CHAPTER XI

THE CONSTANTINOPLE COURIER

An ear-splitting report sent them all reeling back. The air stank with the fumes of burnt cordite. Then Clubfoot’s voice went booming through the room. A great automatic was smoking in his hand.

“The next shot will go through your head, Bewlay,” he roared at the prisoner who, on the report of the pistol, had momentarily ceased struggling. “Stand back there, Tarock,” he thundered. “I’ll have no brawling here. Sit down, all of you! Heinrich!”

The young German appeared in the doorway.

“Take Major Okewood on one side, and, if he attempts to escape, shoot him! Max, you look after Bewlay! Have you got the bags? Bring them in!”

The dominating personality of the man was extraordinary. Complete silence fell upon the room. The men at the table resumed their seats. Heinrich led Desmond into a corner while Max unceremoniously pitched the other prisoner on to a window-seat, where he lay motionless. He looked like an Englishman, young and of athletic build, with close-cropped fair hair, now stiff with matted blood from a great cut across the head.

A man staggered into the room, his arms piled high with white and green canvas bags sealed with red wax. With a sickening heart Desmond recognized them. They were the valises of the King’s Messenger. “Bewlay,” Grundt had called this fresh prisoner. Desmond remembered the name now. Paul Bewlay was the Constantinople courier.

The bags were tumbled in a heap on the table. With scissors and knives Grundt and his companions busied themselves with cutting the strings that bound them. Soon the table was heaped high with a litter of letters, documents, newspapers, and packages.

Presently Clubfoot looked up from the work. “You’ve searched him, Max?”

“Jawohl, Herr Doktor!”

The man took from his pocket a red bandana handkerchief, heavily weighted down, and handed it to Tarock. The Austrian spilled out a mixed assortment of objects, a watch and chain, a gold cigarette-case, a pencil, and a little silver brooch—the Silver Greyhound, the messenger’s badge.

“You’ve looked in the lining of his clothes, Max?”

“Ja, Herr Doktor. There is nothing there!”

The opening of the packages revealed some curious things. There was an old brass lamp, a pair of Jodhpore breeches, a couple of Samarcand rugs, and some boxes of Turkish Delight, enjoying, in strange promiscuity, the hospitality of the diplomatic valise. In the way of odd commissions, a King’s Messenger is as useful as the village carrier.

The rummaging went on. Then Desmond heard Mandelstamm’s reedy lisp.

“Your customary good fortune has failed you again, Herr Doktor!”

“Unsinn!” came the angry retort. “It must be here. He has been under observation every step of the way. Patience, my friend! We shall find it!”

The work was resumed in silence until at length Mandelstamm left the table.

“It’s useless!” he cried, his voice shrill with vexation. “You’re wasting our time, Herr Doktor!”

Tarock, too, had left his seat and was whispering to Blund, the fat Englishman, in a corner. Grundt remained alone at the table. His bulging brows were furrowed in thought. Then, as though struck by a sudden idea, he picked up one of the round boxes of Turkish Delight, raised the lid and shook the contents out upon the table. A second, a third, and a fourth box he treated in the same manner, and then, with a whoop of joy, he plunged his hand into the sticky pile of sweetmeats before him. When he withdrew his hand he held a number of sheets of white flimsy paper between finger and thumb. Dusting the fine sugar off them, he held them up for all to see.

“Herr Mandelstamm,” he said cuttingly, “perhaps this will teach you that Dr. Grundt does not promise what he cannot fulfil!”

But a ringing voice from the window-seat broke in upon his words. “You damned scoundrel!”

The King’s Messenger was standing erect. The soiled scarf that had gagged him had slipped aside. He was bound round with rope like a mummy in its wrappings, and his face was almost irrecognizable with the smother of dried blood that had welled from the wound in his head. But he stood up and shouted his defiance into the room as though he, and not Clubfoot, were the master there.

Grundt looked up slowly. “Max,” he said, without raising his voice, “take him away and get rid of him. He is of no further use to us,” he explained to the men at the table, while Max fell upon his victim.

With alacrity Tarock scrambled to his feet, drawing something from his hip pocket.

“I’ll attend to him!” he said in a voice hoarse with pleasurable excitement. And he hurried from the room behind Max and his prisoner.

As he passed, Desmond, covered by Heinrich’s automatic, saw that the Austrian carried in his hand a long Norwegian knife.

Mandelstamm extended talon-like fingers towards the paper in Clubfoot’s hand.

“L-l-let me s-s-see.” He stuttered with excitement.

“It’s in code,” said Grundt.

And all eyes turned to Desmond.

Grundt heaved himself up and, grasping his rubber-shod stick, hobbled awkwardly across the room to where Heinrich guarded the prisoner. The cripple waved the guard back.

“Okewood,” he said, “you are clever enough to know when you are beaten. I am well aware that your motto has ever been, ‘While there’s life there’s hope!’ but let me assure you that in this instance you can derive very little solace from that saying. The position of this house is so remote, its precincts are so well guarded, that, even if your friends were to discover your hiding-place—which is most unlikely—and were in hot cry hither, I should have ample leisure to devise and carry out even the most lingering form of death for you.” He paused and scrutinized the young man’s face. “I offer you your life on one condition.”

Desmond remained silent.

“Does it interest you?”

A long-drawn-out, gurgling scream, high-pitched and shrill with the extremity of agony, suddenly broke the brooding stillness of the house. It was followed by a little muffled cry from the room. From behind a typewriter placed on a desk in the corner a young girl had risen hesitatingly, one hand clutching her cheek, terror in her eyes. Desmond had not noticed her before.

“Xenia!” Mandelstamm cried harshly.

Listlessly the girl sank back into her seat.

Desmond looked straight into Clubfoot’s eyes. “What was that? Who screamed?” he asked, knowing full well the answer to his question.

“I think it must have been Bewlay,” calmly replied Grundt; and asked again: “Does my proposition interest you?”

Desmond shrugged his shoulders.

“Believe me, lieber Okewood,” Clubfoot resumed persuasively, “murder in cold blood is not one of my hobbies. One has to kill at times, but it is always a messy business unless one has the resources of a well-stocked laboratory at one’s back. Listen to me. I have here a message in your Secret Service code number 3A. If you will decipher it for us, you shall go free. We are willing to give you any reasonable guarantee of your life . . .”

“And if I tell you that I know nothing of this code?”

“That would not be true, my friend! Besides yourself, there are only two persons who, before the Foreign Office adopted it, were acquainted with its cipher . . . your revered Chief (a remarkable man, my dear Okewood, and a credit to our profession!) and his confidential clerk, by name Collins, I believe, who lives at Hatfield. Am I correct? No, no, my friend, you won’t try to deceive me. Old Clubfoot knows too much!”

“And if I reject your offer?”

Again that terrible scream rang out, suddenly checked this time and dying away in a strangling gurgle.

With an expressive movement of eyes and head Grundt indicated the upper regions of the house, now plunged once more into silence, as much as to say: “You wouldn’t drive us to _that_?”

Desmond Okewood put out his hand. “Let’s see the despatch!” he said brusquely.

But Clubfoot held up a deprecating paw. “No, no, my friend, not so fast,” he laughed. “You might tear it or . . . or drop it in the fire. I’ve been at a deal of trouble to get it.” He raised his voice. “Fräulein Xenia!”

The girl came slowly over from her corner. She was a slender, graceful creature, with slim hands and feet, glossy hair of jet-black brushed smoothly down to conceal her ears, and the clear, wide-open eyes of a child. As she stood before the big cripple waiting to hear his bidding, she let her black eyes rest for a moment on Desmond’s face. They were honest eyes, dark and appealing. Somehow he drew comfort from them.

Grundt handed her the despatch. “Sit down over there at the machine and make me one copy of this. Be very careful and check the ciphers carefully! Verstehen Sie?”

“Ich verstehe, Herr Doktor!” she answered in a low voice, pleasant of timbre, but lifeless and toneless.

As she crossed the room the door opened. Tarock had returned. He was red in the face and out of breath, and there was an air of stealthy guilt about him that chilled Desmond to the very marrow. He could not save now, but only avenge poor Bewlay. If his own hour were near, as he had a shrewd suspicion it was, he meant, so he promised himself, to risk all, if needs be, to send the Cracow _souteneur_ to precede him at the Judgment Seat.

The brisk rattle of the typewriter fell upon the quietness of the room. How matter-of-fact it sounded! They might have been in a lawyer’s office, not in this house of twilight death, whence time and the daylight were excluded.

The girl had finished her typing. Her black head was bowed over her table. She was revising the long list of numbers. In a minute, Desmond told himself, he must make up his mind how to act.

Now she had crossed the room: now she was giving the despatch and the copy to Clubfoot. Was Bewlay really dead? Or would he scream again? . . .

Clubfoot was speaking: “. . . Which is it to be?”

Desmond cleared his throat. All his senses were alert now. Those dreadful cries had stung him into action. He must gain time—time. By this the Chief and Francis, his brother, than whom there were no greater masters of their craft alive, would be busy with plans for his rescue. But they must have time to get on his track, unless he were too securely hidden away for them ever to find him . . . time, time . . .

“Give me the despatch!” Desmond exclaimed suddenly. Silently, his suspicious eyes searching the other’s face, Clubfoot handed over the typewritten sheets. Desmond studied them. Then, with a shake of the head: “I can’t decipher it like this,” he said. “Have you any dictionaries here?”

A glimmer of triumph shot into Grundt’s face. “What dictionary do you want?” he asked.

“Peereboom’s English-Dutch Dictionary, the edition of 1898,” Desmond answered promptly.

“I’ll send for it. It’ll be in your hands within the hour!” Clubfoot retorted and clapped him, almost affectionately, on the shoulder.

Then they took Desmond back to his room. In the corridor on the first floor they passed the body of the courier, lying, still swathed in his bonds, lifeless, in a welter of blood.