by Sapper
‘But what are you going to do?’ she cried.
Hugh grinned. ‘I haven’t the remotest idea,’ he answered. ‘Doubtless the Lord will provide.’
The instant the girl had left the room Hugh switched off the lights and stepped across to the curtains which covered the long windows. He pulled them aside, letting them come together behind him; then, cautiously, he unbolted one side of the big centre window. The night was dark, and the moon was not due to rise for two or three hours, but he was too old a soldier to neglect any precautions. He wanted to see more of The Elms and its inhabitants; but he did not want them to see more of him.
Silently he dodged across the lawn towards the big trees at the end, and leaning up against one of them, he proceeded to make a more detailed survey of his objective. It was the same type of house as the one he had just left, and the grounds seemed about the same size. A wire fence separated the two places, and in the darkness Hugh could just make out a small wicket gate, closing a path which connected both houses. He tried it, and found to his satisfaction that it opened silently.
Passing through, he took cover behind some bushes from which he could command a better view of Mr Lakington’s abode. Save for one room on the ground floor the house was in darkness, and Hugh determined to have a look at that room. There was a chink in the curtains, through which the light was streaming out, which struck him as having possibilities.
Keeping under cover, he edged towards it, and at length, he got into a position from which he could see inside. And what he saw made him decide to chance it, and go even closer.
Seated at the table was a man he did not recognise; while on either side of him sat Lakington and Peterson. Lying on a sofa smoking a cigarette and reading a novel was a tall, dark girl, who seemed completely uninterested in the proceedings of the other three. Hugh placed her at once as the doubtful daughter Irma, and resumed his watch on the group at the table.
A paper was in front of the man, and Peterson, who was smoking a large cigar, was apparently suggesting that he should make use of the pen which Lakington was obligingly holding in readiness. In all respects a harmless tableau, save for one small thing – the expression on the man’s face. Hugh had seen it before often – only then it had been called shell shock. The man was dazed, semi-unconscious. Every now and then he stared round the room, as if bewildered; then he would shake his head and pass his hand wearily over his forehead. For a quarter of an hour the scene continued; then Lakington produced an instrument from his pocket. Hugh saw the man shrink back in terror, and reach for the pen. He saw the girl lie back on the sofa as if disappointed and pick up her novel again; and he saw Lakington’s face set in a cold sneer. But what impressed him most in that momentary flash of action was Peterson. There was something inhuman in his complete passivity. By not the fraction of a second did he alter the rate at which he was smoking – the slow, leisurely rate of the connoisseur; by not the twitch of an eyelid did his expression change. Even as he watched the man signing his name, no trace of emotion showed on his face – whereas on Lakington’s there shone a fiendish satisfaction.
The document was still lying on the table, when Hugh produced his revolver. He knew there was foul play about, and the madness of what he had suddenly made up his mind to do never struck him: being that manner of fool, he was made that way. But he breathed a pious prayer that he would shoot straight – and then he held his breath. The crack of the shot and the bursting of the only electric light bulb in the room were almost simultaneous; and the next second, with a roar of ‘Come on, boys,’ he burst through the window. At an immense advantage over the others, who could see nothing for the moment, he blundered round the room. He timed the blow at Lakington to a nicety; he hit him straight on the point of the jaw and he felt the man go down like a log. Then he grabbed at the paper on the table, which tore in his hand, and picking the dazed signer up bodily, he rushed through the window on to the lawn. There was not an instant to be lost; only the impossibility of seeing when suddenly plunged into darkness had enabled him to pull the thing off so far. And before that advantage disappeared he had to be back at The Larches with his burden, no light weight for even a man of his strength to carry.
But there seemed to be no pursuit, no hue and cry. As he reached the little gate he paused and looked back, and he fancied he saw outside the window a gleam of white, such as a shirt-front. He lingered for an instant, peering into the darkness and recovering his breath, when with a vicious phut something buried itself in the tree beside him. Drummond lingered no more; long years of experience left no doubt in his mind as to what that something was.
‘Compressed-air rifle – or electric,’ he muttered to himself, stumbling on, and half dragging, half carrying his dazed companion.
He was not very clear in his own mind what to do next, but the matter was settled for him unexpectedly. Barely had he got into the drawing-room, when the door opened and the girl rushed in.
‘Get him away at once,’ she cried. ‘In your car… Don’t waste a second. I’ve started her up.’
‘Good girl,’ he cried enthusiastically. ‘But what about you?’
She stamped her foot impatiently. ‘I’m all right – absolutely all right. Get him away – that’s all that matters.’
Drummond grinned. ‘The humorous thing is that I haven’t an idea who the bird is – except that–’ He paused, with his eyes fixed on the man’s left thumb. The top joint was crushed into a red, shapeless pulp, and suddenly the meaning of the instrument Lakington had produced from his pocket became clear. Also the reason of that dreadful cry at dinner…
‘By God!’ whispered Drummond, half to himself, while his jaws set like a steel vice. ‘A thumbscrew. The devils…the bloody swine…’
‘Oh! quick, quick,’ the girl urged in an agony. ‘They may be here at any moment.’ She dragged him to the door, and together they forced the man into the car.
‘Lakington won’t,’ said Hugh, with a grin. ‘And if you see him tomorrow – don’t ask after his jaw… Good night, Phyllis.’
With a quick movement he raised her hand to his lips; then he slipped in the clutch and the car disappeared down the drive.
He felt a sense of elation and of triumph at having won the first round, and as the car whirled back to London through the cool night air his heart was singing with the joy of action. And it was perhaps as well for his peace of mind that he did not witness the scene in the room at The Elms.
Lakington still lay motionless on the floor; Peterson’s cigar still glowed steadily in the darkness. It was hard to believe that he had ever moved from the table; only the bullet imbedded in a tree proved that somebody must have got busy. Of course, it might have been the girl, who was just lighting another cigarette from the stump of the old one.
At length Peterson spoke. ‘A young man of dash and temperament,’ he said genially. ‘It will be a pity to lose him.’
‘Why not keep him and lose the girl?’ yawned Irma. ‘I think he might amuse me–’
‘We have always our dear Henry to consider,’ answered Peterson. ‘Apparently the girl appeals to him. I’m afraid, Irma, he’ll have to go…and at once…’
The speaker was tapping his left knee softly with his hand; save for that slight movement he sat as if nothing had happened. And yet ten minutes before a carefully planned coup had failed at the instant of success. Even his most fearless accomplices had been known to confess that Peterson’s inhuman calmness sent cold shivers down their backs.
CHAPTER 3
In Which Things Happen in Half Moon Street
Hugh Drummond folded up the piece of paper he was studying and rose to his feet as the doctor came into the room. He then pushed a silver box of cigarettes across the table and waited.
‘Your friend,’ said the doctor, ‘is in a very peculiar condition, Captain Drummond – very peculiar.’ He sat down and, putting the tips of his fingers together, gazed at Drummond in his most professional manner. He paused for a moment, as if exp
ecting an awed agreement with this profound utterance, but the soldier was calmly lighting a cigarette. ‘Can you,’ resumed the doctor, ‘enlighten me at all as to what he has been doing during the last few days?’
Drummond shook his head. ‘Haven’t an earthly, doctor.’
‘There is, for instance, that very unpleasant wound in his thumb,’ pursued the other. ‘The top joint is crushed to a pulp.’
‘I noticed that last night,’ answered Hugh non-committally. ‘Looks as if it had been mixed up between a hammer and an anvil, don’t it?’
‘But you have no idea how it occurred?’
‘I’m full of ideas,’ said the soldier. ‘In fact, if it’s any help to you in your diagnosis, that wound was caused by the application of an unpleasant mediaeval instrument known as a thumbscrew.’
The worthy doctor looked at him in amazement. ‘A thumbscrew! You must be joking, Captain Drummond.’
‘Very far from it,’ answered Hugh briefly. ‘If you want to know, it was touch and go whether the other thumb didn’t share the same fate.’ He blew out a cloud of smoke, and smiled inwardly as he noticed the look of scandalised horror on his companion’s face. ‘It isn’t his thumb that concerns me,’ he continued; ‘it’s his general condition. What’s the matter with him?’
The doctor pursed his lips and looked wise, while Drummond wondered that no one had ever passed a law allowing men of his type to be murdered on sight.
‘His heart seems sound,’ he answered after a weighty pause, ‘and I found nothing wrong with him constitutionally. In fact, I may say, Captain Drummond, he is in every respect a most healthy man. Except – er – except for this peculiar condition.’
Drummond exploded. ‘Damnation take it, and what on earth do you suppose I asked you to come round for? It’s of no interest to me to hear that his liver is working properly.’ Then he controlled himself. ‘I beg your pardon, doctor: I had rather a trying evening last night. Can you give me any idea as to what has caused this peculiar condition?’
His companion accepted the apology with an acid bow. ‘Some form of drug,’ he answered.
Drummond heaved a sigh of relief. ‘Now we’re getting on,’ he cried. ‘Have you any idea what drug?’
‘It is, at the moment, hard to say,’ returned the other. ‘It seems to have produced a dazed condition mentally, without having affected him physically. In a day or two, perhaps, I might be able to – er – arrive at some conclusion…’
‘Which, at present, you have not. Right! Now we know where we are.’ A pained expression flitted over the doctor’s face: this young man was very direct. ‘To continue,’ Hugh went on, ‘as you don’t know what the drug is, presumably you don’t know either how long it will take for the effect to wear off.’
‘That – er – is, within limits, correct,’ conceded the doctor.
‘Right! Once again we know where we are. What about diet?’
‘Oh! light… Not too much meat… No alcohol…’ He rose to his feet as Hugh opened the door; really the war seemed to have produced a distressing effect on people’s manners. Diet was the one question on which he always let himself go…
‘Not much meat – no alcohol. Right! Good morning, doctor. Down the stairs and straight on. Good morning.’ The door closed behind him, and he descended to his waiting car with cold disapproval on his face. The whole affair struck him as most suspicious – thumbscrews, strange drugs… Possibly it was his duty to communicate with the police…
‘Excuse me, sir.’ The doctor paused and eyed a well-dressed man who had spoken to him uncompromisingly.
‘What can I do for you, sir?’ he said.
‘Am I right in assuming that you are a doctor?’
‘You are perfectly correct, sir, in your assumption.’
The man smiled: obviously a gentleman, thought the practitioner, with his hand on the door of his car.
‘It’s about a great pal of mine, Captain Drummond, who lives in here,’ went on the other. ‘I hope you won’t think it unprofessional, but I thought I’d ask you privately how you find him.’
The doctor looked surprised. ‘I wasn’t aware that he was ill,’ he answered.
‘But I heard he’d had a bad accident,’ said the man, amazed.
The doctor smiled. ‘Reassure yourself, my dear sir,’ he murmured in his best professional manner. ‘Captain Drummond, so far as I am aware, has never been better. I – er – cannot say the same of his friend.’ He stepped into his car. ‘Why not go up and see for yourself?’
The car rolled smoothly into Piccadilly, but the man showed no signs of availing himself of the doctor’s suggestion. He turned and walked rapidly away, and a few moments later – in an exclusive West End club – a trunk call was put through to Godalming – a call which caused the recipient to nod his head in satisfaction and order the Rolls-Royce.
Meanwhile, unconscious of this sudden solicitude for his health, Hugh Drummond was once more occupied with the piece of paper he had been studying on the doctor’s entrance. Every now and then he ran his fingers through his crisp brown hair and shook his head in perplexity. Beyond establishing the fact that the man in the peculiar condition was Hiram C Potts, the American multi-millionaire, he could make nothing out of it.
‘If only I’d managed to get the whole of it,’ he muttered to himself for the twentieth time. ‘That dam’ fellah Peterson was too quick.’ The scrap he had torn off was typewritten, save for the American’s scrawled signature, and Hugh knew the words by heart.
plete paralysis
ade of Britain
months I do
the holder of
of five million
do desire and
earl necklace and the
are at present
chess of Lamp-
k no questions
btained.
AM C POTTS.
At length he replaced the scrap in his pocketbook and rang the bell.
‘James,’ he remarked as his servant came in, ‘will you whisper “very little meat and no alcohol” in your wife’s ear, so far as the bird next door is concerned? Fancy paying a doctor to come round and tell one that!’
‘Did he say anything more, sir?’
‘Oh! a lot. But that was the only thing of the slightest practical use, and I knew that already.’ He stared thoughtfully out of the window. ‘You’d better know,’ he continued at length, ‘that as far as I can see we’re up against a remarkably tough proposition.’
‘Indeed, sir,’ murmured his servant. ‘Then perhaps I had better stop any further insertion of that advertisement. It works out at six shillings a time.’
Drummond burst out laughing. ‘What would I do without you, oh! my James,’ he cried. ‘But you may as well stop it. Our hands will be quite full for some time to come, and I hate disappointing hopeful applicants for my services.’
‘The gentleman is asking for you, sir.’ Mrs Denny’s voice from the door made them look round, and Hugh rose.
‘Is he talking sensibly, Mrs Denny?’ he asked eagerly, but she shook her head.
‘Just the same, sir,’ she announced. ‘Looking round the room all dazed like. And he keeps on saying “Danger”.’
Hugh walked quickly along the passage to the room where the millionaire lay in bed.
‘How are you feeling?’ said Drummond cheerfully.
The man stared at him uncomprehendingly, and shook his head.
‘Do you remember last night?’ Hugh continued, speaking very slowly and distinctly. Then a sudden idea struck him and he pulled the scrap of paper out of his case. ‘Do you remember signing that?’ he asked, holding it out to him.
For a while the man looked at it; then with a sudden cry of fear he shrank away. ‘No, no,’ he muttered, ‘not again.’
Hugh hurriedly replaced the paper. ‘Bad break on my part, old bean; you evidently remember rather too well. It’s quite all right,’ he continued reassuringly; ‘no one will hurt you.’ Then after a pause: ‘Is your name
Hiram C Potts?’
The man nodded his head doubtfully and muttered ‘Hiram Potts’ once or twice, as if the words sounded familiar.
‘Do you remember driving in a motor car last night?’ persisted Hugh.
But what little flash of remembrance had pierced the drug-clouded brain seemed to have passed; the man only stared dazedly at the speaker. Drummond tried him with a few more questions, but it was no use, and after a while he got up and moved towards the door.
‘Don’t you worry, old son,’ he said with a smile. ‘We’ll have you jumping about like a two-year-old in a couple of days.’
Then he paused: the man was evidently trying to say something. ‘What is it you want?’ Hugh leant over the bed.
‘Danger, danger.’ Faintly the words came, and then, with a sigh, he lay back exhausted.
With a grim smile Drummond watched the motionless figure.
‘I’m afraid,’ he said half aloud, ‘that you’re rather like your medical attendant. Your only contribution to the sphere of pure knowledge is something I know already.’
He went out and quietly closed the door. And as he re-entered his sitting-room he found his servant standing motionless behind one of the curtains watching the street below.
‘There’s a man, sir,’ he remarked without turning round, ‘watching the house.’
For a moment Hugh stood still, frowning. Then he gave a short laugh. ‘The devil there is!’ he remarked. ‘The game has begun in earnest, my worthy warrior, with the first nine points to us. For possession, even of a semi-dazed lunatic, is nine points of the law, is it not, James?’
His servant retreated cautiously from the curtain, and came back into the room. ‘Of the law – yes, sir,’ he repeated enigmatically. ‘It is time, sir, for your morning glass of beer.’
II
At twelve o’clock precisely the bell rang, announcing a visitor, and Drummond looked up from the columns of the Sportsman as his servant came into the room.