The Complete Four Just Men (90 page)

Dr Oberzohn took off his overcoat and laid it tenderly inside the shelter of the open cabin, tenderly because every pocket was packed tight with money.

To Mirabelle Leicester, crouching in the darkness of that sheltered space, the time that passed had no dimension. Once an authoritative voice hailed them from the bank. It was a policeman; she saw him after the boat had passed. A gas-lamp showed the glitter of his metal buttons. But soon he was far behind.

Deptford was near when they reached a barrier which neither ingenuity nor money could pass; a ragged night-bird peered down curiously at the motor-boat. ‘You can’t get through here, guv’nor,’ he said simply. ‘The lock doesn’t open until high tide.’

‘When is this high tide?’ asked Oberzohn breathlessly.

‘Six o’clock tomorrow morning,’ said the voice.

For a long time he was stricken to inactivity by the news, and then he sent his engines into reverse and began circling round.

‘There is one refuge for us, young miss,’ he said. ‘Soon we shall see it. Now I will tell you something. I desire so much to live. Do you also?’

She did not answer.

‘If you cry out, if you will make noises, I will kill you – that is all,’ he said; and the very simplicity of his words, the lack of all emphasis behind the deadly earnestness, told her that he would keep his word.

Chapter 32

The search

‘
’Ware man-traps,’ said Gonsalez.

The white beam of his lamp had detected the ugly thing. He struck at it with his stick, and with a vicious snap it closed.

‘Here’s one that’s been sprung,’ he said, and examined the teeth. ‘And, what’s more, it has made a catch! There’s blood here.’

Manfred and Digby were searching the ground cautiously. Then Manfred heard the quick intake of his breath, and he stooped again, picked up a strip of braided cloth.

‘A man’s,’ he said, and his relief betrayed his fear. ‘Somebody in evening dress, and quite recent.’ He looked at his finger. ‘The blood is still wet.’

Digby showed him the ventilator grating through which he had smelt the incense, and when Leon stooped, the faint aroma still remained.

‘We will try the factory first. If that draws blank, we’ll ask Dr Oberzohn’s guidance, and if it is not willingly given I shall persuade him.’ And in the reflected light of the lamp George Manfred saw the hard Leon he knew of old. ‘This time I shall not promise: my threat will be infinitely milder than my performance.’

They came to the dark entry of the factory, and Manfred splashed his light inside.

‘You’ll have to walk warily here,’ he said,

Progress was slow, for they did not know that a definite path existed between the jagged ends of broken iron and debris. Once or twice Leon stopped to stamp on the floor; it gave back a hollow sound.

The search was long and painfully slow: a quarter of an hour passed before Leon’s lamp focused on the upturned flagstone and the yawning entrance of the vault. He was the first to descend, and, as he reached the floor, he saw silhouetted in the light that flowed from the inner room, a man, as he thought, crouching in the doorway, and covered him.

‘Put up your hands!’ he said.

The figure made no response, and Manfred ran to the shape. The face was in the shadow, but he brought his own lamp down and recognized the set grin of the dead man.

Gurther!

So thus he had died, in a last effort to climb out for help.

‘The Snake,’ said Manfred briefly. ‘There are no marks on his face, so far as I can see.’

‘Do you notice his wrist, George?’

Then, looking past the figure, Gonsalez saw the girl lying on the bed, and recognized Joan before he saw her face. Halfway across the room he slipped on something. Instinctively he knew it was a snake and leapt around, his pistol balanced.

‘Merciful heaven! Look at this!’

He stared from the one reptile to the other.

‘Dead!’ he said. ‘That explains Gurther.’

Quickly he unstrapped Joan’s wrists and lifted up her head, listening, his ear pressed to the faintly fluttering heart. The basin and the sponge told its own story. Where was Mirabelle?

There was another room, and a row of big cupboards, but the girl was in no place that he searched.

‘She’s gone, of course,’ said Manfred quietly. ‘Otherwise, the trap would not have been open. We’d better get this poor girl out of the way and search the grounds. Digby, go to – ’

He stopped. If Oberzohn were in the house, they must not take the risk of alarming him.

But the girl’s needs were urgent. Manfred picked her up and carried her out into the open, and, with Leon guiding them, they came, after a trek which almost ended in a broken neck for Leon, to within a few yards of the house.

‘I presume,’ said Gonsalez, ‘that the hole into which I nearly dived was dug for a purpose, and I shouldn’t be surprised to learn it was intended that the late Mr Gurther should find a permanent home there. Shall I take her?’

‘No, no,’ said Manfred, ‘go on into the lane. Poiccart should be there with the car by now.’

‘Poiccart knows more about growing onions than driving motor-cars.’ The gibe was mechanical; the man’s heart and mind were on Mirabelle Leicester.

They had to make a circuit of the stiff copper-wire fence which surrounded the house, and eventually reached Hangman’s Lane just as the headlamps of the Spanz came into view.

‘I will take her to the hospital and get in touch with the police,’ said Manfred. ‘I suppose there isn’t a nearby telephone?’

‘I shall probably telephone from the house,’ said Leon gravely.

From where he stood he could not tell whether the door was open or closed. There was no transom above the door, so that it was impossible to tell whether there were lights in the passage or not. The house was in complete darkness.

He was so depressed that he did not even give instructions to Poiccart, who was frankly embarrassed by the duty which had been imposed upon him, and gladly surrendered the wheel to George.

They lifted the girl into the tonneau, and, backing into the gate, went cautiously up the lane – Leon did not wait to see their departure, but returned to the front of the house.

The place was in darkness. He opened the wire gate and went silently up the steps. He had not reached the top before he saw that the door was wide open. Was it a trap? His lamp showed him the switch: he turned on the light and closed the door behind him, and, bending his head, listened.

The first door on the right was Oberzohn’s room. The door was ajar, but the lamps were burning inside. He pushed it open with the toe of his boot, but the room was empty.

The next two doors he tried on that floor were locked. He went carefully down to the kitchens and searched them both. They were tenantless. He knew there was a servant or two on the premises, but one thing he did not know, and this he discovered in the course of his tour, was that Oberzohn had no bedroom. One of the two rooms above had evidently been occupied by the servants. The door was open, the room was empty and in some confusion; a coarse night-dress had been hastily discarded and left on the tumbled bedclothes. Oberzohn had sent his servants away in a hurry – why?

There was a half-smoked cigarette on the edge of a deal wash-stand. The ash lay on the floor. In a bureau every drawer was open and empty, except one, a half-drawer filled with odd scraps of cloth. Probably the cook or the maid smoked. He found a packet of cigarettes under one pillow to confirm this view, and guessed they had gone to bed leisurely with no idea that they would be turned into the night.

He learned later that Oberzohn had bundled off his servants at ten minutes’ notice, paying them six months’ salary as some salve for the indignity.

Pfeiffer’s room was locked; but now, satisfied that the house was empty, he broke the flimsy catch, made a search but found nothing. Gurther’s apartment was in indescribable disorder. He had evidently changed in a hurry. His powder puffs and beards, crêpe hair and spirit bottles, littered the dressing-table. He remembered, with a pang of contrition, that he had promised to telephone the police, but when he tried to get the exchange he found the line was dead: a strange circumstance, till he discovered that late that evening Meadows had decided to cut the house from all telephonic communication, and had given orders accordingly.

It was a queerly built house: he had never realized its remarkable character until he had examined it at these close quarters. The walls were of immense thickness: that fact was brought home to him when he had opened the window of the maid’s room to see if Digby was in sight. The stairs were of concrete, the shutters which covered the windows of Oberzohn’s study were steel-faced. He decided, pending the arrival of the police, to make an examination of the two locked rooms. The first of these he had no difficulty in opening. It was a large room on the actual ground level, and was reached by going down six steps. A rough bench ran round three sides of this bare apartment, except where its continuity broke to allow entrance to a further room. The door was of steel and was fastened.

The room was dusty but not untidy. Everything was in order. The various apparatus was separated by a clear space. In one corner he saw a gas engine and dynamo covered with dust. There was nothing to be gained here. The machine which interested him most was one he knew all about, only he had not guessed the graphite moulds. The contents of a small blue bottle, tightly corked, and seemingly filled with discoloured swabs of cotton-wool, however, revived his interest. With a glance round the laboratory, he went out and tried the second of the locked doors.

This room, however, was well protected, both in the matter of stoutness of door and complication of locks. Leon tried all his keys, and then used his final argument. This he carried in a small leather pouch in his hip pocket; three steel pieces that screwed together and ended in a bright claw. Hammering the end of the jemmy with his fist, he forced the claw between door and lintel, and in less than a minute the lock had broken, and he was in the presence of the strangest company that had ever been housed.

Four electric radiators were burning. The room was hot and heavy, and the taint of it caught his throat, as it had caught the throat of the Danish servant. He put on all the lights – and they were many – and then began his tour.

There were two lines of shelves, wide apart, and each supporting a number of boxes, some of which were wrapped in baize, some of which, however, were open to view. All had glass fronts, all had steel tops with tiny air-holes, and in each there coiled, in its bed of wool or straw, according to its requirements, one or two snakes. There were cobras, puff-adders, two rattlesnakes, seemingly dead, but, as he guessed, asleep; there was a South American
fer-de-lance
, that most unpleasant representative of his species; there were little coral snakes, and, in one long box, a whole nest of queer little things that looked like tiny yellow lobsters, but which he knew as scorpions.

He was lifting a baize cover when: ‘Don’t move, my friend! I think I can promise you more intimate knowledge of our little family.’

Leon turned slowly, his hands extended. Death was behind him, remorseless, unhesitating. To drop his hand to his pocket would have been the end for him – he had that peculiar instinct which senses sincerity, and when Dr Oberzohn gave him his instructions he had no doubt whatever that his threat was backed by the will to execute.

Oberzohn stood there, and a little behind him, white-faced, open-eyed with fear, Mirabelle Leicester.

Digby – where was he? He had left him in the grounds.

The doctor was examining the broken door and grunted his annoyance.

‘I fear my plan will not be good,’ he said, ‘which was to lock you in this room and break all those glasses, so that you might become better acquainted with the Quiet People. That is not to be. Instead, march!’

What did he intend? Leon strolled out nonchalantly, but Oberzohn kept his distance, his eyes glued upon those sensitive hands that could move so quickly and jerk and fire a gun in one motion.

‘Stop!’

Leon halted, facing the open front door and the steps.

‘You will remember my sainted brother, Señor Gonsalez, and of the great loss which the world suffered when he was so vilely murdered?’

Leon stood without a quiver. Presently the man would shoot. At any second a bullet might come crashing on its fatal errand. This was a queer way to finish so full a life. He knew it was coming, had only one regret; that this shaken girl should be called upon to witness such a brutal thing. He wanted to say goodbye to her, but was afraid of frightening her.

‘You remember that so sainted brother?’ Oberzohn’s voice was raucous with fury. Ahead of him the light fell upon a face.

‘Digby! Stay where you are!’ shouted Leon.

The sound of the explosion made him jump. He saw the brickwork above the doorway splinter, heard a little scuffle, and turned, gun in hand. Oberzohn had pulled the girl in front of him so that she afforded a complete cover: under her arm he held his pistol.

‘Run!’ she screamed.

He hesitated
a second.
Again the pistol exploded and a bullet ricochetted from the door. Leon could not fire. Oberzohn so crouched that nothing but a trick shot could miss the girl and hit him. And then, as the doctor shook free the hand that gripped his wrist, he leapt down the steps and into the darkness. Another second and the door slammed. He heard the thrust of the bolts and a clang as the great iron bar fell into its place. Somehow he had a feeling as of a citadel door being closed against him.

* * *

Dr Oberzohn had returned unobserved, though the night was clear. Passing through the open water-gate he had tied up to the little quay and landed his unwilling passenger. Digby, according to instructions, had been making a careful circuit of the property, and at the moment was as far away from the barge as it was humanly possible to be. Unchallenged, the doctor had worked his way back to the house. The light in the hall warned him that somebody was there. How many? He could not guess.

‘Take off your shoes,’ he growled in Mirabelle’s ear, and she obeyed.

Whatever happened, he must not lose touch of her, or give her an opportunity to escape. Still grasping her arm with one hand and his long Mauser pistol in the other, he went softly up the steps, got into the hall and listened, locating the intruder instantly.

It all happened so quickly that Mirabelle could remember nothing except the desperate lunge she made to knock up the pistol that had covered the spine of Leon Gonsalez. She stood dumbly by, watching this horrible old man fasten the heavy door, and obediently preceded him from room to room. She saw the long cases in the hot room and shrank back. And then began a complete tour of the house. There were still shutters to be fastened, peep-holes to be opened up. He screwed up the shutters of the servants’ room, and then, with a hammer, broke the thumb-piece short.

‘You will stay here,’ he said. ‘I do not know what they will do. Perhaps they will shoot. I also am a shooter!’

Not satisfied with the lock that fastened her door, he went into his workshop, found a staple, hook and padlock, and spent the greater part of an hour fixing this additional security. At last he had finished, and could put the situation in front of four very interested men.

He unlocked the door of the concrete annexe and called the crestfallen gunmen forth, and in a very few words explained the situation and their danger.