by Mark Hodder
He chuckled as he wrote it.
“That’ll puzzle ‘em if they read it,” he said. “They’ll probably detach one man to follow the messenger to the nearest post-office and look over his shoulder as he sends the message off.”
“But this messenger-boy—” began Sir James.
“Oh, that’s all right! He’s my assistant—Tinker. I thought he might come in handy, so I told him to get into a messenger-boy’s uniform and follow me here after a ten-minutes’ interval, and to wait in the hall till he heard from me. Even if they saw him come in they won’t connect him with me, and there are dozens of messenger-boys always coming and going here.”
There was a tap at the door, and Tinker entered, holding his cap in his hand. His uniform, truth to tell, was a trifle tight for him.
Blake nodded.
“Off with that coat!” he said. “Now open your shirt.”
Tinker did as he was told.
Blake took the envelope containing the precious message and slid it inside the shirt.
“No one must catch sight of that on any account; and you will be followed and watched, at any rate, as far as the nearest post-office, where you will send off this telegram, addressed to myself. If anyone tries to look over your shoulder as you do so give him every chance; but after that you must give him the slip, and cut back home and change into country kit for travelling.
“You will be at the station in plenty of time for the Queenborough-Flushing boat-train. Take a third-class smoker—corridor for preference—and collar two seats. After that wait till I come. If I’m not followed I shall get into the same compartment; if I am I shall choose another close by. But on no account must you recognise me until I speak to you. Wear that envelope next to your skin, and have an automatic in your pocket. You’ll find plenty of money in the desk. Bring it; we shall need a lot. Also bring the two bags that are ready packed, and a spare ulster and cap for me. Now clear out, and carry that telegraph-form openly in your hand. We leave for Holland to-night. Mrs. Bardell must look after Pedro. I don’t know when we shall be back.”
“Very good, sir!” said Tinker.
“Now, Sir James,” said Blake quickly, “I’ll trouble you for a dummy duplicate of that envelope and its contents—blank paper, of course, and a big official seal on the outside. After which, if you’ll show me the way to the cellars, I’ll be off.”
Sir James looked puzzled. He never did quite understand Blake’s methods, but he was far too wise to question them.
He took the big sheet of officially headed foolscap, folded it with care, and, having placed it in an envelope of similar size, made a huge blob of red sealing-wax on the flap, the size of a half-crown piece, and sealed it with an important-looking seal. As he did so a whimsical smile flickered across his tired, worn face.
“I don’t know what on earth you want this for,” he said, “or why you want it so blatantly sealed; but I don’t mind telling you in confidence that the seal itself is merely an old Egyptian curio I picked up a for a few shillings in a pawn-broker’s the other day as I was walking to the office, and the hieroglyphics mean ‘all men are frauds,’ or something to that effect.”
Blake also smiled as he picked up the envelope and put it in his pocket.
“Most appropriate,” he said. “Here are you, a person of importance in the State affairs, placidly preparing an entirely fraudulent document for your own ends, myself aiding and abetting in the scheme; and those fellows outside ready to stick at nothing—even murder—to lay hands on it, because their Government will pay them highly to do so. Pretty gang of scoundrels we are all round—eh?”
Sir James rose and held out his hand.
“Goodbye, and good luck!” he said. “It’s on my conscience that I’m asking you to run an unfair risk. But what can I do? It’s risking the life of one man against the lives of perhaps hundreds and thousands of others. That’s the literal truth, and you are the one man I can entrust with the task.
“I leave all details to you. I ask no questions as to your ways and means and methods. But, my dear fellow, that paper—the real paper, I mean—must not be found or read, except by those for whom it is intended. The risk is enormous. If I don’t see or hear from you in ten days—say, a fortnight’s time—I shall take it for granted that you will have destroyed either the paper or yourself, or both. And, mind you, if you are not killed, but merely taken prisoner with that paper on you, it will be my bounden duty to disavow you—to be like a Trojan, in fact—swear that you were not acting under my instructions, and that I have no interest in you or your movements whatever. I shouldn’t dare lift a finger or bring the slightest diplomatic pressure to bear to save you. You clearly understand?”
Blake lit another cigarette and laughed.
“It certainly isn’t your fault if I don’t. You know, Sir James, you really have a positive gift for elucidating uncomfortable possibilities. I assure you that I haven’t the slightest intention of being caught if I can help it; and the bare idea of a German fortress makes me shudder. The feeding, especially just now, is abominable, they tell me. I’ll tell you a secret. At heart I am a positive epicure, and I adore a really decent and well-cooked meal. Now, if I may ring for the commissionaire again and get him to show me the way through the cellars, I’ll be off. I shan’t have a whole heap of time to spare as it is, and I’ve a lot to do.”
Blake rang again, and the commissionaire came back, expressionless as some wooden automaton.
“Hawkins,” said Sir James, and gave a little deprecatory cough behind his hand, “you know the cellars where those old documents and things are stored. I want you to take this gentleman down there and help him to get out through the window and grating at the far end. You have the keys of the padlocks, I believe. There are some suspicious-looking men hanging about the street outside in front of there, and Mr. Blake doesn’t wish to be seen. You will not mention this to anyone either now or later. You understand me?”
“Perfectly, Sir James. Would you please follow me, sir?” he added, turning to Blake.
“I’m quite ready,” said Blake. “Goodbye again, Sir James! It is just half-past five, I see. If I am not back here in this room with what you require by, say, six o’clock on this day fortnight, you had better send another man at once, for I shall have come to grief. There is one point, however, on which you can set your mind at ease. They may bag me, but they won’t bag the paper, even if I have to eat it under their very noses.”
The two men shook hands again, and Blake followed Hawkins out of the room and down the stairs.
They descended to the basement, and so into the cellars beyond—a dingy, musty-smelling place with festoons of cobwebs hanging from the ceilings.
Hawkins paused a moment to light a candle in a rickety old iron candlestick, and they made their way gingerly along by its flickering light until they came to a much-begrimed window showing faintly lighter against the general gloom.
Blake reached out a hand and brought the open palm of it down on the candle-flame, leaving them in darkness.
“Can’t be too careful. Might have been seen from the outside,” he said. “Get to work with those keys, and give me a leg-up.”
The ex-sergeant obeyed stolidly, fumbling with the rusty latch and bars of the window, which he at last managed to open, giving admission to a little well-like area some five feet square, with a padlocked grating above of rather smaller dimensions.
This grating was within easy reach as they stood in the well.
Hawkins unlocked the two padlocks fastening it down, gave Blake the help of his broad back to clamber on to and raise the grating, and accepted two half-crowns thrust through the bars after the grating was closed again; and Blake, with a brief “good-night!” and a word of thanks, went padding softly and swiftly down the alleyway leading to the regular Hampton-Court-maze-like tangle of mews which lay beyond.
Ninety-nine Londoners out of a hundred may have passed daily within a respectable stone’s-throw of those mews withou
t ever being aware of their existence. Private motors are housed there cheek by jowl with old, emblazoned family coaches in the next stable—coaches that are only used at great State functions, such as a gala night at the opera or a coronation.
Ostensibly there is no more respectable labyrinth of by-streets in London, and its inhabitants are ultra-respectable, upper-class servants, earning big wages and deserving them. But at the same time, to a man in Blake’s position, they were very likely to prove a veritable death-trap. He knew every turn and twist of them as he knew the inside of his own pocket, and he knew very clearly their possibilities if a few paid agents of the great German spy system had been warned to lie in wait for him there, on the bare chance that he would choose that way. So he walked swiftly, keeping well in the centre of the cobbled roadway, and even hummed a snatch of a tune as he walked; but his eyes searched out all the darker corners on either hand as he did so, and his ears were alert to catch the slightest unaccustomed sound.
Yet even so, as he rounded a sharp angle, three men sprang at him from behind the shelter of a doorway in a bunch.
The light was bad and tricky, owing to the new war regulations, but he had almost what is called “cat’s sight,” and suffered less from the darkness probably than they did. Also, he had been expecting trouble, and was prepared.
He sprang aside to get his back protected by a solid wall, and, with a sudden lunge of his stick, caught the leading man full in the mouth with the ferrule end. The man dropped with a muttered, guttural curse, and lay on the stones, spitting out loosened and broken teeth.
Almost at the same instant the second made a savage blow at him with a sandbag—that silent, deadly weapon of the East American crook. Blake dodged in the nick of time, and so saved his skull; but the blow caught him on the shoulder, momentarily paralysing his right arm, and causing him to drop his stick with a clatter.
The man raised his sandbag again, and Blake caught him a swift left-hander on the point as he did so.
There were no complaints.
“Two!” said Blake cheerfully. “Now, then, Hans, or Fritz, or whatever your beautiful name may be, it’s your turn to join the dance. Come along; only be quick, as this is my busy day!”
The man feinted, and Blake glimpsed the sheen of steel in his right hand.
The fellow wanted to use his knife, that was clear enough, but he wasn’t whole-hearted about it. The sight of his two companions lying on the stones, much the worse for wear, had taken the grit out of him, and he hesitated. That was his mistake, because Blake didn’t. He brought round his stick, which he had hurriedly picked up, with a whistling, back-handed cut, which caught the fellow stingingly across the ear, half dazing him with the sudden pain, and throwing him off his balance.
Blake dropped the broken stick, caught the man’s knife hand by the wrist, and again above the elbow. There was a twist, a jerk, a quick upthrust of Blake’s bent knee, and a sound like the sound of a snapping hurdle, followed by a perfect bellow of pain and the tinkle of steel on stone.
The man’s forearm had been broken at the elbow joint, and he dropped like a log, whimpering and cursing.
A window somewhere up above was flung open, and a groom’s voice was heard complaining petulantly, and asking: “What the, which the, how the blank something or another couldn’t a poor beggar have his tea in peace?”
Blake chuckled, and hurried away, keeping close to the wall this time.
“I will say one thing for old Sir James,” he said to himself. “When he does give you a job, it’s never what you might call really dull. Things happen. I wonder what the next item on the programme will be?”
He emerged from the labyrinth of the mews at the upper end without further mishap, took several sharp turns, and then a step or two backwards, to make sure that he wasn’t being followed; and, having satisfied himself on this point, he headed straight for the Cafe Royale, in Regent Street—a favourite restaurant of his in emergencies, because of its different entrances and its giving on to different streets—a very useful thing from his point of view, as he had found on more than one occasion.
He passed straight to the grill-room, casting quick, keen glances at the various occupants, for the crowd is generally one of many nationalities, and it was quite possible that Hans or Fritz, at present nursing a broken arm in the mews, might have confederates there.
He saw nothing suspicious, however, in his brief survey, and ordered himself a dinner with the care of a man who knows that he may not have a chance to taste food again for the next twenty-four hours or more.
After his dinner he had coffee and a cigarette, and, contrary to his usual custom, ordered a small jug of milk with his coffee.
His next proceedings were, to say the least of it, a trifle unusual. He had purposely chosen a small table in a corner, so that no one could get behind him or look over his shoulder, whilst he himself could command a clear view of the entire length of the room.
He drew the big official envelope out of his pocket, slit open the bottom end neatly with a knife, and, under cover of the tablecloth, withdrew the blank sheet which it contained.
This he placed on the table before him, and, taking a folding pen with a clean nib in it from his waistcoat pocket, he dipped the nib in the milk, and wrote something in a bold hand across the centre of the page. The writing was, of course, invisible, and as soon as the milk had thoroughly dried he refolded the paper, replaced it in the envelope, paid his bill, and strolled out by the door at the opposite end to that by which he had entered—after which he made his way leisurely to Victoria Station on foot.
He had plenty of time in hand, and had no wish to appear on the platform a second earlier than was absolutely necessary. He was not hankering after publicity in his movements.
He took his ticket, booking straight through to Flushing, and noticed that passengers were being stopped at the barrier and taken aside to be searched. Holland is a neutral country, but experience has taught the authorities that many very unneutral things and people, especially people, have been smuggled through it since the war.
He glanced at the big clock. The train was due to start in under a couple of minutes, so he went up to the barrier to show his tickets. The collector glanced at them, and nodded, and immediately another official stepped up to him.
“This way, sir! We shall have to go through you as a matter of form. I’m afraid you’ve cut it rather fine. You’ll have to go by the next boat. Orders, sir! All intending passengers are warned to be on the platform at least half an hour before the train starts. If they aren’t, it’s their fault, not ours.”
Blake nodded, and slightly turned up the lapel of his coat, giving the man a glimpse of a small silver badge which had been concealed beneath it.
The man looked, stepped back, and touched his cap.
“Beg pardon, sir. I didn’t know, of course. You’d better hurry; she’ll be off in a minute!”
Blake nodded once more, and hurried along the platform. He had barely gone twenty paces when he heard the sound of a violent altercation going on behind him.
He glanced backwards over his shoulder, and saw the man whom he had hit on the “point” in the mews struggling frantically with two burly but quite placid officials.
“Search me on der train!” he cried excitedly. “I tell you I haf nothings! Search me on der train! That I catch the boat is imberative!”
“Can’t be done, sir; it’s against orders. You can cross to-morrow morning. It will only make a few hours’ difference. Only my advice is, turn up in plenty of time!”
Just then the man caught sight of Blake; their eyes met, and he began to rage again.
“I haf to go!” he yelled, struggling.
“Yes, you will certainly ‘haf’ ter go—to the lock-up, if there’s any more fuss!” was the imperturbable answer.
“Take him away, Jarvis. You know what to do with him if he becomes troublesome! Bloomin’ German thug, that’s what he is!” he added to himself.
Blake chuckled, and raced down the platform. He glimpsed Tinker waving to him, the carriage door swung open, and Blake leapt in as the train began to gather speed.
They had their compartment of the corridor carriage all to themselves.
“Who was your friend with the beautiful voice at the barrier?” asked Tinker.
“Hump! We’ll call him an acquaintance!” said Blake. “I met him for the first time just after leaving Sir James, and had to knock him down to avoid being sandbagged. There were three of the beauties waiting for me in the mews at the back there. It’s awkward, for, of course, he’ll wire to his people out there to look out for us on the frontier. Everything all right?”
“Yes, all serene. Pedro hasn’t eaten Mrs. Bardell yet—at least, he hadn’t when I left. They didn’t search me, because I said I was travelling for Sir James, and gave them one of his cards, which I annexed while I was waiting in the hall this afternoon. I photographed the paper you gave me, and made two film transparencies. They are quite good, and will easily enlarge to twice the size of the original. The films themselves are two and a quarter by one and a quarter. I thought they might come in handy if we are obliged to destroy the original. One film is stitched into the lining of my hat. The other is in the handle of that toothbrush of yours—you know the hollow-handled one with the screw end to it. Here’s your automatic, by the way, and I’ve a dozen full cartridge slips stowed away in the bags.”
“Good!” said Blake. “Now I’d better change out of this kit as soon as I can. Pull those blinds down on the corridor side; I don’t want an audience.”
Ten minutes later Blake was rigged out like a typical American commercial traveller, and Tinker had stowed his other things into a spare gladstone he had brought for the purpose.
“We’ll leave that in the cloak-room at Queensboro’,” he said, as he slipped into a big travelling ulster.
