by Sapper
‘No, Lakington; I’m not going to murder you.’ A gleam of hope came into the other’s eyes. ‘But I’m going to fight you in order to decide which of us two ceases to adorn the earth; that is, if your diagnosis of the contents of the bath is correct. What little gleam of pity I might have possessed for you has been completely extinguished by your present exhibition of nauseating cowardice. Fight, you worm, fight; or I’ll throw you in!’
And Lakington fought. The sudden complete turning of the tables had for the moment destroyed his nerve; now, at Drummond’s words, he recovered himself. There was no mercy on the soldier’s face, and in his inmost heart Lakington knew that the end had come. For strong and wiry though he was, he was no match for the other.
Relentlessly he felt himself being forced towards the deadly liquid he had prepared for Drummond, and as the irony of the thing struck him, the sweat broke out on his forehead and he cursed aloud. At last he backed into the edge of the bath, and his struggles redoubled. But still there was no mercy on the soldier’s face, and he felt himself being forced farther and farther over the liquid until he was only held from falling into it by Drummond’s grip on his throat.
Then, just before the grip relaxed and he went under, the soldier spoke once: ‘Henry Lakington,’ he said, ‘the retribution is just.’
Drummond sprang back, and the liquid closed over the wretched man’s head. But only for a second. With a dreadful cry, Lakington leapt out, and even Drummond felt a momentary qualm of pity. For the criminal’s clothes were already burnt through to the skin, and his face – or what was left of it – was a shining copper colour. Mad with agony, he dashed to the door, and flung it open. The four men outside, aghast at the spectacle, recoiled and let him through. And the kindly mercy which Lakington had never shown to anyone in his life was given to him at the last.
Blindly he groped his way up the stairs, and as Drummond got to the door the end came. Someone must have put in gear the machinery which worked on the fifth step, or perhaps it was automatic. For suddenly a heavy steel weight revolving on an arm whizzed out from the wall and struck Lakington behind the neck. Without a sound he fell forward, and the weight unchecked, clanged sullenly home. And thus did the invention of which he was proudest break the inventor’s own neck. Truly, the retribution was just…
‘That only leaves Peterson,’ remarked the American coming into the hall at that moment, and lighting a cigar.
‘That only leaves Peterson,’ agreed Drummond. ‘And the girl,’ he added as an afterthought.
CHAPTER 12
In Which the Last Round Takes Place
It was during the next hour or two that the full value of Mr Jerome K Green as an acquisition to the party became apparent. Certain other preparations in honour of Peterson’s arrival were duly carried out, and then arose the question of the safe in which the all-important ledger was kept.
‘There it is,’ said Drummond, pointing to a heavy steel door flush with the wall, on the opposite side of the room to the big one containing Lakington’s ill-gotten treasure. ‘And it doesn’t seem to me that you’re going to open that one by pressing any buttons in the wall.’
‘Then, Captain,’ drawled the American, ‘I guess we’ll open it otherwise. It’s sure plumb easy. I’ve been getting gay with some of the household effects, and this bar of soap sort of caught my eye.’
From his pocket he produced some ordinary yellow soap, and the others glanced at him curiously.
‘I’ll just give you a little demonstration,’ he continued, ‘of how our swell cracksmen over the water open safes when the owners have been so tactless as to remove the keys.’
Dexterously he proceeded to seal up every crack in the safe door with the soap, leaving a small gap at the top unsealed. Then round that gap he built what was to all intents and purposes a soap dam.
‘If any of you boys,’ he remarked to the intent group around him, ‘think of taking this up as a means of livelihood, be careful of this stuff.’ From another pocket he produced an India rubber bottle. ‘Don’t drop it on the floor if you want to be measured for your coffin. There’ll just be a boot and some bits to bury.’
The group faded away, and the American laughed.
‘Might I ask what it is?’ murmured Hugh politely from the neighbourhood of the door.
‘Sure thing, Captain,’ returned the detective, carefully pouring some of the liquid into the soap dam. ‘This is what I told you I’d got – gelignite; or, as the boys call it, the oil. It runs right round the cracks of the door inside the soap.’ He added a little more, and carefully replaced the stopper in the bottle. ‘Now a detonator and a bit of fuse, and I guess we’ll leave the room.’
‘It reminds one of those dreadful barbarians the Sappers, trying to blow up things,’ remarked Toby, stepping with some agility into the garden; and a moment or two later the American joined them.
‘It may be necessary to do it again,’ he announced, and as he spoke the sound of a dull explosion came from inside the house. ‘On the other hand,’ he continued, going back into the room and quietly pulling the safe door open, ‘it may not. There’s your book, Captain.’
He calmly relit his cigar as if safe opening was the most normal undertaking, and Drummond lifted out the heavy ledger and placed it on the table.
‘Go out in relays, boys,’ he said to the group of men by the door, ‘and get your breakfasts. I’m going to be busy for a bit.’
He sat down at the table and began to turn the pages. The American was amusing himself with the faked Chinese cabinet; Toby and Peter sprawled in two chairs, unashamedly snoring. And after a while the detective put down the cabinet, and coming over, sat at Drummond’s side.
Every page contained an entry – sometimes half a dozen – of the same type, and as the immensity of the project dawned on the two men their faces grew serious.
‘I told you he was a big man, Captain,’ remarked the American, leaning back in his chair and looking at the open book through half-closed eyes.
‘One can only hope to Heaven that we’re in time,’ returned Hugh. ‘Damn it, man,’ he exploded, ‘surely the police must know of this!’
The American closed his eyes still more.
‘Your English police know most things,’ he drawled, ‘but you’ve sort of got some peculiar laws in your country. With us, if we don’t like a man – something happens. He kind o’ ceases to sit up and take nourishment. But over here, the more scurrilous he is, the more he talks bloodshed and riot, the more constables does he get to guard him from catching cold.’
The soldier frowned.
‘Look at this entry here,’ he grunted. ‘That blighter is a Member of Parliament. What’s he getting four payments of a thousand pounds for?’
‘Why, surely, to buy some nice warm underclothes with,’ grinned the detective. Then he leaned forward and glanced at the name. ‘But isn’t he some pot in one of your big trade unions?’
‘Heaven knows,’ grunted Hugh. ‘I only saw the blighter once, and then his shirt was dirty.’ He turned over a few more pages thoughtfully. ‘Why, if these are the sums of money Peterson has blown, the man must have spent a fortune. Two thousand pounds to Ivolsky. Incidentally, that’s the bloke who had words with the whatnot on the stairs.’
In silence they continued their study of the book. The whole of England and Scotland had been split up into districts, regulated by population rather than area, and each district appeared to be in charge of one director. A varying number of sub-districts in every main division had each their sub-director and staff, and at some of the names Drummond rubbed his eyes in amazement. Briefly, the duties of every man were outlined: the locality in which his work lay, his exact responsibilities, so that overlapping was reduced to a minimum. In each case the staff was small, the work largely that of organisation. But in each district there appeared ten or a dozen names of men who were euphemistically described as lecturers; while at the end of the book there appeared nearly fifty names – both of men and
women – who were proudly denoted as first-class general lecturers. And if Drummond had rubbed his eyes at some of the names on the organising staffs, the first-class general lecturers deprived him of speech.
‘Why,’ he spluttered after a moment, ‘a lot of these people’s names are absolute household words in the country. They may be swine – they probably are. Thank God! I’ve very rarely met any; but they ain’t criminals.’
‘No more is Peterson,’ grinned the American; ‘at least not on that book. See here, Captain, it’s pretty clear what’s happening. In any country today you’ve got all sorts and conditions of people with more wind than brain. They just can’t stop talking, and as yet it’s not a criminal offence. Some of ’em believe what they say, like Spindleshanks upstairs; some of ’em don’t. And if they don’t, it makes ’em worse: they start writing as well. You’ve got clever men, intellectual men – look at some of those guys in the first-class general lecturers – and they’re the worst of the lot. Then you’ve got another class – the men with the business brain, who think they’re getting the sticky end of it, and use the talkers to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them. And the chestnuts, who are the poor blamed decent working men, are promptly dropped in the ash-pit to keep ’em quiet. They all want something for nothing, and I guess it can’t be done. They all think they’re fooling one another, and what’s really going at the moment is that Peterson is fooling the whole bunch. He wants all the strings in his hands, and it looks to me as if he’d got ’em there. He’s got the money – and we know where he got it from; he’s got the organisation – all either red-hot revolutionaries, or intellectual windstorms, or calculating knaves. He’s amalgamated ’em, Captain; and the whole blamed lot, whatever they may think, are really working for him.’
Drummond, thoughtfully, lit a cigarette.
‘Working towards a revolution in this country,’ he remarked quietly.
‘Sure thing,’ answered the American. ‘And when he brings it off, I guess you won’t catch Peterson for dust. He’ll pocket the boodle, and the boobs will stew in their own juice. I guessed it in Paris; that book makes it a certainty. But it ain’t criminal. In a Court of Law he could swear it was an organisation for selling birdseed.’
For a while Drummond smoked in silence, while the two sleepers shifted uneasily in their chairs. It all seemed so simple in spite of the immensity of the scheme. Like most normal Englishmen, politics and labour disputes had left him cold in the past; but no one who ever glanced at a newspaper could be ignorant of the volcano that had been simmering just beneath the surface for years past.
‘Not one in a hundred’ – the American’s voice broke into his train of thought – ‘of the so-called revolutionary leaders in this country are disinterested, Captain. They’re out for Number One, and when they’ve talked the boys into bloody murder, and your existing social system is down-and-out, they’ll be the leaders in the new one. That’s what they’re playing for – power; and when they’ve got it, God help the men who gave it to ’em.’
Drummond nodded, and lit another cigarette. Odd things he had read recurred to him: trade unions refusing to allow discharged soldiers to join them; the reiterated threats of direct action. And to what end?
A passage in a part of the ledger evidently devoted to extracts from the speeches of the first-class general lecturers caught his eye: ‘To me, the big fact of modern life is the war between classes… People declare that the method of direct action inside a country will produce a revolution. I agree… it involves the creation of an army.’
And beside the cutting was a note by Peterson in red ink: ‘An excellent man! Send for protracted tour.’
The note of exclamation appealed to Hugh; he could see the writer’s tongue in his cheek as he put it in.
‘It involves the creation of an army…’ The words of the intimidated rabbit came back to his mind. ‘The man of stupendous organising power, who has brought together and welded into one the hundreds of societies similar to mine, who before this have each, on their own, been feebly struggling towards the light. Now we are combined, and our strength is due to him.’
In other words, the army was on the road to completion, an army where ninety per cent of the fighters – duped by the remaining ten – would struggle blindly towards a dim, half-understood goal, only to find out too late that the whip of Solomon had been exchanged for the scorpion of his son…
‘Why can’t they be made to understand, Mr Green?’ he cried bitterly. ‘The working man – the decent fellow–’
The American thoughtfully picked his teeth.
‘Has anyone tried to make ’em understand, Captain? I guess I’m no intellectual guy, but there was a French writer fellow – Victor Hugo – who wrote something that sure hit the nail on the head. I copied it out, for it seemed good to me.’ From his pocket-book he produced a slip of paper. ‘“The faults of women, children, servants, the weak, the indigent, and the ignorant are the faults of husbands, fathers, masters, the strong, the rich, and the learned.” Wal!’ he leaned back in his chair, ‘there you are. Their proper leaders have sure failed them, so they’re running after that bunch of cross-eyed skaters. And sitting here, watching ’em run, and laughing fit to beat the band, is your pal, Peterson!’
It was at that moment that the telephone bell rang, after a slight hesitation Hugh picked up the receiver.
‘Very well,’ he grunted, after listening for a while ‘I will tell him.’
He replaced the receiver and turned to the American.
‘Mr Ditchling will be here for the meeting at two, and Peterson will be late,’ he announced slowly.
‘What’s Ditchling when he’s at home?’ asked the other.
‘One of the so-called leaders,’ answered Hugh briefly turning over the pages of the ledger. ‘Here’s his dossier, according to Peterson. “Ditchling, Charles. Good speaker; clever; unscrupulous. Requires big money; worth it. Drinks.”’
For a while they stared at the brief summary, and then the American burst into a guffaw of laughter.
‘The mistake you’ve made, Captain, in this country is not giving Peterson a seat in your Cabinet. He’d have the whole caboose eating out of his hand; and if you paid him a few hundred thousands a year, he might run straight and grow pigs as a hobby…’
II
It was a couple of hours later that Hugh rang up his rooms in Half Moon Street. From Algy, who spoke to him, he gathered that Phyllis and her father were quite safe, though the latter was suffering in the manner common to the morning after. But he also found out another thing – that Ted Jerningham had just arrived with the hapless Potts in tow, who was apparently sufficiently recovered to talk sense. He was still weak and dazed, but no longer imbecile.
‘Tell Ted to bring him down to The Elms at once,’ ordered Hugh. ‘There’s a compatriot of his here, waiting to welcome him with open arms.’
‘Potts is coming, Mr Green,’ he said, putting down the receiver. ‘Our Hiram C. And he’s talking sense. It seems to me that we may get a little light thrown on the activities of Mr Hocking and Herr Steinemann, and the other bloke.’
The American nodded slowly.
‘Von Gratz,’ he said. ‘I remember his name now. Steel man. Maybe you’re right, Captain, and that he knows something; anyway, I guess Hiram C Potts and I stick closer than brothers till I restore him to the bosom of his family.’
But Mr Potts, when he did arrive, exhibited no great inclination to stick close to the detective; in fact, he showed the greatest reluctance to enter the house at all. As Algy had said, he was still weak and dazed, and the sight of the place where he had suffered so much produced such an effect on him that for a while Hugh feared he was going to have a relapse. At length, however, he seemed to get back his confidence, and was persuaded to come into the central room.
‘It’s all right, Mr Potts,’ Drummond assured him over and over again. ‘Their gang is dispersed, and Lakington is dead. We’re all friends here now. You’re quite safe
. This is Mr Green, who has come over from New York especially to find you and take you back to your family.’
The millionaire stared in silence at the detective, who rolled his cigar round in his mouth.
‘That’s right, Mr Potts. There’s the little old sign.’ He threw. back his coat, showing the police badge, and the millionaire nodded. ‘I guess you’ve had things humming on the other side, and if it hadn’t been for the Captain here and his friends they’d be humming still.’
‘I am obliged to you, sir,’ said the American, speaking for the first time to Hugh. The words were slow and hesitating, as if he was not quite sure of his speech. ‘I seem to remember your face,’ he continued, ‘as part of the awful nightmare I’ve suffered the last few days – or is it weeks? I seem to remember having seen you, and you were always kind.’
‘That’s all over now, Mr Potts,’ said Hugh gently. ‘You got into the clutches of the most infernal gang of swine, and we’ve been trying to get you out again.’ He looked at him quietly. ‘Do you think you can remember enough to tell us what happened at the beginning? Take your time,’ he urged. ‘There’s no hurry.’
The others drew nearer eagerly, and the millionaire passed his hand dazedly over his forehead.
‘I was stopping at the Carlton,’ he began, ‘with Granger, my secretary. I sent him over to Belfast on a shipping deal and–’ He paused and looked round the group. ‘Where is Granger?’ he asked.
‘Mr Granger was murdered in Belfast, Mr Potts,’ said Drummond quietly, ‘by a member of the gang that kidnapped you.’
‘Murdered! Jimmy Granger murdered!’ He almost cried in his weakness. ‘What did the swine want to murder him for?’
‘Because they wanted you alone,’ explained Hugh. ‘Private secretaries ask awkward questions.’
After a while the millionaire recovered his composure, and with many breaks and pauses the slow, disjointed story continued.
‘Lakington! That was the name of the man I met at the Carlton. And then there was another…Peter…Peterson. That’s it. We all dined together, I remember, and it was after dinner, in my private sitting room, that Peterson put up his proposition to me… It was a suggestion that he thought would appeal to me as a businessman. He said – what was it? – that he could produce a gigantic syndicalist strike in England – revolution, in fact; and that as one of the biggest shipowners – the biggest, in fact – outside this country, I should be able to capture a lot of the British carrying trade. He wanted two hundred and fifty thousand pounds to do it, paid one month after the result was obtained… Said there were others in it…’