She was gazing at him in dismay. Was he proposing to her? The idea was incredible, almost revolting. He must have read in her face the thoughts that were uppermost in her mind, the loathing, the sense of repulsion which filled her, yet he went on, unabashed: “I am a man of great riches. You are a girl of considerable poverty. But because I saw you one day in your poor house, looking, gracious lady, like a lily growing amidst foul weeds, my heart went out to you, and for this reason I brought you to London, spending many thousands of pounds in order to give myself the pleasure of your company.”
“I don’t think you need go any farther, Dr. Oberzohn,” she said quietly, “if you’re proposing marriage, as I think you are.”
He nodded emphatically.
“Such is my honourable intention,” he said.
“I would never marry you in any circumstances,” she said. “Not even if I had met you under the happiest conditions. The question of your age”—she nearly added “and of your appearance,” but her natural kindness prevented that cruel thrust, though it would not have hurt him in the slightest degree—“has nothing whatever to do with my decision. I do not even like you, and have never liked you, Mr. Oberzohn.”
“Doctor,” he corrected, and in spite of her woeful plight she could have laughed at this insistence upon the ceremonial title.
“Young miss, I cannot woo you in the way of my dear and sainted brother, who was all for ladies and had a beautiful manner.”
She was amazed to hear that he had a brother at all—and it was almost a relief to know that he was dead.
“Martyred, at the hands of wicked and cunning murderers, slain in his prime by the assassin’s pistol…” His voice trembled and broke. “For that sainted life I will some day take vengeance.”
It was not wholly curiosity that impelled her to ask who killed him.
“Leon Gonsalez.” The words in his lips became the grating of a file. “Killed…murdered! And even his beautiful picture destroyed in that terrible fire. Had he saved that, my heart would have been soft towards him.” He checked himself, evidently realizing that he was getting away from the object of his call. “Think over this matter, young lady. Read the romantic books and the amorous books, and then perhaps you will not think it so terrible a fate to drift at moonlight through the canals of Venice, with the moon above and the gondoliers.”
He wagged his head sentimentally.
“There is no book which will change my view, doctor,” she said. “I cannot understand why you propose such an extraordinary course, but I would rather die than marry you.”
His cold eyes filled her with a quick terror.
“There are worse things than death, which is but sleep—many worse things, young miss. Tomorrow I shall come for you, and we will go into the country, where you will say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ according to my desire. I have many—what is the word?—certificates for marriage, for I am too clever a man to leave myself without alternatives.”
(This was true; he had residential qualifications in at least four counties, and at each he had given legal notice of his intended marriage.)
“Not tomorrow or any other day. Nothing would induce me.”
His eyebrows went almost to the top of his head.
“So!” he said, with such significance that her blood ran cold. “There are worse men than the Herr Doktor”—he raised a long finger warningly—“terrible, men with terrible minds. You have met Gurther?”
She did not answer this.
“Yes, yes, you danced with him. A nice man, is he not, to ladies? Yet this same Gurther…I will tell you something.”
He seated himself on a corner of the table and began talking, until she covered her ears with her hands and hid her white face from him.
“They would have killed him for that,” he said, when her hands came down, “but Gurther was too clever, and the poor German peasants too stupid. You shall remember that, shall you not?”
He did not wait for her answer. With a stiff bow he strutted out of the room and up the stairs. There came the thud of the trap falling and the inevitable rumble of the concrete barrel.
He had some work to do, heavy work for a man who found himself panting when he climbed stairs. And though four of his best and most desperate men were waiting in his parlour drinking his whisky and filling the little room with their rank cigar smoke, he preferred to tackle this task which he had already begun as soon as night fell, without their assistance or knowledge.
On the edge of the deep hole in his grounds, where the wild convolvulus grew amidst the rusty corners of discarded tins and oil barrels, was a patch of earth that yielded easily to the spade. When the factory had been built, the depression had been bigger, but the builders had filled in half the hole with the light soil that they had dug out of the factory’s foundations.
He took his spade, which he had left in the factory, and, skirting the saucer-shaped depression, he reached a spot where a long trench had already been dug. Taking off his fine coat and waistcoat, unfastening cravat and collar and carefully depositing them upon the folded coat, he continued his work, stopping now and again to wipe his streaming brow.
He had to labour in the dark, but this was no disadvantage; he could feel the edges of the pit. In an hour the top of the trench was level with his chin, and, stooping to clear the bottom of loose soil, he climbed up with greater difficulty than he had anticipated, and it was only after the third attempt that he managed to reach the top, out of breath and short of temper.
He dressed again, and with his electric torch surveyed the pit he had made and grunted his satisfaction.
He was keenly sensitive to certain atmospheres, and needed no information about the change which had come over his subordinates. In their last consultation Gurther had been less obsequious, had even smoked in his presence without permission—absent-mindedly, perhaps, but the offence was there. And Dr. Oberzohn, on the point of smacking his face for his insolence, heard a warning voice within himself which had made his hand drop back at his side. Or was it the look he saw on Gurther’s face? The man was beyond the point where he could discipline him in the old Junker way. For although Dr. Oberzohn condemned all things Teutonic, he had a sneaking reverence for the military caste of that nation.
He left the spade sticking in a heap of turned earth. He would need that again, and shortly. Unless Gurther failed. Somehow he did not anticipate a failure in this instance. Mr. Monty Newton had not yet grown suspicious, would not be on his guard. His easy acceptance of the theatre tickets showed his mind in this respect.
The four men in his room rose respectfully as he came in. The air was blue with smoke, and Lew Cuccini offered a rough apology. He had been released that morning from detention, for Meadows had found it difficult to frame a charge which did not expose the full activities of the police, and the part they were playing in relation to Mirabelle Leicester. Evidently Cuccini had been reproaching, in his own peculiar way and in his own unprincipled language, the cowardice of his three companions, for the atmosphere seemed tense when the doctor returned. Yet, as was subsequently proved, the appearance of discord was deceptive; might indeed have been staged for their host’s benefit.
“I’ve just been telling these birds—” began Cuccini.
“Oh, shut up, Lew!” growled one of his friends. “If that crazy man hadn’t been shouting your name, we should not have gone back! He’d have wakened the dead. And our orders were to retire at the first serious sign of an alarm. That’s right, doctor, isn’t it?”
“Sure it’s right,” said the doctor blandly. “Never be caught—that is a good motto. Cuccini was caught.”
“And I’d give a year of my life to meet that Dago again,” said Cuccini, between his teeth.
He was delightfully inconsistent, for he came into the category, having been born in Milan, and had had his early education in the Italian quarter of Hartford, Connecticut.
“He’d have tortured me too…he was going to put lighted wax matches between my fi
ngers—”
“And then you spilled it!” accused one of the three hotly. “You talk about us bolting!”
“Silence!” roared the doctor. “This is unseemly! I have forgiven everything. That shall be enough for you all. I will hear no other word.”
“Where is Gurther?” Cuccini asked the question.
“He has gone away. Tonight he leaves for America. He may return—who knows? But that is the intention.”
“Snaking?” asked somebody, and there was a little titter of laughter.
“Say, doctor, how do you work that stunt?” Cuccini leaned forward, his cigar between his fingers, greatly intrigued. “I saw no snakes down at Rath Hall, and yet he was bitten, just as that Yankee was bitten—Washington.”
“He will die,” said the doctor complacently. He was absurdly jealous for the efficacy of his method.
“He was alive yesterday, anyway. We shadowed him to the station.”
“Then he was not bitten—no, that is impossible. When the snake bites”—Oberzohn raised his palms and gazed piously at the ceiling—“after that there is nothing. No, no, my friend, you are mistaken.”
“I tell you I’m not making any mistake,” said the other doggedly. “I was in the room, I tell you, soon after they brought him in, and I heard one of the busies say that his face was all wet.”
“So!” said Oberzohn dully. “That is very bad.”
“But how do you do it, doctor? Do you shoot or sump’n?”
“Let us talk about eventual wealth and happiness,” said the doctor. “Tonight is a night of great joy for me. I will sing you a song.”
Then, to the amazement of the men and to their great unhappiness, he sang, in a thin reedy old voice, the story of a young peasant who had been thwarted in love and had thrown himself from a cliff into a seething waterfall. It was a lengthy song, intensely sentimental, and his voice held few of the qualities of music. The gang had never been set a more difficult job than to keep straight faces until he had finished.
“Gee! You’re some artist, doctor!” said the sycophantic Cuccini, and managed to get a simulation of envy into his voice.
“In my student days I was a great singer,” said the doctor modestly.
Over the mantelpiece was a big, old clock, with a face so faded that only a portion of the letters remained. Its noisy ticking had usually a sedative effect on the doctor. But its main purpose and value was its accuracy. Every day it was corrected by a message from Greenwich, and as Oberzohn’s success as an organizer depended upon exact timing, it was one of his most valuable assets.
He glanced up at the clock now, and that gave Cuccini his excuse.
“We’ll be getting along, doctor,” he said. “You don’t want anything tonight? I’d like to get a cut at that Gonsalez man. You won’t leave me out if there’s anything doing?”
Oberzohn rose and went out of the room without another word, for he knew that the rising of Cuccini was a signal that not only was the business of the day finished, but also that the gang needed its pay.
Every gang-leader attended upon Mr. Oberzohn once a week with his pay-roll, and it was usually the custom for the Herr Doktor to bring his cash-box into the room and extract sufficient to liquidate his indebtedness to the leader. It was a big box, and on pay-day, as this was, filled to the top with bank-notes and Treasury bills. He brought it back now, put it on the table, consulted the little slip that Cuccini offered to him, and, taking out a pad of notes, fastened about by a rubber band, he wetted his finger and thumb.
“You needn’t count them,” said Cuccini. “We’ll take the lot.”
The doctor turned to see that Cuccini was carelessly holding a gun in his hand.
“The fact is, doctor,” said Cuccini coolly, “we’ve seen the red light, and if we don’t skip now, while the skipping’s good, there’s going to be no place we can stay comfortable in this little island, and I guess we’ll follow Gurther.”
One glance the doctor gave at the pistol and then he resumed his counting, as though nothing had happened.
“Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty…”
“Now quit that,” said Cuccini roughly. “I tell you, you needn’t count.”
“My friend, I prefer to know what I am going to lose. It is a pardonable piece of curiosity.”
He raised his hand to the wall, where a length of cord hung, and pulled it gently, without taking his eyes from the bank-notes.
“What are you doing? Put up your hands!” hissed Cuccini.
“Shoot, I beg.” Oberzohn threw a pad of notes on the table. “There is your pay.” He slammed down the lid of the box. “Now you shall go, if you can go! Do you hear them?” He raised his hand, and to the strained ears of the men came a gentle rustling sound from the passage outside as though somebody were dragging a piece of parchment along the floor. “Do you hear? You shall go if you can,” said the doctor again, with amazing calmness.
“The snakes!” breathed Cuccini, going white, and the hand that held the pistol shook.
“Shoot them, my friend,” sneered Oberzohn. “If you see them, shoot them. But you will not see them, my brave man. They will be—where? No eyes shall see them come or go. They may lie behind a picture, they may wait until the door is opened, and then…!”
Cuccini’s mouth was dry.
“Call ‘em off, doctor,” he said tremulously.
“Your gun—on the table.”
Still the rustling was audible. Cuccini hesitated for a second, then obeyed, and took up the notes.
The other three men were huddled together by the fireplace, the picture of fear.
“Don’t open the door, doc,” said Cuccini, but Oberzohn had already gripped the handle and turned it.
They heard another door open and the click of the passage light as it had come on. Then he returned.
“If you go now, I shall not wish to see you again. Am I not a man to whom all secrets are known? You are well aware!”
Cuccini looked from the doctor to the door.
“Want us to go?” he asked, troubled.
Oberzohn shrugged.
“As you wish! It was my desire that you should stay with me tonight—there is big work and big money for all of you.”
The men were looking at one another uneasily.
“How long do you want us to stay?” asked Cuccini.
“Tonight only; if you would not prefer…”
Tonight would come the crisis. Oberzohn had realized this since the day dawned for him.
“We’ll stay—where do we sleep?”
For answer Oberzohn beckoned them from the room and they followed him into the laboratory. In the wall that faced them was a heavy iron door that opened into a concrete storehouse, where he kept various odds and ends of equipment, oil and spirit for his cars, and the little gas engine that worked a small dynamo in the laboratory and gave him, if necessary a lighting plant independent of outside current.
There were three long windows heavily barred and placed just under the ceiling.
“Looks like the condemned cell to me,” grumbled Cuccini suspiciously.
“Are the bolts on the inside of a condemned cell?” asked Oberzohn. “Does the good warden give you the key as I give you?”—
Cuccini took the key.
“All right,” he said ungraciously, “there are plenty of blankets here, boys—I guess you want us where the police won’t look, eh?”
“That is my intention,” replied the doctor.
Dr. Oberzohn closed the door on them and re-entered his study, his big mouth twitching with amusement. He pulled the cord again and closed the ventilator he had opened. It was only a few days before that he had discovered that there were dried leaves in the ventilator shaft, and that the opening of the inlet made them rustle, disturbingly for a man who was engaged in a profound study of the lesser known, and therefore the more highly cultured, philosophers.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE - THE THINGS IN THE BOX
HE heard the soft purr of engines,
and, looking through the hall window, saw the dim lights of the car approaching the house, and turned out the hall lamp. There he waited in the darkness, till the door of the limousine opened and Gurther jumped out. “I respectfully report that it is done, Herr Doktor,” he said.
Oberzohn nodded.
“The woman of Newton—where is she?”
“She is inside. Is it your wish that I should bring her? She was very troublesome, Herr Doktor, and I had to use the needle.”
“Bring her in—you!” He barked to the chauffeur. “Help our friend.”
Together they lifted the unconscious girl, but carried her no farther than the steps. At this point Oberzohn decided that she must return to the prison. First they sent the chauffeur away; the car was garaged at New Cross (it was one of Oberzohn’s three London depots), where the man also lived. After he had gone, they carried Joan between them to the factory, taking what, to Gurther, seemed an unnecessarily circuitous route. If it was necessary, it was at least expedient, for the nearest way to the factory led past the yawning hole that the doctor had dug with such labour.
There was no mistaking Oberzohn’s arrival this time. The trap went up with a thud, and Mirabelle listened, with a quickly beating heart, to the sound of feet coming down the stone stairs. There were two people, and they were walking heavily. Somehow she knew before she saw their burden that it was Joan. She was in evening dress, her face as white as chalk and her eyes closed; the girl thought she was dead when she saw them lay her on the bed.
“You have given her too much, Gurther,” said Oberzohn.
Gurther? She had not recognized him. It was almost impossible to believe that this was the dapper young man who had danced with her at the Arts Ball.
“I had to guess in the dark, Herr Doktor,” said Gurther.
They were talking in German, and Mirabelle’s acquaintance with that language was very slight. She saw Gurther produce a small flat case from his pocket, take out a little phial, and shake into the palm of his hand a small brown capsule. This he dissolved in a tiny tube which, with the water he used, was also extracted from the case. Half filling a minute syringe, he sent the needle into Joan’s arm. A pause, and then: “Soon she will wake, with your kind permission, Herr Doktor,” said Gurther.
(1929) The Three Just Men Page 25