Читать книгу The Complete Detective Sgt. Elk Series (6 Novels in One Edition) - Edgar Wallace - Страница 35

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In an instant the road was filled with men; they must have been crouching in the shadow of the grassy plateau, but in that same instant Poltavo had leapt back to the cover of the garden. A revolver banged behind him; and, as he ran, he snatched his own revolver from his pocket, and sent two quick shots into the thick of the surrounding circle. There was another gate at the farther end of the garden; there would be men there, but he must risk it. He was slight and had some speed as a runner; he must depend upon these gifts.

He opened the gate swiftly and sprang out. There were three or four men standing in his path. He shot at one point-blank, dodged the others, and ran. He judged that his pursuers would not know the road as well as he. Shot after shot rang out behind him. He was an easy mark on the white road, and he turned aside and took to the grass. He was clear of the houses now, and there was no danger ahead, but the men who followed him were untiring.

Presently he struck the footpath across the sloping plain that led to the shore, and the going was easier.

It was his luck that his pursuers should have missed the path. His every arrangement worked smoothly, for the boat was waiting, the men at their oars, and he sprang breathlessly into the stern.

It was a circumstance which might have struck him as strange, had he been in a condition for calm thought, that the horsemen who were of the party that surrounded him had not joined in pursuit.

But there was another mystery that the night revealed. He had been on board the Doro — as his little ship was called — for an hour before he went to the cabin that had been made ready for him. His first act was to take his revolver from his pocket, preparatory to reloading it from the cartridges stored in one of his trunks.

Two chambers of the pistol were undischarged, and, as he jerked back the extractor, these two shells fell on the bed. He looked at them stupidly.

Both cartridges were blank!

*

Had he heard T.B. Smith speaking as he went flying down the road, Poltavo might have understood.

“Where’s the dead man?” asked T.B.

“Here, sir,” said Van Ingen cheerfully.

“Good.” Then, in French, he addressed a figure that stood in the doorway.

“Were you hurt, mademoiselle?”

Catherine’s little laugh came out to him. “I am quite safe,” she said quietly. He was going away, but she called him.

“I cannot understand why you allowed him to escape—” she began. “That you should desire blank cartridges to be placed in his revolver is not so difficult, but I do not see—”

“I suppose not,” said T.B. politely, and left her abruptly.

He sprang onto a horse that was waiting, and went clattering down the hill, through the Sole, down the narrow main street that passes the mosque; dismounting by the Custom House, he placed his horse in charge of a waiting soldier, and walked swiftly along the narrow wooden pier. At the same time as the count was boarding the Doro, T.B. and Van Ingen were being rowed in a cockleshell of a pinnace to the long destroyer which lay, without lights, in the bay.

They swung themselves up a tiny ladder onto the steel deck that rang hollow under their feet.

“All right?” said a voice in the darkness.

“All right,” said T.B.; a bell tinkled somewhere, the destroyer moved slowly ahead, and swung out to sea.

“Will you have any difficulty in picking her up?” He was standing in the cramped space of the little bridge, wedged between a quick-firing gun and the navigation desk.

“No — I think not,” said the officer; “ — our difficulty will be to keep out of sight of her. It will be an easy matter to keep her in view, because she stands high out of the water, and she is pretty sure to burn her regulation lights. By day I shall let her get hull down and take her masts for guide.”

It was the strangest procession that followed the southern bend of the African coast. First went the Doro, its passengers serenely unconscious of the fact that six miles away, below the rim of the horizon, followed a slim ugly destroyer that did not once lose sight of the Doro’s mainmast; behind the destroyer, and three miles distant, came six destroyers steaming abreast. Behind them, four miles away, six swift cruisers.

That same night, there steamed from Funchal in the Island of Madeira, the Victor Hugo, Condé, Gloire, and the Edgard Quinet of the French Fleet; the Roon, Yorck, Prinz Adalbert, and the battleship Pommern of the German Navy, with sixteen destroyers, and followed a parallel ocean path.

After three days’ steaming, the Doro turned sharply to starboard, and the unseen fleets that dogged her turned too. In that circle of death, for a whole week, the little Spanish steamer twisted and turned, and, obedient to the message that went from destroyer to cruiser, the fleets followed her every movement. For the Doro was unconsciously leading the nations to the “Mad Battleship.” She had been slipped with that object. So far every part of the plan had worked well. To make doubly sure, the news of Zillier’s escape from Devil’s Island had been circulated in every country. It was essential that, if they missed the Maria Braganza this time, they should catch her on the first of June at “Lolo.”

“And where that is,” said T.B., in despair, “Heaven only knows.”

Wearing a heavy overcoat, he was standing on the narrow deck of the destroyer as she pounded through the seas. They had found the southeast trade winds at a surprisingly northerly latitude, and the sea was choppy and cold.

Young Marchcourt, the youthful skipper of the Martine, grinned.

“‘Lolo’ is ‘nowhere,’ isn’t it?” he said.

“You’ll find it charted on all Admiralty maps; it’s the place where the supply transport is always waiting on manoeuvres — I wish to Heaven these squalls would drop,” he added irritably, as a sudden gust of wind and rain struck the tiny ship.

“Feel seasick?” suggested T.B. maliciously.

“Not much — but I’m horribly afraid of losing sight of this Looker-ahead.”

He lifted the flexible end of a speaking-tube, and pressed a button.

“Give her a few more revolutions, Cole,” he said. He hung up the tube. “We look like carrying this weather with us for a few days,” he said, “and, as I don’t feel competent to depend entirely upon my own eyesight, I shall bring up the Magneto and the Solus to help me watch this beggar.”

Obedient to signal, two destroyers were detached from the following flotilla, and came abreast at dusk.

The weather grew rapidly worse, the squalls of greater frequence. The sea rose, so that life upon the destroyer was anything but pleasant. At midnight, T.B. Smith was awakened from a restless sleep by a figure in gleaming oilskins.

“I say,” said a gloomy voice, “we’ve lost sight of that dashed Doro.”

“Eh?”

T.B. jumped from his bunk, to be immediately precipitated against the other side of the cabin.

“Lost her light — it has either gone out or been put out. We’re going ahead now full speed in the hope of overhauling her—”

Another oilskinned figure came to the door.

“Light ahead, sir.”

“Thank Heaven!” said the other fervently, and bolted to the deck.

T.B. struggled into his clothing, and, with some difficulty, made his way to the bridge. Van Ingen was already before him. As he climbed the little steel ladder, he heard the engine-bell ring, and instantly the rattle and jar of the engines ceased.

“She’s stationary,” explained the officer,” so we’ve stopped. She has probably upset herself in this sea.”

“How do you know she is stationary?” asked T.B., for the two faint stars ahead told him nothing.

“Got her riding lights,” said the other laconically.

Those two riding lights stopped the destroyer; it stopped six other destroyers, far out of sight, six obedient cruisers came to a halt, and, a hundred miles or so away, the combined French and German fleets became stationary.

All through the night the watchers lay, heaving, rolling, and pitching, like so many logs, on the troubled seas. Dawn broke mistily, but the lights still gleamed. Day came in dull greyness, and the young officer, with his eyes fastened to his binoculars, looked long and earnestly ahead.

“I can see a mast,” he said doubtfully, “but there’s something very curious about it.” Then he put down his glasses suddenly, put out his hand, and rang his engines full ahead.

He turned to the quartermaster at his side.

“Get the Commodore by wireless,” he said rapidly; “the Doro has gone.” Gone, indeed, was the Doro — gone six hours since.

They found the lights. They were still burning when the destroyer came up with them. A roughly built raft with a pole lashed upright, and from this was suspended two lanterns. Whilst the fleet had watched this raft, the Doro had gone on. Nailed to the pole was a letter. It was sodden with spray, but T.B. had no difficulty in reading it.

“Cher ami,” it ran, “much as I value the honour of a naval escort, its presence is embarrassing at the moment. I saw your destroyer this morning through my glasses, and guessed the rest. You are ingenious. Now I understand why you allowed me to escape.

“My respectful salutations to you, oh, most admirable of policemen!”

It was signed, “POLTAVO.”

*

The court-martial held on Lieutenant-Commander George Septimus Marchcourt, on a charge of “neglect of duty, in that he failed to carry out the instructions of his superior officer,” resulted in an honourable acquittal for that cheerful young officer. It was an acquittal which had a far-reaching effect, though’at the time it did not promise well.

T.B. was a witness at the trial, which was a purely formal one, in spite of the attention it excited.

He remained at Gibraltar, pending further developments. For the affair of the Nine Men had got beyond Scotland Yard — they were an international problem.

T.B. was walking over from La Linea, across the strip of neutral ground which separated Gibraltar from Spain, with Van Ingen, when he confessed that he despaired of ever bringing the Nine to justice.

“The nations cannot stand the racket much longer,” he said; “these Nine Men are costing civilisation a million a week! Think of it! A million pounds a week! We must either capture them soon or effect a compromise. I am afraid they will make peace on their own terms.”

“But they must be caught soon,” urged the other.

“Why?” demanded T.B. irritably. “How can we hope to capture one of the fastest war vessels afloat when the men who control her have all the seas to run in?”

They had reached the waterport, and T.B. stopped before his hotel.

“Come in,” he said suddenly. The two men passed through the paved vestibule and mounted the stair to T.B.’s room. “I’m going to look again at our clue,” he said grimly, and extracted from his portfolio the drawing of the little cross with the circular ends.

T.B. himself does not know to this day why he was moved to produce this disappointing little diagram at that moment. It may have been that, as a forlorn hope, he relied upon the application of a fresh young mind to the problem which was so stale in his, for Van Ingen had never seen the diagram.

He looked and frowned.

“Is that all?” he asked, without disguising his disappointment.

“That is all,” responded T.B.

They sat looking at the diagram in silence. Van Ingen, as was his peculiarity, scribbled mechanically on the blotting pad before him. He drew flowers, and men’s heads, and impossible structures of all kinds; he made inaccurate tracings of maps, of columns, pediments, squares, and triangles. Then, in the same absent way, he made a rough copy of the diagram.

Then his pencil stopped and he sat bolt upright.

“Gee!” he whispered.

The detective looked up in astonishment.

“Whew!” whistled Van Ingen. “Have you got an atlas, Smith?”

The detective took one from his trunk. Van Ingen turned the leaves, looked long and earnestly at something he saw, closed the book, and turned a little white, but his eyes were blazing.

“I have found ‘Lolo,’” he said simply.

He took up his pencil and quickly sketched the diagram:

“Look,” he said, and added a few letters:

“Longitude, nought; latitude nought — L.0, L.0!” whispered the detective. “You’ve hit it, Van Ingen! By Jove! Why, that is off the African coast.”

He looked again at the map.

“It is where the Greenwich meridian crosses the Equator,” he said. “It’s ‘nowhere’! The only ‘nowhere’ in the world!”