CHAPTER XIII

IN WHICH CHECK PROVES TO BE CHECKMATE

When Desmond came to his senses he was propped up in a limousine that was slowly threading a broad street crowded with trams and other traffic. The Chief was at his side and, on the opposite seat, Francis with the girl whose pale face, dark eyes, and glossy black hair were vaguely familiar.

With a bewildered expression the young man looked from one face to the other.

“Where am I?”

“You’re in the Mile End Road, old man, going home,” said his brother, patting him on the knee.

“And Clubfoot?”

“Escaped down the river by launch!”

Desmond took the girl’s hand. “I remember it all now,” he said. “It was this brave girl that saved us. She gave me the automatic with which I was able to keep them off until you came. Without that gun . . .”

“I shouldn’t talk any more now if I were you,” the Chief counselled.

“I’m all right,” said Desmond, “except that my head is buzzing like a beehive. What happened to me exactly?”

“You were hit by a ricochet off your precious barricade,” his brother replied. “Actually it only grazed your temple, but it put you down for the count . . .”

Desmond was silent for a moment. “Escaped by launch, did he?” he remarked presently. “Francis, where _was_ this house to which they took me?”

“Down on the Thames flats, between Rainham and Purfleet,” said his brother; “about as lonely a spot as they could find.”

“But how on earth did you locate me?”

“Okewood,” interposed the Chief with finality, “you are talking too much. That story, like yours, will have to keep!”

Actually it only kept until the following day, when Desmond, his head romantically bound up in a bandage, entertained the Chief and Francis to lunch at his chambers.

“For our providential arrival,” remarked the Chief, neatly spearing the cherry in his cocktail as they stood round the fire, “you can thank this brother of yours! Two nights ago you vanished off the face of the earth. We had no description of the man who kidnapped you beyond that of old Clubfoot; we had no particulars at all of the car, no inkling of the route you took. And how do you think Francis here grappled with _that_ situation? Tell him yourself, man!” The Chief chuckled and drained his glass.

“Well,” said Francis slowly, “it was a long shot, for I reckoned the odds at about a hundred to one on Clubfoot murdering you right off. But I thought there was a chance he might hold you to ransom or something of the sort; in that case he would have to have a secure retreat to which he could convey you. That retreat, I figured to myself, must be within a reasonable distance of London, for Clubfoot’s business is here. So, within an hour of your disappearance, I arranged for an inquiry to be sent by telephone or telegram to every house and estate agent within a radius of fifty miles of London as to whether a house had recently been let to any one answering Clubfoot’s description. I offered a reward of five hundred pounds for the information.

“By noon I had my answer. They rang up from Marlow and Wadding’s, the big West-End agents, to say that one of their clerks had an important statement to make. In due course the man arrived. He had gone down one day last week to inspect on behalf of a client a property close to the river some miles from Purfleet, a place called Rushdene Grange. When he reached the house, he found that it showed evident signs of occupation, for smoke was rising from the chimneys, though all the windows were shuttered.

“He supposed that the house had been placed in the hands of more than one agent for disposal and had been let without the knowledge of his firm. He was standing at the front door when a car came up the drive. A big lame man, answering in every particular to the description of our friend Grundt, got out. He told the clerk very gruffly that the place was let and vanished into the house.

“From inquiries my informant made locally he ascertained that the house had been let furnished to a man named Fitzroy, which, the police tell me, is one of the various aliases of Schmetterding, alias Blund, an old friend of ours, Des., for, if you remember, it was he who took that place at Harlesden for Grundt in the affair of the purple cabriolet. When we picked up the poor gentleman with his neck so picturesquely broken at the foot of the staircase at Rushdene Grange, Manderton recognized him at once. He’s an Englishman of German extraction, with a fine list of convictions against him at the Yard.”

Francis looked at his brother and smiled. “A little rough with him, weren’t you, Des.?”

“He came butting in when I was trying to escape,” replied Desmond, “so I landed him a punch, and he went backwards over the stairs.”

“And there was Tarock on his face in the hall with a bullet in his temple . . .”

“Dead?”

“As dead as a door-nail!” Francis replied.

“I’m glad I nailed him,” Desmond remarked, and added, addressing the Chief, “Tarock, of Cracow, you know, sir!”

The big man nodded. “He’s no loss,” he remarked. “He’d lived too long, anyway.”

“From what my house agent friend told me,” Francis resumed, “we guessed that the house would be a regular fortress. So I took a charge of guncotton with the cutting-out party the Chief let me organize and blew the lock off the front door. How Clubfoot escaped being killed by the explosion I don’t know. When we got in, we found the nest empty except for that choice specimen, Mandelstamm, who was spitting teeth into the basin in the bath-room out of the most beautiful mouth you ever saw. Whew, Des., you must have fetched him a clip!”

“He walked into my fist,” his brother retorted, grinning. “But what about Grundt?”

“I’m afraid he got away through my fault. The shooting inside the house rather rattled me . . . on account of you, you know . . . and I blew the lock before our men had got into their stations at the back. Clubfoot must have escaped through the basement and got down to the river, for we discovered afterwards that an electric launch he used to keep up a creek had disappeared. I presume he took Max and Heinrich with him. They left poor Bewlay where they killed him upstairs.”

“He died well,” said Desmond, giving him his epitaph. He turned to the Chief. “And this treaty, sir? Clubfoot has got away with it, I suppose?”

“He has!” replied the big man grimly.

“He was under the impression that it was coded in 3A,” Desmond went on. “It wasn’t, you know, though I didn’t disabuse his mind, of course. It was in no code _I_ had ever seen before.”

“Or will ever see again. The only two keys in existence, one in Constantinople and the other in London, were destroyed by my orders within twenty-four hours of the courier being kidnapped. The F.O., you see, changed their minds about 3A and used a special cipher. Do you know that the Bolsheviks offered twenty-five thousand pounds for a copy of that treaty _en clair_? The Secretary of State has been in a perfect agony of mind about it, for the party who negotiated this document, with certain influential Turks behind the scenes at the Porte, was not an official emissary. And if Parliament had got wind of the affair at this stage . . .” He broke off and whistled.

“Chief,” said Desmond, “we must do something for this girl Xenia. Her people are all in prison in Russia, and now that Tarock is dead . . .”

“That’s already seen to,” replied the big man. “Mademoiselle Xenia is being cared for by some friends of mine, and in a little while, when she has got over this shock, I think I ought to be able to utilize her knowledge of Russian at one of our report centres in the Baltic States. In any case, I mean to remove her as soon as possible out of Clubfoot’s reach.”

“He’s vanished into thin air, I suppose?” Desmond remarked.

“A perfect Vidocq!” the Chief observed. “But never fear: he’ll be after us again, if only to pay us back for checkmating him this time!” And he grinned with great contentment.

“And what’s our next move to be, sir?” asked Desmond.

“You and that brother of yours,” replied the Chief, “will, each and severally, equip yourselves with a bag of golf-clubs and report to-morrow morning at a course not too far removed from London and devote yourselves, until further orders, to reducing your respective handicaps.”

“But Clubfoot . . .” the two young men broke out.

“Clubfoot will keep. But you’ll not beat him with your nerves frayed out at the ends. You two get out into the fresh air and forget all about him. And in the mean time . . .”

“Luncheon is served,” announced Desmond’s man.

“As good an occupation as any,” observed the Chief, “in the intervals between the rounds!”