Grundt took out his watch and laid it on the table before him. “I have exactly five minutes to spare,” he said. “In that time I propose to turn you inside out, my friend, or, by God, we’ll see what the old-fashioned methods of cross-examination will do!”
He moistened his lips with his tongue, like some great beast of prey licking its chops.
“I’m waiting!” he said.
Shaking in every limb, Herr Murchison opened his lips to speak. “My headquarters are . . . Munich!” he said in a strained voice.
“Turn your head to the right!” shouted Grundt suddenly. “Turn your head, I say! Meinhardt, Felix! Thrust him down under the lamp!”
Strong arms forced Herr Murchison brutally forward until his chest rested on the cloth. His spectacles fell off. The bright light streamed full in his face.
“Desmond Okewood, bei Gott!” roared Grundt. “You poor fool, did you think you could hoodwink me? Don’t you know that a man can never disguise his ears? Himmelkreuzsakrament, you and I have a long account to settle, and this time”—his voice shook with concentrated fury—“I’m going to see that it’s paid!”
Then came a hoarse shout from without: “The police!” and the sounds of a violent scuffle. Immediately the room was a mass of scrambling, jostling figures. The light went out almost simultaneously . . . at the very moment that Clubfoot clawed a great automatic from his pocket. In the clammy, noisy darkness Desmond flung himself across the table straight at the throat of that sinister gigantic figure facing him.
His opponent struggled fiercely, but the chair impeded him. Desmond hung on grimly, determined that, this time, his old enemy should not escape him. Then the light went up and Desmond found himself looking into the mocking face of Paul Geyer. Two uniformed constables pounced upon him, and Desmond relaxed his grip.
“I’ll have the law on you,” gasped Geyer, tugging at his torn collar. “Though I do keep a table, that’s no justification for half murdering me! Take his name and address, Inspector!”
Touching his cap, the Inspector drew Desmond Okewood aside. “You’ll be Major Okewood, I’m thinking,” he said. “Your brother has been like a wild man about you!”
“Where is he?” asked Desmond.
“There’s a passage under the road to a wharf beside the river,” the Inspector answered. “It connects with the house here by a trap in the back hall. There’s a lame man escaped that way . . .”
“A lame man?” queried Desmond in dismay.
“Aye! Mr. Okewood went after him with a couple of my chaps!”
He was interrupted by the appearance of Francis himself, breathless and dishevelled. Only his taximan’s uniform remained to recall his disguise of the night.
“He’s away!” he gasped, answering his brother’s unspoken question. “Vanished into the night! The men are beating the place for him, but those blasted wharves are a regular rabbit warren, and it’s as dark as be-damned outside. Who’s your fat friend?”
He indicated Geyer, who, violently protesting, was being led away by his captors.
“When the light went out,” said Desmond, “Clubfoot changed places with him. He knew this fellow only risked a fine for keeping a gambling-den. It was my own fault. I over-acted and put the old man on his guard. Where’s the girl?”
“Disappeared. We’ll get her at Duchess Street, I shouldn’t wonder!”
“What’s the bag here? Do you know?”
Francis made a grimace. “Nothing very great, I’m afraid. Some vague foreigners and a brace of bruisers. None of Clubfoot’s gang, at any rate. They must have smelt a rat, for as we were picking the lock a fellow unexpectedly opened the front door and gave the alarm!”
“I know,” said Desmond. “Clubfoot got suspicious when I asked him to give me time, and sent this chap out to see if there were any police around. By the way, what happened to the Chief’s crowd?”
Francis raised his eyes to heaven. “Somebody will be sacrificed for this night’s work. Their car burst a tyre in Victoria Street and they lost sight of my taxi. The arrangement was, you see, that they were to follow the girl and not you. Instead of ringing up headquarters to report, they went careering all over Belgravia, and when I rang up the Chief on leaving you they hadn’t turned up. So we simply asked the nearest police divisional headquarters to raid this place as a gambling-hell. It seemed the quickest way of getting assistance!”
They were silent for a moment. Then Desmond said: “I must say I should like to have known how those flower signals were worked.”
“We pinched old Bessie to-night,” his brother replied, “and she spilled the beans. A confederate, instructed by Grundt, tipped her off the colour by means of a handkerchief as he stood at the bar—red, blue and white, or white. As to the meaning of the various colours, I think the Chief’s diagnosis was correct. Clubfoot apparently had found out that Finucane was an habitué of the ‘Hex.’ in the old days and laid this plot to trap him. Poor Finucane! The girl got the signal of red carnations for him, too!”
A week later a tug off Charing Cross Pier fished up in its screw the dead body of Finucane, bound hand and foot, with a bullet through the head. The Hexagon Buffet knew the McKenzie girl no more. Nor did she ever return to Duchess Street. As an old offender, Paul Geyer was given a month’s imprisonment for keeping a gaming-house, and, as an alien—he was Russian-born—recommended for deportation. In respect of the death of Finucane no charge was brought against him, for want of evidence.
Meanwhile The Man with the Clubfoot remained at large.
If, as the textbooks tell us, a successful retirement be the greatest test of strategy, then, indeed, Clubfoot can lay claim to be one of the most skilful of generals in the never-ending guerilla warfare that is the daily life of the Secret Service. No man can ensure himself against the surprises of fate; but in one respect Dr. Grundt’s foresight was never found wanting, and that was in the provision of a safe and inconspicuous line of retreat. Nothing is more devastating to the moral of troops of pursuit than the knowledge that their enemy, after each successful raid, is able to retire in safety into ambush to select his own time for the next sortie.
My two friends frankly recognized the affair at the house in Pimlico as a serious reverse. Not only had Clubfoot made away with one of the Chief’s most expert and trusted agents, but he had also eluded the trap laid for him and arranged matters so as to leave in the hands of his pursuers not a single accomplice against whom anything more serious than a simple misdemeanour could be proved. In itself the check was bad enough, but its results were even more grave. The long list of unexplained crimes was beginning to sap at the moral of the Service: there were resignations among the weaker vessels whom crises of this nature invariably expose; and even the Chief, most dogged and equable of mortals, who had his own private reasons for anxiety, began to look worried.
It therefore redounds the more to his credit that at this juncture, some three weeks after Clubfoot’s escape by river from the house of Pimlico, the Chief should have taken a decision that, it is safe to predict, in any walk of life other than the Secret Service, would have been denounced as sheer lunatic foolhardiness.
Once more Grundt had vanished away into the Ewigkeit. It was as though the vast bulk of the master spy had dissolved into thin air. One clue, and one clue only—and that nothing better than a report based on more than doubtful authority—was forthcoming pointing to his presence in Germany. A “double-cross”—one of those versatile gentlemen who carry on espionage for both sides—sent word that a friend of his had seen a burly lame man whose appearance answered the description of Clubfoot lunching at a small café on one of the islands in the Havel, the river outside Berlin. No corroboration was obtainable and nothing more was heard directly of the redoubtable German until one morning the Chief found in his mail a letter from Dr. Grundt, posted in the West Central postal district of London, asking for an interview.
This the Chief decided immediately to grant. By the rules of the game he knew that the meeting would be privileged. In according it he was aware that he undertook to allow his visitor to come and go unmolested. Such encounters are not uncommon in the Secret Service. The “double-crosses” form, as it were, an invisible bridge between the most inveterate adversaries and, within the limit of strange unwritten moral laws in this most immoral of avocations, there are pacts and understandings that not infrequently are laid down at meetings no whit less bizarre than the memorable interview between Clubfoot and the Chief.
With characteristic consideration the big man sent for my two friends and informed them of Dr. Grundt’s request.
“It’s . . . it’s incredible, sir,” said Desmond Okewood.
“He wouldn’t have the nerve,” his brother Francis put in.
“Clubfoot would,” grimly observed the Chief, and pitched a letter on the desk in front of them. “Read it for yourself!”
Strange and devious are the ways of the Secret Service. Old hands at the game, neither Desmond nor Francis Okewood had been astonished on being bidden, severally and secretly, to report at the office of Jacob Melchizedech, commission agent, Shaftsbury Avenue, to find the Chief installed in one of the three modest rooms which Mr. Melchizedech’s place of business comprised.
Bizarre folk often have the pressing need to unbosom themselves to those who pull the strings behind the façade of public affairs. But the social record of some of these mysterious gentlemen and ladies is not always one to inspire unquestioning confidence. So, in the first instance, a non-committal identity and a non-committal address are but an elementary safeguard against blackmail and the kindred practices of the “double-cross.” Seldom did the Chief, known to few only by sight and to fewer still by name, face the casual visitor save under the cloak of an unrevealing identity and an accommodation address.
Desmond picked up the letter and read it, while his brother looked over his shoulder.
Dr. Grundt [the bold, upright handwriting set forth] presents his compliments to his colleague, the Director of the British Secret Service, and requests the favour of a personal interview at a time and place most convenient to the latter. A reply by return in the Agony Column of The Times would oblige.
“Well, I’m damned!” Desmond exploded violently. “You’re surely not going to receive the fellow, sir?”
“Mr. Melchizedech on my behalf,” the Chief retorted with a twinkle in his eye, “will be pleased to hear anything our friend wishes to lay before me!”
“We’ll be three to one, anyhow!” muttered Francis Okewood.
The Chief shook his head. “No, we shan’t,” he announced decisively. “You two will be in the farther room . . .”
“But, Chief,” Desmond broke in vehemently, “the man will be armed. He’s dangerous: he stops at nothing . . .”
The big man shrugged his broad shoulders.
“I always meet an adversary halfway,” he said. “And I would remind you that Grundt and I have never yet come face to face. I am inordinately interested, I must confess, in this cripple who, when he directed the ex-Kaiser’s personal secret service, exercised such power over his Imperial master that he was the most dreaded man in Germany. You and your brother have told me so much about his dominating personality. I like encountering dominating personalities!” he added reflectively.
Desmond and Francis Okewood exchanged a glance full of meaning. For months the figure of the gigantic cripple had haunted their thoughts. So deeply had their long duel with The Man with the Clubfoot impressed his figure on their brain that in their mind’s eye they could see him now, a simian silhouette with his vast girth, his immensely long arms, his leering, savage eyes beneath the shaggy brows—above all, his inevitable undisguisable trade-mark, the monstrous deformed foot.
“I know you would meet anything or anybody with your bare fists, sir,” Desmond pleaded, “but Clubfoot is beyond the pale. He has the profoundest contempt for our English notions of fair play and, though you may agree to this idea of his of an armistice meeting, on his side you can bet your bottom dollar it’s a plant! He’s a treacherous devil, and the only way to treat him is to fall on him the moment he appears, tie him up, and lodge him as quickly and as securely as possible in the nearest jail.”
“Well,” said the Chief slowly, “there may be something in what you say. But in all my career I’ve never yet refused to meet an enemy who wrote and asked, fair and square, for an interview. I shall see Grundt!”
“But, sir,” urged Desmond, “look at the list of his victims since he started his campaign of vengeance against the Service—Branxe, Wetherby Soukes, Fawcett Wilbur, Törnedahl, Miss Bardale, Bewlay, Finucane! The man’s a wolf, a mad dog! He ought to be shot at sight!”
The Chief’s strong face had grown very stern. “I agree. But I want my sight of him. Don’t worry, Okewood. I’ve got my tally against our clubfooted friend. He’ll get no change out of me . . .”
He looked at his watch. “Half-past six. He’ll be here any moment now! Away with the pair of you into the back room. If you’ll remove the map of the tube railways hanging on the partition wall you’ll find a trap which, provided you don’t turn up the light, will—ahem!—facilitate both seeing and hearing!”
“Sir, once more . . .” said Desmond.
The Chief shook his head.
“And I haven’t even got a gun!” muttered the young man forlornly as he accompanied his brother from the room.
A “buzzer” whizzed raspingly through Mr. Melchizedech’s office. Composedly the Chief rose from his chair and, crossing the outer room, opened the front door. An enormous man in a black wide-awake hat with a heavy caped ulster faced him. The visitor leaned heavily upon a crutch-handled stick.
“Mr. Melchizedech?” he wheezed, for the stairs had temporarily robbed him of his breath.
“That’s my name,” replied the Chief. “Please come in.”
He stood back to let the stranger pass, then led the way into the inner office.
“Won’t you take off your things?” he said, and, pointing to a chair, remained standing.
With slow, deliberate movements the visitor slid the ulster from his shoulders and cast it with his hat on a couch. Then he turned and faced the other, and, for a full minute, the two men measured each other in silence. They were something of the same type, both of big build, both masterly and virile, with iron determination shown in the proud jut of the nose, the massive cast of the jaw.
There was, however, a marked difference in their regard. The Englishman was suave, self-possessed, restrained, and his manner, though watchful and even suspicious, was placid and polite. But in his every trait the other, his visitor, was restless and provocative. The baleful glare in his dark and burning eyes was in itself a challenge, and his movements had something of the menacing deliberation of a wild beast. There was an indescribable air of primeval savagery about him with his bulging tufted brows, his enormous deep chest, his long and powerful arms, his short thick legs, as he confronted the other across the desk.
Presently his eyes left the Chief’s face as, with insolent deliberation, he let his gaze sweep slowly round the room. It took in the desk with its dusty bundles of papers, the safe in the wall behind, the office calendar, the clock, the hat-stand, and the filing-cabinet, before coming to rest again upon the impassive mask confronting him.
With a comprehensive wave of his stick he indicated their surroundings.
“Na,” he croaked, “as between colleagues was there really any necessity for this elaborate setting?” Shrewdly he watched the other’s face.
“My instructions from the gentleman to whom you wrote,” replied the Chief evenly, “are to hear what you wish to say. I was to add that, in according you this interview, my Chief in no way binds his liberty of future action, notably with regard to the punishment he proposes to inflict upon you.”
Anger flashed swiftly into the hard, dark eyes. “Punishment?” he exclaimed; then dropped chuckling into a chair. “Bold words!” he added. “So ist’s aber recht! As between man and man!”
Impressively he laid one hairy palm downwards upon the desk.
“You have had ample warning of my power,” he said. “I have decimated your Service, Herr Kollege; its moral is profoundly shaken; and, after the series of sanguinary reverses you have sustained at my hands, I can only suppose that a form of puerile amour-propre prevents you from recognizing the futility of continuing the struggle. So I have come to you, frankly and openly, as is our German way, to lay my cards upon the table.”
Not by so much as the flutter of an eyelid did the Chief interrupt the flow of this harangue. He listened quietly, composedly, his keen grey eyes fixed on his visitor’s face.
“My work here is almost done,” the other resumed. “For many years I have lived my life intensely, working early and late, contriving, combining, braving danger and defeating intrigues, for the greater glory of my people. But the world is changing—was ich sage! has changed, Herr Kollege, and the hour has almost struck for old Clubfoot, as they call me, to take his retirement. One last mission remains to be fulfilled and then old Clubfoot retires to his vineyard in Suabia, and politics will know no more the greatest man in our profession since Fouché!”
He seemed to swell up as he uttered his boast and his deep voice thrilled warmly to the fire of his egotism. Then his mood changed. With a crash he brought his fist down upon the desk.
“This Bliss mission must not go through, Herr Kollege,” he commanded.
For the first time a new light crept into the steady grey eyes that watched him so closely from across the table. The expression was involuntary and vanished almost as soon as it appeared. But, mere flicker though it was, it did not escape Grundt.
“I surprise you, I see,” the cripple remarked softly. “Nothing is withheld from me, lieber Herr. Shall I tell you about Mr. Alexander Bliss, senior partner of Haversack and Mayer, brokers to the British Government, and his mission to . . .”
An instinctive gesture from the other interrupted him.
“Discretion above all things,” Grundt acquiesced. “To the capital of a certain State contiguous to Russia, shall we say? You are doubtless aware that its new-found liberty has brought this ambitious Staatchen to the verge of financial disaster. A brand-new, spick-and-span army, costly missions abroad, banquets to fête the promise of to-morrow (but never the achievement of to-day), injudicious speculation in the exchanges of its neighbours have, as you undoubtedly know, played such havoc with the national resources that bankruptcy is the inevitable corollary. The British Government, with the altruism that has always distinguished its foreign policy (I would not suggest for a moment that the heavy commitments of British capital in this quarter influence its actions in the least!), has come to the rescue of . . . of this State. Your Mr. Bliss, after a number of most secret interviews with the Finance Minister, has concluded a satisfactory arrangement for the secret pledging in London of the State jewels, the glories of the nation’s past. I think I have summed up the situation correctly.”
He leant forward across the desk, tapping the blotter with stub forefinger.
“You will recall Mr. Bliss,” he said, “and cancel the arrangement he has made. A group of German financiers is prepared to take such action as will avert the disaster that threatens . . . this State. You will recall Bliss!”
Very quietly the Chief shook his head.
“If the British Government declines assistance,” Grundt resumed, “this Government will be bound to fall back upon the offer of the German group. The withdrawal of the Bliss mission will enable the German syndicate to arrange a loan on its own terms. I observe that you are already familiar with the existence of this German consortium. You see I am perfectly candid with you. I will push my frankness a step farther. This Bliss affair will be my last case. The matter satisfactorily adjusted, I retire, Herr Kollege, and enable you to reorganize your shattered and nerve-destroyed Service!”
Reflectively the Chief stabbed at his blotter with his reading-glass.
“Don’t be too hard on us, Herr Doktor,” he remarked. “The two Okewoods are in excellent health!”
A warm flush crimsoned the pallid cheeks of the cripple. Hot anger suddenly gleamed in his dark and restless eyes. But he controlled himself. He ran one hand over the close iron-grey stubble that thatched the bony head and his fleshy lips bared his yellow teeth in a forced smile.
“Clever, clever young men, Herr Kollege!” he murmured. “I congratulate you upon your Okewoods. May they live long to enjoy the fruits of their cleverness!”
In his mouth the wish became an imprecation, with such glowing vehemence did he utter it. He spoke with a snarl that for a moment lent his features a positively tigerish expression.
But the Chief had stood up. “Is that all?” he demanded, and came round the desk.
Clubfoot, his hairy hands crossed above the crutch of his stick, leaned back in his chair and looked up at his interrogator.
“Yes,” he replied. “And now you know what you’ve got to do!”
The Chief plucked open the door. “Get out of here and go to hell!” he said without raising his voice, with the same dogged composure he had maintained throughout the interview.
Like some great animal heaving itself erect, Grundt struggled cumbrously to his feet.
“You . . . you refuse?” he blustered.
The Chief ignored the question. “If you’re not out of here in one minute,” he retorted with deadly calm, “cripple though you are, I . . . shall . . . kick . . . you . . . downstairs!”
Leaning heavily on his stick, The Man with the Clubfoot hobbled slowly to the door. On the threshold he stopped and, in a gesture of sudden ferocity, thrust his face into the other’s.
“You have passed sentence of death on Bliss,” he said in a voice that fury rendered hoarse and almost inarticulate, “and sentence of death on yourself as well!”
Then he passed out and they heard his heavy footstep pounding down the stairs.
Three times in the course of the ensuing week the Chief’s life was attempted. There is reason to believe, Desmond Okewood says, that, previously to this, other attempts had been made; but he has certain knowledge only of these three plots. No word of the outrages passed the inmost circle of the Service represented by the Chief himself and Collins, his confidential clerk, and Desmond learned of them only when, visiting headquarters one day, he observed that liftman, doormen, messengers, and clerks had all been changed.
“Some one tampered with the lock of the gate of the lift which works automatically after hours,” the Chief explained reluctantly when Desmond tackled him, “and, but for a certain instinctive caution that has served me well before now, I should have taken a drop of six floors. Somebody inside did it, so I made a clean sweep of the office staff with the exception of Collins!”
But it was not until months afterwards that Desmond heard of the youth who, caught lurking in the area of the Chief’s London house, was found to be carrying a hypodermic needle filled with prussic acid, and of the endeavour to derail the train by which the Chief was travelling to a conference in the north.
But when, one spring morning, the Chief arrived by car at Desmond Okewood’s Surrey bungalow, Desmond saw at once by his face that the strain was beginning to tell. The steady grey eyes were as keen as ever and the mouth had lost nothing of its firmness; but there was a set air of restraint about the big man which did not deceive Desmond.
They breakfasted together and, the meal done, the Chief proposed a walk in the garden.
“We can talk better in the open air,” he remarked as he filled his pipe.
It was an old garden whose high red walls, now clothed with the blossom of peach and apple, were a guarantee against eavesdroppers. For a spell they strolled in silence along the paths bordering the beds bright with spring flowers, the busy clamour of thrush and blackbird the only sound.
“Two days will see us through now,” the Chief remarked suddenly. “Bliss has reached Berlin with the jewels, Okewood. He has had the most express injunctions to hand them over there to a trustworthy messenger of his choosing, for he himself, unless I am greatly mistaken, is by this time a marked man. The messenger will immediately convey the jewels to Brussels where you will take charge of them. A plane will be waiting for you at the Brussels aerodrome, you will fly straight back to Croydon where a car will be in readiness day or night to take you to the Bank of England. There you will hand the jewels over to the Governor against his receipt. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly!”
“To prevent leakage I forbade Bliss throughout his trip to communicate with me at all. I, however, have been able to send him instructions from time to time. His messenger was due to leave Berlin last night, and will report to you to-morrow evening at Box A at the Flora Theatre—it’s a music-hall—in Brussels!”
Desmond nodded. “Who is it?”
“Bliss had no means of telling me. But I have arranged a recognition signal. The messenger will ask you the question: ‘Do you know the Albany?’ to which you will reply: ‘From the Mansion to Vigo Street!’ On that answer, and on that answer only, the jewels will be handed over. Have you got that?”
Desmond repeated question and answer.
“It sounds idiotic,” said the Chief apologetically, “but I had to improvise something on the spot.”
“And when do I leave?” Desmond asked.
“By the morning train from Victoria to-morrow. You will be in Brussels by four in the afternoon. A red Minerva car will meet you at the station and will be at your disposal for the whole of your stay. Just say to the driver ‘Albany’ and he will obey your orders. He will take you to the theatre and afterwards drive you out to the aerodrome to the machine that we have ordered for you. I honestly believe that nothing can go wrong, for the details I have given to you were sent sealed by air to Bliss in Berlin, and I have word that Bliss has received them. Our plan is, therefore, known only to myself, Bliss, and you . . .”
“And the messenger . . .” Desmond put in.
“Quite so. But you can trust Bliss to have picked a reliable person. He is, without exception, the most suspicious-minded cove I’ve ever come across . . . Hallo, what’s this?”
A maid came hurrying up the garden path.
“The gentleman is wanted on the telephone, please, sir,” she said to Desmond.
They went into the house, where Desmond, discreetly, left the Chief at the telephone in the study. He returned to find the Chief staring moodily out of the window in an attitude of abstraction most unusual for him. On the sound of Desmond’s entrance he turned round.
“Bliss was found dead in his hotel in Berlin with his throat cut this morning,” he said. “A remarkable man, your friend Clubfoot!” he added.
Desmond whistled. Then, with a shade of anxiety in his voice, he added: “I hope you’ll be cautious for a bit, sir!”
The Chief laughed dryly. “The warning applies to you with stronger force, young fellow,” he retorted. “Bliss’s messenger left Berlin for Brussels last night with the packet, as the message puts it. If only he isn’t followed! . . .”
“If only he isn’t followed! . . .” The Chief’s phrase accompanied Desmond across the North Sea. The wheels of the Pullman hammered it out as the boat train bore him swiftly to the Channel shores, and it resounded in the rhythmic thudding of the waves against the sides of the Ostend packet. He had a mental picture of the unknown messenger being whirled across Germany, even as he was speeding over land and sea, towards that enigmatical point of contact, Box A, at the Flora Theatre in Brussels.
“If only he isn’t followed! . . .” The phrase recurred to Desmond as the Brussels train pulled out of Ostend’s shabby station. Had they really eluded the long grasp of the man of might and mystery? If not, at what stage would he intervene? Would he interpose his massy bulk between the two emissaries speeding towards one another to meet? Or would he let contact be established and, once made, break it? . . .
It was satisfactory to know, at any rate, Desmond reflected, that, so far as his experienced eye could detect, he had not been shadowed since leaving London. That he could set his mind similarly at rest about the man he was to meet! In the square outside the Brussels terminus the red Minerva car was waiting, and its driver, a button-nosed cockney with a surprising bilingual gift, showed his recognition of the password by the cheeriest of smiles.
Desmond drove to the Flora at once, though it was only four o’clock. To his great satisfaction, for he wished to make a reconnaissance, he found that a matinée was in progress. He was not in the theatre for more than twenty minutes, and he spent the remainder of the afternoon on the field of Waterloo. Visits to La Haye Sainte and Hougomont and the attempt to snatch from their rather mournful atmosphere something of that mighty clash of arms effectively took his thoughts off the work before him.
In reality, however, he was looking forward with the keenest relish to the surprises of the evening. He dined well but wisely at the “Filet de Bœuf,” and the half-pint of champagne, which was his modest allowance, seemed to quicken in him that lurking delight in adventure which had first drawn him towards the Secret Service.
The evening performance at the Flora was billed to begin at nine o’clock, but when towards that hour, the ouvreuse showed Desmond into Box A, the house was not half full. Comfortable-looking bourgeoisie with their wives and often their children, mugs of beer on the ledge before them, formed the bulk of the audience, and Desmond, whose thoughts were with the auditorium rather than the stage, found some amusement in observing them.
The performance had been proceeding for about half an hour and a troupe of comic acrobats were giving their turn when behind him he heard the door of the box open. He felt a thrill—the Unknown had arrived. He heard the wheezy voice of the ouvreuse: “Voici, Madame! Merci, Madame!” the door swung to with a click and, as he turned, Desmond found himself facing a girl.
She was in evening dress, which, after the fashion of women at theatres on the Continent, she was wearing with a large black hat. Petite and dainty, from the nape of her neck almost to her feet she was swathed in a long Spanish shawl, white, on which huge crimson flowers were embroidered, with a deep silken fringe.
“Madame, je regrette . . .”
Desmond stood up. The girl’s arrival was most untimely. At any moment now the messenger might appear. Seemingly, she had mistaken the box. Yet the grim old ouvreuse had let her in. She was a pretty girl, about twenty-five, he judged, and her dark eyes, with their curling lashes, the smooth curve of her cheek, were admirable.
The band was playing an interminable quick-step, to which the tumblers performed their tricks and contortions. The girl did not advance into the box, but remained in the half-light at the back.
“I demand a thousand pardons, Monsieur,” she murmured in French from the back of the box. “I was to have met some . . . friends who have not yet arrived. If I might remain a little at the back of the box. It is impossible to wait in the promenade!”
“Je vous en prie, Madame!” said Desmond politely, and advanced to the front of the box to fetch a chair. But the next moment he had stepped swiftly back from the red velvet ramp and remained rooted where he stood, staring, staring . . .
In the opposite box, with a party of men, Clubfoot was seated. He occupied the place of honour in the centre of the box, big, burly, and determined. With an opera-glass he was slowly sweeping the stalls.
“Damnation!” Desmond swore aloud. He had forgotten all about the girl behind him. Clubfoot had forestalled the messenger, then, and had come to see the transfer effected. It was ten o’clock already. What had happened to Bliss’s man? . . .
“You are an Englishman, aren’t you?” The girl’s voice, the voice of an educated Englishwoman, broke in upon his meditation. He swung round. “I beg your pardon for swearing just now,” he answered in English. “I’m afraid I forgot about you!” He cast a swift glance at the box opposite.
The girl laughed. “You speak French so well that I should never have taken you for an Englishman,” she said.
“And, apart from your accent, I was convinced from your appearance that you were a Parisian,” retorted Desmond gallantly. He kept back in the shadow as much as possible.
Few women are proof against compliments on their good taste. The girl flushed with appreciation.
“Are you from London?” she asked.
Desmond looked at her quickly. An incredible suspicion had dawned upon him. What if Bliss’s messenger were a woman? There was no reason why it should not be. Nothing had been said about the messenger being a man.
“Yes,” he answered tensely.
The girl was at the mirror on the side of the box arranging her hat.
“Do you know the Albany?” she said.
The question was uttered casually. Like a flash the reply came back: “From the Mansion to Vigo Street!”
The girl whipped round, one hand beneath her enveloping shawl.
“Thank God!” she whispered. “Quick! Take them!”
“Be careful!”
Desmond gripped her hand and drew her back into the dim recesses of the box. He could see that Clubfoot, facing them across the auditorium, now had his glasses focussed in their direction.
“They’re watching us,” the young man whispered to the girl. “Pass them to me behind your back!”
A heavy packet, wrapped in soft chamois leather, about the size of a cigar-box, was thrust into his outstretched hand. It was too large for any pocket of his suit, so Desmond slipped it into the pocket of his grey tweed overcoat, which he carried on his arm.
“I was . . . scared!” the girl murmured. “Bliss told me that an Englishman would meet me, and I thought, when I saw you, that I had got into the wrong box. I didn’t dare go out into the promenade again on account of the man outside . . .”
“You were followed here?”
The girl nodded. “All the way from Berlin. I thought I had given him the slip at the station here, but, if I did, he evidently picked up my trail again.”
“What’s he like, this man who shadowed you?”
“A young man, slim and fair. He has a long white scar on his face and . . .”
“H-sst!”
Desmond pressed her arm. The handle of the box door was being slowly turned. They drew back behind the door as it opened. Then in the mirror hanging on the velvet tapestry of the opposite wall Desmond saw a face, bloodless and crafty, barred with a livid cicatrice, the face of Heinrich, Clubfoot’s aide. He, on his side, must have seen Desmond mirrored in the glass, for he gasped audibly. The face disappeared.
“He’s gone to warn the others!” Desmond whispered. He glanced across the house. “And Clubfoot’s left his box. If only this turn would finish! They wouldn’t dare to attack us when the lights are up . . .”
But the tumblers were the star turn, the top of the bill. With shrill cries, to the lilt of that never-ending quick-step, they bounced and whirled across the stage, working up to their grand climax.
Desmond turned to the girl. “Are you game for a dash?” he demanded.
He plucked the door wide. The corridor was deserted. Behind them, as they stepped quickly outside, the theatre now rang with the applause that marked the fall of the curtain. Desmond, the girl behind him, darted softly down a staircase marked “Sortie d’Incendie” in red lights, that stood almost opposite the box door. They descended unmolested and Desmond congratulated himself on his forethought in having made that preliminary reconnaissance as he pushed outwards the emergency door at the foot of the flight.
In the street without, by the side of the theatre, the red Minerva waited. Desmond thrust the girl inside, sprang in after her, the self-starter whirred, the engine throbbed, and they glided out into the broad and brightly lighted avenues of Brussels.
From the barrier of the aerodrome, where the Minerva pulled up, Desmond could see the machine destined for their night journey. What a puny thing it looked, stranded there, forlorn and solitary, in the centre of the vast open space swept by the glare of the lights of the night landing-station and surrounded by the long, low sheds whose roofs were now silvered by the effulgence of the moon!
On their way to the flying-field the girl had told Desmond her history. Her name was Mary Brewster, and for two years she had been acting as confidential secretary to the head of one of the British missions in Berlin. Her General had recommended her to Bliss as a trustworthy German-speaking messenger, and though she was fully aware of the danger of the mission, she had jumped at the chance of a trip home at Government expense.
She was a funny little girl, Desmond decided. Her work in Berlin had given her some insight into the workings of the Secret Service, and the grave seriousness with which she took her mission amused Desmond, grown blasé in eight years’ experience of its ways. Her very conscientiousness made her profoundly suspicious—even of Desmond at first; and she subjected him to a prolonged cross-examination as to the bona fides of the chauffeur. When the last-named, on their arrival at the aerodrome, went off in search of the pilot, the girl wanted to know whether he was sure that the aviator was to be trusted.
“My dear child,” said Desmond, laughing, “that’s not my responsibility. It’s the Chief’s. Each of us has his job in this show. The chauffeur’s is to bring me alongside the aeroplane and hand me over to the pilot . . .”
As he spoke they saw a hooded and muffled figure detach itself from the knot of mechanics gathered about the plane. It proved to be the pilot, a swarthy young man, to judge by as much as his helmet disclosed of his features, short and stocky, in leather flying-kit. He came up with the chauffeur to the car.