Читать книгу The Devil Man - Edgar Wallace - Страница 7

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Baumgarten waited until the sound of the trap wheels had passed beyond his hearing, closed the half-open door through which he had watched the departure, and went swiftly upstairs to Madame Stahm. Madame was alone; she had dismissed the nurse, and was half sitting, half reclining in her big throne chair. She saw something in the man's face that brought her bolt upright.

"What is wrong?" she asked.

"Did you hear it?" His black eyebrows made an inquiring arch. "If you did not, our doctor did."

"Lamonte?"

"The ventilator must have been left open. I will go and see. Tomorrow we shall have the police here, and that will be extremely awkward."

She was galvanized to life by the words and came instantly to her feet.

"The police?" she said shrilly. "You are mad! And if they come it will be your fault. You are careless, Peter." He said no word, but, passing down into the hall, took the lantern from the table and descended a flight of stone stairs, through an underground kitchen and along a passage, the end of which was barred by an ironclad door. He unlocked this; beyond was a chamber that had once been a wine cellar, a large, low- vaulted room, lined with iron shelves. He stopped here to light a gas bracket and went on through another door to a smaller cellar.

It was part of a much older building. The stone-vaulted roofs were supported on pillars that seemed over-massive in that confined space. Again he lit a gas bracket and looked round. A table, a chair and a bed practically comprised the furnishing of the room. On the bed lay a man, and from beneath the blanket ran a thin, steel chain which was fastened to a staple in the wall.

The man on the bed lay on his back, his white, disfigured face upturned. He glared at Baumgarten as he approached.

"Why did you make that noise, you pig?" demanded Baumgarten without heat.

The man blinked at him. "I am cold, and there are rats here," he said thickly. "I must have been dreaming." He stretched out his hand, took a mug of water from the table and drank eagerly, supporting himself on his elbow.

"It is very cold," he said again. "You must give me some more blankets."

"I will give you something else to warm you." Baumgarten showed his white teeth in a smile from which mirth was absent. "You are fortunate to be alive, my breaker of oaths!"

The man on the bed passed his thin hand over his face wearily, and turned on his side. "I took no oaths; I am not a traitor," he said. "I was little more than a workman—you know that, Herr Baumgarten. It is true that I worked for Eckhardt, but would Eckhardt give me any of his secrets? It is true that I worked for Wertheimer, but does he tell me his formula? A hundred and fifty francs a week, Herr Baumgarten—that is my salary. Is it the pay of a genius to whom you trust formulas?"

"You're a liar," said Baumgarten dispassionately. "Every month you sent a thousand francs to your bank in Lausanne. We shall make you talk, my friend."

The face of Lamonte puckered with rage. "Your whip—no. Some day I shall talk, Baumgarten, before an English judge—and I shall tell them of the man who was here before, and who left a message written on the wall...ah, you did not know that. Where is he—you devil!" Suddenly he leaped from the bed. Baumgarten had just time to throw himself out of reach before the chain about the man's ankles caught him and flung him to the stone floor.

Peter Baumgarten was no coward. He could meet violence with violence, but this news the man had given him threw him off balance.

"My friend, you had him here; what did you do with him?" screamed the prisoner, straining at the chain. "You murdered him—you and that hag! I will have you on the scaffold with a rope round your necks!"

"Your friend is in Switzerland." Baumgarten was practically breathless, panic stricken by the discovery of his secret. "He was very foolish; he could have had a lot of money. Instead, he preferred to be a traitor."

"He is dead," wailed Lamonte.

"He is alive—I swear it. He went from here a very sick man, but he is alive." Here he spoke the truth, for the prisoner this cell had held was alive and on the Continent in the mental hospital for which his sufferings had qualified him. "Go back to bed. Be sensible. We have not hurt you. What is a little whip? You are the better for it. Tell us all that Eckhardt told you, and you will be a rich man and free."

The man crawled back to bed with a groan and pulled the blankets over him. "I know nothing, I can tell nothing," he said.

Baumgarten went out, extinguished the light and locked the doors behind him. He found Madame sitting as he had left her. "Well?" she asked.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"I am worried about this man. His mentality is stronger. We cannot present him to the alienist and say: 'His mind is deranged; do not believe anything he says.'"

"He may die," she said indifferently.

"I hope not." Baumgarten's voice was curt, emphatic. "What use is it to you or to me, Clarice, if we have millions in our hands, and after be locked up behind an iron door, with an English judge eating his eggs and bacon and saying: 'I think I will send these people to the gallows today,' hein? That is no end for a gentleman! All the money in the world is not worth it. We have already gone too far, spent too much, chasing this miracle dream of ours."

"You're a fool, too," she snapped. And then, after a moment's thought: 'The little man would kill him.'

"Peace?" He laughed. "You do not know that man, madame! He could not kill Lamonte—he must dramatize his every action. If Lamonte were part of a drama—yes. But if you took him down to a cold cellar and said: 'Kill this man,' he would be horrified. He is highly moral, a little religious."

She stared at him in amazement: "Peace I am talking about," she said.

He nodded. "That is Peace. I mean, this dirty little man has a peculiar moral standard. Strange that you have not noticed that. It is the standard of sentiment, a little elastic, but very real. And yet, he is loathsome; and I feel that I could put my foot on him every time I see him."

She smiled to herself. "He is very admirable. Some day he will be very useful."

"To calm your nerves?" He could not resist the sneer.

"To save us all," she replied.