The Big Book of Espionage

by The Big Book of Espionage (retail) (epub)

  “Thank heavens we won’t have to wake them up,” Norah remarked with relief.

  Val turned the flash into the machine. It was empty; and bore D.C. license plates. Oakridge Manor, he judged, was having visitors this night. All the better.

  The drive widened into a big circle in front of the house, with a flower bed in the center, and they could make out dimly the looming bulk of a large Colonial mansion, with a wing at each end. They started around the flower bed; and suddenly Norah stumbled again, and gasped sharply as she jumped quickly aside.

  “What is this?”

  Val’s light was on it a moment later—a huge Great Dane dog lying dead on the driveway with a trickle of blood staining the ground in front of its chest. It had been shot, and had not been dead long as Val discovered when he touched it with his foot.

  The sight shocked them out of their calm. “I don’t like this!” Nancy whispered sharply.

  “I’d like to get my hands on the man who killed that beautiful animal!” Norah exclaimed indignantly under her breath. “Look at him—poor thing!”

  Val looked at the house instead. Looked warily. Of a sudden the drear silence had taken on an ominous quality. He couldn’t say why. After all, there were a score of reasons why the dog might have been killed. It might have been a strange dog, for instance, trespassing in some way. But nevertheless the feeling persisted.

  “Perhaps you two had better go back to the car,” he suggested under his breath.

  “We’ll stick together,” Nancy told him quietly.

  “I’m not afraid!” Norah Beamish insisted defiantly. “It takes more than a dead dog to upset me. Go on.”

  Val hesitated, and then against his better judgment led the way to the front door. It was made of heavy planks, with small diamond-shaped panes of leaded glass at the top. Curtains inside cut off the view beyond. He found a big wrought-iron knocker breast high, and used it. The clanging sounds seemed to echo back through the house, which despite the lights was strangely silent.

  The knocking was not answered. He repeated it. And while he waited, he roved the beam of the flash around the big dark front porch. Not ten feet away the bottoms of a pair of shoes caught his eye.

  It was a man, lying there on his face, with the bone handle of a knife sticking up grotesquely from under one shoulder blade!

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE WOMAN UPSTAIRS

  Nancy Fraser saw that sight past Val’s shoulder an instant later. Her fingers bit into his arm as she pressed close to him. “Is—is he dead?” she asked unsteadily.

  “Looks that way,” Val muttered, stepping forward to the side of the motionless body.

  He stooped, caught a shoulder and turned the face up. The flashlight showed a dapper, well-dressed young man with a sharp face, prominent nose and tousled black hair. It was no one he had ever seen before.

  Norah had moved to the spot also. She did not cry out. She was calm as usual. “Nancy—I think we had better go back to the machine.”

  “What do you think is happening here?” Nancy asked Val swiftly.

  “Haven’t the slightest idea,” he confessed. “But it looks bad.”

  Just then the front door opened, letting a bright swath of light out across the front porch.

  Val whirled around, sliding his hand into his pocket.

  A broad-shouldered, heavy-set man stepped out into the light and peered at them. He had a gun in his hand, and as he stared at them the weapon slowly lowered to his side and he asked gruffly: “What’s this?”

  “I think you’re the one to do the explaining,” Val countered, walking toward him. “Who killed that man?”

  “You aren’t the sheriff?” the stranger mumbled, looking at the two women.

  “No. I’m not the sheriff.”

  “Then who the devil are you?”

  Norah Beamish ranged alongside Val, and there was not the slightest trace of a quaver in her voice as she said firmly: “Our car ran out of gasoline down there on the road, and we came in here looking for a telephone or enough gasoline to take us on.”

  The man who stood there in the light had a wide flat face, with lumpy, muscular jowls, blue-black with a close-shaven beard. His eyes were narrowed, his mouth was a tight line and his manner suspicious as Norah Beamish spoke to him. But the suspicion gradually left.

  “Out of gasoline, eh?” he said.

  “Yes,” Norah answered clamly. “Have you any to spare? And while we’re asking questions, what is that dead man doing there? It’s—it’s horrible.”

  * * *

  —

  Val kept his hand on the automatic in his pocket. He was aware of the narrowed eyes resting on the pocket for a moment, and suspected that the fellow knew what was in it. But the fact seemed to make no difference. They couldn’t look very suspicious with Norah Beamish standing there very much the grande dame, asking imperious questions.

  “I guess it does look pretty funny to find a thing like that on a front porch, doesn’t it, madam?” the man chuckled. “The fact is, I’m waiting for the sheriff now. I thought when you knocked it was he. You see, this fellow, whoever he is,” with a jerk of his head at the body, “was prowling around here tonight with at least one other man. The dog ran out barking at them, and they shot him.”

  “They should have been shot themselves for that!” Norah sniffed.

  “My sentiments exactly, madam,” she was assured. “I heard the disturbance and ran out to see what was the matter. One of them took a shot at me in the dark. I made a good target against the light, I imagine. The bullet just missed me. See where it hit the side of the door?”

  He turned and pointed to a small round hole in the wood at the side of the door which Val had not noticed when he knocked.

  “And so you stabbed him?” Norah queried, wide-eyed.

  That drew another chuckle. “No, madam, I did not stab him. I had stepped out without my gun, and I ran back inside and slammed the door. It was ‘Big Buck,’ the n——— yard man, who threw that knife. He’s quite handy with one, and he had dodged out at the side of the house when he heard the noise. Standing there, he saw one of the men run up on the porch and take a stand at the side of the door with a gun in his hand. Evidently waiting for me to show myself again, madam. Buck didn’t know what it was all about. But he knew I was in danger, and when I started to open the door again, having gotten my gun, Buck threw his knife. Unfortunately with fatal effect. The man fell. And his companions must have gone one way while Buck went the other. When I stepped out on the porch with this revolver, I found the fellow breathing his last, and it took me ten minutes or so to get the straight of the matter. I’ve telephoned the sheriff, and he said he would get out here as soon as he could.

  “And that,” said the man drily, “explains the gory scene, madam. If you people will step inside you may use the telephone, and save yourselves the unpleasantness of being out here with him.”

  With a polite inclination of his head he indicated the doorway hospitably.

  “Thank you. We will do that,” said Norah firmly, and she sailed inside before Val could say anything to her. Nancy looked at him inquiringly.

  Val swiftly conned the facts. “You say there were two of them?” he asked.

  “At least that many.”

  “And the others ran?”

  “I haven’t seen anything more of them. I guess they didn’t know how many men were out there in the darkness throwing knives, so they left while the leaving was good,” the man chuckled again.

  * * *

  —

  Galbraith had been intending to come here. He had been killed. Now violence had appeared at this house a few hours later. Was it the work of the Black Doctor, Val wondered. Was this house unaware of the danger threatening it? Had the Black Doctor, or some of his men, been closing
in on it and been checked by an unexpected knife thrown out of the darkness?

  It looked that way.

  The mystery was growing thicker at every move, but this was the chance he had wanted to get inside the house. Val nodded slightly at Nancy and followed her into a wide, spacious hall.

  “My name is Easton,” he said calmly as their host joined them, closing the door behind him.

  “Tillson is my name, sir,” the other answered promptly.

  This was the man, then, to whom Ramey’s wire had been sent. But what about Long, the city man who had bought the place several years before, according to the owner of the drugstore back in Hartsville? Val had been wondering about that all the way out. Long owned Oakridge Manor, yet Ramey had wired a J. B. Tillson. Did they live here together? Were they partners, friends? Those were questions he wanted to ask, but didn’t dare to, under the circumstances.

  “You are the owner, I presume?” he suggested.

  And received a negative shake of the head.

  “No. Mr. Long is the owner here. He’s upstairs in bed with a broken leg.”

  Norah Beamish had been looking around as they talked. “You have a nice place here,” she complimented.

  “Thank you, madam,” Tillson bowed. “I think it is myself.”

  He was a curious combination of hard-boiled sophistication and ultra-polite civility. The fact that a man lay dead on the front porch did not seem to disturb him in the slightest. In fact he seemed amused, if anything. Val surprised a quirk at the corner of his mouth that was suppressed almost instantly. And since the telephone was not pressed on them at once, he talked casually.

  “Do you have a farm here?”

  Tillson shook his head. “Only a vegetable garden. I guess there isn’t enough money in farming these days to tempt John. And since he has enough money to live on he lets the place lie as it is.”

  “I imagine the women folks are upset by this business tonight,” Norah Beamish observed shrewdly.

  “There are no women in the house,” Tillson told her. “John is a bachelor, and my wife is in California.”

  “Where all wives should be,” said Norah.

  Tillson was the perfect host as he smiled at her sadly. “There are different opinions about that, of course, madam. I miss Mrs. Tillson a great deal. Won’t you ladies sit down? Mr. Easton, the telephone is in the back of the house. I’ll take you there. Better get the call in before the sheriff gets here.”

  Talking to this man, looking about the spacious hall, listening to the peaceful quiet of the old house, Val had felt increasingly that something was wrong.

  All this did not hook up with Galbraith’s errand to this country; with Gregg’s declaration that the man had been empowered to spend a million pounds; with the British agent that had evidently been tagging Galbraith; and the cold-blooded way both men had died. What could one of the great powers find interesting in this spot? In this man Tillson or his friend who lay upstairs with a broken leg? What did New York have to do with this peaceful lonely spot on the banks of the Potomac?

  And while those thoughts had flashed through Val’s mind, he was wondering about Tillson also. For despite the ultra politeness, the soft, almost genial manner of the man, the effect fell flat. He didn’t look like a country gentleman, or a man who would be satisfied to hibernate in a quiet spot like this. He looked hard, cold, clever. And every once in a while there was a glint in his eyes, a catlike scrutiny of his surroundings, a cold, quickly caught inflection of his voice, that bore out that impression.

  * * *

  —

  No, the man didn’t ring true. The situation didn’t ring true. There was peace in the air. But it was a taut, quivering peace, a quiet that seemed charged with electric tension.

  Instead of quieting the nerves it put them on edge. Val had a very definite feeling that all this pleasantry might change instantly to tragedy.

  And against all the facts he had marshaled there was the evidence of the dead dog and the lifeless corpse out there on the front porch. That dead man belonged to the cities. He wasn’t a casual country prowler. He didn’t belong out here in the mist-filled night, far from houses or people—unless the facts were right. Unless there were more to all this than appeared on the surface. Unless Galbraith had been intending to come here, and the Black Doctor was also interested in the place.

  That was evidence that could not be disputed. Val wished the women were back in the machine, heading toward Washington. He was, he told himself, a fool for bringing them out there. He could have done the job just as well himself.

  “I’ll use your telephone,” he agreed briskly. “And then we’ll go out to our car and cause you no further trouble.”

  “It is a pleasure,” Tillson assured him. “It does this house good to have women in it once in a while.”

  And the words were barely out of the man’s mouth as he turned to the door on his right when the quiet of the house was rudely shattered by a rush of feet upstairs. And following that came the high, shrill, terror-stricken cry of a woman…

  They all froze in their tracks, staring toward the top of the wide sweeping stairs that led up to the second floor, whence that scream had come.

  Val’s eyes dropped to Tillson, whose head had hunched forward and whose face had darkened with an ugly scowl.

  That was all the proof Val needed of his suspicions. Tillson had lied flatly when he said there were no women in the house. And that woman who had screamed was in mortal terror or great pain. It drove a shiver down his back.

  “What’s wrong up there?” Norah Beamish uttered explosively, swinging around on Tillson.

  It all happened in seconds. Later on Val was to wonder why he hadn’t moved fast enough. But he didn’t have a chance, couldn’t guess what was going to happen.

  After the scream cut off sharp, the running feet still pounded upstairs. They reached the head of the stairs and started down.

  The four of them standing below in the hall saw the feet, the legs, the whole figure of a man dashing down the stairs. He was hatless, coatless, shirtless—a sleek, pudgy form half running, half falling down the stairs in his mad haste.

  His hair was rumpled wildly; blood was streaming from the corner of his mouth, spattering the white front of his under shirt and his arms. And one hand brandished a gleaming revolver.

  With a shock Val recognized Galbraith’s New York visitor—Ramey!

  Only now the sleek unctuousness of the man had given away to wild, uncontrollable fright and desperation. His face was twisted in a mask of terror as he catapulted to the turn of the stairs.

  “Get back!” Val cried at Nancy Fraser. His arm swept her roughly back against the wall.

  And an instant later, as Ramey reached the turn in the stairs, their ears were deafened by the report of a gun. It was Tillson shooting. Standing there calmly, jaws clenched until the bunching muscles ridged out. His gun spat once—twice—three times….

  Ramey’s legs gave way under him. The terror-stricken mask of his face suddenly looked horrible as it was struck by a bullet. His body raced forward, the gun flying from his fingers.

  And as Norah Beamish lost her poise and screamed aloud, Ramey’s limp body tumbled and bounced and slid to the floor of the hall at their feet.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE £1,000,000 SECRET

  The odor of burnt powder was strong on the air. Their ears were ringing from the shattering explosions in the confined space of the hall. And ghastly death there before them was stark evidence that they were not dreaming.

  Val turned on Tillson, tugging at the automatic in his pocket—and met the steady muzzle of Tillson’s revolver. Behind it he saw a new Tillson. A man no longer smiling, polite. The narrowed eyes were cold and hard. The flat face was a mask that was not good to see.

  “Put
your arms up!” Tillson ordered through his teeth.

  Val hesitated only a fraction of a second. Proof of what might happen if he did not was too close at hand. He jerked his hands from his coat pocket and lifted his arms in the air.

  “You—you cold-blooded killer!” Norah Beamish gasped.

  “Shut up!” Tillson ordered her roughly. “You talk too much, old lady!”

  “Old?” Norah choked. “Why—why—”

  “Do I have to shut your mouth for you?” Tillson asked coldly.

  “Norah, be quiet,” Nancy ordered clearly. She stepped to Norah’s side and laid slender fingers on Norah’s arm.

  Tillson gave her a cold grin. “You have some sense, young lady,” he remarked.

  “You haven’t acted as if you had,” Nancy told him in the same cool voice. Her deep blue eyes were boring at the man as if she were trying to look behind his face and see things that had not become visible heretofore.

  Tillson sneered at them. “Gas!” he said. “Ran out of it right by the front gate. It was convenient, wasn’t it? And too bad.”

  “Your name isn’t Tillson,” Nancy said coolly.

  “No? What is it?”

  That was what Val was wondering. The whole picture had changed. He was trying to get his bearings again, linking up the facts to make a new picture. And while he was doing that someone else came to the top of the stairs and descended leisurely.

  Val saw black-clad legs, a white shirt, with sleeves rolled up—and a tall, stooped figure descended into view. A pale, cadaverous face looked down at them as the newcomer halted at the turn of the stairs and surveyed the scene for a moment with an inscrutable smile on his lips. The bony arms below the rolled-up sleeves were covered thickly with dark matted hair. And the long talonlike fingers of the right hand held a keen, gleaming surgeon’s scalpel.