The Treasure House of Martin Hews E-Book

E. Phillips Oppenheim

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

A best-selling author of novels, short stories, magazine articles, translations, and plays, Oppenheim published over 150 books. He is considered one of the originators of the thriller genre, his novels also range from spy thrillers to romance, but all have an undertone of intrigue. The tiny kingdom of Theos is surrounded by Eastern European powers in this 1902 novel of politics, war, and romance. Russia and Turkey are plotting to take over the peaceful and rural country. A short lived Republic has been treacherously betrayed by communist elements. The country turns to its exiled King, Ughtred of Tyrnaus, a prince who has been a soldier in Britain for 20 years. The prince is convinced by Baron Nicholas of Reist to return to Theos and be crowned. Continuous action, changing alliances, loyalty and betrayal are all in play.

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXII

CHAPTER XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER XXXVI

CHAPTER XXXVII

CHAPTER XXXVIII

CHAPTER XXXIX

CHAPTER XL

CHAPTER XLI

CHAPTER 1

In a fit of utter dejection, I stopped in the middle of the long cinder path, and looked miserably around me. It was, perhaps without exception, the ugliest landscape upon which I had ever gazed–a flat and swampy region, ignored, apparently, by the agriculturist and scorned by even the most optimistic of builders. There were evidences here and there of calamitous speculative enterprise–a deserted brickyard, overrun with weedy grass, a one-storied factory which showed no signs of ever having been occupied, and every window of which was broken. For the most part, however, the land was a wilderness, with here and there an isolated and squalid-looking cottage. The fields, the grass of which seemed to lack any shade of colour or breath of vitality, were separated by dykes in which black, unwholesome water stood stagnant. A few cows seemed oppressed by ruminating gloom. There were no trees, no birds save occasional flocks of inflying seagulls, great patches of sedgy, irreclaimable land, stretching to the river banks. In the far distance, upon the other side of the unseen waterway, were factory chimneys, gaunt and stark, looming through the misty sky. For sound, in this dreary waste, there was only the screech of a passing locomotive from the branch line by which I had completed my journey the distant hooting of a steamer, or the melancholy call of ‘the drifting gulls. There came upon me, as I lingered there, a strong inclination to turn around, retrace my steps to the station, with its draughty shed for a booking office, sit down upon that solitary, decrepit bench, and, abandoning my enterprise, wait for the train which would take me back to the warmth and humanity of a great city. Then my hand stole into my trousers pocket, the coins jingled through my fingers–ninepence-halfpenny, and an oblong piece of cardboard-my return third-class ticket to London. I remembered that this completed the total of my worldly possessions, and off I started again down that hideous cinder track, facing what had seemed to me, from the first moment it had loomed up before me, the ‘grimmest, the ugliest, the most fearsome building I had ever seen or conceived.

It reminded me of one of those unnatural nightmares, the earliest sign of incipient lunacy, when one’s brain fails, and the ordinary buildings of some fancied city suddenly assume gigantic unnatural proportions, a hundred times the size of any possible effort of human hands. There was no doubt, however, as to the reality of this architectural abortion, and, as I stepped over the stile into the road, and caught a fuller view of it rising from perfectly flat lands, arrogant, overmastering in its bare, assertive ugliness, an unpleasant conviction stole in upon me. I stopped the only human being I had seen since I had left the station–a road-mender, plodding slowly through the mud.

“Can you tell me what that building or institution is?” I asked him.

He turned a rheumaticky neck, and followed my pointing finger.

“That be Breezeley Mansion, sir,” he replied.

With that he had had enough of me, and went on his way, and I, struggling with my fit of nervous aversion, pushed on until I stood almost under the shadow of this monstrosity of brick and stone. There was no lodge, no wall to protect it from the road, no garden. There it stood, a great building which age seemed only to have rendered more hideous, straight fronted, with rows of uninviting windows, and at the two ends round towers, with huge windows. It was big enough for a prison, or an asylum, and unpleasing enough for either. That it should be the dwelling-place of any sane man seemed to me incredible, and yet in my pocket reposed a letter addressed to “Martin Hews, Esq., Breezeley Mansion,” and that letter, together with ninepence half-penny, was my last resource against starvation.

I trod the granite avenue, pressed the electric bell, and received my first shock. The door was opened even before my finger had released the knob. A butler, who would not have disgraced a Grosvenor Square mansion, opened it, and leaned forward with an air of benevolent enquiry.

“I have come down from London to see Mr. Hews,” I explained. “I have a letter of introduction to him.”

The man smiled at me reassuringly.

“That is quite all right, sir. Will you come this way?”

He led me across a hall which, in those confused moments, seemed to me like the anteroom of a palace, motioned me to enter a small, automatic lift, followed me in, and closed the gates. We shot up some three stories, after which he again took charge of me, ushered me down a corridor where my feet fell soundlessly upon the thickly piled carpet, and at its farther end touched the knob of a bell. We heard its gentle tinkling in the room, and almost immediately, without any visible agency, the door of an apartment almost as spacious as a museum swung open.

“The gentleman you were expecting, sir,” the butler announced, leading the way towards a distant corner–and forthwith took his leave.

I advanced a few steps farther, and stood staring like the clumsiest of rustics. Before me, seated at a large rosewood writing-table, upon which were several telephone receivers, a row of ivory push bells, and various other unusual-looking instruments, was the man whom I had come to visit. My first impression of him was that he was seated–but at that moment I could not be sure of anything definite as regards his posture. He was enclosed in what seemed to be an amazing sort of bath-chair, the front of which was hidden in the knee hole of the desk so that only the upper part of his body was visible. The effect he produced upon me, during those first few minutes, remains to this day an indescribable thing. One would have expected, from an afflicted person, a certain delicacy of expression and outline, the pallor which is nearly always associated with every sort of suffering. The man before me was of an entirely different type. His face was inclined to be round in shape. He had colour upon his cheeks which at first seemed to me as though it must be unnatural. His brown eyes were curiously prominent, almost beady. He had carefully trimmed, bushy eyebrows of a lighter shade, and a mass of brown hair, arranged with such absolute perfection that from the first I suspected it to be a wig. His mouth was by far his most attractive feature. It had a delicacy of its own, and a sensitiveness almost childish. He was dressed with meticulous care, in dark clothes, his folded satin tie of deep purple, fastened by a pin with a quaint foreign stone. When I tried afterwards to reconstruct in my mind his personality, from amongst a haze of tangled impressions, I could think of nothing but the curving mouth and prominent eyes which seemed never to leave my face.

“You are Major Owston?” he asked, looking across at me. “That is my name, sir,” I answered.

“What sort of employment do you want?”

“Any sort in the world which will keep me from starvation.” He scrutinised me thoughtfully, raised his hand and pointed to a chair. I sat down, and would have moved it a little nearer to his desk, but found to my amazement that it was screwed to the floor, and that underneath the seat was a maze of wire and tubes. I found also that it faced the great window through which the light was streaming in.

“You will forgive the peculiarity of the chair,” my host begged. “I have visitors of many sorts, and I like sometimes to know exactly how far they are away from me. It would perhaps amuse you–”

He broke off, amid touched one of a line of ivory knobs on the right-hand side of his desk. I felt a sudden tingling in my arms and legs. If the room had been on fire I could not have moved from my place. He chuckled softly, touched another knob, and everything was again normal. He rubbed his hands together with positively childish delight.

“One of my little devices,” he explained, with a curious touch of vanity in his tone. “I am a helpless person, you see, and I must defend myself…So you want any sort of employment, Henry Owston? Are there any limitations to that somewhat daring statement?”

“None that I can think of,” I assured him.

He eyed me critically.

“You are not over-scrupulous, then?”

“Not in a general way. I don’t want to get into trouble. I have been in prison once. That was quite enough for me.”

“In England?”

“No, in France.”

“Ah, I remember,” he murmured, nodding his head reflectively. “It was at Marseilles, was it not? That affair with a French Artillery Officer. You have a violent temper, I imagine.”

I looked at him in astonishment. Not even Leonard Joyce, my friend who had given me the letter of introduction, knew of that episode in my life to which Martin Hews had alluded.

“If I have,” I told him, after a moment’s deliberation, “it is very seldom roused, and there is generally sufficient provocation.” He eyed me appraisingly.

“You are how tall, Major Owston?” he enquired.

I was a little surprised, but I answered him at once.

“Six feet three and a half, sir.”

“Magnificently developed around the shoulders,” he went on, moving his head a little sideways. “A trifle underfed, I should say, by the look of you. I have need of strong men, Major Owston, both for my own protection, and to carry on my business.”

“I am not a weakling,” I assured him.

“Apparently not,” he assented. “Let me see. Shall I tell you a little mare about yourself? In the Inter-‘Varsity Sports eighteen years ago, you won all the prizes which were worth taking. Later you have thrown the hammer as only the Americans can throw it. You were in the semi-finals of the Amateur Boxing Championship twelve years ago. There was a rumour that it was a gesture ‘of chivalry which prevented your winning. You were supposed to be good enough for County cricket, even for Yorkshire, but the war came, and you developed into a keen soldier. You did a little ‘more than average well–twice mentioned, I believe, and the D.S.O. Afterward you had the usual bad luck of a man who had not settled upon his profession definitely when the war broke out. You left your regiment, and tried soldiering in Morocco with the Spaniards. Then, of course, there was that French affair–rather an unfortunate episode just then. Anything I have forgotten, Major Owston?”

I was speechless. I could think of no living person who could have told me as much as this stranger had done. He watched my surprise with that same smile of absolutely childish gratification.

“Ah well,” he went on, “if I take you into my employ you will realise that it is my business sometimes to know everything. Directly Joyce mentioned your name, I began to set enquiries on foot. By-the-by, did he prepare you for the fact that I was an invalid?”

“He gave me to understand,” I admitted diffidently, “that you were–that you had lost the use of your legs.”

He frowned as though, for some reason; my answer annoyed him.

“I never had any legs,” he explained abruptly. “I am a human freak, Major Owston. I was born without legs. You can see very nearly all there is of me. That is why I sit in the most amazing motor-chair that has ever been designed. My own invention, Major–entirely my own invention.”

I muttered a word of sympathy, which he acknowledged gravely.

“I wonder,” he speculated, “whether I really lose much through not having legs. You shall judge. Sit still. I will give you an exhibition.”

There followed the most extraordinary performance I had ever seen in my life. With the touch of a finger upon the steering wheel of his chair, an engine began to throb, and he glided from behind the desk in a graceful backward curve. He came to a standstill, and then suddenly seemed to flash away from before my eyes. He was across at the other side of the room before I could realise that he had moved, threading his course amongst chairs and tables, skirting the edge of various articles of furniture with the most amazing precision, now and then revolving, running backwards with only a careless turn of the head over his shoulder, never losing that curiously conceited smile, and glancing more than once quickly across at me as though for my approbation. Finally he passed me like a streak and before I could thoroughly collect myself he was seated again opposite to me behind the table. The motor ceased to throb. His eyes sought mine triumphantly. He was evidently wrapped in deep enjoyment of my stupefaction.

“Have you ever seen anything like that?” he demanded.

“Never in my life,” I assured him, as soon as I could find words. “I can’t even now understand how such delicate steering can ever be learned. It’s–it’s miraculous!”

His smile was like the smile of a child whose dolls have been praised, or a mother whose infant has been flattered. It transformed his whole appearance, and it helped me to appreciate the persistence of those small vanities which were woven like a thread through the man’s whole being. Incidentally it gave me confidence. I had no longer any fear about that ninepence-halfpenny in my trousers pocket. He pointed to the window–the great, uncurtained window in the full light of which I sat.

“Go over there,” he ordered. “Follow the road back to London. Tell me if you see anything.”

I obeyed him, and looked searchingly along that soggy, ill-made, muddy thoroughfare, stretching across the marshes bordered by the threadbare hedges, and yawning dykes, to which a lowering mass of mingled mist and smoke hung over the approaches to the city.

“I see the road until it disappears,” I reported. “It is empty.”

He glanced at an electric clock upon the table, and frowned. Then he lifted from its stand one of the telephone receivers by which he was surrounded, and spoke into it so softly that I failed to hear a word he said. Again he turned towards me.

“Your eyes appear to be strong,” he remarked. “How far can you follow the road backwards?”

“Past the station,” I told him, “past what seems to be a sewage farm, across a wooden bridge to what might be a main road beyond.”

“Look again,” he enjoined. “Watch.”

There ensued a brief silence–a silence of perhaps three minutes–during which no sign of human life appeared upon the miserable plain across which I looked. At last, at the far end of the road, there was a speck. I scrutinised it narrowly.

“There is a vehicle–a motor-car–coming,” I announced. “Describe it to me.”

I waited until it came nearer. It was being driven at a great speed, rocking from side to side upon the road, sending up little fountains of water from the holes across which it sped. I turned my head.

“It is a very big car–I should say a Rolls-Royce. It is being driven apparently by a chauffeur. There is another man inside, and I think a girl.”

My new employer–already I felt that I was in his service–nodded shortly.

“Come here,” he directed. “Turn around. Look at that wall.”

He pointed to a strip of oak panelling, not far from the door, and before my eyes, without any visible agency, it parted and slid gently open. Afterwards I knew that he had touched a button under his desk.

“Go in there,” he ordered. “You can listen to all that is said by means of the instrument standing on a bracket upon your right-hand side. There is a look-out hole there too. If I should strike the desk with the flat of my hand twice, I need help. The door will open by means of a button underneath the bracket.”

“I understand,” I assured him.

I moved towards the recess. As I was crossing the threshold, he called after me.

“With the flat of my hand twice,” he repeated, “but do not be disappointed if nothing happens, Henry Owston. Others have been before you, and waited in vain. I run my risks as does every man who has enemies, but never yet, poor cripple though I am, have I had to call for help. To-night, however–it may be different. It depends in what spirit my visitor comes…Take your place, please. Adjust the microphone to your ears. You can open the door, remember, if I give the signal, by pressing the button just below the instrument.”

After which instructions, he dismissed me with a little wave of the hand, and I passed into my hiding-place.

CHAPTER 2

I found my temporary refuge larger than I had expected, with some sort of ventilation from overhead, and lit by an electric bulb which flashed out with the closing of the door. I fitted the microphone to my head, and established myself in a not uncomfortable chair before the spy-hole. Then I suddenly received an unexpected shock. Exactly opposite to the opening through which I had entered there flashed, through a chink in the wall, a thin line of light. Noiselessly the panels rolled back and a woman stood framed in the aperture–a woman whom I judged at first, notwithstanding the youthfulnesss of her figure, to be elderly. Then, as she lowered her head a little, I saw that what I had taken for grey hair was in reality a very beautiful shade of ash-coloured blonde, fine as silk, and glimmering almost to gold as she stooped to enter the closet, and stood for a moment under the electric bulb. She held up her finger, and I checked my first exclamation of surprise.

“Listen, please, to what I have to say, and answer me in as low a tone as possible,” she begged.

“But who are you?” I enquired.

“I will explain directly. Put on your microphone again, and listen for the opening of the door. Your mission, which I suppose is to guard Martin Hews, does not commence until then.”

I obeyed her almost unconsciously. Her voice, soft and pleasant though it was, had in it some curiously compelling quality. With the instrument fixed to my ears, my sense of hearing became at once more acute. I could hear the scratching of a pen upon notepaper, the hissing of a log in the grate; otherwise there was silence in the room.

“You are poor,” she continued. “You came down here on a desperate chance. You may not know it, but you have failed. Martin Hews has decided not to employ you. The car is already ordered to take you back to the station.”

It was like a sentence of fate, and my heart sank as I listened.

“How do you know that?” I demanded.

“It is my business. I am Martin Hews’s niece. I know most of the secrets even of this house.”

“Well,” I sighed, “I hope you are making a mistake. Unless you have been listening–”

“I have been listening;” she interrupted, “and I know my uncle.”

“He was pretty well my last chance,” I confided gloomily. “Then you have lost it. You are, I think you said, in straitened means. You can earn this, if you care to.”

She handed me a folded slip of paper. I opened it out and found that it was a twenty-pound Bank of England note.

“Who am I to serve for this?” I asked. “Your uncle or you?”

“Me,” she answered calmly.

“Hush!”

I, too, had heard the click of the motor-chair! I looked through my peep-hole. Its occupant had simply changed his position in order to reach a box of cigarettes. He lit one and recommenced his writing. The room was still empty. I turned back to the girl. Her eyes were fixed upon me–grey eyes with a glint of green in them, indifferent, almost inhuman, as it seemed to me at that moment, yet curiously impressive under her strange-coloured hair. For the first time I realised that in her own fashion–and a very distinctive one it was–she was beautiful.

“You can earn this twenty pounds,” she whispered, “by leaving your place here, and catching the train for London which starts in twenty minutes. I will show you the way to where the car is waiting. All that you will have to do is to deliver a letter in Berkeley Square, and never come near this house again.”

We looked at one another for a few seconds in silence. Her eyes never left mine, but it would have taken a cleverer man than I to have guessed what was passing in her brain.

“If your uncle will not engage me,” I said, “that is my misfortune. I have accepted the task of watching here until his visitor has gone, and I must carry it out.”

“Take my advice,” she begged. “Don’t waste your time. You owe nothing to Martin Hews. Soon he will dismiss you with a cynical word of farewell. There is not a soul in this house who does not hate him. Those of us who live here and obey his orders do it because we must. As yet you are free. Take my offer, and hurry away.”

“And leave him without a protector in case there is trouble,” I reminded her.

She laughed very softly, but with a scorn which was almost malicious.

“My uncle can look after himself,” she assured me. “Besides, if his time has come, you would be of very little help to him. It would be all over before you could get half-way across the room. Will you come?”

I looked at her once more, and my decision, if anything, was strengthened by what I saw in her eyes, but failed wholly to read.

“I will not,” I decided, turning my back upon her, and peering through my spy-hole…“There is someone coming into the room. Please go away.”

Apparently she was convinced of my obduracy, and, in a measure, reconciled to it, for I heard the door roll smoothly back, and the click of its fastening. I had no time to indulge in speculations as to this strange happening, for it was obvious that the expected visitor had arrived. I heard the opening of the door, and the butler’s sonorous voice. I saw Martin Hews’s eyebrows go up, saw him lean a little forward in his strange chair. Then the other two figures came into view–a fair, sturdily built man, commonplace enough in appearance, but with a bulldog type of feature and keen blue eyes. There was a look of suffering in his face as though he were ill, and he leaned Upon a stick. He was dressed in reasonable clothing, but his hair was unkempt, his collar crumpled, one of his shoe-laces undone. I judged that he had come from some adventure, for there was an air of exhaustion about him, and in his eyes there was fear. Holding on to his arm was a girl–a little Jewess she seemed to me–small, with an exquisite cameo-like face, dark-brown eyes and hair, and brilliantly red lips. She looked defiantly at Martin Hews.

“I was expecting you, Jim Donkin. But the young lady?”

The man sank into the fixed chair, with a little groan of relief.

“You’ll have to look after her, guv’nor,” he declared. “If she can’t come with me, you’ll have to keep her safe. You know what happened last night?”

“I know that you committed a murder,” Martin Hews observed calmly. “You are trying me very high, Donkin. You were on your own last night, you must remember, and it is not an easy thing to protect a murderer. Tell me about the girl.”

“You know who she is. This is Rachel. ‘Tain’t her fault, but it was because of her the row began last night. The newspapers haven’t got half of it yet. There were a hundred of us fighting down in the Mews, back of the Bethnal Green Road, and Phil Abrahams wasn’t the only one who got his. We were obeying orders, too, you know, guv’nor. The cops were getting too inquisitive about what we were really out for. You wanted a real hooligan fight, and we b––y well had it.”

“There isn’t a great deal of time to waste if I am to get you away,” Martin Hews warned him. “Why have you brought the girl with you? It is quite true that I am willing to undertake the task of looking after her, but I did not intend to have her here.”

“Where in hell could I leave her in London?” the man demanded. “Abrahams took her from me, as he had sworn to Joseph that he would, but he was a dying man before he could hand her over, bleeding to death in Aldgate Passage. We’re pretty well wiped out now, though. They’ll get her if I leave her in London.”

“Half a dozen of ‘em,” the girl intervened, “half a dozen of ‘em who reckon I never ought to have left Joseph, and who mean to get me back if they can. Mind you, they’ll soon forget it,” she went on, “and I don’t know that I’m so scared as it is. Joseph would have something to say if they turned ugly, but Jim here, he’s all for me lying low. You’re afraid Joseph will get me again, ain’t you, Jim?” she asked, with a mocking laugh.

“I’d come back from the dead, blast you, if you went back to him,” the man growled. “What about me, Chief?” he went on, looking anxiously across the desk. “It wasn’t exactly your work we were on last night, but you wanted a row–a real, ordinary row–to put the cops off the scent. Yesterday’s began on the racecourse, went on in the train from Newmarket, and finished–my Gawd, what a finish! down Bethnal Green Road way.”

Martin Hews leaned forward in his chair, and contemplated the two. His face was unclouded, his smile almost benevolent. He might have been the head of some great charitable organisation, evolving his plans for the protection of this outcast.

“I grasp the position,” he said at last. “Everything is arranged so far as you are concerned, Donkin. You must be prepared to leave here in five minutes. A car is waiting for you now. As for the young lady, I shall offer her at any rate temporary shelter.”

“What, here?” she demanded, with a grimace.

“Certainly You will be safer under this roof than anywhere. The housekeeper will look after you. As for you, Donkin, please follow my servant downstairs now. I shall keep my word and get you out of this, but you have disappointed me. I wanted Joseph’s gang crushed. I wanted Joseph himself removed. You have failed me.”

“If I get over this,” Donkin muttered, a spasm of pain suddenly contorting his face, “I’ll get Joseph as soon as I can sneak back to the country.”

“That is your own affair,” Martin Hews said equably. “I shall probably have settled with him myself before that can happen. In the meantime, kindly follow my servant downstairs. You will be provided with ample funds, and I wish you well; at the same time, in the struggle between you and Joseph, you are up to now the loser, and I have no use for the second best.”

He dismissed them with an imperative little wave of the hand, and they disappeared, ushered out by the butler who had entered without any visible or audible means of summons. The panels glided open in front of me, and I stepped out. Martin Hews looked at me thoughtfully.

“You can drive a car?” he asked.

“I can,” I answered, with a sudden return of hope.

“You can fight, I know,” he continued. “Do your best to get Donkin away. If you come up against the police, you had better offer no resistance and be sure that my name is not mentioned. If any members of Joseph’s gang try to intercept you, that will be a different matter. Fight if you have any chance at all. They will kill Donkin if they get him…Here!”

He opened a drawer, and handed me a flat-handled automatic, of the latest type, fully charged. Behind me was standing once more that ubiquitous butler, waiting to show me downstairs.

“Don’t use the gun if you can help it,” Martin Hews enjoined. “Those things are for show more than for use, but remember they’ll kill Donkin if they get him. You may report here later if all goes well…”

Five minutes afterwards we were swinging down the straight, muddy road leading towards the river, in a large, open touring car, built apparently for speed. Donkin was by my side, muffled up in an overcoat, and groaning every now and then in pain. A dark-complexioned chauffeur in the front crouched over his wheel. One glance I threw behind as we started off, and curiously enough I looked, as though by instinct, at one particular window. Leaning out of it was the girl who had offered me the twenty-pound note, and assured me that Martin Hews had decided to turn me down. She stood like a statue, watching us. I shook my fist at her. She turned away.

CHAPTER 3

WE drew up, after a ghastly six-mile drive across the wilderness of my detestation, at the end of what was little better than a rough cart track leading down to the river. My companion, with a final groan, stepped heavily out, and looked with anxious eyes first along the road by which we had come, and afterwards at the motor-launch moored a score of yards out in the sluggish stream. He stepped into the dinghy which was waiting under the bank, and for the first time the strained look of apprehension seemed to pass from his face.

“He’s a rum little devil, but he’s kept his word,” he muttered, as I helped him in. “I knew if anyone could get me away, he could. Tell Rachel I’m safe.”

There was no other word of farewell. He clambered on to the motor-launch, the dinghy was drawn up, and the former swung round and started off seaward, the spray already breaking over her as she crept into speed. I watched her for several moments, until she disappeared into the grey, drifting mist. Then, just as I was turning around, the chauffeur touched me on the shoulder. He pointed along the road by which we had come, and I saw a motor-car approaching, furiously driven.

“This road don’t lead anywhere, sir,” he confided. “There’s no room to pass, and the dykes are full. I am thinking it means a bit of trouble for us.”

“Anyhow, we’ve done our job,” I remarked, peering forward. “We’ve got our man away, according to orders.”

“Yes, and they’ll never catch him now,” the chauffeur agreed. “There aren’t any boats round here, and not a launch that could touch that one nearer than Rotherhithe.”

“I wonder if it’s the police?” I suggested.

“I don’t think!” he rejoined grimly. “It’s my belief it’s some of the gang he’s been scrapping with. Ugly fellows they are, too.”

The car rushed towards us, swaying from side to side, splashing the water lying in the sunken pools of the road high into the air, more than once only just avoiding a dangerous skid. When at last, with a grinding of brakes, and tearing of gears, the vehicle came to a standstill about a dozen yards away from us, we were completely ignored by its occupants for several moments. An apparently young man, wearing a long motoring coat of fashionable cut, a cap pulled down over his forehead, and unusually large spectacles, slipped from his seat by the driver, and strolled to the edge of the muddy bank beneath which lapped the waters of the river. His eyes followed the trail left by the disappearing motorboat, and he seemed to be doing his best to peer through the gathering gloom to her possible destination. Whilst he watched, his hand as though mechanically sought his pocket, and mine immediately followed suit. He pulled out a cigarette case, lit a cigarette, and, with a last look down the river, turned away and swung round towards us. He glanced at the chauffeur cursorily, and addressed himself to me. He kept at least half a dozen paces away, and his features were completely hidden.

“To whom have I the pleasure of speaking?” he asked, a faint note of truculence lurking in his tone.

“My name is Owston–Major Owston–at your service,” I answered.

“I have to thank Martin Hews for this, I suppose?” he demanded, pointing down the river.

“I am not here to answer questions,” I told him.

“Mine was only a matter of form,” he assured me. “You have spent, I trust, a pleasant afternoon assisting in the escape of a cowardly murderer. Present my compliments to Mr. Martin Hews, and my congratulations upon his organisation. You, I imagine, are one of his new mercenaries.”

I made no reply. It was an extraordinarily silent stretch of country, and there was no sound whatever, except the gentle gurgling of the water against the river bank. Curiously enough, the memory of those few seconds remained in my mind for long afterwards–the car, splashed with mud, steam rising from its bonnet, drawn up by the side of the road, its three very formidable-looking occupants staring menacingly across at us, the young man facing me, so thoroughly disguised by his coat and hat and spectacles, yet with strangely subtle suggestions of something sinister and threatening in his bitter words.

“I wonder,” he speculated at last, and his tone seemed to grow in insolence, “whether you are likely to be any trouble to me in the future? Why not a life for a life, eh? It’s a sound doctrine, a lonely spot, and the river’s deep just here.”

I answered him, I hope, with equal coolness. At all events, I know that the hand which gripped the butt end of my automatic was firm and steady.

“Your car leaves tracks,” I reminded him. “Your presence here was expected. There is no part of that river so deep but that it gives up its secrets with the flow of the tide.”

Perhaps he saw the dull glitter of metal raised an inch or two from my pocket. He waved his hand contemptuously towards it.

“We kill when the need comes,” he said, “without fear or scruple, but we are not butchers. Add this to my message. Tell Mr. Martin Hews that I hear his gewgaw castle has become the asylum for damsels in distress. Nevertheless, when the fancy takes me to recover Rachel, I shall come and fetch her.”

He touched his hat, and mounted again to his place by the side of the chauffeur. The car, with its evil-looking load, moved slowly back in reverse, until it reached a turning place, when it was driven off at such a reckless pace that it was speedily out of sight. My first enterprise in the service of Martin Hews was over. Not a blow had been struck. The afternoon had ended, in fact, a little tamely, but I could very well guess what would have happened if the young man who had accosted me, and his friends, had arrived before Donkin had boarded the motor-boat.  

Again I sat in the fixed chair of audience, and made my report to the master of Breezeley Mansion. He listened to me with a changeless, sardonic smile. It was almost as though he found food for humorous reflection in the tardy arrival of Joseph and his friends.

“So we are in the position,” he remarked when I had finished, “of holding an unwilling Helen, with Hector flying for his life and Joseph advancing to the assault. Dear me, what troubles our good nature may lead us into. Come, Major Owston, do you feel inclined to help in the defence of this eagerly sought-for young woman?”

“At your bidding, sir,” I replied. “May I take it from the suggestion that I am engaged?”

“You are engaged,” he told me calmly. “Your salary will be a thousand a year, and if you fail to give me satisfaction I shall ask you to walk out at a moment’s notice.”

“What about my duties?” I queried.

“Your first and principal one is to guard my person. I have enemies. The man Joseph, whom you probably saw to-day, is one of them. So long as Donkin’s gang was in existence, I was comparatively safe. Now that they are wiped out, Joseph will look this way. I have treasures, bought and paid for, which he thinks should have gone to him. He is a fool. He was outwitted. He will always be outwitted.”

“The man with whom I spoke to-day,” I ventured, “seemed to me anything but a fool.”

“You are right,” he acknowledged. “Joseph is not a fool. He has a cunning brain, he has genius, he is a great opponent. He has moments of weakness, though. He smarts always under the sense of fancied wrongs. He permits himself to hate–he hates me. Passion of that sort disturbs judgment. Feeling for my throat, he will some day thrust his neck into the noose.”

One of the telephones upon Martin Hews’s desk tinkled gently. He listened, and spoke into it a nearly inaudible word. Almost before he had replaced the receiver, the white light above the door flashed. He touched a button upon his desk, the door swung open, and the girl who had intruded upon my hiding-place, with her singular offer, entered the room. I watched her as she walked with measured footsteps towards an easy-chair set behind a small Chippendale desk. Of me she took not the slightest notice, nor did any gesture or word of greeting pass between her and Martin Hews.

“Since you are joining my establishment, Major Owston,” the latter said, with a little wave of his hand, “let me introduce you to my niece–my lay-secretary, if I may call her so, for she does nothing except act as intermediary between myself and my bureau of information, into whose secrets you shall be one day initiated. My dear,” he went on, turning to her, “a young Goliath who has guaranteed to protect me against the assassins of Shoreditch–Major Owston–Miss Essiter.”

I rose to my feet. Her eyes met mine, expressionless and vacant. She inclined her head very slightly, and took no further notice of me.

“Where are you staying in London?” Martin Hews enquired. “At Rowton House last night,” I told him. “I imagine it would have been the Embankment to-night.”

“Your clothes?”

“Mostly pawned. I have nothing except what I stand in.”

He studied me thoughtfully–a pudgy little finger played with the end of his chin.

“I am, as a rule,” he admitted, “suspicious of such destitution. In your case, however, you will receive the benefit of the doubt. Beatrice, my dear, fifty pounds from your coffer, if you please.”

The young woman leaned forward, opened a wonderful ivory box with clasps which seemed to me of solid gold, and counted out fifty pounds from what appeared to me to be an inexhaustible supply. She took the notes across, and laid them on her uncle’s desk. He passed them over to me. I had to hold them very tightly in my hand to be sure that I was not dreaming.

“I will take it for granted,” he continued, “that you are not on speaking terms with your tailor, and I will telephone to mine. You must have some clothes. Most other things we can provide you with. For the present, you will sleep here, until I have decided what to do with this fair Helen of Shoreditch. Before the week is over, I shall probably have other work for you in the West End. That must wait, however, until you have your clothes, and until your rooms are engaged. Do you happen to belong to any clubs in Town?”

“I am still a member of the Rag, sir,” I told him–“rather a matter of kindly sufferance, I am afraid, but I am supposed to be out of England.”

“Service clubs are not the slightest use,” he snapped. “What about Ciro’s, the Embassy, the Blue Skies, and that sort of thing?”

“I know them, of course,” I admitted. “If I had been able to pay their subscriptions, I should have spent the money on food before now.”

He made a note upon some tablets by his side. A bell rang softly. The white light flashed out, the door opened. My employer’s expression became almost benevolent.

“Come in, Minchin,” he invited, “come in.”

A man entered, and approached the table respectfully. He was dressed in sober black, and there were many points about him which seemed to indicate the well-trained gentleman’s servant. He was a person of curiously nondescript appearance, with small features, bald head, and slanting eyes set rather wide apart. Suitably attired, he could have passed anywhere for a Chinaman. On the spot I took an instinctive but violent dislike to him.

“Minchin,” his master announced, “this gentleman, Major Owston, has accepted a post of responsibility in the household. He will sleep here to-night. You will give him the laurel suite on the ground floor. He will need a great many articles for his toilette, most of which you will doubtless be able to provide.”

“Certainly, sir.”

“In five minutes,” Martin Hews concluded, “return and show Major Owston to his rooms.”

The man departed. My new employer turned towards me, and the indifferent note left his tone. His expression had become almost ferocious. He looked at me intensely, his eyes seeking mine, holding them with an almost portentous intensity. I was as nearly afraid of him as I have ever been of any man in my life.

“Owston,” he said, “from now on until we part you are my man. Don’t question my orders. If you fail to carry them out, or neglect to obey them, scuttle away as fast as you can, but I warn you now, as I warned you before, that my enterprises in life are not undertaken for purposes of philanthropy. Sometimes it may happen that I am actually aiding and abetting criminals. Often I am against the law. I alone plan; you, my servants, obey. You may refuse to carry out my instructions, and quit my service, but if a breath of my doings is carried to the outside world or a confidence of mine betrayed, you pay–you pay to a very ugly limit. Is that understood?”

“Perfectly,” I assured him. “I have my own principles left, such as they are, and nothing will make me swerve from them, but the world has treated me badly, and I am not squeamish.”

With that, he touched a button under his desk, Minchin reappeared, and I became an inmate of Breezeley Mansion.

CHAPTER 4

THE apartments to which my new employer’s peculiar manservant in due course conducted me were, after the hard time through which I had recently passed, a revelation in comfort and luxury. There was a pleasantly furnished sitting-room, with a bedroom and large bathroom communicating, all on the ground floor, and the windows of all three protected by iron bars. With a suit of clothes it was impossible to provide me, but linen, sponges, and all manner of toilet articles seemed to have appeared by magic. Minchin, at his master’s wish, reappeared, after I had had my bath and made as much of a toilette as I could, and he told me strange things in a curiously matter-of-fact fashion.

“Mr. Hews thought, sir,” he confided, “that you had better become acquainted with the constitution of the-household. In addition to the ordinary domestic staff we have five footmen in the house.”

“What on earth for?” I asked.

“For purposes of defence. Mr. Hews is very nervous about burglars. Then there are three electricians.”

“Also fighters?”

“They are generally too busy to think about anything but their work,” he said. “The house, as you may have noticed, is full of electric devices. Even the master’s carriage run up or downstairs in grooves connected with an electric dynamo. Then there is a complete set of burglar alarms indoors and out, and the secret doors are all worked in the same manner. We have a huge searchlight in the tower, and some other small contrivances which Mr. Hews will probably tell you about himself. So far as I have been able to observe, sir–and I have been here for eleven years–I should say that the electricians are the hardest worked members of the staff.”

“Well, it all sounds to me odd, of course, Minchin,” I acknowledged, “but I dare say I shall get used to it.”

“Life here usually has plenty of variety, sir,” the man continued. “Your meals can be served in your sitting-room at any hours you order them, and there is a car at your disposal whenever you require it. Across the passage there is a library. There is also a billiard room. The master wishes you to keep for the present the automatic you have, and there are other weapons and ammunition in the cupboard.”

“Who actually lives in the house beside the servants?” I asked. “Miss Essiter, Mr. Hews, and yourself, sir.”

“Why, there must be forty empty rooms!” I exclaimed.

“There are a great many,” he admitted. “Still, there are visitors–foreign chiefly–coming and going all the time, and the whole of the north wing has been converted into a museum for pictures and such-like. The master often spends several hours a day locked in there.”

“What on earth made Mr. Hews choose this ‘singular neighbourhood?” I asked.

“It has its advantages, sir,” Minchin explained. “You saw one of them to-day when we were able to get Donkin away by means of the river. Years ago,” the man added reflectively, “we used to have a great many callers drop off from the steamers. The police became a little inquisitive, though. There was an accident on the road between here and the river one night. A Chinaman was shot with some very valuable precious stones upon him. I am afraid the police since that time have been a trifle suspicious of this house and our doings.”

It occurred to me that I was perhaps becoming too curious concerning matters which were not exactly my affair. I endeavoured to change the subject.

“Talking of the police,” I remarked, “don’t you think they’ll get Donkin? There must be a warrant out against him, and they can telephone and Wireless down the river.”

“We are not afraid of the police, sir,” Minchin assured me. “The only trouble was getting Donkin on to the motor-boat before any of Joseph’s lot arrived. The police are all very well in their way, but they are much slower. The motor-boat did the trick for us. By this time, Donkin is on a tanker. He leaves that to-night for a coasting-steamer, and so on. The master is a great organiser. It gives him pleasure to arrange these things. His agents in London are almost as clever…At what time will you take you dinner, sir?”

“At any time that is convenient,” I told him, trying, by adopting a casual tone about the matter, to conceal the fact that I had had no luncheon.

“It will be served about eight o’clock then, sir,” he announced.

He laid upon the table the evening paper which he had been carrying, and respectfully took his leave. I looked after him for a moment or two, wondering why the man had inspired me with such a profound sense of distrust. His manner was quiet and civil, almost impressive. There was nothing in the least furtive about him. He looked one in the face, and he was certainly an excellent servant. He was of a secretive type, without a doubt, but as likely as not it was his master’s secrets he guarded. I mixed myself a whisky-and-soda, and stretched myself out in an easy-chair to reflect upon this amazing household of which I had become a member. Exactly what was Martin Hew’s object in life? What were the thoughts and schemes with which that strange brain of his was occupied? Why had it become a point of honour with him to secure the escape of a desperate criminal, and give shelter to his mistress? That he should keep his house closely guarded was not an unreasonable thing, especially if that other wing, of which Minchin had spoken, was filled with as many priceless treasures as was the library in which he usually sat. On the other hand, I was not at all convinced that his energies were purely defensive. His organisation outside must exist for some purpose or other. Was he, I speculated, the head of a band of criminals of his own, of which I was already a member, or was he simply a receiver of stolen goods on a huge scale, a financier of robberies and fraudulent exploits? After all, my interest in the matter was really little more than academic. After years of bitter hardship, I had adopted the vagabond’s philosophy. There was to be a roof over my head to-night, food to eat, wine to drink, tobacco to smoke. Questions of ethics could go hang. I was content to wait for the first problem to present itself…

My room became a little close, and presently I took advantage of a cleverly concealed door, and, finding the fastening with some difficulty, opened it and stepped out into the night. A slight drizzling rain was falling, which cooled my cheeks, as I strolled down the flinty path towards the road. There was scarcely a sound to be heard except the melancholy hooting of steamers crawling up the river, and the prospect all around was as dreary as ever. Suddenly I was aware that my solitude was about to be disturbed. A motor-car or taxicab had stopped in the road some two hundred yards away, and a man was proceeding on foot towards me. The incident in itself was ordinary enough, but the singular part of it was that, although it was a dark night, the vehicle had approached without lights and the footsteps which every moment I could hear more distinctly seemed to be the footsteps of a man seeking as far as possible to avoid attention. Even when he came in sight–a large, bulky figure, wearing a bowler hat and a long mackintosh–his progress was furtive, and at his first glimpse of the light of my cigarette he appeared to hesitate. In a moment or two, however, he came on, and paused as he reached my side. I recognised him at once. It was Miles, the butler, who had admitted me. He had lost his manner, however. He was no longer the dignified but affable major-domo of a large household; he gave one the impression of a man skulking in from an errand of which he was ashamed.

“Good evening,” I greeted him. “You have had a wet walk, I am afraid.”

He lifted his hat with an effort at politeness.

“A miserable walk, sir,” he confided. “A shocking neighbourhood this. You’ll find it dull, I’m afraid, if you’re staying with us long.”

My immediate reply was interrupted in a singular fashion. I felt suddenly blinded, bathed in a great sheet of light. I shielded my eyes with my hand, and swung around. A brilliant shaft of electric illumination from the farther tower had caught us both, played on us for a moment, and travelled on over the mud-soaked wilderness to the road beyond. The water in the dykes glistened, the wizened trees stood out one by one. About half-way to the station, the vehicle in which Miles had arrived was clearly visible–a motor-car or taxicab perhaps–being driven very slowly, and still without lights. Then as suddenly as it had appeared, the searchlight was shut off, and the darkness around us seemed more intense than ever. I realised to my surprise that the man by my side was trembling violently.

“God bless my soul, sir, what was that?” he gasped.

“A searchlight,” I exclaimed. “Minchin told me that they had one in the tower.”

“Curse their spying ways!” he exclaimed, with an abrupt vehemence which astonished me. “As though a man couldn’t take a little jaunt to see a friend without their wanting to know all about it! It’s a strange household, sir. I shall not be able to stand their ways. I’m used to something very different. I shall give notice to-morrow.”