by Sapper
“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 flattered.”
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, hut 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 he 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 pulle
d 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 has 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, hut 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 goodbye 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, goodbye, 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.
“Goodbye, my dear friend – goodbye,” 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.
