by Talbot Mundy
So when the waiter had brought my dinner I talked too, telling Kennedy everything I knew about the whole affair, he laughing quietly most of the time, behaving, in fact, as if I were recounting reminiscences.
“Tell me,” he said when I had finished, “do you know of any other nation than America that could produce a man like Meldrum Strange? The man is right, but not within his rights. What would you think of me, for instance, if I went to America and did there what he proposes to do here? However, it’s too late to help that now. We’ve got to go forward. I’ll say this for him; he has forced our hand, and personally I’m in his debt; I’ve been trying for months to bring this gang to book, but there was obstruction at headquarters. Tonight we’re going to let the law go hang, act ultra vires, and feed these devils some of their own medicine. I’m likely to lose my job over it, but that doesn’t matter, I’m about ready to retire. Out of a hundred and eighteen murders, we know of ninety in recent months that have been committed at the instigation of this gang or by its members. Can’t prove a thing. If we bring them to trial there’s no evidence. We shan’t get the real ring-leaders tonight, but we’ll get the five who call themselves executive committee, and let’s hope they’re ugly!
“No search-warrants. Didn’t dare apply for them. Information would have leaked out. We’ve got a special, hand-picked force made up entirely of British officers, who’ve no connection with the police. They’re supposed to be on their way to a party; and if they should suddenly become a rescue party, that would possibly not involve the Administration in a breach of its own laws. Individually the officers may find themselves in rather hot water, but they’re willing to run that risk for the sake of rendering a public service.”
“Where are the officers now?” I asked him.
“In this room.”
I looked about me. There were twenty or thirty officers in uniform dining at different tables — no unusual number. You would never have suspected them of being there with a common purpose. There were not more than two dining together, and they were of various ranks, from major downward.
“Tell me,” said I, “have you had any communication with Grim about this business?”
He chuckled. “No. Grim’s an old crony of mine. We all know Grim in the Intelligence. When he sent in his resignation we wondered. When we saw him linking up with Meldrum Strange we knew. Grim’s an old war-horse — answers to the trumpet. Can’t help himself — goes for the heart of trouble automatically like a needle to a magnet. Grim saw me on the job once yesterday and twice today — spotted me here as soon as he entered the room — saw that head-waiter taken in charge by one of my men — and possibly drew his own conclusions. However, we’ve discussed elephants long enough. Suppose you join your friends. Just go ahead with the evening’s performance. Protect that Poulakis woman if you can; she’s in danger. They’ll suspect her of having betrayed them. Don’t be surprised by anything that happens!”
* * * * *
So I joined our party, and was aware of being suspected by the women. None of the three was in the Poulakis class. They had neither her charm nor her well-bred self-control; they laughed too noisily, ate too greedily, and laid a lot too much emphasis on their own importance, besides making jokes about Strange and Zelmira Poulakis that would have been in rotten bad taste in any circumstances. It was difficult not to laugh at Strange, for he was getting red under the collar and almost ready to explode.
Nobody was drinking much. We laughed through dessert with Jeremy until the dark-eyed woman sitting on my left began hinting that it was time to go. Then, and not until then, Zelmira Poulakis began to betray signs of nervousness, mastering herself with difficulty, looking suddenly much older, and apparently at a loss for words. However, she managed to smile, and to make the next move gracefully.
“Now for the experience of your lives!” she said. “You will learn that this dinner has been a delightful overture to Grand Opera — Faust, let us say, for you are going to meet Mephistopheles!”
Narayan Singh came forward to meet us in the hall, looking solemn and magnificent in all that finery, and escorted Zelmira Poulakis to the carriage as only an Indian can. He induced the impression that she was a semi-deity, in whose footsteps flowers should spring up presently; whereas the rest of us were merely to be tolerated, on the ground that she had condescended to acknowledge us. I suspect that half the reason why aristocracy is dying out is that impresarios as skillful as Narayan Singh are scarce in these days; a woman or man on social stilts needs a clever rogue to go in front and provide the proper atmosphere. On the way out I tried to speak to Grim, but one of the three chaperones spotted it and prevented by coming between us. It was her suggestion that he should ride in the front carriage with the women, and Grim couldn’t well refuse.
Looking back as we drove away I saw automobiles assembling in the dark in front of the hotel steps, and not long afterward we began to be pursued at a distance by the purring of six or eight cars. One passed us, and stopped to let us pass again under pretext of a stalled engine; but the others kept well to the rear, trusting to the first to keep us in view.
We drove over the Nile and past the Poulakis mansion, down two or three streets to another house bigger than hers, standing gloomy and aloof with its sides all wan in moonlight. The shadow of one tree fell in the shape of a human skull across the front of it, and the urns on the pillars of the great gate looked like those you see over a cemetery wall. It was a perfect house for the sort of performance we were in for.
“Close enough to the Nile for dumping corpses without unnecessary scandal,” as Jeremy sweetly expressed it. “Feel like a swim, you fellows? How about it, Strange? They tell me swimming with your throat cut’s easy — no work to it — just drift down with the stream!
“Have we all got guns?” he demanded, as we drove in through the echoing gate and it clanged shut. Strange had none. I offered him mine and he refused it testily, for his nerves were on edge.
“No use for one,” he answered. “Out of my line. I was a fool to bring you fellows on this errand. Save yourselves if there’s any trouble, and—”
“Sure you’re a fool!” laughed Jeremy, “but we like you, Strange, old top. It’s nice to know a millionaire who isn’t wiser than the rest of us! Here we are! Now for act one!” But they kept our carriage waiting several minutes before the first moved on and let ours draw up opposite the front door.
CHAPTER XII. “Crooks are just crooks.”
I wonder how many men there are who can go forward into the unknown without making mental pictures in advance of what’s coming. I believe Grim can. I know I can’t. It may be that ability to refrain from “imagining vain things” leaves you free to imagine truly and successfully. We who imagine in advance form judgments in advance and I expect that’s why we’re so frequently wrong.
I fully expected to find Grim and all four women waiting for the rest of us, either outside the door of the house or else just inside it. I also expected to find Narayan Singh standing there, for he had ridden on the platform behind the women’s carriage, and would naturally get down to open the carriage door for them. I couldn’t have guessed wider of the mark. It was a one hundred per cent. miss.
We stepped out into darkness. The other carriage was already disappearing into deeper gloom, and ours proceeded to follow it. There was a porch in such deep shadow that you could hardly see its outlines, but enough dim light came out through the partly opened front door to prove that nobody was standing outside. Somebody standing behind the door opened it wide, and we walked in one by one, Strange leading.
The door clicked softly shut behind us, and it was almost too dark to see, for there was only one lamp in the hall, and that shrouded with black silk; but we could dimly discern three solemn individuals dressed in black from head to foot, who stood in line to receive us. They looked like undertakers.
“Your weapons, please!” said the man in the center in sepulchral tones; and all three held their right hands out.
/> “Do we get brass checks?” asked Jeremy. The middle man of the three didn’t answer, but continued holding out his hand. Meldrum Strange said crustily that he had no weapons.
“Do you mean that we won’t be admitted otherwise?” I demanded.
There was still not a word said in reply, but the first and third men each took a threatening step toward Jeremy and me. They obviously meant to search us, and I can’t say what I would have done about it, except that I never yet did surrender a weapon to anybody on demand, and old dogs find it difficult to learn new tricks.
But Strange solved the problem for us, by going clear off his head. I guess the nervous strain was too much for a man of his temperament, used to having his own way in the world.
“You swine!” he said; and clenching his right fist he swung with all his strength and weight for the chin of the man in the middle. It was the sort of blow that wins world’s championships. Any man caught off-guard would have gone down under it. The fellow in black collapsed like a corpse.
I’m entitled to no credit for what followed. Jeremy did the thinking. I simply followed suit, doing the only thing I could do. Jeremy closed with his man, and I believe hit him with the butt-end of his Colt. The fellow in front of me tried to stop my left fist with the peak of his jaw, and the men who can do that successfully bulk about twice his size.
It was all over in half a second almost noiselessly, for they fell on thick carpet, making no remarks. There was a door on Jeremy’s left and he opened it.
“Quick!” he whispered. “Here’s an empty room.”
You couldn’t see a thing, but Jeremy picked up one man, hove him in there, and turned to help me with the second. I had already gathered up Strange’s victim. If you’ve ever watched the U.S. Navy police throwing their captured drunks into a boat in some foreign port you’ll realize that an unconscious man can be handled pretty roughly without being seriously hurt; it’s only when they struggle that bones get broken.
I tossed number two through the door on top of Jeremy’s number one — or so I supposed — and together we picked up the third man. We swung him like a sack and let go. It was only then, as his feet disappeared through the opening, that we realized that all three had fallen, not on to a floor, nor down-stairs, but down a dark hole where a flight of stairs had probably once been.
They made no noise and we didn’t stop to investigate. We locked the door and Jeremy pocketed the key.
If you allow two minutes from the time the front door clicked behind us until that other key was in Jeremy’s pocket you’ll be well on the right side. The next thing Jeremy did was to find the front-door latch, slide it back, and fix it in that position, so that any rescue party would simply have to turn the big brass knob outside and walk in unannounced. But what to do then was too much for even Jeremy to guess, so I said:
“Grim’s inside somewhere. We can’t leave Grim and Narayan Singh.”
There was nothing in that to argue about; but you can suggest as many explanations of what followed as you like without being sure you have given the right one. A friend in the U.S. Secret Service, whom I have known for twenty years, laughed when I told him it couldn’t be explained; he said:
“Me boy, that’s aisy. Crooks are just crooks. Ivery mother’s son has a quirk in him that works wan way. If it weren’t for that we’d niver catch the smart wans. They’re all alike. They play safe. Be damned, they take more pains playin’ safe than a boid takes buildin’ a nest. But did you iver see a boid take an inventory wance the nest was built an’ the eggs laid? They figure that when precaution’s took, it’s took. An’ that’s where we come in. We look for their precautions. It’s as plain as the nose on y’r face that those crooks had set three men at the front door ‘at they knew they could bet on. An’ bet they did. An’ bettin’s chancy. Chance is scaircely iver on the side of the law, because the law don’t dale in chances, but in the long run it’s always agin the crook!”
Maybe Clancy put his finger on it — I don’t know. The gang upstairs had certainly left the guarding of the entrance hall exclusively to those three men. They were careless when they least could afford to be. We went forward.
There was no furniture in the hall, except two carpets one on top of the other presumably to deaden footfall, and that one dim hanging lantern shrouded in black silk. The stairs turned around to the right in front of us, and we walked up as softly as we could, I leading this time and going slowly.
After making two turns they gave on to a dark landing, also thickly carpeted, and we found ourselves faced by six shut doors, with a window on our left that admitted moonlight through its narrow top pane; the rest was curtained. There was nobody waiting to receive us, but we could hear voices. I cleared my throat loudly; and a wooden shutter moved on the panel of the door immediately in front of us, exposing a small round hole. Light streamed through the hole and was shut off instantly by the head of someone who scrutinized us for about a minute. Then the whole panel moved downward, and his face appeared in the opening, but you couldn’t see much of it; the upper half was covered with a black mask; the lower part, that you could see, framed a mean, anemic smile.
“Simon should have brought you upstairs,” he complained suspiciously. “Why didn’t he?”
Jeremy lied with genius — for I suppose that is genius which gets believed.
“There were three men downstairs,” he said. “Two of ’em went and stood on the porch in the dark. Simon closed the front door and told us to come on up.”
“Oh. Well, Simon knows his business. Come in here.”
We entered a room about ten by eight that had doors on either hand opening into other rooms. We were in the middle of a suite of apartments. The heat in this small connecting room was stifling, for there was no window and the light came from a huge oil-lamp against which about a hundred moths were busy beating themselves to death.
The man who admitted us had evening clothes on, but over them, in addition to the mask, a black cloak like a pew-opener’s that reached his heels, and he seemed to be sweating more than was good for him.
“Where’s Grim?” demanded Jeremy.
He didn’t answer but, whether intentionally or not, permitted the front of his cloak to open and show a heavy revolver in a holster. Through the door on the left we could hear women’s voices — men’s through the door on the right; no words were distinguishable. There was no furniture in the room except a carpet, a camp-stool, and the lamp on a bracket on the wall. Our host sat down on the stool between the two side doors, and there seemed to be nothing for us to do but wait and look at him. But waiting isn’t Jeremy’s favorite amusement.
“Damned uninteresting cage!” he said. “What’s in the next one?”
“Wait for your turn!” the man in the mask answered.
“Turn?” said Jeremy. “We’re done to a turn! So are you. Let some air in. If you don’t, I will!”
“Keep quiet!” said the man in the mask.
“What d’you take us for?” asked Jeremy, purposely raising his voice, and striding forward to open one of the doors. But his purpose was already accomplished. The door on our left opened suddenly and Narayan Singh’s face appeared; he smiled, said nothing whatever, and closed the door again at once. Strange looked alarmed, for when Narayan Singh is deliberately trying to look like a hasheesh-maddened fanatic a sight of him would freeze his own mother’s marrow-bones. But there wasn’t anything reassuring that I could safely say to Strange just then in front of that fellow with a mask.
Jeremy was just about to irritate him further when somebody tapped out a signal on the right-hand door, and with a bad-tempered sneer at us the fellow got off his camp-stool and produced a key from under his cloak. He very nearly unmasked us in the process, for as he made that movement Jeremy and I both felt for our pistols. Luckily he was too intent on fitting the key into the door to notice it.
We went in one by one, passing around a high black screen beyond the door, and found ourselves in a square room f
urnished with a long mahogany table in the midst, and about a dozen high-backed chairs. There was no other furniture, except for a bench against one wall on which three men were seated.
Facing us at the table as we entered were five men, all in evening clothes. Those on the bench against the wall wore long black cloaks exactly like that of the fellow in the anteroom. Every one of the eight men in the room was masked to the tip of his nose; but the middle one of the five was recognizable from Narayan Singh’s account, for he had rolls of fat protruding over his collar, and the end man on our right had a short beard “of the kind that missionaries wear.”
We heard the key turn in the lock behind us, which was hardly reassuring, but there were no weapons in evidence, and there was nothing on the table except blotting-paper, pens, ink-pots, and a lot of printed blanks that looked like checks and promissory notes.
“Good evening, Mr. Meldrum Strange! Good evening, gentlemen!” said the man with the fat neck. “Pray be seated.”
“Evening!” Strange answered gruffly.
“Where’s Grim?” demanded Jeremy.
“Be seated — be seated, gentlemen!”
“Where’s Grim?”
“You will learn that presently. Be seated.”
We sat down facing the five. There was a door in the middle of the wall behind their backs, and another door on our right, so that we were obviously open to attack from two sides and behind, to say nothing of the three attendants on the bench. There wasn’t much to be gained in the circumstances by glancing about the room nervously, so I concentrated my attention on the fat-necked man, reasoning that if there were going to be any violence he would be the one to give the signal. Strange concentrated on him too.
