The Man Without A Face

by The Man Without a Face (retail) (epub)

  HELEN WILLIAMS.

  “The she devil,” exclaimed Bamberger, despairingly.

  “Livia will be all right,” said Harrison. “I’m certain of that.”

  “You’re certain,” said Bamberger, scornfully. “You sent her there and now she has disappeared. You’re responsible if anything happens to her and you cheerfully say you’re certain she’ll be all right. This Williams woman seems a bit too clever for you, I should say. Whatever you’ve done she’s gone one better.”

  “I think that will do, Mr. Bamberger,” answered Harrison, sternly. “You disobeyed orders this morning and now you play the coward. If that is how you feel, all I can do is to ask you to leave these chambers immediately.”

  “Mr. Harrison—” expostulated Bamberger.

  “There’s no argument, Mr. Bamberger; you heard what I said,” replied Harrison. “I’ve taken on a big job for you, how big and how serious it is you can have no conception. You can’t trust me and so you’d better go.”

  “But I do trust you, Harrison,” said Bamberger, imploringly. “I apologise most humbly for anything I have said. I didn’t mean it. I was beside myself.”

  Harrison looked solemnly at him and seemed, for a few moments, to be deep in thought.

  “I suppose we’re all of us a bit nervy this morning,” he said, after a while, myself as much as anyone. “I’m sorry I haven’t seemed sympathetic over Miss Marston. I am really, Bamberger, but to get her out of the hole she’s in—and it’s not an uncomfortable one, I am certain of that—we’ve got to settle accounts with the other people. Now then, are we all ready to push forward together again with the certainty we are going to win?”

  His enthusiastic tone so heartened the other two that they agreed with one voice.

  “Very well,” said Harrison. “Henry, you have your instructions. I’m not going to repeat them but don’t come back here again and be at the address I gave you at the time fixed. One thing more, make certain you have both your passports with you.”

  “Yes, sir,” answered Henry, as if a request to have passports ready when you are only making a journey to Hampstead was the most usual thing in the world.

  “You, Bamberger, may have less to do but a lot depends on it,” said Harrison. “When Henry leaves here he will be followed by someone employed by the enemy. Now you will follow the follower. It doesn’t matter if he sees you because he must keep his eye on Henry. When Henry gets some distance along Fleet Street he will suddenly turn into one of the many little courts at the side. There he is going to make a dash for it and you will come up very quickly and get in front of the gentleman who is following him. One way or another you’ve got to keep him until you yourself feel certain that Henry has got clear away. You understand?”

  “Quite,” answered Bamberger.

  “And you realise that it is essential to our success that it should work out all right,” said Harrison. “Henry must get away all right.”

  “And then what am I to do?” asked Bamberger.

  “I am afraid all you can do is to watch and wait,” answered Harrison. “What’s your club?”

  “Junior Excelsior.”

  “Keep in touch with it until you hear from me,” said Harrison. “That’s all, I think. Good luck.”

  He shook hands with Bamberger and then, to Henry’s great surprise, with Henry himself.

  “By the way, Henry,” he said, “get the café to send in some coffee and sandwiches about seven o’clock. I don’t expect I shall want to go out to-day and I may be getting hungry by then.”

  Henry looked even more surprised but he and Harrison had taken their food in a similar fashion during a pressure of work and so he nodded his head. Soon afterwards Harrison heard the front door shut and went quietly to the window without being obvious to anyone outside. The window looked out on to a small paved court, a path leading diagonally from the doorway at the bottom of Harrison’s staircase to a narrow passage leading towards King’s Bench Walk. There was nobody in the court at that moment and it was very easy to keep an eye on Henry and anyone who might follow him.

  Henry appeared from the doorway and started to cross the court. As he reached the passage on the other side a stranger came out of the doorway and followed him. Although walking in the most natural manner in the world—almost too natural—this was obviously a paid “shadower.” He kept a steady distance behind Henry and left no doubt, in Harrison’s mind, as to what he was doing. As this man reached the passage, Philip Bamberger emerged. As an amateur, his guile at hiding his mission was less than that of the other. He was clearly following somebody and, by hook or crook, intended to keep them in sight. The professional walker soon realised this, and just before disappearing from sight, showed his perplexity by pausing for a moment and turning round. But his duty was to follow Henry—there could be no doubt of that—so on he went and disappeared. Bamberger soon disappeared in his turn and the court was empty. Three actors had passed off the stage for the moment, thought Harrison. His conjecture had been confirmed that there had been only two watchers outside his door for no one else appeared. One had waited behind Mr. Harrison himself, and so the sandwich constructed of the other between Henry and Bamberger was likely to be successful. With the most ordinary luck, Bamberger would carry out his instructions and Henry be left to pursue his way without unwelcome observation.

  Harrison went back to his chair and lit a cigar. Three actors off the stage, he thought, and one of them to return and play the most important part in the play if further tragedy was not to follow. It was taking a pretty heavy risk, but there was no help for it. He was in a tight corner and the position had to be faced.

  Harrison puffed his cigar. Of course he had been foolish to shake hands with Henry. That would have made him suspicious immediately. Harrison felt he had satisfactorily disguised the seriousness of the situation up to that point. It had been an impulsively sentimental thing to do, but what could you expect. One is only human and death is an unpleasant thing to face.

  Harrison had faced death before but it had usually been in a sudden form. Quick thinking and quick moving had been the way to fight against it, but in this case he had been given a day to think it over: a most unpleasant idea. He knew there would be no mercy on the other side. Miss Williams was too like the woman he had met in a previous case, Jeanne de Marplay, even if she were not the same person, to doubt that. De Marplay had not been afraid to commit murder herself and this woman was of the same persuasion. Harrison knew too much to live. His death warrant had been signed, “with a cross,” he thought with gloomy wit, but the idea pleased him all the same. Miss Williams, Cross, and their friends would be waiting for him at the party or reception or whatever one liked to call it, and some time later in the evening his number would be up. He could not guess how they would do it. He did not particularly want to. A certain amount of unpleasantness was likely to be an ingredient, but they would do it. On that point there was no argument.

  It would be a gloomy business sitting there all day and thinking, but what else was there to do? If he went out he would be followed wherever he went. He did not flatter himself that he could suddenly give them the slip. They would be too good at it for him to do that. If he talked to anybody he met or tried to make a suspicious call, he might find himself under an omnibus or some equally unattractive vehicle before he knew where he was. Better stay there, for he could reckon to be safe until Mr. Cross’s friends called for him.

  Harrison put down his cigar and went to the front door. He opened it gently and outside he saw someone who looked like a messenger going slowly up the staircase to the next floor. A tiring job if he has to spend the whole day at it, thought Harrison, as he closed the door again.

  He went back to his desk wondering whether he should not have kept in touch with Scotland Yard. Things have happened too quickly, he thought in justification, and they could do little now. The enemy would be ready for anything like that. He had really very little to go on and even if he had sent a mess
age to Henry, what would have been the use? And there was always the telephone. Harrison smiled and looked at the instrument. What about the telephone? He picked up the receiver and put it to his ear. The line was dead as mutton. Nothing doing there, even if he wanted to. The line had been cut. He put back the receiver.

  So there he was, cut off from the world, with a sentry on his door—and this could happen in London in the nineteen-thirties. Very curious, and at that moment Harrison fell fast asleep.

  Chapter XVI

  The Flashlight Escape

  Harrison slept soundly until a knock on his door at seven o’clock heralded the arrival of coffee and sandwiches. Surprised at the lateness of the hour, he went sleepily to the door and told the waiter to bring in the tray and put it on the table. The hovering figure of the watcher outside was fairly close to the door and Harrison could see that any effort on his part to speak quietly to the waiter might have provoked a serious interruption. It amused him therefore to raise his voice so that his sentry might undergo no undue strain in carrying out his duties.

  “If you will wait a moment,” said Harrison to the waiter, “I will pay you now. I may not be here tomorrow.”

  “Going away, sir?” asked the waiter.

  “Yes,” answered Harrison, “on a long journey,” a reply which should certainly satisfy the gentleman outside, he thought.

  “After some criminals, I suppose, sir?” said the waiter, respectfully.

  Harrison smiled. He hoped the watcher had taken full note of the remarks. “Of course,” answered Harrison, quite loudly, “and when I get back I hope to have a nice collection rounded up.”

  “That’s good, sir,” said the waiter, pocketing the money. “You must be a terror to them, from all I hear.”

  He disappeared and Harrison was left alone, hoping that the watcher had profited wisely by the lesson. His sleep had refreshed him greatly and he enjoyed his slender meal. Very leisurely he changed his clothes and was smoking and musing over all the possibilities of the night before him—such a great deal depended on Henry—when another knock came on the door. “My escort,” he said to himself and opened the door to two men in evening clothes. “Good evening, gentlemen,” he said, with a slight bow. “Friends of Mr. Cross?”

  “We have come to fetch you,” answered one of them.

  “Very kind of you,” said Harrison. “Your names?”

  “No need for that,” answered the other, gruffly. “Come along.”

  “I made a perfectly polite request for your names,” repeated Harrison.

  “Don’t be funny,” said the gruff man. “What the devil do you want to know for? Get your coat on and come along quickly. We’re both armed.”

  “Again I am complimented,” said Harrison, putting on his coat; “two armed men for one person like myself. Very gratifying, Mr.—”

  He paused but gained no help.

  “Possibly Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones?” he said.

  “Oh, anything you like,” said the gruff man. “Who cares what our names are?”

  “Somebody does,” answered Harrison.

  “Who?” asked the other man.

  “The police,” answered Harrison.

  “Another joke, I suppose,” said the gruff man. “You’re very funny, Mr. Harrison, but it doesn’t bluff us. Smith and Jones will be good enough for the police, anyhow.”

  The other man gave a chuckle and Harrison turned towards him. “Not good enough for me,” he said, quickly. “I may want to know you both again after this and I should be inclined to say your names were Josephs and Skelofski—two good old English names.”

  The man looked at Harrison and produced an automatic pistol but was immediately pounced upon by the gruff man.

  “Put that away, you fool,” he said. “We don’t want any trouble here. What if he does know our names? Who cares? It’s not going to make any difference.” He turned to Harrison. “You’re very clever, aren’t you, Mr. Clay Harrison,” he said, “but not clever enough. You’re coming with us and that’s all there is to it. You’ve talked quite enough, thank you, and we don’t want to hear any more.”

  Harrison bowed again and was silent. He had given his escort a shock and that was something. They would be likely to be a little more nervy in dealing with him during the evening and that was also to the good. He had made them more implicitly his enemies, certainly, but if the situation worked out as he had planned, they might now feel slightly less cool than they had before.

  The two men placed Harrison between them and pressing closely by each side of him they led him out of the room. He noticed that the sentry was now leaning over the banisters and watching the departure and was half inclined to say “good-night,” but that might only lead to some physical violence on the part of either Josephs or Skelofski, and Harrison did not think a blow in the ribs or something of that sort was justified by such a poor piece of humour. In the roadway was standing a magnificent saloon car and, with the greatest adroitness, the two men manoeuvred Harrison on to the seat between them. It was really a remarkable piece of work which roused Harrison’s admiration. It would have been impossible for him to have made the slightest movement as he crossed the pavement and got into the car, and yet it had all seemed so perfectly natural. Gentlemen with very great experience of this kind of work, thought Harrison, experts at their job.

  Very little was said on the journey to Hampstead. Neither of Harrison’s companions were inclined to chatter, and he himself saw no advantage in attempting to exchange confidences. The motor-car turned into a broad road bordered by large Victorian mansions. These were residences which were capable of being kept up when money could be spread further and there was no domestic servant problem. Even to-day some of them were maintaining some of their comfortable splendour, and the house to which Harrison was being taken was in this class. A well-kept drive led to the front door, and the car had to wait its turn while others were putting down guests. Harrison therefore had a chance to look at the house in the gathering dusk, and approvingly studied its well-kept facade and trimly painted woodwork. Although quite solidly Victorian in appearance it had shutters to each of the windows—open at the moment and clipped back to the walls. They were reminiscent of the conventional Swiss chalet and might have seemed almost incongruous except that, in an odd way, they added to the attractive look of the house. When the front door was reached, Harrison’s two attendants helped him from the car, with rather less caution than they had exercised in getting him into it. Obviously escape from the Hampstead retreat was a more difficult task. They went up the front steps and were received by a resplendent-looking butler.

  Harrison chuckled as he recognised Finney, the treacherous servant of the Bamberger household. Finney was hardly as happy at being recognised and returned Harrison’s smile with a look of virulent malevolence. “Mr. Finney doesn’t like me, either,” thought Harrison. “The whole gang’s gathered to see the end of me, has it?”

  His hat and coat were taken by a man-servant who might or might not be one of the enemy. Harrison thought not: possibly just engaged for the evening. Possibly the only people concerned were Finney, Josephs, Skelofski, Miss Williams and Cross. That might be their order of merit, too, except that it would have been more gallant and probably more correct to have placed Miss Williams at the end, by herself.

  Harrison was then ushered into a magnificent reception-room. Massive columns supported the ceiling and the whole gave the effect of dignity and excellent architectural effect. He particularly noticed that there were recesses through the columns on each side of the door and that curtains hung there, not entirely obscuring the space beyond but enough to conceal a man, if such concealment were necessary.

  At the far end of the room stood Helen Williams radiantly dressed and looking her most beautiful. Her evening gown was dazzling and her face radiated a warm welcome to each guest as he or she approached her and spoke a few words. Beside her stood Mr. Cross, immaculately clothed but somehow still undistinguished. Harrison agai
n had the feeling that such a man would be impossible to describe a few minutes after he had passed out of sight. He was certainly not nondescript but, equally so, he was definitely non-identifiable. To glance at him standing by Miss Williams, one would have classed him as a very tame follower of a very beautiful woman—the kind of man she likes to have about her to do any class of errand but in no way a rival to any man with the smallest attraction to win her smiles.

  Yet, in that brief instinct of observing them, Harrison could not help feeling that Cross’s self-effacement was too complete. His eyes were too keen and observant to justify the mentality which such a nature would presume. The diagnosis was so good and so justifiable that Harrison felt that Mr. Cross was revealing exceedingly high acting ability. No man, not even Mr. Cross, would be quite such a nonentity as Mr. Cross looked.

  Josephs and Skelofski walked up the room with Harrison between them and again showed their skill in making an unnatural situation seem perfectly natural. They might have been three great friends walking towards Miss Williams, certainly not two warders who were guarding a dangerous prisoner with extraordinary care.

  Miss Williams gave her most entrancing look as Harrison came up to her and bowed. She held out her gloved hand which Harrison pressed firmly. She winced slightly at his pressure but the warmth of her smile did not lessen.

  “How very good of you to come to-night, Mr. Harrison,” she said with the greatest cordiality.

  “It was very good of you to ask me,” answered Harrison.

  “Well, you know you are a very busy man,” said Miss Williams, “and very seldom accept an invitation like this. I feel highly honoured.”

  “Wild horses could not have kept me away,” said Harrison with the slightest of side glances to his escort.

  Miss Williams laughed musically. “What a woman,” thought Harrison; “every gift nature can give her. Any woman would envy her—and yet a crook through and through.”