The Complete Four Just Men (71 page)

Chapter 9

Before the lights went out

The band had stopped, a rustle of hand-clapping came from the hot dancers, and almost before the applause had started the second band struck up ‘Kulloo’.

Mirabelle was not especially happy. Her partner was the most correct of dancers, but they lacked just that unity of purpose, the oneness of interest which makes all the difference between the ill- and the well-matched.

‘May we sit down?’ she begged. ‘I am rather hot.’

‘Will the gracious lady come to the little hall?’ he asked. ‘It is cooler there, and the chairs are comfortable.’

She looked at him oddly.

‘ “Gracious lady” is a German expression – why do you use it, Lord Evington? I think it is very pretty,’ she hastened to assure him.

‘I lived for many years in Germany,’ said Mr Gurther. ‘I do not like the German people – they are so stupid.’

If he had said ‘German police’ he would have been nearer to the truth; and had he added that the dislike was mutual, he might have gained credit for his frankness.

At the end of the room, concealed by the floral decorations of the bandstand, was a door which led to a smaller room, ordinarily separated from the main hall by folding doors which were seldom opened. Tonight the annexe was to be used as a conservatory. Palms and banked
flowers
were everywhere.
Arbours had
been artificially created, and there were cosy nooks, half-hidden by shrubs, secluded seats and tables,
all that ingenuity could design to meet the wishes of sitters-out.

He stood invitingly at the entrance of a little grotto, dimly illuminated by one Chinese lantern.

‘I think we will sit in the open,’ said Mirabelle, and pulled out a chair.

‘Excuse me.’

Instantly he was by her side, the chair arranged, a cushion found, and she sank down with a sigh of relief. It was early yet for the loungers: looking round, she saw that, but for a solitary waiter fastening his apron with one eye upon possible customers, they were alone.

‘You will drink wine . . . no? An orangeade? Good!’ He beckoned the waiter and gave his order. ‘You must excuse me if I am a little strange. I have been in Germany for many years – except during the war, when I was in France.’

Mr Gurther had certainly been in Germany for many years, but he had never been in France. Nor had he heard a shot fired in the war. It is true that an aerial bomb had exploded perilously near the prison at Mainz in which he was serving ten years for murder, but that represented his sole warlike experience.

‘You live in the country, of course?’

‘In London: I am working with Mr Oberzohn.’

‘So: he is a good fellow. A gentleman.’

She had not been very greatly impressed by the doctor’s breeding, but it was satisfying to hear a stranger speak with such heartiness of her new employer. Her mind at the moment was on Heavytree Farm: the cool parlour with its chintzes – a room, at this hour, fragrant with the night scents of flowers which came stealing through the open casement. There was a fox-terrier, Jim by name, who would be wandering disconsolately from room to room, sniffing unhappily at the hall door. A lump came up into her throat. She felt very far from home and very lonely. She wanted to get up and run back to where she had left Joan and tell her that she had changed her mind and must go back to Gloucester that night . . . she looked impatiently for the waiter. Mr Gurther was fiddling with some straws he had taken from the glass container in the centre of the table. One end of the straws showed above the edge of the table, the others were thrust deep in the wide-necked little bottle he had in the other hand. The hollow straws held half an inch of the red powder that filled the bottle.

‘Excuse!’

The waiter put the orangeades on the table and went away to get change. Mirabelle’s eyes were wistfully fixed on a little door at the end of the room. It gave to the street, and there were taxicabs which could get her to Paddington in ten minutes.

When she looked round he was stirring the amber contents of her glass with a spoon. Two straws were invitingly protruding from the foaming orangeade. She smiled and lifted the glass as he fitted a cigarette into his black holder.

‘I may smoke – yes?’

The first taste she had through the straws was one of extreme bitterness. She made a wry face and put down the glass.

‘How horrid!’

‘Did it taste badly . . . ?’ he began, but she was pouring out water from a bottle.

‘It was most unpleasant – ’

‘Will you try mine, please?’ He offered the glass to her and she drank. ‘It may have been something in the straw.’ Here he was telling her the fact.

‘It was . . . ’

The room was going round and round, the floor was rising up and down like the deck of a ship in a stormy sea. She rose, swayed, and caught him by the arm.

‘Open the little door, waiter, please – the lady is faint.’

The waiter turned to the door and threw it open. A man stood there – just outside the door. He wore over his dinner dress a long cloak in the Spanish style. Gurther stood staring, a picture of amused dismay, his cigarette still unlit. He did not move his hands. Gonsalez was waiting there, alert . . . death grinning at him . . . and then the room went inky black. Somebody had turned the main switch.

Chapter 10

When the lights went out

Five, ten minutes passed before the hall-keeper tripped and stumbled
and cursed his way to the smaller room and, smashing down the hired flowers, he passed through the wreckage of earthen pots and tumbled mould to the control. Another second and the rooms were brilliantly lit again – the band struck up a two-step and fainting ladies were escorted to the decent obscurity of their retiring rooms.

The manager of the hall came flying into the annexe.

‘What happened – the main fuse gone?’

‘No,’ said the hall-keeper sourly, ‘some fool turned over the switch.’

The agitated waiter protested that nobody had been near the switch-box.

‘There was a lady and gentleman here, and another gentleman outside.’ He pointed to the open door.

‘Where are they now?’

‘I don’t know. The lady was faint.’

The three had disappeared when the manager went out into a small courtyard that led round the corner of the building to a side street. Then he came back on a tour of inspection.

‘Somebody did it from the yard. There’s a window open – you can reach the switch easily.’

The window was fastened and locked.

‘There is no lady or gentleman in the yard,’ he said. ‘Are you sure they did not go into the big hall?’

‘In the dark – maybe.’

The waiter’s nervousness was understandable. Mr Gurther had given him a five-pound note and the man had not as yet delivered the change. Never would he return to claim it if all that his keen ears heard was true.

Four men had appeared in the annexe: one shut the door and stood by it. The three others were accompanied by the manager, who called Phillips, the waiter.

‘This man served them,’ he said, troubled. Even the most innocent do not like police visitations. ‘What was the gentleman like?’

Phillips gave a brief and not inaccurate description.

‘That is your man, I think, Herr Fluen?’

The third of the party was bearded and plump; he wore a Derby hat with evening dress.

‘That is Gurther,’ he nodded. ‘It will be a great pleasure to meet him. For eight months the Embassy has been striving for his extradition. But our people at home . . . !’

He shrugged his shoulders. All properly constituted officials behave in such a manner when they talk of Governments.

‘The lady now’ – Inspector Meadows was patently worried – ‘she was faint, you say. Had she drunk anything?’

‘Orangeade – there is the glass. She said there was something nasty in the straws. These.’

Phillips handed them to the detective. He wetted his fin from them, touched his tongue and spat out quickly.

‘Yes,’ he said, and went out by the little door.

Gonsalez, of course: but where had he gone, and how, with a drugged girl on his hands and the Child of the Snake? Gurther was immensely quick to strike, and an icy-hearted man: the presence of a woman would not save Leon.

‘When the light went out – ’ began the waiter, and the trouble cleared from Mr Meadows’s face.

‘Of course
–
I
had
forgotten
that,’
he
said
softly.
‘The
lights
went
out!’

All the way back to the Yard he was trying to bring something from the back of his mind – something that was there, the smooth tip of it tantalizingly displayed, yet eluding every grasp. It had nothing to do with the lights – nor Gonsalez, nor yet the girl. Gurther? No. Nor Manfred? What was it? A name had been mentioned to him that day – it had a mysterious significance. A golden idol! He picked up the end of the thought . . . Johnny! Manfred’s one mystery. That was the dust which lay on all thought. And now that he remembered he was disappointed. It was so ridiculously unimportant a matter to baffle him.

He left his companions at the corner of Curzon Street and went alone to the house. There was a streak of light showing between the curtains in the upstairs room. The passage was illuminated – Poiccart answered his ring at once.

‘Yes, George and Leon were here a little time back – the girl? No, they said nothing about a girl. They looked rather worried, I thought. Miss Leicester, I suppose? Won’t you come in?’

‘No, I can’t wait. There’s a light in Manfred’s room.’

The ghost of a smile lit the heavy face and faded as instantly.

‘My room also,’ he said. ‘Butlers take vast liberties in the absence of their masters. Shall I give a message to George?’

‘Ask him to call me at the Yard.’

Poiccart closed the door on him; stopped in the passage to arrange a salver on the table and hung up a hat. All this Meadows saw through the fanlight and walking-stick periscope which is so easily fitted and can be of such value. And seeing, his doubts evaporated.

Poiccart went slowly up the stairs into the little office room, pulled back the curtains and opened the window at the top. The next second, the watching detective saw the light go out and went away.

‘I’m sorry to keep you in the dark,’ said Poiccart.

The men who were in the room waited until the shutters were fast and the curtains pulled across, and then the light flashed on. White of face, her eyes closed, her breast scarcely moving, Mirabelle Leicester lay on the long settee. Her domino was a heap of shimmering green and scarlet on the floor, and Leon was gently sponging her face, George Manfred watching from the back of the settee, his brows wrinkled.

‘Will she die?’ he asked bluntly.

‘I don’t know: they sometimes die of that stuff,’ replied Leon cold-bloodedly. ‘She must have had it pretty raw. Gurther is a crude person.’

‘What was it?’ asked George.

Gonsalez spread out his disengaged hand in a gesture of uncertainty.

‘If you can imagine morphia with a kick in it, it was that. I don’t know. I hope she doesn’t die: she is rather young – it would be the worst of bad luck.’

Poiccart stirred uneasily. He alone had within his soul what Leon would call ‘a trace’ of sentiment.

‘Could we get Elver?’ he asked anxiously, and Leon looked up with his boyish smile. ‘Growing onions in Seville has softened you, Raymondo
mio
!’ He never failed in moments of great strain to taunt the heavy man with his two years of agricultural experiment, and they knew that the gibes were deliberately designed to steady his mind. ‘Onions are sentimental things – they make you cry: a vegetable
muchos simpatico
! This woman is alive!’

Her eyelids had fluttered twice. Leon lifted the bare arm, inserted the needle of a tiny hypodermic and pressed home the plunger.

‘Tomorrow she will feel exactly as if she had been drunk,’ he said calmly, ‘and in her mouth will be the taste of ten rank cigars. Oh, señorinetta, open thy beautiful eyes and look upon thy friends!’

The last sentence was in Spanish. She heard: the lids fluttered and rose.

‘You’re a long way from Heavytree Farm, Miss Leicester.’

She looked up wonderingly into the kindly face of George Manfred.

‘Where am I?’ she asked faintly, and closed her eyes again with a grimace of pain.

‘They always ask that – just as they do in books,’ said Leon oracularly. ‘If they don’t say “Where am I?” they ask for their mothers. She’s quite out of danger.’

One hand was on her wrist, another at the side of her neck.

‘Remarkably regular.
She has a good
head
– mathematical probably.’

‘She is very beautiful,’ said Poiccart in a hushed voice.

‘All people are beautiful – just as all onions are beautiful.
What is the difference
between
a
lovely
maid
and
the ugliest
of duennas
–
what but
a matter of pigmentation and activity of tissue?
Beneath that,
an astounding similarity of the circulatory, sustentacular, motorvascular – ’

‘How long have we got?’ Manfred interrupted him, and Leon shook his head.

‘I don’t know – not long, I should think. Of course, we could have told Meadows and he’d have turned out police reserves, but I should like to keep them out of it.’

‘The Old Guard was there?’

‘Every man jack of them – those tough lads! They will be here just as soon as the Herr Doktor discovers what is going forward. Now, I think you can travel. I want her out of the way.’

Stooping, he put his hands under her and lifted her. The strength in his frail body was a never-ending source of wonder to his two friends.

They followed him down the stairs and along the short passage, down another flight to the kitchen. Manfred opened a door and went out into the paved yard. There was a heavier door in the boundary wall. He opened this slowly and peeped out. Here was the inevitable mews. The sound of an engine running came from a garage near by. Evidently somebody was on the look out for them. A long-bodied car drew up noiselessly and a woman got out. Beside the driver at the wheel sat two men.

‘I think you’ll just miss the real excitement,’ said Gonsalez, and then to the nurse he gave a few words of instruction and closed the door on her.

‘Take the direct road,’ he said to the driver. ‘Swindon – Gloucester. Good night.’

‘Good night, sir.’

He watched anxiously as the machine swung into the main road. Still he waited, his head bent. Two minutes went by, and the faint sound of a motor-horn, a long blast and a short, and he sighed.

‘They’re clear of the danger zone,’ he said.

Plop
!

He saw the flash, heard the smack of the bullet as it struck the door, and his hand stiffened. There was a thudding sound – a scream of pain from a dark corner of the mews and the sound of voices. Leon drew back into the yard and bolted the door.

‘He had a new kind of silencer. Oberzohn is rather a clever old bird. But my air pistol against their gun for noiselessness.’

‘I didn’t expect the attack from that end of the mews.’ Manfred was slipping a Browning back to his pocket.

‘If they had come from the other end the car would not have passed – I’d like to get one of those silencers.’

They went into the house. Poiccart had already extinguished the passage light.

‘You hit your man – does that thing kill?’

‘By accident – it is possible. I aimed at his stomach: I fear that I hit him in the head. He would not have squealed for a stomach wound. I fear he is alive.’

He felt his way up the stairs and took up the telephone. Immediately a voice said, ‘Number?’

‘Give me 8877 Treasury.’

He waited, and then a different voice asked: ‘Yes – Scotland Yard speaking.’

‘Can you give me Mr Meadows?’

Manfred was watching him frowningly.

‘That you, Meadows? . . . They have shot Leon Gonsalez – can you send police reserves and an ambulance?’

‘At once.’

Leon hung up the receiver, hugging himself.

‘The idea being – ?’ said Poiccart.

‘These people are clever.’ Leon’s voice was charged with admiration. ‘They haven’t cut the wires – they’ve simply tapped it at one end and thrown it out of order on the exchange side.’

‘Phew!’ Manfred whistled. ‘You deceived me – you were talking to Oberzohn?’

‘Captain Monty and Lew Cuccini. They may or may not be deceived, but if they aren’t, we shall know all about it.’

He stopped dead. There was a knock on the front door, a single, heavy knock. Leon grinned delightedly.

‘One of us is now supposed to open an upper window cautiously and look out, whereupon he is instantly gunned. I’m going to give these fellows a scare.’

He ran up the stairs to the top floor, and on the landing, outside an attic door, pulled at a rope. A fire ladder lying flat against the ceiling came down, and at the same time a small skylight opened. Leon went into the room, and his pocket-lamp located what he needed: a small papier-mache cylinder, not unlike a seven-pound shell. With this on his arm, he climbed up the ladder on to the roof, fixed the cylinder on a flat surface, and, striking a match, lit a touch-paper. The paper sizzled and spluttered, there was a sudden flash and ‘boom!’ a dull explosion, and a white ball shot up into the sky, described a graceful curve and burst into a shower of brilliant crimson stars. He waited till the last died out; then, with the hot cylinder under his arm, descended the ladder, released the rope that held it in place, and returned to his two friends.

‘They will imagine a secret arrangement of signals with the police,’ he said; ‘unless my knowledge of their psychology is at fault, we shall not be bothered again.’

Ten minutes later there was another knock at the door, peremptory, almost official in its character.

‘This,’ said Leon, ‘is a policeman to summon us for discharging fireworks in the public street!’

He ran lightly down into the hall and without hesitation pulled open the door. A tall, helmeted figure stood on the doorstep, notebook in hand.

‘Are you the gentleman that let off that rocket – ’ he began.

Leon walked past him, and looked up and down Curzon Street. As he had expected, the Old Guard had vanished.