sorry to hear it, although it was a note of fear. It told me that my warning had been unnecessary. Nanette knew that Zara was a dangerous man.
“I have been wondering what I should do,” she began suddenly. “But now I have made up my mind.”
She opened her handbag and took out a twisted scrap of paper. Smoothing it carefully, she passed it to me, and:
“Captain Slattery dropped this yesterday,” she said, “while he was with me in a taxi. I think, perhaps——”
She hesitated.
“Yes?” said I, glancing at what was written on the paper.
“It’s so odd that I think, perhaps, you should show it to—your friend.”
Watching her as she spoke, I wondered at the scheme of things; wondered whether she would outlive a romance born in a jewelled island, or whether, despite her youth, it was real, for good or ill, this love of hers for O’Shea.
I suppressed a sigh, and bent over the writing. This was what I read:
Book from Charing Cross to the British Museum. From the Mansion House also it is no distance to the British Museum. Hyde Park there is a station. Change at Charing Cross for Piccadilly. Bond Street is merely Bond Street, and two London Bridges are better than one Bond Street. But the Mansion House and the British Museum are national institutions, and Berkeley Square pulled down or Berkeley Square blown up would only lead to the Old Bailey. Residents at the Crystal Palace rarely moved to Berkeley Square, and the Tower Bridge is new whilst London Bridge is old. Meet you in Bond Street.
I raised my eyes. Nanette was stifling laughter. Now she stifled it no longer. And Nanette’s laughter was very sweet music.
“Of course,” she confessed, “I know it seems perfectly idiotic! But one never knows. It may mean a general strike or something. But whatever it means, I shall have to be pushing along. I am meeting Mumsy at Marshall’s.”
She stood up, looking sharply to right and left, and I wondered what this might portend. However, we took the path to the Gate, walking very slowly, and from there proceeded in a taxi.
I dropped Nanette at her destination and was standing outside the shop wondering whether to walk over to the Club or to hunt up O’Shea, when an explanation of this chance meeting presented itself.
O’Shea, I recalled, had once said, in Nanette’s presence, that when he had a difficult problem upon his mind, he varied the ordinary routine of a London morning. Other duties permitting, he walked as far as Peter Pan, and in the presence of the little god not infrequently discovered a solution of his difficulties.
Nanette had been unfortunate. This morning O’Shea had not come.
I reëntered the taxi which I had kept waiting, and:
“Lancaster Gate,” I directed.
Why I did so I have no idea; but experience has taught me that the motives which prompt many far-reaching actions are so obscure as to defy subsequent research.
Discharging the man, I set out along that path beside the Serpentine. The hour was now approaching noon, and platoons of white-capped nursemaids promenaded with the younger generation. I found myself surrounded by future society beauties; statesmen who would be making laws when I was an old man; great soldiers destined to save the British Empire from enemies yet unborn; actresses whose reputations might overshadow the memory of Sarah Bernhardt; princesses, dukes, vagabonds, thieves; some in perambulators, others in miniature automobiles, some toddling; a fascinating crowd.
Then I awakened from my day dream. Standing squarely in front of Peter Pan, and watching that youthful deity with a fixed stare, was O’Shea! He remained unaware of my presence until I touched him on the shoulder.
He turned swiftly. And I saw a far-away look in his gray eyes instantly change to one of close scrutiny; then:
“Decies,” he said, “I am glad to see you. I learned something last night.”
“What?” I said.
“I learned why Adolf Zara has come to England! The president of the S Group—a person with the mentality of a Tomsky and the morals of a baboon—is one Schmidt.”
“Well?” said I.
“Schmidt is in London!”
CHAPTER XXV.
THE SECOND MESSAGE
“Of course,” I said, “it may mean nothing.”
O’Shea raised his eyes from the extraordinary communication that I had handed to him, and:
“Or it may mean everything!” he added.
We sat on that bench by the water’s edge where I had met Nanette. O’Shea continued his scrutiny of the message, and, looking over his shoulder, I read it again for perhaps the twentieth time. Its absurdity fogged me. Passers-by ceased to exist, and I forgot Peter Pan.
“Perhaps,” said I, “it is some kind of code.”
“Since it is otherwise meaningless,” O’Shea murmured, without raising his eyes, “your suggestion is excellent. You will have noticed that there are three references to the British Museum and that the expression ‘Two London Bridges’ occurs?”
“I had not particularly noticed this,” I admitted.
“Two London Bridges,” O’Shea went on musingly. “Very interesting—very interesting. You see where I mean?”
He indicated the passage with the rim of his monocle.
“Quite,” said I eagerly. “But Charing Cross, Berkeley Square, and Bond Street also occur several times.”
“But only Bond Street and Berkeley Square crop up in pairs,” he replied, “if we exclude the brace of London Bridges.”
And now, as we sat there pondering over this nonsensical piece of writing, came a strange interruption.
“Have you seen Comrade Zara?” said a guttural voice.
I looked up sharply. A stout German obstructed my view of Kensington Gardens. His ample face was draped in a pleasant smile, and he surveyed O’Shea and myself through a pair of spectacles that resembled portholes. No doubt I was gaping like an imbecile but O’Shea rose to the situation lightly.
“He is here,” he replied calmly. “Are you from Comrade Schmidt?”
“I am,” said the German. His smile disappeared. Relieved of it, his face was frankly sinister. “Have you seen Comrade Wilson?”
Perhaps it is unnecessary to state that emerging from a perusal of the letter about Hyde Park, Bond Street, and Berkeley Square, and finding myself plunged into this apparently inane conversation, I began to doubt my own sanity; but:
“This is Comrade Wilson,” said O’Shea gravely, and waved his hand in my direction!
The German nodded in a very brusque way.
“Show me the order,” he demanded.
O’Shea held up the demented document we had been reading; whereupon:
“Good,” said our eccentric acquaintance. “Quick! The order for to-night!” He passed an envelope to O’Shea. “I am followed. Good-morning.”
He moved off hurriedly, and I was still staring in speechless astonishment when a thick-set man wearing a blue suit and a soft hat, and who, without resembling a straggler from the Row, might have been a Colonial visitor, came along the path. One keen side-glance he gave us, and then disappeared in the wake of our Teutonic acquaintance.
“O’Shea——” I began; but:
“After all,” he interrupted me, “one must admit that the Scotland Yard people are efficient. That was a detective-inspector of the Special Branch.”
“Do you mean he is following the German?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“But why should he follow him? Who was the German?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea!” O’Shea replied.
“But he mentioned Zara! And you seemed to know him.”
O’Shea adjusted his monocle and looked me over in a way that I didn’t like.
“Really, Decies,” he replied, “considering the admirable assistance which you have given me in this matter—for which I shall always be grateful—there are times when you defeat me. Why our German friend reposed his confidence in us I have no more idea than the Man in the Moon, nor why he confided this letter to my keeping. But his reference to Zara brands him a member of the S Group, without the significant fact that he is being followed by an officer of the Special Branch, whom I chance to know but who does not know me. The weary arm of coincidence is not long enough to embrace all these happenings, Decies. There is some other explanation. Let us see if it is here.”
He tore open the envelope and withdrew a single sheet of paper. I bent forward eagerly, and over his shoulder read the following:
Charing Cross, London Bridge, Hyde Park, and the Strand are all worthy of a visit. Kingsway is modern, but the British Museum, Tower Bridge, the Mansion House, especially the British Museum, must not be neglected. Hyde Park merits several visits. The Mansion House, or the British Museum, can be done in one day, but Hyde Park is the only Hyde Park, whilst Piccadilly and the Strand are merely thoroughfares. The British Museum exhibit 365A is not in the National Gallery. The Crystal Palace does not resemble Buckingham Palace and Bond Street is not the Station for the Crystal Palace. Shepherd’s Market is a survival. But book at Kingsway. Meet you at the Mansion House.
“And now,” said O’Shea, “you know as much as I do!”
I stared at him blankly, and, as I stared, heard clocks, near and remote, strike the hour of noon. O’Shea suddenly thrust the second letter into his pocket and began to study that which Nanette had given to me.
He looked up, staring intently at the figure of Peter Pan, then:
“Twelve o’clock,” he muttered. “Does the fact that it is twelve o’clock convey anything to you, Decies?”
“Nothing,” I confessed, “except that I feel thirsty.”
But it had conveyed something more to O’Shea. A distinguished officer is not relieved of his ordinary duties and dispatched to the Argentine upon the toss of a coin. He is selected for his special qualifications. That O’Shea’s qualifications were extensive I had already learned; that they were also peculiar was beginning to dawn upon me.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE CRYPTOGRAM
Nanette was with a party at the Hippodrome that night, and I had promised to look in during the interval. The curtain had just fallen and the orchestra was playing as I entered with O’Shea. The manager met us at the top of the steps.
No doubt you remember him. He is unforgettable, being the best-dressed manager in Europe. He was delighted to meet O’Shea and much happier in greeting an officer of the Household troops who had come in for a drink than in endorsing a plebeian check for the use of the Royal box.
Nanette came running out ahead of her party and stopped dead on seeing O’Shea. He bowed in his grave, courtly fashion. She glanced at me swiftly, and then:
“Oh, Major O’Shea,” she said, “I want to ask you to forgive me!”
“And I want to thank you,” said he.
“To thank me?”
Nanette looked up at him and then down again very swiftly. She began tapping her foot upon the rubber-coated floor.
“To thank you,” he repeated, “once more. It seems to be my happy fate, Nanette, to be always thanking you.”
“But what have you to thank me for?” she asked, industriously studying the point of her shoe.
“For giving me an opportunity of redeeming my many failures.”
Nanette looked up—she was quite calm again—and met his eyes bravely.
“Some of them,” she said, “have been my fault.”
“You are wrong,” O’Shea assured her. “The fault has been mine from the very beginning.”
“What do you mean?” she asked; and I turned aside, joining some friends who had just come out from the stalls.
In spite of my determination about Nanette, it still hurt a little bit to see that light in her eyes.
“I mean,” I heard O’Shea reply, “that I have tried to do something that is impossible.”
I heard no more, nor did I want to.
That bell which indicates the rise of the curtain releases from the bars of a London theatre certain characteristic types. The wet man returning guiltily with guarded breath to his dry wife in the stalls, having stepped out to “smoke a cigarette.” The bored man, who is present under protest, and who goes to his seat like a martyr to the stake. The victim of jazzitis who dances with his girl friend in the lobby, and post-mortem examination of whose skull reveals the presence of several perfectly formed saxophones but nothing else.
The curtain was about to rise and practically everybody was seated when I learned that Nanette had straggled. She stood with O’Shea in the opening at the back of the stalls. And I thought that I had never before seen her so animated in his company.
Envied model of her girl friends, Nanette was a paragon of self-possession in the company of all men, or had been until she had met O’Shea. Never, hitherto, had I seen her at her ease with him. But to-night she was—realized that she was—and her happy excitement will be good to remember when I am ten years older.
One hand resting upon his arm, she looked up, talking gaily. He, too, had relaxed, as any man must have done finding himself in the company of an adorably pretty and spirited girl who loved him so much that she didn’t care who knew. He was laughing like a schoolboy.
The curtain was up before Nanette tore herself away. She was very flushed, and I know her heart was beating wildly. I pitied her escort, foreseeing that she would be abstracted throughout the remainder of the evening.
O’Shea turned to me, and his eyes were still glistening happily.
“Well, Decies,” said he, “what are you thinking?”
“I am thinking,” I replied honestly, “that we are about of an age. That if Nanette had looked at me as I saw her looking at you, I should have asked her to marry me before I let her go back to her seat.”
He stared very hard, his expression changing from second to second; then:
“Being Celtic,” he said, “I suppose I am superstitious. At every turn since I have met her Nanette has intruded in my life. I am beginning to wonder.”
“About what are you thinking in particular?” I asked.
“About the letter that Zara dropped in the cab and that Nanette gave to you.”
“Have you fathomed it?” I asked excitedly—“and the other?”
“Both are in the same code. But without the first I doubt that I should have been able to read the second.”
“Then you have read them?”
“I have,” O’Shea replied; “and this time Nanette has dealt me a full hand.”
His suppressed excitement communicated itself to me.
“What have you learned?” I said eagerly. “Can I be of any assistance?”
“Your assistance is indispensable!” he returned. “Are you game?”
“Every time!”
“Good enough. Let us go along to your rooms, and I will explain what to-night has in store for us.”
As the taxi that we presently hailed threaded its way through the traffic of Cranbourne Street, and on through that of Piccadilly, I glanced aside several times at my silent companion. I wondered if his abstraction might be ascribed to the problem of the S Group, or to that of Nanette. Not being an O’Shea, I hesitated to judge. But my vote was for Nanette.
Arrived at my rooms and having sampled the whisky and soda:
“Now,” O’Shea began, “the mantle of Edgar Allan Poe not having fallen upon my shoulders, I doubt that I should have solved this cipher but for the happy coincidence of meeting our German friend in the very shadow of Peter Pan. You will recall, too, that at the moment of his departure, the clocks were chiming the hour of noon.”
“I remember,” said I.
“I turned it over in my mind, considering the thing from every conceivable angle. Before I tackled the cipher—for of course the messages were palpably written in some kind of cipher—one fact was plain enough to me.”
“What was that?”
“The fact that Zara, an important member of the S Group, was not known by sight to the member who spoke to us! He mistook me for Zara, and he mistook you for one Comrade Wilson, of whom I had never heard, and respecting whom I have no instructions.”
“So far I agree,” said I, “but what I simply cannot make out is why this deranged German should walk up to two perfect strangers seated in Kensington Gardens and take it for granted that they were the people he was looking for.”
“His opening remark was non-committal,” O’Shea reminded me, reflectively sipping his whisky and soda.
“Certainly it was; but am I to assume that the man was walking about London addressing the inquiry, ‘Have you seen Comrade Zara?’ to every male citizen he met on his travels?”
“The very point that led me to a solution of the problem,” O’Shea returned. “I realized, of course, that the routine which you indicate would have been insane, and I do not look for insanity of this kind from members of the S Group. I recalled that we had been sitting by the statue of Peter Pan, and that I had drawn your attention to the presence of ‘Two London Bridges’ in the message. I noted that the double bridges were preceded by a reference to Bond Street—or, rather, by two references to Bond Street—and followed by another. I remembered that the hour was noon.
“Treating the message as a cipher, I assumed, as a basis of investigation, that the various well-known spots mentioned represented letters and that all intervening words might be neglected. Now, I had two almost certain clues to work upon.
“First, that our German friend clearly expected to meet Zara and someone called Wilson by the statue of Peter Pan. Second, that he expected to meet them there at noon. Think for a moment, and you will realize that this must have been the case.”
“It is clear enough,” said I, “now that you point it out to me.”
“His handing me a second message in the same cipher,” O’Shea went on, “suggested that the first related to the appointment which we, by bounty of the gods, had accidentally kept. I therefore assumed that the first message conveyed something of this sort: ‘Be at the statue of Peter Pan at midday.’
“I began to examine it with this idea in mind. Particularly, I was looking for a sequence to fit the name, Peter Pan. As you can see—” he spread the original messages on my table before me—“it appears unmistakably at the very beginning. Charing Cross is the first point mentioned; four other London landmarks occur, and then Charing Cross again. I assumed as a working theory that Charing Cross stood for the letter P.
“This suggested that British Museum was E as it occurs next, is followed by Mansion House, and then occurs again.
“Assuming Mansion House to be T, we get P-e-t-e. Calling Hyde Park R, we get Peter. Charing Cross then crops up in its correct place. Reading Piccadilly as A and Bond Street as N gives Peter Pan.”
He laid his cigarette in an ash-tray and bent over the writing enthusiastically.
“This enabled me to cross-check, for Bond Street occurs again immediately, with the two London Bridges which first attracted my attention, followed by another Bond Street.
“Bond Street being N, it was reasonable to assume that London Bridge was O, making—Peter Pan, Noon.”
“By gad!” I exclaimed. “It’s wonderful!”
“On the contrary,” O’Shea assured me, “it is elementary. To continue: we now have Mansion House again, or T, followed by British Museum—E, and two Berkeley Squares, hitherto unmentioned. Old Bailey and Crystal Palace crop up next—very defeating—followed by a third Berkeley Square. Then Tower Bridge. This is followed by London Bridge, O, and Bond Street, N. Remembering the name of the Comrade for whom you were mistaken, Decies, I very quickly determined that Berkeley Square stood for L and the word following ‘Noon’ was ‘Tell.’ This gave me a pair of blanks, then L, another blank, and o-n. Wilson was clearly indicated, and I had my complete message. ‘Peter Pan noon, tell Wilson.’ ”
O’Shea replaced his cigarette between his lips and turned to me, smiling.
“You mean,” said I, “that you have read the second message?”
“Naturally,” he replied. “It is childishly easy, once having got the idea of the nature of the cipher. Without bothering you with details, such as the letters implied by Buckingham Palace, Shepherd’s Market, and Kingsway—places that don’t occur in the first message—I may say that it reads as follows: ‘Porchester Terrace 365A—which I assume to be the number of a house—midnight.’ ”
“Good heavens!” I glanced at the clock. “And he said the order was for to-night!”
“To-night,” O’Shea returned, glancing up. “We have two hours.”
“We have two hours?”
“Precisely,” said he, and his gray eyes surveyed me unblinkingly. “There are certain chances, but there is no game without chances, and we shall be covered by a raid squad from Scotland Yard. Whether Comrade Schmidt is more familiar with the appearance of Comrades Zara and Wilson than his emissary seems to be, I cannot say. But to-night at twelve o’clock I suggest that you and I present ourselves at number 365A Porchester Terrace, as Comrades Zara and Wilson! It is asking a lot, Decies, but are you game?”
“Good God!” I said, hesitated for one electric moment, and then held out my hand.
O’Shea grasped it.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE COMRADES GATHER
“Nanette has gone on somewhere to dance,” said O’Shea.
“I know.” I stared out of the window of the taxi. “I take it that she doesn’t know where we have gone on to?”
“No.”
O’Shea’s reply was little more than a whisper, but it told me that which made me at once glad and sorry. For good or for ill, Nanette was winning.
“Two things are rather worrying me,” O’Shea confessed. “It is obvious enough that Zara is afraid to visit any of the known centres of the S Group, hence the appointment at Peter Pan. He probably received the letter—or ‘Order’—at some post office, under an assumed name. But if he had read it and decoded it before he dropped it in the taxi, where was he at noon to-day?”
“Unable to approach Peter Pan,” I replied promptly, “because we were there, not to mention the man from Scotland Yard who was following the German.”
“Yes,” O’Shea mused. “Zara’s reaction to this check is one of the points I am wondering about. It may prove to be a snag. The second snag——”
But as our taxi had turned into Porchester Terrace and was now pulling up, I did not learn what the second snag might be.
We alighted, and I looked up and down the street. Save for O’Shea’s assurance, there was nothing to show that our movements were covered by the squad from Scotland Yard. Porchester Terrace proclaimed itself empty from end to end, or for as far as I could see.
Number 365A was a prosperous-looking mansion set back beyond a patch of shrubbery and approached through a sort of arcade guarded by handsome double doors. What appeared to be a large room on the first floor was brilliantly lighted, but otherwise the house was in darkness.
“Pull over to the other side of the street,” O’Shea directed the taxi driver, “and wait. We shall not be long.”
“Very good, sir.”
As the man turned his cab:
“Now,” said O’Shea, “we are going over the top! Are you fit?”
“All ready,” said I.
O’Shea pressed the bell button.
In the interval that elapsed between the ringing of the bell and the opening of the door, I conjured up a picture of Nanette dancing with somebody or another somewhere, perpetually glancing abstractedly about the room, as I had seen her do so often, in hope of catching a glimpse of O’Shea.
It was hard to believe that this doorway before which we waited represented a frontier which, once crossed, shut us off from the life of empty gaiety which the name of London conveys to so many; difficult to regard it as the porch of a grim and real underworld, controlled by enemies of established society, remorseless, almost inhuman in their bloodthirsty fanaticism.
A saturnine foreign butler admitted us. We had shed our dinner kit and were wearing tweeds.
“Comrade Zara and Comrade Wilson,” said O’Shea with composure.
The man nodded and stood aside. We entered the arcade, which was bordered by plants in pots, and saw ahead of us some carpeted steps, lighted by a hanging lantern.
As the double doors closed behind us, I experienced one of those indescribable moments compounded of panic and exhilaration. Then somewhere, very dimly, I heard a clock striking midnight. We were going upstairs.
“Comrade Zara and Comrade Wilson.”
I found myself in a large room, very simply furnished in library fashion, and in the presence of six or seven rather unsavoury human specimens, some of whom bowed curtly, and some of whom did not bow at all.
Our Peter Pan acquaintance was present; and a short thick-set man, who had incredibly long arms, and who generally resembled a red baboon, came forward to greet us. He had incomplete teeth, and those that survived badly needed scaling. His accent opened up wide possibilities.
“Greeting, Comrades,” said he. “You are welcome. My name is Schmidt.”
And as he spoke, fixing his piercing glance first upon O’Shea and then upon myself, I recognized beneath that uncouth exterior the primitive, formidable force of the man.
He presented the other comrades, by names which are not to be found in Debrett, and I reflected that impudence is indispensable to success in this sort of game.
It became evident that, from Comrade Schmidt downward, nobody in the room was familiar with the appearance of either Zara or Wilson!
An appalling-looking bearded creature attached itself to O’Shea.
“We are anxious, Comrade,” it said, “to hear your personal account of the state of the work in South Africa.”
“I am not too hopeful,” O’Shea replied gloomily, and glanced aside at me.
“But,” said Schmidt, turning his dreadful little eyes in my direction, “Comrade Wilson brings us news from the United States which will be like new blood in our veins.”
Somehow or another, O’Shea managed to shake off the Missing Link, and to secure a word aside with me.
“Very full bag,” he murmured. “If we make no mistakes, we shall purge England and America of some unsavoury elements. But the second snag which I had foreseen rests on the fact that another steamer from Madeira has reached Southampton since we returned. There is one member of the S Group whom we left behind. He knows us both. He might quite conceivably have been in that steamer! His appearance here would raise the temperature considerably. And——”
He was interrupted. The door of the room was thrown open and the foreign butler entered.
“Comrade Macalister,” he announced.
“The snag to which I referred!” said O’Shea.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE RAID
I suppose that at some time during his life every man who has anything of the boy left in him has thought that he would like to take a fling at the great adventure of Secret Service. I feel called upon to assure these aspirants that a comfortable armchair is the better choice.
Accident, or that Higher Power which the Arabs call Kismet, had cast me into the path of Edmond O’Shea. He had honoured me with his friendship, but had quite failed to recognize that I was a man of lesser stature than his own. Whilst granting every honour to marshal and statesman, personally I am disposed to believe that it was men such as O’Shea who steered the Allies to victory; and perhaps, hitherto, I had been inclined to look upon the Secret Service as a job for highbrows rather than for soldiers.
This error was to be corrected.
Conceive a large room filled with enemies of established order; fanatics, whose collected scruples would have left a thimble empty. Conceive that I and O’Shea, posing as members of their bloodthirsty organization, were amongst them as spies, pledged to bring about their ruin.
Now, conceive that a “Comrade,” who knows us and has fared ill at our hands, is suddenly announced.
Perhaps I shall be forgiven when I say that I remembered with gratitude how Edmond O’Shea had rallied a company of the Guards during the great retreat, how his presence of mind and consummate self-possession had helped historians to chronicle Cambrai with pride rather than with humility.
He edged up beside me. I saw him fumbling for his monocle and saw his change of expression when he realized that he had left it behind; then:
“Get near the door,” he murmured. “My fault, Decies, to have let you in for this. But I had hoped to learn things that police examination can never bring out.”
Macalister came in.
He was in dinner kit and he smoked a cigar which, to my disordered vision, appeared to be decorated with two bands. His superb self-possession was worthy of Tom Mix. He did not merely own the room; he possessed the property.
“Take the left,” said O’Shea.
Unerringly, instinctively, Macalister’s glance settled upon us at the moment of his entrance. He had advanced no more than one pace beyond the butler, and his mouth was agape for excited utterance, when O’Shea’s revolver had him covered.
Overwhelmed with a sense of utter unreality, I covered the group of four on my left which included the formidable Schmidt.
Glibly, as though born of long familiarity, the words leapt to my tongue:
“Hands up!”
The command was obeyed. And I have since thought, paradoxical though it may appear, that violent men, in these matters, are more tractable than men of peace. Assessing human life lightly, they credit the brain behind the gun with compunction no greater than their own.
“By God!” I heard Macalister say—and I hope I shall always find time to take off my hat to a good loser—“I had you wrong all along, Major!”
Schmidt looked dangerously ugly for a moment; then:
“Line up,” said O’Shea sharply. “Jump to it. Fall in on the left of Schmidt.”
Came inarticulate mutterings, but without other audible protest the group obeyed, forming a line having Schmidt at one end and the saturnine butler at the other.
“Now,” O’Shea continued, “if any man lowers his hands, I shall not argue with him. Decies, will you go down to the street door and whistle? Pass behind me. Keep a sharp look-out. I don’t know who is in the house.”
I obeyed, the sense of unreality prevailing. But I know I shall always remember that row of sullen-faced men with raised hands, who watched as I crossed behind O’Shea.
There was no one on the stairs, and no one in the long, glazed passage that led to the street. This gained, I ran the length of it, and throwing open the double doors beheld a seemingly deserted Porchester Terrace.
I whistled shrilly. The result was magical.
Springing from what hiding places I know not, men appeared running from right and left! This was the raid squad from Scotland Yard, and I realized that I was helping to mould history.
Our taximan, who was waiting on the other side of the street, and who had been peacefully smoking a cigarette, jumped down from his seat and watched the proceedings with an expression of stupefaction that was comic in its intensity.
Everything was carried out in a most orderly manner. The members of the Group were arrested without unnecessary fuss. The whole thing might have been “produced” by David Belasco. A six-seater car appeared from somewhere or another, in which the gang was canned as neatly as tinned sardines.
The police handled the job with such discretion that chance passers-by never dreamed that anything unusual was going forward. They do these raids much better on the screen.
Macalister was the last to come down from above, his cigar still held firmly between his teeth. He was unperturbed. Deportation was the worst he had to fear, and he knew it quite well. He was smiling slyly. He paused, looking hard at O’Shea and at myself.
“Listen,” he said, “you two boys have doubled on me pretty badly, but I don’t bear no malice.” His grammar at times revealed the influence of the Cubist school. “Zara is different, and he’s still loose. Take my tip and watch out for Zara. If he’s seeing red, don’t try to pet him. Good-night!”
He entered the car, urged by two detectives.
“Good-night,” murmured O’Shea thoughtfully, and turned to me.
“You know, Decies,” he went on, “if that man had had our advantages, he would have made a damned good sportsman.”
There were certain formalities to be attended to, and I suppose it was close upon two o’clock when O’Shea and I found ourselves outside my rooms. I suggested a doch-an’-dorris.
“If I were superstitious,” O’Shea declared, “I should refuse.”
He smiled, glancing up at the tall ladder beneath which we must walk to reach my door.
“Oh!” said I, “they are mending the roof, or something.”
“I suppose we might risk it,” he replied; and we went in.
The incident stuck in my mind, not so much because of any superstitious significance that I attached to it as because of what actually happened later.
O’Shea dropped on to the settee in my big room and sighed rather wearily as he watched me preparing drinks.
“You know, Decies,” said he, “I am both glad and sorry that this job is over. I have blundered through by sheer good luck. Without your aid, and the aid of someone else, I should have crashed badly.”
“Perhaps not,” I returned. “If you had not succeeded in one way, you might quite easily have found another.”
“Or I might not,” said he. “No. I am a poor policeman, and peace-time soldiering is no sort of game.”
“What do you mean, O’Shea?”
“I mean,” he replied, holding up to the light a glass that I had handed to him, “that I am infernally restless.”
I sighed as loudly as he had done and stooped over the syphon. Then:
“Decies,” said O’Shea, “we live in a generation that grows up very early.”
“We do,” I agreed.
“I should like to talk to you seriously. There are many men I have known longer, but none I could sooner trust. Yet in this matter somehow I don’t feel…”
“Yes?” I prompted.
“Well, I don’t feel quite at liberty to discuss it with you.”
There was a silence that might have been awkward. O’Shea was watching me almost pathetically; and:
“I know what you want to talk about,” I said. “Nanette is a witch. But there is only one man in the world for her now. It might be fair, though, to give her a year to think it over.”
“You don’t doubt my attitude in the matter,” O’Shea murmured.
“No,” I replied, “I know it.”
He looked at me very fixedly, when:
“Coo-ooh!” I heard.
O’Shea’s expression changed; and, turning, I crossed to an open window, looking down into the street.
Standing just in front of the ladder which disfigured the front of the premises, was Nanette, staring upward. A two-seater with several people in it stood at the curb.
“Hello, Nanette,” I called.
“Saw your light,” she shouted, “as we were passing. May we come up, or are you going to bed?”
“No,” I replied, and hesitated to tell her what I knew she hoped. “Come right up and bring your friends. I have only just got in.”
“Right-oh!” she cried.
CHAPTER XXIX.
ADOLPH ZARA
The party that presently invaded us proved to consist of Nanette and a brunette girl friend whom I had not seen before. They were escorted by a young medical officer on leave from Mesopotamia—a very charming type of Scotsman—and Milton, one of Nanette’s Madeira conquests, whom, you may recall, I had met again recently under rather odd circumstances. I thought that this evening was probably his reward for the weary job of scouting that he had performed on that occasion.
He was not a happy man. The fact was beginning to dawn upon him that at the Savoy, the Hippodrome, and wherever else they had gone, he had been wasting his fragrance on the desert air. I pictured him driving to my apartment as one consciously heading for his doom.
The poor fellow was rather pathetically young, and, regarding every acquaintance of Nanette’s as a serious rival, he had awakened to the fact that he had three score or so of deadly enemies in London. Presently:
“Whisky and soda?” said I; “or have you reached the Bass stage?”
“Neither, thanks,” he returned, and glared around my modest bachelor apartment as one who finds himself in the chamber of Bluebeard.
Nanette had sped to O’Shea like an arrow to its target. As I turned aside from the peevish Milton, “I hadn’t dared to hope I should see you again to-night,” I heard her say.
The other man and the pretty brunette were jointly occupying my most comfortable armchair, therefore, conquering a perfectly stupid pique which Milton had inspired:
“Well,” said I, holding out my cigarette case, “we seem to have no alternative but to—look on, Milton.”
He rejected the olive-branch, and, rudely ignoring my proffered case, crossed to the settee where Nanette and O’Shea sat side by side.
“I say, Nanette,” he exclaimed, “what about going on to Chelsea?”
Nanette barely glanced up as she replied:
“No, I don’t want to dance any more to-night, Jim.”
“Why not dance here?” cried her friend, pointing in the direction of the piano. “Do you play, Mr. Decies?”
“Not dance music,” I confessed gladly.
“But Jim does,” she went on. “Go on, Jim! Just one.”
“Jim” crossed to the piano, offering an excellent imitation of an ox approaching Chicago. He crashed into a piece of syncopation that put years on the instrument. I had never heard the item before and trust that I shall never hear it again. I saw O’Shea smilingly shake his head; then Nanette ran across to me, and off we went around the furniture, I wondering which would burst first, a wire in my reeling piano or a blood-vessel in the empurpled skull of the player.
Nanette danced because she was too happy to keep still, even with O’Shea beside her. I danced because I had no choice in the matter. It was an odd business, pointedly illustrating the part that Terpsichore plays in this modern civilization of ours.
Nanette was dancing with me, but she wanted to dance with O’Shea. The other pair didn’t want to dance at all. They just wanted to be alone together. And Milton didn’t want to be the band. In fact, the whole thing was a sort of neutral territory, or sanctuary, in which the various protagonists found temporary refuge.
I don’t know what momentous decision Nanette’s girl friend was shirking, but when Milton threatened to weaken:
“Go on, Jim! Please go on!” she cried, avoiding the ardent gaze of her partner.
Milton, the most ferociously reluctant musician I have ever seen at work, made a renewed assault upon the keyboard. He was watching Nanette, who rarely took her eyes off O’Shea; and a vein rose unpleasantly upon his forehead. He perpetrated some discords that set my teeth on edge.
How long this might have continued I hesitate to guess. Milton’s gorge was rising tropically. I doubt that his destruction of my piano would have ceased while life remained in the instrument, but an interruption came.
Nanette and I had navigated an awkward channel behind the armchair and were beating up toward the settee and O’Shea. The man from Mesopotamia had ingeniously steered his partner into a little book-lined recess at the farther end of the room. I had my back to the open window and Nanette was facing it. Suddenly she grew rigid.
Her face became transfigured with an expression of horror that I can never forget. She pulled up dead—staring, staring past me, into the darkness of the street beyond.
“What is it, Nanette?” I began, when the music ceased with a crash and I saw Milton bound to his feet.
Unconsciously, I had gripped Nanette hard. But, in the next instant, she wrenched herself free from my grasp, turned, and with a queer sort of smothered cry threw herself upon O’Shea!
I twisted about.
Not two feet behind me an arm protruded into the room! The hand grasped a strange-looking pistol—for at that time I had never seen a Maxim Silencer. I heard a muffled thud. Something came whizzing through the air in my direction. (I learned later, when clarity came, that it was a valuable Ming vase that had stood upon the piano.)
“Hold him, Decies!” yelled Milton.
It was Milton who had hurled this costly projectile at the dimly seen arm in the window. The vase went crashing out into the street. I heard a second thud. Milton fell forward across the instrument—and then slid down on to the carpet. The hand clutching the pistol had vanished.
A sort of vague red mist was dancing before my eyes. Came a rush of footsteps. Nanette was slipping from O’Shea’s arms. His face as he looked down into hers was a mask of tragedy. I heard her utter a little moan and I saw a streak of blood upon one white shoulder.
Then followed chaos.
A very weak voice, which vaguely I recognized as that of Milton, said:
“Don’t worry about me, Doc. Look after Nanette.”
I saw O’Shea stoop and lift Nanette. I saw her pale face. When, cutting through the tumult like a ray from a beacon:
“The window, Decies! Watch which way he goes!”
Automatically, I obeyed O’Shea. I strained out, looking to right and to left of the ladder. It was boarded over, but I realized that a desperate man, given sufficient agility, could have climbed the rungs from underneath, as evidently the assassin had done.
At first, the street seemed to be empty from end to end; then I saw the figure of a man emerge from shadow into a patch of light cast by a street lamp—one who walked swiftly in the direction of Berkeley Square. I withdrew my head and stared, only half believing, about the room.
Milton, looking deathly, lay propped up against the piano. He met my glance, and:
“Seen him?” he demanded.
I turned, as the military surgeon who had been bending over Nanette looked up at her friend, who stood beside him.
“Know anything about nursing?” he jerked.
The girl was very pale, but:
“Yes,” she answered bravely, meeting his eyes, “a little. Tell me what to do, and I will do it.”
He nodded, smiling, whereat I was reassured, and then:
“Have you a manservant in the house, Mr. Decies?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Dig him out. I can manage. You fellows are in the way. Get after the swine who did this.”
But O’Shea had already started for the door. His expression was one I had rather not have seen. There is a savage hidden in every Celt, if one digs deep through.
The other members of the group by this time were safely housed in cells. I thought that if we were destined to overtake Adolf Zara, he was likely to enjoy the distinction of spending the night in a morgue.
CHAPTER XXX.
MEMORIES CAN SAVE
As Milton’s car, driven by O’Shea, raced around the corner into the square, all question of the fugitive’s identity was settled.
Just vaulting into a two-seater that had been parked over by the railings was the man whose retreating figure I had seen as I leaned from the window! I prayed that he might be unable to start. But my prayer was not answered. Off he went, heading for Piccadilly.
One swift glance back he gave over his shoulder. And in the light of the street lamp by which the car had stood, I saw the face of Zara!
I glanced at O’Shea beside me. His pale features were set like a mask. I looked to right and to left; but not a soul was in sight. Berkeley Square was apparently deserted. Often enough I had wondered how certain notorious burglaries had been accomplished with all the resources of civilization at beck and call of justice. This was the answer.
We had no means of arranging for Zara’s interception—although a constable was on duty at the corner of Bruton Street! We could only hope to keep him in sight or else overtake him. The merest hitch, or slightest traffic delay, would deliver him into our hands. But the betting was equal. Such an accident might as well befall us as him; and, the quarry once out of sight, our chances fell below zero.
O’Shea spoke never a word. His mind held but one single purpose. That purpose, I firmly believe, was to wreak justice upon Zara with his own hands.
Momentarily, I wondered about Milton. Of Nanette I dared not think. But a cold fury was growing within me, and I fingered the pistol that had been in my pocket since the raid upon the house in Porchester Terrace.
Zara whirled round into St. James’s Street. The traffic in Piccadilly was not great but there were a number of pedestrians about. I even saw policemen in the distance. It all seemed utterly grotesque. Then, hot upon the fugitive, we, too, were dropping down the slope. Far ahead I could see the clock above St. James’s Palace. The hour was a quarter past two.
Our speed was outrageous. We crossed Pall Mall at about thirty-five, and came out into the Mall, heading for Buckingham Palace in Brooklands fashion. We were gaining slightly. We crept from forty-five to fifty. Broad thoroughfares, brightly lighted, offered no obstruction; and we flew around the sharp bend by the Victoria Memorial and headed east.
“Westminster Bridge!” I muttered.
O’Shea did not speak. Past the barracks we sped, and, undeterred by a certain amount of traffic in Parliament Square, shot on to the approach to the Bridge. We were now three lengths behind Zara, and on the gradient began to improve upon it. Zara drove on the inside of the car lines, hugging the pavement. And at about the centre of the Bridge we passed outside him. I heard someone shouting.
“Cover him, Decies!” said O’Shea grimly. “Shoot if he doesn’t pull up!”
I turned and gave a loud cry. Zara had slowed down and was already twenty yards behind us!
“Stop, O’Shea!” I cried—“stop!”
He obeyed so suddenly that I nearly dived through the windshield. Then we jumped, one on either side, and started to run back.
Zara had already dismounted, and I saw him peeling his coat. A picture arose out of the recent past: a foggy night off Ushant: and I seemed to hear again that eerie cry, “Man overboard!”
So it was that Zara had eluded us once before. Undoubtedly he was going to do so again; and for all the cold hatred in my heart, I could not entirely withhold admiration as I saw him bound upon the parapet, raise his arms, and take that appalling dive into the Thames far below.
I knew now, however, what I had not known formerly: that Adolf Zara’s courage was the courage of madness. His was that disease of fanaticism which, when it does not cough up a Tomsky, floods the criminal lunatic asylums.
As we both craned over the parapet, peering down at the uneasy water, I heard the sound of a runner and then the flat note of a police whistle.
“There he is!” said O’Shea.
I stared but could see nothing, when:
“Hello, there! What’s the game! Who was it that went over?” cried a loud voice.
We turned, as a breathless constable came doubling up.
“A very dangerous criminal,” O’Shea replied, “and we were chasing him. Quick, officer! on which side of the Bridge shall we find a boat?”
The manner of one accustomed to give orders is unmistakable, and:
“West, sir,” the constable answered promptly. “There’s a boat at the pier.”
“Good,” said O’Shea, and started to run to the car. I followed.
As we jumped in, turned, and headed back to where Big Ben recorded the fact that only seven minutes had elapsed since we had passed St. James’s Palace, I saw the constable coming after us. But, leaving the car by the foot of the clock tower, O’Shea raced across to the gate at the head of those steps that lead down to the pier. It was locked; and here I thought that the chase ended. But I had counted without O’Shea.