The arrangement of that password in itself showed how cleverly Rudolph Rayne was foresighted in all his plans. He always left a loophole for escape. Surely he was a past-master in the art of criminality, for his fertile brain evolved schemes and exit channels which nobody ever dreamed of.
The squire of Overstow, who was regarded by the wealthy county people of Yorkshire as perfectly honest in all his dealings, and unduly rich withal, attracted to his table some of the most exclusive hunting set, people with titles, as well as the parvenus impossibles who had bought huge places with the money made out of the war. The County never dreamed of the mysterious source of Rudolph Raynes unlimited income.
After traveling through a number of deserted streets in Bristol, I at last found myself upon a high road with a signpost which told me that I was on my way to Wells, that picturesque little city at the foot of the Mendip Hills. So, fearing lest I might be followed, I went all out through Axbridge and Cheddar, until at last I came to the fine old cathedral at Wells, which I knew quite familiarly. Near it was the Swan Hotel, at which, after some difficulty, I aroused the boots, secured a room, and placed the car in the garage.
It was then nearly half-past three in the morning, and my only object in taking a room was to inform Rayne by telephone of my narrow escape. Rayne was remaining the night at Half Moon Street, while Lola and Madame Duperré were at the Carlton. We had all come up from Overstow a couple of days before, and two secret meetings had been held at Half Moon Street.
Of the nature of the plot in progress I was in entire ignorance. They never let me completely into their plans; indeed, I only knew their true import when they were actually accomplished.
The half-awake boots at the Swan indicated the telephone, and a quarter of an hour later I was speaking to Rayne in his bedroom in London. Very guardedly I explained how nearly I had been trapped, whereupon I heard him chuckle.
A very good lesson for you, Hargreave! he replied. Our friends are apparently on the watch, so get back to London as soon as you can. Youll be here at breakfast-time. Leave the car at Lloyds and come along to me. Good luck to you! he added, and then switched off.
The Lloyds garage he mentioned was in Bloomsbury, a place kept for the accommodation of motor-thieves. Many a car which disappeared quickly found its way there, and in a few hours the engine numbers were removed and fresh ones substituted, while the bodies were repainted and false number-plates attached.
As I put down the telephone receiver, it suddenly occurred to me that already the Bristol police might have telephoned a description of the car along the various roads leading out of the city. Therefore it would be too risky to remain there. Hence, as though in sudden decision, I paid the boots for my bed, and five minutes later was again on the road speeding towards London.
I chose the road to Salisbury, and after blinding for half an hour, I stopped and put on the false number-plates and license with which Rayne always provided me.
It was as well that I did so, for in the gray morning as I went through Salisbury a police-sergeant and a constable hailed me just as I turned into St. John Street, near the White Hart, calling upon me to stop. I could see by their attitude that they were awaiting me, therefore pretending not to hear I quickened my pace and, knowing the road, soon left the place behind me.
Again, in a village some ten miles farther on, a constable shouted to me as I continued my wild flight, hence it seemed apparent that a cordon had been formed around me, and I now feared that to enter Winchester would be to run right into the arms of the police.
The only way to save myself was to abandon the car and get back to London by rail. As I contemplated this I was already passing beside the high embankment of the South Western Railway, where half a mile farther on I found a little wayside station. Therefore I turned the car into a small wood, and destroying my genuine license and hiding the genuine number-plate, I took the next train to Winchester, and thence by express to Waterloo after a very wild and adventurous night. That I had been within an ace of capture was palpable. But why?
I was in the service of the man who controlled that vast criminal organization which the police of Europe were ever trying to break up. But why should I be sent to meet the mysterious hunchback Tarrant on Clifton Bridge?
There seemed to have been a little flaw in our plans, Hargreave, said the alert, good-looking man as I sat with him in his cosy chambers in Half Moon Street that morning. The police evidently got wind of the fact that old Morley was meeting you, and Benton tried to impersonate him. I know Benton. Hes always up against me. He might have succeeded had he made the hump on his back a hard one, eh? he laughed, as though rather amused than otherwise.
But he didnt know the password, I remarked in triumph.
No! It was fortunate for you that I had arranged it with old Morley, said the man with the master-mind. One must be ever wary when one treads crooked paths, you know. The slightest slip and the end comes! But, at any rate, last nights adventure has sharpened your wits.
And it has cost us the A. C.! I remarked.
Bah! Whats a motor-car more or less when one is working a big thing! he exclaimed. Never let ideas of economy stand in your way, or youll never make a fortune. In order to make money you must always spend money.
I often recollected that adage of his in later days, when the pace grew even hotter.
Rayne paused for a few minutes. Then he said:
Ive already heard from old Morley on the telephone half an hour ago. He was on the bridge and watched the fun. Then he discreetly withdrew and went back to his hotel in Clifton. He declares that you acted splendidly.
Im much gratified by his testimonial, I said.
Ive arranged that he shall meet you to-night here in London outside the Three Nuns Hotel at Aldgate. Go to Lloyds and get a car. At half-past seven it will be dark. Drive up, go into the bar and have a drink. Youll find him there and recognize him by his deformity. Outside he will mention the password and you will drive him where he directs. Thats all!
And the man who had, on engaging me, so particularly wanted to know if I could sing, and had never asked me to do so, dismissed me quite abruptly, as was his habit. His quick alertness, keen shrewdness and sharp suspicion caused him to speak abruptly almost churlishly to those about him. I, however, now understood him. Yet I wondered what evil work was in progress.
He had often pitted his wits against the most famous detective inspector, the great Benton, who had achieved so much notoriety in the Enfield poisoning case, the Sunbury mystery in which the body of a young girl shop-assistant had been found headless in the Thames, the great Maresfield drug drama of Limehouse and Mayfair, and the disappearance of the Honorable Edna Newcomen from her mothers house in Grosvenor Gardens. Superintendent Arthur Benton was perhaps the most wideawake hunter of criminals in the United Kingdom. As chief of his own particular branch at Scotland Yard he performed wonderful services, and his record was unique. Yet, hampered as he was by official red-tape and those regulations which prevented his men from taking a third-class railway ticket when following a thief, unless they waited for weeks for the return of the expenditure from official sources, he was no match for the squire of Overstow, who had a big bank balance, who moved in society, official, political and otherwise, and who actually entertained certain high officials at his table.
From a man in the Department of the Public Prosecutor at Whitehall, Rayne often learnt much of the inner workings of Scotland Yard and of secret inquiries, for a civil servant at a well-laid sumptuous table is frequently prone to indiscretion.
Arthur Benton was a well-meaning and very straight-dealing public servant with a splendid record as a detector of crime, but against money and such influence he could not cope. Indeed, more than once Rayne declared to me that he intended evil against Benton.
Yet I rather like him, he had said when we were discussing him one day. After all, hes a real good sportsman!
So according to Raynes orders I met the hunchback Tarrant at the Three Nuns Hotel at Aldgate. I had taken another car from Lloyds garage a Fiat landaulette, stolen, no doubt and in it, at the old mans directions, I drove out to Maldon, in Essex, where at a small house outside the town I found, to my surprise, Rayne already awaiting us.
What, I wondered, was in progress?
CHAPTER IV
THE FOUR FALSE FINGERS
The house outside Maldon proved to be a newly built, detached, eight-roomed villa in a lonely spot on the high road to Witham. As I idled about it, I smelt a curious odor of melting rubber. Apparently the place had been taken furnished, but with what object I could not guess. Tarrant was a queer, rather insignificant-looking old fellow with a shock of white hair and a scraggy white beard.
Both he and Rayne were closeted together in the little dining-room for nearly two hours, while I sat in the adjoining room. I could hear them conversing in low tones, and the smell of rubber warmed by heat became more pungent. What game was being carried on? Something very secret without a doubt. I thought I heard the sound of a third mans voice. Indeed, there might be a third person present, for I had not been admitted to the room.
At last, leaving Rayne there, I drove the old man on to Witham, where I left him at his own request at a point near the wireless telegraph station, and turning, went back to the thieves garage and there left the car.
I did not see Rudolph Rayne again for several days, but according to instructions I received from Madame Duperré, I went by train up to Yorkshire and awaited their arrival.
From Duperré, who arrived three days after I had got to Overstow, I gathered that Rayne had suddenly been called away to the Continent on one of his swift visits, on a little matter of business, added Vincent with a meaning grin.
We were smoking together in the great old library, when I told him of my narrow escape on Clifton Bridge.
Yes, he said. Benton is always trying to get at us. It was sly of him to impersonate old Morley. I wonder how he got to know that you were meeting him? Someone must have betrayed Rayne. I have a suspicion who it may be. If he has, then woe betide him! Rudolph never forgives an enemy or a blunderer.
I tried to get from Duperré the reason why the hunchback had met Rayne in such secrecy, but he would divulge nothing.
Next day his wife and Lola returned, and that same evening as I sat with the latter in the chintz-covered drawing-room for though I had been engaged as chauffeur I was now treated as one of the family I had a delightful chat with her.
That she was sorely puzzled at her fathers rapid journeys to and fro across Europe without any apparent reason, of the strange assortment of his friends and the secrecy in which he so often met them, I had long ago observed.
The truth was that I had fallen deeply in love with the sweet dainty girl whose father was the most audacious and cunning crook the modern world had produced. I believed, on account of the small confidence we had exchanged, that Lola, on her part, did not regard me with actual disfavor.
When will your father be back, do you think? I asked her as she lounged upon a settee with a big orange silk cushion behind her. She looked very sweet. She wore a pretty but very simple dance-frock of flame-colored ninon, in which I had seen her at the Carlton on the night when I set out to meet the man Tarrant and was so nearly caught.
I had given her a cigarette, and we were smoking together cosily Duperré and his wife being somewhere in the great old house. I think Duperré was, after all, a sportsman, even though he was a practiced crook, for on that night he and his wife allowed me to be alone with Lola.
Do you know a friend of your father, an old man named Tarrant? I asked her suddenly.
Tarrant Morley Tarrant? she asked. Oh! yes. Hes such a funny old fellow. Three years ago he often used to visit us when we lived in Biarritz, but I havent seen him since.
Who is he?
He was the manager of the branch of the Crédit Foncier. He is French, though he bears an English name.
French! But he speaks English! I remarked.
Of course. His mother was English. He was once employed by Morgans in Paris, I believe, but I havent seen him lately. Father said one day at table that the old fellow had overstepped the mark and owing to some defalcations had gone to prison. I was sorry. What do you know of him?
Nothing, I replied. Ive heard of him.
She looked me very straight in the face from beneath her long dark lashes.
Ah! you wont tell me what you know, she said mysteriously.
Neither will you, Lola! Then, after a pause, I added: I want to know whether he is your fathers friend or his enemy.
His friend, no doubt.
Why should your father have as friend a man who robs a bank, eh? I asked very earnestly.
Ah! That I dont know! replied the girl as she bent towards me earnestly. I Im always so puzzled. Ever since my dear mother died, just after I came back from Roedene, I have wondered and always wondered. I can discover nothing absolutely nothing! Father is so secret, and neither Madame nor he will tell me anything. They only say that their business is no affair of mine. My father has business, no doubt, Mr. Hargreave. From his business he derives his income. But I cannot see why he should so constantly meet men and women in all sorts of social positions and give them orders, as it were. I am not blind, neither am I deaf.
You have listened in secret, eh? I asked.
I confess that I have. Then, after a slight pause, she went on: And I have overheard some very strange conversations. My father seems to direct the good fortunes of certain of his friends, while at the same time he plots against his enemies. But I suppose, after all, it is business.
Business! Little did the girl dream of the real occupation of her unscrupulous father, or the desperate characters of his friends, both male and female.
Truly, she was very sweet and charming, and I hated to think that in her innocence she existed in that fevered world of plotting and desperate crime.
We walked along the broad terrace in the twilight. Beyond spread the wide park to a dark belt of trees, Shermans Copse, it was called, a delightfully shady place in summer where we had often strolled together.
As we chatted, I reflected. So old Morley Tarrant was a gaol-bird! Hence it was but natural that Rudolph Rayne, who preserved such a high degree of respectability, would hesitate to meet him providing he knew that the police were watching. He certainly knew that, hence the secrecy of their appointment.
As we walked Madame suddenly emerged from the French windows of the drawing-room and joined us.
Ive just had a wire from Rudolph, she said. Hes leaving Copenhagen to-night and will be back to-morrow night. Id no idea that he had been over in Denmark. But there! he is such a bird of passage that one never knows where he may be to-morrow. And she laughed.