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THE BLACK GANG [Part 2]

CHAPTER XI

In Which Hugh Drummond and the Reverend Theodosius Longmoor Take Lunch Together

“Rot, Hugh!” Peter turned a little irritably from his coven inspection of the Reverend Theodosius Longmoor. “You’ve got Peterson on the brain. Why, that old bird is no more like him than my boot.”

“Nevertheless, it’s Peterson,” answered Drummond doggedly. “Don’t look at him, Peter; don’t let him think we’re talking about him on any account. I admit he bears not the slightest resemblance to our one and only Carl, but he’s no more unlike him than the Comte de Guy was that time in Paris. It’s just that one little trick he can never shake off—that tapping with his left hand on his knee—that made me spot him.”

“Well, granted you’re right,” conceded Darrell grudgingly, “what do we do now, sergeant-major?”

Drummond lit a cigarette thoughtfully before he replied. Half-hidden by a large luncheon party which was just preparing to move into the restaurant, he stole another look at the object of their remarks. With an expression of intense benevolence the Reverend Theodosius was chatting with an elderly lady, and on Drummond’s face, as he turned back, was a faint grin of admiration. Truly in the matter of disguises the man was a living marvel.

“I don’t know, Peter,” he answered after a while. “I’ve got to think this out. It’s been so sudden that it’s got me guessing. I know it’s what we’ve been hoping for; it’s what we wrote that letter to the paper for—to draw the badger. And by the Lord! we’ve drawn him, and the badger is Peterson. But somehow or other I didn’t expect to find him disguised as a Mormon missionary residing at the Ritz.”

“You’re perfectly certain, Hugh?” said Peter, who was still far from convinced.

“Absolutely, old man,” answered Drummond gravely. “The clergyman over there is Carl Peterson, late of the Elms, Godalming. And the game has begun again.”

Darrell gave a short laugh as he noted the gleam in his leader’s eyes. “I’m thinking,” he remarked soberly, “that this time the game is going to make us go all out.”

“So much the better,” grinned Hugh. “We’ll add him to our collection, Peter, and then we’ll present the whole damned bunch to the Zoo. And, in the meantime, he shall lunch with us when Phyllis arrives, and prattle on theology to an appreciative audience. Incidentally it will appeal to his sense of humour; there’s no difficulty about recognising us.”

“Yes,” agreed Peter, “we start one up there. He doesn’t know that we’ve spotted him. I wonder where the diamonds come in, Hugh?”

“Darned intimately, from what I know of the gentleman. But that’s only one of several little points that require clearing up. And in the next few days, Peter, my boy—we will clear them up.”

“Or be cleared up ourselves,” laughed Darrell. “Look out, he’s coming over.”

They turned as the clergyman crossed the lounge towards them.

“Jolly old tum-tum beginning to shout for nourishment,” said Hugh with an affable smile as he joined them. “My wife should be here at any moment now, Mr.—er—”

“Longmoor is my name,” said the clergyman, beaming on them. “It is very charming of you to take such compassion on a lonely old man.”

“Staying here all by yourself?” asked Drummond politely.

“No; my daughter is with me. The dear child has been my constant companion ever since my beloved wife’s death some years ago.”

He polished his glasses, which had become a little misty, and Drummond made noises indicative of sympathy.

“You wouldn’t believe the comfort she has been to me. In these days, when it seems to me that the modern girl thinks of nothing but dancing and frivolity, it is indeed a blessing to find one who, while preserving her winsome sense of humour, devotes her life to the things that really matter. In our recent tour in Austria—I beg your pardon, you said—”

“Nothing,” answered Drummond quietly. “You have been to Austria, you say?”

“Yes; we have just returned from a visit to the famine-stricken area,” replied the clergyman. “Most interesting—but most terribly sad. You know—I don’t think I caught your name.”

“Drummond, Captain Drummond,” answered Hugh mechanically. “And this is Mr. Darrell. I think I have had the pleasure of making your daughter’s acquaintance already. She was manufacturing woollen garments for the Austrians down here, and I retrieved an elusive ball of wool for her.”

“That is just my daughter all over, Captain Drummond,” beamed the Reverend Theodosius. “Never wasting her time, always doing something for the good of humanity.”

But at the moment it is to be regretted that Hugh was not worrying his head over the good of humanity. Inconceivable though it was, judged on the mere matter of appearance, that the Reverend Theodosius was Carl Peterson, it was still more inconceivable that the wool-knitter with the heart of gold could be Irma. Of course Peterson might have changed his daughter—but if he hadn’t, what then? What had he said to Peter Darrell when the girl, recognising him all the time, was sitting in the next chair? How much had she overheard? And suddenly Hugh began to feel that he was floundering in deep waters. How many cards did the other side hold? and, what was even more important, how many of his own cards had they placed correctly? And glancing up he found the reverend gentleman’s blue eyes fixed on him and glinting with a certain quizzical humour. Assuredly, reflected Drummond, it was up to him to find out, and that as soon as possible, exactly how matters stood. The trouble was how to set about it. To greet the Reverend Theodosius as a long-lost friend and ask him whether the disguise was donned to amuse the children would certainly precipitate affairs, but it would also throw one of his best cards on the table. And Carl Peterson was not a gentleman with whom it was advisable to weaken one’s hand unnecessarily. So it all boiled down to a policy of waiting for the other side to play first, which, in view of the fact that he was getting distinctly peckish, seemed to Hugh to be an eminently sound decision.

He glanced at his watch and turned to Darrell. “Confound the girl, Peter! She’s nearly forty minutes late.”

“Picked up a pal, old boy,” answered that worthy. “Picked up a pal and they’re masticating a Bath bun somewhere. Why not leave a message at the door, and let’s get on with it? I’m darned hungry.”

The Reverend Theodosius beamed from behind his spectacles. “’Tis ever the same,” he murmured gently. “But it is the prerogative of their sex.”

“Well, let’s toddle in and take nourishment,” said Hugh, taking hold of the clergyman’s arm with his hand and pushing him towards the restaurant. “Jove! Mr. Longmoor—you’ve got some pretty useful biceps on you.”

The other smiled as if pleased with the compliment.

“Nothing to you, Captain Drummond, to judge by your size, but I think I may say I’m a match for most men. My ministry has led me into some very rough corners, and I have often found that where gentle persuasion fails, force will succeed.”

“Quite so,” murmured Drummond, gazing at the menu. “Nothing like a good one straight on the point of the jaw for producing a devout manner of living in the recipient. Often found that out myself. By the way, what about the daughter? Isn’t she going to honour us?”

“Not today,” answered the Reverend Theodosius. “She is lunching upstairs with the poor fellow I told you about, whose office was wrecked last night. He is sadly in need of comfort.”

“I’ll bet he is,” agreed Hugh. “But if he put on one of those jolly little things she’s knitting and trotted up and down Piccadilly he’d soon get all the money back for your chancel steps. The man I’m sorry for is the poor devil who was found adhering to the wall.”

The Reverend Theodosius glanced at him thoughtfully, and Drummond realised he had made a slip.

“You seem to know quite a lot about it. Captain Drummond,” murmured the other, dissecting a sardine.

“It’s in the early editions of the evening papers,” returned Hugh calmly. “Pictures and everything. The only thing they’ve left out is that reference to your little lump of dough.”

“In such a dreadful thing as this, a trifle like that might well he overlooked,” said the Reverend Theodosius. “But I understand from my poor friend upstairs that the police are satisfied that three scoundrels were involved in the crime. And two of them have escaped.”

“Dirty dogs,” said Hugh, frowning. “Now if all three had been found adhering to the furniture it might have reconciled you to the loss of those hundred acid drops.”

“In fact,” continued the clergyman, helping himself to some fish, “the whole thing is very mysterious. However, the police have every hope of laying their hands on the two others very shortly.”

“They’re always optimistic, aren’t they?” returned Hugh. “Pity no one saw these blighters running round and throwing bombs about the house.”

“That is just the fortunate thing, Captain Drummond,” said the other mildly. “Far be it from me to desire vengeance on any man, but in this case I feel it is deserved. The unfortunate clerk downstairs who was brutally assaulted by them has confided to his employer that he believes he knows who one of the other two was. A huge man. Captain Drummond, of enormous strength: a man—well, really, do you know?—a man I should imagine just like you, and a man, who, popular rumour has it, is the head of a mysterious body calling itself the Black Gang. So that should prove a valuable clue for the police when they hear of it.”

Not by the flicker of an eyelid did Drummond’s face change as he listened with polite attention to the clergyman’s remarks. But now once again his brain was moving quickly as he took in this new development. One card, at any rate, was down on the table: his identity as leader of the Black Gang was known to Peterson. It was the girl who had found him out: that was obvious. The point was how did it affect matters.

“An elusive person, I believe,” he remarked quietly. “We’ve heard quite a lot of him in the papers recently. In fact, I was actually in Sir Bryan Johnstone’s office when a gentleman of the name of Charles Latter came and demanded protection from the Black Gang.”

For a moment a gleam of amazement shone in the other’s eye. “You surprise me,” he murmured. “I trust it was afforded him.”

Hugh waved a vast hand. “Do you doubt it, Mr. Longmoor? I personally accompanied him to a house-party to ensure his safety. But as I told old Tum-tum afterwards—that’s Sir Bryan Johnstone, you know, a great pal of mine—nothing that I could do could avert the catastrophe. I prattled to him gently, but it was no good. He went mad, Mr. Longmoor—quite, quite mad. The boredom of that house-party unhinged his brain. Have another chop?”

“How very extraordinary!” remarked the clergyman. “And what did your friend—er—Tum-tum say when he heard of the results of your supervision?”

“Well, quite unofficially, Mr. Longmoor, I think he was rather pleased. Latter was an unpleasant man, engaged in unpleasant work, and he does less harm when insane. A merciful thing, wasn’t it, that we found such a suitable gathering of guests at our disposal?”

“And yet,” pursued the Reverend Theodosius, “it struck me from an English paper I happened to pick up in Paris a little while ago, that the leader of this obscure gang claimed in some way to be responsible for the condition of Mr. Latter. He issued a ridiculous sort of manifesto to the Press, didn’t he?”

“I believe he did,” answered Drummond, draining his glass. “An effusion which ended with a threat to the people at the back of men like Latter. As if it would have any effect! Scum like that, Mr. Longmoor, remain hidden. They blush unseen. I do wish you’d have another chop.”

“Thank you—no.” The Reverend Theodosius waved away the waiter and leaned back in his chair. “Doubtless you are right, Captain Drummond, in championing this person; but if what this wretched, ill-treated clerk says is correct, I am afraid I can look on him as nothing less than a common thief. Of course, he may have made a mistake, but he seems very positive that one of the miscreants last night was the leader of the Black Gang himself.”

“I see,” said Drummond, with the air of a man on whom a great truth had dawned. “That hundred thick ’uns still rankling in the grey matter what time the vestry collapses.”

“Hardly that,” returned the clergyman severely. “My friend, whose office was wrecked, was amongst other things a dealer in precious stones. Last night in his desk were six magnificent diamonds—entrusted to him for sale by a—well, I will be discreet—by a well-known Russian nobleman. This morning he finds them gone—vanished—his room wrecked. Why, my heart bleeds for him.”

“I’ll bet it does,” answered Drummond sympathetically. “Darned careless, isn’t it, the way some of these people drop bombs about the place? Still, if your pal circulates an exact description of the diamonds to the police, he’ll probably get ’em back in time. I suppose,” he added by way of an afterthought, “I suppose he can go to the police about it?”

“I don’t quite understand you. Captain Drummond.” The Reverend Theodosius stared at his host in surprise.

“One never knows, these days, does one?” said Hugh mildly. “Dreadful thing to get a nice little bunch of diamonds shot at one’s head, and then find you’ve got stolen property. It puts the next fellow who pinches them rather on velvet. A cup of coffee, won’t you?”

“Fortunately nothing of that sort exists in this case. Yes, thank you, I would like some coffee.”

“Good,” said Hugh, giving the order to the waiter. “So that all you’ve got to do—or rather your pal—is to tell the police that the office was blown up by the leader of the Black Gang, and that the diamonds were pinched by the leader of the Black Gang, and that you would like his head on a silver salver by Wednesday week. It seems too easy to me. Cigarette? Turkish this side—gaspers the other.”

“Thank you.” The Reverend Theodosius helped himself from the case Hugh was holding out. “It certainly does seem easy, the way you put it.”

“The only small trifle which seems to jut out from an otherwise clear-cut horizon is too ridiculous to worry about.”

“And that is?”

“Why—who is the leader of the Black Gang? It would be a dreadful affair if they brought the wrong bird’s head on a charger. No diamonds, no Bradburys; no nothing.”

“I don’t anticipate that it should be hard to discover that, Captain Drummond,” said the clergyman mildly. “Surely with your marvellous police system…”

“And yet, Mr. Longmoor,” said Hugh gravely, “even though lately I have been reinforcing that system—literally helping them myself—they are still completely in the dark as to his identity.”

“Incredible,” cried the other. “Still, we can only hope for the best. By the way, I’m afraid your wife has finally deserted you for lunch.” He pushed back his chair. “I shall hope to have the pleasure of making her acquaintance some other day. And now if you will excuse me, I must run away. My correspondence at the moment with regard to the relief funds for destitute Austrians is very voluminous. A thousand thanks for a most enjoyable meal.”

He bowed with a courteous smile, and threaded his way through the crowded restaurant towards the door. And it was not until he had finally disappeared from sight that Hugh turned to Peter Darrell with a thoughtful expression on his face.

“Deuced interesting position of affairs, Peter,” he remarked, lighting another cigarette. “He knows I’m the leader of our bunch, and doesn’t know I know it; I know he’s Peterson, and he doesn’t know I know it. I wonder how long it will be before the gloves come off.”

“Supposing he keeps out of it himself, and gives you away to the police,” said Peter. “It’ll be rather awkward, old son.”

“Supposing he does, it would be,” grinned Hugh. “I’d love to see Tum-tum’s face. But, my dear old Peter, hasn’t your vast brain grasped the one essential fact, that that is precisely what he can’t do until he’s certain I haven’t got the diamonds? Apart altogether from a variety of very awkward disclosures about Number 5, Green Street—he, or his hunchback friend, would have to explain how they gained possession in the first place of those stones. I made discreet inquiries this morning, Peter, and that rose-pink diamond was one of the Russian Crown jewels. Awkward—very.”

He smiled and ordered two brandies.

“Very, very awkward, Peter—but with distinct elements of humour. And I’m inclined to think the time is approaching when the seconds get out of the ring.”

CHAPTER XII

In Which Count Zadowa Is Introduced to Alice in Wonderland

A quarter of an hour later the two young men stepped into Piccadilly. Evidently Phyllis was not proposing to turn up, and nothing was to be gained by remaining. The next move lay with the other side, and until it was played it was merely a question of marking time. At the entrance to the Ritz they separated, Peter turning eastwards to keep some mysterious date with a female minor star of theatrical London, while Hugh strolled along Berkeley Street towards his house. At times a faint smile crossed his face at the thought of Peterson devoting his young brain to the matter of starving Austrians, but for the most part a portentous frown indicated thought. For the life of him he couldn’t see what was going to happen next. It appeared to him that the air wanted clearing; that in military parlance the situation was involved. And it was just as he was standing in Berkeley Square, waving his stick vaguely as a material aid to thought, that he felt a touch on his arm.

“Excuse me, sir,” said a voice at his elbow, “but I would like a few words with you.”

He looked down, and his eyes narrowed suddenly. Standing beside him was the hunchback, Mr. Atkinson, and for a moment Hugh regarded him in silence. Then, dismissing a strong inclination to throw this unexpected apparition under a passing furniture van, he raised his eyebrows slightly and removed his cigar from his mouth. Evidently the next move had begun, and he felt curious as to what form it would take.

“My powers as a conversationalist are well known,” he remarked, “amongst a large and varied circle. I was not, however, aware that you belonged to it. In other words, sir, who the deuce are you and what the dickens do you want to talk to me about?”

“Something which concerns us both very intimately,” returned the other. “And with regard to the first part of your question—do you think it necessary to keep up the pretence, especially as there are no witnesses present. I suggest, however, that as our conversation may be a trifle prolonged, and this spot is somewhat draughty, we should adjourn to your house; Brook Street, I believe, is where you live. Captain Drummond.”

Hugh removed his cigar, and stared at the hunchback thoughtfully.

“I haven’t the slightest wish to have a prolonged conversation with you in any place, draughty or otherwise,” he remarked at length. “However, if you are prepared to run the risk of being slung out of the window if you bore me, I’ll give you ten minutes.”

He turned on his heel and strolled slowly on towards his house, while the hunchback, shooting venomous glances at him from time to time, walked by his side in silence. And it was not until some five minutes later when they were both in Drummond’s study that any further remark was made.

It was Hugh who spoke, standing with his back to the fireplace, and looking down on the misshapen little man who sat in an arm-chair facing the light. An unpleasant customer, he reflected, now that he saw him close to for the first time: a dangerous, vindictive little devil—but able, distinctly able. Just such a type as Peterson would choose for a tool.

“What is it you wish to say to me?” he said curtly.

“A few things. Captain Drummond,” returned the other, “that may help to clear the air. In the first place may I say how pleased I am to make your acquaintance in the flesh, so to speak? I have long wanted a little talk with the leader of the Black Gang.”

“I trust,” murmured Hugh solicitously, “that the sun hasn’t proved too much for you.”

“Shall we drop this beating about the bush,” snapped the other.

“I shall drop you down the stairs if you talk to me like that, you damned little microbe,” said Hugh coldly, and the other got to his feet with a snarl. His eyes, glaring like those of an angry cat, were fixed on Drummond, who suddenly put out a vast hand to screen the lower part of the hunchback’s face. With a cry of fear he recoiled, and Hugh smiled grimly. So it had been Mr. Atkinson himself who had flung the bomb the night before: the eyes that had glared at him through the crack in the door were unmistakably the same as those he had just looked into over his own hand. With the rest of the face blotted out to prevent distraction there could be no doubt about it, and he was still smiling grimly as he lowered his hand.

“So you think I’m the leader of the Black Gang, do you?” he remarked. “I don’t know that I’m very interested in your thoughts.”

“I don’t think: I know,” said the hunchback viciously. “I found it out today.”

“Indeed,” murmured Hugh politely. “Would it be indiscreet to ask how you found out this interesting fact?”

“Do you deny it?” demanded the other furiously.

“My dear little man,” said Hugh, “if you said I was the Pope I wouldn’t deny it. All I ask is that now you’ve afflicted me with your presence you should amuse me. What are your grounds for this somewhat startling statement?”

“My grounds are these,” said the hunchback, recovering his self-control: “last night my office in Hoxton was wrecked by a bomb.”

“Good Lord!” interrupted Hugh mildly, “it must be old Theodosius Longmoor and his hundred quid. I thought he looked at me suspiciously during lunch.”

“It was wrecked by a bomb. Captain Drummond,” continued the other, not heeding the interruption. “That bomb also killed a man.”

“It did,” agreed Hugh grimly.

“One of the three men who broke in. The other two escaped—how I don’t know. But one of them was recognised by the clerk downstairs.”

“I gathered that was the story,” said Hugh.

“He was recognised as the leader of the Black Gang,” continued the hunchback. “And that was all until today. Just the leader of the Black Gang—an unknown person. But today—at the Ritz, Captain Drummond—my clerk, who had brought me a message, recognised him again, without his disguise. No longer an unknown man, you understand—but you.”

Drummond smiled, and selected a cigarette from his case.

“Very pretty,” he answered, “but a trifle crude. As I understand you, I gather that your shrewd and intelligent clerk states that the leader of the Black Gang broke into your office last night in order to indulge in the doubtful pastime of throwing bombs about the premises. He further states that I am the humorist in question. Allowing for the moment that your clerk is sane, what do you propose to do about it?”

“In certain eventualities, Captain Drummond, I propose to send an anonymous letter to Scotland Yard. Surprised though they would be to get it, it might help them to clear up the mystery of Mr. Latter’s insanity. It may prove rather unpleasant for you, of course, but that can’t be helped.”

“It’s kind of you to give me a loophole of escape,” said Drummond pleasantly. “What are the eventualities to which you allude?”

“The non-return to me of a little bag containing diamonds,” remarked the hunchback quietly. “They were in the desk which was wrecked by the bomb.”

“Dear, dear.” said Hugh. “Am I supposed to have them in my possession?”

“I can only hope most sincerely for your sake that you have,” returned the other. “Otherwise I’m afraid that letter will go to the police.”

For a while Drummond smoked in silence: then, with a lazy smile on his face, he sat down in an arm-chair facing the hunchback.

“Most interesting,” he drawled. “Most interesting and entertaining. I’m not very quick, Mr.—, I’ve forgotten under what name you inflict yourself on a long-suffering world, but I shall call you Snooks—I’m not, as I say, very quick. Snooks, but as far as my brain can grapple with the problem it stands thus. If I give you back a packet of diamonds which I may, or may not, possess you will refrain from informing the police that I am the leader of the Black Gang. If, on the contrary, I do not give them back to you, you will send them that interesting piece of information by means of an anonymous letter.” The smile grew even lazier. “Well, you damned little excrescence, I call your bluff. Get on with it.”

With a snarl of rage the hunchback snatched up his hat and rose to his feet.

“You call it bluff, do you? “—and his voice was shaking with fury. “Very good, you fool—I accept. And you’ll be sorry when you see my cards.”

“Sit down. Snooks: I haven’t finished with you yet.” There was still the same maddening smile on Drummond’s face, which disappeared suddenly as the hunchback moved towards the door. In two strides Hugh had him by the collar, and with a force that made his teeth rattle Mr. Atkinson found himself back in his chair.

“I said sit down, Snooks,” said Drummond pleasantly. “Don’t let me have to speak to you again, or I might hurt you. There are one or two things I have to say to you before depriving myself of the pleasure of your company. By the post following the one which carries your interesting disclosure will go another letter addressed to Sir Bryan Johnstone himself. I shall be in the office when he opens it—and we shall both be roaring with laughter over the extraordinary delusion that I—quite the biggest fool of his acquaintance—could possibly be the leader of the Black Gang. And, as if to prove the utter absurdity of the suggestion, this second letter will be from the leader of the Black Gang himself. In it he will state that he was present at 5, Green Street, Hoxton, last night in an endeavour to obtain possession of the anarchist and Bolshevist literature stored there. That he took with him a professional burglar to assist him in opening the safe and other things which might be there, and that while engaged in this eminently virtuous proceeding he found that he was trapped in the room by some mechanical device. And then, Snooks, will come a very interesting disclosure. He will state how suddenly he saw through a crack in the door a pair of eyes looking at him. And their colour—see, what is the colour of your eyes. Snooks?—grey-blue, very noticeable. Much the same as old Longmoors—though his are a little bluer. And then the owner of the eyes. Snooks, was so inconsiderate as to throw a bomb in the room; a bomb which killed one of the men, and wrecked the desk. So that the owner of the eyes, Snooks, grey-blue eyes just like yours, is a murderer—a common murderer. And we hang men in England for murder.” He paused and stared at the hunchback. “This is a jolly game, isn’t it?”

“And you really imagine,” said the hunchback contemptuously, “that even your police would believe such a story that a man would wreck his own office, when on your own showing he had the men trapped inside it.”

“Probably not,” said Drummond affably. “Any more than that they would believe that I was the leader of the Black Gang. So since they’re such a wretched crowd of unbelievers I don’t think it’s much good playing that game, Snooks. Waste of time, isn’t it? So I vote we play another one, all on our own—a little game of make-believe—like we used to play in the nursery.”

“I haven’t an idea what you’re talking about. Captain Drummond,” said the hunchback, shifting uneasily in his chair. For all trace of affability had vanished from the face of the man opposite him, to be replaced by an expression which made Mr. Atkinson pass his tongue once or twice over lips that had suddenly gone dry.

“Haven’t you, you rat?” said Drummond quietly. “Then I’ll tell you. Just for the next five minutes we’re going to pretend that these two astonishing statements which the police—stupid fellows—won’t believe are true. We’re going to pretend—only pretend, mind you, Snooks—that I am the leader of the Black Gang; and we’re going to pretend that you are the man who flung the bomb last night. Just for five minutes only, then we go back to reality and unbelieving policemen.”

And if during the following five minutes strange sounds were heard by Denny in the room below, he was far too accustomed to the sounds of breaking furniture to worry. It wasn’t until the hunchback pulled a knife that Drummond warmed to his work, but from that moment he lost his temper. And because the hunchback was a hunchback—though endowed withal by Nature with singular strength—it jarred on Drummond to fight him as if he had been a normal man. So he flogged him with a rhinoceros-hide whip till his arm ached, and then he flung him into a chair, gasping, cursing, and scarcely human.

“You shouldn’t be so realistic in your stories. Snooks,” he remarked affably, though his eyes were still merciless as he looked at the writhing figure. “And I feel quite sure that that is what the leader of the Black Gang would have done if he had met the peculiar humorist who threw that bomb last night. Bad habit—throwing bombs.”

With a final curse the hunchback staggered to his feet, and his face was diabolical in its fury. “You shall pay for that. Captain Drummond, stroke by stroke, and lash by lash,” he said in a shaking voice.

Drummond laughed shortly. “All the same, old patter,” he remarked. “Tell old Longmoor with my love—” He paused and grinned. “No, on second thoughts I think I’ll tell his reverence myself—at the appointed time.”

“What will you tell him?” sneered the hunchback.

“Why, that his church isn’t the only place where dry-rot has set in. It’s prevalent amongst his pals as well. Must you go? Straight down the stairs, and the card tray in the hall is only electric-plate—so you might leave it.”

With a great effort Mr. Atkinson pulled himself together. His shoulders were still aching abominably from the hiding Drummond had given him, but his loss of self-control had been due more to mental than to physical causes. Immensely powerful though Drummond was, his clothes had largely broken the force of the blows for the hunchback. And now as he stood by the door the uppermost thought in his mind was that he had failed utterly and completely in the main object of his interview. He had come, if possible, to get the diamonds, and failing that, to find out for certain whether Drummond had them in his possession or not. And the net result had been a flogging and nothing more. Too late he realised that in dealing with men of the type of Hugh Drummond anything in the nature of a threat is the surest guarantee of a thick ear obtainable: but then Mr. Atkinson was not used to dealing with men of that type. And the uppermost thought in his mind at the moment was not how he could best revenge himself on this vast brute who had flogged him, but what he was going to say to the Reverend Theodosius Longmoor when he got back to the Ritz. The question of revenge could wait till later.

“Can we come to an understanding, Captain Drummond?” he remarked quietly. “I can assure you, of course, that you have made a terrible mistake in thinking that it was I who threw that bomb at you last night.”

“At me?” Drummond laughed shortly. “Who said you’d thrown it at me? That wasn’t the game at all, Snooks. You threw it at the leader of the Black Gang.”

“Can’t we put our cards on the table?” returned the other with studied moderation. “I know that you are that leader, you know it—though it is possible that no one else would believe it. I was wrong to threaten you—I should have known better, I apologise. But if I may say so I have had my punishment. Now as man to man—can we come to terms?”

“I am waiting,” said Hugh briefly. “Kindly be as concise as possible.”

“Those diamonds, Captain Drummond. Rightly or wrongly I feel tolerably certain that you either have them in your possession, or that you know where they are. Now those diamonds were not mine—did you speak? No. Well—to resume. The diamonds were not mine; they had been deposited in the desk in my office unknown to me. Then this fool—whom you foolishly think was myself—threw the bomb into the office to kill you. I admit it; he told me all about it. He did not kill you, for which fact, if I may say so, I am very glad. You’re a sportsman, and you’ve fought like a sportsman—but our fight, Captain Drummond, has been over other matters. The diamonds are a side-show and hardly concern you and me. I’ll be frank with you; they are the sole wealth saved by a Russian nobleman from the Bolshevist outrages. He deposited them in my office during my absence, with the idea of my selling them for him—and now he and his family must starve. And so what I propose is—”

“I don’t think I want to hear your proposal, Snooks,” said Drummond kindly. “Doubtless I look a fool; doubtless I am a fool, but I like to think that I’m not a congenital idiot. I’m glad you have discovered that it’s not much use threatening me; but to tell you the strict truth, I prefer threats to nauseating hypocrisy. So much so in fact that the thought of that starving nobleman impels me to take more exercise. Ever read Alice in Wonderland, Snooks? A charming book—a masterpiece of English literature. And there is one singularly touching, not to say fruity, bit which concerns Father William—and a genteel young man.”

With a look of complete bewilderment on his face Mr. Atkinson felt himself propelled through the door, until he came to a halt at the top of the stairs.

“It’s a little poem, Snooks, and some day I will recite it to you. Just now I can only remember the one singularly beautiful line which has suggested my new form of exercise.”

Mr. Atkinson became aware of a boot in the lower portion of his back, and then the stairs seemed to rise up and hit him. He finally came to rest in the hall against an old oak chest of the pointed-corner type, and for a moment or two he lay there dazed. Then he scrambled to his feet to find three young men, who had emerged from a lower room during his flight, gazing at him impassively: while standing at the top of the stairs down which he had just descended and outlined against a window was the huge, motionless figure of Drummond. Half cursing, half sobbing, he staggered to the front door and opened it. Once more he looked back—not one of the four men had moved. They were just staring at him in absolute silence, and, with a sudden feeling of pure terror. Count Zadowa, alias Mr. Atkinson, shut the door behind him and staggered into the sunlit street.

CHAPTER XIII

In Which Hugh Drummond and the Reverend Theodosius Have a Little Chat

“Come up, boys,” laughed Hugh. “The fog of war is lifting slowly.”

He led the way back into the study, and the other three followed him.

“That object, Ted, you will be pleased to hear, is the humorist who threw the bomb at us last night.”

“The devil it was,” cried Jerningham. “I hope you gave him something for me. Incidentally, how did he run you to earth here?”

“Things have moved within the last two or three hours,” answered Drummond slowly. “Who do you think is stopping at the Ritz at the present moment? Who do you think lunched with Peter and me today? Why—Peterson, my buckos—no more and no less.”

“Rot!” said Toby Sinclair incredulously.

“No more and no less. Peterson himself—disguised as a clergyman called Longmoor. And with him is dear Irma encased in woollen garments. And it was Irma who spotted the whole thing. I never recognised her, and she was sitting next to Peter and me in the lounge when we were discussing things. Of course, they’re mixed up with that swab I’ve just kicked down the stairs—in fact, we’ve bolted the fox. The nuisance of it is that by putting two and two together they’ve spotted me as the leader of our bunch. How I don’t quite know, but they indubitably have. They also think I’ve got those diamonds: hence the visit of the hunchback, who did not know they were in the desk when he bunged the bomb. In fact, things are becoming clearer all the way round.”

“I’m glad you think so,” remarked Algy. “I’m dashed if I see it.”

Drummond thoughtfully filled himself a glass of beer from the cask in the corner.

“Clearer, Algy—though not yet fully luminous with the light of day. Between Peterson and those diamonds there is, or was, a close and tender connection. I’ll eat my hat on that. Between Peterson and the hunchback there is also a close connection—though I have my doubts if it’s tender. And then there’s me tripping lightly like the good fairy…Hullo! What’s this?”

He had opened his desk as he spoke, and was now staring fixedly at the lock.

“It’s been forced,” he said grimly. “Forced since this morning. They’ve been over this desk while I’ve been out. Push the bell, Ted.”

They waited in silence till Denny appeared in answer to the ring.

“Someone has been in this room, Denny,’” said Drummond. “Someone has forced this desk since half-past eleven this morning.”

“There’s been no one in the house, sir,” answered Denny, “except the man who came about the electric light.”

“Electric grandmother,” snapped his master. “You paralytic idiot, why did you leave him alone?”

“Well, sir, Mrs. Drummond was in the house at the time—and the servants were all round the place.” Denny looked and felt aggrieved, and after a while Drummond smiled.

“What sort of a man was it, you old fathead?”

“A very respectable sort of man,” returned Denny with dignity. “I remarked to Mrs. Denny how respectable he was, sir. Why, he actually went some distance down the street to call a taxi for Mrs. Drummond to go to the Ritz…”

His words died away, as he stared in amazement at the expression on his master’s face.

“What the devil is it, Hugh?” cried Ted Jerningham.

“He called a taxi, you say?” muttered Drummond. “The man who came here called a taxi?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Denny. “He was leaving the house at the same time, and as there was none in sight he said he’d send one along at once.”

“And Mrs. Drummond went in the taxi he sent?”

“Certainly, sir,” said Denny in surprise. “To the Ritz, to join you. I gave the order myself to the driver.”

The veins were standing out on Drummond’s forehead, and for a moment it seemed as if he was going to hit his servant. Then with an effort he controlled himself, and sank back in his chair with a groan.

“It’s all right, Denny,” he said hoarsely. “It’s not your fault: you couldn’t have known. But—what a fool I’ve been! All this time wasted, when I might have been doing something.”

“But what on earth’s happened?” cried Algy.

“She never turned up at the Ritz, Algy: Phyllis never turned up for lunch. At first I thought she was late, and we waited. Then I thought she’d run into some pal and had gone to feed somewhere else. And then, what with talking to Peterson, and later that hunchback, I forgot all about her.”

“But, good heavens, Hugh, what do you mean?” said Ted. “You don’t think that—”

“Of course I think it. I know it. They’ve got her: they’ve kidnapped her. Right under my nose.” He rose and began to pace up and down the room with long, uneven strides, while the others watched him anxiously.

“That damned girl heard me say that she was coming to lunch, and just after that she went upstairs. And Peterson, being Peterson, took a chance—and he’s pulled it off.”

“Ring up Scotland Yard, man,” cried Toby Sinclair.

“What the devil am I to tell them? They’d think I was off my head. And I’ve got no proof that Peterson is at the bottom of it. I haven’t even got any proof that would convince them that Longmoor is Peterson.”

Algy Longworth stood up, serious for once in a way. “There’s no time now to beat about the bush, Hugh. If they’ve got Phyllis there’s only one possible thing that you can do. Go straight to Bryan Johnstone and put all your cards on the table. Tell him the whole thing from A to Z—conceal nothing. And then leave the matter in his hands. He won’t let you down.”

For a moment or two Hugh faced them undecided. The sudden danger to Phyllis seemed to have robbed him temporarily of his power of initiative; for the time he had ceased to be the leader.

“Algy’s right,” said Jerningham quietly. “It doesn’t matter a damn what happens to us, you’ve got to think about Phyllis. We’ll get it in the neck—but there was always that risk.”

“I believe you’re right,” muttered Hugh, looking round for his hat. “My brain’s all buzzing, I can’t think—”

And at that moment the telephone bell rang on his desk.

“Answer it, Ted,” said Hugh.

Jerningham picked up the receiver.

“Yes—this is Captain Drummond’s house. No—it’s not him speaking. Yes—I’ll give him any message you like. Who are you? Who? Mr. Longmoor at the Ritz. I see. Yes—he told me you had lunched with him today. Oh! yes, certainly.”

For a while Ted Jerningham stood holding the receiver to his ear, and only the thin, metallic voice of the speaker at the other end broke the silence of the room. It went on, maddeningly indistinct to the three men crowding round the instrument, broken only by an occasional monosyllable from Jerningham. Then with a final—”I will certainly tell him,” Ted laid down the instrument.

“What did he say, Ted?” demanded Hugh agitatedly.

“He sent a message to you, old man. It was approximately to this effect—that he was feeling very uneasy because your wife had not turned up at lunch, and that he hoped there had been no accident. He further went on to say that since he had parted from you a most peculiar piece of information had come to his knowledge, which, incredible though it might appear, seemed to bear on her failure to turn up at the Ritz. He most earnestly begged that you should go round and see him at once—because if his information was correct any delay might prove most dangerous for her. And lastly, on no account were you to go to the police until you had seen him.”

For a while there was silence in the room. Drummond, frowning heavily, was staring out of the window; the others, not knowing what to say, were waiting for him to speak. And after a while he swung round, and they saw that the air of indecision had gone.

“That simplifies matters considerably,” he said quietly. “It reduces it to the old odds of Peterson and me.”

“But you’ll go to the police, old man,” cried Algy. “You won’t pay any attention to that message. He’ll never know that you haven’t come straight to him.”

Drummond laughed shortly. “Have you forgotten the rules so much, Algy, that you think that? Look out of the window, man, only don’t be seen. There’s a fellow watching the house now—I couldn’t go a yard without Peterson knowing. Moreover I’m open to a small bet that he knew I was in the house when he was talking to Ted. Good heavens! No. Peterson is not the sort of man to play those monkey-tricks with. He’s got Phyllis, the whole thing is his show. And if I went to the police, long before they could bring it home to him, or get her back—she’d be—why—”—and once again the veins stood out on his forehead—”Lord knows what the swine wouldn’t have done to her. It’s just a barter at the present moment—the diamonds against her. And there’s going to be no haggling. They win the first round—but there are a few more on the horizon.”

“What are you going to do?” said Ted.

“Exactly what he suggests,” answered Hugh. “Go round and see him at the Ritz—now, at once. I shan’t take the diamonds with me, but there will be no worry over the exchange as far as I’m concerned. It’s just like his dirty method of fighting to go for a girl,” he finished savagely.

“You don’t think they’ve hurt Mrs. Drummond, sir,” said Denny anxiously.

“If they have, they’ll find the remains of an elderly parson in Piccadilly,” returned Hugh, as he slipped a small revolver into his pocket. “But I don’t think so. Carl is far too wise to do anything so stupid as that. He’s tried with the hunchback and failed, now he’s trying this. And he wins.” He crossed to the door and opened it. “In case I don’t come back by six, the diamonds are in my sponge bag in the bathroom—and go straight to Scotland Yard. Tell Tum-tum the whole yarn.”

With a brief nod he was gone, and a moment later he was in the street. It was almost deserted, and he waited on the pavement for the loitering gentleman who came obsequiously forward. “Taxi, sir?”

A convenient one—an almost too convenient one—came to a standstill beside them, and Hugh noticed a quick look flash between the driver and the other man. Then he took stock of the taxi, and behold it was not quite as other taxis. And in his mind arose an unholy desire. As has been said, the street was nearly deserted, and it was destined to become even more deserted. There was a crash of breaking glass and the loiterer disappeared through one window of the machine.

Hugh stared at the astounded driver.

“If you say one word, you appalling warthog,” he remarked gently, “I’ll throw you through the other.”

It was a happy omen, and he felt better as he walked towards the Ritz. Simple and direct—that was the game. No more tortuous intrigues for him; hit first and apologise afterwards. And he was still in the same mood when he was shown into the sitting-room where the Reverend Theodosius Longmoor was busily working on Austrian famine accounts. He rose as Hugh entered, and his daughter, still knitting busily, gave him a charming girlish smile.

“Ah! my dear young friend,” began Mr. Longmoor, “I see you’ve had my message.”

“Yes,” answered Hugh affably, “I was standing next door to the fellow you were talking to. But before we come to business, so to speak—I must really ask you not to send Snooks round again. I don’t like him. Why, my dear Carl, I preferred our late lamented Henry Lakington.”

There was a moment of dead silence, during which the Reverend Theodosius stared at him speechlessly and the busy knitter ceased to knit. The shock was so complete and sudden that even Carl Peterson seemed at a loss, and Drummond laughed gently as he took a chair.

“I’m tired of this dressing-up business, Carl,” he remarked in the same affable voice. “And it’s so stupid to go on pretending when everybody knows. So I thought we might as well have all the cards on the table. Makes the game much easier.”

He selected a cigarette with care, and offered his case to the girl.

“My most hearty congratulations, mademoiselle,” he continued. “I may say that it was not you I recognised, but your dear—it is father still, isn’t it? And now that we’ve all met again you must tell me some time how you got away last year.”

But by this time the clergyman had found his voice. “Are you mad, sir?” he spluttered. “Are you insane? How dare you come into this room and insult my daughter and myself? I shall ring the bell, sir, and have you removed.”

He strode across the room, and Drummond watched him calmly. “I’ve just called one bluff this afternoon, Carl,” he said lazily. “Now I’ll call another. Go on, push the bell. Send for the police and say I’ve insulted you. Go and see dear old Tum-tum yourself: he’ll be most awfully braced at meeting you.”

The other’s hand fell slowly to his side, and he looked at his daughter with a resigned expression in his face.

“Really, my dear, I think that the heat—or perhaps—” He paused expressively, and Drummond laughed.

“You were always a good actor, Carl, but is it worth while? There are no witnesses here, and I’m rather pressed for time. There’s no good pretending that it’s the heat or that I’m tight, because I’m the only member of the audience, and you can’t deceive me, you really can’t. Through a series of accidents you have become aware of the fact that I am the leader of the Black Gang. You can go and tell the police if you like—in fact, that horrible little man who came round to see me threatened to do so. But, if you do so, I shall tell them who you are, and I shall also inform them of the secret history of the bomb. So that, though it will be awkward for me, Carl, it will be far more awkward for you and Mademoiselle Irma; and it will be positively unhealthy for Snooks. You take me so far, don’t you? Up to date I have been dealing in certainties; now we come to contingencies. It strikes me that there are two doubtful points, old friend of my youth—just two. And those two points are the whereabouts respectively of my wife and your diamonds. Now, Carl, do we talk business or not?”

“My dear young man,” said the other resignedly, “I intended to talk business with you when you arrived if you had given me a chance. But as you’ve done nothing but talk the most unmitigated drivel since you’ve come into the room I haven’t had a chance. You appear obsessed with this absurd delusion that I am some person called Carl, and—But where are you going?”

Drummond paused at the door.

“I am going straight to Scotland Yard. I shall there tell Sir Bryan Johnstone the whole story from A to Z, at the same time handing him a little bag containing diamonds which has recently come into my possession.”

“You admit you’ve got them,” snapped the other, letting the mask drop for a moment.

“That’s better, Carl—much better.” Drummond came back into the room. “I admit I’ve got them—but they’re in a place where you can never find them, and they will remain there until six o’clock tonight, when they go straight to Scotland Yard—unless, Carl—unless my wife is returned to me absolutely unscathed and unhurt before that hour. It is five o’clock now.”

“And if she is returned—what then?”

“You shall have the diamonds.”

For a space the two men stared at one another in silence, and it was the girl who finally spoke.

“What proof have we that you’ll keep your word?”

“Common sense,” said Hugh quietly. “My wife is somewhat more valuable to me than a bagful of diamonds. In addition, you know me well enough to know that I do not break my word. Anyway, those are my terms—take them or leave them. But I warn you that should anything happen to her—nothing will prevent me going straight to the police. No consideration of unpleasant results for me will count even for half a second. Well, do you accept?”

“There is just one point. Captain Drummond,” remarked the clergyman mildly. “Supposing that I am able to persuade certain people to—er—expedite the return of Mrs. Drummond in exchange for that little bag, where do you and I stand after the bargain is transacted. Do you still intend to tell the police of your extraordinary delusions with regard to me?”

“Not unless they should happen to become acquainted with the ridiculous hallucination that I am the leader of the Black Gang,” answered Drummond. “That was for your ears alone, my little one, and as you knew it already, you won’t get fat on it, will you? No, my intentions—since we are having a heart-to-heart talk—are as follows. Once the exchange is effected we will start quite fair and square—just like last time, Carl. It doesn’t pay you to go to the police: it doesn’t pay me, so we’ll have a single on our own. I am frightfully anxious to add you to my collection of specimens, and I can’t believe you are burning with zeal to go. But we’ll see, Carl, we’ll see. Only—no more monkey-tricks with my wife. Don’t let there be any misunderstanding on that point.”

The clergyman smiled benevolently.

“How aptly you put things!” he murmured. “I accept your terms, and I shall look forward afterwards to the single on our own that you speak about. And now—as to details. You must bear in mind that just as Mrs. Drummond is more valuable to you than diamonds, she is also somewhat larger. In other words, it will be obvious at once whether those whom I represent have kept their side of the bargain by producing your wife. It will not be obvious whether you have kept yours. The diamonds may or may not be in your pocket, and once you have your wife in your arms again the incentive to return the diamonds would be diminished. So I suggest. Captain Drummond, that you should bring the diamonds to me—here in this room, before six o’clock as a proof of good faith. You may keep them in your possession; all that I require is to see them. I will then engage on my side to produce Mrs. Drummond within a quarter of an hour.”

For a moment Drummond hesitated, fearing a trick. And yet it was a perfectly reasonable request, as he admitted to himself. From their point of view it was quite true that they could have no proof that he would keep his word, and once Phyllis was in the room there would be nothing to prevent the two of them quietly walking out through the door and telling the Reverend Theodosius to go to hell.

“Nothing can very well happen at the Ritz, can it?” continued the clergyman suavely. “And you see I am even trusting you to the extent that I do not actually ask you to hand over the diamonds until your wife comes. I have no guarantee that even then you will not get up and leave the room with them still in your possession. You are too big and strong a man. Captain Drummond, to allow of any horseplay—especially—er—in a clergyman’s suite of rooms.”

Drummond laughed. “Cut it out, Carl!” he exclaimed. “Cut it out, for heaven’s sake! All right. I agree. I’ll go round and get the stones now.”

He rose and went to the door.

“But don’t forget, Carl—if there are any monkey-tricks, heaven help you.”

The door closed behind him, and with a snarl the clergyman spun round on the girl.

“How the devil has he spotted us?” His face was convulsed with rage. “He’s the biggest fool in the world, and yet he spots me every time. However, there’s no time to worry about that now; we must think.”

He took one turn up and down the room, then he nodded his head as if he had come to a satisfactory decision. And when he spoke to the girl, who sat waiting expectantly on the sofa, he might have been the head of a big business firm giving orders to his managers for the day.

“Ring up headquarters of A Branch,” he said quietly. “Tell them to send round Number 13 to this room at once. He must be here within a quarter of an hour.”

“Number 13,” repeated the girl, making a note. “That’s the man who is such a wonderful mimic, isn’t it? Well?”

“Number 10 and the Italian are to come with him, and they are to wait below for further orders.”

“That all?” She rose to her feet as the Reverend Theodosius crossed rapidly to the door which led to the bathroom. “What about that silly little fool—his wife?”

For a moment the man paused, genuine amazement on his face.

“My dear girl, you don’t really imagine I ever intended to produce her, do you? And any lingering doubt I might have had on the matter disappeared the moment I found Drummond knew us. There’s going to be no mistake this time over that young gentleman, believe me.”

With a slight laugh he disappeared into the bathroom, and as little Janet put through her call a tinkling of bottles seemed to show that the Reverend Theodosius was not wasting time.

CHAPTER XIV

In Which a Rolls-Royce Runs Amok

Some ten minutes later he emerged from the bathroom carefully carrying a saucer in his hand. The girl’s announcement that Number 13 had started at once had been received with a satisfied grunt, but he had spoken no word. And the girl, glancing through the door, saw him, with his shirt sleeves rolled up above his elbows, carefully mixing two liquids together and stirring the result gently with a glass rod. He was completely absorbed in his task, and with a faint smile on her face she went back to the sofa and waited. She knew too well the futility of speaking to him on such occasions. Even when he came in, carrying the result of his labours with a pair of india-rubber gloves on his hands, she made no remark, but waited for him to relieve her curiosity.

He placed the mixture on the table and glanced round the room. Then he pulled up one of the ordinary stuff arm-chairs to the table and removed the linen head-rest, which he carefully soaked with the contents of the saucer, dabbing the liquid on with a sponge, so as not to crumple the linen in any way. He used up all the liquid, and then, still with the same meticulous care, he replaced the head-rest on the chair, and stood back and surveyed his handiwork.

“Look all right?” he asked briefly.

“Quite,” answered the girl. “What’s the game?”

“Drummond has got to sit in that chair,” he returned, removing the saucer and the sponge to the bathroom, and carefully peeling off his gloves. “He’s got to sit in that chair, my dear, and afterwards that linen affair has got to be burnt. And whatever happens “—he paused for a moment in front of her—”don’t you touch it.”

Quietly and methodically, he continued his preparations, as if the most usual occurrence in the world was in progress. He picked up two other chairs, and carried them through into the bedroom; then he returned and placed an open dispatch-case with a sheaf of loose papers on another one.

“That more or less limits the seating accommodation,” he remarked, glancing round the room. “Now if you, cara mia, will spread some of your atrocious woollen garments on the sofa beside you, I think we can guarantee the desired result.”

But apparently his preparations were not over yet. He crossed to the sideboard and extracted a new and undecanted bottle of whisky. From this he withdrew about a dessertspoonful of the spirit, and replaced it with the contents of a small phial which he took out of his waistcoat pocket. Then he forced back the cork until it was right home, and with the greatest care replaced the cap of tinfoil round the top of the bottle. And the girl, coming over to where he was working, saw that the bottle was again as new.

“What a consummate artist you are, cheri!” she said, laying a hand on his shoulder.

The Reverend Theodosius smiled and passed his arm round her waist.

“One of the earliest essentials of our—er—occupation, my little one, is to learn how to insert dope into an apparently untouched bottle.”

“But do you think you will get him to drink even out of a new bottle?”

“I hope so. I shall drink myself. But even if he doesn’t, the preparation on the chair is the essential thing. Once his neck touches that—”

With an expressive wave of his hand he vanished once more into the bathroom, returning with his coat.

“Don’t you remember that Italian toxicologist—Fransioli?” he remarked. “We met him in Naples three years ago, and he obligingly told me that he had in his possession the secret of one of the real Borgia poisons. I remember I had a most interesting discussion with him on the subject. The internal application is harmless; the external application is what matters. That acts alone, but if the victim can be induced to take it internally as well it acts very much better.”

“Fransioli?” She frowned thoughtfully. “Wasn’t that the name of the man who had the fatal accident on Vesuvius?”

“That’s the fellow,” answered the Reverend Theodosius, arranging a siphon and some glasses on a tray. “He persuaded me to ascend it with him, and on the way up he was foolish enough to tell me that the bottles containing this poison had been stolen from his laboratory. I don’t know whether he suspected me or not—I was an Austrian Baron at the time, if I remember aright—but when he proceeded to peer over the edge of the crater at a most dangerous point I thought it better to take no risks. So—er—the accident occurred. And I gathered he was really a great loss to science.”

He glanced at his watch, and the girl laughed delightedly. “It will be interesting to see if his claims for it are true,” he continued thoughtfully. “I have only used it once, but on that occasion I inadvertently put too much into the wine, and the patient died. But with the right quantities it produces—so he stated, and I saw him experiment on a dog—a type of partial paralysis, not only of the body, but of the mind. You can see, you can hear, but you can’t speak and you can’t move. What ultimately happens with a human being I don’t know, but the dog recovered.”

A quick double knock came at the door, and with a final glance round the room the Reverend Theodosius crossed to his desk and sat down.

“Come in,” he called, and a small dapper-looking man entered.

“Number 13, sir,” said the newcomer briefly, and the other nodded.

“I am expecting a man here shortly, 13,” remarked the clergyman, “whose voice I shall want you to imitate over the telephone.

“Only over the telephone, sir?”

“Only over the telephone. You will not be able to be in this room, but there is a bathroom adjoining in which you can hear every word that is spoken.” The other nodded as if satisfied. “For how long will you require to hear him talk?”

“Five or ten minutes, sir, will be ample.”

“Good. You shall have that. There’s the bathroom. Go in, and don’t make a sound.”

“Very good, sir.”

“And wait. Have Giuseppi and Number 10 come yet?”

“They left headquarters, sir, just after I did. They should be here by now.”

The man disappeared into the bathroom, closing the door behind him, and once again the Reverend Theodosius glanced at his watch.

“Our young friend should be here shortly,” he murmured. “And then the single which he seems so anxious to play can begin in earnest.”

The benign expression which he had adopted as part of his role disappeared for an instant to be replaced by a look of cold fury.

“The single will begin in earnest,” he repeated softly, “and it’s the last one he will ever play.”

The girl shrugged her shoulders. “He has certainly asked for it,” she remarked, “but it strikes me that you had better be careful. You may bet on one thing—that he hasn’t kept his knowledge about you and me to himself. Half those young idiots that run about behind him know everything by this time, and if they go to Scotland Yard it will be very unpleasant for us, mon cheri. And that they certainly will do if anything should happen to dear Hugh.”

The clergyman smiled resignedly. “After all these years, you think it necessary to say that to me! My dear, you pain me—you positively wound me to the quick. I will guarantee that all Drummond’s friends sleep soundly in their beds tonight, harbouring none but the sweetest thoughts of the kindly and much-maligned old clergyman at the Ritz.”

“And what of Drummond himself?” continued the girl.

“It may be tonight, or it may be tomorrow. But accidents happen at all times—and one is going to happen to him.” He smiled sweetly, and lit a cigar. “A nasty, sticky accident which will deprive us of his presence. I haven’t worried over the details yet—but doubtless the inspiration will come. And here, if I mistake not, is our hero himself.”

The door swung open and Drummond entered. “Well, Carl, old lad,” he remarked breezily, “here I am on the stroke of time with the bag of nuts all complete.”

“Excellent,” murmured the clergyman, waving a benevolent hand towards the only free chair. “But if you must call me by my Christian name, why not make it Theo?” Drummond grinned delightedly.

“As you wish, my little one. Theo it shall be in future, and Janet.” He bowed to the girl as he sat down. “There’s just one little point I want to mention, Theo, before we come to the laughter and games. Peter Darrell, whom you may remember of old, and who lunched with us today, is sitting on the telephone in my house. And eight o’clock is the time limit. Should his childish fears for my safety and my wife’s not be assuaged by that hour, he will feel compelled to interrupt Tum-tum at his dinner. I trust I make myself perfectly clear.”

“You are the soul of lucidity,” beamed the clergyman.

“Good! Then first of all, there are the diamonds. No, don’t come too near, please, you can count them quite easily from where you are.” He tumbled them out of the bag, and they lay on the table like great pools of liquid light. The girl’s breath came quickly as she saw them, and Drummond turned on her with a smile.

“To one given up to good works and knitting, Janet, doubtless, such things do not appeal. Tell me, Theo,” he remarked as he swept them back into the bag—”who was the idiot who put them in Snooks’ desk? Don’t answer if you’d rather not give away your maidenly secrets; but it was a pretty full-sized bloomer on his part, wasn’t it—pooping off the old bomb?”

He leaned back in his chair, and for a moment a gleam shone in the other’s eyes, for the nape of Drummond’s neck came exactly against the centre of the impregnated linen cover.

“Doubtless, Captain Drummond, doubtless,” he murmured politely. “But if you will persist in talking in riddles, don’t you think we might choose a different subject until Mrs. Drummond arrives?”

“Anything you like, Theo,” said Drummond. “I’m perfectly happy talking about you. How the devil do you do it?” He sat up and stared at the other man with genuine wonder on his face. “Eyes different—nose—voice—figure—everything different. You’re a marvel—but for that one small failing of yours.”

“You interest me profoundly,” said the clergyman. “What is this one small failing that makes you think I am other than what I profess to be?”

Drummond laughed genially.

“Good heavens, don’t you know what it is? Hasn’t Janet told you? It’s that dainty little trick of yours of tickling the left ear with the right big toe that marks you every time. No man can do that, Theo, and blush unseen.”

He leaned back again in his chair, and passed his hand over his forehead.

“By Jove, it’s pretty hot in here, isn’t it?”

“It is close everywhere today,” answered the other easily, though his eyes behind the spectacles were fixed intently on Drummond. “Would you care for a drink?”

Drummond smiled; the sudden fit of muzziness seemed to have passed as quickly as it had come.

“Thank you—no,” he answered politely. “In your last incarnation, Theo, you may remember that I did not drink with you. There is an element of doubt about your liquor which renders it a dangerous proceeding.”

“As you will,” said the clergyman indifferently, at the same time placing the bottle of whisky and the glasses on the table. “If you imagine that I am capable of interfering with an unopened bottle of Johnny Walker, obtained from the cellars of the Ritz, it would be well not to join me.” He was carefully removing the tinfoil as he spoke, and once again the strange muzzy feeling swept over Drummond. He felt as if things had suddenly become unreal—as if he was dreaming. His vision seemed blurred, and then for the second time it passed away, leaving only a strange mental confusion. What was he doing in this room? Who was this benevolent old clergyman drawing the cork out of a bottle of whisky?

With an effort he pulled himself together. It must be the heat or something, he reflected, and he must keep his brain clear. Perhaps a whisky-and-soda would help. After all, there could be no danger in drinking from a bottle which he had seen opened under his very eyes.

“Do you know, Theo,” he remarked, “I think I will change my mind and have a whisky-and-soda.”

His voice sounded strange to his ears; and he wondered if the others noticed anything. But apparently not; the clergyman merely nodded briefly, and remarked, “Say when.”

“When,” said Drummond, with a foolish sort of laugh. It was a most extraordinary thing, but he couldn’t focus his eyes; there were two glasses on the table and two clergymen splashing in soda from two siphons. Surely he wasn’t going to faint; bad thing to faint when he was alone with Peterson.

He took a gulp at his drink and suddenly began to talk—foolishly and idiotically.

“Nice room, Carl, old lad…Never expected meet you again: certainly not in nice room…Wrote letter paper after poor old Latter went mad. Drew you—drew badger. Send badger mad too.”

His voice trailed away, and he sat there blinking stupidly. Everything was confused, and his tongue seemed weighted with lead. He reached out again for his glass—or tried to—and his arm refused to move. And suddenly out of the jumble of thoughts in his brain there emerged the one damning certainty that somehow or other he had been trapped and drugged. He gave a hoarse, inarticulate cry, and struggled to rise to his feet, but it was useless; his legs and arms felt as if they were bound to the chair by iron bands. And in the mist that swam before his eyes he saw the mocking faces of the clergyman and his daughter.

“It seems to have acted most excellently,” remarked the Reverend Theodosius, and Drummond found he could hear quite normally; also his sight was improving; things in the room seemed steadier. And his mind was becoming less confused—he could think again. But to move or to speak was utterly impossible; all he could do was to sit and watch and rage inwardly at having been such a fool as to trust Peterson.

But that gentleman appeared in no hurry. He was writing with a gold pencil on a letter pad, and every now and then he paused and smiled thoughtfully. At length he seemed satisfied, and crossed to the bathroom door.

“We are ready now,” Drummond heard him say, and he wondered what was going to happen next. To turn his head was impossible; his range of vision was limited by the amount he could turn his eyes. And then, to his amazement, he heard his own voice speaking from somewhere behind him—not, perhaps, quite so deep, but an extraordinary good imitation which would have deceived nine people out of ten when they could not see the speaker. And then he heard Peterson’s voice again mentioning the telephone, and he realised what they were going to do.

“I want you,” Peterson was saying, “to send this message that I have written down to that number—using this gentleman’s voice.”

They came into his line of vision, and the new arrival stared at him curiously. But he asked no questions—merely took the paper and read it through carefully. Then he stepped over to the telephone, and took off the receiver. And, helplessly impotent, Drummond sat in his chair and heard the following message spoken in his own voice:

“Is that you, Peter, old bird? I’ve made the most unholy bloomer. This old bloke Theodosius isn’t Carl at all. He’s a perfectly respectable pillar of the Church.”

And then apparently Darrell said something, and Peterson, who was listening through the second ear-piece, whispered, urgently to the man.

“Phyllis,” he went on—”she’s as right as rain! The whole thing is a boss shot of the first order.…”

Drummond made another stupendous effort to rise, and for a moment everything went blank. Dimly he heard his own voice still talking into the instrument, but he only caught a word here and there, and then it ceased, and he realised that the man had left the room. It was Peterson’s voice close by him that cleared his brain again.

“I trust you approve of the way our single has started. Captain Drummond,” he remarked pleasantly. “Your friend Peter, I am glad to say, is more than satisfied, and has announced his intention of dining with some female charmer. Also he quite understands why your wife has gone into the country—you heard that bit, I hope, about her sick cousin?—and he realises that you are joining her.”

And suddenly the pleasant voice ceased, and the clergyman continued in a tone of cold, malignant fury.

“You rat! You damned interfering young swine! Now that you’re helpless I don’t mind admitting that I am the man you knew as Carl Peterson, but I’m not going to make the mistake he made a second time. I underestimated you. Captain Drummond. I left things to that fool Lakington. I treated you as a blundering young ass, and I realised too late that you weren’t such a fool as you looked. This time I am paying you the compliment of treating you as a dangerous enemy, and a clever man. I trust you are nattered.”

He turned as the door opened, and the man who had telephoned came in with two others. One was a great, powerful-looking man who might have been a prize-fighter; the other was a lean, swarthy-skinned foreigner, and both of them looked unpleasant customers. And Hugh wondered what was going to happen next, while his eyes rolled wildly from side to side as if in search of some way of escape. It was like some ghastly nightmare when one is powerless to move before some dreadful figment of the brain, only to be saved at the last moment by waking up. Only in Hugh’s case he was awake already, and the dream was reality.

He saw the men leave the room, and then Peterson came over to him again. First he took the little bag of diamonds out of his pocket, and it struck Hugh that though he had seen the other’s hand go into his pocket, he had felt nothing. He watched Peterson and the girl as they examined the stones; he watched Peterson as he locked them up in a steel dispatch-case. And then Peterson disappeared out of his range of vision. He was conscious that he was near him—just behind him—and the horror of the nightmare increased. It had been better when they were talking; at least then he could see them. But now, with both of them out of sight—hovering round the back of his chair, perhaps—and without a sound in the room save the faint hum of the traffic outside, the strain was getting unbearable.

And then another thought came to add to his misery. If they killed him—and they intended to, he was certain—what would happen to Phyllis? They’d got her too, somewhere; what were they going to do to her? Again he made a superhuman effort to rise; again he failed so much as to move his finger. And for a while he raved and blasphemed mentally. It was hopeless, utterly hopeless; he was caught like a rat in a trap.

And then he began to think coherently again. After all, they couldn’t kill him here in the Ritz. You can’t have dead men lying about in your room in an hotel. And they would have to move him some time; they couldn’t leave him sitting there. How were they going to get him out? He couldn’t walk, and to carry him out as he was would be impossible. Too many of the staff below knew him by sight.

Suddenly Peterson came into view again. He was in his shirt sleeves and was smoking a cigar, and Hugh watched him sorting out papers. He seemed engrossed in the matter, and paid no more attention to the helpless figure at the table than he did to the fly on the window. At length he completed his task, and having closed the dispatch-case with a snap, he rose and stood facing Hugh.

“Enjoying yourself?” he remarked. “Wondering what is going to happen? Wondering where dear Phyllis is?” He gave a short laugh. “Excellent drug that, isn’t it? The first man I tried it on died—so you’re lucky. You never felt me put a pin into the back of your arm, did you?”

He laughed again; in fact, the Reverend Theodosius seemed in an excellent temper.

“Well, my friend, you really asked for it this time, and I’m afraid you’re going to get it. I cannot have someone continually worrying me like this, so I’m going to kill you, as I always intended to some day. It’s a pity, and in many ways I regret it, but you must admit yourself that you really leave me no alternative. It will appear to be accidental, so you need entertain no bitter sorrow that I shall suffer in any way. And it will take place very soon—so soon, in fact, that I doubt if you will recover from the effects of the drug. I wouldn’t guarantee it: you might. As I say, you are only the second person on whom I have tried it. And with regard to your wife—our little Phyllis—it may interest you to know that I have not yet made up my mind. I may find it necessary for her to share in your accident—or even to have one all on her own: I may not.”

The raving fury in Drummond’s mind as his tormentor talked on showed clearly in his eyes, and Peterson laughed.

“Our friend is getting quite agitated, my dear,” he remarked, and the girl came into sight. She was smoking a cigarette, and for a while they stared at their helpless victim much as if he was a specimen in a museum.

“You’re an awful idiot, my Hugh, aren’t you?” she said at length. “And you have given us such a lot of trouble. But I shall quite miss you, and all our happy little times together.” She laughed gently, and glanced at the clock. “They ought to be here fairly soon,” she remarked. “Hadn’t we better get him out of sight?”

Peterson nodded, and between them they pushed Drummond into the bathroom.

“You see, my friend,” remarked Peterson affably, “it is necessary to get you out of the hotel without arousing suspicion. A simple little matter, but it is often the case that one trips up more over simple matters than over complicated ones.”

He was carefully inserting a pin into his victim’s leg as he spoke, and watching intently for any sign of feeling.

“Why, I remember once,” he continued conversationally, “that I was so incredibly foolish as to replace the cork in a bottle of prussic acid after I had—er—compelled a gentleman to drink the contents. He was in bed at the time, and everything pointed to suicide, except that confounded cork. I mean, would any man, after he’s drunk sufficient prussic acid to poison a regiment, go and cork up the empty bottle? It only shows how careful one must be over these little matters.”

The girl put her head round the door. “They’re here,” she remarked abruptly, and Peterson went into the other room, half closing the door. And Drummond, writhing impotently, heard the well-modulated voice of the Reverend Theodosius.

“Ah, my dear friend, my very dear old friend! What joy it is to see you again. I am greatly obliged to you for escorting this gentleman up personally.”

“Not at all, sir, not at all! Would you care for dinner to be served up here?”

Someone to do with the hotel, thought Drummond, and he made one final despairing effort to move. He felt it was his last chance, and it failed—as the others had done before. And it seemed to him that the mental groan he gave must have been audible, so utterly beyond hope did he feel. But it wasn’t, no sound came from the bathroom to the ears of the courteous sub-manager.

“I will ring later if I require it,” Peterson was saying in his gentle, kindly voice. “My friend, you understand, is still on a very strict diet, and he comes to me more for spiritual comfort than for bodily. But I will ring should I find he would like to stay.”

“Very good, sir.”

And Drummond heard the door close, and knew that his last hope had gone.

Then he heard Peterson’s voice again, sharp and incisive. “Lock the door. You two—get Drummond. He’s in the bathroom.”

The two men he had previously seen entered, and carried him back into the sitting-room, where the whole scheme was obvious at a glance. Just getting out of an ordinary invalid’s chair was a big man of more or less the same build as himself. A thick silk muffler partially disguised his face, a soft hat was pulled well down over his eyes, and Drummond realised that the gentleman who had been wheeled in for spiritual comfort would not be wheeled out.

The two men pulled him out of his chair, and then, forgetting his condition, they let him go, and he collapsed like a sack of potatoes on the floor, his legs and arms sprawling in grotesque attitudes.

They picked him up again, and not without difficulty they got him into the other man’s overcoat; and finally they deposited him in the invalid’s chair, and tucked him up with the rug.

“We’ll give it half an hour,” remarked Peterson, who had been watching the operation. “By that time our friend will have had sufficient spiritual solace; and until then you two can wait outside. I will give you your full instructions later.”

“Will you want me any more, sir?” The man whose place Drummond had taken was speaking.

“No,” said Peterson curtly. “Get out as unostentatiously as you can. Go down by the stairs and not by the lift.”

With a nod he dismissed them all, and once again Drummond was alone with his two chief enemies.

“Simple, isn’t it, my friend?” remarked Peterson. “An invalid arrives, and an invalid will shortly go. And once you’ve passed the hotel doors you will cease to be an invalid. You will become again that well-known young man about town—Captain Hugh Drummond—driving out of London in his car—a very nice Rolls, that new one of yours—bought, I think, since we last met. Your chauffeur would have been most uneasy when he missed it but for the note you’ve left him, saying you’ll be away for three days.”

Peterson laughed gently as he stared at his victim. “You must forgive me if I seem to gloat a little, won’t you?” he continued. “I’ve got such a large score to settle with you, and I very much fear I shan’t be in at the death. I have an engagement to dine with an American millionaire, whose wife is touched to the heart over the sufferings of the starving poor in Austria. And when the wives of millionaires are touched to the heart, my experience is that the husbands are generally touched to the pocket.”

He laughed again even more gently and leaned across the table towards the man who sat motionless in the chair. He seemed to be striving to see some sign of fear in Drummond’s eyes, some appeal for mercy. But if there was any expression at all it was only a faint mocking boredom, such as Drummond had been wont to infuriate him with during their first encounter a year before. Then he had expressed it in words and actions, now only his eyes were left to him, but it was there all the same. And after a while Peterson snarled at him viciously.

“No, I shan’t be in at the death, Drummond, but I will explain to you the exact programme. You will be driven out of London in your own car, but when the final accident occurs you will be alone. It is a most excellent place for an accident, Drummond—most excellent. One or two have already taken place there, and the bodies are generally recovered some two or three days later—more or less unrecognisable. Then when the news comes out in the evening papers tomorrow I shall be able to tell the police the whole sad story. How you took compassion on an old clergyman and asked him to lunch, and then went out of London after your charming young wife—only to meet with this dreadful end. I think I’ll even offer to take part in the funeral service. And yet—no, that is a pleasure I shall have to deny myself. Having done what I came over to do, Drummond, rather more expeditiously than I thought likely, I shall return to my starving children in Vienna. And, do you know what I came over to do, Drummond? I came over to smash the Black Gang—and I came over to kill you—though the latter could have waited.”

Peterson’s eyes were hard and merciless, but the expression of faint boredom still lingered in Drummond’s. Only too well did he realise now that he had played straight into his enemy’s hands, but he was a gambler through and through, and not by the quiver of an eyelid did he show what he felt. Right from the very start the dice had been loaded in Peterson’s favour owing to that one astounding piece of luck in getting hold of Phyllis. It hadn’t even been a fight—it had been a walk-over. And the cruel part of it was that it was not through any mistake of Drummond’s. It was a fluke pure and simple—an astounding fluke—a fluke which had come off better than many a carefully-thought-out scheme. If it hadn’t been for that he would never have come to Peterson’s sitting-room at all; he would never have been doped; he wouldn’t have been sitting helpless as a log while Peterson put down his cards one after the other in cold triumph.

“Yes, it could have waited. Captain Drummond—that second object of mine. I assure you that it was a great surprise to me when I realised who the leader of the Black Gang was—a great surprise and a great pleasure. To kill two birds, so to speak, with one stone, saves trouble; to accomplish two objects in one accident is much more artistic. So the Black Gang loses its leader, the leader loses his life, and I regain my diamonds. Eminently satisfactory, my friend, eminently. And when your dear wife returns from the country—if she does—well, Captain Drummond, it will be a very astute member of Scotland Yard who will associate her little adventure with that benevolent old clergyman, the Reverend Theodosius Longmoor, who recently spent two or three days at the Ritz. Especially in view of your kindly telephone message to Mr.—what’s his name?—Mr. Peter Darrell?” He glanced at his watch and rose to his feet.

“I fear that that is all the spiritual consolation that I can give you this evening, my dear fellow,” he remarked benignly. “You will understand, I’m sure, that there are many calls on my time. Janet, my love “—he raised his voice—”our young friend is leaving us now. I feel sure you’d like to say good-bye to him.”

She came into the room, walking a little slowly and for a while she stared in silence at Hugh. And it seemed to him that in her eyes there was a gleam of genuine pity. Once again he made a frantic effort to speak—to beg, beseech, and implore them not to hurt Phyllis—but it was useless. And then he saw her turn to Peterson.

“I suppose,” she said regretfully, “that it is absolutely necessary.”

“Absolutely,” he answered curtly. “He knows too much, and he worries us too much.”

She shrugged her shoulders and came over to Drummond. “Well, good-bye, mon ami,” she remarked gently. “I really am sorry that I shan’t see you again. You are one of the few people that make this atrocious country bearable.”

She patted him on his cheek, and again the feeling that he was dreaming came over Drummond. It couldn’t be real—this monstrous nightmare. He would wake up in a minute and find Denny standing beside him, and he registered a vow that he would go to an indigestion specialist. And then he realised that the two men had come back into the room, and that it wasn’t a dream, but hard, sober fact. The Italian was putting a hat on his head and wrapping the scarf round his neck while Peterson gave a series of curt instructions to the other man. And then he was being wheeled along the passage towards the lift, while the Reverend Theodosius walked solicitously beside him, murmuring affectionately in his ear.

“Good-bye, my dear friend—good-bye,” he remarked, after the chair had been wheeled into the lift. “It was good of you to come. Be careful, liftman, won’t you?”

He waved a kindly hand, and the last vision Drummond had of him before the doors closed was of a benevolent old clergyman beaming at him solicitously from behind a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles.

And now came his only chance. Surely there would be someone who would recognise him below; surely the hall porter, who in the past had received many a tip from him, must realise who he was in spite of the hat pulled down over his eyes. But even that hope failed. The elderly party in the invalid’s chair who had come half an hour ago was now going, and there was no reason why the hall porter should suspect anything. He gave the two men a hand lifting the chair into a big and very roomy limousine car which Drummond knew was certainly not his, and the next instant they were off.

He could see nothing—the hat was too far over his eyes. For a time he tried to follow where they were going by noting the turns, but he soon gave that up as hopeless. And then, after driving for about half an hour, the car stopped and the two men got out, leaving him alone. He could hear a lot of talking going on, but he didn’t try to listen. He was resigned by this time—utterly indifferent; his only feeling was a mild curiosity as to what was going to happen next.

The voices came nearer, and he found himself being lifted out of the car. In doing so his hat was pulled back a little so that he could see, and the first thing he noticed was his own new Rolls-Royce. They couldn’t have brought it to the Ritz, he reflected, where it might have been recognised—and an unwilling admiration for the master brain that had thought out every detail, and the wonderful organisation that allowed of them being carried out, took hold of his mind.

The men wheeled him alongside his own car; then they lifted him out of his chair and deposited him on the back seat. Then the Italian and the other man who had been at the Ritz sat down one on each side of him, while a third man took the wheel.

“Look slippy, Bill,” said the big man beside him. “A boat will be coming through about half-past nine.”

A boat! What was that about a boat? Were they going to send him out to sea, then, and let him drown? If so, what was the object of getting his own car? The hat slipped forward again, but he guessed by some of the flaring lights he could dimly see that they were going through slums. Going eastward Essex way, or perhaps the south side of the river towards Woolwich. But after a time he gave it up: it was no good wondering—he’d know for certain soon enough. And now the speed was increasing as they left London behind them. The headlights were on, and Hugh judged that they were going about thirty-five miles an hour. And he also guessed that it was about forty-five minutes before they pulled up, and the engine and lights were switched off. The men beside him got out, and he promptly rolled over into a corner, where they left him lying.

“This is the place to wait,” he heard the Italian say. “You go on, Franz, to the corner, and when it’s ready flash your torch. You’ll have to stand on the running-board. Bill, and steer till he’s round the corner into the straight. Then jump off—no one will see you behind the headlights. I’m going back to Maybrick Tower.”

And then he heard a sentence which drove him impotent with fury, and again set him struggling madly to move.

“The girl’s there. We’ll get orders about her in the morning.” There was silence for a while; then he heard Bill’s voice. “Let’s get on with it. There’s Franz signalling. We’ll have to prop him up on the steering-wheel somehow.”

They pulled Drummond out of the back of the car, and put him in the driver’s seat.

“Doesn’t matter if he does fall over at the last moment. It will look as if he’d fainted, and make the accident more probable,” said the Italian, and Bill grunted.

“Seems a crime,” he muttered, “to smash up this peach of a car.” He started the engine and switched on the headlights; then he slipped her straight into third speed and started. He was on the running-board beside the wheel, steering with one hand and holding on to Drummond with the other. As they rounded the corner he straightened the car up and opened the throttle. Then he jumped off, and Drummond realised the game at last.

A river was in front—a river spanned by a bridge which swung open to let boats go through. And it was open now. He had a dim vision of a man waving wildly; he heard the crash as the car took the guarding gate, and then he saw the bonnet dip suddenly; there was a rending, scraping noise underneath him as the framework hit the edge; an appalling splash—and silence.

CHAPTER XV

In Which Hugh Drummond Arrives at Maybrick Hall

Two things saved Drummond from what was practically certain death—the heavy coat he was wearing, and the fact that he rolled sideways clear of the steering-wheel as soon as the man let go of him with his hand. Had he remained behind the wheel he must infallibly have gone to the bottom with the car, and at that point where the river narrowed to come through the piers of the bridge the water was over twenty feet deep. He had sufficient presence of mind to take a deep breath as the car shot downwards; then he felt the water close over his head. And if before his struggles to move had been fierce—now that the end seemed at hand they became desperate. The desire to get clear—to give one kick with his legs and come to the surface roused him to one superhuman effort. He felt as if the huge heave he gave with his legs against the floorboards must send him flying to the top; afterwards he realised that this vast effort had been purely mental—the actual physical result had been practically negligible. But not quite, it had done something, and the coat did the rest.

With that one last supreme throw for his life his mind had overcome the effects of the poison to the extent of forcing his legs to give one spasmodic little kick. He floated clear of the car, and slowly—how slowly only his bursting lungs could testify—the big coat brought him to the surface. For a moment or two he could do nothing save draw in deep gulps of air; then he realised that the danger was not yet past. For he couldn’t shout, he could do nothing save float and drift, and the current had carried him clear of the bridge out of sight of those on top. And his mind was quite clear enough to realise that the coat which had saved him, once it became sodden would just as surely drown him.

He could see men with lanterns on the bridge; he could hear them shouting and talking. And then he saw a boat come back from the ship that had passed through just before he went over the edge in his car. Surely they’d pull downstream to look for him, he thought in an agony of futile anger; surely they couldn’t be such fools as to go on pulling about just by the bridge when it was obvious he wasn’t there. But since they thought that he was at the bottom in his car, and blasphemous language was already being wafted at them by the skipper of the vessel for the useless delay, with a sinking heart Drummond saw the boat turn round and disappear up-stream into the darkness. Men with lanterns still stood on the bridge, but he was far beyond the range of their lights, and he was drifting farther every minute. It was just a question of time now—and it couldn’t be very long either. He could see that his legs had gone down well below the surface, and only the air that still remained in the buttoned-up part of his overcoat kept his head out and his shoulders near the top. And when that was gone—the end. He had done all he could; there was nothing for it now but to wait for the inevitable finish. And though he had been credibly informed that under such circumstances the whole of a man’s life passes in rapid review before him, his sole and only thought was an intense desire to get his hands on Peterson again.

For a while he pictured the scene with a wealth of pleasant detail, until a sudden change in his immediate surroundings began to take place. At first he could not realise what had happened; then little by little it began to dawn on him what had occurred. Up to date the water in which he floated had seemed motionless to him; he had been drifting in it at exactly the same velocity as the current. And now, suddenly, he saw that the water was going past him. For a moment or two he failed to understand the significance of the fact; then wild hope surged up in his mind. For a time he stared fixedly at the bridge, and the hope became a certainty. He was not drifting any farther from it; he was stationary; he was aground. He could feel nothing; he could see nothing—but the one stupendous fact remained that he was aground. Life took on another lease—anything might happen now. If only he could remain there till the morning they would see him from the bridge, and there seemed no reason why he shouldn’t. The water still flowed sluggishly past him, broken with the faintest ripple close to his head. So he reasoned that it must be very shallow where he was, and being an incurable optimist, he resumed, with even fuller details, his next meeting with Peterson.

But not for long. Starting from his waist and spreading downwards to his feet and outwards through his shoulders to his hands there slowly began to creep the most agonising cramp. The torture was indescribable, and the sweat dripped off his forehead into his eyes. And gradually it dawned on him that the effects of the poison were wearing off. Sensation was returning to his limbs; even through his agony he could feel that he was resting against something under the water. Then he heard a strange noise, and realised that was he himself groaning with the pain. The use of his voice had come back. He spoke a sentence aloud, and made certain.

And then Drummond deliberately decided on doing one of those things which Peterson had always failed to legislate for in the past. Ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have shouted themselves hoarse under such circumstances; not so Drummond. Had he done so a message would have reached Peterson in just so long as it took a trunk call to get through; the man called Franz was still assiduously helping the gate-keeper on the bridge. And the Reverend Theodosius Longmoor and his little Janet would have vanished into the night, leaving no traces behind them.

Which all flashed through Drummond’s mind as the cramp took and racked him, and the impulse to shout grew stronger and stronger. Twice he opened his mouth to hail the men he could see not three hundred yards away—to give a cry that would bring a boat post-haste to his rescue; twice he stopped himself with the shout unuttered. A more powerful force was at work within him than mere pain—a cold, bitter resolve to get even with Carl Peterson. And it required no great effort of brain to see that that would be more easily done if Peterson believed he had succeeded. Moreover if he shouted there would be questions asked. The police would inevitably come into the matter, demanding to know why he adopted such peculiar forms of amusement as going into twenty feet of water in a perfectly good motor-car. And all that would mean delay, which was the last thing he wanted. He felt tolerably certain that, for all his apparent confidence, Peterson was not going to stop one minute longer in the country than was absolutely necessary.

So he stayed where he was, in silence—and gradually the cramp passed away. He could turn his head now, and with eyes that had grown accustomed to the darkness he saw what had happened. On each side of him the river flowed past smoothly, and he realised that by a wonderful stroke of luck he had struck a small shoal. Had he missed it—had he floated by on either side—well, Peterson’s plan would have succeeded.

“Following the extraordinary motor accident reported in our previous issue, we are now informed that the body of the unfortunate driver has been discovered some three miles from the scene of the tragedy. He was drowned, and had evidently been dead some hours.”

Drummond smiled grimly to himself as he imagined the paragraphs in the papers. His nerves were far too hardened to let his narrow escape worry him for an instant, and he felt an unholy satisfaction in thinking of Peterson searching the early specials and the late extras for that little item of news.

“I’d hate you to be disappointed, my friend,” he muttered to himself, “but you’ll have to be content with the coat and hat. The body has doubtless drifted farther on and will be recovered later.”

He took off his hat, and let it drift away; he unbuttoned his overcoat and sent it after the hat. Then letting himself down into the deep water, he swam noiselessly towards the bank.

A little to his surprise he found that his legs and arms felt perfectly normal—a trifle stiff perhaps, but beyond that the effects of the poison seemed to have worn off completely. Beyond being very wet he appeared to have suffered no evil results at all, and after he’d done “knees up” on the bank for five minutes to restore his circulation he sat down to consider his plans.

First, Phyllis at Maybrick Hall. He must get at her somehow, and, even if he couldn’t get her away, he must let her know she would be all right. After that things must look after themselves; everything would depend on circumstances. Always provided that those circumstances led to the one great goal—Peterson. Once Phyllis was safe, everything was subservient to that.

A church clock nearby began to toll the hour, and Drummond counted the strokes. Eleven o’clock—not two hours since he had gone over the bridge—and it felt like six. So much the better, it gave him so many more hours of darkness, and he wanted darkness for his explorations at Maybrick Hall. And it suddenly dawned on him that he hadn’t the faintest idea where the house was.

It might have deterred some men; it merely made Drummond laugh. If he didn’t know, he’d find out—even if it became necessary to pull someone out of bed and ask. The first thing to do was to get back to the spot where the car had halted, and to do that he must go across country. Activity was diminishing on the bridge, but he could still see lanterns dancing about, and the sudden appearance of a very wet man might lead to awkward questions. So he struck off in the direction he judged to be right—moving with that strange, cat—like silence which was a never-ceasing source of wonderment even to those who knew him best.

No man ever heard Drummond coming, and very few ever saw him until it was too late, if he didn’t intend that they should. And now, in utterly unknown country, with he knew not how many undesirable gentlemen about, he was taking no risks. Mercifully for him it was a dark night—just such a night in fact as he would have chosen, and as he passed like a huge shadow from tree to tree, only to vanish silently behind a hedge, and reappear two hundred yards farther on, he began to feel that life was good. The joy of action was in his veins; he was going to get his hands on somebody soon, preferably the Italian or the man who called himself Franz. For Bill he had a sneaking regard; Bill at any rate could appreciate a good car when he saw one. The only trouble was that he was unarmed, and an unarmed man can’t afford to stop and admire the view in a mix up. Not that the point deterred him for a moment, it only made him doubly cautious. He must see without being seen; he must act without being heard. Afterwards would be a different matter.

Suddenly he stiffened and crouched motionless behind a bush. He had heard voices and the sound of footsteps crunching on the gravel.

“No good waiting any more,” said the man whom he recognised as Franz. “He’s dead for a certainty, and they can’t pull him out till tomorrow. Couldn’t have gone better. He swayed right over just as the car took the gates, and the bridge-keeper saw it. Think he fainted—”

Their voices died away in the distance, and Drummond came out from behind the bush. He stepped forward cautiously and found himself confronted with a high wire fence. Through it he could see a road along which the two men must have been walking. And then through a gap in the trees he saw a light in the window of a house. So his first difficulty was solved. The man called Franz and his companion could have but one destination in all probability—Maybrick Hall. And that must be the house he could see through the trees, while the road on the other side of the fence was the drive leading up to it.

He gave them half a minute or so; then he climbed through the fence. It was a fence with horizontal strands of thick wire, about a foot apart, and the top strand was two feet above Drummond’s head. An expensive fence, he reflected; an unusual fence to put round any property of such a sort. An admirable fence for cattle in a corral because of its strength, but for a house and grounds—peculiar, to say the least. It was not a thing of beauty; it afforded no concealment, and it was perfectly simple to climb through. And because Drummond had been trained in the school which notices details, even apparently trivial ones, he stood for a moment or two staring at the fence, after he had clambered through. It was the expense of the thing more than anything else that puzzled him. It was new—that was obvious, and after a while he proceeded to walk along it for a short way. And another peculiar thing struck him when he came to the first upright. It was an iron T-shaped post, and each strand of wire passed through a hole in the bottom part of the T. A perfectly simple and sound arrangement, and, but for one little point, just the type of upright one would have expected to find in such a fence. Round every hole was a small white collar, through which each strand of wire passed, so that the wires rested on the collars, and not on the holes in the iron uprights. Truly a most remarkable fence, he reflected again—in fact, a thoroughly eccentric fence. But he got no farther than that in his thoughts; the knowledge which would have supplied him with the one clue necessary to account for that fence’s eccentricity of appearance was not his. The facts he could notice; the reason for the facts was beyond him. And after a further examination he shrugged his shoulders and gave it up. There were bigger things ahead of him than a mere question of fencing, and, keeping in the shadow of the shrubs which fringed each side of the drive, he crept silently towards the house.

It was a low, rambling type of building covered as far as he could see with ivy and creepers. There were only two stories, and Hugh nodded his satisfaction. It made things simpler when outside work was more than likely. For a long time he stood in the shadow of a big rhododendron bush, carefully surveying every possible line of approach and flight, and it was while he was balancing up chances that he gradually became aware of a peculiar noise proceeding from the house. It sounded like the very faint hum of an aeroplane in the far distance, except that every two or three seconds there came a slight thud. It was quite regular, and during the four or five minutes whilst he stood there listening there was no variation in the monotonous rhythm. Thud: thud: thud—faint, but very distinct, and all the time the gentle whirring of some smooth-running, powerful engine.

The house was in darkness save for one room on the ground floor, from which the light was streaming. It was empty, and appeared to be an ordinary sitting-room. And, as a last resort, Hugh decided he would go in that way, if outside methods failed. But to start with he had no intention of entering the house; it struck him that the odds against him were unnecessarily large.

He retreated still farther into the shadow, and then quite clear and distinct the hoot of an owl was heard in the silent garden. He knew that Phyllis would recognise the call if she heard it; he knew that she would give him some sign if she could. And so he stood and waited, eagerly watching the house for any sign of movement. But none came, and after a pause of half a minute he hooted again. Of course it was possible that she was a room facing the other way, and he had already planned his line of advance round to the back of the house. And then, just as he was preparing to skirt round and investigate he saw the curtains of one of the upper rooms shake and open slightly. Very faintly he repeated the call, and to his joy he saw a head poked through between them. But he was taking no chances, and it was impossible to tell to whom the head belonged. It might be Phyllis, and on the other hand it might not. So once again he repeated the call, barely above his breath, and then he waited for some answer.

It came almost at once; his own name called very gently, and he hesitated no more. He was across the lawn in a flash and standing under her window, and once again he heard her voice tense with anxiety. “Is that you, Hugh?”

“Yes, darling, it’s me right enough,” he whispered back. “But there’s no time to talk now. I want you to jump on to the flowerbed. It’s soft landing, and it won’t hurt you.”

“But I can’t, old man,” she said, with a little catch in her breath. “They’ve got me lashed up with a steel chain.”

“They’ve got you lashed up with a steel chain,” repeated Hugh stupidly. “The devil they have; the devil they have!” And his voice was shaking a little with cold, concentrated fury. “All right, kid,” he went on after a moment; “if you can’t come to me, I must come to you. We’ll soon deal with that chain.”

He glanced into the room underneath hers and saw that it looked like a drawing-room. The windows seemed easy to force if necessary, but he decided first of all to try the ivy outside. But it was useless for a man of his weight. Just at the bottom it supported him, but as soon as he started to climb it gave way at once. Twice he got up about six feet, twice he fell back again as the ivy broke away from the wall. And after the second attempt he looked up at the anxious face of his wife above.

“No go, darling,” he muttered. “And I’m afraid of making too much noise. I’m going to try and force this window.”

By a stroke of luck they had not taken his clasp-knife, and by a still greater stroke of luck he found that the catch on the window had been broken, and that it proved even easier to open than he had thought. He stepped back and looked up.

“I’m coming in, kid,” he whispered. “Do you know where the stairs are?”

“Just about the middle of the house, old man. And listen. I can’t quite reach the door to open it, but I’ve got my parasol and I can tap on it so that you’ll know which it is.”

“Right,” he answered. “Keep your tail up.” The next moment he had vanished into the drawing-room. And now he noticed that that strange noise which he had heard while standing on the lawn was much louder. As he cautiously opened the door and peered into the passage the very faint hum became a steady drone, while with each successive thud the floorboards shook a little.

The passage was in darkness, though light was shining from under some of the doors. And as he crept along in search of the stairs he heard voices proceeding from one of the rooms he passed. Evidently a fairly populous household, it struck him, as he tested the bottom stair with his weight to see if it creaked. But the staircase was old and solid, and the stair carpet was thick, and at the moment Hugh was not disposed to linger. Afterwards the house seemed to promise a fairly fruitful field for investigation; at present Phyllis was all that mattered. So he vanished upwards with the uncanny certainty of all his movements at night, and a moment later he was standing on the landing above.

It was a long, straight corridor, a replica of the one below, and he turned in the direction in which he knew her room must lie. And he had only taken a couple of steps when he stopped abruptly, peering ahead with eyes that strove to pierce the darkness. For it seemed to him that there was something in the passage—something darker than its surroundings. He pressed against the wall absolutely motionless, and as he stood there with every sense alert, and his arms hanging loosely forward ready for any emergency, he heard a tapping on one of the doors just ahead of him. It was Phyllis signalling with her parasol as she had said, and he took a step forward. And at that moment something sprang out of the darkness, and he found himself fighting for his life.

For a second or two he was at a disadvantage, so completely had he been taken by surprise, then the old habits returned. And not a moment too soon; he was up against an antagonist who was worthy of him. Two hands like iron hooks were round his neck, and the man who gets that grip first wins more often than not. His own hands shot out into the darkness, and then for the first time in his life he felt a stab of fear. For he couldn’t reach the other man: long though his arms were, the other man’s were far longer, and as his hands went along them he could feel the muscles standing out like steel bars. He made one supreme effort to force through to his opponent’s throat and it failed; with his superior reach he could keep his distance. Already Drummond’s head was beginning to feel like bursting with the awful pressure; round his throat, and he knew he must do something at once or lose. And just in time he remembered his clasp-knife. It went against his grain to use it; never before had he fought an unarmed man with a weapon—and as far as he could tell this man was unarmed. But it had to be done and done quickly.

With all his force he stabbed sideways at the man’s left arm. He heard a snarl of pain, and the grip of one of the hands round his throat relaxed. And now the one urgent thing was to prevent him shouting for help. Like a flash Drummond was on him, one hand on his mouth and the other gripping his throat with the grip he had learned from Osaki the Jap in days gone by, and had never forgotten. And because he was fighting to kill now he wasted no time. The grip tightened; there was a dreadful worrying noise as the man bit into his thumb—then it was over. The man slipped downwards on to the floor, and Drummond stood drawing in great mouthfuls of air.

But he knew there was no time to lose. Though they had fought in silence, and he could still hear the monotonous thud and the beat of the engine, at any moment someone might come upstairs. And to be found with a dead man at one’s feet in a strange house is not the best way of securing a hospitable welcome. What to do with the body—that was the first insistent point. There was no time for intricate schemes; it was a question of taking risks and chancing it. So for a moment or two he listened at the door of the room opposite that on which he had heard Phyllis tapping, and from which the man had sprung at him—then he gently opened it. It was a bedroom and empty, and without further hesitation he dragged his late opponent in, and left him lying on the floor. By the dim light from the uncurtained window, he could see that the man was almost deformed, so enormous was the length of his arms. They must have been six inches longer than those of an average man, and were almost as powerful as his own. And as he saw the snarling, ferocious face upturned to his, he uttered a little prayer of thanksgiving for the presence of his clasp-knife. It had been altogether too near a thing for his liking.

He closed the door and stepped across the passage, and the next moment Phyllis was in his arms.

“I thought you were never coming, old man,” she whispered. “I was afraid the brutes had caught you.”

“I had a slight difference of opinion with a warrior outside your door,” said Hugh, grinning. “Quite like old times.”

“But, my dear,” she said, with sudden anxiety in her voice, “you’re sopping wet.”

“Much water has flowed under the bridge, my angel child, since I last saw you, and I’ve flowed with it.” He kissed her on the right side of her mouth, then on the left for symmetry, and finally in the middle for luck. Then he grew serious. “No time for hot air now, old thing; let’s have a look at this jolly old chain effect of yours. Once we’re out of here, you shall tell me everything and I’ll eat several pounds of mud for having been such an unmitigated idiot as to let these swine get hold of you.”

He was examining the steel chain as he spoke, and gradually his face grew grave. He didn’t seem to have gained much after all by breaking in; Phyllis was just as much a prisoner as ever. The chain, which was about six feet long, was fastened at one end to a big staple in the wall and at the other to a bracelet which encircled his wife’s right wrist. And the bracelet could only be opened with a key. Any idea of breaking the chain or pulling out the staple was so preposterous as not to be worth even a moment’s thought; so everything depended on the bracelet. And when he came to examine it more carefully he found that it had a Yale lock.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, and she watched him anxiously.

“Can’t you get it undone, boy?” she whispered.

“Not if I stopped here till next Christmas, darling,” he answered heavily.

“Well, get out of the window and go for the police,” she implored.

“My dear,” he said still more heavily, “I had, as I told you, a little difference of opinion with the gentleman outside the door—and he’s very dead.” She caught her breath sharply. “A nasty man with long arms who attacked me. It might be all right, of course—but I somehow feel that this matter is beyond the local constable, even if I could find him. You see, I don’t even know where we are.” He checked the exclamation of surprise that rose to her lips. “I’ll explain after, darling, let’s think of this now. If only I could get the key; if only I knew where it was even.”

“A foreigner came in about an hour ago,” answered his wife. “He had it then. And he said he’d come again tonight.”

“He did, did he?” said Hugh slowly. “I wonder if it’s my friend the Italian. Anyway, kid, it’s the only chance. Did he come alone last time?”

“Yes: I don’t think there was anyone with him. I’m sure there wasn’t.”

“Then we must chance it,” said Hugh. “Say something; get him into the room and then leave him to me. And if for any reason he doesn’t come I’ll have to leave you here and raise the gang.”

“Wouldn’t it be safer, boy, to do that now?” she said imploringly. “Suppose anything happened to you.”

“Anything further that happens to me tonight, old thing,” he remarked grimly, “will be as flat as a squashed pancake compared to what’s happened already.”

And then because she saw his mind was made up, and she knew the futility of arguing under those conditions, she sat on the bed beside him to wait. For a while they sat in silence listening to the monotonous thudding noise which went ceaselessly on; then because he wanted to distract her mind he made her tell him what had happened to her. And in disjointed whispers, with his arm round her waist, she pieced together the gaps in the story. How the man had come about the electric light, and then had offered to fetch her a taxi he knew already from Denny. She had got in, never suspecting anything, and told him to drive to the Ritz—and almost at once she had begun to feel faint. Still she suspected nothing, until she tried to open one of the windows. But it wouldn’t open, and the last thing she remembered before she actually fainted was tapping on the glass to try to draw the driver’s attention. Then when she came to, she found to her horror that she was not alone. A man was in the car with her, and they were out of London in the country. Both windows were wide open, and she asked him furiously what he was doing in her car. He smiled, and remarked that so far he was not aware he had sold it, but he was always open to an offer. And it was then that she realised for the first time exactly what had happened.

The man told her quite frankly that she hadn’t fainted at all, but had been rendered unconscious by a discharge of gas down the speaking-tube; that acting under orders he was taking her to a house in the country where she would have to remain for how long he was unable to say, and further if she made a sound or gave any trouble he would gag her on the spot.

Hugh’s arm tightened round her waist, and he cursed fluently under his breath.

“And what happened when you got here, darling?” he asked as she paused.

“They brought me straight up here, and tied me up,” she answered. “They haven’t hurt me—and they’ve given me food, but I’ve been terrified—simply terrified—as to what they were going to do next.” She clung to him, and he kissed her reassuringly. “There’s a man below with red hair and a straggling beard, who came and stared at me in the most horrible way. He was in his shirt sleeves and his arms were all covered with chemical stains.”

“Did he touch you?” asked Hugh grimly.

“No—he just looked horrible,” she said, with a shudder. “And then he repeated the other man’s threat—the one who had been in the car—that if I shouted or made any fuss he’d lash me up and gag me. He spoke in a sort of broken English—and his voice never seemed to rise above a whisper.”

She was trembling now, and Hugh made a mental note of another gentleman on whom he proposed to lay hands in the near future. Red hair and a straggling beard should not prove hard to recognise.

He glanced at the watch on Phyllis’s wrist, and saw that it was very nearly one o’clock. The noise of the engine was still going monotonously on; except for that the house seemed absolutely silent. And he began to wonder how long it would be wise to continue the vigil. Supposing no one did come; supposing somebody came who hadn’t got the key; supposing two or three of them came at the same time. Would it be better, even now, to drop through the window—and try to find a telephone or the police? If only he knew where he was; it might take him hours to find either at that time of night. And his whole being revolted at the idea of leaving Phyllis absolutely defenceless in such a house.

He rose and paced softly up and down the room trying to think what was the best thing to do. It was a maddening circle whichever way he looked at it, and his fists clenched and unclenched as he tried to make up his mind. To go or to wait; to go at once or to stop in the hope that one man would come up and have the key on him. Common sense suggested the first course; something far more powerful than common sense prompted the latter. He could not and would not leave Phyllis alone. And so he decided on a compromise. If when daylight came no one had been up to the room, he would go; but he would wait till then. She’d feel safer once the night was over, and in the dawn he would be able to find his way outside more easily.

And he was just going to tell Phyllis what he had decided, when he heard a sound that killed the words on his lips. A door had opened below, and men’s voices came floating up the stairs.

“Lie down, darling,” he breathed in her ear, “and pretend to be asleep.”

Without a word she did as he told her, while Hugh tiptoed over towards the door. There were steps coming up the stairs, and he flattened himself against the wall—waiting. The period of indecision was passed; unless he was very much mistaken the time of action had arrived. How it would pan out—whether luck would be in, or whether luck would fail was on the lap of the gods. All he could do was to hit hard and if necessary hit often, and a tingle of pure joy spread over him. Even Phyllis was almost forgotten at the moment; he had room in his mind for one thought only—the man whose steps he could hear coming along the passage.

There was only one of them, he noted with a sigh of relief—but for all that silence would be essential. It would take time to find the key; it would take even longer to get Phyllis free and out of the house. So there must be no risk of an alarm whatever happened.

The steps paused outside the door, and he heard a muttered ejaculation in Italian. It was his own particular friend of the motor right enough, and he grinned gently to himself. Apparently he was concerned over something, and it suddenly dawned on Drummond that it was the absence from duty of the long-armed bird that was causing the surprise. In the excitement of the moment he had forgotten all about him, and for one awful second his heart stood still. Suppose the Italian discovered the body before he entered the room, then the game was up with a vengeance. Once the alarm was given he’d have to run the gauntlet of the whole crowd over ground he didn’t know.

But his fears were groundless; the non-discovery of the watcher by the door took the Italian the other way. His first thought was to make sure that the girl was safe, and he flung open the door and came in. He gave a grunt of satisfaction as he saw her lying on the bed; then like a spitting cat he swung round as he felt Drummond’s hand on his shoulder.

“E pericoloso sporgersi,” muttered Hugh pleasantly, recalling the only Italian words he knew.

“Dio mio!” stammered the other, with trembling lips. Like most southerners he was superstitious, and to be told that it was dangerous to lean out of the window by a man whom he knew to be drowned was too much for him. It was a ghost; it could be nothing else, and his knees suddenly felt strangely weak.

“You didn’t know I was a linguist, did you?” continued Hugh, still more pleasantly; and with every ounce of weight in his body behind the blow, he hit the Italian on the point of the jaw. Without a sound the man crumpled up and pitched on his face.

And now there was not a moment to be lost. At any moment one of his pals might come upstairs, and everything depended on speed and finding the key. Hugh shut the door and locked it; then feverishly he started to search through the Italian’s pockets. Everything up to date had panned out so wonderfully that he refused to believe that luck was going to fail him now, and sure enough he discovered the bunch in one of the unconscious man’s waistcoat pockets. There were four of them, and the second he tried was the right one. Phyllis was free, and he heard her give a little sob of pure excitement.

“You perfectly wonderful boy!” she whispered, and Hugh grinned.

“We’ll hurl floral decorations afterwards, my angel,” he remarked. “Just at the moment it seems a pity not to replace you with someone.”

He heaved the Italian on to the bed, and snapped the steel bracelet on to his arm. Then he slipped the keys into his own pocket, and crossed to the window. The engine was still humming gently; the thudding noise was still going on; nothing seemed in any way different. No light came from the room below them, everything had worked better than he had dared to hope. He had only to lower Phyllis out of the window, and let her drop on to the flower-bed and then follow himself. After that it was easy.

“Come along, darling,” he said urgently, “I’m going to lower you out first—then I’ll follow. And once we’re down, you’ve got to trice up your skirts and run like a stag across the lawn till we’re under cover of those bushes. We aren’t quite out of the wood yet.”

They were not indeed. It was just as Phyllis let go, and he saw her pick herself up and dart across the lawn, that he heard a terrific uproar in the house below, and several men came pounding up the stairs. There were excited voices in the passage outside, and for a moment he hesitated, wondering what on earth had caused the sudden alarm. Then realising that this was no time for guessing acrostics, he vaulted over the window-sill himself, and lowered himself to the full extent of his arms. Then he too let go and dropped on to the flower-bed below. And it was as he was picking himself up, preparatory to following Phyllis—whom he could see faintly across the lawn waiting for him, that he heard someone in the house shout an order in a hoarse voice.

“Switch on the power at once, you damned fool; switch it on at once!”

CHAPTER XVI

In Which Things Happen at Maybrick HalL

Had the Italian come up five minutes sooner—a minute even—all would have been well. As it was, at the very moment when Drummond’s crashing blow took him on the point of the jaw with mathematical precision, another mathematical law began to operate elsewhere—the law of gravity. Something fell from a ceiling on to a table in the room below that ceiling, even as in days gone by an apple descended into the eye of the discoverer of that law.

The two men seated in the room below the ceiling in question failed to notice it at first. They were not interested in mathematics but they were interested in their conversation. One was the red-headed man of whom Phyllis had spoken: the other was a nondescript type of individual who looked like an ordinary middle-class professional man.

“Our organisation has, of course, grown immensely,” he was saying. “Our Socialist Sunday Schools, as you may know, were started twenty-five years ago. A very small beginning, my friend, but the result now would stagger you. And wishy-washy stuff was taught to start with too; now I think even you would be satisfied.”

Something splashed on the table beside him, but he took no notice.

“Blasphemy, of course—or rather what the Bourgeois call blasphemy—is instilled at once. We teach them to fear no God; we drive into them each week that the so-called God is merely a weapon of the Capitalist class to keep them quiet, and that if it had not that effect they would see what a machine-gun could do. And, Yulowski, it is having its effect. Get at the children has always been my motto—for they are the next generation. They can be moulded like plastic clay; their parents, so often, are set in a groove. We preach class hatred—and nothing but class hatred. We give them songs to sing—songs with a real catchy tune. There’s one very good one in which the chorus goes:

“Come, workers, sing a rebel song, a song of love and hate,

Of love unto the lowly and of hatred to the great.”

He paused to let the full effect of the sublime stanza sink in, and again something splashed on to the table. Yulowski nodded his head indifferently.

“I admit its value, my friend,” he remarked in a curious husky whisper. “And in your country I suppose you must go slowly. I fear my inclinations lead towards something more rapid and—er—drastic. Sooner or later the Bourgeois must be exterminated all the world over. On that we are agreed. Why not make it sooner as we did in Russia? The best treatment for any of the Capitalist class is a bayonet in the stomach and a rifle butt on the head.”

He smiled reminiscently, a thin, cruel smile, and once again there came an unheeded splash.

“I have heard it said,” remarked the other man, with the faintest hesitation, “that you yourself were responsible in Russia for a good many of them.”

The smile grew more pronounced and cruel. “It was I, my friend, who battered out the brains of two members of the Arch Tyrant’s family. Yes, I—I who sit here.” His voice rose to a sort of throaty shout and his eyes gleamed. “You can guess who I mean, can’t you?”

“Two girls,” muttered the other, recoiling a little in spite of himself.

“Two—” The foul epithet went unuttered; Yulowski was staring fascinated at the table. “Holy Mother! what’s that?”

His companion swung round, and every vestige of colour left his face. On the table was a big red pool, and even as he watched it there came another splash and a big drop fell into it.

“Blood!” he stammered, and his lips were shaking. “It’s blood.” And then he heard the Russian’s voice, low and tense.

“Look at the ceiling, man, look at the ceiling.”

He stared upwards and gave a little cry of horror. Slowly spreading over the white plaster was a great crimson stain, whilst from a crack in the middle the steady drip fell on to the table.

It was Yulowski who recovered himself first; he was more used to such sights than his companion.

“There’s been murder done,” he shouted hoarsely, and dashed out of the room. Doors were flung open, and half a dozen men rushed up the stairs after him. There was no doubt which the room was, and headed by Yulowski they crowded in—only to stop and stare at what lay on the floor.

“It’s the Greek,” muttered one of them. “He was guarding the girl. And someone has severed the main artery in his arm.”

With one accord they dashed across the passage to the room where Phyllis had been. In a second the door was broken in, and they saw the unconscious Italian lying on the bed.

“The Black Gang,” muttered someone fearfully, and Yulowski cursed him for a cowardly swine. And it was his hoarse voice that Drummond heard shouting for the power to be switched on, as he turned and darted across the lawn.

Completely ignorant of what had taken place, he was just as ignorant of what was meant by switching on the power. His one thought now was to get away with Phyllis. A start meant everything, and at the best he couldn’t hope for a long one. With his arm through hers he urged her forward, while behind him he heard a confused shouting which gradually died away under the peremptory orders of someone who seemed to be in command. And almost subconsciously he noticed that the thudding noise had ceased; only the faint humming of the engine broke the silence.

Suddenly in front of him he saw the fence which had caused him to wonder earlier in the evening. It was just the same in this part as it had been in the other, but he wasn’t concerned with speculations about it now. The only thing he was thankful for was that it was easy to get through.

He was not five feet from it, when it happened—the amazing and at the moment inexplicable thing. For months after he used to wake in the night and lie sweating with horror at the nearness of the escape. For it would have been Phyllis who would have gone through first; it would have been Phyllis, who—But it did happen—just in time.

He saw a dark shape dart across the open towards the fence, an animal carrying something in its mouth. It reached the fence, and the next instant it bounded an incredible height in the air, only to fall backwards on to the ground and lie motionless almost at Drummond’s feet. It was so utterly unexpected that he paused instinctively and stared at it. It was a fox, and the fowl it had been carrying lay a yard away. It lay there rigid and motionless, and completely bewildered he bent and touched it, only to draw back his hand as if he’d been stung. A sharp stabbing pain shot up his arm, as if he’d had an electric shock—and suddenly he understood, and with a cry of fear he dragged Phyllis back just in time.

The brain moves rapidly at times; the inherent connection of things takes place in a flash. And the words he had used to the Italian, “E pericoloso sporgersi,” took him back to Switzerland, where the phrase is written on every railway carriage. And in Switzerland, you may see those heavy steel pylons with curved pointed hooks to prevent people climbing up, and red bands painted with the words ‘Danger de mort’. Live wires there are at the top, carried on insulators—even as the fence wires were carried through insulators in the uprights.

Danger de mort. And the fox had been electrocuted. That was what the man had meant by shouting for the power to be switched on. And as he stood there still clutching Phyllis’s arm, and shaken for the moment out of his usual calm, there came from the direction of the house, the deep-throated baying of a big hound.

“What is it, Hugh?” said Phyllis in an agonised whisper. With terrified eyes she was staring at the body of the fox, stiff and rigid in death, and with its jaws parted in a hideous snarl.

And again there came from the direction of the house a deep-throated bay.

Then suddenly she realised that her husband was speaking—quietly, insistently. Only too well did he know the danger: only too well did he know that never before in his life had the situation been so tight. But no sign of it showed on his face: not a trace of indecision appeared in his voice. The position was desperate, the remedy must be desperate too.

“We can’t climb through the fence, dear,” he was saying calmly. “You see they’ve switched an electric current through the wires, and if you touch one you’ll be electrocuted. Also they seem to have turned an unpleasant little animal into the garden, so we can’t stay here. At least—you can’t. So I’m going to throw you over the top.”

In an agony of fear she clung to him for a moment: then as she saw his quiet, set face she pulled herself together and smiled. There was no time for argument now: there was no time for anything except instant action. And being a thoroughbred, she was not going to hinder him by any weakness on her part. Of fear for herself she felt no trace: her faith and trust in her husband was absolute. And so she stood there silently waiting while he measured height and distance with his eye.

Of his ability to get her over he felt no doubt: but when a mistake means death to the woman he loves a man does not take risks. “Come, dear,” he said after a moment’s pause. “Put your knees close up to your chin, and try to keep like a ball until you feel yourself falling.”

She doubled herself up and he picked her up. One hand held both her feet—the other gripped the waistband at the back of her skirt. Once he lifted her above his head to the full extent of his arms to free his muscles: then he took a little run and threw her up and forward with all his strength. And she cleared the top strand by two feet.…

She landed unhurt in some bushes, and when she had scrambled to her feet she realised he was speaking again—imperatively, urgently. “Get the gang, darling: somehow or other get the gang. I’ll try and get you a good start. But—hurry.”

The next instant he had disappeared into the undergrowth, and only just in time. A huge hound running mute had dashed into the clearing where a second or two before they had been standing, and was cautiously approaching the dead fox. She stared at it fascinated, and then with a little cry of terror she pulled herself together and ran. She had forgotten the fence that was between them: for the moment she had forgotten everything except this huge brute that looked the size of a calf. And the hound, seeing the flutter of her dress, forgot things too. A dead fox could wait, a living human was better fun by far. He bounded forward: gave one agonised roar as he hit the fence, and turning a complete somersault lay still. And as Phyllis stumbled blindly on, she suddenly heard Hugh’s cheerful voice from the darkness behind her, apparently addressing the world at large.

“Roll up! roll up! roll up! one fox: one Pomeranian: one fowl. No charge for admittance. Visitors are requested not to touch the exhibits.”

And then loud and clear the hoot of an owl thrice repeated. It was a message for her, she knew—not a senseless piece of bravado: a message to tell her that he was all right. But the call at the end was the urgent call of the gang, and though he was safe at the moment she knew there was no time to be lost. And, with a little prayer that she would choose the right direction, she broke into the steady run of the girl who beagles when she goes beagling, and doesn’t sit on the top of a hill and watch. Hugh had never let her down yet: it was her turn now.

To what extent it was her turn, perhaps it was as well that she did not realise. Even Drummond, hidden in the undergrowth just by the clearing where lay the body of the hound, was ignorant of the nature of the odds against him. He had not the slightest idea how many men there were in the house—and while it remained dark he didn’t much care. In the dark he felt confident of dealing with any number, or at any rate of eluding them. It was the thing of all others that his soul loved—that grim fighting at night, when a man looks like a trunk of a tree, and the trunk of a tree looks like a man. It was in that that he was unequalled—superb: and the inmates of Maybrick Hall would have been well advised to have stayed their hands till the light came. Then the position, in military parlance, could have been taken without loss. An unarmed man is helpless when he can be seen.

But since the inmates were ignorant of what they were up against, they somewhat foolishly decided on instant action. They came streaming across in a body in the track of the dead hound, and by so doing they played straight into the hands of the man who crouched in the shadows close by them. He listened for one moment to the babel of tongues of every nationality, and decided that a little more English might adjust the average. So without a sound he faded away from his hiding-place, and emerged from the undergrowth ten yards nearer the house. Then with his collar turned up, and his shoulders hunched together, he joined the group. And a man-eating tiger in their midst would have been a safer addition to the party.

Certain it is that the next quarter of an hour proved a period of such terror for the inmates of Maybrick Hall that at the end of that time they reassembled at the house and flatly refused to budge, despite the threats and curses of the red-headed Russian. For Drummond had heard the original orders—to form a line of beaters and shoot on sight—and had smiled gently to himself in the darkness. There is always an element of humour in stalking the stalkers, and when the line formed up at intervals of two or three yards the quarry was behind it. Moreover the quarry was angry, with the cold, steady rage of a powerful man who realises exactly what he is up against. Shoot on sight was the order, and Drummond accepted the terms.

Slowly the line of shadowy men moved forward through the undergrowth, and creeping behind them came the man they were out to kill. And gradually he edged nearer and nearer to the wire fence, until he was following the outside man of the line. He saw him pause for a moment peering round a bush, with his revolver ready in his hand. And then the terror started. The beater next to the victim had a fleeting vision of a huge black object springing through the darkness: a muttered curse and a gurgle—and a dreadful strangled scream. And the outside beater was no more. He had been hurled against the live-wire fence as if he was a child—and the exhibits had been increased by one.

With a hoarse cry of fear the man who had been next to him turned and ran towards the house, only to find himself seized from behind with a grip of iron. It was Franz, and as he stared into the face of the man whom he knew to be drowned he gave a squawk like a trapped rabbit. But there was nothing ghostly about the hands round his neck, and as he felt himself being rushed towards the fence of death he began to struggle furiously. But Drummond was mad at the moment, and though Franz was a powerful man he might have saved himself the trouble. A terrific blow hit him on the face, and with a grunt he fell back against the fence. The exhibits were increased by two, and through the darkness rang a cheerful laugh, followed by the hooting of an owl.

And now the line was broken, and men were crashing about in all directions shouting hoarsely. Experts of the Red Terror they might be—butcherers of women and children whose sole fault lay in the fact that they washed: that night they found themselves up against a terror far worse than even their victims had ever experienced. For they, poor wretches, knew what was coming: the men who ran shouting through the undergrowth did not. Here, there, and everywhere they heard the hooting of an owl: they formed into bunches of twos and threes for protection, they blazed away with compressed-air revolvers at harmless rhododendron bushes, and sometimes at their own pals. And every now and then a great black figure would leap silently out of the darkness on to some straggler: there would be a bellow of fear and pain—followed by an ominous silence, which was broken a second or two later by the hooting of an owl twenty yards away.

Occasionally they saw him—a dim, fleeting shadow, and once four of them fired at him simultaneously. But luck was with him, and though two holes were drilled in his coat Drummond was not hit himself. His quiet laugh came suddenly from behind them, and even as they swung round cursing, one of them collapsed choking with a bullet through his chest. It was the first time he had used his first victim’s revolver, but the target was too tempting to be let off. And at last they could stand it no longer. They had no idea how many men they were up against, and a complete panic set in. With one accord they rushed for the house, and a mocking peal of laughter followed them as they ran. For Drummond had gambled on that, and he had won. In the position of knowing that every man was his enemy, he had been at an advantage over the others, who were never sure who was a friend. For a while he listened to the flood of lurid blasphemy which came from the open windows of the room into which they had crowded: then he dodged along the bushes and looked in. For a moment he was sorely tempted to fire: in fact he went so far as to draw a bead on the red-headed Russian, who was gesticulating furiously. Then his hand dropped to his side: shooting into the brown was not his idea of the game. And at the same moment, the lights were switched off in the room: it had evidently struck someone inside that the position was a trifle insecure. The talking ceased abruptly, and with a faint grin on his face Drummond swung round and vanished into the deepest part of the undergrowth. It was necessary to do some thinking.

He had got the start he wanted for Phyllis, which was all to the good, but he was as far as ever himself from getting out. There was still the fence to be negotiated if he was to escape, and common sense told him that there wasn’t the remotest chance of the current having been switched off. And incidentally it didn’t much matter whether it had been or not, since the only way of finding out for certain was to touch one of the wires—a thing he had not the faintest intention of doing. He could still hear the steady thrumming of the engine, and so the fence was out of the question.

Delving into memories of the past, when he had sat at the feet of the stinks master at his school, he tried to remember some of the gems of wisdom, anent electricity, which had fallen from his lips. But since his sole occupation during such lectures had been the surreptitious manufacture of sulphuretted hydrogen from a retort concealed below his desk, he finally gave up the attempt in despair. One thing was certain; the fence must be continuous. From knowledge gained from the sparking plugs of his car, he knew that a break in the circuit was fatal. Therefore, there could be no break in the fence which encircled the house. And if that was so—how about the drive? How did the drive pass through the fence? There must be a break there, or something capable of forming a break. A motor-car will not go over an eight-foot fence, and he had seen the wheel tracks of a car quite clearly on the drive earlier in the evening.

Yes—he would try the gate. It was imperative to get away, and that as soon as possible. When dawn came, and the first faint streaks were already beginning to show in the east, he realised that he would be at a hopeless disadvantage. Moreover the absolute silence which now reigned after the turmoil and shouting of the last few minutes struck him as ominous. And Drummond was far too clever a man to underrate his opponents. The panic had been but a temporary affair; and the panic was now over.

He began to thread his way swiftly and silently in the direction of the drive. Not for a second did he relax his caution, though he felt tolerably certain that all his opponents were still inside the house. Only too well did he know that the greatest danger often lies when things seem safest. But he reached the edge of the drive without incident, and started to skirt along it away from the house. At last he saw the gate, and turned deeper into the undergrowth. He wanted to examine it at leisure, before making up his mind as to what he would do. As far as he could see from the outline he could make out against the road, it was an ordinary heavy wooden gate, such as may be seen frequently at the entrance to small country houses.

A tiny lodge lay on one side: the usual uncared-for undergrowth on the other. He could see the wire fence coming to the gatepost on each side; he could see that the strands were bunched together at the gate as telegraph wires are bunched when they pass underneath a bridge on a railway line. And it was while he was cogitating on the matter that he saw a man approaching from the other side. He came up to the gate, climbed over it with the utmost nonchalance, and turned into the little lodge. And Hugh noticed that as he climbed he was careful to avoid the second horizontal from the ground. At last it seemed to him that everything was clear. Contact was made through the latch; the current passed along the wires which were laid on the top of the second horizontal from the ground, and thence to the continuation of the fence on the other side. Anyway, whatever the electrical device, if this man could climb the gate in safety—so could he. There was a risk—a grave risk. It meant going out into the open; it meant exposing himself for a considerable period. But every moment he delayed the light grew better, and the risk became worse. And it was either that or waiting in the garden till daylight made his escape impossible. And still he hung back. Men who knew Hugh Drummond well often said that he had a strange sixth sense which enabled him to anticipate danger, when to others with him everything seemed perfectly safe. Well—nigh fantastic stories were told of him by men who had accompanied him on those unofficial patrols he had carried out in No Man’s Land whenever his battalion was in the line, and frequently when it wasn’t. And as he stood there motionless as a statue, with only the ceaseless movement of his eyes to show his strained attention, that sixth sense of his warned him, and continued warning him insistently. There was danger: he felt it, he knew it—though where it lay he couldn’t tell.

And then suddenly he again saw a man approaching from the other side—a man who climbed the gate with the utmost nonchalance and turned into the little lodge. He, too, carefully avoided the second horizontal from the ground, but Drummond was not paying any attention to the gate now. Once again his sixth sense had saved him, for it was the same man who had climbed over the first time. And why should a man adopt such a peculiar form of amusement, unless he was deliberately acting as a decoy? He had disappeared into the lodge, only to leave it again by a back entrance—and in an instant the whole thing was clear. They had gambled on his going to the gate: they had gambled on his having a dart for it when he saw the gate was safe to climb. And he smiled grimly when he realised how nearly they had won their bet.

Suddenly his eyes riveted themselves on the little hedge in front of the lodge. Something had stirred there: a twig had snapped. And the smile grew more grim as he stared at the shadow. Up to date it was the gate that had occupied his attention—now he saw that the hedge was alive with men. And after a while he began to shake gently with laughter. The idea of the perspiring sportsman trotting in and out of the back door, to show off his particular line in gates, while a grim bunch of bandits lay on their stomachs in the dew, hoping for the best, appealed to his sense of humour. For the moment the fact that he was now hopelessly trapped did not trouble him: his whole soul went out to the painstaking gate-hopper. If only he would do it again—that was his one prayer. And sure enough about five minutes later he hove in sight again, stepping merrily and brightly along the road.

His nonchalance was superb: he even hummed gently to show his complete disdain for gates in general and this one in particular. And then Drummond plugged him through the leg. He felt that it would have been a crime to end the career of such a bright disposition: so he plugged him through the fleshy part of the leg. And the man’s howl of pain and Drummond’s raucous bellow of laughter broke the silence simultaneously.

Not the least merry interlude, he reflected, in an evening devoted to fun and games, as he took cover rapidly behind a big tree. For bullets were whistling through the undergrowth in all directions, as the men who had been lying under cover of the hedge rose and let fly. And then quite abruptly the shooting died away, and Drummond became aware that a car was approaching. The headlights were throwing fantastic shadows through the bushes, and outlined against the glare he could see the figures of his opponents. Now was his chance, and with the quickness of the born soldier he acted on it. If the car was to come in they must open the gate; and since nothing blinds anyone so completely as the dazzle of strong headlights, he might be able to slip out unseen, just after the car had passed through. He skirted rapidly to one side out of the direct beam: then he made his way towards the lodge, keeping well out on the flank. And from a concealed position under the cover of the little house he awaited developments.

The man he had shot through the leg was unceremoniously bundled on to the grass beside the drive, whilst another man climbed the gate and went up to the car, which had come to a standstill ten yards or so away. Drummond heard the sound of a window being lowered, and an excited conversation: then the man who had approached the car stepped back again into the glare of the headlights.

“Open the gate,” he said curtly, and there was a sardonic grin on his face.

And now Drummond was waiting tensely. If he was to bring it off it would be a matter of seconds and half-seconds. Little by little he edged nearer to the drive, as a man with what appeared to be a huge glove on his hand approached the gate. There was a bright flash as he pressed down the catch and the circuit was broken, and at the same moment the headlights on the car went out, while an inside light was switched on.

And Drummond stopped dead—frozen in his tracks. The car was moving forward slowly, and he could see the people inside clearly. One was Count Zadowa—alias Mr. Atkinson; one was the Reverend Theodosius Longmoor. But the other—and it was the third person on whom his eyes were fixed with a hopeless feeling of impotent rage—the other was Phyllis herself. The two men were holding her in front of them, so that to fire was an impossibility, and Peterson was smiling out of the window with the utmost benevolence. Then they were past him, and he watched the red tail-lamp disappearing up the drive, while the gate was shut behind them. Another flashing spark stabbed the darkness; the circuit was complete again. And with a feeling of sick, helpless fury, Drummond realised that it had all been useless. H was exactly where he had been half an hour before, with the vital difference that the events of the last half-hour could not be repeated. He was caught: it was the finish. Somehow or other the poor girl must have blundered right into the car, and probably asked the occupants for help. She wouldn’t have known who they were; she’d just stopped the car on spec, and…He shook his fists impotently, and at that moment he heard a loud, powerful voice which he recognised at once speaking from the direction of the house.

“Unless Captain Drummond comes into the house within five minutes, I shall personally kill Mrs. Drummond.” And the voice was the voice of Carl Peterson.

CHAPTER XVII

In Which a Murderer Is Murdered at Maybrick Hall

“You appear to have a wonderful faculty for remaining alive, my young friend,” remarked Peterson two minutes later, gazing benevolently at Drummond over his clerical collar.

“Principally, Theo, my pet, because you’ve got such a wonderful faculty for making bloomers,” answered Drummond affably.

No trace of the impotent rage he had given way to in the garden showed in his face as he spoke; and yet, in all conscience, the situation was desperate enough. He was unarmed—his revolver had been removed from him as he entered the house—and behind his chair stood two men, each with the muzzle of a gun an inch off his neck. In another corner sat Phyllis, and behind her stood an armed man also. Every now and then his eyes stole round to her, and once he smiled reassuringly—an assurance he was far from feeling. But principally his eyes were fixed on the three men who were sitting at the table opposite him. In the centre was Carl Peterson, smoking the inevitable cigar; and, one on each side of him, sat Count Zadowa and the red-headed Russian Yulowski.

“You can’t imagine the pleasant surprise it gave me,” Peterson continued gently, “when your charming wife hailed my car. So unexpected: so delightful. And when I realised that you were running about in our grounds here instead of being drowned as that fool No. 10 told me over the telephone…By the way, where is No. 10?”

He turned snarling on the Russian, but it was one of the men behind Drummond’s chair who answered.

“He’s dead. This guy threw him on the live wires.”

“Is that little Franz?” murmured Hugh Drummond, lighting a cigarette. “Yes—I regret to state that he and I had words, and my impression is that he has passed away. Do you mind standing a little farther away?” he continued, addressing the men behind him. “You’re tickling the back of my neck, and it makes me go all goosey.”

“Do you mean to say,” said the Russian in his harsh voice, “that it was you and only you outside there?”

“You have guessed it, Adolph,” answered Drummond, speaking mechanically. It had seemed to him, suddenly, that, unseen by the others, Phyllis was trying to convey some message. “Alone I did it, to say nothing of that squib-faced bird upstairs with the long arms. In fact, without wishing to exaggerate, I think the total bag is five—with dear old ‘pericoloso sporgersi’ as an ‘also ran.’”

What was she trying to make him understand? And then suddenly she began to laugh hysterically, and he half rose from his seat, only to sit down again abruptly as he felt the cold ring of a revolver pressed into the nape of his neck.

“Three and two make five,” said Phyllis, half laughing and half crying, “and one makes six. I worked it out tonight, and it all came right.”

She went on aimlessly for a while in the same strain, till the Russian swung round on her with a snarl, and told her to shut her mouth. He was talking in low tones to Peterson, and, with one searching look at Hugh, she relapsed into silence. There was no hysteria in that look, and his heart began to pound suddenly in his excitement. For 3256 Mayfair was the number of Peter Darrell’s telephone, and she could only mean one thing—that she had got through to Peter before she stopped the car. And if that was so there was still hope, if only he could gain time. Time was the essential factor: time he must have somehow. And how was he to get it? Not by the quiver of an eyelid did the expression on his face change: he still smoked placidly on, looking with resigned boredom at the three men who were now conferring earnestly together. But his mind was racing madly, as he turned things over this way and that. Time: he must gain time.

If his supposition was right, Carl Peterson was in ignorance of the fact that a message had been got through. And in that lay the only chance. Just as in Bridge there comes a time when to win the game one must place a certain card with one of the opponents; and play accordingly—so that card must be placed in Peterson’s hand. If the placing has been done correctly, you take your only chance of winning: if the placing is wrong, you lose anyway. And so, starting with that as a foundation, he tried to work out the play of the hand. Peter Darrell knew, and Peterson was in ignorance of the fact.

First—how long did he want? Two hours at least: three if possible. To round up all the gang and get cars in the middle of the night would take time—two hours at the very least. Secondly—and there was the crux—how was he going to get such a respite? For this time he could not hope for another mistake. It was the end, and he knew it.

No trace of mercy showed in the faces of the three men opposite him. He caught occasional remarks, and after a while he realised what the matter under discussion was. Evidently the redheaded Russian was in favour of killing him violently, and at once—and it was Count Zadowa who was advocating caution, while Peterson sat between them listening impassively, with his eyes fixed on Drummond.

“Bayonet the pair of them,” snarled Yulowski at length, as if tired of arguing the point. “I’ll do the job if you’re too squeamish, and will bury ’em both with the rest of the bodies in the grounds somewhere. Who’s to know: who’s to find out?”

But Count Zadowa shook his head vigorously. “That’s just where you’re wrong, my friend. No one would see you do it more willingly than I—but you’ve got to remember the rest of his gang.”

His voice died away to a whisper, and Drummond could only catch disjointed fragments. “I know the Black Gang,” Zadowa was saying. “You don’t. And they know me.” Then he heard the word “accident” repeated several times, and at length Yulowski shrugged his shoulders and leaned back in his chair.

“Have it your own way,” he remarked. “I don’t care how they’re killed, as long as they are killed. If you think it’s necessary to pretend there has been an accident, we’ll have an accident. The only point is what sort of an accident.”

But Count Zadowa had apparently not got as far as that, and relapsed into silence. His powers of imagination were not sufficiently great to supply the necessary details, and it was left to Carl Peterson to decide matters.

“Nothing is easier,” he remarked suavely, and his eyes were still fixed on Drummond. “We are discussing, my young friend,” he continued, raising his voice slightly, “the best way of getting rid of you and your charming wife. I regret that she must share your fate, but I see no way out of it. To keep her permanently about the premises would be too great an inconvenience; and since we can’t let her go without involving ourselves in unpleasant notoriety, I fear—as I said—that she must join you. My friend Yulowski wishes to bayonet you both, and bury you in the grounds. He has done a lot of that sort of thing in his time, and I believe I am right in stating that his hand has not lost its cunning since leaving Russia. A little out of practice, perhaps: but the result is the same. On the other hand, Count Zadowa, whom you know of old, quite rightly points out that there are the members of your ridiculous gang, who know about him, and might very easily find out about me. And when in a few days your motor-car is hoisted out of the water, and is traced by the registration number as being yours, he fears that not only may he find things very awkward, but that a certain amount of unenviable and undesirable limelight may be thrown on this part of the country, and incidentally on this house. You follow our difficulties so far?”

“With the utmost clarity, Theo,” answered Drummond pleasantly.

“It’s always such a pleasure talking to you,” continued Peterson. “You’re so unexpectedly quick on the uptake. Well then—to proceed. Though it will not interfere with me personally—as I leave England in four hours—it will interfere considerably with my plans if the police come poking their noses into this house. We like to hide our light under a bushel, Captain Drummond: we prefer to do our little bit unnoticed. So I feel sure that you will be only too ready to help us in any way you can, and fall in with my suggestion for your decease with goodwill. I have a very warm regard for you in so many ways, and I should hate to think that there was any bad blood between us at the end.”

“Carl—my pet—you’ll make me cry in a minute,” said Drummond quietly. To all outward appearances he was in the same mocking vein as his principal enemy, but a little pulse was beginning to hammer in his throat, and his mouth felt strangely dry. He knew he was being played with as a mouse is played with by a cat, and it was all he could do to stop himself from demanding outright to know what was coming. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Phyllis sitting very white and still, but he didn’t dare to look at her direct for fear he might break down. And then, still in the same tone, Peterson went on:

“I knew I could rely on you to meet me. I shall tell Irma when I see her, and she will be very touched by your kindness, Drummond—very touched. But to come back to the point. As my friend Zadowa most justly observed—we want an accident: a real good bona-fide accident, which will relieve the world of your presence and will bring no scorching glare of publicity upon this house or any of my confreres who remain in England. You may recall that that was my original idea, only you seem in the most extraordinary way to have escaped from being drowned. Still, as far as it goes, we have a very good foundation to build on. Your car—duly perceived by the gentleman of limited intelligence who works the bridge—went over the edge. You were duly perceived in it. Strangely enough, his eyesight must have been defective—or else he was so flustered by your amazing action that he was incapable of noticing everything at such a moment. Because he actually failed to see that your charming wife was seated beside you. In the moment of panic when she realised you had fainted, she leant forward—doubtless to try and throw out the clutch. Yes “—his eyes, cold and expressionless, were turned momentarily on Phyllis—”I think that is what she must have done. That accounts for the not very intelligent gate-opener failing to see her. But that she was there is certain. Because, Captain Drummond, both bodies will be recovered from the river the day after tomorrow, shall we say? some two or three miles downstream.”

“Your efforts at drowning have not been vastly successful up to date, Carl, have they?” said Drummond genially. “Do I understand that we are both to be taken out and held under the water, or are you going to use the bath here? That is to say “—and he glanced pointedly at Yulowski—”if such a commodity exists. Or are you again going to experiment with that dope of yours?”

“Wrong on all counts,” answered Peterson. “You are far too large and strong, my dear Drummond, to be drowned by such rudimentary methods. And it is more than likely that even if we attempted to do it, the fact that you struggled would be revealed in a post-mortem examination. And that would spoil everything, wouldn’t it? No longer would it appear to be an accident: Count Zadowa’s masterly argument would all have been wasted. Why—I might as well agree at once to Yulowski’s suggestion of the bayonet. Pray give me credit, my dear young friend, for a little more brains than that.”

“I do, Theo: I assure you I do,” said Drummond earnestly. “It’s only my terrible fear that you’ll again go and make a hash of it that inspires my remarks.”

“Thank you a thousand times,” murmured the clergyman gently. He was leaning forward, his elbows on the table—and for the first time Drummond understood something of the diabolical hatred which Peterson felt for him. He had never shown it before: he was far too big a man ever to betray his feeling unnecessarily. But now, as he sat facing him, gently rubbing his big white hands together, Drummond understood.

“Thank you a thousand times,” he repeated in the same gentle voice. “And since you are so concerned about the matter, I will tell you my plan in some detail. I need hardly say that any suggestions you make on any points that may strike you will receive my most careful attention. When the car crashed into the water it carried you and your wife with it. We have got as far as that, haven’t we? As it plunged downwards you—still unconscious from your dreadful and sudden fainting fit—were hurled out. Your wife, in a magnificent endeavour to save you, rose in her seat and was hurled out too. I think we can safely say that, don’t you, seeing that the not too intelligent gatekeeper could not have seen the car as it fell?”

“Go on,” said Drummond quietly.

“Interested, I hope,” murmured Peterson. “But don’t hesitate to stop me if anything is at all obscure. I feel that you have a perfect right to suggest any small alterations you like. Well—to proceed. You were both hurled out as the car plunged into the water, and somewhat naturally you were both thrown forward. Head foremost, you will note, Drummond, you left the car—and your heads struck the stonework of the opposite pier with sickening force, just before you reached the water. In fact, a marked feature of the case, when this dreadful accident is reported in the papers, will be the force with which you both struck that pier. Your two heads were terribly battered. In fact, I have but little doubt that the coroner will decide, when your bodies are recovered some few miles downstream—that you were not in reality drowned, but that the terrific impact on the stone pier killed you instantly. Do you think it’s sound up to date?”

“I think it’s damned unsound,” remarked Drummond languidly. “If you propose to take me and endeavour to make my head impinge on a stone wall, someone is going to get a thick ear. Besides, the bridge isn’t open, and even your pal, the not too intelligent gate-keeper, might stick in his toes a bit. Of course “—he added hopefully—”you might say you were doing it for the movies. Tell him you’re Charlie Chaplin, but that you dressed in such a hurry you’ve forgotten your moustache.”

The red-headed Russian was snarling venomously. “Let me get at him, chief. He won’t try being funny again.”

“No. I shall be too occupied sprinkling myself with insect powder,” retorted Drummond vulgarly. “Why, you lousy brute, if you got at me, as you call it, and there wasn’t half a battalion of infantry holding guns in my head, I’d break your neck with one hand strapped behind my back.”

The Russian half rose to his feet, his teeth bared, and Peterson pulled him back into his chair.

“You’ll get your chance in a moment or two, Yulowski,” he remarked savagely. Then he turned once more on Drummond, and the genial look had vanished from his face. “Doubtless your humour appeals to some people; it does not to me. Moreover, I am in rather a hurry. I do not propose, Captain Drummond, to take you to the bridge and endeavour to make your head impinge on a wall, as you call it. There is another far simpler method of producing the same result. The impinging will take place in this house. As a soldier you should know the result of a blow over the head with the butt of a rifle. And I can assure you that there will be no bungling this time. Yulowski is an expert in such matters, and I shall stay personally to see that it is done. I think we can give a very creditable imitation of what would have happened had my little story been true, and tomorrow night—I see that it is getting a little too light now for the purpose—your two bodies will be carried over and dropped in the river. The length of time you will both have been dead will be quite correct, within an hour or so—and everything will be most satisfactory for all concerned.”

Drummond passed his tongue over his lips, and despite himself his voice shook a little. “Am I to understand,” he said after a moment, “that you propose to let that man butcher us here—in this house—with a rifle?”

“Just so,” answered Peterson. “That is exactly what you are to understand.”

“You are going to let him bash my wife over the head with a rifle butt?”

“I am going to order him to do so,” said Peterson mildly. “And very shortly at that. We must not have any mistakes over the length of time you’ve both been dead; I confess it sounds drastic, but I can assure you it will be quite sudden. Yulowski, as I told you, is an expert. He had a lot of experience in Russia.”

“You inhuman devil!” muttered Drummond dazedly. “You can do what you like to me, but for Heaven’s sake let her off.”

He was staring fascinated at the Russian, who had risen and crossed to a cupboard in the wall. There was something almost maniacal in the look on his face—the look of a savage, brute beast, confronted with the prey it desires.

“Impossible, my dear young friend,” murmured Peterson regretfully. “It affords me no pleasure to have her killed, but I have no alternative. To see you dead, I would cross two continents,” he snarled suddenly, “but “—and his voice became normal again—”only bitter necessity compels me to adopt such measures with Phyllis. You see, she knows too much.” He whispered in Count Zadowa’s ear, who rose and left the room, to return shortly with half a dozen more men.

“Yes, she knows too much, and so I fear I cannot let her off. She would be able to tell such a lot of most inconvenient things to the police. This house is so admirably adapted for certain of our activities that it would be a world of pities to draw undesirable attention to it. Especially now that Count Zadowa has been compelled to leave his own office, owing entirely to your reprehensible curiosity.”

But Drummond was paying no attention to him. His eyes were fixed on the Russian, who had come back slowly into the centre of the room, carrying a rifle in his hand. It was an ordinary Russian service rifle, and a bayonet was fixed in position. Yulowski handled it lovingly, as he stood beside Peterson—and suddenly Count Zadowa turned white and began to tremble. To throw a bomb into a room and run for your life is one thing: to sit at a table in cold blood and witness a double execution is another. Even Peterson’s iron nerves seemed a little shaken, and his hand trembled as he removed his cigar. But there was no sign of relenting on his face; no sign of faltering in his voice as he spoke to the men who had just come into the room.

“In the interests of us all,” he remarked steadily, “I have decided that it is necessary to kill both the prisoners.” He made a sign, and Drummond, sitting almost paralysed in his chair, found both his arms gripped, with three men hanging on to each.

“The man,” continued Peterson, “has been interfering with our work in England—the work of the Red International. He is the leader of the Black Gang, as you probably know; and as you probably do not know, it is he and his gang who have been responsible for the mysterious disappearance of some of our most trusted workers. Therefore with regard to him there can be no second thought: he deserves death, and he must die. With regard to the woman, the case is a little different. She has done us no active harm—but she is a member of the bourgeois class, and she in his wife. Moreover she knows too much. And so it becomes necessary that she should die too. The reason why I am adopting this method of putting them both out of the way, is—as I have already explained to all save you newcomers—that, when the bodies are discovered, the cause of death will appear to be accidental. They will both of them seem to the police to have gone over the edge of the bridge in the car, and hit their heads on the pier opposite. And tomorrow night you will carry the bodies to the river and drop them in. And that “—he resumed his cigar—”I think is all.”

Yulowski handled his rifle lovingly, and once again his teeth showed in a wolfish grin. “Which shall I take first, chief?” he said carelessly.

“The point is immaterial,” returned Peterson. “I think perhaps the woman.”

Drummond tried to speak and failed. His tongue was clinging to the roof of his mouth: everything in the room was dancing before his eyes. Dimly he saw the red-headed brute Yulowski swinging his rifle to test it: dimly he saw Phyllis sitting bolt upright, with a calm, scornful expression on her face, while two men held her by the arms so that she would not move. And suddenly he croaked horribly.

Then he saw Yulowski put down the rifle and listen intently for a moment.

“What’s the matter?” snapped Peterson irritably.

“Do you hear the different note to that dynamo?” said Yulowski.

“What the hell’s that got to do with it?” roared Peterson. “Get on with it, damn you—and attend to the dynamo afterwards.”

Yulowski nodded, and picked up his rifle again. “The last time,” he said, turning on Drummond with a dreadful look of evil in his face, “that this rifle was used by me was in a cellar in Russia—on even more exalted people than you. I brought it especially with me as a memento, never thinking I should have the pleasure of using it again.”

He swung it over his head, and Drummond shut his eyes—to open them again a moment later, as the door was flung open and a man distraught with terror dashed in.

“The Black Gang!” he shouted wildly. “Hundreds of them—all round the house. They’ve cut the wires.”

With a fearful curse Peterson leaped to his feet, and the men holding Drummond, dumbfounded at the sudden turning of the tables, let go his arms. Yulowski stood staring foolishly at the door, and what happened then was so quick that none of the stupefied onlookers raised a finger to prevent it.

With the howl of an enraged beast, Drummond hurled himself on the Russian—blind mad with fury. And when two seconds later a dozen black-cowled, black-hooded figures came swarming in through the door, for one instant they paused in sheer horror.

Pinned to the wall with his own bayonet which stuck out six inches beyond his back, was a red-headed, red-bearded man gibbering horribly in a strange language; whilst creeping towards a benevolent-looking clergyman, who crouched in a corner, was a man they scarce recognised as their leader, so appalling was the look of malignant fury on his face.

Carl Peterson was no coward. In the world in which he moved, there were many strange stories told of his iron nerve and his complete disregard of danger. Moreover Nature had endowed him with physical strength far above the average. But now, for perhaps the first time in his life, he knew the meaning of stark, abject terror.

The sinister men in black—members of that very gang he had come over to England to destroy—seemed to fill the room. Silently, as if they had been drilled to it, they disarmed everyone: then they stood round the walls—waiting. No one spoke: only the horrible imprecations of the dying Russian broke the silence, as he strove feebly to pull out the rifle and bayonet from his chest, which had fixed him to the wall as a dead butterfly is fixed in a collection with a pin.

Peterson had a fleeting vision of a girl with white face and wide, staring eyes, beside whom were standing two of the motionless black figures as guards—the girl whom he had just sentenced to a dreadful and horrible death, and then his eyes came back again as if fascinated to the man who was coming towards him. He tried to shrink farther into his corner, plucking with nerveless fingers at his clerical collar—while the sweat poured off his face in a stream. For there was no mercy in Hugh Drummond’s eyes: no mercy in the great arms that hung loosely forward. And Peterson realised he deserved none.

And then it came. No word was spoken—Drummond was beyond speech. His hands shot out and Peterson felt himself drawn relentlessly towards the man he had planned to kill, not two minutes before. It was his turn now to wonder desperately if it was some hideous nightmare, even while he struggled impotently in his final frenzy with a man whose strength seemed equal to the strength of ten. He was choking: the grip on his throat was not human in its ferocity. There was a great roaring in his ears, and suddenly he ceased to struggle. The glare in Drummond’s eyes hypnotised him, and for the only time in his life he gave up hope.

The room was spinning round: the silent black figures, the dying Yulowski, the girl—all seemed merged in one vast jumble of colour growing darker and darker, out of which one thing and one thing only stood out clear and distinct on his dying consciousness—the blazing eyes of the man who was throttling him. And then, as he felt himself sinking into utter blackness, some dim sense less paralysed than the rest seemed to tell him that a change had taken place in the room. Something new had come into that whirling nightmare that spun round him: dimly he heard a voice—loud and agonised—a voice he recognised. It was a woman’s voice, and after a while the grip on his throat relaxed. He staggered back against the wall gasping and spluttering, and gradually the room ceased to whirl round—the iron bands ceased to press upon his heart and lungs.

It was Irma who stood there: Irma whose piteous cry had pierced through to his brain: Irma who had caused those awful hands to relax their grip just before it was too late. Little by little everything steadied down: he found he could see again—could hear. He still crouched shaking against the wall, but he had got a respite anyway—a breathing-space. And that was all that mattered for the moment—that and the fact that the madness was gone from Hugh Drummond’s eyes.

The black figures were still standing there motionless round the walls; the Russian was lolling forward—dead; Phyllis was lying back in her chair unconscious. But Peterson had eyes for none of these things: Count Zadowa shivering in a corner—the huddled group of his own mea standing in the centre of the room he passed by without a glance. It was on Drummond his gaze was fixed: Drummond, who stood facing Irma with an almost dazed expression on his face, whilst she pleaded with him in an agony of supplication.

“He ordered that man to brain my wife with a rifle butt,” said Drummond hoarsely. “And yet you ask for mercy.”

He passed his hand two or three times over his forehead as Irma once again broke into wild pleadings; then he turned and stared at Peterson. She stopped at last, and still he stared at the gasping clergyman as if making up his mind. And, in truth, that was precisely what he was doing. Like most big men he was slow to anger, but once his temper was roused it did not cool easily. And never before in his life had he been in the grip of such cold, maniacal fury as had held him during the last few minutes. Right from the start had Peterson deceived him: from the very moment when he had entered his sitting-room at the Ritz. He had done his best to murder him, and not content with that he had given orders for Phyllis and him to be butchered in cold blood. If the Black Gang had not arrived—had they been half a minute later—it would have been over. Phyllis—his Phyllis—would have been killed by that arch-devil whom he had skewered to the wall with his own rifle. And as the thought took hold of him, his great fists clenched once more, and the madness again gleamed in his eyes. For Peterson was the real culprit: Peterson was the leader. To kill the servant and not the master was unjust.

He swung round on the cowering clergyman and gripped him once again by the throat, shaking him as a terrier shakes a rat. He felt the girl Irma plucking feebly at his arm, but he took no notice. In his mind there was room for no thought save the fixed determination to rid the world for ever of this monstrous blackguard. And still the motionless black figures round the wall gave no sign, even when the girl rushed wildly from one to the other imploring their aid. They knew their leader, and though they knew not what had happened to cause his dreadful rage they trusted him utterly and implicitly. Whether it was lawful or not was beside the point: it was just or Hugh Drummond would not have done it. And so they watched and waited, while Drummond, his face blazing, forced the clergyman to his knees, and the girl Irma sank half-fainting by the table.

But once again Fate was to intervene on Peterson’s behalf, through the instrumentality of a woman. And mercifully for him the intervention came from the only woman—from the only human being—who could have influenced Drummond at that moment. It was Phyllis who opened her eyes suddenly, and, half-dazed still with the horror of the last few minutes, gazed round the room. She saw the huddled group of men in the centre: she saw the Russian lolling grotesquely forward supported on his own rifle: she saw the Black Gang silent and motionless like avenging judges round the walls. And then she saw her husband bending Carl Peterson’s neck farther and farther back, till at any moment it seemed as if it must crack.

For a second she stared at Hugh’s face, and saw on it a look which she had never seen before—a look so terrible, that she gave a sharp, convulsive cry.

“Let him go, Hugh: let him go. Don’t do it.”

Her voice pierced his brain, though for a moment it made no impression on the muscles of his arms. A slightly bewildered look came into his eyes: he felt as a dog must feel who is called off his lawful prey by his master.

Let him go—let Carl Peterson go! That was what Phyllis was asking him to do—Phyllis who had stood at death’s door not five minutes before. Let him go! And suddenly the madness faded from his eyes: his hands relaxed their grip, and Carl Peterson slipped unconscious to the floor—unconscious but still breathing. He had let him go, and after a while he stepped back and glanced slowly round the room. His eyes lingered for a moment on the dead Russian, they travelled thoughtfully on along the line of black figures. And gradually a smile began to appear on his face—a smile which broadened into a grin.

“Perfectly sound advice, old thing,” he remarked at length. “Straight from the stable. I really believe I’d almost lost my temper.”

CHAPTER XVIII

In Which the Home Secretary Is Taught the Fox-Trot

It was a week later. In Sir Bryan Johnstone’s office two men were seated, the features of one of whom, at any rate, were well known to the public. Sir Bryan encouraged no notoriety: the man in the street passed him by without recognition every time. In fact it is doubtful if many of the general public so much as knew his name. But with his companion it was different: as a member of several successive Cabinets, his face was almost as well known as one or two of the lesser lights in the film industry. And it is safe to say that never in the course of a life devoted to the peculiar vagaries of politics had his face worn such an expression of complete bewilderment.

“But it’s incredible, Johnstone,” he remarked for the fiftieth time. “Simply incredible.”

“Nevertheless, Sir John,” returned the other, “it is true. I have absolute indisputable proof of the whole thing. And if you may remember, I have long drawn the Government’s attention to the spread of these activities in England.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” said Sir John Haverton a little testily, “but you have never given us chapter and verse like this before.”

“To be perfectly frank with you,” answered Sir Bryan, “I didn’t realise it fully myself until now. Had it not been for the Black Gang stumbling upon this house in Essex—Maybrick Hall—overpowering the owners and putting me on their track, much of this would never have come to light.”

“But who are the members of this Black Gang?” demanded the Cabinet Minister.

Sir Bryan Johnstone gave an enigmatic smile.

“At the moment, perhaps,” he murmured, “that point had better remain in abeyance. I may say that in the whole of my official career I have never received such a profound surprise as when I found out who the leader of the gang was. In due course, Sir John, it may be necessary to communicate to you his name; but in the meantime I suggest that we should concentrate on the information he has provided us with, and treat him as anonymous. I think you will agree that he has deserved well of his country.”

“Damned well,” grunted the other, with a smile. “He can have a seat in the Cabinet if this is his usual form.”

“I hardly think,” returned Sir Bryan, smiling even more enigmatically, “that he would help you very much in your proceedings, though he might enliven them.”

But the Cabinet Minister was once more engrossed in the report he was holding in his hand.

“Incredible,” he muttered again. “Incredible.”

“And yet, as I said before—the truth,” said the other. “That there is an organised and well-financed conspiracy to preach Bolshevism in England we have known for some time: how well organised it is we did not realise. But as you will see from that paper, there is not a single manufacturing town or city in Great Britain that has not got a branch of the organisation installed, which can if need be draw plentifully on funds from headquarters. Where those funds come from is at the present moment doubtful: in my own mind I have no doubt that Russia supplies the greater portion. You have in front of you there, Sir John “—he spoke with sudden passion—”the definite proofs of a gigantic attempt at world revolution on the Russian plan. You have in front of you there the proofs of the appalling spread of the Proletarian Sunday Schools, with their abominable propaganda and their avowed attempt to convert the children who attend them to a creed whose beginning is destruction and whose end is chaotic anarchy. You have in front of you there the definite proofs that 80 percent of the men engaged in this plot are not visionaries, swayed by some grandiloquent scheme of world reform—are not martyrs sacrificing their lives for what seems to them the good of the community—but criminals, and in many cases murderers. You have there before you the definite proofs that 80 percent of these men think only of one thing—the lining of their own pockets, and to carry out that object they are prepared utterly to destroy sound labour in this and every other country. It’s not as difficult as it looks; it’s not such a big proposition as it seems. Cancer is a small growth compared to the full body of the victim it kills: the cancer of one man’s tongue will kill a crowd of a thousand. We’re a free country. Sir John; but the time is coming when freedom as we understood it in the past will have to cease. We can’t go on as the cesspit of Europe, sheltering microbes who infect us as soon as they are here. We want disinfecting: we want it badly. And then we want sound teaching, with the best representatives of the employers and the best representatives of the employed as the teachers. Otherwise you’ll get this.”

With his finger he flicked a paper towards the Cabinet Minister. “‘To teach the children the ideal of Revolution—that should be the primary aim of a Proletarian school.’

“Printed at Maybrick Hall,” said Sir Bryan grimly. “And listen to this—a couple of the Ten Proletarian Maxims.

“‘Thou shalt demand on behalf of your class the COMPLETE SURRENDER of the CAPITALIST CLASS.’

“And another:

“‘Thou shalt teach REVOLUTION, for revolution means the abolition of the present political state, the end of Capitalism.’”

He gave a short laugh.

“That’s what they’re teaching the children. Destruction: destruction: destruction—and not a syllable devoted to construction. What are they going to put in its place? They don’t know—and they don’t care—as long as they get paid for the teaching.”

Sir John Haverton nodded thoughtfully.

“I must go into all this in detail,” he remarked. “But in the meantime you have raised my curiosity most infernally about this Black Gang of yours. I seem to remember some extraordinary manifesto in the paper—something to do with that damned blackguard Latter, wasn’t it?”

Sir Bryan leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette.

“There are one or two gaps I haven’t filled in myself at the moment,” he answered. “But I can tell you very briefly what led us to our discoveries at that house in Essex of which I spoke to you—Maybrick Hall. About six days ago I received a typewritten communication of a similar type to one or two which I had seen before. A certain defect in the typewriter made it clear that the source was the same, and that source was the leader of the Black Gang. Here is the communication.”

He opened a drawer in his desk, and passed a sheet of paper across to the Cabinet Minister.

“If,” it ran, “jolly old McIver will take his morning constitutional to Maybrick Hall in Essex, he will find much to interest him in that delightful and rural spot. Many specimens, both dead and alive, will be found there, all in a splendid state of preservation. He will also find a great many interesting devices in the house. Above all, let him be careful of an elderly clergyman of beneficent aspect, whose beauty is only marred by a stiff and somewhat swollen neck, accompanied by a charming lady who answers to the name of Janet. They form the peerless gems of the collection, and were on the point of leaving the country with the enclosed packet which I removed from them for safe keeping. My modesty forbids me to tell an unmarried man like you in what portion of dear Janet’s garments this little bag was found, but there’s no harm in your guessing.”

“What the devil?” spluttered Sir John. “Is it a practical joke?”

“Far from it,” answered the other. “Read to the end.”

“After McIver has done this little job,” Sir John read out, “he might like a trip to the North. There was an uninhabited island off the West coast of Mull, which is uninhabited no longer. He may have everything he finds there, with my love.—The leader of the Black Gang.”

Sir John laid down the paper and stared at the Director of Criminal Investigation.

“Is this the rambling of a partially diseased intellect?” he inquired with mild sarcasm.

“Nothing of the sort,” returned the other shortly. “McIver and ten plain-clothes men went immediately to Maybrick Hall. And they found it a very peculiar place. There were some fifteen men there—trussed up like so many fowls, and alive. They were laid out in a row in the hall.

“Enthroned in state, in two chairs at the end, and also trussed hand and foot, were the beneficent clergyman and Miss Janet. So much for the living ones, with the exception of an Italian, who was found peacefully sleeping upstairs, with his right wrist padlocked to the wall by a long chain. I’ve mentioned him last, because he was destined to play a very important part in the matter.” He frowned suddenly. “A very important part, confound him,” he repeated. “However, we will now pass to the other specimens. In the grounds were discovered—a dead fowl, a dead fox, a dead hound the size of a calf—and three dead men.”

Sir John ejaculated explosively, sitting up in his chair.

“They had all died from the same cause,” continued the other imperturbably—”electrocution. But that was nothing compared to what they found inside. In an upstairs room was a dreadful-looking specimen, more like an ape than a man, whose neck was broken. In addition, the main artery of his left arm had been severed with a knife. And even that was mild to what they found downstairs. Supported against the wall was a red-headed man stone dead. A bayonet fixed to a rifle had been driven clean through his chest, and stuck six inches into the wall behind him. And on that the body was supported.”

“Good heavens!” said Sir John, aghast. “Who had done it?”

“The leader of the Black Gang had done it all, fighting desperately for his own life and that of his wife. One of the men lashed up in the hall turned King’s Evidence and told us everything. I’m not going to weary you with the entire story, because you wouldn’t believe it. This man had heard everything: had been present through it all. He heard how this leader—a man of gigantic strength—had thrown his wife over the high live-wire fence, just as the hound was on top of them, and the hound dashing after her had electrocuted itself. He heard how the girl, rushing blindly through the night in an unknown country, had stumbled by luck on the local post office, and managed to get a telephone call through to London, where she found the rest of the gang assembled and waiting—their suspicions aroused over some message received that evening from the Ritz. Then she left the post office and was wandering aimlessly along the road, when a car pulled up suddenly in front of her. Inside was a clergyman accompanied by another man—neither of whom she recognised. They offered her a lift, and the next thing she knew was that she’d been trapped again, and was back at Maybrick Hall. So much this man heard: the rest he saw. The leader of the Black Gang and his wife were sentenced to death by the clergyman…Clergyman!” Sir Bryan shook his fist in the air. “I’d give a year’s screw to have laid my hands on that clergyman.”

“He escaped?” cried the other.

“All in due course,” said Sir Bryan. “They were sentenced to death by having their brains bashed out with the butt of a rifle—after which they were to be thrown in the river. It was to be made to appear an accident. And the man who was to do it was a Russian called Yulowski—one of the men who butchered the Russian Royal family…A devil of the most inhuman description. He literally had the rifle raised to kill the girl, when the Black Gang, having cut the wire fence, arrived in the nick of time. And it was then that the leader of that gang, who had thought he was on the point of seeing his wife’s brains dashed out, took advantage of the utter confusion and sprang on the Russian with a roar of rage. The man who told us stated that he had never dreamed such a blow was possible as the rifle thrust which pierced clean through the Russian. It split him like a rotten cabbage, and he died in three minutes.”

“But, my dear fellow,” spluttered the Cabinet Minister, “you can’t expect me to believe all this. You’re pulling my leg.”

“Never farther from it in my life, Haverton,” said the other. “I admit it seems a bit over the odds, but every word I’ve told you is gospel. To return to the discoveries. McIver found that the house was the headquarters of a vast criminal organisation. There were schemes of the most fantastic descriptions cut and dried in every detail. Some of them were stupid: some were not. I have them all here. This one “—he glanced through some papers on his desk—”concerns the blowing of a large gap in one of the retaining walls of the big reservoir at Staines. This one concerns a perfectly-thought-out plot on your life when you go to Beauchamp Hall next week. You were to be found dead in your railway carriage.”

“What!” roared Sir John, springing to his feet.

“It would very likely have failed,” said Sir Bryan calmly, “but they would have tried again. They don’t like you or your views at all—these gentlemen. But those are the least important. From time immemorial wild, fanatical youths have done similar things: the danger was far greater and more subtle. And perhaps the most dangerous activity of all was what I have spoken about already—Maybrick Hall was the headquarters of these poisonous Proletarian Sunday Schools. But in addition to that there was forgery going on there on a big scale: money is necessary for their activities. There were also long lists of their agents in different parts of the country, and detailed instructions for fomenting industrial unrest. But you have it all there—you can read it at your leisure for yourself. Particularly I commend to your notice, the series of pamphlets on Ireland, and the methods suggested for promoting discord between England and France, and England and America.”

Sir Bryan lit a cigarette.

“To return to the personal side of it. McIver, engrossed in his search, paid very little attention to the row of mummies in the hall. They certainly seemed extraordinarily safe, and one can hardly blame him. But the fact remains that, at some period during the morning, the Italian, who, if you remember, was padlocked in a bedroom upstairs, escaped. How I can’t tell you: he must have had a key in his pocket. They found the padlock open, and the room empty. And going downstairs they found the chairs recently occupied by the clergyman and Miss Janet empty also. Moreover from that moment no trace of any of them has been found. It is as if the earth had opened and swallowed them. Which brings us to the packet enclosed with the letter from the leader of the Black Gang.”

He crossed to a safe and took out the little chamois-leather bag of diamonds.

“Nice stones,” he remarked quietly. “Worth literally a King’s ransom. The pink one is part of the Russian crown jewels: the remainder belonged to the Grand Duke Georgius, who was murdered by the Bolshevists. His son, who had these in his possession, died ten days ago of an overdose of a sleeping-draught in Amsterdam. At least that is what I understood until I received these. Now I am not so sure. I would go further, and say I am quite sure that even if he did die of an overdose, it was administered by the beneficent clergyman calling himself the Reverend Theodosius Longmoor—the most amazing international criminal of this or any other age—the man who, with Miss Janet and the Italian, has vanished into thin air, right under McIver’s nose.”

“And you mean to say this man has been in England and you haven’t laid him by the heels?” said Sir John incredulously.

“Unfortunately that is what I mean,” answered the other. “The police of four continents know about him, but that’s a very different thing from proof. This time we had proof—these diamonds: and the man has vanished—utterly and completely. He is the master mind who controls and directs, but very rarely actually does anything himself. That’s why he’s so devilishly difficult to catch. But we’ll do it sooner or later.”

The Cabinet Minister was once more studying the typewritten communication from the leader of the Black Gang.

“It’s the most astounding affair, this, Johnstone,” he said at length. “Most astounding. And what’s all this about the island off the coast of Mull?”

Sir Bryan laughed.

“Not the least astounding part of the whole show, I assure you. But for you to understand it better I must go back two or three months, to the time when we first became aware of the existence of the Black Gang. A series of very strange disappearances were taking place: men were being spirited away, without leaving a trace behind them. Of course we knew about it, but in view of the fact that our assistance was never asked to find them, and still more in view of the fact that in every case they were people whose room we preferred to their company, we lay low and said nothing.

“From unofficial inquiries I had carried out we came to the conclusion that this mysterious Black Gang was a reality, and that, further, it was intimately connected with these disappearances. But we also came to the conclusion that the ideals and objects of this gang were in every way desirable. Such a thing, of course, could not be admitted officially: the abduction of anyone is a criminal offence. But we came to the conclusion that the Black Gang was undoubtedly an extremely powerful and ably led organisation whose object was simply and solely to fight the Red element in England. The means they adopted were undoubtedly illegal—but the results were excellent. Whenever a man appeared preaching Bolshevism, after a few days he simply disappeared. In short, a reign of terror was established amongst the terrorists. And it was to put that right I have no doubt that the Reverend Theodosius Longmoor arrived in this country.” Sir Bryan thoughtfully lit another cigarette. “To return to the island. McIver went there, and after some little difficulty located it, out of the twenty or thirty to which the description might apply. He found it far from uninhabited, just as that letter says. He found it occupied by some fifty or sixty rabid anarchists—the gentlemen who had so mysteriously disappeared—who were presided over by twenty large demobilised soldiers commanded by an ex-sergeant-major of the Guards. The sixty frenzied anarchists, he gathered, were running a state on communist lines, as interpreted by the ex-sergeant-major. And the interpretation moved even McIver to tears of laughter. It appeared that once every three hours they were all drawn up in a row, and the sergeant-major, with a voice like a bull, would bellow:

“‘Should the ruling classes have money?’

“Then they answered in unison—‘No.’

“‘Should anyone have money?’

“Again they answered ‘No.’

“‘Should everyone work for the common good for love?’

“‘Yes.’

“Whereat he would roar: ‘Well, in this ’ere island there ain’t no ruling classes, and there ain’t no money, and there’s dam’ little love, so go and plant more potatoes, you lop-eared sons of Beelzebub.’

“At which point the parade broke up in disorder.”

Sir John was shaking helplessly.

“This is a jest, Johnstone. You’re joking.”

“I’m not,” answered the other. “But I think you’ll admit that the man who started the whole show—the leader of the Black Gang—is a humorist, to put it mildly, who cannot well be spared.”

“My dear fellow, as I said before, the Cabinet is the only place for him. If only he’d export two or three of my colleagues to this island and let ’em plant potatoes I’d take off my hat to him. Tell me—do I know him?” Sir Bryan smiled.

“I’m not certain: you may. But the point, Haverton, is this. We must take cognisance of the whole thing, if we acknowledge it at all. Therefore shall we assume that everything I have been telling you is a fairy story: that the Black Gang is non-existent—I may say that it will be shortly—and that what has already appeared in the papers is just a hoax by some irresponsible person? Unless we do that there will be a cause celebre fought out on class prejudice—a most injudicious thing at the present moment. I may say that the island is shut down, and the sixty pioneers have departed to other countries. Also quite a number of those agents whose names are on the list you have have left our shores during the past few days. It is merely up to us to see that they don’t come back. But nothing has come out in the papers: and I don’t want anything to come out either.”

He paused suddenly, as a cheerful voice was heard in the office outside.

“Ah! here is one Captain Drummond, whom I asked to come round this morning,” he continued, with a faint smile. “I wonder if you know him.”

“Drummond?” repeated the other. “Is he a vast fellow with an ugly face?”

“That’s the man,” said Sir Bryan.

“I’ve seen him at his aunt’s—old Lady Meltrose. She says he’s the biggest fool in London.”

Sir Bryan’s smile grew more pronounced as the door opened and Hugh came in.

“Morning, Tum-tum,” he boomed genially. “How’s the liver and all that?”

“Morning, Hugh. Do you know Sir John Haverton?”

“Morning, Sir John. Jolly old Cabinet merry and bright? Or did you all go down on Purple Polly at Goodwood yesterday?”

Sir John rose a little grimly. “We have other things to do besides backing horses, Captain Drummond. I think we have met at Lady Meltrose’s house, haven’t we?”

“More than likely,” said Hugh affably. “I don’t often dine there: she ropes in such a ghastly crowd of bores, don’t you know.”

“I feel sure, Captain Drummond, that you’re an admirable judge.” Sir John turned to Sir Bryan Johnstone and held out his hand. “Well, I must be off. Good morning, Johnstone—and you’ve thoroughly roused my curiosity. I’d very much like to know who the gentleman is whom we’ve been discussing. And in the meantime I’ll look through these papers and let you know my decision in due course.”

He bustled out of the office, and Hugh sank into a chair with a sigh of relief.

“The old boy’s clothes seem full of body this morning. Tum-tum,” he remarked as the door closed. “Indigestion—or don’t the elastic-sided boots fit?”

“Do you know what we have been discussing, Hugh?” said the other quietly.

“Not an earthly, old man. Was it that new one about the girl in the grocer’s shop?”

“We’ve been discussing the leader of the Black Gang,” said Sir Bryan, with his eyes fixed on the man sprawling in the chair opposite.

Not by the twitch of a muscle did Drummond’s face change: he seemed engrossed in the task of selecting a cigarette.

“You’ve been in Deauville, haven’t you, Hugh—the last few days?”

“Quite right old man. All among the fairies.”

“You don’t know that a burglary has taken place at your house in London?”

“A burglary!” Drummond sat up with a jerk. “Why the deuce hasn’t Denny told me?”

“A very small one,” said Sir Bryan, “committed by myself, and perhaps he doesn’t know. I took—your typewriter.”

For a few moments Hugh Drummond stared at him in silence: then his lips began to twitch. “I see,” he said at length. “I meant to have that defective ‘s’ repaired.”

“You took me in, old boy,” continued Sir Bryan, “utterly and absolutely. If it hadn’t been for one of the men at Maybrick Hall turning King’s evidence, I don’t believe I should have found out now.”

“Well, what are you going to do about it?” asked Drummond after a pause.

“Nothing. I was discussing the matter with Sir John this morning, and we both agreed that you either deserved penal servitude or a seat in the Cabinet. And since neither course commends itself to us, we have decided to do nothing. There are reasons, which you will appreciate, against any publicity at the moment. But, Hugh, the Black Gang must cease.”

Drummond nodded. “Carried, nem. con; Tum-tum. It shall automatically dissolve today.”

“And further,” continued Sir Bryan, “will you relieve my curiosity and tell me what sent Charles Latter mad?”

“I did,” said Drummond grimly, “as I told that ass McIver over a cocktail at the Regency. He was plotting to blow up three thousand men’s employment, Tum-tum, with gun-cotton. It was at his instigation that four men were killed in Manchester as the result of another outrage. So I lashed him to his bed, and underneath him I put what he thought was a slab of gun-cotton with fuse attached. It wasn’t gun-cotton: it was wood. And he went mad.” He paused for a moment, and then continued. “Now, one for you. Why did you let Carl Peterson escape? I nearly killed him that night, after I’d bayoneted the Russian.”

“How did you know he had escaped?” demanded Sir Bryan.

Hugh felt in his pocket and produced a note.

“Read it,” he said, passing it across the desk.

“It was a pity you forgot that there might be another key to the padlock, Captain Drummond,” it ran. “And Giuseppi is an old friend of mine. I quite enjoyed our single.”

Sir Bryan returned the note without a word, and Drummond replaced it in his pocket.

“That’s twice,” he said quietly, and suddenly the Director of Criminal Investigation, than whom no shrewder judge of men lived, saw and understood the real Drummond below the surface of inanity—the real Drummond, cool, resourceful, and inflexible of will—the real Drummond who was capable of organising and carrying through anything and everything once he had set his mind to it.

“That’s twice,” he repeated, still in the same quiet tone. “Next time—I win.”

“But no more Black Gang, Hugh,” said the other warningly.

Drummond waved a huge hand. “I have spoken, Tum-tum. A rose by any other name, perhaps—but no more Black Gang.” He rose and grinned at his friend. “It’s deuced good of you, old man, and all that…”

The eyes of the two men met.

“If it was found out, I should be looking for another job,” remarked Sir Bryan dryly. “And perhaps I should not get the two thousand pounds which I understand the widow of the late lamented Ginger Martin has received anonymously.”

“Shut up,” said Drummond awkwardly.

“Delighted, old man,” returned the other. “But the police in that district are demanding a rise of pay. She has been drunk and disorderly five times in the last week.”

To those strong-minded individuals who habitually read the entrancing chit-chat of Mrs. Tattle in The Daily Observer, there appeared the following morning a delightful description of the last big fancy-dress ball of the season held at the Albert Hall the preceding night. Much of it may be passed over as unworthy of perpetuation, but the concluding paragraph had its points of interest.

“Half-way through the evening,” she wrote in her breezy way, “just as I was consuming an ice in one hand with the Duchess of Sussex, and nibbling the last of the asparagus in the other with the Princess of Montevideo, tastefully disguised as an umbrella-stand, we were treated to the thrill of the evening. It seemed as if suddenly there sprang up all round the room a mass of mysterious figures clothed from head to foot in black. The dear Princess grew quite hysterical, and began to wonder if it was a ‘hold up’ as she so graphically described it. In fact, for safety, she secreted the glass-headed parasol—the only remaining heirloom of the Royal House—and which formed a prominent part of her costume, behind a neighbouring palm. Whispers of the mysterious Black Gang were heard on all sides, but we were soon reassured. Belovedst, they all carried champagne bottles! Wasn’t it too, too thrilling!! And after a while they all formed up in a row, and at a word from the leader—a huge man, my dears, puffectly ’uge—they discharged the corks in a volley at one of the boxes, which sheltered no less than two celebrities—Sir Bryan Johnstone, the chief of all the policemen, and Sir John Haverton, the Home Secretary. It is rumoured that one of the corks became embedded in Sir John’s right eye—but rumour is a lying jade, is not she? Anyway loud sounds of revelry and mirth were heard proceeding from the box, and going a little later to powder my nose I distinctly saw Sir John being taught the intricacies of the fox-trot by the huge man in the passage. Presumably the cork had by then been removed from his eye, but one never knows, does one? Anything can happen at an Albert Hall ball, especially at the end of the season.”