‘There’s a lot o’ top ’amper on this nightgown, sir,’ he muttered disparagingly.
Sir Leonard cloaked himself in it, drawing the hood well over his head.
‘Stay here, you three,’ he said, ‘and if that fellow wakes up put him to sleep again. I’ll close the gate, but won’t lock it, and come to me at once if you hear my whistle.’
He entered and, pushing the massive door to, walked on to the end of the archway, emerging presently into the courtyard with the inevitable fountain playing in the centre. Above him, running round four sides of the building, was a veranda, and he wondered where the prisoners were lodged, but a feeling of exultation filled him when he caught sight of the dim outlines of a Moor, armed with a rifle, squatting before a door at the far end. Casually he walked up the steps of the veranda, and strolled along towards the man, his fingers gripping the barrel of his revolver, the hood of his burnous drawn still closer round his face. The fellow took no notice of him until he was a yard or so away, then looked up, indulging in a prodigious yawn as he did so. But the yawn was cut short, and ended in a queer grunt, as the weapon in Wallace’s hand caught him hard on the temple. He sagged over sideways, and his rifle clattered to the floor before his assailant could catch it. Expecting an alarm, Wallace looked anxiously round, remaining perfectly still for nearly a minute. To his relief, nothing happened. He bent and searched the clothing of his victim, presently, to his joy, finding a large ring containing two keys. Stepping over the sprawling Moor, he inserted one in the keyhole of the door the fellow had apparently been guarding. It turned at once, and he found himself in a room lighted only by a small aperture high up, through which the moonlight only showed faintly.
Not daring to speak for fear that perhaps, after all, the prisoners were not there, he closed the door, took a flashlight from his pocket, and switched it on. The only furniture the room contained was a divan, though several costly-looking rugs covered the floor. Two men, fully dressed, sat up and blinked, and a great sigh of relief broke from him. One was Cousins, the other a stranger, whom he guessed to be the equerry of the Prince of Emilia. Of the Prince himself there was no sign. Wondering why they showed no enthusiasm at his appearance, he suddenly realised that, being behind the light, they could only see a shadowy figure in a burnous.
‘You’re a nice sort of a chap,’ growled Cousins. ‘Is it part of your beastly game to keep us awake all night?’
‘I think you’ll have to keep awake tonight, Cousins,’ replied Sir Leonard quietly, ‘if you want to get away from here.’
There came a startled gasp, then Cousins was on his feet, hauling up the other man.
‘Jehoshaphat!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s Sir Leonard Wallace himself.’ He began an appropriate quotation, stopped in the middle of it, and asked: ‘How did you get here, sir?’
‘There’s no time to answer questions now. Where’s the Prince?’
‘In a room close to El Arish’s apartments.’
‘Who’s El Arish?’
‘The owner of this den of thieves, sir.’
‘Well, show me the way, and watch your step.’
He opened the door, and stepped out. The unconscious form of the guard reminded him that it would not do to leave the man where he was lying. With the help of his companions, he carried the fellow into the room, where he was tied up and gagged with strips torn from his own clothing. Then Cousins led the way along the veranda, and stopped before a door at which he pointed silently. Guessing that the other key would open this, Wallace tried it, and found he was right.
The three of them stepped into a room which they saw by the light of Sir Leonard’s torch, was far more sumptuously furnished than the other, but was just as much a prison, for it contained no windows. A bed stood in an alcove, and on it was lying the Prince, fast asleep, wearing gaudy pyjamas. Wallace stole across the room, and gently shook him. The young man started up, and was about to cry out, when Sir Leonard’s hand on his mouth prevented him.
‘Silence,’ he warned in a low voice. ‘We are here to rescue you, and—’
A door suddenly swung open behind a heavy arabesque curtain, which was drawn aside, revealing in the light, thrown from the lamp which he carried, a tall man with a revolver in his other hand. Wallace recognised him as the Moor he had seen with the Prince on the lawn.
‘Surely my guests do not propose to leave me?’ he remarked coolly in excellent French, and stared hard at Sir Leonard, who, when waking the Prince, had thrown back his hood. ‘Who are you, sir?’ he demanded.
‘My name is Wallace,’ replied Sir Leonard as coolly as he, ‘and, if it is of any interest to you, I am attached to the British diplomatic service.’
‘Indeed? I find it most interesting. I should like to know how you got in, but that can wait. It appears that I am to have another prisoner on my hands.’
Wallace was amused at his calm manner. Here, he thought, was an opponent worthy of his steel.
‘You’ve made a slight mistake,’ he observed. ‘I have come to take the Prince away from you. Do you realise that you have committed the crime of lèse-majesté?’
The Moor shrugged his shoulders.
‘That means nothing to me,’ he returned contemptuously.
‘I am afraid it will mean a great deal.’ He turned to the Prince. ‘Will your Highness be good enough to dress?’ he requested.
The Moor’s manner changed slightly, as the Prince obeyed with alacrity, assisted by his equerry. He placed the lamp on a convenient table.
‘I have no objection to that,’ he said, his eyes glittering evilly, ‘but, as none of you will leave this place, it is a waste of time. In two minutes I will call my men, and you will be helpless.’
‘And I will call mine,’ returned Sir Leonard. ‘What then?’
‘Your men! Where are they?’
‘You will soon know.’
He looked towards the door, and the Moor’s eyes followed his. Thus was he tricked for, as he looked away, like lightning Wallace’s torch had disappeared and, in his hand, pointed steadily at the Moor, was a revolver.
‘Drop that gun!’ commanded the Englishman sternly. ‘I shall not have the slightest compunction in shooting you after what you have done, if you give me the chance.’
A look of baffled fury showed for an instant on the Moor’s face, then he smiled.
‘You will be very clever, if you get away from here,’ he observed, and placed his revolver on the table.
‘Not a bit of it,’ retorted Sir Leonard. ‘It is easy. All I want you to remember is that the slightest attempt on your part to sound an alarm will mean your sad demise. I hope you understand me. And if you think that, as soon as we have left this house, you will be able to rouse your men, and attack us before we can get clear, let me remove that impression from your mind at once. You are coming with us!’
With what sounded very much like an oath, El Arish’s hand shot out to grab his revolver, but Wallace stepped quickly across the room, and placed the muzzle of his weapon within a few inches of the other man’s eyes.
‘We’ll have no nonsense, if you please,’ he said sternly.
El Arish broke into voluble protests, half in French, half in Arabic. All his coolness had vanished, and he looked terrified, but Wallace paid little attention to him. As soon as the Prince was dressed, Sir Leonard ordered Cousins to lead the way.
‘Go as quietly as you can, all of you,’ he warned. ‘I will bring up the rear with this gentleman. You will find my three men awaiting us in the archway; they will lead you to the boat.’
Cousins, followed closely by the Prince and his equerry, walked silently along the veranda, and down the steps to the courtyard. El Arish once again began to protest, but the touch of Sir Leonard’s revolver in his back cut him short and, with a shrug, which typified the fatalism of his race, he went after the others, his captor close to his heels. Once, going down the steps, he pretended to stumble, but a low-voiced threat from Wallace showed him the necessity of being more ci
rcumspect. After that he gave no further trouble. The shadowy figures of Batty and the two sailors rose from the ground, where they had been sitting, when the others arrived.
‘Here, Batty,’ called Sir Leonard, ‘keep your gun pointed at this fellow while I remove the burnous.’
The disrobing process was quickly accomplished, and he gave a sigh expressive of relief as he threw the voluminous garment down beside its owner.
‘It was a trifle smelly,’ he muttered. ‘Thanks, Batty. I’ve got him covered. Lead on as silently as you can.’
‘Wot about this ’ere bloke?’ questioned the ex-sailor in a hoarse whisper. ‘’E’s beginning to come round, sir.’
‘Tie him up and gag him; then put him inside and shut the gate.’
With naval thoroughness it was done, after which Batty and the sailors led the way back to the launch. No alarm was raised behind them, and nothing untoward happened during the hour it took them to reach the boat. Every now and then Wallace prodded his prisoner in the back, as a warning that he was still there, but El Arish had accepted his fate apparently, and made no more protests.
Once in the cave, Sir Leonard set two men to keep watch on him, and drew the Prince aside.
‘I don’t think any good purpose will be served by taking El Arish with us, your Highness,’ he observed. ‘This, I believe to be a matter for settlement between your country and another. El Arish has been merely the tool.’
He proceeded in a whisper to enlarge on his suspicions to the astonished Prince.
‘If you agree,’ he concluded, ‘I’ll tell him he can go if he confesses.’
The Prince nodded, and Wallace confronted the Moor.
‘You can go,’ he declared, ‘if, to use an Americanism, you come clean.’
‘How do you mean?’ queried the Moor.
Sir Leonard explained and, once he understood how much the Englishman knew or suspected, El Arish gave away the whole plot. It had, as Wallace had guessed, been engineered by a nation jealous of Great Britain and antagonistic to Italy. By the light of a lamp brought from the launch, he agreed to write down his part in the affair, and sign it. When that was done he was told he could depart.
‘If I were you,’ advised Sir Leonard, ‘I should take a long holiday in the interior of Morocco until this affair blows over.’
The Moor who, at the prospect of release, had recovered his insouciance, bowed mockingly.
‘Your anxiety on my behalf,’ he observed, ‘touches me deeply.’
He watched his late prisoners climb aboard the launch; then bowed again, and walked away. With three additional passengers the boat was somewhat crowded, but nobody minded the crush. The Prince was in high good humour, and repeated again and again the great debt of gratitude he owed to Wallace, until the latter became rather embarrassed and sought the company of Cousins. To the latter he handed the morocco-bound notebook, and the little man’s wrinkled face creased in its extraordinary way into a smile.
‘So you saw through my design, sir,’ he chuckled. ‘I thought you’d be sooner or later on the trail, and nobody else but you would have guessed what I wanted to inform you. It was very clever of you, if I may say so, sir.’
‘Not so clever as your idea to leave such a clue.’
‘It was a lucky thing I had the book with me, and in my hip pocket. I wouldn’t have been able to get at it, if it had been elsewhere. My hands were tied behind me, you see.’
‘But you always carry the book in your hip pocket, don’t you?’
‘Generally. How did you know, sir?’
‘Just observation, that’s all. You can get at it more surreptitiously there, when you can’t think of an appropriate quotation, can’t you?’
Cousins actually blushed, but it was too dark for his smiling chief to see his face distinctly.
‘How did you trace us, sir?’ he asked hastily. ‘The book only told you we were in Morocco, but it’s a biggish country in which to search for anybody.’
Wallace told him the whole story; then inquired how they had been kidnapped. It appeared that after they had been walking up and down the lawn of Government House for ten minutes or thereabouts, and at the moment were at the far end close to the shrubs and trees, they were suddenly pounced upon by several men, who threw some sort of thick material over their heads, and tied their arms and legs. Then they were thrown on the ground, while a whispered conversation took place in Arabic, a language which Cousins knew well. By straining his ears he heard a man telling others to climb over the wall, and get back to the dhow as soon as the Prince and his companions had been placed in the car. He added that it was necessary that the boat should sail for Morocco as soon as possible. Cousins, straining at his bonds and wondering what to do to leave some sort of clue behind, suddenly remembered that his notebook was bound in morocco leather. It was a slender hope that anyone would grasp the significance of the little volume, but there was nothing else he could do. He managed to get his fingers into his hip pocket, pull out the book, and leave it on the ground. A few minutes later they were picked up, carried a few yards and bundled into a car, which immediately started. It seemed a long time to Cousins before it stopped again and, when at last it did, they were thrown into a boat and rowed some distance, before being transferred to the larger vessel.
‘We only reached the house of El Arish,’ he concluded, ‘about thirty hours before you came along, sir, and, do you know, we were tied up all the time we were on that blessed boat. El Arish pretends to have manners, but he’s no gentleman. “What is he but a brute whose flesh has soul to suit” – Browning, sir!’
‘Thanks,’ returned Wallace sarcastically. ‘Did you look in the book for that one?’
Cousins became silent.
The relief of the Governor of Gibraltar was tremendous when his royal guest was brought back to him, as was that of the British Foreign Office. The revelations of Sir Leonard Wallace caused a tremendous sensation in diplomatic circles, with the result that the nation which had hoped for so much from the abduction of the Prince of Emilia was forced by Italy, backed by Great Britain, to eat very humble pie indeed.
‘The old country came out of the affair with flying colours,’ observed Wallace to his wife, as a week or so later they sat together once again on the terrace of their New Forest home.
‘Thanks to you, dear,’ she murmured.
‘No; thanks to Cousins’ passion for quotations and the little book in which he writes them.’
CHAPTER THREE
Sentiment and Suicide
‘The whole gas question is in the air,’ observed Major Brien with great profundity.
Sir Leonard Wallace, who was busily engaged in signing documents, glanced up at his friend and smiled.
‘Where did you expect it to be?’ he queried. ‘Buried in the ground?’
Brien looked at him suspiciously; then he, too, smiled.
‘Rather a bon mot that,’ he said in self-congratulatory tones. ‘But what are you going to do about this Mason affair?’
Wallace did not answer. Instead he went on reading through the reports, and appending his signature. The last one appeared to give him a good deal of thought, but at length he signed it.
‘Is that all, Stephenson?’ he asked the man standing respectfully at his side.
‘Yes, sir,’ was the reply.
‘Very well. Take them away. As soon as Mr Cousins returns tell him I am waiting here for him.’
The clerk gathered up the papers and quietly left the room.
‘Now, Bill,’ urged Sir Leonard, ‘tell me what’s worrying you.’
Brien rose from the chair in which he had been lounging.
‘It’s that message from Brookfield,’ he asserted walking across to the bookshelves, and running his finger along the titles as though in search of a particular volume. ‘It seems fairly evident from what he says that Professor Mason’s secret is out – in fact that it is a secret no longer, and that the poor old chap not only lost his life, but all he has worked
for since the War.’
Wallace nodded.
‘Looks like it,’ he agreed, ‘but the formula may not have been in the safe at all. What are you looking for?’
‘That book of yours on Lewisite.’
‘Third shelf down, seventh book along from the right-hand side,’ was the prompt direction.
Brien turned, and looked admiringly at his chief.
‘How do you do it?’ he asked.
Wallace laughed.
‘I was glancing through it myself half an hour ago,’ he confessed, ‘and that’s where I put it.’
Brien uttered a sound expressive of disgust, removed the book from its shelf; then returned, and sank into the chair he had vacated. He quickly found the chapter he wanted, and began to read carefully. Sir Leonard rested his head in his hands – one natural, the other artificial – and gazed unseeingly at his desk. Although he had spoken so lightly to his friend, he was feeling anything but elated.
Professor Mason who, practically since the cessation of hostilities, had been seeking a poison gas that would be supreme, that would destroy all life against which it was directed, and stifle any attempt at resistance, had at last succeeded. Working with care and patience on the principles of Lewisite, he had gradually evolved a gas so malignant that, according to him, no mask could be invented that would be proof against it. He had been actuated all the time by the belief that such a gas would make war impossible. In the hands of a nation, as honourable as Great Britain, he declared that it would prove far more efficacious for peace than the League of Nations could ever be. At the same time he was forced to admit that, if the formula fell into the hands of an unscrupulous country, the result might well mean that all other nations would become subject races to that country. Despite themselves, high officials at the War Office had been impressed, with the result that during the final stages of the professor’s work the Secret Service had been asked to supply a man to guard him and his discovery from possible curiosity on the part of agents of other powers. Sir Leonard Wallace had sent Brookfield, a very clever member of his staff, who, after proving himself one of the successes of the Special Branch at Scotland Yard, had been transferred to the Secret Service.
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