Raymond de Costa smiled.
“Pretty people to treat a son of mine like dirt,” he said disdainfully. “The mother is head over heels in debt; the girl only looks presentable because she does a little writing. Why don’t you make up to the mother?”
The young man turned round, his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets, discontent eloquently written on his face.
“The mother’s all right,” he grumbled. “I can twist Mrs. Yale round that.” He held up a stodgy little finger. “If it was only the mother there would be no trouble. It’s the girl.”
“Give her presents; women like that sort of thing!” suggested his father, but the young man shook his head.
“I’ve given her——” He stopped.
“What?”
“Oh, lots of things!” said the youth vaguely. His conscience was troubling him a little. Something was very much on his mind.
There is an intense sympathy between some fathers and some sons which is generally all to the good. It sometimes, however, works out to the embarrassment of one of the partners. De Costa père had a trick of catching mind impressions; and now there came to him the recollections of something he wished to say.
“By the way,” he said carelessly, “Miss Yale has something which I should very much like to possess.”
The youth made no attempt to discover what that something was. He glanced a little apprehensively at his parent and waited.
“Miss Yale,” the other went on, “has a bangle, which, from the description I have had of it, must be the very companion of one which I have been scouring the world to secure, and which that thief Song-lu of Nanping swore he had dispatched to me by registered post.”
He rose from the table too, a scowl on his unpleasant face.
“It cost me over a thousand pounds to find, and another thousand to buy,” he said; “and Song-lu expects me to believe that he entrusted it to the registered post!”
“When ought it to have arrived?” stammered Gregory, very red in the face and horribly conscious of a desire to bolt.
“During my absence in China,” said his father. Then, sharply: “You saw nothing of a bangle, did you?”
Gregory de Costa cleared his throat.
“I wanted to say—I’ve had an uncomfortable feeling,” he said incoherently, “that a bangle came to me—at least I thought it was for me—some old curio that you’d picked up, governor. I hadn’t any idea it was for you; it was just addressed ‘Mister de Costa’.”
“Ah, you’ve got it!” There was relief and pleasure in Raymond de Costa’s face.
The son hesitated.
“Well,” he said, “I haven’t exactly got it. As a matter of fact I thought you meant me to give it away—so I gave it!”
De Costa stared at his son open-mouthed. His face went paler and paler with almost unconquerable rage.
“Gave it away?” he said at last, restraining himself with the greatest effort. “And to whom did you give it, you precious fool?”
“I gave it to Miss Yale,” said the young man sullenly. “How was I to know?”
“How was he to know?” De Costa, senior, appealed to the ceiling in his exasperation. “How was he to know that I should not waste my time picking up curios for a moon-calf? Oh, Gregory Marcus de Costa, you make me tire!”
It was chee-chee now. All the Eurasian in him was indicated in his voice and his manner. Tears of rage stood in his eyes.
Only a man of iron will could have overcome his natural disabilities as did old De Costa, because of a sudden he became very calm.
“You must go at once to Miss Yale, and on any excuse whatever you must regain possession of that bracelet. Tell her,” he bent his brows in thought, “tell her that you have learnt that it came from somebody who was suffering with the plague. Tell her anything—but get the bangle. She shall have diamonds in its stead. Go!”
“I’m awfully sorry, governor,” began Gregory.
The old man bared his teeth.
“Get out!” he said savagely.
Gregory de Costa went to his room with a grievance and a fear. Suppose Yvonne Yale would not surrender this precious circle of jade? Suppose she were hurt—no such luck! The worst and the most likely thing that could happen would be that she would seize an excellent and providential opportunity for ridding herself of an undesirable suitor.
He dressed himself with care, swearing at his reflection in the glass as at his worst enemy. He counted his money mechanically before transferring it from one pocket to the other—a frugal soul was Gregory de Costa!—and examined with care the interior of his pocket-book. He would avail himself of his father’s offer. It would be a diamond bracelet which he would offer as a substitute, and no girl in her senses could refuse that. He found consolation in the prospect, and finished his dressing carefully.
The Yales, mother and daughter, lived in a tiny house in Upper Curzon Street—a little house which had managed to squeeze itself between two more imposing façades and strove unsuccessfully to pretend that it had been there all the time.
Miss Yale was alone, the servant informed him, and added with the garrulous familiarity of a servant from whom her mistress had no secrets, that she had gone to the bank.
In the little drawing-room on the first floor Mr. de Costa junior found a lady who was coldly polite and undisguisedly surprised to see him at that hour in the morning.
He blundered to his fate.
“Fact is, Miss Yvonne——” he began.
“Miss Yale,” she corrected him with a little smile.
“Sorry. Fact is, there’s been a plague.”
“A plague?”
He nodded vigorously, satisfied with the sensation he had created.
“But I’m afraid that I don’t understand,” she said. “Where is the plague, and what has it to do with me?”
“In China,” he lied glibly. “Thousands of fellows dead. My governor is awfully upset; that bracelet, you know.”
She began to comprehend, and nodded.
“You see,” he went on eagerly, “the man that owned it has the plague, and the governor’s awfully concerned about you. So if you’ll let me have it, we’ll just put it where it can do no harm.”
He was flushed with self-satisfaction; already it seemed his task was satisfactorily performed. But her next words sent a flood of ice-water down his back.
“I’m sorry,” she said; “but I haven’t got it.”
“Haven’t? Oh, I say, Miss Yvonne! Oh, come now!” he almost wailed. “You must have it. I shall get into an awful row!”
“I am sorry you will get into trouble,” she said quietly; “but I haven’t got it at the moment.”
“But you must have it, Miss—Miss Yale. You must!” He was violent almost in his terror at facing his father empty-handed. “And I must insist upon your giving it to me.”
A wrong—a fatally wrong—move on the part of Gregory de Costa.
The girl stood up, stiff and uncompromising.
“You insist?” she said scornfully. “You forget that the bracelet is mine, though I assure you I’ve no desire to keep it. In a short time I shall have it, and it will be sent to you. Good morning!”
“If I’ve said anything offensive,” pleaded the young man humbly, yet in his humility mopping his brow with a handkerchief, the gaudiness of which was in itself an offence.
“Good morning!” said Yvonne Yale, with a little inclination of dismissal.
There was a knock at the door, and De Costa checked his flood of apology.
“Captain Talham,” announced the servant, and Captain Talham followed her quickly into the room.
The girl flashed a little smile of welcome, then turned to the young man.
“Captain Talham will give you what you desire,” she said coldly; then, to the tall man: “Will you please give this gentleman the bracelet I gave you yesterday?”
Talham looked from the girl to the youth, and from the youth to the girl. Then, with a sigh in which relief was evident, he drew from his right hand pocket something wrapped in tissue paper and placed it in the outstretched hand of the other.
“Phew!” said Mr. Gregory de Costa, and unwrapped the jade bracelet set about with bands of gold. “Phew!” he said again, and his trembling fingers stowed the precious circlet in an inside pocket.
Captain Talham scrutinised him gravely.
“My friend,” he said, “on what small and seemingly trivial incident does life turn! A petulant word—the hint of offensiveness to this dear lady”—he waved his hand gracefully in the direction of the embarrassed Yvonne—“a sudden revulsion of feeling, which turns penitence to stern and unscrupulous purpose, hardens the shamed heart, and adds lustre to villainy.”
“I beg your pardon?” asked young Mr. de Costa reasonably puzzled.
Talham would have proceeded, but something in the girl’s eyes, some mute entreaty, averted him. He favoured the young man with a bow which effectively dismissed him and turned his attention to the girl.
She waited until the door closed behind him.
“You are always getting me out of scrapes, Captain Talham,” she smiled.
“You’ve got me out of a scrape,” he said solemnly, and seated himself at her gesture.
He had been up all night, he told her without invitation.
He added that he had borrowed a sovereign from a famous detective whom, with unnecessary caution, he described as Signor T——.
“Not that I’ve been to sleep,” he said. “I have been engaged with a Chink”—he saw she was puzzled—“a Chinaman,” he hastened to correct himself. “A very admirable man, who does things.”
An ambiguous but characteristic description, she thought.
He was ill at ease, and remarkably silent through the interview; spoke little, yet several times seemed to be on the point of speaking.
“You seem to have something to confess,” she said at last in gentle raillery.
She had to make conversation at an hour of the day when small talk was a most difficult exercise to assume, and was at her wits’ end for subjects.
Three times he had started with an ominous “I feel that I ought to tell you”; and three times he had stopped and talked rapidly for a minute or two about some subject wholly irrelevant to the matter under discussion.
“I have and I haven’t,” he said slowly. “That is to say, I had, and probably that from a strictly ethical standpoint still have. It is a nice question.”
He rose to go with startling abruptness.
“There is something troubling you, my man,” thought she in an amused way.
“Miss Yale,” he said solemnly. “In war all expedients are justified.”
“I agree,” she smiled. “But exactly what are you thinking about?”
It may be that Captain Talham had no intention of telling her at that precise moment. What is certain, however, is that in his agitation he pulled his handkerchief from an inside pocket and with it something which fell upon the floor.
The girl looked at it in wonder; and well she might, for there was an absolute replica of the ornament she had returned to young De Costa a few moments before.
Mr. de Costa, senior, sat in his study until late that night. His son had gone to a musical comedy to the relief of his mind and the repair of a crushed spirit, and Mr. de Costa was alone in the house save one man-servant—a half-caste factotum, who was neither butler nor errand-boy nor valet, and yet performed the functions of each.
At nine o’clock a man came to the house and was admitted through the servants’ entrance. He was shown at once to the study.
De Costa looked over his glasses at the visitor and pointed to a chair.
“Sit down, Soo,” he said, and the Chinaman, with a jerk and wriggle intended to display his respect for superiority, and his reluctance to seat himself in the presence of greatness, obeyed.
He was above medium height, and pallid even for a Chinaman. His high cheekbones and thin, straight lips, gave him sinister appearance, yet he was by no means bad-looking, for the nose was straight and well proportioned to the face. He wore no queue, and his black hair was brushed back in the style affected by the youth of England. His eyes were larger than the average, set about in a void face—void of emotion, of the expression and capacity for feeling.
Whatever humility convention may have dictated on his arrival, he had no false views on the question of his equality for the man who sat at the desk, for he leant over, lifted the lid of a silver box, and extracted a cigarette.
“Well,” asked Mr. de Costa, blotting a letter he had written, “what is the news?”
The man he called Soo shook his head as he applied a light to the cigarette.
“I come to you for news,” he said. “In my humble circle we talk of nothing more interesting than the surprising results which follow a game of Fan-tan.”
“Where did you pick up your English?” asked De Costa irritably. It is never pleasant to know that one whom in your heart you grade below your own intellectual level is your superior in scholastic attainments.
“I picked it up in the place where one acquires much enlightenment,” said Soo carelessly.
He blew a ring of smoke towards the ceiling, and watched it disappear.
“You wouldn’t imagine,” said he, “that I was intended for the ministry; yet that is the fact. There were good people who thought I would make an ideal missionary, and by the force of my personality and the knowledge of my own people, wean them from the traditions and the philosophies of two thousand years to the half-hearted philosophies, imperfectly understood and imperfectly promulgated in twenty different ways by the intelligent people of this country.”
De Costa said nothing. He was too wily a man to be drawn into a discussion on a subject with which he was not too well acquainted.
Soo had an irritating trick of getting him out of his depths.
“I understand you’ve got the bracelet,” said the Chinaman, and the other acknowledged the possession.
He unlocked the drawer of his desk, and took out a steel box. From this he extracted the bangle which Talham had handed to his son.
It was still in its paper wrapping, and Soo paused awhile before he removed the tissue.
“It is very light for jade,” he said suspiciously.
He threw the end of his cigarette into the fireplace with a quick movement of his hand, and stripped the ornament of its wrapper.
He looked at it carefully, twisting the bangle about in his hand.
“This is not jade,” he said.
“Not jade,” repeated the merchant, and half rose from his chair. “Are you sure?”
“This is celluloid,” said the calm Soo, “cleverly copied and possibly weighted to give it the appearance of jade.”
He balanced it carefully on his hand; then he examined the gold bands.
“Yes, as I thought,” he said, “the weight is in the gold.”
He inspected the inscriptions and read them carefully. Half obliterated as they were, it was no easy task to decipher them by artificial light. Then he put the bangle upon the table.
“Your friend has deceived you,” he said quietly. “This is not the famous Shu Shun bracelet. It is not even an imitation. These writings”—he tapped the bangle with his fingers—“are commonplace copybook maxims, as you would call them in this country.”
He picked up the ornament again, and read: “An ungrateful son is a disappointed father.” “The father of patience is wisdom, and the source of peace is love.”
“You have been fooled, my friend!” he said.
De Costa sprang to his feet.
“Explain what you mean,” he said.
The Chinaman was lighting another cigarette.
“It is very simple.” He looked abstractedly at the ceiling, and spoke half to himself: “The girl had the original bracelet, and has returned this. Either she, or one of her friends, has the bangle; and it is our business to get it. Without that”—he lowered his voice—“everything that happened yesterday was in vain.”
“Don’t talk about yesterday,” said De Costa hurriedly. “That is a subject which I never wish to discuss; you don’t know how I’m feeling about it, Soo. I never wanted anybody hurt, I swear I didn’t.”
The Chinaman interrupted him with a slow smile.
“These things are not done by politeness,” he said. “You are going into a big enterprise, and you must take a correspondingly big risk.”
“I take no risks,” said De Costa, white of face. “I know nothing whatever about it. Two deaths! My God, they couldn’t——”
Soo nodded.
“They could indeed,” he said easily. “If anybody hangs for what happened last night, be sure that you hang with them. You have gone into this matter, De Costa, with your eyes open. You saw a chance of obtaining an enormous treasure, and you took all risk. You Westerners,” he went on, “place too high a value upon human life.”
He half rose from his chair, leant across to the desk, and picked up the bangle again, examining it with an amused smile. Then, as he replaced it upon the table, he said grimly: “The events of yesterday about which you do not wish to speak, would have been wholly unnecessary had I known in time that this bangle existed.”
“But surely,” began De Costa, “the paper you found——”
Soo shook his head. He was calmness itself. “I have no papers,” he said simply.
De Costa stared at him.
“No papers! What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly what I say,” said the other. He marked the situation upon the outstretched fingers of his hand. “Three men were sent to secure an envelope from the Chinese Ambassador’s bureau, and one of them was killed. Two made their escape with the papers concerning the matter. I have not seen them since.”
“Gone?” said De Costa.
“Gone!” repeated the other. “There is another influence at work. I am inclined to associate an old acquaintance of mine—Captain Talham. You probably know him!”
De Costa nodded.
“He is interested in this matter of Mount Li. So firm was my conviction that he was behind the treachery of my two men, that I took the liberty of preparing a little surprise for him last night. Unfortunately,” he said with regret, “it did not materialise. But to-night—who knows?”
He rose abruptly, and buttoned his overcoat, turning up the collar about his neck.
“I must go now,” he said. “There is a lot of work to be done before to-morrow morning.”
“What work?” asked De Costa.
“I am going to recover the bracelet,” said Soo, and there was that in his eyes which made the older man quail.
“There will be no violence?” he stammered.
“None, I assure you,” said the other airily.
“Remember,” said De Costa almost tremulously, “that it is a woman you have to deal with.”
“I have dealt with many women,” said Soo, “and I find very little difference between the sexes save that the gentler is a trifle more courageous, and a little more willing to bear the consequences of their folly.”
De Costa accompanied him into the regions of the kitchen and showed him to the door which led to the area. Not another word was spoken between the two men.
De Costa closed the door behind his visitor and bolted it securely. He went back to his study and drained off a glass of neat brandy.
He went to bed that night in no happy frame of mind.
He might have been less happy, as he lay tossing from side to side in his bed, had he seen the dark figure of a man stealing in the shadow of the wall which formed a tiny courtyard at the back of his house.
Whoever the masked man was who was working so deliberately at the back door of Mr. de Costa’s respectable dwelling, he went to work methodically and without any indication that he feared detection. He carried a little tiny kit of tools which he had spread upon the ground, and from time to time he leant down and selected one of these by the light of a small electric lamp which he flashed for a moment upon the kit’s contents.
He took some trouble to avoid anything in the nature of a violent noise, and it was half an hour before the lock, and a portion of the door, came away very gently in his hand.
As methodically he leant down and rolled up the tools, placing them in his pocket; he pushed the door open, and entered.
He had no difficulty in forcing another door, or in gaining the wide hallway which formed the principal entrance to the house.
In half an hour he pursued his inquiries with quiet confidence.
The dining-room yielded nothing; the rather ornate drawing-room no more. Yet he made a systematic search, flickering his light here and there, moving such pictures as he thought might conceal that which he sought.
He reserved his examination of the study till the last. He found some cigarette ends in the fireplace and picked them up cautiously, examining the brand with the light of his lantern. These he wrapped carefully in a piece of paper, and placed in his waistcoat pocket. He opened all the drawers and methodically examined them, replacing them just as he had found them, and relocked the drawers after him with a curious key which he took from his pocket.
After a while he mounted the stairs.
De Costa occupied the first room on the second floor, and the door faced the stairs, and on the right was another door, which led to the dressing-room, which again gave access to the principal bedroom.
The visitor made no attempt to force the door for some minutes, but devoted his attention to the door on the right.
It opened easily. He stood in the doorway listening. For all he knew De Costa may have had alarms fixed; but no bell or buzzer woke the stillness of the night. He closed the door gently behind him; the floor was carpeted with thick felt, and the precaution he had taken of enclosing his feet in goloshes was unnecessary. In this room, as he knew, was the intimate safe of the merchant’s.
He had come prepared to open that safe and inspect its interior. In his pocket was a heavy iron bottle containing sufficient oxygen for his purpose, and in another pocket the blow-pipe and the instruments necessary to burn out the lock of the safe.
He switched on his pocket light, and turned it unhesitatingly in the direction of where the safe was to be found. Instantly his thumb closed upon the switch, and his light went out. Facing him was a man who stood with his back to the safe. His face was covered with a black crêpe mask, and in his hand, pointing insistently in the direction of the other, was a long-barrelled Colt revolver.
He might have saved himself the trouble of switching off his light, for instantly from the stranger’s disengaged hand a white beam of light shot out. He had come similarly equipped.
“Go downstairs,” whispered the man by the safe, “and keep your hands away from your pockets.”
There was nothing for the burglar to do but to obey. Without a word he turned and walked out of the room, the other following a few paces behind.
“To the kitchen!” whispered the second man, and the burglar turned obediently.
They entered the big, underground kitchen together, the second man closing the door behind him before he felt on the wall for the switch. In a minute the room was illuminated, and they stood facing each other.
“Who are you?” asked the second man quietly.
“I prefer to remain anonymous,” said the burglar.
He was the taller of the two, a man above medium height, and his voice had just that touch of culture which one does not expect from a member of the criminal classes.
“I prefer to see your face,” said the second man.
The burglar shrugged his shoulders.
“Existence,” he said oracularly, “is made up of unsatisfied desires. Nature in the ordering of her plans does not take into account the prejudices——”
“Good heavens!” gasped the other. “Captain Talham!”
The burglar was silenced momentarily, apparently annoyed too.
“I am Captain Talham,” he said with ridiculous pride, and took off his mask; “though why you should know me I fail to understand.”
The second man laughed—a low, musical, chuckling laugh.
“I know you all right,” he answered.
Talham stood for a moment fidgeting by the side of the kitchen table; then:
“Let us put our cards on the table, Tillizinni,” he said.
It was the second man’s turn to start.
“Oh, yes, I know you!” Talham went on. “I always remember people by their hands; and as you probably know, the third knuckle of your left is more prominent than any other.”
Tillizinni laughed.
“We seem to have made a pretty mess of it between us,” he said; “as I gather, we are both here on the same errand.”
Talham nodded.
“You can save yourself the trouble of tampering with the safe. I’ve already been to it.”
“How did you get in?” asked Talham.
The detective shook his head with a smile.
“The last thing I can do is to arrange to get out,” he answered evasively. “What did you find?”
Talham hesitated.
“I found nothing, save that our friend T’si Soo has been here. Some of his cigarette ends were in the fireplace; at least, they are Chinese, and I gather——”
Tillizinni nodded.
“I didn’t need his cigarette ends to know that,” he said. “I saw him come out.”
They left the house together, walking arm in arm, through the front door, leaving the door ajar, and walked away under the very nose of a policeman who stood at the corner of a street a hundred yards from the house.
For a long time neither man spoke. Then Tillizinni burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter.
“You amuse me very much,” he said, “although you annoy me. Here is a situation worthy of a comic opera. I go to burgle a house for my own private ends. I meet another burglar, whom it is my duty, as an officer of the law, to arrest.”
“Let’s go and talk it over!” said Talham.
* * * * *
“You’re a curious man,” said Tillizinni, and Captain Talham did not consider it worth while to correct him, though “curious” was an obvious misapplication of a word.
A bright, cheerful fire burnt in the big Adams’ fireplace, and the shaded lamp on the table afforded enough light to the room. Outside, day was breaking over the dull silver of the river and slow moving tugs were passing up with the tide, drawing a trail of clumsy barges in their wake.
Tillizinni’s rooms in Adelphi Terrace offered the finest view in London, but never was London more attractive than in the early hours of a frosty winter morning.
Neither of the two men had slept that night. A bundle of papers, each giving a brief account of the tragedy, was at the detective’s elbow. He looked across to Talham in his worn garments. You could not pity the tall man. His confidence, his self-satisfaction—in the best sense of the word—precluded pity. He sat now with a fragrant cigar between his teeth, a steaming cup of coffee within reach on a little table by his side, his legs crossed—a model of contentment.
“I gather, of course,” Tillizinni went on, “that you wanted to find the Ts’in tomb, and I must confess that I regarded your search as being little removed, in point of self-interest, from the efforts of our Chinese friends.”
Talham shook his head.
“Accustomed as you are to the venal predilections——” he began.
Tillizinni put up his hands to his ears in mock despair.
“Do you forget that I am Italian?” he asked.
The great anthropologist was a man of quick likes and quicker dislikes. Never before had he found one to whom he felt so warm and so instant a regard as he did with this adventurer. Add the warm and generous qualities of his southern nature, interest in the rara humanis which his science dictated, and there is every excuse for the sudden friendship which has so often been the subject of criticism.
Tillizinni was at the zenith of his fame; he had handled the danger of the Fourth Plague with rare courage and ingenuity, and his name at this time was in all mouths. Even Scotland Yard, a cautious institution which does not take the stranger to its bosom, however brilliant he may be, had succumbed to his fascination, and Room 673E was “Mr. Tillizinni’s Room,” just as surely and unalterably as Room 1 is the Chief Commissioner’s.
He leant forward to stir the fire, and to return an escaping coal to its glowing inferno.
“Will your man do the work you require?” he asked.
“In the time?”
The detective nodded, and Talham pursed his lips thoughtfully.
“He has till eleven,” he said; “and a Chinese mechanic can do much in seven hours.”
There was a restful little interval of silence, which Tillizinni broke.
“It is most fantastic—the most bizarre idea I have ever heard,” he said. “From no other human being in the world would I accept such a story. Yet I believe you.”
“Of course you do,” retorted Talham simply.
Tillizinni stared; then an amused smile crossed his thin lips. The other surveyed him with great earnestness, then leant forward.
“Signor Tillizinni,” he said, “the acquirement of wealth is a process which too often dissipates the qualities of self-respect. I will be a millionaire, not as the thief who robbed a tomb of dross”—he snapped his fingers finely—“but as the genius who wrested from the dead ages the secret and its attainments. I am satisfied that in the tomb of Ts’in I shall have revealed to me that supreme mechanical wonder of all time—perpetual motion.”
His face was tense; his eyes glossed with the splendour of the thought. So the eyes of Christopher Columbus might have burnt as he sighted, through the spray, the low, grey cloud of land upon his bow.
“All this story of mechanical devices,” Talham went on rapidly. “These rivers of quicksilver which run for ever by some complexity of machinery—it is all true. There may be little or no treasure; but that device lies hidden as surely as the bones of the architects are upon the floor of the chasm.”
He rose, and paced the room with short, quick, nervous steps.
“But suppose when you opened the tomb you found nothing?” asked Tillizinni. “Suppose the device was non-existent and the quicksilver rivers had disappeared, and there was nothing but the store of treasure?”
Talham thought for a while.
“I should take the treasure,” he said impressively, “and afterwards I should close the tomb reverently and come away.”
Tillizinni laughed. It was a long, rich, chuckling laugh of pure enjoyment, which not even the reproachful eye of the other could suppress.
“I like you,” said Tillizinni; “and if I do not consider it my duty to hamper you, I shall find a pleasure in helping you in your search.”
Ten minutes later, the two men were dozing in their chairs, proof enough of the ease which comes with friendship.
It was not until ten o’clock, with the bright, winter’s sunlight flooding the room, that Tillizinni awoke with a sense of refreshment. The big lamp upon the table still burnt, and he extinguished it.
His eyes fell upon Talham still fast asleep. His legs outstretched, his hands thrust into trouser pockets, and his chin on his breast.
Tillizinni moved across the room noiselessly, and looked out into the terrace below. There were two tradesmen’s carts delivering goods at a neighbouring club. He closed the French windows of the room and returned to Talham, and dropped his hand upon the other’s shoulder.
Talham was awake instantly.
“Anything wrong?” he asked, as he saw the other’s face.
Tillizinni shook his head.
“That we are both alive is evidence that nothing is wrong,” he said. “Look at the mantelpiece!”
Talham raised his eyes.
On the shelf above the fireplace, between two Tanagra statuettes, was a small, square, black box, as large as a small tea-caddy, and not unlike one in its appearance. Dependent from the case, hung a length of fuse some eight inches long, and the end was burnt black.
“Ashes in the fireplace—obviously fuse,” said Tillizinni, kneeling down. “What made it stop burning, I wonder?”
He examined the little rope minutely, using a reading-glass.
“That’s blood!” He pointed with his finger to a stain near the burnt end. “The man who placed this here had blood on his hands—probably cut himself in making the entrance. Now, where?”
He walked to the door of the room and, opening it, crossed the broad landing. Another room opened from here, and he entered. It was used as a box-room, and should have been locked. For the matter of that, it should have possessed a lock of more service than the twisted piece of metal that lay on the floor.
“Wrenched off with a modern pocket-jack,” said Tillizinni approvingly. “A neat piece of work. Don’t touch the lock; we’ll hunt for a finger-print by and by. Window open! Humph!”
It was clear which way the thing had come.
“We’ve had a narrow escape,” said Tillizinni.
“So did he,” said Talham.
Talham was seized with the idea of making an afternoon call, and waited on Tillizinni, to the detective’s embarrassment.
“Tillizinni,” he said, “one of the duties which civilisation imposes upon its products, is the obligation under which we all rest, to observe the social amenities.”
After which preamble he deigned to explain that he had accepted an invitation for himself and for the detective, to what he termed “a party.”
Tillizinni had visions of being called upon to sing, or do parlour tricks, and he hastily excused himself.
“You must come,” said Talham gravely. “I did perhaps overstep the conventions when, without consulting you, I accepted this invitation on your behalf. But I think you will enjoy yourself. Mrs. Smith is a lady of singular charm of manner, and has the gift which so few women, and indeed so few men, possess, of appreciating scientific endeavour at its true value.”
From which Tillizinni gathered that the lady had been engaged in impressing upon Talham what a fine fellow he was.
The detective hesitated. He knew he would be horribly bored, but it must be confessed he was possessed by a curiosity to know exactly how Talham would behave in that nebulous sphere which is called “society.”
Mrs. Smith had a little house in Bayswater. It was in one of those long roads which connect Bayswater with Mayfair, and where, at the Mayfair end, the houses grow narrower and narrower, crowding against one another as if in a panic lest they stray into the more unfashionable end of the street.
She was a woman who had a passion for parties, and was never quite so happy as when she was making two guests groan where one had groaned before.
Since her entertaining area was severely restricted, it is not to be wondered that her little social plot was somewhat overcrowded.
Habitués at Mrs. Smith’s “at homes” and functions were sufficiently well acquainted with the lay of the house to tuck themselves into odd corners and alcoves; but both Talham and his apprehensive companion found themselves a little cramped for room in the tiny hall where six men were endeavouring to find pegs for their coats at one and the same time.
The drawing-room was on the first floor, and although the stairs leading up to it were somewhat narrow, Mrs. Smith carried out the illusion of a Foreign Office reception by receiving her guests on the first landing with her back to the bathroom door, and handing them over, as they squeezed past, to an ill-fitted butler, who conducted them the three or four paces which separated the end of stairs from the beginning of drawing-room.
She boasted that she never forgot names, and was wont to cite herself and King Edward as twin souls in this respect.
Indeed, from time to time, she found many startling phases of resemblance between herself and various members of the Royal Family.
The tiny drawing-room was uncomfortably crowded.
Tillizinni found himself wondering, as he pushed his way through the press, by what extraordinary manœuvre Mrs. Smith held and attracted such a large and representative body of good-looking young men.
He had a lurking suspicion that as fast as they entered the drawing-room by the door they surreptitiously escaped through the window.
There was that air of unreality which is frequently to be found in the small drawing-rooms of the people bitten by the social bug.
“She called me Mr. Tinker,” said Talham’s voice in the other’s ear.
His words almost trembled with chagrin. Tillizinni tried to appease him.
“She called me Phillips,” he said with a smile; “though that is not my name as far as I know. You must allow for lapses in the memory of a hostess who probably entertains thousands of people in a year.”
Talham was silent, but he was very annoyed indeed.
The press was thickest at one end of the drawing-room, and to this the two made, following the instinct which invariably draws man to man—for men like men in crowds.
“What is the attraction?” grumbled Talham. “Is it not lamentable,” he went on without waiting for a reply, which, as a matter of fact, the detective was not prepared to offer, “that with all the joyous and bountiful gifts which nature has prepared and laid open for her children, men should be found who prefer the hot and fetid atmosphere of a drawing-room and the stimulations of artificial gaiety to that ante-chamber of heaven, the field? Does not the pettiness—the inconclusiveness—of it, strike you? Think of the futility of effort——”
He got so far and was warming to his subject, when the little crowd which stood between them and the attraction, thinned, as a sea-fret thins before a westerly wind, and Tillizinni saw, for the first time in his life, Yvonne Yale.
She was standing near the fireplace, listening to a short youth by her side, with some evidence of boredom.
Her hair, perfectly coiffeured, was a mass of golden brown. About this she wore a little bandeau of dull gold.
Tillizinni received the impression of observing a crowned queen—so proud and straight she stood, with a little tilt to her chin, and the merest hint of condescension in her eyes, as she talked to the voluble youth who hung upon her words.
Her gown, cut low at the neck, was very plain. It was of black velvet, close fitting. About her neck she had three strings of imitation pearls. Her arms, bare to the elbow, were white and beautifully shaped; her hands larger than one expected, but pretty. She had a plain gold bangle about her wrist—the only jewel she wore.
Tillizinni looked at Talham. He was staring at the girl, his lips parted, his eyes wide open, his head a little forward.
At any other moment he would have amused the other, but Tillizinni had seen that look before—that strange earnestness and intensity with which he confronted the problems of life.
He continued to look, and the girl must have subconsciously become aware of the unwinking gaze fixed upon her, for she turned her head and faced him.
For a moment they stood thus, looking one at the other; then Tillizinni saw a delicate pink creep into her face, and he caught Talham’s arm.
“Introduce me,” he muttered, “and apologise for my rudeness.”
Obeying rather the dictation of his inner self than any suggestion of his friend, Talham went towards her, his hand outstretched.
She held out her hand frankly with a little smile to Talham, and he took it. He held it, it seemed to Tillizinni, an unconscionable time. The responsibility of piloting Talham through the social maze was getting on the nerves of one who was famous throughout Europe for his freedom from nerve trouble.
“I am glad to see you again, Captain Talham,” she said with a dazzling smile which showed two rows of pearly teeth. “We do not often entertain such distinguished people.”
She said this with a gentle note of mockery, but as usual Talham took her very seriously.
“Whatever views you may hold regarding my friend,” he said gravely, “you must not think of regarding me as distinguished. I hope, Miss Yale, that you and I shall be great friends. I will have no artificial barriers erected which may separate to any extent two people anxious to grow in acquaintance.”
The girl looked puzzled. She had uttered the first conventional pleasantry which had come into her head. She never regarded Talham as distinguished. To her he was a man, who in the moment of her necessity, had rendered a kindly and a chivalrous service.
She turned hurriedly, it seemed to Tillizinni, to introduce her mother—a lady dressed in the abrupt fashion which was suggestive of conflicting bargain sales.
Mrs. Smith was engaged in the eternal quest for the missing segment. It was only a tiny segment that was required to make both ends of her circle meet. She speculated modestly on the Stock Exchange, and dreamt dreams of meeting a magnificent, kindly man who would give her the “tip” of her life.
Then she would buy shares. The market would undergo some extraordinary evolution, and the shares she bought at one pound, less fortunate people would want to buy at twenty-five shillings. Then she would sell, and she would be exactly five shillings per share to the good.
And if she had had five thousand shares, why then she would have one thousand two hundred and fifty pounds.
It was very simple.
On such day dreams as these, men grow rich, but they are usually the men who sell the shares to the dreamers.
But Talham was not to be detached. He made a little speech to the mother, and with deplorable sang froid, dismissed her from the circle. It was unpardonable, but it was very much Talham.
Tillizinni, watching the scene with his keen eyes, was chuckling and learning.
But the girl was undoubtedly puzzled. She could not understand whether Talham was serious, or whether his persistence was a form of humour which had just about then become popular owing to the success of a certain socialist dramatist, with whose name I will not sully these fair pages.
“I am sure I shall be delighted,” she murmured pleasantly.
He had invited her to a concert, and had in his magnetic, plausible way, persuaded her to go.
She altered her position, tapping her foot nervously—an infallible sign that she was embarrassed. She looked from Talham to the dark young man at her side.
Gregory de Costa owed his readmission to the Yale ménage to the admiration which Mrs. Smith had for his business acumen. There were some subjects which Yvonne did not regard as being worth a quarrel, and Gregory de Costa’s attendance was one of these.
He made up for homeliness of face in magnificence of attire. His dress suit was cut so well that he seemed, like another famous character, to have been melted and poured into it. In the breast of his shirt blazed a diamond, almost as big as a hickory nut. His links, when he raised his hand to caress his tiny moustache, radiated light. His bejewelled fingers reminded one irresistibly of the illuminations at Luna Park.
“Do you know Mr. de Costa?” asked the girl.
Talham bowed to the young man, and the young man bowed to him.
For some reason she did not introduce Tillizinni.
“I think I have met you before, Captain Talham,” said the young man.
“I do not think we have ever met you,” said Talham with deliberation.
“In our office?” suggested Mr. de Costa, an encouraging smile on his thick lips.
“We have never been into your office,” said Talham.
“I’m perfectly sure that I have seen you there,” persisted the other.
If he expected that Talham would be satisfied with an exchange of platitudinous pleasantries with the girl, and then withdraw, he was disappointed. If he imagined he could draw Talham to a discussion on so futile a question as his presence in an office at some remote period of his life, he was mad.
Talham had a weightier interest. The thought that he might be de trop never occurred to him, and if it had been suggested that his unconventional method of interesting others in his career and his aspirations was calculated rather to bore than to grip their imaginations, he would have smiled, pityingly.
He diagnosed the girl’s half-amused embarrassment as a natural nervousness in being suddenly confronted with a man of his attainments. By some extraordinary mental convolution which was peculiarly Talhamesque, he credited her with a full appreciation of his genius, a lurking suspicion of his identity, and a comfortable ignorance of the character of his adventures. Like the exigent little boy who demanded of the store-keeper two cents worth of hundreds and thousands—an infinitesimal candy, about the size of a pin’s head, variously coloured—Talham wanted her to pick him out all white.
“It is more than a pleasure to again meet you, Miss Yale,” he began, in his oratorical manner. “There are some events in life—some landmarks which rise above the dreary path that meanders across the plain of eternity—which stand out…”
He orated on without drawing breath, so to speak. For his imagery he ransacked forest and field and plain; the vegetable, mineral and animal kingdoms contributed to the illuminations of his argument; and the girl stood looking at him wonderingly, a little frightened, a little—a very little—amused, a little—more than a little—bored.
As for Gregory de Costa—he stood stolidly by, taking no part in the conversation, twirling his moustache with a determined and an injured air.
From sheer humanity, Tillizinni set himself the task of diverting Talham’s attention. He felt that his action was invested with that heroism which one reads about in books of travel, when a devoted servant sets himself the thankless task of attracting the attention of a tiger, feeding upon his fellow creature, to his plump and trembling self.
Tillizinni succeeded, however, in giving the girl an opportunity for escape; but he drew down upon himself all the heavy weapons in Talham’s arsenal. It was absolutely necessary for him to seek out Mrs. Smith and pay her that little attention which is due from a guest to his hostess.
Fortunately Mrs. Smith came to the rescue. She was engaged in that process which is described in the society columns as “mixing up her guests.” In other words, she was making her slow way through the crowded little room, giving a nod here, a smile there, some comment—generally misplaced—elsewhere. She left behind her a trail of bachelors, who had, in acknowledging her tender inquiries after their wives, inferentially admitted such possessions.
She found Talham, and from the manner in which she pounced upon him and led him forth, Tillizinni gathered that the object of her search had been accomplished.
She was Yvonne Yale’s stepmother, being the second wife of the gallant colonel who had long since passed over to the majority. Mrs. Smith’s poetical way of putting it, was that he had taken his sword to heaven; but as to this, it is impossible to speak with authority.
She was one of those women who have a den—half study, half boudoir, all roll-top desks and Liberty knick-knacks. She prided herself upon being a thorough business woman, with a head for figures, which meant periodical disputes between her and her broker, which induced piles of tragic correspondence between herself and her bank, and explained to a very large extent the domestic cataclysms which were of such frequent occurrence in her household.
To this den she led Talham, and in the hour he spent with her he learnt as much of her private history, and much more of her financial standing, than she knew herself.
He came back and rescued Tillizinni at a period where he was bored to the point of tears. Talham was very important and very mysterious. He plunged into the crowd again to find Yvonne Yale. She may have seen him coming; at any rate Tillizinni saw her look helplessly round, then face him with a scared look.
“Must you really go, Captain Talham?”
Talham said that he really must go; he said why he had to go, what he had to do—the hours of anxious work which lay ahead of him—and he hinted of the destinies of people which would be affected by any longer abstention from their interest. He spoke of generations yet unborn whose fates were trembling in the balance; he laid down the well-worn thesis that social obligations should be subservient to stern economic realities.
If she thought she had seen the last of him after he had so unmistakably expressed his intention of retiring, she was mistaken. She did not know Talham. She felt foolish and resented the cause. People at whom speeches are made in public invariably feel foolish.
Yet for all the exhaustive character of his farewell, Talham remembered on his way home several things he had intended to say, and was half inclined to go back to say them. All the way to the hotel he could think of nothing else but her wonderful eyes, her refinement, her glorious voice.
She was, he then told me, the daughter of an army officer who had died suddenly a few years before, leaving the second wife and his daughter the most meagre of incomes. This was the text on which he delivered an address, dealing with the duty of the state and the grudging gratitude of the nation. So far as Tillizinni was able to trace, Yvonne’s father was a colonel of infantry, who had spent some twenty years in various parts of the globe, missing active service the whole of his life, and finishing up with the command of a militia depôt. Under these circumstances, Talham’s heroics about the “children of England’s battle-scarred defenders” were beside the point.
“Mrs. Yale,” he said impressively, “was a wonderful woman, a splendid woman, a business woman. I can only hope that Yvonne inherits her splendid qualities.”
When Talham ordered his world to his own satisfaction, he was not above adjusting the laws of progeniture. Mrs. Smith had sought his advice as to her investments. Talham had fallen for it.
It is a subtle form of flattery employed by dowagers, who could not hint at the physical attractions of their middle-aged and bald-headed admirers, and still retain their self-respect; and who found in this oblique tribute to their business capacities an effective and profitable substitute.
But Talham was not middle-aged, and the poison of the flattery had eaten deeper into his system.
“I am transferring five thousand shares in the Mount Li Exploration Syndicate,” he said.
Tillizinni was not easily moved, but now he gasped.
“The Mount Li——?” he asked incredulously.
“The Mount Li Exploration Syndicate,” said Talham firmly.
“But there isn’t such a company,” protested the other.
Talham looked at him a little sadly.
“It is one of the things I have overlooked,” he said. “One of the essentials of our communal life. It did not, I confess, occur to me until that extraordinary woman was discussing such things as shares and bonds, that I realised in a flash that it was impossible for me to help her because no such shares stood in my name. Have not,” he asked impressively, “the great events of history which have transformed the world, been born in a moment’s inspiration? Even as I sat there, in the excellently appointed study—I must make a note, by the way, of the furnishing of that apartment: I should like an office arranged on similar lines—the Mount Li Exploration came into existence.”
“In other words,” said Tillizinni with a helpless smile, “you created the company in order to give her shares!”
“I created the company,” agreed the tall man, gravely.
It was a drizzling, miserable night; the streets were crowded with cars and cabs carrying their occupants to theatreland. On the drenched pavements the newspaper boys drove a thriving trade despite the unpromising climatic conditions. Every news bill dealt with the one subject—the mysterious murder, in the heart of London, of an ambassador by some person or persons unknown.
That it was the Chinese Ambassador added to the general interest. There was something bizarre and mysterious about the great empire which appealed to the imagination, and the series of hypothesis which appeared in the columns of the press assisted to a remarkable degree in fostering the sense of mystery which surrounded the tragedy.
There was scarcely a police-station in London that was not at that moment interrogating some stray Chinaman who had been brought in to account for his whereabouts on the night of the murder.
There was not a district, apparently, which could not furnish a clue.
The Evening Megaphone, London’s most enterprising evening journal, secured something of a “beat,” for it was the only paper which was able to throw a light upon the inside mystery of a vendetta which had apparently culminated in the Ambassador’s assassination.
“We are able,” said this journal, in large, leaded type, “to supply a number of curious and significant facts concerning the tragedy, which have hitherto been unrecorded elsewhere. Our representative had the pleasure of a long conversation with Mr. T’si Soo, a wealthy young Chinese gentleman who has been domiciled in England for a number of years. Mr. T’si Soo is the son of the Governor of Chulung, a large and populous district of China, and is engaged in this city in studying constitutional law. Mr. Soo—a fine, handsome-looking young man of commanding appearance—received the representative of The Evening Megaphone in Piccadilly. Fortunately Mr. Soo has a perfect command of English, and the interpreter which our representative brought with him was unnecessary.
“ ‘I cannot tell you,’ said Mr. Soo, ‘how grieved I am at the death of the Noble Prince who so ably and worthily represented the Dowager Empress at the court of St. James.
“ ‘The Prince, as you know, was an antiquarian of great note, but he was also a man of strong political opinions which, I fear, have not always commended themselves to the majority of my fellow countrymen.
“ ‘He was by repute a reactionary,’ he went on, ‘and earned the animosity of a number of secret societies in China by his efforts to secure their abolition.’
“ ‘But surely,’ our representative pointed out, ‘the abolition of secret societies is not a reactionary movement!’
“Mr. Soo shook his head.
“ ‘You are now speaking,’ he said with a smile, ‘from the point of view of the European. In China we regard anybody as a reactionary who attempts to alter the position of affairs so that it corresponds with any period of time in the past. For instance, there was a time when there were no secret societies; to abolish them would be regarded, therefore, as a reactionary measure since it would produce conditions which had once existed. That, again, I say, is an Eastern point of view.’
“ ‘Do you explain the murder as having been committed by the emissary of a society?’ asked our representative.
“Mr. Soo nodded.
“ ‘I believe there is an association,’ he said, ‘which had a special reason for removing the Ambassador.’
“ ‘It has been suggested,’ said our representative, ‘that robbery was the object of the murder, and that a bureau had been rifled and valuable documents extracted.’
“Mr. Soo was very emphatic in dissociating himself with this theory.
“ ‘That I do not believe,’ he said. ‘The people who killed his Excellency probably travelled all the way from China, and are now, possibly, on their way back again. They had no other object but his destruction, and if they stole documents, they were documents associated with the Prince’s campaign to suppress the societies affected.’
“It may be remarked,” continued the enterprising journal, “that such is the abhorrence in which the crime is held by every Chinaman, that numerous offers of help have come to this paper from Chinese citizens who desire to assist in the search for the miscreant. It may be said that the interpreter who accompanied our representative was one of these. It was through his instrumentality that the interview with Mr. Soo was secured.
“With extraordinary modesty, he disappeared as soon as the interview was concluded, and has since not been in this office.”
Whilst the contents bills of The Evening Megaphone were flaring the question at every street corner: “Was Ambassador Killed by Secret Society?” Soo himself was interviewing the interpreter whose enterprise and modesty the journal was at the moment praising. He was interviewing him in a little room, the smallest in the suite he occupied, and he was assisted in the process by three compatriots, who gazed impassively on a Chinaman, a little less impassive, stretched upon a small iron bed, his wrists strapped to the bed head, his feet spreadeagled and strapped to its sides.
Soo sat on a chair smoking his inevitable cigarette, with his inevitable monocle glued in his eye, watching the man with interest.
“First,” he said, “you shall tell me why you came here, who sent you, and what you desired.”
“Lord,” gasped the man on the bed, “I have told you everything; by my Father’s grace I have nothing more to say.”
His face was drawn and haggard, beads of perspiration stood upon his shaven skull, and terror was in his eyes.
“You shall tell me,” repeated the other calmly, “who sent you, why you came, and what you were told to do.”
He nodded to the man who sat nonchalantly smoking a pipe by the side of the captive’s bed.
The man leant over and made a half turn of the screw upon a weird-shaped contrivance which enclosed the prisoner’s fingers.
The man suppressed a shriek with reason, for over him leant a second Chinaman ready to thrust a gag in his mouth.
“You shall tell me,” said Soo monotonously, “why you came, who sent you here, and your business.”
“Lord,” whispered the man, “I will tell you all I know.”
Soo nodded to the torturer, and he loosened the screw on the other’s finger.
“Give him water,” said Soo, and the attendant with the gag put a cup to the other’s lips. He drank greedily.
“Lord, I was sent by my society, which, as your Excellency knows, is the society of the ‘Banner Bearers of Heaven.’ ”
Soo nodded.
“They desired to discover how your Lordship felt in this matter.”
“To whom were you to report?” asked Soo.
The man hesitated, and his interrogator glanced significantly at the screw in which the captive’s hand still rested. It was enough for the man on the bed.
He mentioned a name.
Soo recognised it as the keeper of a Chinese lodging-house in the East End of London—a man who was known to him to be the agent of the Bannermen.