The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales

by Maurice Leblanc

  “Yes, sir,” I replied, and, bowing, went out, while with the ladies he turned in the direction of the dining-room.

  I idled about until the stable clock was just on the point of striking nine, when I made my way by the servants’ staircase to my master’s room. The corridor was in semi-darkness. I rapped, but there being no one there, I entered, switched on the light, and there upon the table found the small pile of new, cloth-bound six-shilling novels, held together with a strap of webbing, such as lawyers use to tie up their papers.

  I took them up, switched off the light, and carried them downstairs to the car, which I had previously brought out into the stable-yard. My lamps were already lit, and I was in the act of putting on my frieze coat when Saunders, driving the Mercedes, passed me, going towards the main entrance of the Hall. He had a passenger—a guest from the station, judging from his dress.

  As the stranger descended from the car the light over the steps revealed his face. I started. It was the jeweller I had spoken to in Bond Street—the man I had taken for the manager, but who was none other than Mr. Gilling himself!

  I saw that all was lost. In a few moments he would come face to face with Bindo!

  In an instant, however, I had made up my mind, and, re-entering the house, I made my way quickly through into the large hall. But Gilling was already there, kissing his wife and daughter. I glanced round, but was reassured to see both Bindo and Sir Charles were absentees. Did they know of Gilling’s impending arrival?

  I ran up to the rooms of both my friends, but could not find them. In Bindo’s room a dress-coat had been thrown upon the bed. He had changed since I had been up there for the books. Alarmed by the news of the jeweller’s arrival, they had, in all probability, changed hurriedly and slipped away. Therefore I ran down to the car, and, telling Saunders that I was off to Birmingham and should return on the morrow, I ran quietly down the long, dark avenue.

  From St. Mellions to Harwich, as the crow flies, is about one hundred and thirty miles. First, however, I went to Northampton, and put the previous body on the car. Then the road I took was by Huntingdon, Cambridge, Halstead, and Colchester—in all, about one hundred and seventy miles. The night was dark, but the roads were in fairly good condition, therefore I went at as high a speed as I dared, full of wonder as to what had really happened.

  Bindo’s dress-coat on the bed showed that he had left, therefore I had every hope that he had not been recognised by the jeweller. After I had changed the body at the coachbuilder’s at Northampton, the run to the Essex coast proved an exciting one, for I had one narrow escape at a level crossing. But to give details of the journey would serve no purpose. Suffice it to say that I duly arrived at the Great Eastern Hotel at Parkeston next morning, and registered there in the name of Parker.

  Then I waited in patience until, two days later, I received a note from Bindo, and met him at some distance from the hotel. His personal appearance was greatly altered, and he was shabbily dressed as a chauffeur.

  “By Jove!” he said, when we were alone, “we’ve had a narrow squeak. We had no idea when Henderson sent that telegram from London calling the old crone up to town that Gilling had been invited. We only heard of his impending arrival at the very moment we were bringing off the coup. Then, instead of remaining there, becoming indignant, and assisting the police, we were compelled to fly, thus giving the whole game away. If we had stayed, Gilling would have recognised us. By Jove! I never had such a tough quarter of an hour in all my life. Blythe has gone up to Scotland, and we shall ship the car across to Hamburg by to-night’s boat from Parkeston. You’ve got those books all right? Don’t lose them.”

  “I’ve left them in the car,” I replied.

  “Left them in the car!” he cried, glaring at me. “Are you mad?”

  “Mad! Why?”

  “Go and get them at once and lock them up in your bag. I’ll show you something when we get an opportunity.”

  The opportunity came three days later, when we were alone together in a room in Höfer’s Hotel, in the Bahnhofs-Platz, in Hamburg. He took the books from me, undid the buckle, and, to my surprise, showed me that the centres of the popular books had been cleverly cut out, so that they were literally boxes formed by the paper leaves. And each book was filled with splendid jewels!

  The haul was a huge one, for several of the diamond ornaments which had been taken from the Chameleon’s safe were of great value. The old lady was passionately fond of jewellery, and spent huge sums with Mr. Gilling. We afterwards discovered that several of the finest pieces we had taken had actually been sent to her on approval by Gilling, so, curiously enough, we had touched his property on a second occasion.

  “It was a difficult affair,” Bindo declared. “I had to pretend to make love to Medhurst, or I should never have been able to get a cast of the safe-key. However, we’ve been able to take the best of the old lady’s collection, and they’ll fetch a good price in Amsterdam, or I’m a Dutchman myself. Of course, there’s a big hue-and-cry after us, so we must lie very low over here for a bit. Fancy your leaving those novels kicking about in the car! Somebody might have wanted to read them!”

  CHAPTER VI

  THE GENTLEMAN FROM LONDON

  Months had passed since the affair of the six new novels.

  In Hamburg Bindo had left me and gone to see the old Jew in Amsterdam, while I had driven the “forty” south through Lüneburg, Brunswick, and Nordhausen to Erfurt, where, passing as an English gentleman of means, I remained for three weeks at a very comfortable hotel, afterwards moving on to Dresden.

  At regular intervals the Count sent me money, but he was, as usual, travelling constantly. I wrote to him to a newspaper-shop in the Tottenham Court Road, reporting my movements and my whereabouts; therefore I knew not from one day to another when I should receive sudden orders to rejoin him.

  The London papers had been full of the affair of the six novels, for it was now well known that the person who had abstracted the jewels was the same who had executed such a neat manœuvre at Gilling’s. One or two of the papers actually published leaderettes upon the subject, severely criticising the incompetency of the police in such matters. I have since heard, however, that at Scotland Yard there is a proverb that the wealthier the thief the less chance of his being caught. Bindo and his friends certainly did not lack funds. The various hauls they had made, even since my association with them, must have put many thousands into their pockets.

  They were a clever and daring trio. They never met unless absolutely necessary in order to arrange some ingenious piece of trickery, and they could all live weeks at the same hotel without either, by word or sign, betraying previous knowledge of each other. Indeed, Count Bindo di Ferraris was the very acme of well-dressed, well-groomed scoundrelism.

  Under the name of Ernest Crawford I was idling away some pleasant weeks at the Europäischer Hof, in the Alstadt, in Dresden, where I had made the acquaintance of a fair-haired Englishman named Upton, and his wife, a fluffy little woman some five years his junior. They had arrived at the hotel about a week after I had taken up my quarters, and as they became friendly I often took them for runs. Upton was the son of a rich Lancashire cotton-spinner, and was, I believe, on his honeymoon. Together we saw the sights of Dresden, the Royal Palace, the Green Vault, the museums and galleries, and had soon grown tired of them all. Therefore, almost daily we went for runs along the Elbe valley, delightful at that season of the vintage.

  One evening, while we were sitting at coffee in the lounge and I was chatting with Mrs. Upton, her husband was joined by a friend from London, a tall, rather loud-spoken, broad-shouldered man, with a pair of merry, twinkling eyes and a reddish moustache. He was a motor-expert, I soon discovered, for on the afternoon following his arrival, when I brought the car round to the hotel, he began to examine it critically.

  I had invited him to go with us
to the Golden Höhe, about six miles distant, and take tea at the restaurant, and he sat at my side as I drove. While passing through the little village of Rächnitz, Mr. Gibbs—for that was his name—suddenly asked—

  “What make of car is yours?”

  No wonder he asked, for so constantly had its identity been disguised that it nowadays bore about as much resemblance to a Napier as it did to a Panhard. I had always before me the fact that the police were on the look-out for a forty “Napier”; therefore I had managed to disguise it outwardly, although a glance within the “bonnet” would, of course, reveal the truth.

  “Oh,” I replied lightly, “it’s quite an unknown make—Bellini, of Turin. I’ve come to the conclusion that small makers can turn out just as good a car as, and perhaps even better than, the larger firms—providing you pay a fair price.”

  “I suppose so,” he said rather thoughtfully. “From her general build I took her to be an English Napier.”

  “She has the Napier cut,” I remarked. “I think Bellini imitates the English style.”

  It was fortunate, I thought, that the “bonnet” was strapped down and locked, for the engines were stamped with their maker’s name.

  “You travel about a lot on her, I suppose,” he went on. “It’s a fine car, certainly. Did you come across the Continent?”

  “Yes. I’ve been about Europe a good deal,” I answered. “Saves railway fares, you know.” And I laughed.

  We were travelling quickly, and, the dust being troublesome, we pulled up, and then, after all four of us goggling, went forward again.

  After tea at the Golden Höhe Mr. Gibbs again evinced a keen interest in the car, examining it carefully, and declaring it to be a most excellent one. Then, on the run back, he again turned the conversation to motoring topics, with a strenuous desire, it seemed, to know my most recent movements.

  A couple of days passed, and I found Upton’s friend a most congenial companion. Each afternoon we all went out for a run, and each evening, after dining, we went to the theatre.

  On the fourth day after Mr. Gibbs’s arrival a messenger brought me a note which, to my surprise, I found to be from Blythe, who directed me to meet him in secret in a certain café in the Grosse Garten at eleven o’clock that night.

  Then I knew that something further had been planned.

  In accordance with the request, I went to the café at the hour appointed. It was crowded, but I soon discovered him, smartly dressed, and seated at a table in the corner. After we had finished our beer I followed him out into the park, where, halting suddenly, he said—

  “Ewart, you’ve placed yourself in a pretty fine predicament!”

  “What do you mean?” I asked in surprise.

  “Well, I saw you yesterday afternoon driving down the Prager-strasse with the very gentleman to whom you ought to give the widest berth.”

  “You mean Gibbs?”

  “I mean that cunning old fox, Inspector Dyer, of Scotland Yard.”

  “What!” I gasped. “Dyer—is that the famous Dyer?”

  “He is. I once, to my cost, had occasion to meet him, and it’s hardly likely that I’d forget his face. I saw you coming along with him, and you could have knocked me down with a feather.”

  “But I—well, I really can’t believe that he’s a detective,” I declared, utterly incredulous.

  “Believe it, or disbelieve it—it’s a fact, I tell you. You’ve been given away somehow, and Dyer has now just got you in his palm.”

  Briefly I explained how I had met Upton, and how Mr. Gibbs had been introduced.

  “Upton may not be what he pretends, you know,” Blythe replied. “They want us very badly at Scotland Yard, and that’s why the affair has been given over to Dyer. He’s the man who generally does the travelling on the Continent. But you know him well enough by reputation, of course. Everyone does.”

  Mr. Gibbs’s intense interest in the car and its maker was thus accounted for. I saw how completely I had been taken in, and how entirely I was now in the renowned detective’s hands. He might already have been round to the garage, unlocked the “bonnet” with a false key, and seen the name “Napier” stamped upon the engine.

  How, I wondered, had he been able to trace me? No doubt the fact that we had shipped the car across from Parkeston to Hamburg was well known to Scotland Yard, yet since that night it had undergone two or three transformations which had entirely disguised it. I was rapidly growing a moustache, too, and had otherwise altered my personal appearance since I posed as Bindo’s chauffeur in Scarborough.

  “The Count, who is lying low in a small hotel in Düsseldorf, wants you to meet him with the car in Turin in a fortnight’s time—at the Hotel Europe. A Russian princess is staying there—and we have a plan. But it seems very probable that you’ll be waiting extradition to Bow Street if you don’t make a bold move, and slip out of Dyer’s hands.”

  “Yes,” I said thoughtfully. “If Gibbs is really Dyer himself, then, I fear, that although I’ve been discreet—for I make a point of never telling my business to strangers—yet he has more than a suspicion that the car is the same as the one I drove daily on the Esplanade at Scarborough.”

  “And if he has a suspicion he has probably wired to England for one of the witnesses to come out and identify you—Gilling himself, most probably.”

  “Then we’re in a most complete hole!” I declared, drawing a long face.

  “Absolutely. What are you going to do?”

  “What can I do?”

  “Get out of it—and at once,” replied Blythe coolly. “If Dyer discovers and tries to prevent your escape, make a bold fight for it,” and from his hip-pocket he drew a serviceable-looking plated revolver, and handed it to me with the remark that it was fully loaded.

  I saw that my position was one of peril. Even now, Dyer might have watched me keeping this appointment with Blythe.

  “I shall leave for Leipzig in an hour,” my friend said. “You’d better return to the hotel, get the car, and make a dash for it.”

  “Why should I get the car?” I queried “Why not slip away at once?”

  “If you tried to you’d probably be ‘pinched’ at the station. Dyer is an artful bird, you know. Once up with you, he isn’t likely to lose sight of you for very long.”

  As he was speaking I recognised, seated at a table before the café some distance away, my friend Upton, idly smoking a cigar, and apparently unconscious of my proximity.

  “That’s all right,” declared Blythe, when I had pointed him out. “It proves two things—first, that this Mr. Upton is really one of the younger men from the Yard, and, secondly, that Dyer has sent him after you to watch where you went to-night. That’s fortunate, for if Dyer himself had come it’s certain he would have recognised me. I gave him a rather nasty jag when he arrested me four years ago, so it isn’t very likely he forgets. And now let’s part. At all hazards, get away from Dresden. But go back to the hotel first, so as to disarm suspicion. When you are safe, wire to the address in the Tottenham Court Road. So long.”

  And without another word the well-dressed jewel-thief turned on his heels, and disappeared in the darkness of the leafy avenue.

  My feelings were the reverse of happy as I made my way back to the Europäischer Hof. To obtain the car that night would be to arouse suspicion that I had discovered Mr. Gibbs’s identity. My safety lay in getting away quietly and without any apparent haste. Indeed, when I gained my room and calmly thought it all over, I saw that it would be policy to wait until next day, when I could obtain the car from the garage as usual, and slip away before the crafty pair were aware of my absence.

  The reason they had not applied to the German police to arrest me could be but one. They had sent to London for someone to come and identify me. This person might arrive at any moment. Dyer had been in Dre
sden already four days; therefore, every minute’s delay was dangerous.

  After long and careful consideration, I resolved to wait until the morrow. No sleep, however, came to my eyes that night, as you may well imagine. All the scandal of arrest, trial, and imprisonment rose before me as the long night hours dragged on. I lit the stove in my room, and carefully destroyed everything that might give a possible clue to my identity, and then sat at the window, watching for day to break.

  Surely Dyer and Upton had achieved a very clever piece of detective work to discover me as they had. I had done my utmost, as I thought, to efface my identity and to give the car an entirely different appearance from that which it had presented at Scarborough. The only manner in which I had been “given away” was, I believed, by means of some English five-pound notes which Bindo had sent me from Stettin, and which I had cashed in Dresden. If these had been stolen—as most probably they had been—then it would well account for the sudden appearance of Mr. Upton and his very charming wife, who had come holiday-making to Germany. Upton had, in his turn, sent information to his superior officer, Inspector Dyer, who had come out to see for himself.

  What an awful fool I had been! How completely I had fallen into the cunningly baited trap!

  At last the grey dawn came, spreading to a bright autumn morning. The roads outside were dry and dusty. I meant, in a few hours, to make a breakneck dash out of Dresden, and to hide somewhere in the country. To attempt to escape by rail would be folly. But if either man was on the watch and invited himself to go for a run with me? What then?

  I grasped the weapon in my pocket and set my teeth hard, recollecting Blythe’s words.

  At eight I ordered my coffee, and, drinking it in feverish haste, went down to the rear of the hotel where the garage was situated. While crossing the courtyard, however, I met Upton, who had a habit of early rising, and was apparently idling about. I purposely did not wear my motor-cap, but my pockets were stuffed with all my belongings that were portable.