The Black Gang

by Sapper

  It was a strange and unwholesome object that obeyed the order, and the Count sat back in his chair.

  “What the devil have you been doing?”

  A pair of rich blue-black eyes, and a nose from which traces of blood still trickled had not improved the general appearance of the assistant downstairs. In one hand he carried a pair of hobnail boots, in the other a piece of paper, and he brandished them alternately while a flood of incoherent frenzy burst from his lips.

  For a minute or two the Count listened, until his first look of surprise gave way to one of black anger.

  “Am I to understand, you wretched little worm,” he snarled, “that you gave the urgency danger signal, not once but half a dozen times, merely because a man hit you over the nose?”

  “But he knocked me silly, sir,” quavered the other. “And when I came to, and saw the boots lying beside me and the till opened, I kind of lost my head. I didn’t know what had happened, sir – and I thought I’d better ring the bell – in case of trouble.”

  He retreated a step or two towards the door, terrified out of his wits by the look of diabolical fury in the hunchback’s eyes. Three or four clerks, who had been surreptitiously peeping through the open door, melted rapidly away, while from his chair Mr Latter watched the scene fascinated. He was reminded of a bird and a snake, and suddenly he gave a little shudder as he realised that his own position was in reality much the same as that of the unfortunate Cohen.

  And then just as the tension was becoming unbearable there came the interruption. Outside in the passage, clear and distinct, there sounded twice the hoot of an owl. To Mr Latter, it meant nothing; to the frightened little Jew it meant nothing; but on the Count the effect was electrical. With a quickness incredible in one so deformed he was at the door, and into the passage, hurling Cohen out of his way into a corner. His powerful fists were clenched by his side: the veins in his neck were standing out like whipcord. But to Mr Latter’s surprise he made no movement, and rising from his chair he too peered round the door along the passage, only to stagger back after a second or two with a feeling of sick fear in his soul, and a sudden dryness in the throat. For twenty yards away, framed in the doorway at the head of the stairs leading down to the office below, he had seen a huge, motionless figure. For a perceptible time he had stared at it, and it had seemed to stare at him. Then the door had shut, and on the other side a key had turned. And the figure had been draped from head to foot in black…

  CHAPTER FIVE

  In which Charles Latter, MP, Goes Mad

  Drummond arrived at Drayton House just as the house-party was sitting down to tea in the hall. A rapid survey of the guests as the footman helped him out of his coat convinced him that, with the exception of Latter, he didn’t know a soul: a second glance indicated that he could contemplate the fact with equanimity. They were a stodgy-looking crowd, and after a brief look he turned his attention to his hostess.

  “Where is Lady Manton?” he asked the footman.

  “Pouring out tea, sir,” returned the man surprised.

  “Great Scott!” said Drummond, aghast. “I’ve come to the wrong house.”

  “The wrong house, sir?” echoed the footman, and the sound of their voices made Lady Manton look up.

  In an instant that astute woman spotted what had happened. The writer of the strange letter she had received at lunch-time had arrived, and had realised his mistake. Moreover, this was the moment for which she had been waiting ever since, and now to add joy to joy it had occurred when her whole party was assembled to hear every word of her conversation with Drummond. With suitable gratitude she realised that such opportunities are rare.

  With a charming smile she advanced towards him, as he stood hesitating by the door.

  “Mr Drummond?” she inquired.

  “Yes,” he murmured, with a puzzled frown. “But – but I seem to have made some absurd mistake.”

  She laughed, and drew him into the hall.

  “A perfectly natural one, I assure you,” she replied, speaking so that her guests could hear. “It must have been my sister-in-law that you met at Wiltshire Towers. My husband was not very fit at the time and so I had to refuse the Duchess’ invitation.” She was handing him a cup of tea as she spoke. “But, of course, I know your cousin, Lord Staveley, well. So we really know one another after all, don’t we?”

  “Charming of you to put it that way, Lady Manton,” answered Drummond, with his infectious grin. “At the same time I feel a bit of an interloper – what! Sort of case of fools toddling in where angels fear to tread.”

  “A somewhat infelicitous quotation,” remarked an unctuous-looking man with side whiskers, deprecatingly.

  “Catches you too, does it, old bird?” boomed Hugh, putting down his empty cup.

  “It was the second part of your quotation that I was alluding to,” returned the other acidly, when Lady Manton intervened.

  “Of course, Mr Drummond, my husband and I insist on your remaining with us until you have completed your business in Sheffield.”

  “Extraordinarily kind of you both, Lady Manton,” answered Hugh.

  “How long do you think you will be?”

  “Three or four days. Perhaps a little more.” As he spoke he looked quite casually at Latter. For some minutes that worthy pillar of Parliament had been staring at him with a puzzled frown: now he gave a slight start as recognition came to him. This was the enormous individual who had snored in Sir Bryan Johnstone’s office the previous afternoon. Evidently somebody connected with the police, reflected Mr Latter, and glancing at. Drummond’s vast size he began to feel more reassured than he had for some time. A comforting sort of individual to have about the premises in the event of a brawl: good man – Sir Bryan. This man looked large enough to cope even with that monstrous black apparition, the thought of which still brought a shudder to his spine.

  Drummond was still looking at him, but there was no trace of recognition in his eyes. Evidently they were to meet as strangers before the house-party: quite right too, when some of the guests themselves might even be members of this vile gang.

  “It depends on circumstances outside my control,” Drummond was saying. “But if you can do with me for a few days…”

  “As long as you like, Mr Drummond,” answered Lady Manton. “And now let me introduce you to my guests.”

  It was not until just before dinner that Mr Latter had an opportunity of a few private words with Drummond. They met in the hall, and for the moment no one else was within earshot.

  “You were in Sir Bryan Johnstone’s office yesterday,” said the MP hoarsely. “Are you connected with the police?”

  “Intimately,” answered Hugh. “Even now, Mr Latter, you are completely surrounded by devoted men who are watching and guarding you.”

  A gratified smile spread over the other’s face, though Drummond’s remained absolutely expressionless.

  “And how did you get here, Mr Drummond?”

  “By car,” returned Hugh gravely.

  “I mean into the house-party,” said Mr Latter stiffly.

  “Ah!” Hugh looked mysterious. “That is between you and me, Mr Latter.”

  “Quite: quite. I am discretion itself.”

  “Until two hours ago I thought I was the biggest liar in the world: now I know I’m not. Our hostess has me beat to a frazzle.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” cried Latter, amazed.

  “There are wheels within wheels, Mr Latter,” continued Hugh still more mysteriously. “A network of intrigue surrounds us. But do not be afraid. My orders are never to leave your side.”

  “Good God, Mr Drummond, do you mean to say…?”

  “I mean to say nothing. Only this one thing I will mention. He laid an impressive hand on Latter’s arm. “Be very careful what you say to that man with the m
utton-chop whiskers and the face like a sheep.”

  And the startled MP was too occupied staring suspiciously at the worthy Sheffield magnate and pillar of nonconformity who had just descended the stairs with his hostess to notice a sudden peculiar shaking in Drummond’s shoulders as he turned away.

  Mr Charles Latter was not a pleasant specimen of humanity even at the best of times, and that evening he was not at his best. He was frightened to the core of his rotten little soul, and when a constitutional coward is frightened the result is not pretty. His conversational efforts at dinner would have shamed a boy of ten, and though he made one or two feeble efforts to pull himself together, it was no good. Try as he would his mind kept reverting to his own position. Over and over again he went on weighing up the points of the case until his brain was whirling. He tried to make out a mental balance sheet where the stock was represented by his own personal safety, but there was always that one unknown factor which he came up against – the real power of this mysterious gang.

  Coming up in the train he had decided to curtail his visit as much as possible. He would carry through what he had been told to do, and then, having pocketed his thousand, he would leave the country for a few months. By that time the police should have settled matters. And he had been very lucky. It had proved easy to find the man Delmorlick, and once he had been found, the other more serious matter had proved easy too. Delmorlick had arranged everything, and had brought three other men to meet him in a private room at one of the smaller hotels.

  Like all the Count’s schemes, every detail was perfect, and once or twice exclamations of amazement interrupted him as he read on. Every possible eventuality was legislated for, and by the time he had finished reading Delmorlick’s eyes were glowing with the enthusiasm of a fanatic.

  “Magnificent,” he had cried, rising and going to the window. “Another nail in the coffin of Capital. And, by heaven! a big one.”

  He had stood there, his head covered with a shock of untidy hair, staring with sombre eyes at the street below. And beside him had stood one of the other men. After a while Latter joined them, and he too for a moment had looked down into the street where little knots of men lounged round doorways with their hands in their pockets, and the apathy of despair on their faces. A few women here and there mingled with them, but there was no laughing or jesting – only the sullenness of lost hope. The hope that had once been theirs of work and plenty was dead; there was nothing for them to do – they were just units in the vast army of unemployed. Occasionally a man better dressed and more prosperous than the others would detach himself from one group and go to another, where he would hold forth long and earnestly. And his listeners would nod their heads vigorously or laugh sheepishly as he passed on.

  For a few moments Delmorlick had watched in silence. Then with a grave earnestness in his voice he had turned to Latter.

  “We shall win, Mr Latter, I tell you. That,” with a lean forefinger he pointed to the man outside, “is going on all over England, Scotland and Ireland. And the fools in London prate of economic laws and inflated currencies. What does an abstract cause matter to those men; they want food.”

  He had glanced at Delmorlick, to find the eyes of the other man fixed on him gravely. He had hardly noticed it at the time – he had been too anxious to get away; now, as he sat at dinner, he found strangely enough that it was the other man’s face which seemed to have made the biggest impression on his mind. A new arrival in the place, so Delmorlick had told him – but red-hot for the cause of freedom and anarchy.

  He made some vague remark to his neighbour and once more relapsed into moody silence. So far, so good; his job was done – he could leave tomorrow. He would have left that afternoon but for the fact that he had sent his baggage up to Drayton House, and it would have looked strange. But he had already arranged for a wire to be sent to him from London the following morning, and for the night – well, there were Drummond and the police. Decidedly, on points he appeared to be in a winning position – quite a comfortable position. And yet – that unknown factor… Still, there was always Drummond; the only trouble was that he couldn’t quite place him. What on earth had he meant before dinner? He glanced across the table at him now: he was eating salted almonds and making love to his hostess.

  “A fool,” reflected Mr Latter, “but a powerful fool. If it was necessary, he’d swallow anything I told him.”

  And so, towards the end of dinner, aided possibly by his host’s very excellent vintage port, Mr Charles Latter had more or less soothed his fears. Surely he was safe in the house, and nothing would induce him to leave it until he went to the station next morning. No thought of the abominable crime he had planned only that afternoon disturbed his equanimity; as has been said, he was not a pleasant specimen of humanity.

  Charles Latter was unmoral rather than immoral: he was a constitutional coward with a strong liking for underhand intrigue, and he was utterly and entirely selfish. In his way he was ambitious: he wanted power, but, though in many respects he was distinctly able, he lacked that essential factor – the ability to work for it. He hated work: he wanted easy results. And to obtain lasting results is not easy, as Mr Latter gradually discovered. A capability for making flashy speeches covered with a veneer of cleverness is an undoubted asset, but it is an asset the value of which has been gauged to a nicety by the men who count. And so as time went on, and the epoch-making day when he had been returned to Parliament faded into the past, Mr Latter realised himself for what he was – a thing of no account. And the realisation was as gall and wormwood to his soul. It is a realisation which comes to many men, and it takes them different ways. Some become resigned – some make new and even more futile efforts: some see the humour of it, and some don’t. Mr Latter didn’t: he became spiteful. And a spiteful coward is a nasty thing.

  It was just about that time that he met Count Zadowa. It was at dinner at a friend’s house, and after the ladies had left he found himself sitting next to the hunchback with the strange, piercing eyes. He wasn’t conscious of having said very much: he would have been amazed had he been told that within ten minutes this charming foreigner had read his unpleasant little mind like a book, and had reached a certain and quite definite decision. In fact, looking back on the past few months, Mr Latter was at a loss to account as to how things had reached their present pass. Had he been told when he stood for Parliament, flaunting all the old hackneyed formulae, that within two years he would be secretly engaged in red-hot Communist work, he would have laughed the idea to scorn. Anarchy, too: a nasty word, but the only one that fitted the bomb outrage in Manchester, which he had himself organised. Sometimes in the night, he used to wake and lie sweating as he thought of that episode.

  And gradually it had become worse and worse. Little by little the charming Count Zadowa, realising that Mr Latter possessed just those gifts which he could utilise to advantage, had ceased to be charming. There were many advantages in having a Member of Parliament as chief liaison officer.

  There had been that first small slip when he signed a receipt for money paid him to address a revolutionary meeting in South Wales during the coal strike. And the receipt specified the service rendered. An unpleasant document in view of the fact that his principal supporters in his constituency were coal-owners. And after that the descent had been rapid.

  Not that even now Mr Latter felt any twinges of conscience: all he felt was occasional twinges of fear that he might be found out. He was running with the hare and hunting with the hounds with a vengeance, and at times his cowardly little soul grew sick within him. And then, like a dreaded bolt from the blue, had come the letter of warning from the Black Gang.

  Anyway, he reflected, as he turned out his light after getting into bed that night, the police knew nothing of his double life. They were all round him, and there was this big fool in the house… For a moment his heart stopped beating: was it his imagination or was that the figure
of a man standing at the foot of the bed?

  The sweat poured off his forehead as he tried to speak: then he sat up in bed, plucking with trembling hands at the collar of his pyjamas. Still the shape stood motionless: he could swear there was something there now – he could see it outlined against the dim light of the window. He reached out fearfully for the switch: fumbled a little, and then with a click the light went on. His sudden scream of fear died half-strangled in his throat: a livid anger took the place of terror. Leaning over the foot of the bed and regarding him with solicitous interest, lounged Hugh Drummond.

  “All tucked up and comfy, old bean,” cried Drummond cheerfully. “Bed socks full of feet and all that sort of thing?”

  “How dare you,” spluttered Latter, “how dare you come into my room like this…”

  “Tush, tush,” murmured Drummond, “don’t forget my orders, old Latter, my lad. To watch over you as a crooning mother crooneth over the last batch of twins. By the way, my boy, you skimped your teeth pretty badly tonight. You’ll have to do better tomorrow. Most of your molars must be sitting up and begging for Kolynos if that’s your normal effort.”

  “Do you mean to tell me that you were in here while I was undressing,” said Latter angrily. “You exceed your instructions, sir: and I shall report your unwarrantable impertinence to Sir Bryan Johnstone when I return to London.”

  “Exactly, Mr Latter. But when will you return to London?” Drummond regarded him dispassionately. “To put some, if not all, of the cards on the table, the anonymous letter of warning which you received was not quite so anonymous as you would have liked. In other words, you know exactly whom it came from.”

  “I don’t,” replied the other. “I know that it came from an abominable gang who have been committing a series of outrages lately. And that is why I applied for police protection.”

  “Quite so, Mr Latter. And as – er – Fate would have it, I am here to help carry out that role.”