CHAPTER V
Table of Contents
So far as Sandy Graham was concerned, his unconsciousness might have lasted an hour or a day. As a matter of fact, it was scarcely a minute after the disappearance of Fischer and his confederates when he was conscious of a rush of cold air in the place, and beheld the vision of a tiny flash of light at the lower end of the gloomy building. Immediately afterwards he heard the soft closing of a door and beheld a tall, shadowy figure slowly approaching. He lay quite still and looked at it, and his heart began to beat with hope. One of the lights had been left burning, and there was something in the bearing and attitude of the man who finally came to a standstill by his side, which was entirely reassuring.
“Lutchester!” he faltered. “My God, how did you get here?”
“Offices of a young lady,” Lutchester observed, producing a knife from his pocket. “Allow me!”
He cut the cords which still secured Graham’s limbs. Then he looked around him.
“How did they bring you here?” he whispered. “I suppose there is a passage from the restaurant?”
“Up through a trapdoor there,” Graham explained, pointing.
Lutchester stood over it and listened intently.
Then he turned around, lifted the glass of brandy from the table, smelt it approvingly, and tasted it.
“Excellent!” he pronounced. “The 1840. Allow me!”
He refilled the glass and handed it to Sandy, who gulped down the contents. The effect was almost instantaneous. In less than a minute he had staggered to his feet.
“Feel strong enough to walk about fifty yards?” Lutchester inquired.
“I’d walk to hell to get out of this place!” was the prompt reply.
Lutchester took his arm, and they passed down the dusty aisle between the worm-eaten and decaying benches and through the outside door, which Lutchester closed and locked behind them. The rush of cold air was like new life to Graham.
“I can walk all right now,” he muttered. “My God, we’ll give these fellows hell for this!”
They made their very difficult way across a plot of ground from which a row of dilapidated cottages had been razed to the ground. The fog still hung around them and seemed to bring with it a curious silence, although the dying traffic from one of the main thoroughfares reached them in muffled notes. Lutchester climbed to the top of a pile of rubbish and then, turning around, held out his hand.
“Up here,” he directed.
Graham struggled up until he stood by his companion’s side. The latter stood quite still, listening for a moment. Then he climbed a little higher and swung around, holding out his hand once more.
“I’m on top of the wall,” he said. “Come on.”
Graham’s knees were shaking, but with Lutchester’s help he staggered up and reached his side. On the pavement below a man in chauffeur’s livery was standing, holding out his hands, and by the side of the curbstone a closed car was waiting. Somehow or other the two reached the pavement. Lutchester almost pushed his companion into the limousine and stepped in after him. The chauffeur sprang to his seat and the car glided off. Graham just realised that there was a woman by his side whose face was vaguely familiar. Then the waves broke in upon his ears once more.
“I was right, then, it seems,” Pamela observed approvingly. “You were just the man for this little affair.”
Lutchester sighed.
“Unfortunately,” he confessed, “a messenger boy would have been as effective. I stumbled over to the chapel—rubber shoes, you observe,” he remarked, pointing downwards—“and soon discovered that blinds had been let down all round and that there were people inside. There was just a faint chink in one, and I caught a glimpse of several men, your friend Oscar amongst them. Having,” he went on, “an immense regard for my personal safety, I was hesitating what means to adopt when the lights were lowered, and it seemed to me that the men were disappearing.”
“Do go on,” Pamela murmured. “This is most exciting.”
“In a sense it was disappointing,” Lutchester complained. “I had pictured for myself a dramatic entrance … a quiet turning of the key, a soft approach— owing to my shoes,” he reminded her—“a cough, perhaps, or a breath … discovery, me with a revolver in my hand pointed to the arch-villain—‘If you stir you’re a dead man!’ … Natural collapse of the villain. With my left hand I slash the bonds which hold Graham, with my right I cover the miscreants. One of them, perhaps, might creep behind me, and I hesitate. If I move my revolver the other two will get the drop on me—I think that is the correct expression? A wonderful moment, that, Miss Van Teyl!”
“But it didn’t happen,” she protested.
“Ah! I forgot that,” he acknowledged. “Still, I was prepared, I had the revolver all right. But as you say, it didn’t happen. I made my way to the chapel door, let myself in, found our friend lying in a half-comatose state upon one of the blue plush Henry sofas, in the shadow of a horrible deal pulpit. I gathered that he had been left there to reflect upon his sins. There was a bottle of remarkably fine brandy within reach, which I tested, and with which I dosed our friend here. I then cut away his bonds, arm in arm we walked down the aisle, I locked up the place, threw the key away, kicked my shins half-a-dozen times crossing that disgusting little plot of land, climbed boldly to the top of the wall, and behold!”
Pamela smiled upon him in congratulatory fashion.
“On the whole,” she said, “I am quite glad that I telephoned to you.”
“You showed a sound discretion,” he admitted.
“If he had not been lame,” she confessed, “I should have sent to Captain Holderness.”
“That would have been a great mistake,” Lutchester assured her. “Holderness is a good fellow but devoid of imagination. He is great on constituted authority. He would have probably marched up with a squad of heavy-footed policemen—and found nothing.”
“Yet I must confess,” Pamela persisted, with a frankness unaccountable even to herself, “that if I could have thought of any one else I should never have telephoned to you.”
“And why not?”
“Because I should not have classified you as being of the adventurous type,” she declared.
Lutchester looked injured.
“After all,” he protested, “that is not my fault. That is due to your singular lack of perception. However, I am able to return the compliment. I, for my part, should have thought that you were more interested in the fashions than in paying exceedingly rash visits to degenerate orientals and negroes.”
“Perhaps some day,” she remarked, “we may understand one another better.”
He met her gaze with a certain seriousness.
“I hope that we may,” he said.
For some reason they were both silent for a moment. Her tone had changed a little when she spoke again.
“You are sure,” she asked, “that you do not mind my leaving the rest of this affair in your hands? There are reasons, which I cannot tell you of just now, which make me anxious not to appear in it at all.”
“I accept the charge as a privilege,” he assented. “We are within a few yards of my rooms now. I promise you that I will look after Captain Graham and advise him as to the proper course for him to pursue.”
The car came to a standstill.
“This then,” she said, holding out her hand, “will be good-by for the present.”
He held her fingers for a moment without reply. Quite suddenly she decided that she liked him. Then he lifted Graham, who was half asleep, half unconscious, to his feet, and assisted him from the car.
“Where shall I tell the man to go to?” he inquired.
“He knows,” she answered with sudden taciturnity.
“Wherever it may be, then,” he replied, “bon voyage!”
CHAPTER VI
Table of Contents
It was about half-an-hour later when Sandy Graham opened his eyes and began to feel the life once more warm
in his veins. He was seated in the most comfortable easy-chair of John Lutchester’s bachelor sitting-room. By his side was a coffee equipage and a decanter of brandy. His head still throbbed, and his bones ached, but his mind was beginning to grow clearer. Lutchester, who had been seated at the writing table, swung round in his chair at the sound of his guest’s movement.
“Feeling better, eh?” he asked.
“I am all right now,” was the somewhat shaky reply. “Got a head like a turnip and a tongue like a lime-kiln, but I’m beginning—to feel myself.”
“How’s your memory?”
“Hazy. Let me see…. My God, I’ve been robbed, haven’t I!”
“So I imagine,” Lutchester replied. “You rather asked for it, didn’t you?”
Graham moved uneasily in his place. He had suddenly the feeling of being back at school—and in the presence of the headmaster.
“I suppose I did in a way,” he admitted, “but at Henry’s—why, I’ve always looked upon the place as a club more than anything else.”
“I am afraid that I can’t agree with you there,” Lutchester observed. “I should consider Henry’s a remarkably cosmopolitan restaurant, where a man in your position should exercise more than even ordinary restraint.”
“I suppose I was wrong,” Graham muttered, “but I had been working for about ten hours on end, and then rushed up to London in the car to try and keep my appointment with Holderness.”
“Stop anywhere on the way?”
“We had a few drinks,” Graham confessed. “I was so done up. Perhaps I had more than I meant to. However, it’s no use bothering about that now. I’ve been robbed, and that’s all there is about it. Could we get on to Scotland Yard from here?”
“We could, but I don’t think we will,” Lutchester replied.
Graham was puzzled.
“Why not?” he demanded. “That formula was the most wonderful thing that has ever been put together, and the whole thing’s so simple. I’ve been afraid every second that some one else might stumble upon it.”
“It is without doubt a great loss,” Lutchester admitted. “All the same, I don’t fancy that it’s a Scotland Yard business exactly. Have you any idea who robbed you?”
Graham paused to think. His eyes were still troubled and uncertain.
“It’s coming back to me,” he muttered. “I remember that beastly barn of a chapel. There were Jules, and that musician fellow, and the big American. He emptied my pockets … Why, of course, I remember how angry he was … My pocketbook was gone! They left me alone to write out the formula again, and then you came…. How on earth did you tumble on to my being there, Lutchester?”
“It was Miss Pamela Van Teyl whom you must thank,” Lutchester told him, “not me. It seems she knew more about Henry’s than any of us. She’d come up against some of the crew in Berlin, and she guessed they were holding you for that formula. She got the key out of one of those men and then telephoned to me for my help.”
“And I never even thanked her,” Graham murmured weakly.
There was a moment’s silence. The recovering man’s consciousness of his position and of events was evidently as yet incomplete. He sat up suddenly in his chair, gripping the sides of it. His eyes were large with reminiscent trouble.
“My pocketbook had gone when they searched me,” he muttered.
“Are you sure that you had it with you when you came into Henry’s?” Lutchester inquired.
“Absolutely certain.”
“Do you think you can remember now what happened when you went upstairs?”
“I reached the lavatory all right—you were with me then, weren’t you?” Graham said reflectively. “I hung up my coat while I washed, but there was no one else in the room. Then you went downstairs and I brushed my hair and just stopped to light a cigarette. You know that on the right-hand side of the landing there is a room where the musicians change. Joseph, that black devil, was standing in the doorway. He grinned as I came into sight. ‘Lady wants to speak to you for a moment, Captain Graham,’ he said. Well, you know how harmless the fellow looks—just a good-natured, smiling nigger. I never dreamed of anything wrong. As a matter of fact, I thought that Peggy Vincent—that’s a young lady I often go to Henry’s with—wanted to have a word with me before I joined our party. I stepped inside the room, and that’s just about all I can remember. It must have been jolly quick. His arm shot round my neck, the door was closed, and that other brute—Hassan, I think it was—held something over my face.”
“But that room was searched,” Lutchester reminded him.
“Well I came to just a little,” Graham explained, “I found that I was in a sort of cupboard place, behind the lockers these fellows have for their clothes. It opens with a spring lock, and you’d never notice it, searching the room.”
“Who was the first person you saw when you recovered consciousness?”
Graham’s forehead was wrinkled in the effort to remember.
“I can’t quite get hold of it,” he confessed, “but I have a sort of fancy I can’t altogether get rid of that there was a woman about.”
Lutchester looked at the end of the cigarette he had just lit.
“A woman?” he repeated. “That’s queer.”
“I can’t remember anything definitely until I woke up in that chapel,” Graham continued, “but when they searched me and found that the pocketbook had gone, Fischer, the big American, muttered some woman’s name. I was queer just at the moment, but it sounded very much to me like Miss Van Teyl’s. He rang her up on the telephone.”
“Did they suspect Miss Van Teyl, then, of having taken your pocketbook?”
Graham shook his head.
“I lost the drift of things just then,” he admitted. “She couldn’t have done, in any case. Forgive me, but aren’t we wasting time, Mr. Lutchester? We must do something. Couldn’t you ring up Scotland Yard now?”
“I certainly could,” Lutchester assented, “but, as I told you just now, I don’t think that I will.”
Graham stared at him.
“But why not?”
“For certain very definite reasons with which you needn’t trouble yourself just now,” Lutchester pronounced. “The formula has gone, without a doubt, but it certainly isn’t in the hands of any of the people at Henry’s.”
“But there’s that American fellow—Fischer!” Graham exclaimed. “He was the ringleader!”
“Just so,” Lutchester murmured thoughtfully. “However, he hasn’t got the formula.”
“But he planned the attack upon me,” Graham protested. “He is an enemy—a German—sheltering himself under his American naturalization. Surely we’re going for him?”
“He’s a wrong ‘un, of course,” Lutchester admitted, “but he hasn’t got the formula.”
“But we must do something!” Graham continued, his anger rising as his strength returned. “Why, the place is a perfect den of conspirators! I expect Ferrani himself is in it, and there’s that other maitre d’hotel, Jules, and those black beasts, Joseph and Hassan, besides Fischer. My God, they shall pay for this!”
Lutchester nodded.
“I dare say they will,” he admitted, “but not quite in the way you are thinking of.”
Graham half rose to his feet.
“Look here,” he said, “I’m sane enough now, aren’t I, and in my proper senses? You are not going to suggest that we don’t turn the police on to that damned place?”
“I certainly am,” was the brief reply.
Graham was aghast.
“What do you mean to do, then?”
“Leave them alone for the present. Not one of them has the formula. Not one of them even knows where it is.”
“But the attack upon me?”
“You asked for all you got,” Lutchester told him curtly, “and perhaps a little more.”
The first tinge of colour came back to Graham’s cheeks. His eyes flashed with anger.
“Perhaps I did,” he admitted, �
�but that doesn’t alter the fact that I’m going to have some of my own back out of them.”
Lutchester crossed his legs and turned round in his chair. For the first time he directly faced his visitor. His tone, though not unkindly, was imperative.
“Young fellow,” he said, “you’ll have to listen to me about this.”
A smouldering sense of revolt suddenly found words.
“Listen to you? What the devil have you got to do with it?” Graham demanded.
“I hate to remind any one of an obligation,” Lutchester answered, “but I am under the impression that, together with Miss Van Teyl, of course, I rescued you from an exceedingly inconvenient situation.”
“I haven’t had time yet to tell you how grateful I am,” Graham said awkwardly. “You were a brick, of course, and how you and Miss Van Teyl tumbled on to the whole thing I can’t imagine. But I don’t understand what you’re getting at now. You can’t suggest that I am to leave these fellows alone and not give information to the police?”
“The character of the place,” Lutchester assured him, “is already perfectly well known to the heads of the police. The matter will be dealt with, but not in the way you suggest. And so far as regards Fischer, I do not wish him interfered with for the present.”
“You do not wish him interfered with?” Graham repeated. “Where the devil do you come in at all?”
“You can leave me out of the matter for the present. You want the formula back, don’t you?”
“My God, yes!” Graham muttered fervently. “It’s all very well to give one a pencil and a piece of paper and say ‘Write it out,’ but there are calculations and proportions—”
“Precisely,” Lutchester interrupted. “You want it back again. Why not let Fischer do the business? He has an idea where it’s gone. The thing to do seems to me to follow him.”
21 Greatest Spy Thrillers in One Premium Edition (Mystery & Espionage Series) Page 215