Читать книгу The Memory Man - Coutts Brisbane - Страница 9

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USUALLY Perry Davison took his leisure over his Sunday-evening meal at the Café des Deux Mondes, passing an hour or two afterwards deep in his favourite literature. This Sunday evening he had a pocketful of furious fiction, but he was not destined to get very far with it, for he was still dallying with an ice when Piranelli appeared beside him.

"My dear Mistaire Davison, I want to ask of you the honaire to join me in my room upstairs. I have the things I spoke about, the things to conjure with, yes, and I show you some more leetle tricks. A leetle liqueur, eh? And coffee, and a leetle bit of fun, eh? It will give me most great pleasure," said Piranelli all in a breath, and waited expectantly.

He was not disappointed. Perry Davison rose to the bait like a hungry trout.

"You will do more tricks? Splendid! You're wonderful, Piranelli! You've no idea how I enjoy seeing you do these things. How did you learn to do them? Or is it a natural gift?"

"I not know. Mebbe it is a gif'," admitted Piraneli modestly. "But you shall see what I do. Mebbe I teach you."

"Superb—though I'm afraid I'm too stupid to learn." Perry thrust The Boys' Best into his pocket and followed Piranelli aloft, all eager expectancy, like a child at a pantomime before the curtain goes up.

It was no magic cave that he entered, but a parlour done in the worst taste of the Plush Period. That wasn't Piranelli's fault, however, for he had merely taken over the furnishings of the place with the rest of the restaurant fittings when he purchased the business. He never saw them; it is doubtful if he ever gave them a thought. He planted Perry in an arm-chair that was at least comfortable, if hideous, and pointed to a little table.

On it stood a tiny bedside lamp shaped like a lighthouse, which sent forth a brilliant beam of light. Somewhere in the room a little electric fan or something of the kind hummed soothingly.

"Make yourself so comfortable, Mistaire Davison, I mak' ready. In one leetle minute I start," murmured Piranelli softly, and fussed about his guest, putting a cushion under his head, then switching off all the lights but one of low power that hung over a table by the curtained window recess.

"Very good of you, Piranelli," Perry said, and stared at the bright point of light in the little beacon.

Piranelli glided softly out. There was silence in the room save for that drowsy, persistent humming. The infrequent traffic of the street was muffled by the window curtains.

Purrurrurrrurrur! The humming went on and on. Perry blinked at the steady beam. His eyes shut, reopened. A faint smile played about his mouth. His eyes closed again. When they opened he seemed to be aware of Piranelli's staring into them compellingly. Great dark eyes, magnetic, commanding—something!

"Slee-eep, slee-eep!" droned Piranelli, his drowsy voici mingling with the eternal humming.

His long fingers strayed soothingly over Perry's forehead, sweat stood in beads upon his own as he concentrated all his will-power in the effort to dominate his victim. Perry blinked once more. Suddenly his eyes closed once again, his whole body seemed to relax and grow flaccid, a thing of loosened muscles and inert nerves. Piranelli's fingers moved ever so lightly and—"You are asleep!" he said in low tones vibrant with command. "You are asleep!"

"'Sleep!" murmured Perry in a queer flat voice. "'Sleep!"

"Stand up!" hissed Piranelli. Perry Davison rose, moving like an automaton. "Sit down!" Perry sat down and relaxed. Piranelli smiled evilly, turned, beckoned. "It is done! It was easy!" he whispered.

From behind the curtains of the recess came the Three, soft-footed—Schelm smiling foolishly, Ostoff uncertain and suspicious, Thunnsenn critically alert, openly sceptical. He stared at Davison.

"Is it really so? Perhaps the man is fooling you—or allowing you to fool yourself," he said softly. "Cannot you make a test? It might be clever acting. If so..."

With a sudden movement he flicked out a long, thin-bladed, very keen knife. Piranelli grinned sourly.

"I show you. Open your eyes!" he barked, if one might be said to bark in a whisper. "Give me that knife!"

Perry's eyes opened. They were fixed in a queer unseeing stare.

"Take that knife. Stab me!" he commanded, and in a flash Perry had leapt to action. He took the knife from Piranelli's hand, thrust at him, drove the point deep—into the cushion he interposed. "Stop! Drop it!"

Perry relapsed into his chair, the knife fell at his feet.

"Yes!" Thunnsenn drew a deep breath. There had been no mistaking the earnest intention of that thrust. Perry Davison, mildest of men, had undoubtedly attempted to stab Piranelli. "Yes, that is convincing. I did not think you could have done it."

"He is a good subject. He is easy. Some men—no, but this one, as I have seen long ago, yields at once. My will it is so much more stronger. Now, look in his pockets first."

They looked. They found a pocket-book with a few pounds in it, three pipes, tobacco, cigarettes, pencil stumps, a key ring minus keys, a pocket-knife, a box of corn pads, pipe cleaners, but never a scrap of paper except juvenile literature.

"Just so!" Thunnsenn seemed to assume command. "I will question him. First. You work for the Admiralty, do you not?"

Perry Davison turned his vacant eyes towards him. He shivered. It was as though the words had awakened something in his dormant mind. His lips moved:

"If blood be the price of Admiralty, oh, God, we ha' paid in full!" he murmured softly.

Three of the four looked at each other in perplexity; Schelm smiled.

"You of English literature have not much read," he said. "It is a quotation from der poet Kipling. Try him again. Der connection is not made quite correct."

"Who is your chief? Who is the man who gives you instructions?" Thunnsenn asked, and waited the reply eagerly. Would it be the name of that unknown head of the British Information Department which every foreign spy so ardently desired to discover? But no!

"Tommy Cole, Sir Thomas Cole, known to his friends as Old King Cole, and a very jolly old soul is he," replied Perry in a sing-song voice.

"That is the right. He is the head of Construction," muttered Ostoff. "But do not waste time. About this range-finder—tell us all about the range-finder for aircraft. What is the principle?"

Perry shivered and was silent. Thunnsenn repeated the question in sharp tones of command. Perry's lips moved silently, then he spoke in the same queer flat voice:

"'Nine thousand two hundred!' came the voice of the range-finding midshipman in the top. Instantly the sights were adjusted. Lieutenant Craddock raised his hand. 'Fire!' he said quietly, and with a tremendous thundering roar that made the whole great ship quiver the huge turret guns uttered their first word in the battle. The mighty shells screamed away across the heaving seas. Dick Manley's heart leapt with—'"

"This is wrong! It is not a range-finder of ships, it is the range-finder of that plane!" cut in Thunnsenn.

"He quotes from one of those fool-boy stories we found in his room," growled Ostoff. "His mind, it is supercharged with the rubbish!"

"'Nine thousand yards away a mighty triple burst of flame leapt high from the deck of the enemy cruiser as the great shells drove—'"

"Stop!" rasped Thunnsenn, and obediently Perry halted in mid-sentence. His unseeing eyes regarded the four blankly, never a suggestion of intelligence in them.

"You do not ask him right," interposed Piranelli. "It is needful to mak' a start at the beginning, to get him in the tune. Ask first about the plane. That makes a start. Then go on to the rangefinder."

"Yes. Tell us of the new plane, the flying-boat that went up to forty-two thousand feet. You were there, in the boat with the admiral. Now, remember! The plane. It went very high? And then the gun was fired, and..." Thunnsenn spoke softly this time, persuasively, halted suggestingly.

Perry responded promptly:

"'As the plane zoomed aloft at the touch of the joystick, Hardy Drake's gaze riveted itself on the four Boche planes emerging from the cloud above him. They had been lurking there, awaiting just such an opportunity as this. Four against one! Long odds, yet the undaunted boy's heart beat high with the joy of battle, he—'"

"Stop!" Thunnsenn almost howled the word. Perry broke off abruptly. "But this is ridiculous! We get nowhere at this rate! Yours is truly a fine notion!" He glared at Piranelli contemptuously.

"His mind, it is supercharged!" murmured Ostoff. "Perhaps if you should try him another way, ask him a question about his home, maybe that start the right train, eh? I make the suggestion only."

"Do as you like!" snorted Thunnsenn. "I think it is waste of time. I see nothing for it but forcing the information from him when he is awake—and then—he would of course disappear."

He flicked his knife suggestively before the unseeing eyes. Perry did not blink. Piranelli grabbed Thunnsenn's arm.

"Do nothin' so foolish! It is known he come here. If anything should happen to him, then we would have to go ver' quick. Wait! I try him, as Ostoff says." He turned to Perry, grinning persuasively, as though the victim could apprehend. "Mistaire Davison, somewhere at home you have secret hiding-place, eh? Somewheres you keep secret things, eh? You tell me, now. Leetle secret place, eh?"

The four bent about Perry eagerly. In spite of the search Schelm and Ostoff had made, it seemed probable that somewhere in the flat valuable information lurked ready for the earnest seeker. Perry breathed deeply. He sighed, and spoke in a voice quavering with emotion.

"'Darling! Heart of my heart! Listen, and I will tell you the dread secret that has haunted me day and night ever since it was thrust upon my unwilling ears. You know the old tower and the secret stairway that leads to the dungeon far below? In its depths—'"

"Hell!" snarled Thunnsenn furiously. "That is more of this infernal balderdash! I'm going! Better wake him up and give your idiotic show. Don't let him suspect anything. In a day or so I'll take my own measures—and I shan't fail. I'll screw his secret out of him if I have to take him to bits, a joint at a time. Come, Ostoff, Schelm! I have a plan—but it needs polishing. Good-night, my clever Piranelli! We will see you to-morrow. Perhaps you will be in your senses by then!"

And the Three filed out, leaving Piranelli glaring but speechless.

Perry Davison sat immobile, his gaze fixed upon vacancy. He did not stir as Piranelli placed an old silk hat, a pack of cards, and one or two simple conjuring tricks on the table, extinguished the little lighthouse, then, bending over him, passed his long fingers across his forehead.

"You remember nothing—nothing!" he said softly. Then: "Awake!"

Perry awoke. Piranelli beamed upon him, offered him a glass of wine.

"You mak' to go asleep," he said genially. "I was detain. A man come on business, but now I am all ready to show my leetle tricks."

"I'm sorry," murmured Perry, blinking and rubbing his eyes. "I suppose I must have dropped off. But now I'm awake again and eager to see all you can show me."

Piranelli began. It was not a great display, but simple Perry thought it marvellous, and said so. And so—to bed, where he slept, presumably undisturbed by dreams, or suspicion of the evil that had been attempted against him, and was being planned at that very moment by the Three.

The Three were disquieted. That strange, inexplicable incident of the three stilettos bearing their names had had its effect. They returned to their quarters with precaution sharpened by the consciousness of failure. They walked in a sort of mental fog, afraid of what the unknown who had struck the things into Piranelli's door might have in store for them.

Who was he? As they walked back to their den together after Piranelli's fiasco, each revolved the problem, delving into his murky past for a clue to the mystery.

Schelm, who had dabbled in the illicit drug traffic for a while, remembered queasily a man whose daughter had been ruined body and soul by the abomination he had supplied to her. That man had sworn to tear Schelm's heart out, soon or late. Schelm had side-tracked him, worked a trick that landed the fellow in an American prison, but he would not stay there for ever. Perhaps it was he—but no! He would not know or care anything about Thunnsenn and Ostoff. Perhaps—a flash of intuition illuminated Schelm. He turned to the others.

"Der man that iss call der Flittermouse!" he exclaimed. "He iss der fellow who put der stickers in der door! Remember, it was he who got Mannheim! He has been put to stimulate us, yes! I am certain sure I have der right!"

The Flittermouse! The name was suggestive of the methods used by the mysterious hatchet-man, the killer who disciplined that legion of the damned to which the Three, and Piranelli, belonged, the spy organization with its ramifications all over Europe. It was continually busy against the day when its masters would launch that mighty mass attack which would overwhelm England in red ruin.

Had a man of the legion qualms, did he try to escape into obscurity to begin a new and honest career; did a man try to betray his employers or purchase immunity for himself by furnishing information; did he wish to retire and live in peace on his ill-gotten earnings? Then the Flittermouse, seldom seen, unrecognized when he fluttered about his destined victim, would do his work.

The police, English, or French, or American, would find a dead man, drowned, or run down by a car in the dark, or apparently poisoned by his own hand. The reports might or might not mention that he wore a ring with a tiny vampire bat engraved on the cornelian with which it was set, a ring which none of his friends knew that he possessed. But word that the Flittermouse had swooped again would stiffen the ranks of the legion.

Therefore the Three looked at each apprehensively. Then Thunnsenn laughed.

"I don't think so. If it had been he, then surely there would have been one for Piranelli also. We have but to be on our guard, and one day we will discover who it was, and then...But meantime, listen to me!"

Far into the night they elaborated plans for Perry Davison's undoing.