by Sax Rohmer
“You won’t mind amusing Miss Oppner, Haredale, till we’re through with this little job? It’s out of your line; you’ll be more at home here, I’m sure.”
The room chosen for this important conference was a small one, having but a single door, which opened on a tiny antechamber; this, in turn, gave upon the corridor. When the six millionaires had entered, and Mr. Oppner had satisfied himself that suitable refreshments were placed in readiness, he returned to the corridor. Immediately outside the door stood Mr. Aloys. X. Alden.
“You’ll sit right there,” instructed Oppner. “The man’s bringing a chair and smokes and liquor, and you’ll let nobody in — nobody. We can’t be heard out here, with the anteroom between and both doors shut; there’s only one window, and this is the sixth storey. So I guess our Bablon palaver will be private, some.”
Alden nodded, bit off the end of a cheroot, and settled himself against the wall. Mr. Oppner returned to his guests. In another room Zoe and Sir Richard Haredale struggled with a conversation upon sundry matters wherein neither was interested in the least. Suddenly Zoe said, in her impulsive, earnest way:
“Sir Richard, I know you won’t be angry, but Mary is my very dearest friend; we were at school together, too; and — she told me all about it this afternoon. I understand what this loss means to you, and that it’s quite impossible for you to remain with Mr. Rohscheimer any longer; that you mean to resign your commission and go abroad. It isn’t necessary for me to say I am sorry.”
He thanked her mutely, but it was with a certain expectancy that he awaited her next words. Rumour had linked Zoe Oppner’s name with that of Séverac Bablon, extravagantly, as it seemed to Haredale; but everything connected with that extraordinary man was extravagant. He recalled how Mary, on more than one occasion, had exhibited traces of embarrassment when the topic was mooted, and how she had hinted that Séverac Bablon might be induced to interest himself in his, Haredale’s, financial loss. Could it be that Mary — perhaps through her notoriously eccentric American friend — had met the elusive wonder-worker? Haredale, be it remembered, was hard hit, and completely down. This insane suspicion had found no harbourage in his mind at any other time; but now, he hugged it dejectedly, watching Zoe Oppner’s pretty, expressive face for confirmatory evidence.
“Of course, the bank has failed for more than three millions,” said the girl earnestly; “but, in your own case, can nothing be done?”
Haredale lighted a cigarette, slightly shaking his head.
“I shall have to clear out. That’s all”
“Oh! — but — it’s real hard to say what I want to say. But — my father has business relations with Mr. Rohscheimer. May I try to do something?”
Haredale’s true, generous instincts got the upper hand at that. He told himself that he was behaving, mentally, like a cad.
“Miss Oppner,” he said warmly, “you are all that Mary has assured me. You are a real chum. I can say no more. But it is quite impossible, believe me.”
There was such finality in the words that she was silenced. Haredale abruptly changed the subject.
An hour passed.
Two hours passed.
Zoe began to grow concerned on her father’s behalf. He was in poor health, and his physician’s orders were imperative upon the point of avoiding business.
Half-way through the third hour she made up her mind.
“He has wasted his time long enough,” she pronounced firmly — and the expression struck Haredale as oddly chosen. “I am going to inform him that his ‘conference’ is closed.”
She passed out into the corridor to where Mr. Alden, his chair tilted at a comfortable angle, and his brogue-shod feet upon a coffee-table which bore also a decanter, a siphon, and a box of cigars, contentedly was pursuing his instructions. He stood up as she appeared.
“Mr. Alden,” she said, “I wish to speak to Mr. Oppner.”
The detective spread his hands significantly.
“I respect your scruples, Mr. Alden,” Zoe continued, “but my father’s orders did not apply to me. Will you please go in and request him to see me for a moment?”
Perceiving no alternative, Alden opened the door, crossed the little anteroom, and knocked softly at the inner door.
He received no reply to his knocking, and knocked again. He knocked a third, a fourth time. With a puzzled glance at Miss Oppner he opened the door and entered.
An unemotional man, he usually was guilty of nothing demonstrative. But the appearance of the room wrenched a hoarse exclamation from his stoic lips.
In the first place, it was in darkness; in the second, when, with the aid of the electric lantern which he was never without, he had dispersed this darkness — he saw that it was empty!
The scene of confusion that ensued upon this incredible discovery defies description.
All the telephones in the Astoria could not accommodate the frantic people who sought them. Messenger boys in troops appeared. Hundreds of guests ran upstairs and hundreds of guests ran downstairs. Every groaning lift, ere long, was bearing its freight of police and pressmen to the scene of the most astounding mystery that ever had set London agape.
Soon it was ascertained that the current had been disconnected in some way from the room where the six magnates had met. But how, otherwise than through the door, they had been spirited away from a sixth floor apartment, was a problem that no one appeared competent to tackle; that they had not made their exit via the door was sufficiently proven by the expression of stark perplexity which dwelt upon the face of Mr. Aloys. X. Alden.
Whilst others came and went, scribbling hasty notes in dog-eared notebooks, he, a human statue of Amaze, gazed at the open window, continuously and vacantly. Jostled by the crowds of curious and interested visitors, he stood, the most surprised man in the two hemispheres.
Short of an airship, he could conceive no device whereby the missing six could have made their silent departure. He was shaken out of his stupor by Haredale.
“Pull yourself together, Mr. Alden,” cried the latter. “Can’t we do something? Here’s half Scotland Yard in the place and nobody with an intelligent proposal to offer.”
Mr. Alden shook himself, like a heavy sleeper awakened.
“Where’s Miss Oppner?” he jerked.
Haredale started.
“I don’t know,” was his reply; “but I can go and see.”
He forced his way past the knot of people at the door, ignoring Inspector Sheffield, who sought to detain him. Rapidly he ran through the rooms composing the suite. In one he met Zoe’s maid, wringing her hands with extravagant emotion.
“Where is your mistress?”
“She has gone out, m’sieur. I cannot tell where. I do not know.”
Haredale’s heart gave a leap — and seemed to pause.
He ran to the stairs, not waiting for the overworked lift, and down into the hall.
“Has Miss Oppner gone out?” he demanded of the porter.
“Two minutes ago, sir.”
“In her car?”
“No, sir. It was not ready. In a cab.”
“Did you hear her directions?”
“No, sir. But the boy will know.”
The boy was found.
“Where was Miss Oppner going, boy?” rapped Haredale.
“Eccleston Square, sir,” was the prompt reply.
The Marquess of Evershed’s. Then his suspicions had not been unfounded. He saw, in a flash of inspiration, the truth. Zoe Oppner had seen in this disappearance the hand of Séverac Bablon — if, indeed, if she did not know it for his work. She was anxious about her father. She wished to appeal to Séverac Bablon upon his behalf. And she had gone — not direct to the man — but to Eccleston Square. Why? Clearly because it was Lady Mary, and not herself, who had influence with him.
Hatless, Haredale ran out into the courtyard. Rohscheimer’s car was waiting, and he leapt in, his grey eyes feverish. “Lord Evershed’s,” he called to the man; “Eccleston Square.�
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CHAPTER XXI
A CORNER IN MILLIONAIRES
At the moment that Julius Rohscheimer’s car turned into the Square, a girl, enveloped in a dark opera wrap, but whose fair hair gleamed as she passed the open door, came alone, out of Lord Evershed’s house, and entering a waiting taxi-cab, was driven away.
“Stop!” ordered Haredale hoarsely through the tube.
The big car pulled up as the cab passed around on the other side.
“Follow that cab.”
With which the pursuit commenced. And Haredale found himself trembling, so violent was the war of emotions that waged within him. His deductions were proving painfully correct. Through Mayfair and St. John’s Wood the cab led the way; finally into Finchley Road. Fifty yards behind, Haredale stopped the car as the cab drew up before a gate set in a high wall.
Lady Mary stepped out, opened the gate, and disappeared within. Heedless of the taxi-driver’s curious stare, Haredale, a conspicuous figure in evening dress, with no overcoat and no hat, entered almost immediately afterwards.
Striding up to the porch, he was searching for bell or knocker when the door opened silently, and an Arab in spotless white robes saluted him with dignified courtesy.
“Take my card to your master,” snapped Haredale, striving to exhibit no surprise, and stepped inside rapidly.
The Arab waved him to a small reception room, furnished with a wealth of curios for which the visitor had no eyes, and retired. As the man withdrew Haredale moved to the door and listened. He admitted to himself that this was the part of a common spy; but his consuming jealousy would brook no restraint.
From somewhere farther along the hall he heard, though indistinctly, a familiar voice.
Without stopping to reflect he made for a draped door, knocked peremptorily, and entered.
He found himself in a small apartment, whose form and appointments, even to his perturbed mind, conveyed a vague surprise. It was, to all intents and purposes, a cell, with stone-paved floor and plaster walls. An antique lamp, wherein rested what appeared to be a small ball of light, unlike any illuminant he had seen, stood upon a massive table, which was littered with papers. Excepting a chair of peculiar design and a magnificently worked Oriental curtain which veiled either a second door or a recess in the wall, the place otherwise was unfurnished.
Before this curtain, and facing him, pale but composed, stood Lady Mary Evershed, a sweet picture in a bizarre setting.
“Has your friend run away, then?” said Haredale roughly.
The girl did not reply, but looked fully at him with something of scorn and much of reproach in her eyes.
“I know whose house this is,” continued Haredale violently, “and why you have come. What is he to you? Why do you know him — visit him — shield him? Oh! my God! it only wanted this to complete my misery. I have, now, not one single happy memory to take away with me.”
His voice shook upon those last words.
“Mary,” he said sadly, and all his rage was turned to pleading— “what does it mean? Tell me. I know there is some simple explanation — —”
“You shall hear it, Sir Richard,” interrupted a softly musical voice.
He turned as though an adder had bitten him; the blasé composure which is the pride of every British officer had melted in the rays of those blue eyes that for years had been the stars of his worship. It was a very human young man, badly shaken and badly conscious of his display of weakness, who faced the tall figure in the tightly buttoned frock-coat that now stood in the open doorway.
The man who had interrupted him was one to arrest attention anywhere and in any company. With figure and face cast in a severely classic mould, his intense, concentrated gaze conveyed to Haredale a throbbing sense of force, in an uncanny degree.
“Séverac Bablon!” flashed through his mind.
“Himself, Sir Richard.”
Haredale, who had not spoken, met the weird, fixed look, but with a consciousness of physical loss — an indefinable sensation, probably mental, of being drawn out of himself. No words came to help him.
“You have acted to-night,” continued Séverac Bablon, and Haredale, knowing himself in the presence of the most notorious criminal in Europe, yet listened passively, as a schoolboy to the admonition of his Head, “you have acted to-night unworthily. I had noted you, Sir Richard, as a man whose friendship I had hoped to gain. Knowing your trials, and” — glancing at the girl’s pale face— “with what object you suffered them, I had respected you, whilst desiring an opportunity to point out to you the falsity of your position. I had thought that a man who could win such a prize as has fallen to your lot must, essentially, be above all that was petty — all that was mean.”
Haredale clenched his hands angrily. Never since his Eton days had such words been addressed to him. He glared at the over-presumptuous mountebank — for so he appraised him; he told himself that, save for a woman’s presence, he would have knocked him down. He met the calm but imperious gaze — and did nothing, said nothing.
“A woman may be judged,” continued the fascinating voice, “not by her capacity for love, but by her capacity for that rarer thing, friendship. A woman who, at her great personal peril, can befriend another woman is a pearl beyond price. Knowing me, you have ceased to fear me as a rival, Sir Richard.” (To his mental amazement something that was not of his mind, it seemed, told Haredale that this was so.) “It remains only for you to hear that simple explanation. Here it is.”
He handed a note to him. It was as follows:
“You have confided to me the secret of your residence, where I might see or communicate with you, and I was coming to see you to-night, but I have met with a slight accident — enough to prevent me. Lady Mary has volunteered to go alone. I will not betray your confidence, but our friendly acquaintance cannot continue unless you instantly release my father — for I know that you have done this outrageous thing. He is ill and it is very, very cruel. I beg of you to let him return at once. If you admire true friendship and unselfishness, as you profess, do this to repay Mary Evershed, who risks irretrievably compromising herself to take this note —
“Zoe Oppner.”
“Miss Oppner, descending the stairs at Lord Evershed’s in too great haste,” explained Séverac Bablon, and a new note, faint but perceptible, had crept into his voice, “had the misfortune to sustain a slight accident — I am happy to know, no more than slight. Lady Mary brought me her message. I commit no breach of trust in showing it to you. There is a telephone in the room at Lord Evershed’s in which Miss Oppner remains at present, and, as you entered, I obtained her spoken consent to do what I have done.”
“Mary,” Haredale burst out, “I know it is taking a mean advantage to plead that if I had not been so unutterably wretched and depressed I never could have doubted, but — will you forgive me?”
Whatever its ethical merits or demerits, it was the right, the one appeal. And it served.
Séverac Bablon watched the reconciliation with a smile upon his handsome face. Though clearly but a young man, he could at will invest himself with the aloof but benevolent dignity of a father-confessor.
“The cloud has passed,” he said. “I have a word for you, Sir Richard. You have learnt to-night some of my secrets — my appearance, my residence, and the identities of two of my friends. I do not regret this, although I am a ‘wanted man.’ Only to-night I have committed a gross outrage which, with the circulation of to-morrow’s papers, will cry out for redress to the civilised world. You are at liberty to act as you see fit. I would wish, as a favour, that you grant me thirty-six hours’ grace — as Miss Oppner already has done. On my word — if you care to accept it — I shall not run away. At the end of that time I will again offer you the choice of detaining me or of condoning what I have done and shall do. Which is it to be?”
Haredale did not feel sure of himself. In fact, the episodes of that night seemed, now, like happenings in a dream — a dream from which he yet was not f
ully awakened. He glanced from Mary to the incomprehensible man who was so completely different from anything he had pictured, from anything he ever had known. He looked about the bare, cell-like apartment, illuminated by the soft light of the globe upon the massive table. He thought of the Arab who had admitted him — of the entire absence of subterfuge where subterfuge was to be expected.
“I will wait,” he said.
But in less than thirty-six hours the world had news of Séverac Bablon.
At a time roughly corresponding with that when Mr. Aloys. X. Alden was standing, temporarily petrified with astonishment, in a certain room of the Hotel Astoria, two gentlemen in evening attire burst into a Wandsworth police station. One was a very angry Irishman, the other a profane Scot, whose language, which struck respectful awe to the hearts of two constables, a sergeant, and an inspector — would have done credit to the most eloquent mate in the mercantile marine.
He fired off a volley of redundant but gorgeously florid adjectives, what time he peeled factitious whiskers from his face and shook their stickiness from his fingers. His Irish friend, with brilliant but less elaborate comments, struggled to depilate a Kaiser-like moustache from his upper lip.
“What are ye sittin’ still for-r?” shouted the Scotsman, and banged a card on the desk. “I’m Hector Murray, and this is John Macready of Melbourne. We’ve been held up by the highwaym’n Bablon. Turrn out the forrce. Turrn out the dom’d diveesion. Get a move on ye, mon!”
The accumulated power of the three names — Hector Murray, John Macready, and Séverac Bablon — galvanised the station into sudden activity, and an extraordinary story, a fabulous story, was gleaned from the excited gentlemen. It appeared in every paper on the following morning, so it cannot better be presented here than in the comparatively simple form wherein it met the eyes of readers of the Gleaner’s next issue. Cuts have been made where the reporter’s account overlaps the preceding, or where he has become purely rhetorical.
SIX FAMOUS CAPITALISTS KIDNAPPED
Séverac Bablon Active Again
AMAZING OUTRAGE AT THE ASTORIA
