When I asked why, he said that the anarchist lot thought it would give them their chance. Everything would be in the melting-pot, and they looked to see a new world emerge. The capitalists would rake in the shekels, and make fortunes by buying up wreckage. Capital, he said, had no conscience and no fatherland. Besides, the Jew was behind it, and the Jew hated Russia worse than hell.
“Do you wonder?” he cried. “For three hundred years they have been persecuted, and this is the return match for the pogroms. The Jew is everywhere, but you have to go far down the backstairs to find him. Take any big Teutonic business concern. If you have dealings with it the first man you meet is Prince von und zuSomething, an elegant young man who talks Eton- and-Harrow English. But he cuts no ice. If your business is big, you get behind him and find a prognathous Westphalian with a retreating brow and the manners of a hog. He is the German business man that gives your English papers the shakes. But if you’re on the biggest kind of job and are bound to get to the real boss, ten to one you are brought up against a little white-faced Jew in a bath-chair with an eye like a rattlesnake. Yes, sir, he is the man who is ruling the world just now, and he has his knife in the Empire of the Tsar, because his aunt was outraged and his father flogged in some one-horse location on the Volga.”
I could not help saying that his Jew-anarchists seemed to have got left behind a little.
“Yes and no,” he said. “They won up to a point, but they struck a bigger thing than money, a thing that couldn’t be bought, the old elemental fighting instincts of man. If you’re going to be killed you invent some kind of flag and country to fight for, and if you survive you get to love the thing. Those foolish devils of soldiers have found something they care for, and that has upset the pretty plan laid in Berlin and Vienna. But my friends haven’t played their last card by a long sight. They’ve gotten the ace up their sleeves, and unless I can keep alive for a month they are going to play it and win.”
“But I thought you were dead,” I put in.
“Mors janua vitae,” he smiled. (I recognized the quotation: it was about all the Latin I knew.) “I’m coming to that, but I’ve got to put you wise about a lot of things first. If you read your newspaper, I guess you know the name of Constantine Karolides?”
I sat up at that, for I had been reading about him that very afternoon.
“He is the man that has wrecked all their games. He is the one big brain in the whole show, and he happens also to be an honest man. Therefore he has been marked down these twelve months past. I found that out—not that it was difficult, for any fool could guess as much. But I found out the way they were going to get him, and that knowledge was deadly. That’s why I have had to decease.”
He had another drink, and I mixed it for him myself, for I was getting interested in the beggar.
“They can’t get him in his own land, for he has a bodyguard of Epirotes that would skin their grandmothers. But on the 15th day of June he is coming to this city. The British Foreign Office has taken to having international tea-parties, and the biggest of them is due on that date. Now Karolides is reckoned the principal guest, and if my friends have their way he will never return to his admiring countrymen.”
“That’s simple enough, anyhow,” I said. “You can warn him and keep him at home.”
“And play their game?” he asked sharply. “If he does not come they win, for he’s the only man that can straighten out the tangle. And if his Government are warned he won’t come, for he does not know how big the stakes will be on June the 15th.”
“What about the British Government?” I said. “They’re not going to let their guests be murdered. Tip them the wink, and they’ll take extra precautions.”
“No good. They might stuff your city with plain-clothes detectives and double the police and Constantine would still be a doomed man. My friends are not playing this game for candy. They want a big occasion for the taking off, with the eyes of all Europe on it. He’ll be murdered by an Austrian, and there’ll be plenty of evidence to show the connivance of the big folk in Vienna and Berlin. It will all be an infernal lie, of course, but the case will look black enough to the world. I’m not talking hot air, my friend. I happen to know every detail of the hellish contrivance, and I can tell you it will be the most finished piece of blackguardism since the Borgias. But it’s not going to come off if there’s a certain man who knows the wheels of the business alive right here in London on the 15th day of June. And that man is going to be your servant, Franklin P. Scudder.”
I was getting to like the little chap. His jaw had shut like a rat- trap, and there was the fire of battle in his gimlety eyes. If he was spinning me a yarn he could act up to it.
“Where did you find out this story?” I asked.
“I got the first hint in an inn on the Achensee in Tyrol. That set me inquiring, and I collected my other clues in a fur-shop in the Galician quarter of Buda, in a Strangers’ Club in Vienna, and in a little bookshop off the Racknitzstrasse in Leipsig. I completed my evidence ten days ago in Paris. I can’t tell you the details now, for it’s something of a history. When I was quite sure in my own mind I judged it my business to disappear, and I reached this city by a mighty queer circuit. I left Paris a dandified young French-American, and I sailed from Hamburg a Jew diamond merchant. In Norway I was an English student of Ibsen collecting materials for lectures, but when I left Bergen I was a cinema-man with special ski films. And I came here from Leith with a lot of pulp-wood propositions in my pocket to put before the London newspapers. Till yesterday I thought I had muddied my trail some, and was feeling pretty happy. Then …”
The recollection seemed to upset him, and he gulped down some more whisky.
“Then I saw a man standing in the street outside this block. I used to stay close in my room all day, and only slip out after dark for an hour or two. I watched him for a bit from my window, and I thought I recognized him … He came in and spoke to the porter … When I came back from my walk last night I found a card in my letter-box. It bore the name of the man I want least to meet on God’s earth.”
I think that the look in my companion’s eyes, the sheer naked scare on his face, completed my conviction of his honesty. My own voice sharpened a bit as I asked him what he did next.
“I realized that I was bottled as sure as a pickled herring, and that there was only one way out. I had to die. If my pursuers knew I was dead they would go to sleep again.”
“How did you manage it?”
“I told the man that valets me that I was feeling pretty bad, and I got myself up to look like death. That wasn’t difficult, for I’m no slouch at disguises. Then I got a corpse—you can always get a body in London if you know where to go for it. I fetched it back in a trunk on the top of a four-wheeler, and I had to be assisted upstairs to my room. You see I had to pile up some evidence for the inquest. I went to bed and got my man to mix me a sleeping-draught, and then told him to clear out. He wanted to fetch a doctor, but I swore some and said I couldn’t abide leeches. When I was left alone I started in to fake up that corpse. He was my size, and I judged had perished from too much alcohol, so I put some spirits handy about the place. The jaw was the weak point in the likeness, so I blew it away with a revolver. I daresay there will be somebody tomorrow to swear to having heard a shot, but there are no neighbours on my floor, and I guessed I could risk it. So I left the body in bed dressed up in my pyjamas, with a revolver lying on the bed-clothes and a considerable mess around. Then I got into a suit of clothes I had kept waiting for emergencies. I didn’t dare to shave for fear of leaving tracks, and besides, it wasn’t any kind of use my trying to get into the streets. I had had you in my mind all day, and there seemed nothing to do but to make an appeal to you. I watched from my window till I saw you come home, and then slipped down the stair to meet you … There, sir, I guess you know about as much as me of this business.”
He sat blinking like an owl, fluttering with nerves and yet desperately determined. By this time I wa
s pretty well convinced that he was going straight with me. It was the wildest sort of narrative, but I had heard in my time many steep tales which had turned out to be true, and I had made a practice of judging the man rather than the story. If he had wanted to get a location in my flat, and then cut my throat, he would have pitched a milder yarn.
“Hand me your key,” I said, “and I’ll take a look at the corpse. Excuse my caution, but I’m bound to verify a bit if I can.”
He shook his head mournfully. “I reckoned you’d ask for that, but I haven’t got it. It’s on my chain on the dressing-table. I had to leave it behind, for I couldn’t leave any clues to breed suspicions. The gentry who are after me are pretty bright-eyed citizens. You’ll have to take me on trust for the night, and tomorrow you’ll get proof of the corpse business right enough.”
I thought for an instant or two. “Right. I’ll trust you for the night. I’ll lock you into this room and keep the key. Just one word, Mr. Scudder. I believe you’re straight, but if so be you are not I should warn you that I’m a handy man with a gun.”
“Sure,” he said, jumping up with some briskness. “I haven’t the privilege of your name, sir, but let me tell you that you’re a white man. I’ll thank you to lend me a razor.”
I took him into my bedroom and turned him loose. In half an hour’s time a figure came out that I scarcely recognized. Only his gimlety, hungry eyes were the same. He was shaved clean, his hair was parted in the middle, and he had cut his eyebrows. Further, he carried himself as if he had been drilled, and was the very model, even to the brown complexion, of some British officer who had had a long spell in India. He had a monocle, too, which he stuck in his eye, and every trace of the American had gone out of his speech.
“My hat! Mr.. Scudder—” I stammered.
“Not Mr. Scudder,” he corrected; “Captain Theophilus Digby, of the 40th Gurkhas, presently home on leave. I’ll thank you to remember that, sir.”
I made him up a bed in my smoking-room and sought my own couch, more cheerful than I had been for the past month. Things did happen occasionally, even in this God-forgotten metropolis.
I woke next morning to hear my man, Paddock, making the deuce of a row at the smoking-room door. Paddock was a fellow I had done a good turn to out on the Selakwe, and I had inspanned him as my servant as soon as I got to England. He had about as much gift of the gab as a hippopotamus, and was not a great hand at valeting, but I knew I could count on his loyalty.
“Stop that row, Paddock,” I said. “There’s a friend of mine, Captain—Captain” (I couldn’t remember the name) “dossing down in there. Get breakfast for two and then come and speak to me.”
I told Paddock a fine story about how my friend was a great swell, with his nerves pretty bad from overwork, who wanted absolute rest and stillness. Nobody had got to know he was here, or he would be besieged by communications from the India Office and the Prime Minister and his cure would be ruined. I am bound to say Scudder played up splendidly when he came to breakfast. He fixed Paddock with his eyeglass, just like a British officer, asked him about the Boer War, and slung out at me a lot of stuff about imaginary pals. Paddock couldn’t learn to call me “sir,” but he “sirred” Scudder as if his life depended on it.
I left him with the newspaper and a box of cigars, and went down to the City till luncheon. When I got back the liftman had an important face.
“Nawsty business ’ere this morning, sir. Gent in No. 15 been and shot ’isself. They’ve just took ’im to the mortiary. The police are up there now.”
I ascended to No. 15, and found a couple of bobbies and an inspector busy making an examination. I asked a few idiotic questions, and they soon kicked me out. Then I found the man that had valeted Scudder, and pumped him, but I could see he suspected nothing. He was a whining fellow with a churchyard face, and half-a-crown went far to console him.
I attended the inquest next day. A partner of some publishing firm gave evidence that the deceased had brought him wood- pulp propositions, and had been, he believed, an agent of an American business. The jury found it a case of suicide while of unsound mind, and the few effects were handed over to the American Consul to deal with. I gave Scudder a full account of the affair, and it interested him greatly. He said he wished he could have attended the inquest, for he reckoned it would be about as spicy as to read one’s own obituary notice.
The first two days he stayed with me in that back room he was very peaceful. He read and smoked a bit, and made a heap of jottings in a note-book, and every night we had a game of chess, at which he beat me hollow. I think he was nursing his nerves back to health, for he had had a pretty trying time. But on the third day I could see he was beginning to get restless. He fixed up a list of the days till June 15th, and ticked each off with a red pencil, making remarks in shorthand against them. I would find him sunk in a brown study, with his sharp eyes abstracted, and after those spells of meditation he was apt to be very despondent.
Then I could see that he began to get edgy again. He listened for little noises, and was always asking me if Paddock could be trusted. Once or twice he got very peevish, and apologized for it. I didn’t blame him. I made every allowance, for he had taken on a fairly stiff job.
It was not the safety of his own skin that troubled him, but the success of the scheme he had planned. That little man was clean grit all through, without a soft spot in him. One night he was very solemn.
“Say, Hannay,” he said, “I judge I should let you a bit deeper into this business. I should hate to go out without leaving somebody else to put up a fight.” And he began to tell me in detail what I had only heard from him vaguely.
I did not give him very close attention. The fact is, I was more interested in his own adventures than in his high politics. I reckoned that Karolides and his affairs were not my business, leaving all that to him. So a lot that he said slipped clean out of my memory. I remember that he was very clear that the danger to Karolides would not begin till he had got to London, and would come from the very highest quarters, where there would be no thought of suspicion. He mentioned the name of a woman—Julia Czechenyi—as having something to do with the danger. She would be the decoy, I gathered, to get Karolides out of the care of his guards. He talked, too, about a Black Stone and a man that lisped in his speech, and he described very particularly somebody that he never referred to without a shudder—an old man with a young voice who could hood his eyes like a hawk.
He spoke a good deal about death, too. He was mortally anxious about winning through with his job, but he didn’t care a rush for his life.
“I reckon it’s like going to sleep when you are pretty well tired out, and waking to find a summer day with the scent of hay coming in at the window. I used to thank God for such mornings way back in the Blue-Grass country, and I guess I’ll thank Him when I wake up on the other side of Jordan.”
Next day he was much more cheerful, and read the life of Stonewall Jackson much of the time. I went out to dinner with a mining engineer I had got to see on business, and came back about half-past ten in time for our game of chess before turning in.
I had a cigar in my mouth, I remember, as I pushed open the smoking-room door. The lights were not lit, which struck me as odd. I wondered if Scudder had turned in already.
I snapped the switch, but there was nobody there. Then I saw something in the far corner which made me drop my cigar and fall into a cold sweat.
My guest was lying sprawled on his back. There was a long knife through his heart which skewered him to the floor.
2. The Milkman Sets Out on His Travels
I sat down in an armchair and felt very sick. That lasted for maybe five minutes, and was succeeded by a fit of the horrors. The poor staring white face on the floor was more than I could bear, and I managed to get a table-cloth and cover it. Then I staggered to a cupboard, found the brandy and swallowed several mouthfuls. I had seen men die violently before; indeed I had killed a few myself in the Matabele Wa
r; but this coldblooded indoor business was different. Still I managed to pull myself together. I looked at my watch, and saw that it was halfpast ten.
An idea seized me, and I went over the flat with a small-tooth comb. There was nobody there, nor any trace of anybody, but I shuttered and bolted all the windows and put the chain on the door. By this time my wits were coming back to me, and I could think again. It took me about an hour to figure the thing out, and I did not hurry, for, unless the murderer came back, I had till about six o’clock in the morning for my cogitations.
I was in the soup—that was pretty clear. Any shadow of a doubt I might have had about the truth of Scudder’s tale was now gone. The proof of it was lying under the table-cloth. The men who knew that he knew what he knew had found him, and had taken the best way to make certain of his silence. Yes; but he had been in my rooms four days, and his enemies must have reckoned that he had confided in me. So I would be the next to go. It might be that very night, or next day, or the day after, but my number was up all right.
Then suddenly I thought of another probability. Supposing I went out now and called in the police, or went to bed and let Paddock find the body and call them in the morning. What kind of a story was I to tell about Scudder? I had lied to Paddock about him, and the whole thing looked desperately fishy. If I made a clean breast of it and told the police everything he had told me, they would simply laugh at me. The odds were a thousand to one that I would be charged with the murder, and the circumstantial evidence was strong enough to hang me. Few people knew me in England; I had no real pal who could come forward and swear to my character. Perhaps that was what those secret enemies were playing for. They were clever enough for anything, and an English prison was as good a way of getting rid of me till after June 15th as a knife in my chest.
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