The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales

by Maurice Leblanc

  “I’m ill!” I gasped. “I—I’m sure I’m poisoned!”

  The faces of all smiled again, while the Baron uttered some words which I could not understand, and then there was a dead silence, all still watching me intently—all except a fair-haired young man opposite me, who seemed to have fallen back in his chair unconscious.

  “You fiends!” I cried, with a great effort, as I struggled to rise.“What have I done to you that you should—poison—me?”

  I know that the Baron grinned in my face, and that I fell forward heavily upon the table, my heart gripped in the spasm of death.

  Of what occurred afterwards I have no recollection, for when I slowly regained knowledge of things around me, I found myself lying beneath a bare, leafless hedge in a grass field. I managed to struggle to my feet, and discovered myself in a bare, flat, open country. As far as I could judge it was midday. I got to a gate, skirted a hedge, and gained the main road. With difficulty I walked to the nearest town, a distance of about four miles, without meeting a soul, and to my surprise found myself in Hitchin. The spectacle of a man entering the town in evening dress and hatless in broad daylight was no doubt curious, but I was anxious to return to London and give information against those who had, without any apparent motive, laid an ingenious plot to poison me.

  At the “Sun” I learned that the time was eleven in the morning. The only manner in which I could account for my presence in Hitchin was that, believed to be dead by the Baron and his accomplices, I had been conveyed in a car to the spot where I was found.

  What, I wondered, had become of the fair-haired young man whom I had seen unconscious opposite me?

  A few shillings remained in my pocket, and, strangely enough, beside me when I recovered consciousness I had found a small fluted phial marked “Prussic acid—poison.” The assassins had attempted to make it apparent that I had committed suicide!

  Two hours later, after a rest and a wash, I borrowed an overcoat and golf-cap, and took the train to King’s Cross. At Judd Street Police Station I made a statement, and with two plain-clothes officers returned to the house in Burton Crescent, only to find that the fair Julie and her friends had flown.

  On forcing the door, we found the dining-table just as it had been left after the poisoned snap-dragon of the previous night. Nothing had been touched. Only Julie, the Baron, the man-servant, and the guests had all gone, and the place was deserted.

  The police were utterly puzzled at the entire absence of motive.

  On my return to my rooms I found orders from Bindo to start at once for Petersburg, which I was compelled to do. So I left London full of wonder at my exciting experience, and not until my arrival at Wirballen, the Russian frontier, six days later, did I discover that, though my passport remained in my wallet, a special police permit to enable me to pass in and out of the districts affected by the revolutionary Terror, was missing! It was a permit which Blythe had cleverly obtained through one of his friends, a high diplomatist, and without which I could not move rapidly in Russia.

  Was it possible that Julie and her friends had stolen it? Was it to be believed that the scoundrelly Baron had attempted to take my life by such dastardly trickery in order to secure that all-powerful document?

  That it was of greatest value to any revolutionist I knew quite well, for upon it was the signature of the Minister of the Interior, and its bearer, immune from arrest or interference by the police, might come and go in Russia without let or hindrance.

  Were they Russians? Certainly the language they had spoken was not Russian, but it might have been Polish. Where was the young man who had been my fellow-victim?

  Loss of this special permit caused me considerable inconvenience, for I had to go to Moscow, and the Terror raging there, I had to get another permit before I could pass and repass the military cordon.

  Yes, Julie Rosier was a mystery. Indeed, the whole affair was a complete enigma.

  I duly returned to London, after assisting Bindo in trying to make acoup that was unfortunately in vain, and then learnt that the body of an unknown young man in evening dress had been found in the river Crouch in Essex, and from the photograph shown me at Scotland Yard I identified it as that of my fellow-guest.

  Through the whole year the adventure has sorely puzzled me, and only the other day light was thrown upon it in the following manner—

  I was in Petersburg again, when I received a polite note from General Zuroff, the chief of police, requesting me to call upon him. The summons caused me considerable apprehension I must admit.

  On entering his room at the Ministry, he gave me a cigarette, and commenced to chat. Then suddenly he touched a bell, another door opened, and I was amazed at seeing before me, between two grey-coated police-officers, a woman—Julie Rosier!

  For an instant she glared at me as though she saw an apparition. Then, with a loud scream, she fainted.

  “Ah!” exclaimed Zuroff. “Then what is reported is correct—eh? You and your friend the Baron enticed this Englishman to your house in London, for you knew by some means that he carried the order of the Minister allowing the bearer free passage everywhere in Russia. You saw that if you merely stole it he would give information, and it would be immediately cancelled. Therefore you cleverly plotted to take his life and make it appear as a case of suicide.” Then, with a wave of his hand, he said, “Take the prisoner back to the fortress.”

  The woman uttered no word. She only fixed her big dark eyes upon me with an expression of abject terror, and then the guards led her out.

  From a drawer Zuroff took the precious document that had been stolen from me, saying—

  “Julie Rosier—or Sophie Markovitch, as her real name is—was arrested in a house in the Nevski yesterday, while the Baron was discovered at the Hôtel d’Angleterre. Both are most violent revolutionists, and to them is due the terrible rioting in Moscow a few months ago. The Baron was hand in hand with Gapon and his colleagues, but escaped to England, and has been there for nearly a year, until, as the outcome of the dastardly plot against you, he altered his appearance, and returned as George Ewart, chauffeur to Baron Bindo di Ferraris of Rome. The arrests yesterday were very smartly made.”

  “But how do you know the details of the attempt upon me?”

  “All men can be bought at a price. They were watched constantly while in London. Besides, one of your fellow-guests of that night—revolutionists all of them—recently turned police spy and reported the facts. It was he who gave us information regarding the whereabouts of Sophie and the Baron.”

  “But another man—a young fellow with fair hair—ate some of the plums from the snap-dragon and died.”

  “Yes; he was young Ivan Kinski—a Pole, who, though a Terrorist, was suspected by his friends of being a spy. You took one plum only, while he probably took more. At any rate, you had a very narrow escape. But you at least have the satisfaction of knowing that Julie will never again fascinate, and the Baron will never again be given an opportunity of preparing his fatal snap-dragon.”

  My friendliness with Zuroff stood us in good stead; for, a week later, Bindo and Blythe contrived to get a very pretty diamond necklet and pair of earrings from a lady in Petersburg, which fetched six hundred golden louis in Amsterdam.

  CHAPTER XI

  THE PERIL OF PIERRETTE

  I

  CONCERNS A STRANGE CONSPIRACY

  Dusk was falling early in Piccadilly as I sat in the car outside the Royal Automobile Club, awaiting the reappearance of my master.

  The grey February afternoon had been bitterly cold, and for an hour I had waited there half frozen. Since morning Count Bindo di Ferraris and myself had been on the road, coming up from Shrewsbury, and, tired out, I was anxious to get into the garage.

  As chauffeur to a trio of perhaps the most expert “crooks” in Europe, my life was the revers
e of uneventful. I was constantly going hither and thither, often on all-night journeys, and always moving rapidly from place to place, often selling the old car and buying a new one, and constantly on the look-out for police-traps of more than one variety.

  Only a week previously the Count had handed me five hundred pounds in Bank of England notes, telling me to sell the forty horse-power six-cylinder “Napier,” which, still a magnificent car, might easily be “spotted,” and to purchase a “sixty” of some other make. By that I knew that some fresh scheme was afoot, and our run to Shrewsbury and Barmouth, in North Wales, had been to test the capabilities of the new “Mercedes” I had purchased a couple of days previously, and in which I now sat.

  It was certainly as fine a car as was on the road, its open exhaust a little noisy perhaps, but capable of getting up a tremendous speed when occasion required. A long, dark-red body, it was fitted with every up-to-date convenience, even to the big electric horn placed in the centre of the radiator, an instrument which emitted a deep warning blast unlike the tone of air-horns, and sounding as long as ever the finger was kept upon the button placed on the driving-wheel.

  In every way the car was perfect. I fancy that I know something about cars, but even with my object to lower the price I failed to discover any defect in her in any particular.

  Suddenly the Count, in a big motor coat and cap, emerged from the Club, ran hurriedly down the steps, and mounting into the seat beside me, said—

  “To Clifford Street, Ewart, as quick as you can. I want to have five minutes’ talk with you.”

  So next instant we glided away into the traffic, and I turned up Bond Street until I reached his chambers, where, when Simmons the valet came out to mind the car, I ascended to Count Bindo’s pretty sitting-room.

  “Sit down, Ewart,” exclaimed the debonnair young man, who was so thoroughly a cosmopolitan, and who in his own chambers was known as Mr. Bellingham, the son of a man who had suddenly died after making a fortune out of certain railway contracts in the Argentine. “Have a drink;” and he poured me out a peg of whisky and soda. He always treated me as his equal when alone. At first I had hated being in his service, yet now the excitement of it all appealed to my roving nature, and though I profited little from a monetary point of view, save the handsome salary I was paid for keeping a still tongue between my teeth, I nevertheless found my post not at all an incongenial one.

  “Look here, Ewart,” the Count exclaimed, with scarcely a trace of his Italian accent, after he had lit a cigarette: “I want to give you certain instructions. We have a very intricate and ticklish affair to deal with. But I trust you implicitly, after that affair of the pretty Mademoiselle Valentine. I know you’re not the man to lose your head over a pretty face. Only fools do that. One can seek out a pretty face when one has made a pile. You and I want money—not toys, don’t we?”

  I nodded assent, smiling at his bluntness.

  “Well, if this thing comes off, it will mean a year’s acceptable rest to us—not rest within four walls, we can easily obtain that, but rest out on one or other of the Greek islands, or on the Bosphorus, or somewhere where we shall be perfectly safe,” he said. “Now I want you to start to-night for Monte Carlo.”

  “To-night!” I exclaimed, dismayed.

  “Yes. You have plenty of time to catch the Dieppe boat at Newhaven. I’ll wire to them to say you are coming—name of Bellingham, of course. I shall leave by train in the morning, but you’ll be at Monty—the Hôtel de Paris—almost as soon as I am. I wouldn’t attempt to go by the Grenoble road, because I heard the other day that there’s a lot of snow about there. Go down to Valence and across to Die.”

  I was rather sick at being compelled to leave so suddenly. Of late I had hardly been in London at all. I was very desirous of visiting some aged relations from whom I had expectations.

  Bindo saw that my face had fallen.

  “Look here, Ewart,” he said, “I’m sorry that you have to do this long run at such short notice, but you won’t be alone—you’ll pick up a lady, and a very pretty young lady, too.”

  “Where?”

  “Well, now I’ll explain. Go around Paris, run on to Melun, and thence to Fontainebleau. You remember we were there together last summer, at the Hôtel de France. At Fontainebleau ask for the road through the Forest for Marlotte—remember the name. About seven kilometres along that road you’ll come to cross-ways. At eight o’clock to-morrow morning she will be awaiting you there, and you will take her straight on to Monty.”

  “How shall I know her?”

  “She’ll ask if you are from Mr. Bellingham,” was his reply. “And look here,” he added, drawing a long cardboard box from beneath the couch,“put this in the car, for she won’t have motor-clothes, and these are for her. You’d better have some money, too. Here’s a thousand francs;” and he took from a drawer in the pretty inlaid Louis XV. writing-table two five-hundred-franc notes and handed them to me, adding, “At present I can tell you nothing more. Go out, find Pierrette—that’s her name—and bring her to Monty. At the Paris I shall be ‘Bellingham’; and recollect we’ll have to be careful. They haven’t, in all probability, forgotten the other little affair. The police of Monaco are among the smartest in Europe, and though they never arrest anybody within their tin-pot Principality, they take jolly good care that the Monsieur le Prefect at Nice knows all about their suspects, and leave him to do their dirty work.”

  I laughed. Count Bindo, so thoroughly a cosmopolitan man-of-the-world, so resourceful, so utterly unscrupulous, so amazingly clever at any subterfuge, and yet so bold when occasion required, held the police in supreme contempt. He often declared that there was no police official between the town of Wick and the Mediterranean who had not his price, and that in many Continental countries the Minister of Police himself could be squared for a few hundreds.

  “But what’s the nature of our new scheme?” I inquired, curious to know what was intended.

  “It’s a big one—the biggest we’ve ever tried, Ewart,” was his answer, lighting a fresh cigarette, and draining his glass as he wished me a successful run due South. “If it works, then we shall bring off a real good thing.”

  “Do the others come out with you?”

  “I hardly know yet. I meet them to-night at supper at the Savoy, and we shall then decide. At any rate, I shall go;” and walking to the little writing-table, he took up the telephone receiver and asked for the Sleeping Car Company’s office in Pall Mall. Then, when a reply came, he asked them to reserve a small compartment in the Mediterranean Express on the morrow.

  “And,” he exclaimed, turning again to me, “I want to impress upon you one thing, Ewart. You and I know each other well, don’t we? Now in this affair there may be more than one mysterious feature. You’ll be puzzled, perhaps,—greatly puzzled,—but don’t trouble your head over the why or the wherefore until we bring off the coup successfully. Then I’ll tell you the whole facts—and, by Jove! you’ll find them stranger than ever you’ve read in a book. When you know the truth of the affair you’ll be staggered.”

  My curiosity was, I admit, excited. Count Bindo, the dare-devil Italian adventurer, who cared not a jot for any man living, and who himself lived so well upon the proceeds of his amazing audacity and clever wits, was not in the habit of speaking like this. I pressed him to tell me more, but he only said—

  “Go, Ewart. Get a bite of something to eat, for you must surely want it; buy what you want for the car—oil, carbide, and the rest, and get away to meet the pretty Pierrette. And—again good luck to you!” he added, as he mixed a little more whisky and tossed it off.

  Then he shook my hand warmly. I left his cosy quarters, and within an hour was crossing Westminster Bridge on the first stage of my hasty run across Europe.

  I had plenty of time to get down to Newhaven to catch the boat, but if I was to be in the Forest o
f Fontainebleau by eight o’clock next morning I would, I knew, be compelled to travel as hard as possible. The road was well known to me, all the way from the Channel to the Mediterranean. Bindo and I had done it together at least a dozen times.

  Since leaving Clifford Street I had eaten a hasty meal, picked up a couple of new “non-skids” at the depôt where we dealt, oiled up, filled the petrol tank, and given the engine a general look round. But as soon as I got out of London the cold became so intense that I was compelled to draw on my fur gloves and button my collar up about my chin.

  Who was Pierrette? I wondered. And what was the nature of this greatcoup devised by the three artists in crime who were conjointly my masters?

  An uneventful though very cold run brought me to the quay at Newhaven, where the car was shipped quite half an hour before the arrival of the train from London. It proved a dark and dirty night in the Channel, and the steamer tossed and rolled, much to the discomfort of the passengers by “the cheapest route,” which, by the way, is the quickest for motorists. But the sea never troubling me, I took the opportunity of having a good square meal in the saloon, got the steward to put a couple of cold fowls and some ham and bread into a parcel, and within half an hour of the steamer touching Dieppe quay I was heading out towards Paris, with my new search-light shining far ahead, and giving such a streak of brilliancy that a newspaper could be read by it half a mile away.

  Dark snow-clouds had gathered, and the icy wind cut my face like a knife, causing me to assume my goggles as a slight protection. My feet on the pedals were like ice, and my hands were soon cramped by the cold, notwithstanding the fur gloves.

  I took the road viâ Rouen as the best, though there is a shorter cut, and about two kilometres beyond the quaint old city, just as it was getting light, I got a puncture on the off back tyre. A horse-nail it proved, and in twenty minutes I was on the road again, running at the highest speed I dared along the Seine valley towards Paris. The wind had dropped with the dawn, and the snow-clouds had dispersed with the daybreak. Though grey and very cheerless at first, the wintry sun at last broke through, and it was already half-past seven when, avoiding Paris, I had made a circuit and joined the Fontainebleau road at Charenton, south of the capital.