Naturally, I thought, Plummer would prefer Hewitt; but in this case I should for once be ahead of my friend, and have the pleasure of relating the circumstances of the capture to him, instead of listening, as usual, to his own quiet explanations of the manner in which the case had been brought to a successful issue. So I took my hat and went.
“Best let me go in front,” whispered the “nark.” “You bein’ a toff might be noticed.” It was a reasonable precaution, and I followed him accordingly.
We went a little way down Barbican, and presently, taking a very narrow turning, plunged into a cluster of alleys, through which, however, I could plainly perceive that our way lay in the direction of the back of the house in Norbury Row. At length my guide stopped at what seemed a stable yard, pushed open a wicket gate, and went in, keeping the gate open for me to follow.
It was, indeed, a stable yard, littered with much straw, which the “nark” carefully picked to walk on as noiselessly as possible, motioning me to do the same. It was a small enough yard, and dark, and when my guide very carefully opened the door of a stable I saw that that was darker still.
He pushed the door wide so as to let a little light fall on another door which I now perceived in the brick wall which formed the side of the stable. After listening intently for a moment at this door, the guide stepped back and favoured me with another puff of rum and a whisper. “There’s no light in that there passage,” he said, “an’ we’d better not strike one. I’ll catch hold of your hand.”
He pulled the stable door to, and took me by the hand. I heard the inner door open quietly, and we stepped cautiously forward. We had gone some five or six yards in the darkness when I felt something cold touch the wrist of the hand by which I was being led. There was a loud click, my hand was dropped, and I felt my wrist held fast, while I could hear my late guide shuffling away in the darkness.
I could not guess whether to cry out or remain quiet. I called after the man in a loud whisper, but got no answer. I used my other hand to feel at my right wrist, and found that it was clipped in one of a pair of handcuffs, the other being locked in a staple in the wall. I tugged my hardest to loosen this staple, but it held firm. The thing had been so sudden and stealthy that I scarce had time to realise that I was in serious danger, and that, doubtless, Plummer had preceded me, when a light appeared at an angle ahead. It turned the corner, and I perceived, coming toward me, carrying a lamp, the pale man of the eyes, whom I had encountered not an hour before — in a word, Mayes.
His eyes searched me still, but he approached me with a curiously polite smile.
“No, Mr. Brett,” he said, “my name is not Richardson, and I am not a bookbinder. Not that I am particular about such a thing as a name, for you have heard of me under more than one already, and you are quite at liberty to call me Richardson if you like. I am sorry to have to talk to you in this uncomfortable place, but the circumstances are exceptional. But, at least, I should give you a chair.”
He stepped back a little way and pressed a bell-button. Presently the fellow who had decoyed me there appeared, and Mayes ordered him to bring me a chair at once, which he did, with stolid obedience. I sat in it, so that my wrist rested at somewhere near the level of my shoulder.
“Mr. Brett,” Mayes pursued, when his man was gone, “I am not so implacable a person as you perhaps believe me; in fact, I can assure you that my disposition is most friendly.”
“Then unfasten this handcuff,” I said.
“I am sorry that that is a little precaution I find it necessary to take till we understand each other better. I am glad to see you, Mr. Brett, though I am sure you will not think me rude if I say that I should have preferred Mr. Martin Hewitt in your place. But perhaps his turn will come later. I have a proposition to make, Mr. Brett. I should like you to join me.”
“To join you?”
“Exactly.” He nodded pleasantly. “You needn’t shrink; I shan’t ask you to do anything vulgar, or even anything that, with your present prejudices, you might consider actively criminal. You can help me, you see, in your own profession as a journalist; and in other ways. And my enterprise is greater than you may imagine. Join me, and you shall be a great man in an entirely new sphere. A small matter of initiation is necessary, and that is all. You have only to consent to that.”
I said nothing.
“You seem reluctant. Well, perhaps it is natural, in your present ignorance. This is no vulgar criminal organisation that I have, understand. I have taken certain measures to provide myself with the necessary tools in the shape of money, and so forth, but my aims are larger than you suspect — perhaps larger than you can understand. And I work with a means more wonderful than you have experience of. For instance, here is to-day’s work. You know about the lost Naval Code, of course — it is what you came about. That document is now lying in the desk you stood by in the room where we spoke of paste grain book covers and the like. It was there then at your elbow. It will be sold for many thousands of pounds by to-morrow, and all the puny watchings and dodgings that have been devised cannot prevent it. The money will go to aid me in the attainment of the power of which you may have a part, if you wish. The means of attaining this I scruple no more about than you did to-day about the story of the bookbindings.” He bowed with a slight smile and went on.
“Come now, Mr. Brett, put aside your bourgeois prejudices and join me. Your friend Plummer is coming gladly, I feel sure, and he will be useful, too. And from what I have seen from Mr. Martin Hewitt, I have no doubt I can make it right with him. If I can’t it will be very bad for him, I can assure you; you have heard and seen something of my powers, and I need say no more. But Hewitt is a man of sense, and will come in, of course, and you had better come with your friends. I want one or two superior men. Mason — you know about Jacob Mason, of course — Mason was a fool, and he was lost — inevitably. The others” — he made a gesture of contempt— “they are mere vulgar tools. They will have their rewards if they are faithful, of course; if not — well, you remember Denson in the Samuel diamond business? He was not faithful, and there was an end of him. I may tell you that Denson was made an example, for one was needed. I assigned him a certain operation, and, having brought it to success, he endeavoured to embezzle — did embezzle — the proceeds. He was made a conspicuous example, in a most conspicuous public place, to impress the others. They didn’t know him, but they knew well enough what the Red Triangle meant! Ah, my excellent recruit — for so I count you already — there is more in that little sign than you can imagine! It is more than a sign — it is an implement of very potent power; and you shall learn its whole secret in that little form of initiation I spoke of. See now, a present example. Telfer, the Admiralty clerk, gave up that document at my mere spoken word. He will deny it to his dying day, and he will be ruined for the act; but he gave me the paper himself, at my mere order. If he were one of my own — if he had passed through the initiation I offer you, I would have protected him; as it is, he must take his punishment, and though it is only I who will benefit, he will still deny the fact! Ha! Mr. Brett, do you begin to perceive that I do not boast when I tell of powers beyond your understanding?”
Truly I was amazed, though I could not half understand. The circumstances of the loss of the Admiralty code had been so inexplicable, and now these incredible suggestions of the prime actor in the matter were more mysterious still.
“Ha! you are amazed,” he went on, “but if you will come further into my counsels I will amaze you more. What are you now? A drudge of a journalist, and if ever you make a thousand a year to feed yourself with you will be lucky. Come to me and you shall be a man of power. There is a place beyond the sea where I may be king, and you a viceroy. Don’t think I am raving! It is true enough that I am an enthusiast, but I have power, power to do anything I please, I tell you! What are the greatest powers among men on this earth? Some will say the pen, or the sword, or love, or what not. Men of the world will say, money and lies; and they will be very n
early right. Money and lies will move continents, but I have one greater power still — the very apex of the triangle! That power I revealed to Jacob Mason. He thought to betray it, and it killed him. That power I will reveal to you, if you will accept the alternative I offer.”
“The alternative?”
“Yes, the alternative, for an alternative it is, of course. If you will go through the form of initiation, I shall keep you here a little till I can trust you — which will be very soon. But if not — well, Mr. Brett, I wish to be as friendly as you please, but having been at the trouble of catching you, and having got you here safely, you who know so much now, you who could be so dangerous if you ever got away — eh? Well, you know my methods, and you have seen them exemplified, and you will understand.”
There was no anger in his voice as he uttered this threat, nor even, I thought, in his eyes. But what there was was worse.
“But I’m sure you will not make things unpleasant,” he concluded. “You will go through the little form I have arranged, if only for curiosity. Just think over it for a moment, while I go to close my little office.”
He took the lamp and turned away, but as he reached the angle of the passage, there came a sound that checked his steps. I could hear a noise of feet and hurried voices, and then suddenly arose a shout in a voice which seemed to be Plummer’s. “Here!” it cried. “Help! This way, Hewitt! Brett!”
I shouted back at the top of my voice, wondering where Plummer was, and what it might all mean. And with that Mayes turned, and I saw that he was about to make for the door I had entered by. I resolved he should not pass me if I could prevent it, and I sprang up and seized my chair in my left hand, shouting aloud for help as I did so.
Mayes came with a bound, and flung his lighted lamp full at my head. It struck the chair and smashed to a thousand pieces, and in that instant of time Mayes was on me. Plainly he had no weapon, or he would have used it; but I was at disadvantage enough, with my right wrist chained to the wall. I clung with all my might, and endeavoured to swing my enemy round against the wall in order that I might clasp my hands about him, and I shouted my loudest as I did it. But the chair and the broken glass hampered me, and Mayes was desperate. The agony in my right wrist was unbearable, and just as I was conscious of a rush of approaching feet a heavy blow took me full in the face, and I felt Mayes rush over me while I fell and hung from the wrist.
I had a stunned sense of lights and voices and general confusion, and then I remembered nothing.
III
I came to myself on the floor of a lighted room, with Hewitt’s face over mine. My wrist seemed broken, though it was free, there was oil and blood on my clothes, and in my left hand I still gripped a piece of Mayes’s coat.
“Stop him!” I cried. “He’s gone by the stable! Have they got him?”
“No good, Brett,” Hewitt answered soberly. “You did your best, but he’s gone, and Peytral after him!”
“Peytral?”
“Yes. He brought his own message to town. But see if you can stand up.”
I was well enough able to do that, and, indeed, I had only fainted from the pain of the strain on my wrist. Several policemen were in the room, beside Hewitt and Plummer. Mayes’s stronghold was in the hands of his enemies.
Then I suddenly remembered.
“The Admiralty code!” I cried. “It was in the office desk. Have you got it?”
“No,” Hewitt answered. “Come, Plummer, up the ladder!”
Little time was lost in forcing Mayes’s desk, and there the document was found, grey cover, red tape and all intact. The police were left to make a vigorous search for any possible copy, and the original was handed to Plummer, as chief representative of the law present. He had been trapped precisely as I had been, except that he had been led further, and shut in a cellar as well as fastened by the wrist. Mayes, it seemed, had wasted very little time in attempting to pervert him, and I have no doubt that, whatever fate might have been reserved for me, Plummer would never have left the place alive had it not been for the timely irruption of Hewitt, with Peytral and the police.
In half an hour Peytral returned. He had dashed out in chase of the fugitive, but failed even to see him — lost him wholly in the courts, in fact. For some little while he persevered, but found it useless.
The dirty-whiskered man made no attempt to escape, though there was talk of another man having got away in the confusion by way of the stable roof. The police were left in charge of the place, and we deferred a complete exploration till the next day.
Hewitt’s tale was simple enough. He had endued himself in somewhat seedy clothes, and had visited 37 Raven Street, Blackfriars, which he found to be merely a tenement house. It took some time to make inquiries there, with the necessary caution, because of the number of lodgers; and then the inquiries led to nothing. It was an experience common enough in his practice, but none the less an annoying delay, and when he returned to his office he found Mr. Peytral already awaiting him. Peytral described his following of Mayes at much greater length and detail than before, and he and Hewitt had come on to Norbury Row at once and asked news of Mr. Moon.
Mr. Moon’s description of the successive disappearances of Plummer and myself, and of our continued absence, so aroused Hewitt’s suspicions that he instantly procured help from the nearest station, and approached the door of Mayes’s office. A knock being unanswered, the door was instantly broken in. The room was found to be unoccupied, but the ladder was still standing at the open window, by which Mayes had descended to the back premises. Down this ladder Hewitt went, with the police after him. The rest I had seen myself.
“But what,” I said, “what is this mystery? Why did Telfer give up the code, and what is the power that Mayes talks of?”
“It is a power,” replied Hewitt, “that I have suspected for some time, and now I am quite sure of it. A secret, dangerous and terrible power which I have encountered before, though never before have I known its possibilities carried so far. It is hypnotism!”
“Hypnotism!” I exclaimed. “But can a person be hypnotised against his will?”
“In a sense, in most cases, he cannot. That is the explanation of Mayes’s proposals to you to go through a ‘form of initiation.’ If you had consented, the ‘form’ would have been a process of hypnotism. Once or twice repeated, and you would have been wholly under his control, so that if he willed it and forbade you, you could tell nothing of what he wished kept secret, and you would have committed any crime he might suggest. Consider poor Jacob Mason! Remember how he struggled to tell what he knew, oppressed by the horror of it, and how it all ended! And remember Henning the clerk, Mayes’s tool in that case of bond robbery! What has happened to him? He committed suicide, as you know, immediately after Mayes had left him at the barn. Brett, this power of hypnotism, a power for healing in the hands of a good man, may become a terrible power for evil in the hands of a villain!”
“But Telfer, to-day? He seems to have known nothing of Mayes, and he was not one of his regular creatures — Mayes himself told me so.”
“About that I don’t know. But I expect we shall find that he has been willingly hypnotised at some time or another, perhaps more than once, by this same scoundrel Mayes. Possibly in one of Mayes’s appearances in respectable society, at an evening party, or the like. In a case of that sort the hypnotist may impress a certain formula — a word, a name, or a number — on the subject’s mind, by the repetition of which, at any future time, that same subject may be instantly hypnotised. So that, once having become hypnotised, on any innocent occasion, the subject is in the power of the hypnotist, more or less, ever after. The hypnotist says: ‘When I repeat such and such a sentence or number to you in future, you will be hypnotised,’ and hypnotised the subject duly is, instantly. Supposing such a case in this matter of Mr. Telfer, it would only be necessary for Mayes to meet him in the corridor, repeat his formula and command the victim to bring out the paper he specified. This done he could similarl
y order him to forget the whole transaction, and this the victim would do, infallibly.”
It is only necessary to say here, parenthetically, that later inquiry proved the truth of Hewitt’s supposition. Twice or three times Mr. Telfer had been hypnotised in a friend’s chambers, by a plausible tall man whose acquaintance his host had made at some public scientific gathering. And in the end it became possible to identify this man with Mayes.
Mr. Moon, of “The Compasses,” was of great comfort to me that evening. My cuts and bruises were washed in his house, and my inner man revived with his food and drink.
“Allus glad to oblige the p’lice,” said Mr. Moon; “allus. ‘Cos why? Ain’t they the p’lice? Very well then!”
THE ADVENTURE OF CHANNEL MARSH
I
Mayes’s stronghold was taken, but Mayes had escaped us once again; the cage was in our hands, but the bird had flown.
Martin Hewitt, however, had his plans, as he was soon to show. The recovery of the Admiralty code was a good stroke, and was a satisfactory ending to an important case; but that, and even the capture of the curious premises behind the Barbican, made but a halting-place in his pursuit of Mayes, and as soon as I was in some degree recovered from my struggle, and the captured place had been hastily searched, the chase was resumed without a moment’s delay; and that adventure was entered upon which saw the end of the Red Triangle and its unholy doings — which came terribly near to seeing the end of Hewitt himself, in fact.
I have not described the den near the Barbican with any great particularity, but I have said that the office, accessible from the open street, was only connected with the hidden premises behind — premises, as was afterwards discovered, held under a separate tenancy — by an easily-shifted ladder. It was in these hidden premises, approached by the maze of courts and the stable-yard, that the main evidences of Mayes’s way of life were observable. The passage where my wrist had been locked to the wall, and the room or cellar in which Plummer had been confined, were the only parts of the lower premises fitted for the detention of prisoners, with the exception of one very low and wholly unlighted cellar, entered by a trapdoor and a very steep flight of brick steps. This place smelt horribly faint and stagnant; but it produced on my mind, both then and when I examined it later, an effect of horror and repulsion more than could be accounted for by the smell alone. Of its history nothing was discovered, and perhaps the feeling (though others experienced it as well as myself) was the effect of mere fancy; but I have never got rid of a conviction that that black cellar, or rather pit — for it was very narrow — had been the instrument of crimes never to be told.
Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison Page 69