That a most violent and desperate struggle had gone forward was abundantly evident from the state of the sitting-room, which, as Farandol was careful to point out, was exactly as the police had discovered it. The black carpet was rucked up, and athwart it, in a mess of crushed petals and broken glass, the remains of a vase of daffodils was scattered. A string of crystal beads which the dead girl had been wearing had broken, and the beads, together with a number of hairpins, strewed the floor. The telltale clock, of which Bannington had spoken, had been retrieved and now stood upon the table beside the typewriter—a small French travelling-clock in a leather case. The glass was broken. They noticed that, as Bannington had said, the hands pointed at sixteen minutes past eight.
Farandol tapped the clock. “This is what is going to hang Master Hollingway,” he remarked.
“Humph,” commented Desmond. “That won’t bring us what we’re looking for, Inspector. I suppose you know what I mean?”
Farandol nodded impressively. “Aye. But he’s got rid of it by now, mark my words. He’s one of your deep ones is Master Hollingway. He thought he’d draw a red herring across the scent. Look at this room and the bedroom beyond! He’s even upset the flour-bins in the kitchen!”
The rooms were, indeed, in a state of remarkable confusion. In the sitting-room the sloping top of a little mahogany escritoire had been burst open and every drawer pulled out. The doors of the oaken buffet stood wide, and its contents, crockery and table linen, were in part spilled out on the carpet. In the bedroom a high-boy had been rifled and garments of all kinds flung about the room. The very bed had been pulled out from the wall, the bedclothes rolled up in a ball and the mattress dragged on one side.
“And all the time,” Farandol resumed, “this precious document was lying there beside the typewriter! All this”—he waved a contemptuous hand at the disordered room—“play-acting is meant to bolster up his story about the footstep on the back stair . . .”
“He’s made a statement, then?” queried Desmond. “I suppose he denies everything?”
“He’s the innocent babe all right, same as they all are at the first go-off,” observed Farandol, fingering his waxed moustache. “Briefly, his story is that he met Miss Bardale in Soho for dinner at a quarter to seven. They had arranged to dine early because of this work that the lady had to do. Hollingway brought her back shortly after eight, and, he says, escorted her upstairs as far as the door of her flat because she was feeling nervous. On the previous evening—according to what this Hollingway says she told him—she had heard a heavy step outside her kitchen on the back stairs . . .”
“Half a minute,” Desmond interrupted; “is there a back entrance? I didn’t notice it . . .”
Without replying, the detective walked through the bathroom into the kitchen and there lifted a chintz curtain, disclosing a door. He turned the handle and showed a series of iron staircases leading down.
“It’s really a fire-escape,” he remarked, “but apparently Miss Bardale used it as a tradesman’s entrance to the flat.”
It was chilly outside and they soon re-entered the flat where Farandol resumed his story.
“Hollingway left her at the door of the flat, he says. He declares he did not go in. He remained talking to the girl for about ten minutes at the top of the staircase outside her flat, and then went down while she went indoors. Webb, the porter, who is on duty all day long in the hall below—he’s an old man with a game leg and can’t get about much—saw them come in soon after eight and saw Hollingway leave alone about twenty minutes later. He knows Hollingway well, and states that he was struck by the change in the young man’s manner. He was pale and upset-like and made no reply when Webb bade him good-night. As far as the police is concerned, Major Okewood, the case is as clear as daylight; but it doesn’t bring you any nearer what you’re after; I quite realize that.”
With an abstracted air Desmond, who was poking about amid the confusion of the sitting-room, nodded.
“Does Hollingway attempt to account for his agitation?” Francis said to Farandol.
“Oh, rather!” The detective replied. “He’s got it all pat. Says he was in love with the girl, has been for years, and last night, when he again asked her to marry him, she turned him down good and hard, told him that a professional dancer was no good to her as a husband and all the rest of it. He tells it all very well,” the Inspector added, musingly. He picked up his hat and gloves. “They’ll be coming along presently to take the body to the mortuary,” he said. “I’m leaving one of my men to stand by. I shall be at the Yard all the morning if I can be of any assistance, gentlemen . . .”
“Right!” Desmond replied. “I’ll probably be telephoning you, Inspector. I should rather like to have a word with this porter fellow, what’s his name—ah, yes, Webb. Send him up, would you?”
Farandol laughed. “He’s a proper thickhead,” he observed. “That dense, you couldn’t hammer a tenpenny nail into his skull without blunting it. I’ll send him up!”
“Pompous ass!” commented Francis as the Inspector shut the front door behind him.
Then he swung round sharply. Desmond had called to him in a tense voice. His brother stood behind him holding a torn envelope in his hand. He thrust it, and with it a folded letter, at Francis.
“Look at that!” he exclaimed.
The envelope was addressed, in what seemed to be a woman’s hand, to Miss Enid Bardale, Flat 7, 31, Crewdwell Street, W.I. The letter, written from an address at Saint John’s Wood, and signed “Your affectionate Mother, M. Bardale,” was to remind “Dearest E.” that she was expected to dinner on the following Saturday at seven-thirty.
“I don’t see . . .” Francis began.
“The postmark, man, the postmark!” cried Desmond.
Francis turned to the envelope again. The postmark was unusually clear. It read:
“Yesterday’s date!” said Francis.
“I found that letter in the drawer of the typewriting table. It was posted at Saint John’s Wood before six o’clock yesterday evening,” Desmond exclaimed emphatically.
“It was, therefore, delivered here by the last post. Now what time is the last delivery in London?”
“Nine o’clock . . .” began Francis. Then broke off. “By George, Des.,” he said slowly. “I take my hat off to you. You can give us all points. Of course, this letter knocks the bottom out of old Farandol’s theory. The girl was alone in the flat, therefore to take this letter from the postman she must have been alive at 9 P.M., therefore the murder did not take place while Hollingway was here, that is to say, before eight-twenty. Unless Hollingway came back . . .”
“That,” said his brother, “Webb, the porter, must tell us. Here he is, I think!”
Webb was a forlorn-looking old man with a shining bald pate and a haggard face intersected with blue veins.
“Come in, Webb,” said Desmond, advancing to the front hall to meet him. “I want you to answer one or two questions. What time did Captain Hollingway leave here last night?”
“Captain ’Ollingway?” queried the old man.
“Yes, the gentleman that brought Miss Bardale home.”
The old man appeared to think. “It wor about twenty-five minutes past h’eight, Mister!”
“How do you know the time so exactly?” demanded Desmond.
Old Webb cast him a sly look. “’Cos for why from where I sets in the front ’all I kin ’ear the clock on Saint Jude’s strike. The quarter ’adn’t long gorn and the ’arf ’adn’t struck w’en the Capting come out. ‘Wish you good-night, Capting,’ I sez . . .”
“But why should you have noted the time so carefully?” Desmond broke in impatiently.
Old Webb’s rheumy eyes puckered up as a cunning grin slowly broke out over his face.
“I was a-waitin’ for my supper-beer,” he replied. “The gal brings it every night at ’arf-past h’eight!”
Desmond smiled. “I see!” he said.
“Were you on duty in the hall all the evening?” he asked.
“I wor, sir, till midnight, w’en I locks up, same as allus!”
“And you never left the hall?”
“No, sir!”
“Did Captain Hollingway come back?”
“No, sir!”
“You’re sure?”
“There worn’t nobody come the whole dratted evenin’ arter ’im, only the pos’man!”
“Oh, the postman came eh? At what time?”
“Round about nine o’clock or a bit arter!”
“Do you take the letters up or does he?”
“’E do! I can’t get around much along o’ my bad leg!”
“Do you know if there were any letters for Miss Bardale?”
“I dunno nothink about that!”
“Did the postman say anything?”
“’E wor put out ’cos, ’e said, there wor but the one letter and ’e ’ad to carry it to the very top!”
“To Miss Bardale’s, you mean?”
The old man shot his questioner a crafty glance. “’E didn’t say nuthin’ about ’er!”
“How long was he up there?”
“Not above a minute or so, Mister. ’E’s a spry one for the stairs, is our postman!”
Desmond made a movement of impatience.
“Did you tell Inspector Farandol about the postman calling?”
“No!”
“Why not?”
“’Cos ’e never arst me!”
“And now, old boy,” said Desmond to his brother when, with some difficulty, they had got rid of the ancient janitor, “let’s look at the facts. We’ve advanced things by half an hour. Hollingway is eliminated; the postman is eliminated, for we know that he was in the building only for a minute or two altogether. No one crossed the front hall downstairs after the postman’s departure, and at midnight the front door was shut. We therefore come back to our only other indication . . .”
“The heavy footstep that Miss Bardale heard on the back stairs on the previous evening?”
“Just so. I was wondering whether that point had struck you. We cannot assume that the murderer was hidden in the flat waiting for Miss Bardale’s arrival. He evidently followed the couple back from dinner, for he was sufficiently acquainted with their movements to make this rather able attempt to fix the guilt on Hollingway. You have seen the front staircase: there is nowhere to hide even a cat. And the floors below are untenanted after six o’clock. We return, therefore, to the back stairs.
“Back doors are usually kept locked. Not only is the back door in this flat, tenanted by a girl living alone, open, but the key is missing. There are no marks of violence on the lock outside: consequently, if the murderer entered by that way, he must have used a key; therefore he must be familiar with his surroundings.
“Did Miss Bardale open in person the last letter she was destined to receive in this life, or did the murderer, his ghastly job accomplished, do so? I think that Miss Bardale opened it, for I found it placed on the top of a neat pile of correspondence in the drawer of her typewriting table, where she was obviously accustomed to keep her letters. Therefore, at nine o’clock, or thereabouts, she was alive. When was she murdered? I will tell you . . .”
So saying, he lifted from the table the little travelling-clock in its case of morocco leather, lifted it out of the case, a dainty thing of glass and gilding, and handed it to Francis.
In the panel at the top was a small metal knob.
“This is not the original case of the clock,” said Desmond. “You see, it is a little too large for it. The new case does not contain the spring usually found to actuate the knob of the repeater . . .”
“The repeater?” exclaimed Francis. “The repeater, Des.?”
And he pressed the knob. There was a little whirr and a clear bell chimed nine times, then, on another note, the clock struck thrice.
“Nine-forty-five,” said Desmond, “showing conclusively that Miss Bardale was murdered, not between eight and eight twenty, but between nine-forty-five and ten o’clock. That case, concealing the repeater mechanism, escaped the notice of the murderer who set the hands back, as it escaped Farandol’s. Neither, of course, was looking for anything of the kind. What we have got to do now is to find out who was on the back stairs outside Miss Bardale’s flat between nine-thirty and ten last night, and, maybe, the night before as well. Whoever it was, he came from this or one of the neighbouring houses . . .”
“How do you know that?”
“If you will look out from the back door you will see that this house and the houses on either side are all furnished with these fire-staircases descending to a common well or court. Since we know that the murderer did not enter from the front, he must have come in from the back, either from this house or from one of the adjacent houses. Will you go off and explore the possibilities of this house and its neighbours? I’m staying on here for a bit. I’ll take a small bet that the murderer can’t be far off . . .”
“I’ll go,” said Francis, grabbing his hat; “but you’ll lose your money. He’s over the hills and far away with Bannington’s report by this time, whoever he is!”
“I wonder!” said Desmond enigmatically.
At ten minutes to eight that evening there came the rattle of nails on the glass panels of the door of Flat 7. Desmond opened and Francis darted in. He caught his brother’s arm.
“Clubfoot!” he gasped.
Swiftly Desmond laid his finger on his lips. He turned and closed the door leading from the hall into the little sitting-room.
“One of Farandol’s men is inside,” he explained. “I’ve been staving him off all the afternoon, as I’m particularly anxious, for the moment, to keep the police out of this—at any rate, until I’ve heard your story!”
Francis nodded understandingly. “For a week,” he said, “a lame man, a foreigner with a misshapen foot, has been a patient in the nursing-home which occupies the second, third, and fourth floors of the house next door to this. He calls himself Dr. Deinwitz, a Czecho-Slovak lawyer, and was brought here by his son, a fair young man with a scar on his face. The son represented that his father was suffering from acute neurasthenia and was in need of absolute rest and quiet. He made it a stipulation that his father’s presence should be kept a secret, otherwise, he said, he would be pestered to death by visitors. In order to be quiet, the son insisted that his father should have a room at the back on the top floor.”
Desmond opened and clenched his hand. “Is he still there?” he asked tensely.
Francis shook his head despondently. “He went out for the first time to-day to go to the City on business. He has kept his room on, but I doubt—”
“He’s kept his room on?” Desmond almost shouted. “Then all is not lost. Wait here a second!”
He darted away, and presently Francis heard him telephoning in one of the inner rooms.
“You’ve no idea what a day I’ve had,” said Francis when his brother came back. “Professional secrecy is a tremendously effective cover against indiscreet inquiries. Young Deinwitz, in whom, of course, I recognized Clubfoot’s aide, Heinrich, seems to have subtly conveyed to the fellow who runs this nursing-home that his father was on the verge of lunacy. Naturally the matron and all of them shut up like oysters when I came barging in with direct questions at the front door. I had to get a letter of introduction from a pal of mine in Harley Street before I finally got into the place. I flatter myself I was rather good as a nerve specialist from Sheffield with a rich patient to ‘place’ . . .”
Desmond laughed happily. “Disguise, eh?”
“Only cheek pads and a toupet! But what are you looking so cheerful about? Old Clubfoot has given us the slip properly this time . . .”
Desmond slipped his arm in his brother’s. “Come inside and meet Sergeant Rushbrooke,” he said.
Francis found that the girl’s body had been taken away, but otherwise no attempt had been made to repair the disorder of the rooms. In an armchair in the sitting-room was a fresh-faced, blue-eyed young man whom Desmond introduced as Sergeant Rushbrooke.
A bell pealed through the flat.
“Bannington!” announced Desmond, and hurried to the front door.
“I got your telephone message,” said the Air Marshal, coming into the sitting-room. “Have you any news for me, Okewood? My God, this suspense is awful!”
He held out two trembling hands towards the young man. Desmond was fumbling in the inside pocket of his coat. He drew forth a thick wad of blue foolscap, folded twice across, which he handed to his visitor.
Bannington snatched at it and, with an eagerness that was almost painful to behold, unfolded it, scrutinized it.
“By the Lord! You’ve saved me!” he gasped and dropped limply into a chair. “How can I ever thank you, Okewood? Man alive, it’s a miracle! Tell me all about it!”
“Des.!” exclaimed Francis.
Sergeant Rushbrooke opened wide his blue eyes. “You didn’t say anything about this to me, sir,” he observed in rather a ruffled tone.
“You won’t be kept in suspense much longer, Sergeant,” said Desmond, and glanced at his watch.
He turned to the Air Marshal. “This was the way of it, sir,” he said. “Last night Miss Bardale was seated there at her typewriter typing out your report with her back to the bedroom door. The time was somewhere about ten o’clock. Suddenly from behind her she hears a noise in the kitchen. Her first thought is not for herself, but for her duty to you. She snatches up her papers—your original and the two pages of the fair copy she had made—and puts them in a place of safety before she turns to meet her murderer. When she sees his face, she attempts to flee back into the sitting-room. But, before she can escape, he is on her, choking out her life with his great hairy hands.
“Then follows the frantic search to find what he had committed murder to discover, a search frantic, yet methodical in its way, room by room, as you may see. It was the circumstance that he had prolonged the search to the very kitchen that made me think he had possibly not achieved his object. So I took up the hunt where he had left off and . . .”
He produced from a drawer in the table a filmy mass of pink edged with lace.
“She had rolled your papers up in her nightdress and put it back under the pillow. I found it wedged between the bed and the wall!”
Sir Alexander Bannington blew his nose violently. “But who was the murderer?” he asked.
Again Desmond consulted his watch. “I may be able to answer that question later,” he said. “For the moment the sooner you get that report in a place of safety the better, sir.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you,” replied Bannington. “Are you and your brother coming along?”
Desmond shook his head. “My work isn’t finished yet! But Francis will escort you back to the Air Ministry . . .”
“No need, I assure you,” said Bannington. “I have my car outside.”
“Believe me,” Desmond urged, “it would be better for you to have an escort!”
Francis drew his brother aside. “It’s no use trying to get me out of the way, Des.,” he told him. “You’ve got something up your sleeve. Now, haven’t you?”
He was smiling, but his brother remained serious.
“The important thing,” Desmond said, “is to get that report away quickly. Bannington has no idea of the danger he runs. When you’ve seen his memorandum into the safe, come back here by all means. If I’m not here I’ll be at the Yard. I may have some news for you . . .”
Desmond leaned forward and whispered in his brother’s ear.
Francis started. Then he said: “But I can’t leave you to face it alone!”
“I shan’t be alone,” Desmond answered. “Sergeant Rushbrooke is here to keep me company, and I have asked the Yard to send me down half a dozen men. Farandol was not there when I telephoned just now, but his substitute promised to send at once. They should be here by this. If you should meet them below, send the man in charge up to me, will you?”
“Well, Okewood, are you ready?” Bannington came out of the hall with his hat on his head. He held out his hand to Desmond.
“If ever I can show my gratitude for what you have done for me this night,” he said with deep feeling, “believe me I will!”
“It’s all in the day’s work,” said Desmond as he accompanied them to the door. “Good-bye.”
“Au revoir!” corrected Francis smilingly as he followed the Air Marshal out.
For full five minutes after they had gone, Desmond remained standing in the hall, sunk in his thoughts. He was interrupted by Sergeant Rushbrooke.
“Beg pardon, sir!” said the plain-clothes man, “but I believe there’s some one on the stairs outside!”
Like a flash Desmond’s hand shot out at the electric-light switch at the door of the sitting-room. There was a click and the room was plunged in darkness. Desmond pulled out an automatic.
“Have your gun ready!” he whispered to the detective. “Keep very quiet, but be prepared to shoot!”
The flat was in complete darkness. Before them, as they crouched behind the table, they saw the dim outline of the bedroom door. Beyond, where the kitchen lay, was blackness.
Very faintly, from the obscurity before them, a key rattled. Presently the cold night air softly brushed their faces. At the end of the flat against a background of silver moonlight a huge figure bulked immensely. A door closed softly and darkness fell again.
A heavy limping sound approached them; a step and a stump, a step and a stump, muted but audible. They could hear the floor boards straining as beneath some immense weight.
And now that uncouth shape loomed gigantic in the doorway of the sitting-room. Its breadth seemed to stretch from jamb to jamb. Some movement must have betrayed their presence, for there came the rasp of a harsh ejaculation. Then the room was flooded with light and Desmond’s voice rang out: “If you move I’ll shoot!”
It was Grundt, bareheaded, in the clothes of rusty black he always affected, his right hand, plumed with black hair on the back, grasping his rubber-shod crutch-stick. He had made a half-turn in the doorway, and now twisted his head round to stare at his challenger, his burning eyes blazing defiance, his cruel, fleshy lips pursed up in a contemptuous sneer.
“You can put your hands up, Herr Doktor!” said Desmond. “Quickly, please, or there might be an accident! And you can drop your stick!”
The giant cripple faced his aggressors squarely. He hesitated for an instant, then, with an almost imperceptible shrug of his shoulders, he slowly raised his hands, his stick rattling to the floor.
“Sergeant, would you mind . . .?” Desmond remarked in a colloquial tone.
Sergeant Rushbrooke crossed to the doorway and, with a dexterity born of long experience, ran his fingers lightly over the big man’s pockets, not forgetting, you may be sure, the inside breast pocket, where your professional gunman mostly carries his weapon, or the armholes of the waistcoat, very handy for concealing a knife.
“He’s not armed, sir,” he reported.
Desmond smiled sardonically. “You’re getting careless, Grundt! A few years ago you would not have been taken off your guard like this!”
But Grundt said no word.
“Your psychological powers are failing, too, my dear Doctor,” Desmond continued. “A woman’s wit defeated you. Celibacy has its drawbacks. If you had been a married man, now, you would have known that women have as great a predilection for curious hiding-places as a magpie!”
For the first time Clubfoot spoke. “You again!” he said in a voice thick with anger. “Always you!” His dark eyes were hot with passion and they saw the veins swell knot-like at his temples. “You are beginning to incommode me, Okewood. I must advise you to be careful!”
Desmond laughed. “If I hadn’t been careful during the last few weeks, I shouldn’t be here to-day,” he said. “You know that well enough, Grundt. However, you’re not going to do any more harm. Sergeant Rushbrooke!”
“Sir?”
“Go down and see if those police I asked for are there. Explain to the man in charge that it is essential that no one should leave this house or the houses on either side for the present, and ask him to be good enough to step up here to me. When you have done that, take a man with you and go to the nursing-home next door and inquire whether young Mr. Deinwitz is there. If he is, invite him to accompany you to Scotland Yard. If he won’t come, kidnap him! Understand?”
“Sir!” said the Sergeant who had learnt discipline in the Brigade of Guards. He seemed to hesitate. “Will you be all right, sir?” he asked.
“Don’t you worry about me,” Desmond smiled. “Dr. Grundt and I are old friends! We shall enjoy a tête-à-tête!”
On that Rushbrooke clattered off and Desmond turned to Clubfoot again. Grundt seemed to have regained all his saturnine good-humour.
“You’ll hang for this job, my friend!” Desmond observed pleasantly.
Grundt bared his strong yellow teeth in a smile and made a little bow. “You have, of course, all necessary evidence against me. Your English justice, if I remember rightly, is exacting on this point.”
Unwittingly Desmond flashed an inquiring glance at him.
The cripple was quick to notice it and chuckled. “My dear Okewood,” he remarked suavely, “you are too deliciously naïve. Lieber Freund, do you really imagine you will ever secure the conviction of a poor neurastheniac for murder simply because, on the night after the tragedy, attracted by the light and the sound of voices, he penetrated the scene of the crime?”
“The key, man, the key!” Desmond broke in.
“The key of my back door opens the back door of this flat,” was the rejoinder. A large key dropped on the carpet at Desmond’s feet. “Try it and see!”
But now an interruption came. There was a ring at the front door. Three men in plain clothes appeared.
“From Mr. Farandol, sir,” said the foremost of the trio, a short, thick-set fellow with a dark moustache. “The Inspector was called away to a big case at Colchester. Our orders are to take the party to the Yard. We’ve a car below if you’d care to come with us.”
Desmond gave a sigh of relief. “By George!” he said, “I certainly will!” The perspiration glittered on his forehead. “I shan’t feel happy till you’ve got him safe under lock and key. Will you handcuff our friend? I’m taking no chances!”
The spokesman of the plain-clothes men, who gave his name as Sergeant Mackay, produced a pair of handcuffs and clasped them about Grundt’s hairy wrists. Clubfoot’s face was an impassive mask; but his eyes glinted dangerously.
They took him out of the flat and descended the stairs in a little procession.
A closed limousine stood at the door. They made Grundt get inside, and the sergeant shared the back seat with him; Desmond and one plain-clothes man sat opposite and the other man got up beside the driver.
It was a raw wet night. Baker Street was a nocturne of black and yellow. The car drove very fast, so fast, indeed, that Desmond drew the sergeant’s attention to it.
“Tap on the glass, sir,” said Mackay, “and tell the driver to slow down a bit.”
Desmond turned half round. At that moment a damp cloth was clapped on to his face. He sprang up in a desperate effort to evade it, for on the instant his nostrils had detected the sickly odour of chloroform. His head struck the roof of the car a violent blow; the pressure on his nose and mouth increased: he strove to breathe and felt that sickening, cloying sweetness drawn up into his lungs. He tried to cry out as his senses slipped away; he sought to struggle as a numbing warmth stole over his limbs. The car seemed full of faces and eyes that stared . . . especially one face, grey and bloated with cruel, fleshy lips that grinned and grinned . . .
There was a click as Grundt’s handcuffs fell apart. The big cripple chuckled and tapped Sergeant Mackay on the knee.
“And the other?” he asked softly.
“The one that came down just now? Heinrich settled him. The key of the office below came in very useful, Herr Doktor! The body is lying there now!”
Clubfoot purred his appreciation.
“Gut gemacht, Max, mein Junger!” he said.
The car sped on through the dripping night.
“You’ve got this spy, Okewood, under lock and key, Herr Doktor?”
The room was sparely lighted by a single reading-lamp with a green shade, and its sickly rays seemed to heighten the pallor of the speaker’s face. He was a round-shouldered man whose high cheek-bones and slanting eyes betrayed his Mongol blood even as his snuffling German jargon revealed his race. He had a rabbit mouth, the upper lip drawn up over long yellow teeth, and the weakness of his chin was in part hidden by a ragged fringe of reddish beard. He sat at the desk, his whole body atwitch with some nervous tic as he gnawed restlessly at his fingers. In the burly apelike figure that confronted him, with the relentless eyes beneath their tufted brows, the cruel, savage mouth and the heavy jowl, any one closely acquainted with the dark ways of international espionage would have recognized the redoubtable Dr. Grundt, better known as The Man with the Clubfoot.
Slowly Grundt opened and shut his great hairy hand.
“I’ve got him—there, Mandelstamm!” he said in a voice that purred with exultation. “We are old, we are exiled; but we are not a back number yet. In this last affair of Sir Alexander Bannington’s report in which, I confess, my customary good fortune failed me, this cursed Okewood had odds of three to one on his side. He thought he had me cornered; but now he, not old Clubfoot, sits in the trap.”
He chuckled savagely with a sound that was almost a snarl.
“I think,” he added, “that our young friend will not altogether relish his prospects when he awakes from his long sleep!”
“You drugged him, hein?” asked the Jew. There was something vulpine in the way he lifted his long aquiline nose.
Clubfoot guffawed. “The neatest trick! Max, whose performance as a Scotland Yard detective was erstklassig—kolossal!—gave him a whiff of chloroform just to keep him quiet! And this poor Okewood believed he was taking me off to Scotland Yard! Donnerwetter!”
He slapped his great thigh and laughed uproariously. His companion’s mouth twitched upwards at the corners displaying another inch or two of dripping, yellow fangs. It was like a fox’s grin if such a phenomenon of natural history can be imagined.
“The Soviets find that spies, like meat, don’t keep!” he softly lisped. “Why didn’t you kill him, Herr Doktor?”
“Perhaps,” Grundt answered slowly, “because I have other uses in view for our enterprising young friend!”
Mandelstamm leant forward swiftly. “Also doch!” he ejaculated.
“What Clubfoot promises he accomplishes,” said Grundt, raising his voice menacingly.
“Of course, of course,” hastily agreed Tavarish Mandelstamm, and slyly added: “Only you didn’t secure the Bannington report, did you, Herr Doktor?”
The blood slowly mounted in the other’s swarthy face. “A mere miscalculation, my friend! It was a trifling matter, anyhow, and I have never been able to interest myself in bagatelles. But this commission of yours . . .” He glanced over his shoulder and lowered his voice. “Do you realize the task you’ve set me? Nein, nicht wahr? Would it surprise you to learn that within the past week the Foreign Office has changed its codes? While the new ones are being revised they are employing, for Most Secret despatches, code 3A of the Secret Service. You didn’t know that, did you? Come closer! Hitherto, the working of code 3A has been known to three persons only—to the Chief of the British Secret Service, to his confidential ciphering clerk, and”—he dropped his voice to a whisper—“to Major Desmond Okewood! . . .”
“Ach nein!” exclaimed the Russian admiringly, cracking his knuckles. “With that draft treaty in our hands . . .”
“P-sst!” warned Grundt, pointing at the door.
A broad-shouldered man with a heavy dark moustache stood on the threshold of the room.
“What is it, Max?” asked Grundt.
“The Englishman is coming round, Herr Doktor!”
Clubfoot looked at his watch. “Midnight!” he said. “You did your work thoroughly, Max!”
“One does what one can, Herr Doktor!”
“You and Heinrich will take it in turns to guard the Englishman throughout the night. You can give him food. But watch him, he’s slippery. If he escapes . . .” He broke off and glared at the other. “Go now and remember what I say!”
Grundt turned to the Russian. “The Constantinople courier is expected to leave Calais for Dover by the afternoon boat. Everything is prepared. If all goes well he should be here soon after dark. Sleep well, Mandelstamm! The draft treaty will be in your hands by to-night!”
Limping heavily with his huge misshapen foot, he hobbled briskly from the room.
Desmond Okewood was emerging painfully from a long, incoherent dream. He found his eyes fixed on an electric bulb caged in steel bars, and set in the ceiling high above his head. As he gazed, the light seemed to come and go, to appear and vanish again . . .
And then, with a jerk, he was fully conscious. With a pang the memory of the night came rushing back. The shame of his position almost overwhelmed him. To think that he, Desmond Okewood, had been deceived by the common crooks’ trick of dressing up confederates as detectives!
He looked about him. He was lying on a couch in a bare and lofty room. Heavy oaken shutters, secured with bars of iron solidly padlocked, excluded every vestige of daylight. He had no idea where he was or what the time of day might be. When he looked for his watch, he found that his pockets had been emptied.
The house was wrapped in silence. Not a sound came to him from without. He tried to review the situation. His position was desperate. Clubfoot would not spare him. This time he was doomed beyond hope of escape. A train of odd incidents from his long battle of wits with the master spy came crowding into his aching head . . .
Still drowsy from the drug, he must have dropped off to sleep, for when next he opened his eyes it was to find some one shaking his arm. A fair-haired youth stood beside the couch, his rather crafty face barred by a long white scar. Desmond recognized Heinrich, Clubfoot’s acolyte in many an exploit.
On the table stood a tray decked for a meal.
“Anything you want you can have,” said Heinrich, “as long as it doesn’t require cutting with a knife. I’ve brought you some minced chicken and a whiskey-and-soda . . .”
“Where am I?” asked Desmond.
“My instructions,” retorted the youth with military precision, “are to feed you. Nothing more. I shall return in half an hour for the tray . . .”
“Can’t I have a wash?” demanded Desmond.
The youth pointed to an oaken cabinet in the corner. “You will find all you require there!” he said. Then he left the room.
Hot water stood ready in a brass jug. After he had washed and eaten, Desmond felt his strength returning. When Heinrich came to fetch the tray, he brought a cup of coffee and a box of cigarettes.
“Quite a prison de luxe!” remarked Desmond brightly.
“My orders are to make you comfortable!” was the non-committal reply.
Each time the door opened, Desmond noticed that a light burnt in the corridor. He assumed, therefore, that it must be evening. Consequently he must have slept almost the round of the clock. The hours dragged interminably on. He paced up and down the room, smoking cigarettes, busy with his thoughts. What had become of Clubfoot? What was he waiting for? Why didn’t he come in and finish it?
Slowly the numbing silence of the house, the absence of any indication of time, the artificial light, began to get on Desmond Okewood’s nerves. This restriction on his liberty was intolerable. He looked about for a bell. There was none. He went to the door—it was solid oak with no lock apparent on the inside—and began to hammer it with his fists and feet. He pounded until he was tired. No one came.
He had fallen to striding up and down the room again when suddenly the door opened. Heinrich came in.
“Dr. Grundt is asking for you. Will you come with me?” he said.
“Gladly,” retorted Desmond. “I’m particularly anxious to have a word with the Herr Doktor!”
“Don’t trouble to try to escape,” observed the young man blandly as he held the door for his prisoner. “Doors and windows are barred and the house is closely guarded. You’d only get hurt!”
The warning was spoken sincerely and carried conviction. Desmond felt his heart sink.
It could not yet be morning, Desmond decided, as he followed his escort down a broad corridor with windows shuttered and barred like that of his room. They descended a flight of steps to a small tiled hall, lighted, like corridor and staircase, by artificial light. From a door that stood ajar came the murmur of voices. Heinrich ushered his prisoner into a long low-ceilinged room.
Four men were seated at the end of an oval table, their faces indistinctly seen through a thin haze of blue tobacco smoke that drifted in the close air.
Grundt presided at the head of the board, a round-shouldered, red-bearded Jew on his right, a grossly plebeian-looking man with a face the colour of suet, thin greyish hair plastered across a shining bald pate, and a great paunch, sprawling in the chair on his left. Next to him was a middle-aged man with a stiff grey beard and a stiff face who sat bolt upright, his hands folded in his lap.
“Be seated, Major,” said Clubfoot cordially, and pointed to a chair next to the Jew. “Mr. Blund, the cigars are with you!”