Toward the Golden Age

by Ashley, Mike;

  “My driver is off for the evening—I did not expect to be going out—but I will ’phone up a taxi and it will be at the gate as soon as we are.” He dispatched the message and then, turning to the house telephone, switched on to Greatorex.

  “I’m just going round to Heronsbourne Park,” he explained. “Don’t stay, Greatorex, but if anyone calls expecting to see me, you can say that I don’t anticipate being away more than an hour.”

  Parkinson was hovering about the hall. With quite novel officiousness he pressed upon his master a succession of articles that were not required. Over this usually complacent attendant the unattractive features of Madame Ferraja appeared to exercise a stealthy fascination, for a dozen times the lady detected his eyes questioning her face and a dozen times he looked guiltily away again. But his incongruities could not delay for more than a few minutes the opening of the door.

  “I do not accompany you, sir?” he inquired, with the suggestion plainly tendered in his voice that it would be much better if he did.

  “Not this time, Parkinson.”

  “Very well, sir. Is there any particular address to which we can telephone in case you are required, sir?”

  “Mr. Greatorex has instructions.”

  Parkinson stood aside, his resources exhausted. Madame Ferraja laughed a little mockingly as they walked down the drive.

  “Your man-servant thinks I may eat you, Signor Carrados,” she declared vivaciously.

  Carrados, who held the key of his usually exact attendant’s perturbation—for he himself had recognized in Madame Ferraja the angelic Nina Brun, of the Sicilian tetradrachm incident, from the moment she opened her mouth—admitted to himself the humour of her audacity. But it was not until half-an-hour later that enlightenment rewarded Parkinson. Inspector Beedel had just arrived and was speaking with Greatorex when the conscientious valet, who had been winnowing his memory in solitude, broke in upon them, more distressed than either had ever seen him in his life before, and with the breathless introduction: “It was the ears, sir! I have her ears at last!” poured out his tale of suspicion, recognition and his present fears.

  In the meanwhile the two objects of his concern had reached the gate as the summoned taxicab drew up.

  “Seven Heronsbourne Place,” called Carrados to the driver.

  “No, no,” interposed the lady, with decision, “let him stop at the beginning of the street. It is not far to walk. My husband would be on the verge of distraction if he thought in the dark that it was the arrival of the police—who knows?”

  “Brackedge Road, opposite the end of Heronsbourne Place,” amended Carrados.

  Heronsbourne Place had the reputation, among those who were curious in such matters, of being the most reclusive residential spot inside the four-mile circle. To earn that distinction it was, needless to say, a cul-de-sac. It bounded one side of Heronsbourne Park but did not at any point of its length give access to that pleasance. It was entirely devoted to unostentatious little houses something between the villa and the cottage, some detached and some in pairs, but all possessing the endowment of larger, more umbrageous gardens than can generally be secured within the radius. The local house agent described them as “delightfully old-world” or “completely modernized” according to the requirement of the applicant.

  The cab was dismissed at the corner and Madame Ferraja guided her companion along the silent and deserted way. She had begun to talk with renewed animation, but her ceaseless chatter only served to emphasize to Carrados the one fact that it was contrived to disguise.

  “I am not causing you to miss the house with looking after me— No. 7, Madame Ferraja?” he interposed.

  “No, certainly,” she replied readily. “It is a little further. The numbers are from the other end. But we are there. Ecco!”

  She stopped at a gate and opened it, still guiding him. They passed into a garden, moist and sweet-scented with the distillate odours of a dewy evening. As she turned to relatch the gate the blind man endeavoured politely to anticipate her. Between them his hat fell to the ground.

  “My clumsiness,” he apologized, recovering it from the step. “My old impulses and my present helplessness, alas, Madame Ferraja!”

  “One learns prudence by experience,” said Madame sagely. She was scarcely to know, poor lady, that even as she uttered this trite aphorism, under cover of darkness and his hat, Mr. Carrados had just ruined his signet ring by blazoning a golden “7” upon her garden step to establish its identity if need be. A cul-de-sac that numbered from the closed end seemed to demand some investigation.

  “Seldom,” he replied to her remark. “One goes on taking risks. So we are there?”

  Madame Ferraja had opened the front door with a latchkey. She dropped the latch and led Carrados forward along the narrow hall. The room they entered was at the back of the house, and from the position of the road it therefore overlooked the park. Again the door was locked behind them.

  “The celebrated Mr. Carrados!” announced Madame Ferraja with a sparkle of triumph in her voice. She waved her hand toward a lean, dark man who had stood beside the door as they entered. “My husband.”

  “Beneath our poor roof in the most fraternal manner,” commented the dark man, in the same derisive spirit. “But it is wonderful.”

  “The even more celebrated Monsieur Dompierre, unless I am mistaken?” retorted Carrados blandly. “I bow on our first real meeting.”

  “You knew!” exclaimed the Dompierre of the earlier incident incredulously. “Stoker, you were right and I owe you a hundred lire. Who recognized you, Nina?”

  “How should I know?” demanded the real Madame Dompierre crossly. “This blind man himself, by chance.”

  “You pay a poor compliment to your charming wife’s personality to imagine that one could forget her so soon,” put in Carrados. “And you a Frenchman, Dompierre!”

  “You knew, Monsieur Carrados,” reiterated Dompierre, “and yet you ventured here. You are either a fool or a hero.”

  “An enthusiast—it is the same thing as both,” interposed the lady. “What did I tell you? What did it matter if he recognized? You see?”

  “Surely you exaggerate, Monsieur Dompierre,” contributed Carrados. “I may yet pay tribute to your industry. Perhaps I regret the circumstance and the necessity but I am here to make the best of it. Let me see the things Madame has spoken of and then we can consider the detail of their price, either for myself or on behalf of others.”

  There was no immediate reply. From Dompierre came a saturnine chuckle and from Madame Dompierre a titter that accompanied a grimace. For one of the rare occasions in his life Carrados found himself wholly out of touch with the atmosphere of the situation. Instinctively he turned his face toward the other occupant of the room, the man addressed as “Stoker”, whom he knew to be standing near the window.

  “This unfortunate business has brought me an introduction,” said a familiar voice.

  For one dreadful moment the universe stood still round Carrados. Then, with the crash and grind of overwhelming mental tumult, the whole strategy revealed itself, like the sections of a gigantic puzzle falling into place before his eyes.

  There had been no robbery at the British Museum! That plausible concoction was as fictitious as the intentionally transparent tale of treasure trove. Carrados recognized now how ineffective the one device would have been without the other in drawing him—how convincing the two together—and while smarting at the humiliation of his plight he could not restrain a dash of admiration at the ingenuity—the accurately conjectured line of inference—of the plot. It was again the familiar artifice of the cunning pitfall masked by the clumsily contrived trap just beyond it. And straightway into it he had blundered!

  “And this,” continued the same voice, “is Carrados, Max Carrados, upon whose perspicuity a government—only the present government, let me in justice say—depends to outwit the undesirable alien! My country; O my country!”

  “Is it really Monsi
eur Carrados?” inquired Dompierre in polite sarcasm. “Are you sure, Nina, that you have not brought a man from Scotland Yard instead?”

  “Basta! He is here; what more do you want? Do not mock the poor sightless gentleman,” answered Madame Dompierre, in doubtful sympathy.

  “That is exactly what I was wondering,” ventured Carrados mildly. “I am here—what more do you want? Perhaps you, Mr. Stoker—?”

  “Excuse me. ‘Stoker’ is a mere colloquial appellation based on a trifling incident of my career in connection with a disabled liner. The title illustrates the childish weakness of the criminal classes for nicknames, together with their pitiable baldness of invention. My real name is Montmorency, Mr. Carrados—Eustace Montmorency.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Montmorency,” said Carrados gravely. “We are on opposite sides of the table here tonight, but I should be proud to have been with you in the stokehold of the Benvenuto.”

  “That was pleasure,” muttered the Englishman. “This is business.”

  “Oh, quite so,” agreed Carrados. “So far I am not exactly complaining. But I think it is high time to be told—and I address myself to you—why I have been decoyed here and what your purpose is.”

  Mr. Montmorency turned to his accomplice.

  “Dompierre,” he remarked, with great clearness, “why the devil is Mr. Carrados kept standing?”

  “Ah, oh, heaven!” exclaimed Madame Dompierre with tragic resignation, and flung herself down on a couch.

  “Scusi,” grinned the lean man, and with burlesque grace he placed a chair for their guest’s acceptance.

  “Your curiosity is natural,” continued Mr. Montmorency, with a cold eye toward Dompierre’s antics, “although I really think that by this time you ought to have guessed the truth. In fact, I don’t doubt that you have guessed, Mr. Carrados, and that you are only endeavouring to gain time. For that reason—because it will perhaps convince you that we have nothing to fear—I don’t mind obliging you.”

  “Better hasten,” murmured Dompierre uneasily.

  “Thank you, Bill,” said the Englishman, with genial effrontery. “I won’t fail to report your intelligence to the Rasojo. Yes, Mr. Carrados, as you have already conjectured, it is the affair of the Countess X to which you owe this inconvenience. You will appreciate the compliment that underlies your temporary seclusion, I am sure. When circumstances favoured our plans and London became the inevitable place of meeting, you and you alone stood in the way. We guessed that you would be consulted and we frankly feared your intervention. You were consulted. We know that Inspector Beedel visited you two days ago and he has no other case in hand. Your quiescence for just three days had to be obtained at any cost. So here you are.”

  “I see,” assented Carrados. “And having got me here, how do you propose to keep me?”

  “Of course that detail has received consideration. In fact we secured this furnished house solely with that in view. There are three courses before us. The first, quite pleasant, hangs on your acquiescence. The second, more drastic, comes into operation if you decline. The third—but really, Mr. Carrados, I hope you won’t oblige me even to discuss the third. You will understand that it is rather objectionable for me to contemplate the necessity of two able-bodied men having to use even the smallest amount of physical compulsion toward one who is blind and helpless. I hope you will be reasonable and accept the inevitable.”

  “The inevitable is the one thing that I invariably accept,” replied Carrados. “What does it involve?”

  “You will write a note to your secretary explaining that what you have learned at 7 Heronsbourne Place makes it necessary for you to go immediately abroad for a few days. By the way, Mr. Carrados, although this is Heronsbourne Place it is not No. 7.”

  “Dear, dear me,” sighed the prisoner. “You seem to have had me at every turn, Mr. Montmorency.”

  “An obvious precaution. The wider course of giving you a different street altogether we rejected as being too risky in getting you here. To continue: To give conviction to the message you will direct your man Parkinson to follow by the first boat-train tomorrow, with all the requirements for a short stay, and put up at Mascot’s, as usual, awaiting your arrival there.”

  “Very convincing,” agreed Carrados. “Where shall I be in reality?”

  “In a charming though rather isolated bungalow on the south coast. Your wants will be attended to. There is a boat. You can row and fish. You will be run down by motor car and brought back to your own gate. It’s really very pleasant for a few days. I’ve often stayed there myself.”

  “Your recommendation carries weight. Suppose, for the sake of curiosity, that I decline?”

  “You will still go there but your treatment will be commensurate with your behaviour. The car to take you is at this moment waiting in a convenient spot on the other side of the park. We shall go down the garden at the back, cross the park, and put you into the car—anyway.”

  “And if I resist?”

  The man whose pleasantry it had been to call himself Eustace Montmorency shrugged his shoulders.

  “Don’t be a fool,” he said tolerantly. “You know who you are dealing with and the kind of risks we run. If you call out or endanger us at a critical point we shall not hesitate to silence you effectively.”

  The blind man knew that it was no idle threat. In spite of the cloak of humour and fantasy thrown over the proceedings, he was in the power of coolly desperate men. The window was curtained and shuttered against sight and sound, the door behind him locked. Possibly at that moment a revolver threatened him; certainly weapons lay within reach of both his keepers.

  “Tell me what to write,” he asked, with capitulation in his voice.

  Dompierre twirled his moustache in relieved approval. Madame laughed from her place on the couch and picked up a book, watching Montmorency over the cover of its pages. As for that gentleman, he masked his satisfaction by the practical business of placing on the table before Carrados the accessories of the letter.

  “Put into your own words the message that I outlined just now.”

  “Perhaps to make it altogether natural I had better write on a page of the notebook that I always use,” suggested Carrados.

  “Do you wish to make it natural?” demanded Montmorency with latent suspicion.

  “If the miscarriage of your plan is to result in my head being knocked—yes, I do,” was the reply.

  “Good!” chuckled Dompierre, and sought to avoid Mr. Montmorency’s cold glance by turning on the electric table-lamp for the blind man’s benefit. Madame Dompierre laughed shrilly.

  “Thank you, Monsieur,” said Carrados, “you have done quite right. What is light to you is warmth to me—heat, energy, inspiration. Now to business.”

  He took out the pocket-book he had spoken of and leisurely proceeded to flatten it down upon the table before him. As his tranquil, pleasant eyes ranged the room meanwhile it was hard to believe that the shutters of an impenetrable darkness lay between them and the world. They rested for a moment on the two accomplices who stood beyond the table, picked out Madame Dompierre lolling on the sofa on his right, and measured the proportions of the long, narrow room. They seemed to note the positions of the window at the one end and the door almost at the other, and even to take into account the single pendent electric light which up till then had been the sole illuminant.

  “You prefer pencil?” asked Montmorency.

  “I generally use it for casual purposes. But not,” he added, touching the point critically, “like this.”

  Alert for any sign of retaliation, they watched him take an insignificant penknife from his pocket and begin to trim the pencil. Was there in his mind any mad impulse to force conclusions with that puny weapon? Dompierre worked his face into a fiercer expression and touched reassuringly the handle of his knife. Montmorency looked on for a moment, then, whistling softly to himself, turned his back on the table and strolled toward the window, avoiding Madame Nina’s pursuant eye.


  Then, with overwhelming suddenness, it came, and in its form altogether unexpected.

  Carrados had been putting the last strokes to the pencil, whittling it down upon the table. There had been no hasty movement, no violent act to give them warning; only the little blade had pushed itself nearer and nearer to the electric light cord lying there…and suddenly and instantly the room was plunged into absolute darkness.

  “To the door, Dom!” shouted Montmorency in a flash. “I am at the window. Don’t let him pass and we are all right.”

  “I am here,” responded Dompierre from the door.

  “He will not attempt to pass,” came the quiet voice of Carrados from across the room. “You are now all exactly where I want you. You are both covered. If either moves an inch, I fire—and remember that I shoot by sound, not sight.”

  “But—but what does it mean?” stammered Montmorency, above the despairing wail of Madame Dompierre.

  “It means that we are now on equal terms—three blind men in a dark room. The numerical advantage that you possess is counterbalanced by the fact that you are out of your element—I am in mine.”

  “Dom,” whispered Montmorency across the dark space, “strike a match. I have none.”

  “I would not, Dompierre, if I were you,” advised Carrados, with a short laugh. “It might be dangerous.” At once his voice seemed to leap into a passion. “Drop that matchbox,” he cried. “You are standing on the brink of your grave, you fool! Drop it, I say; let me hear it fall.”

  A breath of thought—almost too short to call a pause—then a little thud of surrender sounded from the carpet by the door. The two conspirators seemed to hold their breath.

  “That is right.” The placid voice once more resumed its sway. “Why cannot things be agreeable? I hate to have to shout, but you seem far from grasping the situation yet. Remember that I do not take the slightest risk. Also please remember, Mr. Montmorency, that the action even of a hair-trigger automatic scrapes slightly as it comes up. I remind you of that for your own good, because if you are so ill-advised as to think of trying to pot me in the dark, that noise gives me a fifth of a second start of you. Do you by any chance know Zinghi’s in Mercer Street?”