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CHAPTER X

SOME BAD CHARACTERS


It happened that on the night of the great attempt the inquisitive Mr.
Lane, of 76 Cawdor Street, was considerably exercised in his mind as
to the depleted condition of his humble treasury. With Mr. Lane the
difference between affluence and poverty was a matter of shillings. His
line of business was a humble one. Lead piping and lengths of telephone
wire, an occasional door-mat improvidently left outside whilst the
servant cleaned the hall, these represented the scope and extent of his
prey. Perhaps he reached his zenith when he lifted an overcoat from a
hatstand what time a benevolent old lady was cutting him thick slices
of bread and butter in a basement kitchen.

Mr. Lane had only recently returned from a short stay in Wormwood
Scrubbs Prison. It was over a trifling affair of horsehair abstracted
from railway carriage cushions that compelled Mr. Lane’s retirement for
two months. It was that same affair that brought about his undoing on
the night of the attempt.

For the kudos of the railway theft had nerved him to more ambitious
attempts, and with a depleted exchequer to urge him forward, and the
prestige of his recent achievements to support him, he decided upon
burglary. It was a wild and reckless departure from his regular line,
and he did not stop to consider the disabilities attaching to a change
of profession, nor debate the unpropitious conditions of an already
overstocked labor market. It is reasonable to suppose that Mr. Lane
lacked the necessary qualities of logic and balance to argue any point
to its obvious conclusion, for he was, intellectually, the reverse
of brilliant, and was therefore ill-equipped for introspective or
psychological examination of the circumstances leading to his decision.
Communing with himself, the inquisitive Mr. Lane put the matter tersely
and brutally.

“Lead pipin’s no go unless you’ve got a pal to work with; telephone
wires is so covered up with wood casin’ that it’s worse’n hard work to
pinch two-penn’oth. I’m goin’ to have a cut at Joneses.”

So in the pelting rain he watched “Joneses” from a convenient doorway.
He noted with satisfaction the “workmen” departing one by one; he
observed with joy the going of “Jones” himself; and when, some few
minutes afterwards, the queer-looking old man, whom he suspected as
being a sort of caretaker, came shuffling out, slamming the gate
behind him, and peering left and right, and mumbling to himself as he
squelched through the rain, the watcher regarded the removal of this
final difficulty as being an especial act of Providence.

He waited for another half-hour, because, for some reason or other,
the usually deserted street became annoyingly crowded. First came a
belated coal cart and a miserably bedraggled carman who cried his
wares dolefully. Then a small boy, escaping from the confines of his
domestic circle, came to revel in the downpour and wade ecstatically
but thoroughly through the puddles that had formed on the uneven
surface of the road. Nemesis, in the shape of a shrill-voiced mother,
overtook the boy and sent him whining and expectant to the heavy hand
of maternal authority. With the coast clear Mr. Lane lost no time. In
effecting an entrance to the headquarters of the “Borough Lot,” Mr.
Lane’s method lacked subtlety. He climbed over the gate leading to
the yard, trusting inwardly that he was not observed, but taking his
chance. Had he been an accomplished burglar, with the experience of
any exploits behind him, he would have begun by making a very thorough
inspection of likely windows. Certainly he would never have tried the
“office” door. Being the veriest tyro, and being conscious, moreover,
that his greatest feats had connection with doors carelessly left ajar,
he tried the door, and to his delight it opened.

Again the skilled craftsman would have suspected some sort of
treachery, and might have withdrawn; but Mr. Lane, recognizing in the
fact that the old man had forgotten to fasten the door behind him only
yet another proof of that benevolent Providence which exerts itself for
the express service of men “in luck,” entered boldly. He lit a candle
stump and looked around.

The evidence of that wealth which is the particular possession of
“master-men” was not evident. Indeed, the floor of the passage was
uncarpeted, and the walls bare of picture or ornament. Nor was the
“office,” a little room leading from the “passage,” any more prolific
of result. Such fixtures as there were had apparently been left behind
by the previous tenant, and these were thick with dust.

“Bah!” said the inquisitive Mr. Lane scornfully, and his words echoed
hollowly as in an empty house.

With the barren possibilities of his exploit before him, Mr. Lane’s
spirits fell.

He was of the class, to whom reference has already been made, that
looked in awe and reverence toward the “Borough Lot” in the same spirit
as the youthful curate might regard the consistory of bishops. In his
cups--pewter cups they were with frothing heads a-top--he was wont to
boast that his connection with the “Borough Lot” was both close and
intimate. A rumor that went around to the effect that the “mouthpiece”
who defended him at the closing of the unsatisfactory horsehair episode
had been paid for by the “Borough Lot” he did not trouble to contradict.

If he had known any of them, even by sight, he would not at that moment
have been effecting a burglarious entry into their premises.

Room after room he searched. He found the ill-furnished bedroom of
Connor, and the room where old George slept on an uncleanly mattress.
He found, too, the big room where the “Lot” held their informal
meetings, but nothing portable. Nothing that a man might slip under his
coat, and walk boldly out of the front door with. No little article of
jewelry that your wife might carry to a pawnbroker’s with a long face
and a longer story of a penury that forced you to part with her dear
mother’s last gift. None of these, noted Mr. Lane bitterly, and with
every fresh disappointment he breathed the harder.

For apart from the commercial aspect of this, his burglary, there
was the sickening humiliation of failure. An imaginative man, he had
already invented the story he was to tell to a few select cronies in
sneak-thief division. He had rehearsed mentally a scene where, with
an air of nonchalance, he drew a handful of golden sovereigns from
his pocket and ordered drinks round. And whilst they were sipping
his drinks, smirking respectfully, he would have confided to them
the fact that he had been duly, and with all ceremony, installed a
full-fledged member of the “Borough Lot.” Of the irony of the situation
he was ignorant. A qualified burglar would have completed a systematic
examination of the premises in ten minutes, but Mr. Lane was not so
qualified. In consequence he dawdled from room to room, going back to
this room to make sure, and returning to that room to be absolutely
certain that nothing had been overlooked. Oblivious of the flight of
time, he stood irresolutely in the topmost room of the house when the
real adventure of the evening began. He heard the click of a lock--he
had thoughtfully closed the office door behind him--and a voice, and
his heart leapt into his throat. He heard a voice, a voice hoarse with
rage, and another, and yet another.

Mr. Lane realized, from the stamping of feet on the stairs, that half a
dozen men had come into the house; from their language he gathered they
were annoyed.

Then he heard something that froze his blood and turned his marrow to
water.

It had begun in a rumble of hoarse, undistinguishable words, and ended
in the phrase that caught his ear.

“... he’s sold us, I tell ye! Put spies on us! He led us into the trap,
curse him....”

He heard another voice speaking in a lower tone.

“What are we worth? You’re a fool! What d’ye think we’re worth? Ain’t
we the ‘Borough Lot’? Don’t he know enough to hang two or three of
us.... It’s Connor and his pal the lawyer....”

The “Borough Lot”!

The paralyzing intelligence came to Mr. Lane, and he held on to the
bare mantelshelf for support. Spies! Suppose they discovered him, and
mistook him for a spy! His hair rose at the thought. He knew them
well enough by repute. Overmuch hero-worship had invested them with
qualities for evil which they may or may not have possessed.

There might be a chance of escape. The tumult below continued. Scraps
of angry talk came floating up.

Mr. Lane looked out of the window; the drop into the street was too
long, and there was no sign of rope in the house.

Cautiously he opened the door of the room. The men were in the room
beneath that in which he stood. The staircase that led to the street
must take him past their door.

Mr. Lane was very anxious to leave the house. He had unwittingly
stepped into a hornets’ nest, and wanted to make his escape without
disturbing the inmates. Now was the time--or never. Whilst the angry
argument continued a creaking stair board or so might not attract
attention. But he made no allowance for the gifts of these men--gifts
of sight and hearing. Bat Sands, in the midst of his tirade, saw the
uplifted finger and head-jerk of Goyle. He did not check his flow
of invective, but edged toward the door; then he stopped short, and
flinging the door open, he caught the scared Mr. Lane by the throat,
and dragging him into the room, threw him upon the ground and knelt on
him.

“What are ye doing here?” he whispered fiercely.

Mr. Lane, with protruding eyes, saw the pitiless faces about him, saw
Goyle lift a life-preserver from the table and turn half-round the
better to strike, and fainted.

“Stop that!” growled Bat, with outstretched hand. “The little swine has
fainted. Who is he? Do any of you fellers know him?”

It was the wizened-faced man whom Angel had addressed as Lamby who
furnished the identification.

“He’s a little crook--name of Lane.”

“Where does he come from?”

“Oh, hereabouts. He was in the Scrubbs in my time,” said Lamby.

They regarded the unconscious burglar in perplexity.

“Go through his pockets,” suggested Goyle.

It happened--and this was the most providential happening of the day
from Mr. Lane’s point of view--that when he had decided upon embarking
on his career of high-class crime he had thoughtfully provided himself
with a few homemade instruments. It was the little poker with
flattened end to form a jemmy and the center-bit that was found in his
pocket that in all probability saved Mr. Lane’s life.

Lombroso and other great criminologists have given it out that your
true degenerate has no sense of humor, but on two faces at least there
was a broad grin when the object of the little man’s visit was revealed.

“He came to burgle Connor,” said Bat admiringly. “Here, pass over the
whisky, one of ye!”

He forced a little down the man’s throat, and Mr. Lane blinked and
opened his eyes in a frightened stare.

“Stand up,” commanded Bat, “an’ give an account of yourself, young
feller. What d’ye mean by breaking into----”

“Never mind about that,” Goyle interrupted savagely. “What has he heard
when he was sneaking outside?--that’s the question.”

“Nothin’, gentlemen!” gasped the unfortunate Mr. Lane, “on me word,
gentlemen! I’ve been in trouble like yourselves, an’----”

He realized he had blundered.

“Oh,” said Goyle with ominous calm, “so you’ve been in trouble like us,
have you?”

“I mean----”

“I know what you mean,” hissed the other; “you mean you’ve been
listenin’ to what we’ve been saying, you little skunk, and you’re ready
to bleat to the first copper.”

It might have gone hard with Mr. Lane but for the opportune arrival of
the messenger. Bat went downstairs at the knock, and the rest stood
quietly listening. They expected Connor, and when his voice did not
sound on the stairs they looked at one another questioningly. Bat came
into the room with a yellow envelope in his hand. He passed it to
Goyle. Reading was not an accomplishment of his. Goyle read it with
difficulty.

“Do the best you can,” he read. “I’m lying ‘doggo.’”

“What does that mean?” snarled Goyle, holding the message in his hand
and looking at Bat. “Hidin’, is he--and we’ve got to do the best we
can?”

Bat reached for his overcoat. He did not speak as he struggled into it,
nor until he had buttoned it deliberately.

“It means--git,” he said shortly. “It means run, or else it means time,
an’ worse than time.”

He swung round to the door.

“Connor’s hidin’,” he stopped to say. “When Connor starts hiding the
place is getting hot. There’s nothing against me so far as I know,
except----”

His eyes fell on the form of Mr. Lane. He had raised himself to a
sitting position on the floor, and now, with disheveled hair and
outstretched legs, he sat the picture of despair.

Goyle intercepted the glance.

“What about him?” he asked.

“Leave him,” said Bat; “we’ve got no time for fooling with him.”

A motor-car came buzzing down Cawdor Street, which was unusual. They
heard the grind of its brakes outside the door, and that in itself
was sufficiently alarming. Bat extinguished the light, and cautiously
opened the shutters. He drew back with an oath.

“What’s that?” Goyle whispered.

Bat made no reply, and they heard him open his matchbox.

“What are you doing?” whispered Goyle fiercely.

“Light the lamp,” said the other.

The tinkle of glass followed as he removed the chimney, and in the
yellow light Bat faced the “Borough Lot.”

“U--P spells ‘up,’ an’ that’s what the game is,” he said calmly. He was
searching his pockets as he spoke. “I want a light because there’s one
or two things in my pocket that I’ve got to burn--quick!”

After some fumbling he found a paper. He gave it a swift examination,
then he struck a match and carefully lit the corner.

“It’s the fairest cop,” he went on. “The street’s full of police, and
Angel ain’t playing ‘gamblin’ raids’ this time.”

There was a heavy knock on the door, but nobody moved. Goyle’s face had
gone livid. He knew better than any man there how impossible escape
was. That had been one of the drawbacks to the house--the ease with
which it could be surrounded. He had pointed out the fact to Connor
before.

Again the knock.

“Let ’em open it,” said Bat grimly, and as though the people outside
had heard the invitation, the door crashed in, and there came a patter
as of men running on the stairs.

First to enter the room was Angel. He nodded to Bat coolly, then
stepped aside to allow the policemen to follow.

“I want you,” he said briefly.

“What for?” asked Sands.

“Breaking and entering,” said the detective. “Put out your hands!”

Bat obeyed. As the steel stirrup-shaped irons snapped on his wrists he
asked--

“Have you got Connor?”

Angel smiled.

“Connor lives to fight another day,” he said quietly.

The policemen who attended him were busy with the other occupants of
the room.

“Bit of a field-day for you, Mr. Angel,” said the thin-faced Lamby
pleasantly. “Thought you was goin’ to let us off?”

“Jumping at conclusions hastily is a habit to be deplored,” said Angel
sententiously. Then he saw the panic-stricken Mr. Lane.

“Hullo, what’s this?” he demanded.

Mr. Lane had at that moment the inspiration of his life. Since he was
by fortuitous circumstances involved in this matter, and since it could
make very little difference one way or the other what he said, he
seized the fame that lay to his hand.

“I am one of the ‘Borough Lot,’” he said, and was led out proud and
handcuffed with the knowledge that he had established beyond dispute
his title to consideration as a desperate criminal.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. Spedding was a man who thought quickly. Ideas and plans came to
him as dross and diamonds come to the man at the sorting table, and he
had the faculty of selection. He saw the police system of England as
only the police themselves saw it, and he had an open mind upon Angel’s
action. It was within the bounds of possibility that Angel had acted
with full authority; it was equally possible that Angel was bluffing.

Mr. Spedding had two courses before him, and they were both desperate;
but he must be sure in how, so far, his immediate liberty depended upon
the whim of a deputy-assistant-commissioner of police.

Angel had mentioned a supreme authority. It was characteristic of
Spedding that he should walk into a mine to see how far the fuse had
burned. In other words, he hailed the first cab, and drove to the House
of Commons.

The Right Honorable George Chandler Middleborough, His Majesty’s
Secretary of State for Home Affairs, is a notoriously inaccessible
man; but he makes exceptions, and such an exception he made in favor
of Spedding. For eminent solicitors do not come down to the House at
ten o’clock in the evening to gratify an idle curiosity, or to be shown
over the House, or beg patronage and interest; and when a business
card is marked “most urgent,” and that card stands for a staple
representative of an important profession, the request for an interview
is not easily refused.

Spedding was shown into the minister’s room, and the Home Secretary
rose with a smile. He knew Mr. Spedding by sight, and had once dined in
his company.

“Er--” he began, looking at the card in his hand, “what can I do for
you--at this hour?” he smiled again.

“I have called to see you in the matter of the late--er--Mr. Reale.” He
saw and watched the minister’s face. Beyond looking a little puzzled,
the Home Secretary made no sign.

“Good!” thought Spedding, and breathed with more freedom.

“I’m afraid----” said the minister. He got no further, for Spedding was
at once humility, apology, and embarrassment.

What! had the Home Secretary not received his letter? A letter dealing
with the estate of Reale? You can imagine the distress and vexation
on Mr. Spedding’s face as he spoke of the criminal carelessness of
his clerk, his attitude of helplessness, his recognition of the
absolute impossibility of discussing the matter until the Secretary
had received the letter, and his withdrawal, leaving behind him a
sympathetic minister of State who would have been pleased--would have
been delighted, my dear sir, to have helped Mr. Spedding if he’d
received the letter in time to consider its contents. Mr. Spedding was
an inventive genius, and it might have been in reference to him that
the motherhood of invention was first identified with dire necessity.

Out again in the courtyard, Spedding found a cab that carried him to
his club.

“Angel bluffed!” he reflected with an inward smile. “My friend, you are
risking that nice appointment of yours.”

He smiled again, for it occurred to him that his risk was the greater.

“Two millions!” he murmured. “It is worth it: I could do a great deal
with two millions.”

He got down at his club, and tendered the cabman the legal fare to a
penny.




CHAPTER XI

THE QUEST OF THE BOOK


When Piccadilly Circus, a blaze of light, was thronged with the crowds
that the theaters were discharging, a motor-car came gingerly through
the traffic, passed down Regent Street, and swinging along Pall Mall,
headed southward across Westminster Bridge.

The rain had ceased, but underfoot the roads were sodden, and the car
bespattered its occupants with black mud.

The chauffeur at the wheel turned as the car ran smoothly along the
tramway lines in the Old Kent Road and asked a question, and one of the
two men in the back of the car consulted the other.

“We will go to Cramer’s first,” said the man.

Old Kent Road was a fleeting vision of closed shops, of little knots
of men emerging from public-houses at the potman’s strident command;
Lewisham High Road, as befits that very respectable thoroughfare, was
decorously sleeping; Lea, where the hedges begin, was silent; and
Chislehurst was a place of the dead.

Near the common the car pulled up at a big house standing in black
quietude, and the two occupants of the car descended and passed through
the stiff gate, along the graveled path, and came to a stop at the
broad porch.

“I don’t know what old Mauder will say,” said Angel as he fumbled for
the bell; “he’s a methodical old chap.”

In the silence they could hear the thrill of the electric bell. They
waited a few minutes, and rang again. Then they heard a window opened
and a sleepy voice demand--

“Who is there?”

Angel stepped back from the porch and looked up.

“Hullo, Mauder! I want you. I’m Angel.”

“The devil!” said a surprised voice. “Wait a bit. I’ll be down in a
jiffy.”

The pleasant-faced man who in dressing-gown and pajamas opened the door
to them and conducted them to a cozy library was Mr. Ernest Mauder
himself. It is unnecessary to introduce that world-famous publisher to
the reader, the more particularly in view of the storm of controversy
that burst about his robust figure in regard to the recent publication
of Count Lehoff’s embarrassing “Memoirs.” He made a sign to the two men
to be seated, nodding to Jimmy as to an old friend.

“I am awfully sorry to disturb you at this rotten hour,” Angel
commenced, and the other arrested his apology with a gesture.

“You detective people are so fond of springing surprises on us
unintelligent outsiders,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye, “that I
am almost tempted to startle you.”

“It takes a lot to startle me,” said Angel complacently.

“You’ve brought it on your own head,” warned the publisher, wagging
a forefinger at the smiling Angel. “Now let me tell you why you have
motored down from London on this miserable night on a fairly fruitless
errand.”

“Eh?” The smile left Angel’s face.

“Ah, I thought that would startle you! You’ve come about a book?”

“Yes,” said Jimmy wonderingly.

“A book published by our people nine years ago?”

“Yes,” the wonderment deepening on the faces of the two men.

“The title,” said the publisher impressively, “is _A Short Study on the
Origin of the Alphabet_, and the author is a half-mad old don, who was
subsequently turned out of Oxford for drunkenness.”

“Mauder,” said Jimmy, gazing at his host in bewilderment, “you’ve hit
it--but----”

“Ah,” said the publisher, triumphant, “I thought that was it. Well,
your search is fruitless. We only printed five hundred copies; the
book was a failure--the same ground was more effectively covered by
better books. I found a dusty old copy a few years ago, and gave it to
my secretary. So far as I know, that is the only copy in existence.”

“But your secretary?” said Angel eagerly. “What is his name? Where does
he live?”

“It’s not a ‘he,’” said Mauder, “but a ‘she.’”

“Her name?”

“If you had asked that question earlier in the evening I could not
have told you,” said Mauder, obviously enjoying the mystery he had
created, “but since then my memory has been refreshed. The girl--and a
most charming lady too--was my secretary for two years. I do not know
what induced her to work, but I rather think she supported an invalid
father.”

“What is her name?” asked Angel impatiently.

“Kathleen Kent,” replied the publisher, “and her address is----”

“Kathleen Kent!” repeated Jimmy in wide-eyed astonishment. “Angels and
Ministers of Grace defend us!”

“Kathleen Kent!” repeated Angel with a gasp. “Well, that takes the
everlasting biscuit! But,” he added quickly, “how did you come to know
of our errand?”

“Well,” drawled the elder man, wrapping his dressing-gown round him
more snugly, “it was a guess to an extent. You see, Angel, when a man
has been already awakened out of a sound sleep to answer mysterious
inquiries about an out-of-date book----”

“What,” cried Jimmy, jumping up, “somebody has already been here?”

“It is only natural,” the publisher went on, “to connect his errand
with that of the second midnight intruder.”

“Who has been here? For Heaven’s sake, don’t be funny; this is a
serious business.”

“Nobody has been here,” said Mauder, “but an hour ago a man called me
up on the telephone----”

Jimmy looked at Angel, and Angel looked at Jimmy.

“Jimmy,” said Angel penitently, “write me down as a fool. Telephone!
Heavens, I didn’t know you were connected.”

“Nor was I till last week,” said the publisher, “nor will I be after
to-morrow. Sleep is too precious a gift to be dissipated----”

“Who was the man?” demanded Angel.

“I couldn’t quite catch his name. He was very apologetic. I gathered
that he was a newspaper man, and wanted particulars in connection with
the death of the author.”

Angel smiled.

“The author’s alive all right,” he said grimly. “How did the voice
sound--a little pompous, with a clearing of the throat before each
sentence?”

The other nodded.

“Spedding!” said Angel, rising. “We haven’t any time to lose, Jimmy.”

Mauder accompanied them into the hall.

“One question,” said Jimmy, as he fastened the collar of his
motor-coat. “Can you give us any idea of the contents of the book?”

“I can’t,” was the reply. “I have a dim recollection that much of it
was purely conventional, that there were some rough drawings, and the
earlier forms of the alphabet were illustrated--the sort of thing you
find in encyclop;dias or in the back pages of teachers’ Bibles.”

The two men took their seats in the car as it swung round and turned
its bright head-lamps toward London.

  “‘I found this puzzle in a book
    From which some mighty truths were took,’”

murmured Angel in his companion’s ear, and Jimmy nodded. He was at
that moment utterly oblivious and careless of the fortune that awaited
them in the great safe at Lombard Street. His mind was filled with
anxiety concerning the girl who unconsciously held the book which
might to-morrow make her an heiress. Spedding had moved promptly, and
he would be aided, he did not doubt, by Connor and the ruffians of the
“Borough Lot.” If the book was still in the girl’s possession they
would have it, and they would make their attempt at once.

His mind was full of dark forebodings, and although the car bounded
through the night at full speed, and the rain which had commenced to
fall again cut his face, and the momentum of the powerful machine took
his breath away, it went all too slowly for his mood.

One incident relieved the monotony of the journey. As the car flew
round a corner in an exceptionally narrow lane it almost crashed
into another car, which, driven at breakneck speed, was coming in
the opposite direction. A fleeting exchange of curses between the
chauffeurs, and the cars passed.

By common consent, they had headed for Kathleen’s home. Streatham was
deserted. As they turned the corner of the quiet road in which the
girl lived, Angel stopped the car and alighted. He lifted one of the
huge lamps from the socket and examined the road.

“There has been a car here less than half an hour ago,” he said,
pointing to the unmistakable track of wheels. They led to the door of
the house.

He rang the bell, and it was almost immediately answered by an elderly
lady, who, wrapped in a loose dressing-gown, bade him enter.

“Nobody seems to be surprised to see us to-night,” thought Angel with
bitter humor.

“I am Detective Angel from Scotland Yard,” he announced himself, and
the elderly lady seemed unimpressed.

“Kathleen has gone,” she informed him cheerfully.

Jimmy heard her with a sinking at his heart.

“Yes,” said the old lady, “Mr. Spedding, the eminent solicitor, called
for her an hour ago, and”--she grew confidential--“as I know you
gentlemen are very much interested in the case, I may say that there is
every hope that before to-morrow my niece will be in possession of her
fortune.”

Jimmy groaned.

“Please, go on,” said Angel.

“It came about over a book which Kathleen had given her some years ago,
and which most assuredly would have been lost but for my carefulness.”

Jimmy cursed her “carefulness” under his breath.

“When we moved here after the death of Kathleen’s poor father I had
a great number of things stored. There were amongst these an immense
quantity of books, which Kathleen would have sold, but which I
thought----”

“Where are these stored?” asked Angel quickly.

“At an old property of ours--the only property that my poor brother
had remaining,” she replied sadly, “and that because it was in too
dilapidated a condition to attract buyers.”

“Where, where?” Angel realized the rudeness of his impatience. “Forgive
me, madam,” he said, “but it is absolutely necessary that I should
follow your niece at once.”

“It is on the Tonbridge Road,” she answered stiffly. “So far as I can
remember, it is somewhere between Crawley and Tonbridge, but I am not
sure. Kathleen knows the place well; that is why she has gone.”

“Somewhere on the Tonbridge Road!” repeated Angel helplessly.

“We could follow the car’s tracks,” said Jimmy.

Angel shook his head.

“If this rain is general, they will be obliterated,” he replied.

They stood a minute, Jimmy biting the sodden finger of his glove, and
Angel staring into vacancy. Then Jimmy demanded unexpectedly--

“Have you a Bible?”

The old lady allowed the astonishment she felt at the question to be
apparent.

“I have several.”

“A teacher’s Bible, with notes?” he asked.

She thought.

“Yes, there is such an one in the house. Will you wait?”

She left the room.

“We should have told the girl about Spedding--we should have told her,”
said Angel in despair.

“It’s no use crying over spilt milk,” said Jimmy quietly. “The thing to
do now is to frustrate Spedding and rescue the girl.”

“Will he dare----?”

“He’ll dare. Oh, yes, he’ll dare,” said Jimmy. “He’s worse than you
think, Angel.”

“But he is already a ruined man.”

“The more reason why he should go a step further. He’s been on the
verge of ruin for months, I’ve found that out. I made inquiries
the other day, and discovered he’s in a hole that the dome of St.
Paul’s wouldn’t fill. He’s a trustee or something of the sort for an
association that has been pressing him for money. Spedding will dare
anything”--he paused then--“but if he dares to harm that girl he’s a
dead man.”

The old lady came in at that moment with the book, and Jimmy hastily
turned over the pages.

Near the end he came upon something that brought a gleam to his eye.

He thrust his hand into his pocket and drew out a notebook. He did not
wait to pull up a chair, but sank on his knees by the side of the table
and wrote rapidly, comparing the text with the drawings in the book.

Angel, leaning over, followed the work breathlessly.

“There--and there--and there!” cried Angel exultantly. “What fools we
were, Jimmy, what fools we were.”

Jimmy turned to the lady.

“May I borrow this book?” he asked. “It will be returned. Thank you.
Now, Angel,” he looked at his watch and made a move for the door, “we
have two hours. We will take the Tonbridge Road by daybreak.”

Only one other person did they disturb on that eventful night, and that
was a peppery old Colonel of Marines, who lived at Blackheath.

There, before the hastily-attired old officer, as the dawn broke, Angel
explained his mission, and writing with feverish haste, subscribed
to the written statement by oath. Whereupon the Justice of the Peace
issued a warrant for the arrest of Joseph James Spedding, Solicitor, on
a charge of felony.




CHAPTER XII

WHAT HAPPENED AT FLAIRBY MILL


Kathleen very naturally regarded the lawyer in the light of a
disinterested friend. There was no reason why she should not do so;
and if there had been any act needed to kindle a kindly feeling for
the distant legal adviser it was this last act of his, for no sooner,
as he told her, had he discovered by the merest accident a clue to the
hidden word, than he had rushed off post-haste to put her in possession
of his information. He had naturally advised immediate action, and when
she demurred at the lateness of the hour at which to begin a hunt for
the book, he had hinted vaguely at difficulties which would beset her
if she delayed. She wanted to let Angel know, and Jimmy, but this the
lawyer would not hear of, and she accounted for the insistence of his
objection by the cautiousness of the legal mind.

Then the excitement of the midnight adventure appealed to her--the
swift run in the motor-car through the wild night, and the wonderful
possibilities of the search at the end of the ride.

So she went, and her appetite for adventure was all but satisfied by a
narrowly-averted collision with another car speeding in the opposite
direction. She did not see the occupants of the other car, but she
hoped they had had as great a fright as she.

As a matter of fact, neither of the two men had given a second thought
to their danger; one’s mind was entirely and completely filled with her
image, and the other was brooding on telephones.

She had no time to tire of the excitement of the night--the run across
soaking heaths and through dead villages, where little cottages showed
up for a moment in the glare of the headlights, then faded into the
darkness. Too soon she came to a familiar stretch of the road, and
the car slowed down so that they might not pass the tiny grass lane
that led to Flairby Mill. They came to it at last, and the car bumped
cautiously over deep cart ruts, over loose stones, and through long
drenched grasses till there loomed out of the night the squat outlines
of Flairby Mill.

Once upon a time, before the coming of cheap machinery, Flairby Mill
had been famous in the district, and the rumble of its big stones went
on incessantly, night and day; but the wheel had long since broken,
its wreck lay in the bed of the little stream that had so faithfully
served it; its machinery was rust and scrap iron, and only the tiny
dwelling-house that adjoined was of value. With little or no repair
the homestead had remained watertight and weatherproof, and herein
had Kathleen stored the odds and ends of her father’s household. The
saddles, shields, spears, and oddments he had collected in his travels,
and the modest library that had consoled the embittered years of his
passing, were all stored here. Valueless as the world assesses value,
but in the eyes of the girl precious things associated with her dead
father.

The tears rose to her eyes as Spedding, taking the key from her hand,
fitted it into the lock of a seventeenth-century door, but she wiped
them away furtively.

Spedding utilized the acetylene lamp of the car to show him the way
into the house. “You must direct me, Miss Kent,” he said, and Kathleen
pointed the way. Up the oaken stairs, covered with dust, their
footsteps resounding hollowly through the deserted homestead, the two
passed. At the head of the stairs was a heavy door, and acting under
the girl’s instructions, the lawyer opened this.

It was a big room, almost like a barn, with a timbered ceiling sloping
downward. There were three shuttered windows, and another door at the
farther end of the room that led to a smaller room.

“This was the miller’s living room,” she said sadly. She could just
remember when a miller lived in the homestead, and when she had
ridden up to the door of the mill accompanied by her father, and the
miller, white and jovial, had lifted her down and taken her through a
mysterious chamber where great stones turned laboriously and noisily,
and the air was filled with a fine white dust.

Spedding placed the lamp on the table, and cast his eyes round the room
in search of the books. They were not difficult to discover; they had
been unpacked, and were ranged in three disorderly rows upon roughly
constructed bookshelves. The lawyer turned the lamp so that the full
volume of light should fall on the books. Then he went carefully over
them, row by row, checking each copy methodically, and half muttering
the name of each tome he handled. There were school books, works of
travel, and now and again a heavily bound scientific treatise, for her
father had made science a particular study. The girl stood with one
hand resting on the table, looking on, admiring the patience of the
smooth, heavy man at his task, and, it must be confessed, inwardly
wondering what necessity there was for this midnight visitation. She
had told the lawyer nothing about the red envelope, but instinctively
felt that he knew all about it.

“_Anabasis_, Xenophon,” he muttered; “Josephus, _Works and Life_;
_Essays of Elia_; _Essays_, Emerson; _Essays_, De Quincey. What’s this?”

He drew from between two bulky volumes a thin little book with a
discolored cover. He dusted it carefully, glanced at the title, opened
it and read the title-page, then walked back to the table and seated
himself, and started to read the book.

The girl did not know why, but there was something in his attitude at
that moment that caused her a little uneasiness, and stirred within her
a sense of danger. Perhaps it was that up till then he had shown her
marked deference, had been almost obsequious. Now that the book had
been found he disregarded her. He did not bring it to her or invite her
attention, and she felt that she was “out of the picture,” that the
lawyer’s interest in her affairs had stopped dead just as soon as the
discovery was made.

He turned the leaves over carefully, poring over the introduction, and
her eyes wandered from the book to his face. She had never looked at
him before with any critical interest. In the unfriendly light of the
lamp she saw his imperfections--the brutal strength of his jaw, the
unscrupulous thinness of the lip, the heavy eyelids, and the curious
hairlessness of his face. She shivered a little, for she read too much
in his face for her peace of mind.

Unconscious of her scrutiny, for the book before him was
all-engrossing, the lawyer went from page to page.

“Don’t you think we had better be going?” Kathleen asked timidly.

Spedding looked up, and his stare was in keeping with his words.

“When I have finished we will go,” he said brusquely, and went on
reading.

Kathleen gave a little gasp of astonishment, for, with all her
suspicions, she had not been prepared for such a complete and instant
dropping of his mask of amiability. In a dim fashion she began to
realize her danger, yet there could be no harm; outside was the
chauffeur, he stood for something of established order. She made
another attempt.

“I must insist, Mr. Spedding, upon your finishing your examination of
that book elsewhere. I do not know whether you are aware that you are
occupying the only chair in the room,” she added indignantly.

“I am very well aware,” said the lawyer calmly, without raising his
eyes.

“Mr. Spedding!”

He looked up with an air of weariness.

“May I ask you to remain quiet until I have finished,” he said, with an
emphasis that she could not mistake, “and lest you have any lingering
doubt that my present research is rather on my own account than on
yours, I might add that if you annoy me by whining or fuming, or by
any such nonsensical tricks, I have that with me which will quiet
you,” and he resumed his reading.

Cold and white, the girl stood in silence, her heart beating wildly,
her mind occupied with schemes of escape.

After a while the lawyer looked up and tapped the book with his
forefinger.

“Your precious secret is a secret no longer,” he said with a hard
laugh. Kathleen made no answer. “If I hadn’t been a fool, I should
have seen through it before,” he added, then he looked at the girl in
meditation.

“I have two propositions before me,” he said, “and I want your help.”

“You will have no help from me, Mr. Spedding,” she replied coldly.
“To-morrow you will be asked to explain your extraordinary conduct.”

He laughed.

“To-morrow, by whom? By Angel or the young swell-mobsman who’s half in
love with you?”

He laughed again as he saw the color rising to the girl’s cheeks.

“Ah! I’ve hit the mark, have I?”

She received his speech in contemptuous silence.

“To-morrow I shall be away--well away, I trust, from the reach of
either of the gentlemen you mention. I am not concerned with to-morrow
as much as to-day.” She remembered that they were within an hour of
daybreak. “To-day is a most fateful day for me--and for you.” He
emphasized the last words.

She preserved an icy silence.

“If I may put my case in a nutshell,” he went on, with all his old-time
suavity, “I may say that it is necessary for me to secure the money
that is stored in that ridiculous safe.” She checked an exclamation.
“Ah! you understand? Let me be more explicit. When I say get the
money, I mean get it for myself, every penny of it, and convert it to
my private use. You can have no idea,” he went on, “how comforting
it is to be able to stand up and say in so many words the unspoken
thoughts of a year, to tell some human being the most secret things
that I have so far hidden here,” he struck his chest. “I had thought
when old Reale’s commission was intrusted to me that I should find the
legatees ordinary plain, everyday fools, who would have unfolded to
me day by day the result of their investigations to my profit. I did
not reckon very greatly on you, for women are naturally secretive and
suspicious, but I did rely upon the two criminals. My experience of the
criminal classes, a fairly extensive one, led me to believe that with
these gentry I should have no difficulty.” He pursed his lips. “I had
calculated without my Jimmy,” he said shortly. He saw the light in the
girl’s eye. “Yes,” he went on, “Jimmy is no ordinary man, and Angel
is a glaring instance of bad nomenclature. I nearly had Jimmy once.
Did he tell you how he got the red envelope? I see he did not. Well,
I nearly had him. I went to look for his body next morning, and found
nothing. Later in the day I received a picture postcard from him, of a
particularly flippant and vulgar character.” He stopped as if inviting
comment.

“Your confessions have little interest for me,” said the girl quietly.
“I am now only anxious to be rid of your presence.”

“I am coming to that,” said the lawyer. “I was very rude to you a
little while ago, but I was busily engaged, and besides I desired to
give you an artistic introduction to the new condition. Now, so far
from being rude, I wish to be very kind.”

In spite of her outward calm, she trembled at the silky tone the lawyer
had now adopted.

“My position is this,” he said, “there is an enormous sum of
money, which rightly is yours. The law and the inclination of your
competitor--we will exclude Connor, who is not a factor--give you
the money. It is unfortunate that I also, who have no earthly right,
should desire this money, and we have narrowed down the ultimate issue
to this: Shall it be Spedding or Kathleen Kent? I say Spedding, and
circumstances support my claim, for I have you here, and, if you will
pardon the suspicion of melodrama, very much in my power. If I am to
take the two millions, _your_ two millions, without interruption, it
will depend entirely upon you.”

Again he stopped to notice the effect of his words. The girl made no
response, but he could see the terror in her eyes.

“If I could have dispensed with your services, or if I had had the
sense to guess the simple solution of this cursed puzzle, I could have
done everything without embarrassing you in the slightest; but now it
has come to this--I have got to silence you.”

He put forward the proposition with the utmost coolness, and Kathleen
felt her senses reel at all the words implied.

“I can silence you by killing you,” he said simply, “or by marrying
you. If I could think of some effective plan by which I might be sure
of your absolute obliteration for two days, I would gladly adopt it;
but you are a human woman, and that is too much to expect. Now, of the
alternatives, which do you prefer?”

She shrank back against the shuttered window, her eyes on the man.

“You are doubtless thinking of the chauffeur,” he said smoothly, “but
you may leave him out of the reckoning. Had your ears been sharp, you
would have heard the car going back half an hour ago--he is awaiting
our return half a mile away. If I return alone he will doubtlessly be
surprised, but he will know nothing. Do you not see a picture of him
driving me away, and me, at his side turning round and waving a smiling
farewell to an imaginary woman who is invisible to the chauffeur?
Picture his uneasiness vanishing with this touch. Two days afterwards
he would be on the sea with me, ignorant of the murder, and curious
things happen at sea. Come, Kathleen, is it to be marriage----?”

“Death!” she cried hoarsely, then, as his swift hand caught her by the
throat, she screamed.

His face looked down into hers, no muscle of it moved. Fixed, rigid,
and full of his dreadful purpose, she saw the pupils of his pitiless
eyes contract.

Then of a sudden he released hold of her, and she fell back against the
wall.

She heard his quick breathing, and closing her eyes, waited.

Then slowly she looked up. She saw a revolver in his hand, and in a
numb kind of way she realized that it was not pointed at her.

“Hands up!” She heard Spedding’s harsh shout. “Hands up, both of you!”

Then she heard an insolent laugh.

There were only two men in the world who would laugh like that in the
very face of death, and they were both there, standing in the doorway,
Angel with his motor goggles about his neck and Jimmy slowly peeling
his gloves.

Then she looked at Spedding.

The hand that held the revolver did not tremble, he was as
self-possessed as he had been a few minutes before.

“If either of you move I’ll shoot the girl, by God!” said Spedding
through his teeth.

They stood in the doorway, and Jimmy spoke. He did not raise his voice,
but she heard the slumbering passion vibrating through his quiet
sentences.

“Spedding, Spedding, my man, you’re frightening that child; put your
gun down and let us talk. Do you hear me? I am keeping myself in hand,
Spedding, but if you harm that girl I’ll be a devil to you. D’ye hear?
If you hurt her, I’ll take you with my bare hands and treat you Indian
fashion, Spedding, my man, tie you down and stake you out, then burn
you slowly. Yes, and, by the Lord, if any man interferes, even if it’s
Angel here, I’ll swing for him. D’ye hear that?”

His breast heaved with the effort to hold himself, and Spedding,
shuddering at the ferocity in the man’s whole bearing, lowered his
pistol.

“Let us talk,” he said huskily.

“That’s better,” said Angel, “and let me talk first. I want you.”

“Come and take me,” he said.

“The risk is too great,” said Angel frankly, “and besides, I can afford
to wait.”

“Well?” asked the lawyer defiantly, after a long pause. He kept the
weapon in his hand pointed in the vicinity of the girl.

Angel exchanged a word in an undertone with his companion, then--

“You may go,” he said, and stepped aside.

Spedding motioned him farther away. Then slowly edging his way to the
door, he reached it. He paused for a moment as if about to speak, then
quick as thought raised his revolver and fired twice.

Angel felt the wind of the bullets as they passed his face, and sprang
forward just as Jimmy’s arm shot out.

Crack, crack, crack! Three shots so rapid that their reports were
almost simultaneous from Jimmy’s automatic pistol sped after the
lawyer, but too late, and the heavy door crashed to in Angel’s face,
and the snap of the lock told them they were prisoners.

Angel made a dart for a window, but it was shuttered and nailed and
immovable.

He looked at Jimmy, and burst into a ringing laugh.

“Trapped, by Jove!” he said.

Jimmy was on his knees by the side of the girl. She had not fainted,
but had suddenly realized her terrible danger, and the strain and
weariness of the night adventure had brought her trembling to her
knees. Very tenderly did Jimmy’s arm support her. She felt the strength
of the man, and, thrilled at his touch, her head sank on his shoulder
and she felt at rest.

Angel was busily examining the windows, when a loud report outside the
house arrested his attention.

“What is that?” asked the girl faintly.

“It is either Mr. Spedding’s well-timed suicide, which I fear is too
much to expect,” said Angel philosophically, “or else it is the same
Mr. Spedding destroying the working parts of our car. I am afraid it is
the latter.”

He moved up and down the room, examined the smaller chamber at the
other end, then sniffed uneasily.

“Miss Kent,” he said earnestly, “are you well enough to tell me
something?”

She started and flushed as she drew herself from Jimmy’s arms, and
stood up a little shakily.

“Yes,” she said, with a faint smile, “I think I am all right now.”

“What is there under here?” asked Angel, pointing to the floor.

“An old workshop, a sort of storehouse,” she replied in surprise.

“What is in it?” There was no mistaking the seriousness in Angel’s
voice.

“Broken furniture.”

“Mattresses?”

“Yes, I think there are, and paints and things. Why do you ask?”

“Jimmy,” said Angel quickly, “do you smell anything?”

Jimmy sniffed.

“Yes,” he said quickly. “Quick, the windows!”

They made a rapid search of the room. In a corner Jimmy unearthed a
rusty cavalry saber.

“That’s the thing,” said Angel, and started to prise loose the solid
shutter; but the wood was unyielding, and just as they had secured a
purchase the blade snapped.

“There is an old ax in the cupboard,” cried the girl, who apprehended
the hidden danger.

With a yell of joy Angel dragged forth an antiquated battle-ax, and
attacked the shutter afresh. With each blow the wood flew in big
splinters, but fast as he worked something else was moving faster.
Angel had not mistaken the smell of petrol, and now a thin vapor of
smoke flowed into the room from underneath the door, and in tiny
spirals through the interstices of the floorboards. Angel stopped
exhausted, and Jimmy picked up the ax and struck it true, then after
one vigorous stroke a streak of daylight showed in the shutter. The
room was now intolerably hot, and Angel took up the ax and hacked away
at the oaken barrier to life.

“Shall we escape?” asked the girl quietly.

“Yes, I think so,” said Jimmy steadily.

“I shall not regret to-night,” she faltered.

“Nor I,” said Jimmy in a low voice, “whatever the issue is. It is very
good to love once in a lifetime, even if that once is on the brink of
the grave.”

Her lips quivered, and she tried to speak.

Angel was hard at work on the window, and his back was toward them, and
Jimmy bent and kissed the girl on the lips.

The window was down! Angel turned in a welter of perspiring triumph.

“Outside as quick as dammit!” he cried.

Angel had found a rope in the smaller room in his earlier search, and
this he slipped round the girl’s waist. “When you get down run clear
of the smoke,” he instructed her, and in a minute she found herself
swinging in mid-air, in a cloud of rolling smoke that blinded and
choked her. She felt the ground, and staying only to loose the rope,
she ran outward and fell exhausted on a grassy bank.

In a few minutes the two men were by her side.

They stood in silence contemplating the conflagration, then Kathleen
remembered.

“The book, the book!” she cried.

“It’s inside my shirt,” said the shameless Angel.




CHAPTER XIII

CONNOR TAKES A HAND


It is an axiom at Scotland Yard, “Beware of an audience.” Enemies
of our police system advance many and curious reasons for this
bashfulness. In particular they place a sinister interpretation upon
the desire of the police to carry out their work without fuss and
without ostentation, for the police have an embarrassing system of
midnight arrests. Unless you advertise the fact, or unless your case
is of sufficient importance to merit notice in the evening newspapers,
there is no reason why your disappearance from society should excite
comment, or why the excuse, put forward for your absence from your
accustomed haunts, that you have gone abroad should not be accepted
without question.

Interviewing his wise chief, Angel received some excellent advice.

“If you’ve got to arrest him, do it quietly. If, as you suggest, he
barricades himself in his house, or takes refuge in his patent vault,
leave him alone. We want no fuss, and we want no newspaper sensations.
If you can square up the Reale business without arresting him, by all
means do so. We shall probably get him in--er--what do you call it,
Angel?--oh, yes, ‘the ordinary way of business.’”

“Very good, sir,” said Angel, nothing loth to carry out the plan.

“From what I know of this class of man,” the Assistant-Commissioner
went on, fingering his grizzled mustache, “he will do nothing. He will
go about his daily life as though nothing had happened; you will find
him in his office this morning, and if you went to arrest him you’d be
shot dead. No, if you take my advice you’ll leave him severely alone
for the present. He won’t run away.”

So Angel thanked his chief and departed.

Throughout the morning he was obsessed by a desire to see the lawyer.
By midday this had become so overmastering that he put on his hat and
sauntered down to Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

“Yes, Mr. Spedding was in,” said a sober clerk, and--after consulting
his employer--“Mr. Spedding would see him.”

The lawyer was sitting behind a big desk covered with be-ribboned
bundles of papers. He greeted Angel with a smile, and pointed to a
chair on the other side of the desk.

“I’ve been in court most of the morning,” he said blandly, “but I’m at
liberty for half an hour. What can I do for you?”

Angel looked at him in undisguised admiration.

“You’re a wonderful chap,” he said with a shake of his head.

“You’re admiring me,” said the lawyer, fingering a paper-knife, “in
very much the same way as an enthusiastic naturalist admires the
markings of a horned viper.”

“That is very nicely put,” said Angel truthfully.

The lawyer had dropped his eyes on to the desk before him; then he
looked up.

“What is it to be?” he asked.

“A truce,” said Angel.

“I thought you would say that,” replied Spedding comfortably, “because
I suppose you know----”

“Oh, yes,” said Angel with nonchalant ease, “I know that the right
hand which is so carelessly reposing on your knee holds a weapon of
remarkable precision.”

“You are well advised,” said the lawyer, with a slight bow.

“Of course,” said Angel, “there is a warrant in existence for your
arrest.”

“Of course,” agreed Spedding politely.

“I got it as a precautionary measure,” Angel went on in his most
affable manner.

“Naturally,” said the lawyer; “and now----”

“Oh, now,” said Angel, “I wanted to give you formal notice that, on
behalf of Miss Kent, we intend opening the safe to-morrow.”

“I will be there,” said the lawyer, and rang a bell.

“And,” added Angel in a lower voice, “keep out of Jimmy’s way.”

Spedding’s lips twitched, the only sign of nervousness he had shown
during the interview, but he made no reply. As the clerk stood waiting
at the open door, Spedding, with his most gracious smile, said--

“Er--and did you get home safely this morning?”

“Quite, thank you,” replied Angel, in no wise perturbed by the man’s
audacity.

“Did you find your country quarters--er--comfortable?”

“Perfectly,” said Angel, rising to the occasion, “but the function was
a failure.”

“The function?” The lawyer bit at the bait Angel had thrown.

“Yes,” said the detective, his hand on the door, “the house-warming,
you know.”

Angel chuckled to himself all the way back to the Embankment. His grim
little jest pleased him so much that he must needs call in and tell his
chief, and the chief’s smile was very flattering.

“You’re a bright boy,” he said, “but when the day comes for you to
arrest that lawyer gentleman, I trust you will, as a precautionary
measure, purge your soul of all frivolities, and prepare yourself for a
better world.”

“If,” said Angel, “I do not see the humorous side of being killed, I
shall regard my life as badly ended.”

“Get out,” ordered the Commissioner, and Angel got.

He realized as the afternoon wore on that he was very tired, and
snatched a couple of hours’ sleep before keeping the appointment he had
made with Jimmy earlier in the day. Whilst he was dressing Jimmy came
in--Jimmy rather white, with a surgical bandage round his head, and
carrying with him the pungent scent of iodoform.

“Hullo,” said Angel in astonishment, “what on earth have you been
doing?”

Jimmy cast an eye round the room in search of the most luxurious chair
before replying.

“Ah,” he said with a sigh of contentment as he seated himself, “that’s
better.”

Angel pointed to the bandage.

“When did this happen?”

“An hour or so ago,” said Jimmy. “Spedding is a most active man.”

Angel whistled.

“Conventionally?” he asked.

“Artistically,” responded Jimmy, nodding his bandaged head. “A runaway
motor-car that followed my cab--beautifully done. The cab horse was
killed and the driver has a concussion, but I saw the wheeze and
jumped.”

“Got the chauffeur?” asked Angel anxiously.

“Yes; it was in the City. You know the City police? Well, they had him
in three seconds. He tried to bolt, but that’s a fool’s game in the
City.”

“Was it Spedding’s chauffeur?”

Jimmy smiled pityingly.

“Of course not. That’s where the art of the thing comes in.”

Angel looked grave for a minute.

“I think we ought to ‘pull’ our friend,” he said.

“Meaning Spedding?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t agree with you,” said Jimmy. “It would be ever so much more
comfortable for you and me, but it will be ever so much better to
finish up the Reale business first.”

“Great minds!” murmured Angel, remembering his chief’s advice. “I
suppose Mr. Spedding will lay for me to-night.”

“You can bet your life on that,” said Jimmy cheerfully.

As he was speaking, a servant came into the room with a letter. When
the man had gone, Angel opened and read it. His grin grew broader as he
perused it.

“Listen!” he said. “It’s from Miss Kent.”

Jimmy was all attention.

  “Dear Mr. Angel,

  “Spedding has trapped me again. Whilst I was shopping this afternoon,
  two men came up to me and asked me to accompany them. They said they
  were police officers, and wanted me in connection with last night’s
  affair. I was so worried that I went with them. They took me to a
  strange house in Kensington.... For Heaven’s sake, come to me!...”

Jimmy’s face was so white that Angel thought he would faint.

“The hounds!” he cried. “Angel, we must----”

“You must sit down,” said Angel, “or you’ll be having a fit.” He
examined the letter again. “It’s beautifully done,” he said. “Scrawled
on a torn draper’s bill in pencil, it might very easily be her writing.”

He put the missive carefully in a drawer of his desk, and locked it.

“Unfortunately for the success of _that_ scheme, Mr. Spedding, I
have four men watching Miss Kent’s house day and night, and being in
telephonic communication, I happen to know that that young lady has not
left her house all day.”

He looked at Jimmy, white and shaking.

“Buck up, Jimmy!” he said kindly. “Your bang on the head has upset you
more than you think.”

“But the letter?” asked Jimmy.

“A little fake,” said Angel airily, “Mr. Spedding’s little _ballon
d’essai_, so foolishly simple that I think Spedding must be losing his
nerve and balance. I’d like to bet that this house is being watched to
see the effect of the note.” (Angel would have won his bet.) “Now the
only question is, what little program have they arranged for me this
evening?”

Jimmy was thoughtful.

“I don’t know,” he said slowly, “but I should think it would be
wiser for you to keep indoors. You might make me up a bed in your
sitting-room, and if there is any bother, we can share it.”

“And whistle to keep my courage up?” sneered Angel. “I’ll make you up
a bed with all the pleasure in life; but I’m going out, Jimmy, and
I’ll take you with me, if you’ll agree to come along and find a man
who will replace that conspicuous white bandage by something less
blood-curdling.”

They found a man in Devonshire Place who was a mutual friend of both.
He was a specialist in unpronounceable diseases, a Knight Commander
of St. Michael and St. George, a Fellow of the two Colleges, and the
author of half a dozen works of medical science. Angel addressed him as
“Bill.”

The great surgeon deftly dressed the damaged head of Jimmy, and wisely
asked no questions. He knew them both, and had been at Oxford with one,
and he permitted himself to indulge in caustic comments on their mode
of life and the possibilities of their end.

“If you didn’t jaw so much,” said Angel, “I’d employ you regularly; as
it is, I am very doubtful if I shall ever bring you another case.”

“For which,” said Sir William Farran, as he clipped the loose ends
of the dressing, “I am greatly obliged to you, Angel Esquire. You
are the sort of patient I like to see about once a year--just about
Christmas-time, when I am surfeited with charity toward mankind, when I
need a healthy moral corrective to tone down the bright picture to its
normal grayness--that’s the time you’re welcome, Angel.”

“Fine!” said Angel ecstatically. “I’d like to see that sentence in a
book, with illustrations.”

The surgeon smiled good-humoredly. He put a final touch to the dressing.

“There you are,” he said.

“Thank you, Bill,” said Jimmy. “You’re getting fat.”

“Thank you for nothing,” said the surgeon indignantly.

Angel struck a more serious tone when he asked the surgeon in an
undertone, just as they were taking their departure--

“Where will you be to-night?”

The surgeon consulted a little engagement book.

“I am dining at the ‘Ritz’ with some people at eight. We are going on
to the Gaiety afterwards, and I shall be home by twelve. Why?”

“There’s a gentleman,” said Angel confidentially, “who will make a
valiant attempt to kill one of us, or both of us to-night, and he might
just fail; so it would be as well to know where you are, if you are
wanted. Mind you,” added Angel with a grin, “you might be wanted for
_him_.”

“You’re a queer bird,” said the surgeon, “and Jimmy’s a queerer one.
Well, off you go, you two fellows; you’ll be getting my house a bad
name.”

Outside in the street the two ingrates continued their discussion on
the corpulency that attends success in life.

They walked leisurely to Piccadilly, and turned towards the circus.
It is interesting to record the fact that for no apparent reason they
struck off into side streets, made unexpected excursions into adjoining
squares, took unnecessary short cuts through mews, and finally, finding
themselves at the Oxford Street end of Charing Cross Road, they hailed
a hansom, and drove eastward rapidly. Angel shouted up some directions
through the trap in the roof.

“I am moved to give the two gentlemen who are following me what in
sporting parlance is called ‘a run for their money,’” he said.

He lifted the flap at the back of the cab, glanced through the little
window, and groaned. Then he gave fresh directions to the cabman.

“Drive to the ‘Troc,’” he called, and to Jimmy he added, “If we must
die, let us die full of good food.”

In the thronged grill-room of the brightly-lighted restaurant the two
men found a table so placed that it commanded a view of the room. They
took their seats, and whilst Jimmy ordered the dinner Angel watched the
stream of people entering.

He saw a dapper little man, with swarthy face and coal-black eyes,
eyebrows and mustache, come through the glass doors. He stood for a
breathing space at the door, his bright eyes flashing from face to
face. Then he caught Angel’s steady gaze, and his eyes rested a little
longer on the pair. Then Angel beckoned him. He hesitated for a second,
then walked slowly toward them.

Jimmy pulled a chair from the table, and again he hesitated as if in
doubt; then slowly he seated himself, glancing from one to the other
suspiciously.

“Monsieur Callvet--ne c’est pas?” asked Angel.

“That is my name,” the other answered in French.

“Permit me to introduce myself.”

“I know you,” said the little man shortly. “You are a detective.”

“It is my fortune,” said Angel, ignoring the bitterness in the man’s
tone.

“You wish to speak to me?”

“Yes,” replied Angel. “First, I would ask why you have been following
us for the last hour?”

The man shrugged his shoulders.

“Monsieur is mistaken.”

Jimmy had been very quiet during the evening. Now he addressed the
Frenchman.

“Callvet,” he said briefly, “do you know who I am?”

“Yes, you are also a detective.”

Jimmy looked him straight in the eyes.

“I am not a detective, Callvet, as you well know. I am”--he felt an
unusual repugnance at using the next words--“I am Jimmy of Cairo. You
know me?”

“I have heard of you,” said the man doggedly.

“What you are--now--I do not know,” said Jimmy contemptuously. “I have
known you as all things--as an ornament of the young Egypt party, as a
tout for Reale, as a trader in beastliness.”

The conversation was in colloquial French, and Jimmy used a phrase
which is calculated to raise the hair of the most brazen scoundrel. But
this man shrugged his shoulders and rose to go. Jimmy caught his sleeve
and detained him.

“Callvet,” he said, “go back to Mr. Spedding, your employer, and tell
him the job is too dangerous. Tell him that one of the men, at least,
knows enough about you to send you to New Caledonia, or else----”

“Or else?” demanded the man defiantly.

“Or else,” said Jimmy in his hesitating way, “I’ll be sending word to
the French Ambassador that ‘Monsieur Plessey’ is in London.”

The face of the man turned a sickly green.

“Monsieur--je n’en vois pas la n;cessit;,” he muttered.

“And who is Plessey?” asked Angel when the man had gone.

“A murderer greatly wanted by the French police,” said Jimmy, “and
Spedding has well chosen his instrument. Angel, there will be trouble
before the evening is over.”

They ate their dinner in silence, lingering over the coffee. The
Frenchman had taken a table at the other side of the room. Once when
Angel went out he made as though to leave, but seeing that Jimmy did
not move, he changed his mind.

Angel dawdled through the sweet, and took an unconscionable time
over his coffee. Jimmy, fretting to be gone, groaned as his volatile
companion ordered yet another liqueur.

“That’s horribly insidious muck to drink,” grumbled Jimmy.

“Inelegant, but true,” said Angel.

He was amused at the obvious efforts of the spy at the other table to
kill time also. Then suddenly Angel rose, leaving his drink untasted,
and reached for his hat.

“Come along,” he said briskly.

“This is very sudden,” remarked the impatient Jimmy.

They walked to the desk and paid their bill, and out of the corner of
his eye Angel could see the dapper Frenchman following them out.

They stepped out along Shaftesbury Avenue; then Jimmy stopped and
fumbled in his pocket. In his search he turned round, facing the
direction from which he had come. The dapper Frenchman was sauntering
toward him, whilst behind him came two roughly-dressed men. Then
Jimmy saw the two men quicken their pace. Passing one on each side of
Callvet, each took an arm affectionately, and the three turned into
Rupert Street, Angel and Jimmy following.

Jimmy saw the three bunched together, and heard the click of the
handcuffs. Then Angel whistled a passing cab. The captive’s voice rose.
“Stick a handkerchief in his mouth,” said Angel, and one of the men
obeyed. The two stood watching the cab till it turned the corner.

“There is no sense in taking unnecessary risks,” said Angel cheerfully.
“It is one thing being a fool, and another being a silly fool. Now
we’ll go along and see what else happens.”

He explained as he proceeded--

“I’ve wanted Callvet for quite a long time--he’s on the list, so to
speak. I lost sight of him a year ago. How Spedding got him is a
mystery. If the truth be told, he’s got a nodding acquaintance with
half the crooks in London ... had a big criminal practice before he
went into the more lucrative side of the law.”

A big crowd had gathered at the corner of the Haymarket, and with one
accord they avoided it.

“Curiosity,” Angel prattled on, “has been the undoing of many a poor
soul. Keep away from crowds, Jimmy.”

They walked on till they came to Angel’s flat in Jermyn Street.

“Spedding will duplicate and triplicate his schemes for catching us
to-night,” said Jimmy.

“He will,” agreed Angel, and opened the door of the house in which his
rooms were.

The narrow passageway, in which a light usually burned day and night,
was in darkness.

“Oh, no,” said Angel, stepping back into the street, “oh, indeed no!”

During their walk Jimmy had had a suspicion that they had been
followed. This suspicion was confirmed when Angel whistled, and two men
crossed the road and joined them.

“Lend me your lamp, Johnson,” said Angel, and taking the bright little
electric lamp in his hand, he entered the passage, followed by the
others. They reached the foot of the stairs, then Angel reached back
his hand without a word, and one of the two men placed therein a stick.
Cautiously the party advanced up the stairway that led to Angel’s room.

“Somebody has been here,” said Angel, and pointed to a patch of mud on
the carpet. The door was ajar, and Jimmy sent it open with a kick; then
Angel put his arm cautiously into the room and turned on the light,
and the party waited in the darkness for a movement.

There was no sign, and they entered. It did not require any great
ingenuity to see that the place had been visited. Half-opened drawers,
their contents thrown on the floor, and all the evidence of a hurried
search met their eyes.

They passed from the little sitting-room to the bedroom, and here again
the visitors had left traces of their investigations.

“Hullo!” Jimmy stopped and picked up a soft felt hat. He looked inside;
the dull lining bore the name of an Egyptian hatter.

“Connor’s!” he said.

“Ah!” said Angel softly, “so Connor takes a hand, does he?”

One of the detectives who had followed them in grasped Angel’s arm.

“Look, sir!” he whispered.

Half-hidden by the heavy hangings of the window, a man crouched in the
shadow.

“Come out of that!” cried Angel.

Then something in the man’s attitude arrested his speech. He slipped
forward and pulled back the curtain.

“Connor!” he cried.

Connor it was indeed, stone dead, with a bullet hole in the center of
his forehead.




CHAPTER XIV

OPENING THE SAFE


The four men stood in silence before the body. Jimmy bent and touched
the hand.

“Dead!” he said.

Angel made no reply, but switched on every light in the room. Then he
passed his hands rapidly through the dead man’s pockets; the things he
found he passed to one of the other detectives, who laid them on the
table.

“A chisel, a jemmy, a center-bit, lamp, pistol,” enumerated Angel. “It
is not difficult to understand why Connor came here; but who killed
him?”

He made a close inspection of the apartment. The windows were intact
and fastened, there were no signs of a struggle. In the sitting-room
there were muddy footmarks, which might have been made by Connor or
his murderer. In the center of the room was a small table. During
Angel’s frequent absences from his lodgings he was in the habit of
locking his two rooms against his servants, who did their cleaning
under his eye. In consequence, the polished surface of the little table
was covered with a fine layer of dust, save in one place where there
was a curious circular clearing about eight inches in diameter. Angel
examined this with scrupulous care, gingerly pulling the table to where
the light would fall on it with greater brilliance. The little circle
from whence the dust had disappeared interested him more than anything
else in the room.

“You will see that this is not touched,” he said to one of the men; and
then to the other, “You had better go round to Vine Street and report
this--stay, I will go myself.”

As Jimmy and he stepped briskly in the direction of the historic police
station, Angel expressed himself tersely.

“Connor came on his own to burgle; he was surprised by a third party,
who, thinking Connor was myself, shot him.”

“That is how I read it,” said Jimmy. “But why did Connor come?”

“I have been expecting Connor,” said Angel quietly. “He was not the
sort of man to be cowed by the fear of arrest. He had got it into his
head that I had got the secret of the safe, and he came to find out.”

Inside the station the inspector on duty saluted him.

“We have one of your men inside,” he said pleasantly, referring to the
Frenchman; then, noticing the grave faces of the two, he added, “Is
anything wrong, sir?”

Briefly enough the detective gave an account of what had happened in
Jermyn Street. He added his instructions concerning the table, and left
as the inspector was summoning the divisional surgeon.

“I wonder where we could find Spedding?” asked Angel.

“I wonder where Spedding will find us?” added Jimmy grimly.

Angel looked round in surprise.

“Losing your nerve?” he asked rudely.

“No,” said the cool young man by his side slowly; “but somehow life
seems more precious than it was a week ago.”

“Fiddlesticks!” said Angel. “You’re in love.”

“Perhaps I am,” admitted Jimmy in a surprised tone, as if the idea had
never occurred to him before.

Angel looked at his watch.

“Ten o’clock,” he said; “time for all good people to be in bed. Being
myself of a vicious disposition, and, moreover, desirous of washing the
taste of tragedy out of my mouth, I suggest we walk steadily to a place
of refreshment.”

“Angel,” said Jimmy, “I cannot help thinking that you like to hear
yourself talk.”

“I love it,” said Angel frankly.

       *       *       *       *       *

In a little underground bar in Leicester Square they sat at a table
listening to a little string band worry through the overture to
_Lohengrin_.

The crowded room suited their moods. Jimmy, in his preoccupation, found
the noise, the babble of voices in many tongues, and the wail of the
struggling orchestra, soothing after the exciting events of the past
few hours. To Angel the human element in the crowd formed relaxation.
The loud-speaking men with their flashy jewelry, the painted women
with their automatic smiles, the sprinkling of keen-faced sharps he
recognized, they formed part of the pageant of life--the life--as Angel
saw it.

They sat sipping their wine until there came a man who, glancing
carelessly round the room, made an imperceptible sign to Angel, and
then, as if having satisfied himself that the man he was looking for
was not present, left the room again.

Angel and his companion followed.

“Well?” asked Angel.

“Spedding goes to the safe to-night,” said the stranger.

“Good,” said Angel.

“The guard at the safe is permanently withdrawn by Spedding’s order.”

“That I know,” said Angel. “It was withdrawn the very night the
‘Borough Lot’ came. On whose behalf is Spedding acting?”

“On behalf of Connor, who I understand is one of the legatees.”

Angel whistled.

“Whew! Jimmy, this is to be the Grand Finale.”

He appeared deep in thought for a moment.

“It will be necessary for Miss Kent to be present,” he said after a
while.

From a neighboring district messenger office he got on by the telephone
to a garage, and within half an hour they were ringing the bell at
Kathleen’s modest little house.

The girl rose to greet them as they entered. All sign of the last
night’s fatigue had vanished.

“Yes,” she replied, “I have slept the greater part of the day.”

Angel observed that she studiously kept her eyes from Jimmy, and that
that worthy was preternaturally interested in a large seascape that
hung over the fireplace.

“This is the last occasion we shall be troubling you at so late an
hour,” said Angel, “but I am afraid we shall want you with us to-night.”

“I will do whatever you wish,” she answered simply. “You have been,
both of you, most kind.”

She flashed a glance at Jimmy, and saw for the first time the surgical
dressing on his head.

“You--you are not hurt?” she cried in alarm, then checked herself.

“Not at all,” said Jimmy loudly, “nothing, I assure you.”

He was in an unusual panic, and wished he had not come.

“He tripped over a hearthrug and fell against a marble mantelpiece,”
lied Angel elaborately. “The marble has been in the possession of
my family for centuries, and is now badly, and I fear irretrievably,
damaged.”

Jimmy smiled, and his smile was infectious.

“A gross libel, Miss Kent,” he said, recovering his nerve. “As a matter
of fact----”

“As a matter of fact,” interrupted Angel impressively, “Jimmy was
walking in his sleep----”

“Be serious, Mr. Angel,” implored the girl, who was now very concerned
as she saw the extent of Jimmy’s injury, and noticed the dark shadows
under his eyes. “Was it Spedding?”

“It was,” said Angel promptly. “A little attempt which proved a
failure.”

Jimmy saw the concern in the girl’s eyes, and, manlike, it cheered him.

“It is hardly worth talking about,” he said hastily, “and I think we
ought not to delay our departure a second.”

“I will not keep you a moment longer than I can help,” she said, and
left the room to dress herself for the journey.

“Jimmy,” said Angel, as soon as she had gone, “cross my hand with
silver, pretty gentleman, and I will tell your fortune.”

“Don’t talk rot,” replied Jimmy.

“I can see a bright future, a dark lady with big gray eyes, who----”

“For Heaven’s sake, shut up!” growled Jimmy, very red; “she’s coming.”

They reached the Safe Deposit when the bells of the city were chiming
the half-hour after eleven.

“Shall we go in?” asked Jimmy.

“Better not,” advised Angel. “If Spedding knows we have a key it might
spoil the whole show.”

So the car slowly patrolled the narrow length of Lombard Street,
an object of professional interest to the half-dozen plain-clothes
policemen who were on duty there.

They had three-quarters of an hour to wait, for midnight had rung
out from the belfries long before a big car came gliding into the
thoroughfare from its western end. It stopped with a jerk before the
Safe Deposit, and a top-hatted figure alighted. As he did so, Angel’s
car drew up behind, and the three got down.

Spedding, professionally attired in a frock-coat and silk hat, stood
with one foot on the steps of the building and his hand upon the key he
had fitted.

He evinced no surprise when he saw Angel, and bowed slightly to the
girl. Then he opened the door and stepped inside, and Angel and his
party followed. He lit the vestibule, opened the inner door, and walked
into the darkened hall.

Again came the click of switches, and every light in the great hall
blazed.

The girl shivered a little as she looked up at the safe, dominating and
sinister, a monument of ruin, a materialization of the dead regrets of
a thousand bygone gamblers. Solitary, alone, aloof it rose, distinct
from the magnificent building in which it stood--a granite mass set in
fine gold. Old Reale had possessed a good eye for contrasts, and had
truly foreseen how well would the surrounding beauty of the noble hall
emphasize the grim reality of the ugly pedestal.

Spedding closed the door behind them, and surveyed the party with a
triumphant smile.

“I am afraid,” he said in his smoothest tones, “you have come too late.”

“I am afraid we have,” agreed Angel, and the lawyer looked at him
suspiciously.

“I wrote you a letter,” he said. “Did you get it?”

“I have not been home since this afternoon,” said Angel, and he heard
the lawyer’s little sigh of relief.

“I am sorry,” Spedding went on, “that I have to disappoint you all;
but as you know, by the terms of the will the fortunate person who
discovers the word which opens the safe must notify me, claiming the
right to apply the word on the combination lock.”

“That is so,” said Angel.

“I have received such a notification from one of the legatees--Mr.
Connor,” the lawyer went on, and drew from his pocket a paper, “and I
have his written authority to open the safe on his behalf.”

He handed the paper to Angel, who examined it and handed it back.

“It was signed to-day,” was all that he said.

“At two o’clock this afternoon,” said the lawyer. “I now----”

“Before you go any further, Mr. Spedding,” said Angel, “I might remind
you that there is a lady present, and that you have your hat on.”

“A thousand pardons,” said the lawyer with a sarcastic smile, and
removed his hat. Angel reached out his hand for it, and mechanically
the lawyer relinquished it.

Angel looked at the crown. The nap was rubbed the wrong way, and was
covered with fine dust.

“If you desire to valet me,” said the lawyer, “I have no objection.”

Angel made no reply, but placed the hat carefully on the mosaic floor
of the hall.

“If,” said the lawyer, “before I open the safe, there is any question
you would like to ask, or any legitimate objection you would wish to
raise, I shall be happy to consider it.”

“I have nothing to say,” said Angel.

“Or you?” addressing Jimmy.

“Nothing,” was the laconic answer.

“Or Miss Kent perhaps----?”

Kathleen looked him straight in the face as she answered coldly--

“I am prepared to abide by the action of my friends.”

“There is nothing left for me to do,” said the lawyer after the
slightest pause, “but to carry out Mr. Connor’s instructions.”

He walked to the foot of the steel stairway and mounted. He stopped for
breath half-way up. He was on a little landing, and facing him was
the polished block of granite that marked where the ashes of old Reale
reposed.

  Pulvis
  Cinis
  et
  Nihil

said the inscription. “‘Dust, cinders and nothing,’” muttered the
lawyer, “an apt rebuke to one seeking the shadows of vanity.”

They watched him climb till he reached the broad platform that
fronted the safe door. Then they saw him pull a paper from his pocket
and examine it. He looked at it carefully, then twisted the dials
cautiously till one by one the desired letters came opposite the
pointer. Then he twisted the huge handle of the safe. He twisted and
pulled, but the steel door did not move. They saw him stoop and examine
the dial again, and again he seized the handle with the same result.
A dozen times he went through the same process, and a dozen times the
unyielding door resisted his efforts. Then he came clattering down the
steps, and almost reeled across the floor of the hall to the little
group. His eyes burnt with an unearthly light, his face was pallid, and
the perspiration lay thick upon his forehead.

“The word!” he gasped. “It’s the wrong word.”

Angel did not answer him.

“I have tested it a dozen times,” cried the lawyer, almost beside
himself, “and it has failed.”

“Shall I try?” asked Angel.

“No, no!” the man hissed. “By Heaven, no! I will try again. One of the
letters is wrong; there are two meanings to some of the symbols.”

He turned and remounted the stairs.

“The man is suffering,” said Jimmy in an undertone.

“Let him suffer,” said Angel, a hard look in his eyes. “He will suffer
more before he atones for his villainy. Look, he’s up again. Let the
men in, Jimmy, he will find the word this time--and take Miss Kent away
as soon as the trouble starts.”

The girl saw the sudden mask of hardness that had come over Angel’s
face, saw him slip off his overcoat, and heard the creaking of boots
in the hall outside. The pleasant, flippant man of the world was gone,
and the remorseless police officer, inscrutable as doom, had taken his
place. It was a new Angel she saw, and she drew closer to Jimmy.

An exultant shout from the man at the safe made her raise her eyes.
With a flutter at her heart, she saw the ponderous steel door swing
slowly open.

Then from the man came a cry that was like the snarl of some wild beast.

“Empty!” he roared.

He stood stunned and dumb; then he flung himself into the great steel
room, and they heard his voice reverberating hollowly. Again he
came to the platform holding in his hand a white envelope. Blindly
he blundered down the stairs again, and they could hear his heavy
breathing.

“Empty!” His grating voice rose to a scream. “Nothing but this!” He
held the envelope out, then tore it open.

It contained only a few words--

  “Received on behalf of Miss Kathleen Kent the contents of this safe.

                “(Signed) JAMES CAVENDISH STANNARD, Bart.
                CHRISTOPHER ANGEL.”

Dazed and bewildered, the lawyer read the paper, then looked from one
to the other.

“So it was you,” he said.

Angel nodded curtly.

“You!” said Spedding again.

“Yes.”

“You have robbed the safe--you--a police officer.”

“Yes,” said Angel, not removing his eyes from the man. He motioned
to Jimmy, and Jimmy, with a whispered word to the girl, led her to
the door. Behind him, as he returned to Angel’s side, came six
plain-clothes officers.

“So you think you’ve got me, do you?” breathed Spedding.

“I don’t think,” said Angel, “I know.”

“If you know so much, do you know how near to death you are?”

“That also I know,” said Angel’s even voice. “I’m all the more certain
of my danger since I have seen your hat.”

The lawyer did not speak.

“I mean,” Angel went on calmly, “since I saw the hat that you put down
on a dusty table in my chambers--when you murdered Connor.”

“Oh, you found him, did you--I wondered,” said Spedding without
emotion. Then he heard a faint metallic click, and leapt back with his
hand in his pocket.

But Jimmy’s pistol covered him.

He paused irresolutely for one moment; then six men flung themselves
upon him, and he went to the ground fighting. Handcuffed, he rose, his
nonchalant self, with the full measure of his failure apparent. He was
once again the suave, smooth man of old. Indeed, he laughed as he faced
Angel.

“A good end,” he said. “You are a much smarter man than I thought you
were. What is the charge?”

“Murder,” said Angel.

“You will find a difficulty in proving it,” Spedding answered coolly,
“and as it is customary at this stage of the proceedings for the
accused to make a conventional statement, I formally declare that I
have not seen Connor for two days.”

Closely guarded, he walked to the door. He passed Kathleen standing
in the vestibule, and she shrank on one side, which amused him. He
clambered into the car that had brought him, followed by the policemen,
and hummed a little tune.

He leaned over to say a final word to Angel.

“You think I am indecently cheerful,” he said, “but I feel as a man
wearied with folly, who has the knowledge that before him lies the
sound sleep that will bring forgetfulness.”

Then, as the car was moving off, he spoke again--

“Of course I killed Connor--it was inevitable.”

And then the car carried him away.

Angel locked the door of the deposit, and handed the key to Kathleen.

“I will ask Jimmy to take you home,” he said.

“What do you think of him?” said Jimmy.

“Spedding? Oh, he’s acted as I thought he would. He represents the
very worst type of criminal in the world; you cannot condemn, any
more than you can explain, such men as that. They are in a class by
themselves--Nature’s perversities. There is a side to Spedding that is
particularly pleasant.”

He saw the two off, then walked slowly to the City Police Station. The
inspector on duty nodded to him as he entered.

“We have put him in a special cell,” he said.

“Has he been well searched?”

“Yes, sir. The usual kit, and a revolver loaded in five chambers.”

“Let me see it,” said Angel.

He took the pistol under the gaslight. One chamber contained an
empty shell, and the barrel was foul. That will hang him without his
confession, he thought.

“He asked for a pencil and paper,” said the inspector, “but he surely
does not expect bail.”

Angel shook his head.

“No, I should imagine he wants to write to me.”

A door burst open, and a bareheaded jailer rushed in.

“There’s something wrong in No. 4,” he said, and Angel followed the
inspector as he ran down the narrow corridor, studded with iron doors
on either side.

The inspector took one glance through the spy-hole.

“Open the door!” he said quickly.

With a jangle and rattle of bolts, the door was opened. Spedding lay
on his back, with a faint smile on his lips; his eyes were closed, and
Angel, thrusting his hand into the breast of the stricken man, felt no
beat of the heart.

“Run for a doctor!” said the inspector.

“It’s no use,” said Angel quietly, “the man’s dead.”

On the rough bed lay a piece of paper. It was addressed in the lawyer’s
bold hand to Angel Esquire.

The detective picked it up and read it.

“Excellent Angel,” the letter ran, “the time has come when I must
prove for myself the vexed question of immortality. I would say that I
bear you no ill will, nor your companion, nor the charming Miss Kent.
I would have killed you all, or either, of course, but happily my
intentions have not coincided with my opportunities. For some time past
I have foreseen the possibility of my present act, and have worn on
every suit one button, which, colored to resemble its fellows, is in
reality a skilfully molded pellet of cyanide. Farewell.”

Angel looked down at the dead man at his feet. The top cloth-covered
button on the right breast had been torn away.




CHAPTER XV

THE SOLUTION


If you can understand that all the extraordinary events of the previous
chapters occurred without the knowledge of Fleet Street, that eminent
journalists went about their business day by day without being any the
wiser, that eager news editors were diligently searching the files of
the provincial press for news items, with the mystery of the safe at
their very door, and that reporters all over London were wasting their
time over wretched little motor-bus accidents and gas explosions, you
will all the easier appreciate the journalistic explosion that followed
the double inquest on Spedding and his victim.

It is outside the province of this story to instruct the reader in what
is so much technical detail, but it may be said in passing that no
less than twelve reporters, three sub-editors, two “crime experts,”
and one publisher were summarily and incontinently discharged from
their various newspapers in connection with the “Safe Story.” The
_Megaphone_ alone lost five men, but then the _Megaphone_ invariably
discharges more than any other paper, because it has got a reputation
to sustain. Flaring contents bills, heavy black headlines, and column
upon column of solid type, told the story of Reale’s millions, and the
villainous lawyer, and the remarkable verse, and the “Borough Lot.”
There were portraits of Angel and portraits of Jimmy and portraits of
Kathleen (sketched in court and accordingly repulsive), and plans of
the lawyer’s house at Clapham and sketches of the Safe Deposit.

So for the three days that the coroner’s inquiry lasted London,
and Fleet Street more especially, reveled in the story of the old
croupier’s remarkable will and its tragic consequences. The Crown
solicitors very tactfully skimmed over Jimmy’s adventurous past, were
brief in their examination of Kathleen; but Angel’s interrogation
lasted the greater part of five hours, for upon him devolved the task
of telling the story in full.

It must be confessed that Angel’s evidence was a remarkably successful
effort to justify all that Scotland Yard had done. There were certain
irregularities to be glossed over, topics to be avoided--why, for
instance, official action was not taken when it was seen that Spedding
contemplated a felony. Most worthily did Angel hold the fort for
officialdom that day, and when he vacated the box he left behind him
the impression that Scotland Yard was all foreseeing, all wise, and had
added yet another to its list of successful cases.

The newspaper excitement lasted exactly four days. On the fourth day,
speaking at the Annual Congress of the British Association, Sir William
Farran, that great physician, in the course of an illuminating address
on “The first causes of disease,” announced as his firm conviction that
all the ills that flesh is heir to arise primarily from the wearing of
boots, and the excitement that followed the appearance in Cheapside of
a converted Lord Mayor with bare feet will long be remembered in the
history of British journalism. It was enough, at any rate, to blot out
the memory of the Reale case, for immediately following the vision of
a stout and respected member of the Haberdasher Company in full robes
and chain of office entering the Mansion House insufficiently clad
there arose that memorable newspaper discussion “Boots and Crime,”
which threatened at one time to shake established society to its very
foundations.

“Bill is a brick,” wrote Angel to Jimmy. “I suggested to him that he
might make a sensational statement about microbes, but he said that
the _Lancet_ had worked bugs to death, and offered the ‘no boots’
alternative.”

It was a fortnight after the inquiry that Jimmy drove to Streatham
to carry out his promise to explain to Kathleen the solution of the
cryptogram.

It was his last visit to her, that much he had decided. His rejection
of her offer to equally share old Reale’s fortune left but one course
open to him, and that he elected to take.

She expected him, and he found her sitting before a cozy fire idly
turning the leaves of a book.

Jimmy stood for a moment in an embarrassed silence. It was the first
time he had been alone with her, save the night he drove with her to
Streatham, and he was a little at a loss for an opening.

He began conventionally enough speaking about the weather, and not to
be outdone in commonplace, she ordered tea.

“And now, Miss Kent,” he said, “I have got to explain to you the
solution of old Reale’s cryptogram.”

He took a sheet of paper from his pocket covered with hieroglyphics.

“Where old Reale got his idea of the cryptogram from was, of course,
Egypt. He lived there long enough to be fairly well acquainted with
the picture letters that abound in that country, and we were fools not
to jump at the solution at first. I don’t mean you,” he added hastily.
“I mean Angel and I and Connor, and all the people who were associated
with him.”

The girl was looking at the sheet, and smiled quietly at the _faux pas_.

“How he came into touch with the ‘professor----’”

“What has happened to that poor old man?” she asked.

“Angel has got him into some kind of institute,” replied Jimmy. “He’s
a fairly common type of cranky old gentleman. ‘A science potterer,’
Angel calls him, and that is about the description. He’s the sort of
man that haunts the Admiralty with plans for unsinkable battleships, a
‘minus genius’--that’s Angel’s description too--who, with an academic
knowledge and a good memory, produced a reasonably clever little
book, that five hundred other schoolmasters might just as easily have
written. How the professor came into Reale’s life we shall never
know. Probably he came across the book and discovered the author, and
trusting to his madness, made a confidant of him. Do you remember,”
Jimmy went on, “that you said the figures reminded you of the Bible?
Well, you are right. Almost every teacher’s Bible, I find, has a plate
showing how the alphabet came into existence.”

He indicated with his finger as he spoke.

“Here is the Egyptian hieroglyphic. Here is a ‘hand’ that means ‘D,’
and here is the queer little Hieratic wiggle that means the same thing,
and you see how the Ph;nician letter is very little different to the
hieroglyphic, and the Greek ‘delta’ has become a triangle, and locally
it has become the ‘D’ we know.” He sketched rapidly.

[Illustration]

“All this is horribly learned,” he said, “and has got nothing to do
with the solution. But old Reale went through the strange birds,
beasts and things till he found six letters, S P R I N G, which were
to form the word that would open the safe.”

“It is very interesting,” she said, a little bewildered.

“The night you were taken away,” said Jimmy, “we found the word
and cleared out the safe in case of accidents. It was a very risky
proceeding on our part, because we had no authority from you to act on
your behalf.”

“You did right,” she said. She felt it was a feeble rejoinder, but she
could think of nothing better.

“And that is all,” he ended abruptly, and looked at the clock.

“You must have some tea before you go,” she said hurriedly.

They heard the weird shriek of a motor-horn outside, and Jimmy smiled.

“That is Angel’s newest discovery,” he said, not knowing whether to
bless or curse his energetic friend for spoiling the _t;te-;-t;te_.

“Oh!” said the girl, a little blankly he thought.

“Angel is always experimenting with new noises,” said Jimmy, “and some
fellow has introduced him to a motor-siren which is claimed to possess
an almost human voice.”

The bell tinkled, and a few seconds after Angel was ushered into the
room.

“I have only come for a few minutes,” he said cheerfully. “I wanted
to see Jimmy before he sailed, and as I have been called out of town
unexpectedly----”

“Before he sails?” she repeated slowly. “Are you going away?”

“Oh, yes, he’s going away,” said Angel, avoiding Jimmy’s scowling eyes.
“I thought he would have told you.”

“I----” began Jimmy.

“He’s going into the French Congo to shoot elephants,” Angel rattled
on; “though what the poor elephants have done to him I have yet to
discover.”

“But this is sudden?”

She was busy with the tea-things, and had her back toward them, so
Jimmy did not see her hand tremble.

“You’re spilling the milk,” said the interfering Angel. “Shall I help
you?”

“No, thank you,” she replied tartly.

“This tea is delicious,” said Angel, unabashed, as he took his cup.
He had come to perform a duty, and he was going through with it. “You
won’t get afternoon tea on the Sangar River, Jimmy. I know because I
have been there, and I wouldn’t go again, not even if they made me
governor of the province.”

“Why?” she asked, with a futile attempt to appear indifferent.

“Please take no notice of Angel, Miss Kent,” implored Jimmy, and added
malevolently, “Angel is a big game shot, you know, and he is anxious to
impress you with the extent and dangers of his travels.”

“That is so,” agreed Angel contentedly, “but all the same, Miss Kent,
I must stand by what I said in regard to the ‘Frongo.’ It’s a deadly
country, full of fever. I’ve known chaps to complain of a headache at
four o’clock and be dead by ten, and Jimmy knows it too.”

“You are very depressing to-day, Mr. Angel,” said the girl. She felt
unaccountably shaky, and tried to tell herself that it was because she
had not recovered from the effects of her recent exciting experiences.

“I was with a party once on the Sangar River,” Angel said, cocking a
reflective eye at the ceiling. “We were looking for elephants, too, a
terribly dangerous business. I’ve known a bull elephant charge a hunter
and----”

“Angel!” stormed Jimmy, “will you be kind enough to reserve your
reminiscences for another occasion?”

Angel rose and put down his teacup sadly.

“Ah, well!” he sighed lugubriously, “after all, life is a burden, and
one might as well die in the French Congo--a particularly lonely place
to die in, I admit--as anywhere else. Good-by, Jimmy.” He held out his
hand mournfully.

“Don’t be a goat!” entreated Jimmy. “I will let you know from time to
time how I am; you can send your letters via Sierra Leone.”

“The White Man’s Grave!” murmured Angel audibly.

“And I’ll let you know in plenty of time when I return.”

“When!” said Angel significantly. He shook hands limply, and with the
air of a man taking an eternal farewell. Then he left the room, and
they could hear the eerie whine of his patent siren growing fainter and
fainter.

“Confound that chap!” said Jimmy. “With his glum face and extravagant
gloom he----”

“Why did you not tell me you were going?” she asked him quietly. She
stood with a neat foot on the fender and her head a little bent.

“I had come to tell you,” said Jimmy.

“Why are you going?”

Jimmy cleared his throat.

“Because I need the change,” he said almost brusquely.

“Are you tired--of your friends?” she asked, not lifting her eyes.

“I have so few friends,” said Jimmy bitterly. “People here who are
worth knowing know me.”

“What do they know?” she asked, and looked at him.

“They know my life,” he said doggedly, “from the day I was sent
down from Oxford to the day I succeeded to my uncle’s title and
estates. They know I have been all over the world picking up strange
acquaintances. They know I was one of the”--he hesitated for a
word--“gang that robbed Rahbat Pasha’s bank; that I held a big share in
Reale’s ventures--a share he robbed me of, but let that pass; that my
life has been consistently employed in evading the law.”

“For whose benefit?” she asked.

“God knows,” he said wearily, “not for mine. I have never felt the need
of money, my uncle saw to that. I should never have seen Reale again
but for a desire to get justice. If you think I have robbed for gain,
you are mistaken. I have robbed for the game’s sake, for the excitement
of it, for the constant fight of wits against men as keen as myself.
Men like Angel made me a thief.”

“And now----?” she asked.

“And now,” he said, straightening himself up, “I am done with the old
life. I am sick and sorry--and finished.”

“And is this African trip part of your scheme of penitence?” she asked.
“Or are you going away because you want to forget----”

Her voice had sunk almost to a whisper, and her eyes were looking into
the fire.

“What?” he asked huskily.

“To forget--me,” she breathed.

“Yes, yes,” he said, “that is what I want to forget.”

“Why?” she said, not looking at him.

“Because--oh, because I love you too much, dear, to want to drag you
down to my level. I love you more than I thought it possible to love
a woman--so much, that I am happy to sacrifice the dearest wish of my
heart, because I think I will serve you better by leaving you.”

He took her hand and held it between his two strong hands.

“Don’t you think,” she whispered, so that he had to bend closer to hear
what she said, “don’t you think I--I ought to be consulted?”

“You--you,” he cried in wonderment, “would you----”

She looked at him with a smile, and her eyes were radiant with unspoken
happiness.

“I want you, Jimmy,” she said. It was the first time she had called him
by name. “I want you, dear.”

His arms were about her, and her lips met his.

They did not hear the tinkle of the bell, but they heard the knock at
the door, and the girl slipped from his arms and was collecting the
tea-things when Angel walked in.

He looked at Jimmy inanely, fiddling with his watch chain, and he
looked at the girl.

“Awfully sorry to intrude again,” he said, “but I got a wire at the
little postoffice up the road telling me I needn’t take the case at
Newcastle, so I thought I’d come back and tell you, Jimmy, that I will
take what I might call a ‘cemetery drink’ with you to-night.”

“I am not going,” said Jimmy, recovering his calm.

“Not--not going?” said the astonished Angel.

“No,” said the girl, speaking over his shoulder, “I have persuaded him
to stay.”

“Ah, so I see!” said Angel, stooping to pick up two hairpins that lay
on the hearthrug.


THE END




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