Introductory material (continued 5)

“Joan has disappeared, so I take it that she has had a sinister hand in it?”

“I know nothing of the details, but I certainly should suppose so,” was the great crook’s reply.

“I am here to beg for your assistance, Monsieur Sarasti. How can I find her?” I implored of the low-browed, dark-faced scoundrel.

He shook his head gravely. Though a criminal and an assassin, he was, however, in no way antagonistic towards me. Perhaps it was on account of Rodwell’s death.

“I fear I can give you no help. The matter is private vengeance on your wife’s part. In such circumstances I cannot interfere.”

“Joan’s father, a barrister, prosecuted Hilda Bennett,” I remarked. “Is it because of that the girl has been spirited away from her home?”

“I think not, for I have knowledge that Illona uttered threats against you both six months ago. She has apparently carried out her threat against your girl friend, and now she intends to betray you.”

“And I am helpless!” I cried in despair. “What reply can I make to the charges she may bring against me?”

Felix Zuroff was silent for a few moments.

“Perhaps it is the woman’s intended revenge that your friend Mr. Gell shall appear in court, and actually prosecute his daughter’s fiancé!” he remarked at last.

“But do give me advice,” I begged of him. “What can I do in order to save myself?”

The desperate bandit again reflected for a few moments.

“If she carried her threat into execution, then your arrest would, in all probability, place us all in peril,” he remarked slowly, as though speaking to himself. “No, she must remain silent. Lisely Hatten is your good friend, and has always been. You may trust her.”

“But how can I defy Illona?” I demanded eagerly.

The man’s dark face changed. I saw a hard, stern look on his countenance.

“I will see to it,” he muttered, and, crossing to the writing-table, he unlocked a drawer, and took out a well-worn little wallet, withdrawing from it a piece of folded cartridge paper upon which I saw was drawn a circle of musical notes, the three double noughts similar to my own.

Taking out a scrap of music paper, he rapidly wrote several bars of music, after referring carefully to the key. At the end, he drew a peculiar sign, evidently a mark well known to his accomplices, and then, folding it, told me to deliver it to her in London at the earliest moment.

“Alas, I have no knowledge of her address,” I said in dismay.

He referred to the wallet into which he had replaced the circular musical design, and a moment later said:

“She stays with a man named Owen when in London. At present he is lodging with Bob Whittaker at Beverley Villa, Sheen Lane, close to Mortlake Station, and she is no doubt there also.”

I scribbled the address upon my shirt-cuff, and taking the precious piece of music, which I knew to be an order which the woman dare not disobey, folded it and placed it securely in my pocket-book.

“If the man Owen is Roddy Owen, then he was the last man seen with Joan,” I remarked.

“Yes. He is Roddy Owen and is lying low on account of an unfortunate affair at Fulham, in which our comrade Tuggy Wilson was shot dead by some unknown person, who had a secret grudge against him. Dufour was suspected, but he was innocent, as he was a great friend of Tuggy’s.”

“Can Owen have had any hand in Joan’s disappearance, do you think?”

“Ah! How can we tell?” he replied, with a mysterious grin. “In my position I can have no interest in the private quarrels of any of my friends. I order, while they obey. That is all!” and in his dark eyes shone a strange, evil glint.

Before I took my leave I again begged of him to release me, but his only reply was:

“I have given you an order for your release from your most dangerous enemy, Monsieur Hipwell. For the present that must suffice!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX. WITHOUT PREJUDICE

That afternoon I recrossed the lake to Evian-les-Bains amid a crowd of English tourists, and after tea at the Royal, Lord Oxenwood gave me back the well-filled dispatch box to take to Downing Street, saying:

“I expect you’ll have to come out again next week. But I shall be at Geneva, as I am attending the League of Nations next Friday.”

He also gave me the dispatch for the Ambassador in Paris, and a box of fresh flowers to take to Lady Oxenwood in Grosvenor Square.

At seven o’clock I was back in Lausanne where I dined at the Café Central up on the Place St. François. Afterwards I watched the dancing until eleven o’clock. Leaving then on the homeward bound Simplon-Orient express, I arrived in Paris next morning, and delivered the dispatch to a secretary from the Embassy. It was seven o’clock the next evening when I arrived in London.

The curious fact frequently struck me how, during my period of unconsciousness, I had been appointed to that highly responsible post of King’s Foreign Service Messenger. For many months I had traveled constantly hither and thither, at the same time leading a criminal life of which I had not the slightest knowledge, except what from time to time I had been able to gather from my undesirable associates.

What would the world have said if it had been known that the secrets of Great Britain’s diplomacy were being entrusted to an expert thief of women’s jewels?

As soon as Bruce opened my door I knew by his scared face that something was wrong.

“The police were here yesterday, sir,” he said, “and they came again to-day. They were here at five o’clock.”

“The police!” I gasped, thoroughly taken aback. “Who?”

“Two detectives, sir. They were very anxious to see you. They showed me a search warrant, and then went over everything. They had all the books down from the shelves, and opened everything.”

“And what did they find?” I asked.

“Nothing, sir. But it’s queer, isn’t it? Why did they get a search warrant, I wonder? Do they think you are a thief?”

“How can I tell, Bruce?” I laughed, remembering with satisfaction how, after taking the pearls from the hollow book, I had destroyed the latter, and had placed the key to the musical cipher in my pocket-book.

One serious fact was now quite plain. Illona had forestalled me, and had already given information to the police, believing that Lady Rathgormly’s pearls were still in their hiding-place.

The bitter vindictiveness of the woman who called me husband I now realized, and in fury I at once took the train down to Mortlake. Without much difficulty I found Beverley Villa, a small detached modern house, the hall of which was badly lit. My ring was answered by a slatternly young girl, of whom I asked for Mr. Whittaker. At the end of the narrow passage appeared a dark, curly-haired man in his shirt-sleeves, who came forward rather pugnaciously, I thought.

“Mr. Whittaker?” I inquired politely. “I have called to see Illona,” I added in a low voice: “I have a message from—from His Excellency.”

The man looked me up and down suspiciously.

“Who are you?” he asked, with a distinct Cockney twang.

For answer I took out the paper with the double noughts and musical notes on it.

Instantly that satisfied him, for he conducted me to a small, cheaply-furnished back sitting-room on the first floor, where I found Illona wearing a soiled négligé gown of pale pink silk.

“You!” she gasped, starting up, and staring at me astounded.

“Yes!” I cried anxiously. “So you have already commenced your devil’s work against me, have you? But two can play at this game. Read that!”

And I pushed into her face the bars of music which His Excellency had scribbled and signed.

“Here is the key, if you want it,” I laughed gloatingly, placing my own key into her hand. “Read it, you traitor, and take heed what you do!”

In a few minutes, by reference to the six circles, she realized what order the master-criminal had issued; for, I watched her face go pale as death.

“I—I——”

“I want no explanation,” I cried. “His Excellency has given me that to convey to you. The future is now your own affair.”

“But, Lionel!” she cried. “I did not mean to——”

“You meant to cause my arrest,” I shouted at her in anger. “But I defy you! His Excellency will deal with you as he thinks fit, never fear. Any one of us who betrays the other pays the penalty, and that is upon you.”

“I swear that I did not mean any harm. I was forced to——” cried the hideous, distorted woman, white to the lips, and staggering.

“His Excellency, I know, is aware of more concerning you than you ever dream,” I said, as laughing defiantly in her face, I turned and left that dark, mysterious abode of thieves.

She darted out after me, and taking my coat-sleeve, pulled me back into the passage.

“What do you mean?” she asked. “What has His Excellency told you?”

“Only that you are my bitterest enemy, and now you have proved it and treated me as such,” was my harsh reply. “The police have searched my rooms.”

“And they have found nothing,” she said. “Therefore why worry further?”

“I don’t,” I said. “It is for you now to worry, I think. His Excellency means what he says, remember.”

“But it is too late,” she screamed. “I can’t draw back now. I was a fool—an accursed fool.”

“Yes,” I said. “I think you were. Good night,” and I left her standing half fainting in the doorway. Whatever cryptic message Felix Zuroff had written in that code of music, it had had a most startling and crushing effect on her. Her face became haggard and drawn, with her eyes starting wildly out of her head. She appeared to be absolutely frozen with horror.

Back in Sackville Street an hour later, it then being nearly midnight, I wondered if I should receive another visit from the police. Nothing had been found. And, in that case, I could see no reason why they should arrest me. Nevertheless, the position had become full of gravest peril. Probably the woman Illona had denounced me by means of an anonymous letter. If so, Scotland Yard would probably act with both hesitancy and discretion.

If a statement had been made that Lady Rathgormly’s pearls were concealed in my room, then naturally the search warrant granted by the magistrate at Marlborough Street Police Court, allowed them to pry into my belongings. Quite certain it was that Illona would never dare to go to the police openly, and denounce me, as it would be far too dangerous a procedure for her. No, as I sat far into the night reflecting over the events of the last forty-eight hours, I arrived at the conclusion that my official position would satisfy the police that I was no thief.

By my conversation with the most notorious motor-bandit Europe had known, I had learned one very important fact, namely, the hiding-place of Roddy Owen, who had so cleverly slipped through the hands of the police from Harrington Court. At half-past nine next morning, I called at Queen’s Gate, and told Mr. Gell of the fellow’s address, without, however, explaining how I had become possessed of it.

“Excellent, my dear Lionel!” he cried enthusiastically. “The information is most important, for it will enable the C.I.D. to take up the case again. Come down to Scotland Yard with me.”

This I did. The Assistant Commissioner had not arrived, but we saw Superintendent Nethersole—one of the “Big Four”—who was an intimate friend of Mr. Gell’s, and who gave orders which resulted in two detectives being told off to keep strict observation upon the house in Sheen Lane, and its fair-haired male lodger.

Superintendent Nethersole’s attitude towards me, however, struck me as distinctly peculiar. I had never met him before, but he inquired if I were Mr. Hipwell, the King’s Messenger, and if I lived in Sackville Street. Was it possible that under his instructions my rooms had been searched? I felt confident that it was so—hence the situation became further extremely awkward.

I walked out into Parliament Street with the extreme satisfaction of knowing that wherever Owen went in the future he would be closely watched. Mr. Gell continued in his car to the Law Courts, while I strolled back home across St. James’s Park.

I found a middle-aged, well-dressed man awaiting me in my room. He introduced himself as Inspector Jerrold of the C.I.D., and he said apologetically:

“We think, sir, that it is only right to explain the reason we searched your apartments during your absence the day before yesterday, and why we also made inquiries at your bank, and examined what you have there in safe custody. At Scotland Yard a letter posted in Paris was received, alleging that the pearls, stolen from Lady Rathgormly some time ago, were in your possession—concealed in a hollow book.”

“Well,” I laughed, “I hope you found them!”

“Of course not, sir,” replied the police officer. “From the first it was considered a wild and improbable story. But we were compelled to do our duty and investigate. I have been sent by the Superintendent to apologize to you.”

“Superintendent who?”

“Superintendent Nethersole at the Yard, sir.”

I smiled. The reason was now plain, why he had evinced such an interest in me.

“I expect you have some secret enemy sir, eh? Oh, you’ve no idea how many foolish and unfounded denunciations we receive against perfectly innocent people,” the inspector said. “There are so many mad people about nowadays. In every case of murder, we always get dozens of false accusations against the supposed culprit. In the Bow Road affair last month, for instance, no fewer than fifty-eight different people were accused as the assassin—mostly by anonymous letter-writers.”

“As long as I’m not proved to be a jewel-thief, Mr. Jerrold, I think we may allow the matter to rest, eh?” I said.

“I think so, sir,” he laughed. Then, politely but firmly refusing a whiskey-and-soda I offered him, he wished me good morning, and I admit that I felt greatly gratified when the door closed behind him.

Certainly I had had a most narrow escape from arrest. The whole affair naturally caused a most intense hatred and loathing to arise within me against my treacherous wife Illona, who, while declaring her extreme solicitude for me, at the same time had acted as my most bitter and dangerous enemy. Yet by the drastic action of His Excellency—whatever it was—her game had now been spoiled. She feared me, I knew. Why? Was it because she anticipated reprisals?

The one vital point which annoyed me to desperation was, that I had in my unconscious state actually married such a painted-up freak. I was wondering whether my marriage could be annulled. I doubted it, for to all intents and purposes I had been quite sane and of sound mind, when I had stood before the Registrar. There would be a hundred people to come forward and declare that I was quite sane and normal. In the papers I had seen reports of many marriage contracts, which the court after evidence had declared null and void. But in my own case, I knew too well that I had been at the time existing in a dream, induced by that baneful drug which had been injected into my veins, causing me to become a criminal and a jewel-thief.

If I told my story in the Divorce Court, people would only laugh at me. And such a thought caused me a deep and most terrible depression.

Even if I succeeded in finding poor Joan alive, I could never marry her, tied as I was to that ugly, done-up traitor, that habitual criminal who had proved herself my worst enemy.

Three days went by. I had been out for an afternoon stroll, and had called on a family named Fleming in Upper Brook Street, where I had tea when, on returning, Bruce told me that Mr. Gell wished to see me at the Temple as soon as possible.

I took a taxi to Fleet Street and was soon shown into the dull, time-dimmed chambers of the eminent King’s Counsel.

“My dear Lionel,” began the burly lawyer, who had just come across from court, and still wore his silk gown. “Your information has brought forth fruit. Nethersole found me in court this afternoon, and tells me that through watching Owen they have found Dufour and his wife. You remember they fled mysteriously from Finlay Street in Fulham. They are now in hiding in a house in Windsor Terrace up at Hoxton, a very low neighborhood, I believe.”

“Dufour is a thief, no doubt.”

“Of course. He was, like Owen, an associate of Tuggy Wilson. The police are greatly gratified, as they have come across quite a little nest of men they have long wanted.”

“Ah, if we only could obtain news of poor Joan!” I cried. “To rediscover Dufour is not of very great interest, is it?”

“No. But to find Owen is. The police have been making a quantity of diligent inquiries about him and a woman who is lodging at the same house at Mortlake, and it is quite possible there may be some dramatic arrests in the immediate future.”

“Arrests?” I gasped, for if Illona were arrested she would attribute it all to me, and would certainly incriminate me.

In a flash I realized the extreme seriousness of the situation.

“You seem surprised, Lionel,” said Mr. Gell. “But as a matter of fact I believe arrests are to be made to-night. I have promised to go up to Hoxton with Nethersole. You’d better come with me. I should be glad to see Owen in the dock; for, we might then learn something of interest. I’m meeting Nethersole at the Yard at half past nine. Dress rough, as I shall, and come along,” he urged.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN. THE SHOP-WINDOW CLUE

Dressed in an old suit of Bruce’s, a pair of my oldest shoes, and wearing a golf cap and a flannel shirt without a collar, I presented a rough appearance as I entered the paved court before the big building known as New Scotland Yard, where Mr. Gell, attired in a butcher’s blue overall, and wearing a battered straw hat, which is the fashion of vendors of meat, awaited me.

“I think we’re in for some excitement to-night,” he said, in a low voice. “Nethersole says that if Owen is there and is cornered, he will probably show fight, so I’ve brought my pistol.”

“So have I,” I replied, feeling my trusty automatic in my hip-pocket. “I always carried it, too, on my journeys on the Continent.”

“The inquiries the police have made during the past month have proved that the little coterie in Hoxton are connected with a big gang of Continental thieves. The woman Bennett was one of them, without a doubt,” remarked my companion.

“But what is the use of it all if we cannot find Joan?” I asked despondently, for I must here confess that I trembled to think of the consequences for me if Illona were arrested and disclosed the truth.

A closed blue Buick stood in the courtyard close by, and a few seconds later Superintendent Nethersole—whom I had difficulty in recognizing as a pallid, consumptive-looking, ill-dressed man—together with three common laborers, emerged. And together we entered the conveyance, truly a rough looking party of hard-working denizens of the East End.

“O’Gorman, who is on duty, has just telephoned to say that Owen and Dufour are spending the evening together and that they have gone round to the bar of the King’s Arms, in the City Road,” Nethersole explained to Joan’s father as the car swung into Parliament Street. “We ought to make a good haul to-night. But our chief concern is to clear up the mystery as to who killed that young expert thief, Tuggy Wilson. Dufour was discharged, but there are still suspicions. The court dismissed him on account of insufficient evidence. But he can be arrested again, if we so decide.”

“Has anyone squealed?” asked Mr. Gell, using the thieves’ expression for giving information.

“Some woman has—but it was only a woman’s hatred,” he replied, glancing at me. And I felt very uncomfortable, to say the least.

“I feel certain that Owen knows the whereabouts of Joan Gell, dead or alive,” I said quickly. “We have to wring the truth from him. Poor girl! She must have suffered the tortures of the damned in these many weeks.”

“If Owen knows anything he shall be made to divulge it, I assure you, Mr. Hipwell,” declared the Superintendent. “Leave that to us,” he added confidently.

Along Theobald’s Road, the Clerkenwell Road, and Old Street we went until, at last gaining the busy City Road, we pulled up at the corner of Shepherdess Walk, not far from the blue lamp denoting the police-station. Nethersole alighted and, with one of his sergeants, strolled farther along the City Road to the corner of a narrow working-class thoroughfare, Windsor Terrace. Presently, from the shadow emerged a loafer who spoke a few hurried words to the Superintendent, and then ambled off. The man was Sergeant O’Gorman, whose duty had been to keep observation upon the house.

Turning back to us, Nethersole said:

“Owen and Dufour are still over there in the public-house. We’ll wait a bit and surround the house when they go back, as they are sure to do at closing-time. I’ve got a warrant for Owen charging him with being an accessory to the murder of Wilson. And we want Dufour because his description resembles that of the man who broke a pane of glass in the window of Appleyard’s, the jewelers in Old Bond Street, six months ago, while another man seized a tray of rings and got away in a car. They were no doubt working together. The man who took the tray was noticed by two passers-by, and I have a shrewd suspicion when I put Mr. Owen up for identification, he will be found to be the thief. They are all a pretty expert lot.”

Then, leaving us, he meandered away, while the sergeant with him crossed to the King’s Arms to have a drink and watch the wanted men, who were all unsuspicious that they had been traced to their humble hiding-place.

With Joan’s father I paced the streets unnoticed in the crowd of hurrying passers-by. None of us dared to enter the police-station; for, in the lower-class neighborhoods there are a hundred suspicious eyes on the alert for officers of the law in plain clothes.

Windsor Terrace did not bear the best of reputations. Many a thief or pilferer had been arrested there. Too, it was the abode of more than one pickpocket known to the police by previous convictions.

An hour full of suppressed excitement went by. At last the burly sergeant of the C.I.D. emerged from the public-house and went off in the opposite direction, subsequently doubling back, and meeting us outside the hospital in the City Road.

“They’re still there, sir,” he reported to his chief. “Another man is with them; but he is a stranger to me. They’ve just bought a bottle of whisky, so they’ll be going home with it in a minute.”

“Anything of any womenfolk?” asked Nethersole.

“No, sir. But I’ve overheard something they’ve been discussing. I believe it’s quite right about Appleyard’s, and that if we search, we’ll find the stuff at the house.”

“Splendid, Rayner!” declared the Superintendent. “Fade out now, but be in reach when we go to the house.”

“All right, sir,” replied the man, and he slunk away and quickly disappeared.

“Rayner is an excellent fellow—and has very long ears,” Nethersole remarked to us, and as I looked around I saw two of the men whom we had brought from the Yard waiting for a motor bus. A moment later they boarded it and went off.

I was surprised, but Nethersole remarked that the pair had evidently been observed and had gone. Ten minutes later they returned separately.

Suddenly from where we stood, we noticed another man come out of the King’s Arms and stand in hesitancy on the curb. As he did so he wiped his brow with a white handkerchief and then went off.

Nethersole’s quick eyes saw the signal, which told him that the men they wanted were about to come out.

Two minutes later they did so. I recognized both Owen and Dufour in the distance. With them was another man, tall and rather older, as far as I could discern.

At once they were followed at a respectful distance by one of the men who had exercised the ruse of leaving on the motor bus. We turned and walked away in the opposite direction. Presently we were overtaken in the crowd by the man who had come out of the bar and wiped his forehead. Addressing his chief, he said:

“All O.K., sir! They’re inside, and Sergeant Rayner is on duty. The third man they call Harry, and I overheard him tell Owen something about a woman—evidently a friend of theirs—that she might ‘peg out’ very soon.”

“Is the man known?” asked Nethersole quickly.

“No, sir. None of us knows him. He’s got a motor-bike in front of the house. So he doesn’t live here.”

“He’s evidently a friend of Owen’s. When he gets away on his bike, our car will follow him. See to that. We may want him.”

“Who is to go, sir?”

“Perry and Denham will go—with Rayner in charge.”

“May I go also?” I asked, eager for a chase. I saw that Owen and Dufour were to be arrested, and to follow the stranger would certainly be exciting.

“If you wish, Mr. Hipwell,” replied the pallid-looking man whom none would recognize as one of the “Big Four” of Scotland Yard.

“And I’ll go too,” said Mr. Gell. “You’ll no doubt deal with Dufour and his friend.”

Nethersole smiled, and then we turned and made our way back along the short street of drab, dilapidated old homes known as Windsor Terrace. As we approached, two other men came to meet us. Signals were given, and with two other men they retired into the shadows of adjacent doorways.

Outside the house there stood a fast “Indian” motor-cycle with its lamp lit, while at the end of the street, where we approached from the City Road, stood our car with the chauffeur, who had already received instructions.

While we drew back Nethersole ascended the steps and knocked loudly at the door, two of his own men standing close behind him. After several repeated knocks the door was at last opened, and the three men from Scotland Yard rushed into the dark passage.

Next moment we heard rapid automatic shots and the loud scream of a woman—probably Dufour’s wife.

In a flash pandemonium was at its height.

At once two other detectives ran into the house and from nowhere there appeared a constable in uniform guarding the door. The raid had certainly been well arranged, to the minutest detail.

Already we were near the car when we saw a tall figure exit hurriedly up the area steps from the basement, mount the motor-cycle, and speed away. Seeing that our car was turned in the opposite direction, I cried out that we should lose sight of him.

“No, sir. I don’t think we shall,” replied the well-trained police chauffeur, who knew all the main roads of London like a map. “He’ll no doubt get out on to the New North Road and into the country. We shall overtake him very soon, I think.”

Then, as we all jumped in, the car quickly sped back along the City Road to the New North Road and was soon traveling at high speed towards the Holloway Road. We were quickly at Holloway Station, but had seen no sign of the fugitive. Therefore our chauffeur slackened speed, saying:

“He won’t think he is being followed. He’ll pass us in a minute or two, and then he’ll believe us to be an ordinary party on the road.”

His prophecy proved true; for, within a few moments the fast “Indian” passed us traveling at about thirty miles an hour, and upon it was the escaping suspect.

In a moment we were after him, allowing him to get well ahead of us. He accelerated wherever he could. And, as there was but little traffic on the road at that hour, we soon found ourselves going through St. Albans and on our way to Dunstable, strangely enough on the same road over which I had traveled with my two friends, the lorry-drivers, on the night of my great misfortune. Up the long main street of Dunstable we passed, and then out on the straight road leading to Fenny Stratford.

“I wonder where the fellow is bound for,” asked Mr. Gell, as he sat resignedly in the back of the car at my side.

“And I’m wondering what dirty work has been done in Windsor Terrace,” I remarked. “Nethersole had an inkling that they would show fight.”

“Oh! Both of them are safe in Shepherdess Walk Police Station by this time,” he said with a laugh. “Trust Nethersole to take care of himself and his men. Our chief interest just now is in this fleeing stranger. Who can he be, and where is he bound for?”

“He may turn off the road,” remarked Sergeant Rayner. “If so we can’t follow in the car. It would arouse his suspicions and he wouldn’t go to his destination. If he does that, we must descend and travel on foot. We shall find his bike outside some house or other.”

“Have you orders to arrest him?” asked Mr. Gell.

“Certainly I have, sir. We only want to know who he is, and where he lives. That’s why we’re here. My orders are to arrest him on suspicion of being implicated in the theft at Appleyard’s.”

Suddenly, on arrival at the dark little village of Hockliffe, where the road from Bedford to Aylesbury crosses the main road from London to Birmingham, the fugitive turned off to the right towards Woburn.

Noticing this, our driver, an expert in following a car, slowed down. “This road leads past Battlesden up to Woburn and Northampton,” he said. “Shall we follow quietly?”

“Yes,” said Rayner, who had been placed in charge. “Put out your lights and creep along after him.”

This we did, and as we descended a hill, we heard the noise of his engine. Without slackening, he went on. Indeed, across the brow of the hill we saw his lights in the distance. Then our driver speeded up, his eyes keen before him in the chase.

We were afraid lest our turning off the main road after him might not arouse his suspicions. In that case we should never trace him to his home.

Proceeding slowly, the driver suddenly exclaimed:

“He’s stopped down in the hollow yonder. Or else he’s had a breakdown. I think it best if you all got down and took a walk. If he goes on I’ll follow and pick you up.”

“I agree,” replied the expert detective Rayner. “He can’t get over the brow of the next hill to Woburn without being heard or seen.”

So, we all alighted and went along at a good pace in the half-light of the crescent moon. The whole countryside was in silence, save now and then the hoot of an owl in the oaks by the roadside. From far off came the sound of heavily-laden lorries, going to and fro, on the main road to the North.

As we walked, there was a slight breeze. And above us the leaves rose and fell with a noise as of lazily-lapping waves upon a sandy shore.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT. THE DARK HOUSE

From somewhere a church clock struck midnight as we went together along the silent country road, lit only by the pale light of the waning moon.

We conversed in whispers. In the still night air human voices carry far. Our driver remained behind with the car, and with him Rayner fixed a rendezvous. If he heard a pistol-shot he was to come instantly in search of us.

“I’m certain he has stopped somewhere near here,” Rayner said to Mr. Gell. “We can only hope that he has left his bike outside.”

We climbed the hill eagerly and gazed down the road, but there was, alas! no light to indicate the presence of a motor-cycle. All was quiet and deserted. In the far distance we heard the hum of a motor car on another road. But nothing else disturbed the rural silence.

Quietly we proceeded down the hill when, of a sudden, we came to a good-sized, detached cottage standing in a small orchard, the only habitation in the vicinity.

Obeying Rayner, who quickly held up his hand, we halted while he crept forward, stepping noiselessly over the grass at the roadside.

Five minutes later he returned to us, exclaiming in a low voice:

“He’s here! His bike is under the portico. I can hear voices, but the place is in darkness. Now, I think the best trick is for you, Dick, to go there and pretend you’ve lost your way,” he said, addressing his colleague from the Yard. “You look like an honest working-man,” he added, with a light laugh. “Get the door open, and we’ll rush it, light or no light. I’ve got my torch.”

“So have I,” declared the stalwart detective addressed as Dick. “We’ll get him all right, never fear.”

“There may be a bit of a scrap, sir,” Rayner said, addressing Mr. Gell. “So you’d better keep out of it. But you, Mr. Hipwell, will give us a helping hand, won’t you?”

“Rather!” I cried. “I’m with you all right.”

“Good! Then let’s get on,” whispered Sergeant Rayner. “We’ve traced the old bird to his nest,” he laughed.

Together we trod in silence over the grass, and entered the golden gate. Then, one by one, we crept noiselessly over the soil to behind the creeper-covered portico in which stood the still hot motor-cycle. When all was ready, Rayner’s colleague trod heavily up the garden-path, stumbled purposely near the door, and rapped upon it.

We could hear a movement within. But no reply was vouchsafed.

Twice he knocked vigorously, until at last we heard a woman’s querulous voice inquire who was there.

“Only me,” was Dick Perry’s reply. “I’m on the road, and I’ve lost my way. I’m very sorry to disturb you at this late hour, missus.”

“Where are you going?” inquired the woman.

“Well, I don’t quite know. I want to get to Wavendon,” he said.

A few moments later we heard the bolts drawn, and an elderly woman stood, an indistinct figure, in the doorway. Next instant she screamed as, pushing her aside, Rayner and two detectives darted in, followed by me, while Mr. Gell remained outside to see if anyone escaped by the window.

The dash was accomplished in a few moments. Rayner and his friends were adepts at forcibly entering premises.

I heard a man on the stairs give vent to a loud curse, when full into my face there came a blood-red flash with a loud report, and a bullet whistled by my head. Next second, however, the man was pinned down by the two detectives.

Exactly what occurred immediately afterwards I hardly know.

The uncertain light of flash-lamps showed the face of a gray-haired hag of a woman who, startled and screaming, was being held by a third plain-clothes man from Shepherdess Walk, who had followed us on a motor-cycle. Meanwhile the fugitive we had overtaken was struggling and cursing, held firmly by Rayner and Perry.

The sound of a pistol-shot brought up our car, and into it the two prisoners were quickly bundled. The man—whose name we afterwards discovered was “Old Tom” or Booth, and whose fingerprints revealed a very interesting record as a thief—became very violent, so that Rayner slipped a pair of handcuffs upon him. Then, leaving him in charge of his assistant, Dick Perry, he and the other man, Denham, re-entered the house to search it.

In the downstairs living-room we found a cheap paraffin-lamp and lit it. Then with Mr. Gell, the detectives ascended the stairs, leaving me below, pistol in hand, ready to prevent anyone, who might still be in the house, from leaving.

After a few minutes I heard Joan’s father utter a loud cry, and shout to me:

“Lionel! Come up here at once!”

Up the two flights of stairs I dashed, to where I saw a light, and found myself in a low-ceilinged attic. In the centre of a bare, miserable room was a bed, and upon it a female figure.

Next second I recognized the pallid, wasted face as that of Joan—my Joan!

My love was inert and apparently unconscious. She opened her eyes for a single second, then closed them again. She recognized neither her father nor me. Mr. Gell suddenly was aged. A moan escaped him.

“This must be the woman whom the fellow in the public-house said couldn’t last much longer,” Rayner remarked. “Do you know her, sir?” he asked of the famous King’s Counsel.

“Know her? Why, she’s my daughter! We must get a doctor at once.”

I stroked my dear one’s hot brow tenderly, and then, realizing that a medical man must be obtained without delay, rushed downstairs to the fugitive’s motor-cycle, and, mounting it, dashed at full speed along the road. After a few miles I entered the dark main-street of a small country town which proved to be Woburn and, of a sleepy man driving a cart, I inquired the whereabouts of the doctor’s house.

Ten minutes later I had explained briefly the discovery of the police, and very shortly the doctor got his car out and followed me back to where my loved one was lying.

After two hours she was removed to the hospital at Leighton Buzzard. But it was nearly three weeks before she was able to relate what had happened to her after being decoyed away by that message purporting to have been sent by me.

While seated in the drawing-room at Queen’s Gate, still very pale and weak from the ill-treatment and semi-starvation she had undergone, she related to us fully her startling adventures.

After going to the Florida Club she had received a second message saying that I had been the victim of a street accident, that I had been taken to St. George’s Hospital. The man who told her so was Owen. And he, having a car outside, offered to take her to the hospital. Naturally alarmed and eager to be at my side, she accepted, only to fall into a well-prepared trap!

In the car she had been seized with dizziness, doped, no doubt. But, on coming to herself, she found to her horror that she was locked in an upstairs room in a small and dirty house kept by a foreigner, named Dufour, and his wife.

She was constantly threatened with death if she shouted for help. But once or twice in her half-demented state she did shout, and her cries were no doubt those heard in Finlay Street by the neighbor, Mrs. Richmond, wife of the draper’s assistant.

Of her removal to the country she had no recollection, for she had again been doped. At Fulham she had been seized with a sudden illness. Then, later at the hospital, at Leighton Buzzard, the doctors had found that from time to time drugs had been given her. All of which had aggravated her condition until she was so ill at the time of her discovery that she could not have lived another week under such conditions.

Happily, she was snatched from the grave just in time. After a fortnight with her mother at Eastbourne she had almost regained her normal health.

Naturally, I spent all the time I could with her, and my blood boiled when she related the ill-treatment and insults meted out to her by her father’s vindictive enemies.

Often, when alone, I held her fondly in my arms and kissed her passionately upon the lips. Nevertheless, my senses were ever benumbed by the terrible knowledge of that tell-tale entry at Somerset House.

From her, as indeed from everyone, I preserved strictly the secret of my marriage. But the appalling fact obsessed me day and night. I dare not attempt to sue for a divorce for fear of the scandal it must certainly entail. Illona was my enemy, and if I attempted to free myself she would, I knew, rise against me and do her worst.

Several weeks went by.

I was compelled to make two journeys abroad—one to Lord Oxenwood at the League of Nations at Geneva, the other by the Sud Express to Madrid, returning on the day following my arrival.

Meanwhile, the Press had reported the dramatic arrest of Owen, Dufour, and Booth. They had been charged at Bow Street with the smash-and-grab robbery from the shop-window of Appleyard’s, the well-known jewelers in Old Bond Street. And, after a remand, they had been committed for trial at the London Sessions. To the intense chagrin of the prisoners, Mr. Gell, K.C., had been instructed by the Director of Public Prosecutions to conduct the case against them. Well they knew that their bitter reprisals against the great lawyer would go against them. Joan, they were well aware, had been discovered, and had related her whole sensational story.

As a matter of fact, her father was furious, even though he was grateful that his daughter had been restored to them. Nevertheless, his anger against Owen knew no bounds.

As for me, I was in an overwhelming quandary.

My own guilt held me speechless.

Day followed day, yet I constantly feared lest one or another of the prisoners might give information against me. For indeed, they must have suspected that I had put the police on the track of the young scoundrel Owen, with the disastrous results to them.

The police, of course, had no idea that the gang of shop-window thieves was affiliated with the cosmopolitan gang under the desperate motor-bandit, Felix Zuroff.

It was only long afterward that I discovered from Lisely Hatten, or Hattenescu—the Roumanian girl who had always acted as my friend and who, having cut herself adrift from the gang, married a respectable banker’s clerk—the truth concerning that well-remembered night in Camberwell. It seems that the Soviet Government had disposed of about half the Imperial Russian Crown jewels, together with those filched from the fashionable jewelers’ shops in Leningrad and Moscow. The remaining half of the jewels of the Romanoffs was being sent in charge of a special messenger and two armed guards, to be delivered in Antwerp to a rich international syndicate which had arranged to purchase them for two and a half millions sterling.

In fear that the train might be wrecked by robbers, the jewels were sent by fast motor car from Moscow to the town of Zdolbunow, on the Polish frontier, whence they were to be conveyed by train across to Belgium. Twenty miles before the frontier was reached there appeared suddenly in the night three cars upon the road. In the first was Zuroff and three men. They ran the Soviet car into a ditch, and, after a fierce encounter, shot dead the courier, the driver, and the two guards. Afterwards they made off to Zdolbunow with their booty. The railway authorities, warned from Moscow of the official courier’s arrival, and never dreaming of the raid, welcomed the bandits; and three of them were soon in the train on their way to Warsaw and Berlin. The others—including Illona, Dufour, and Owen—traveled as ordinary passengers by the same train. But at Lublin, half way to Warsaw, they all alighted. Two cars awaited them, and they disappeared, subsequently arriving at Vienna, and getting to London via Switzerland, by the Arlberg Express.

On the foggy night in Camberwell they were examining their booty in that small, stuffy room which was the London meeting-place of the notorious and elusive gang, and into which I had so unfortunately stumbled.

At that hour the girl Hatten had taken compassion on me, and, since her happy marriage, I, on more than one occasion, have thanked her for allowing me possession of the most precious of the senses—my eyesight.

Still vividly I remember that old rickety table piled with jewels of such magnitude that my eyes had been dazzled, and of the dark, sinister face of the man who had emulated the infamous Bonnot, the motor bandit, and whose daring crimes had become the terror of the Continental police.

I compared his imperious appearance in that squalid working-class house in Camberwell with the luxury and ease in which he lived in retirement in his flower-embowered flat in Lausanne—the man who in his great criminal coup had taken the lion’s share of jewels worth two and a half million pounds.

But all this was of no assistance to me. Two hard facts obsessed me. The defiant Felix Zuroff, the most notorious motor bandit of the century and the inventor of the musical code, had not released me from my unwilling bondage. Neither could I cast off the shackles which bound me forever to that ugly, ill-formed adventuress who called herself Illona.

Though occupying one of the most trusted offices at Downing Street, I was, nevertheless, an expert jewel-thief. Recollections of that wonderful rope of stolen pearls which had reposed in a hollow book in my room, held me bewildered. Sometimes with excuses and untruths forced to my lips by Joan, and the ever-present fear of denunciation to the police, I felt myself on the verge of madness.

I put the situation plainly to you, my reader. Had you awakened, as from a trance, to find yourself to be an expert jewel-thief, married to a rouged and made-up old hag whose criminal record was known, and yet you were engaged to a sweet, innocent girl whom you adored—how, I ask, would you—how would you have acted?

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE. CONCLUSION

The night was hot and stifling in London.

Everyone who could manage it was away in the country, or at the sea. The West End was like a deserted desert, and half the clubs, including my own, were closed for cleaning. We had hospitality at the Royal Automobile, which I, as a club man, liked only for its cock-and-hen restaurant.

I had been up at home—for the governor was at Hipwell during the recess—and had arrived back at Sackville Street only at eight o’clock that evening. At nine, while I ate my dinner alone at the Automobile, a waiter called me to the telephone.

It was Joan’s father, who asked me to meet him at the Carlton Club, close by, in half an hour.

“I must see you, my boy,” he said urgently. “Something has happened. I can’t tell you over the ’phone. Don’t fail to come over to me.”

Such a message I could not disobey. Punctually I met him in the great hall of the well-known political club. Forthwith he took me up into one of the private rooms.

“Look here, Lionel,” he said very seriously. “You’ve never been frank with me! Now, tell me the whole truth.” And his big dark eyes fixed themselves on me—the eyes of the greatest legal cross-examiner of his time.

Under that keen, searching glance of his there had flinched murderers, and criminals of more or less notoriety who had gone down in the police annals of Great Britain as notorious cases. As a cross-examiner no one had ever superseded him at the criminal Bar. The late Sir Edward Marshall Hall had been acknowledged to be a great criminologist and a marvelous advocate. But stout old John Gell, with his jelly-like stomach when he laughed, was declared to be on a par with the dead pleader who had been such a prominent member of the Crimes Club.

John Gell, K.C., had taken Sir Edward’s place in the public estimation, and perhaps deservedly so. He had been called to the Bar on the same day as Sir Hawley Hayes, the Director of Public Prosecutors, and they had been life-long friends, ever since both were glad enough to have their briefs marked with two guineas to appear in County Court cases.

“Joan has gone with her mother to dine with Lady Tickencote,” he said, glancing at the closed door. “I should have gone, but I wanted to see you on a matter of extreme urgency.” I noticed on his broad, clean-shaven face a look of mystery that I had never before seen there.

“Now, look here, Lionel!” he said again in a hard voice such as he used towards a hostile witness in court. “Why haven’t you been quite open with me?”

I sat staring at him, unable to utter a word.

What could he know?

“Ah, I see you hesitate, my boy! And, after all, quite naturally,” he said, with a faint smile. “Read that!” And he placed in my hands a typed memorandum headed: “From the Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police, New Scotland Yard, S.W.”

My eyes fell upon a statement which held me breathless. I sat staggered, speechless, as one in a dream. The words I read were:

“The prisoner Dufour, on remand to the London Sessions yesterday, made a statement to the Governor of Brixton Prison, that the criminal Tuggy Wilson was shot by a jealous woman known as Illona Hipwell, a member of the criminal gang. In consequence Superintendent Nethersole this afternoon went to the house in Sheen Lane, where the woman was in hiding, but before he could arrest her on suspicion she committed suicide by swallowing prussic acid. A marriage certificate found in the dead woman’s possession shows her to have been the wife of Mr. Lionel Hipwell of Sackville Street, Piccadilly, who is well-known to you.”

Below was scribbled “C.L.,” the initials of Mr. Cunningham Lee.

The typed words danced before my eyes. Death, the penalty of a crime, had broken the fetters that bound me to the ill-shapen woman who had so cleverly deceived and enmeshed me, and I was free—free to marry Joan!

After the first few moments in which I realized all that the tragic occurrence meant to me, I turned to my love’s father, and in very lame, halting sentences, I fear, told him of my many strange and bitter experiences, of the two years’ blank in my life in which I had become an expert jewel-thief. I told him, too, of my accident in Rome which had reunited the threads of my lost memory, and brought me to realize the ghastly truth of my own impossible position.

Without seeking to conceal one single fact concerning either my follies, my offences, or my undesirable friends, I poured out my soul to the one man, save my father, in whom I trusted, and begged of him his advice.

He heard me through, making few comments. At last, after a brief silence, in which his legal mind worked quickly, he said:

“Lionel, you certainly have been more sinned against than sinning. I feel certain that the world would forgive you your offences which were committed while your brain was in an abnormal condition on account of that drug administered to you with malice aforethought. As regards the criminal Felix Zuroff, guilty though he is, no doubt, we must recollect that it was through his warning to you of the woman Illona’s intentions that we discovered poor Joan, just at the crucial moment when delay must certainly have resulted in my poor child’s death.”

“But Zuroff has refused to release me!” I pointed out despairingly. “Already Illona has cast suspicions upon me by denouncing me as being in possession of Lady Rathgormly’s pearls.”

“Happily the public knows nothing of your connection with these people, my dear Lionel—neither are they likely to know. Nethersole is in ignorance that it was the woman now dead who denounced you anonymously, so why should we disclose anything further?”

“I may be denounced by others,” I remarked despondently.

“Not if you make your peace with Zuroff,” replied the eminent counsel. “And surely that need not present any great difficulty. He is apparently living in retirement on his ill-gotten gains. Therefore a promise of silence on your part will effect a firm compact between you. Appeal to him again—and I feel you will not do so in vain.”

“I will follow your advice,” I declared promptly, full of heartfelt thanks for his generous counsel.

“As for myself, knowing all that I do, I shall at once make excuse and withdraw from the prosecution of the prisoners,” said the well known King’s Counsel. “I could not act in such circumstances.”

He returned his brief next day.

At the trial on the following Monday, Owen, Dufour, and Booth were all three found guilty of the smash-and-grab jewel raid at Appleyard’s and sentenced. The first got five years’ penal servitude. The others got three years each. While Dufour’s wife and the woman who had held Joan in bondage—though nothing came out in the trial concerning my love’s sufferings—each received a sentence of eighteen months as accomplices.

A few days later I carried dispatches again to Lord Oxenwood at Geneva. And, after delivering them, went on to Lausanne where, on the same night, I had a long interview with the notorious bandit Zuroff.

His first words were to congratulate me on my freedom from the woman who had been my most bitter enemy. Then, after I had begged of him to release me, pointing out that my further association with him must inevitably prove a danger to us both, he at last reluctantly consented to a firm agreement which secured absolute silence for silence. This we exchanged in writing, but in a very guarded way, of course.

When he handed me what was really my passport to peace and happiness, I took it, I think, with perhaps the greatest satisfaction I have ever experienced. Besides, when a few days later I handed it in confidence to Joan’s father, he unhesitatingly gave his consent to our marriage.

That same night of our public engagement Joan, when alone with me, put two questions to me which I had much difficulty in answering. Apparently she had received an anonymous letter telling her of my marriage with Illona, and she asked me for the truth. The second question concerned the stolen bracelet she had discovered in my pocket.

Both were, indeed, matters which I found considerable difficulty in satisfactorily explaining. However, I called her father into the room, and before him told her the truth, which he himself corroborated.

Afterwards I held her in my arms and kissed her passionately—the first kiss since she had received her parents’ consent to our union.

* * * * * * * *

With greatest pleasure I here record that on the day of our wedding at St. Mary Abbot, Kensington, my father and my father-in-law became reconciled, a fact which gave all of us the most supreme satisfaction.

Felix Zuroff, the most daring and desperate jewel-thief Europe has ever known and whose ramifications ran through the whole Continent, restored Lady Rathgormly’s pearls to her, at my suggestion. Shortly after that he died suddenly of heart-failure.

Visitors to the Black Museum at New Scotland Yard, where pieces of evidence of great crimes are preserved, will find the actual piece of sparkling aquamarine with the Double Nought upon it, which I carried from Rome to the man Owen in London. They will find, as well, the three double noughts of the key to one of the most ingenious of criminal secret codes ever devised.

THE END