CHAPTER XV

THE DECOY

“My dear Okewood,” opened the Chief when, half an hour later, he faced Desmond across the fireside in his library, “you find me grappling with what is probably the most perplexing problem I have ever tackled. For the past four weeks, since your very ugly adventure with our old friend Clubfoot in the affair of the Constantinople courier, I have kept you and your brother deliberately away from the Service . . . against your own wish, I know . . . frankly because you are too valuable to be sacrificed to Dr. Grundt’s personal spite!”

At the mention of the name of his old enemy, Desmond Okewood sat up eagerly in his chair.

“Is Clubfoot up to his tricks again?” he asked quickly.

The Chief shrugged his shoulders. “I used to have the reputation of being a man who knew his own mind,” he replied.

Desmond looked at the beaklike nose and the massive jaw appraisingly. The Chief was worshipped in the Service for his quickness of decision.

“But when I tell you, in answer to your question, that one day I think he is and the next day I think he isn’t, you will realize how badly they’ve got me bothered. It’s not a long story, Okewood, and you may as well hear it because, I tell you honestly, the thing’s got too big for one man to handle alone; I ought to give the whole of my attention to it, but I can’t; I’m too busy. If I did, I should have to neglect other more important affairs, and that is precisely what this campaign of deviltry is meant to achieve.” The Chief drew meditatively on his cigar. “You knew Finucane, I think?”

“Who was lately in Brussels for you?”

The Chief nodded.

“Rather. But why ‘knew’?”

“He’s vanished, Okewood!”

“Kidnapped or . . .?”

“Murdered, almost certainly. It’s more than a week since it happened. He knew too much!”

Desmond nodded his assent. Brussels, the half-way house to everywhere in Europe, is the report centre for the espionage services of every great European Power. The Secret Service agent who can make good in Brussels has little left to learn about the game.

“Yesterday a week ago Finucane crossed over from Brussels to see me,” the Chief resumed. “Between ourselves, Finucane has been tightening up our report centres in industrial Germany. You know Finucane, Okewood: no Vere de Vere about him, but a devilish clever fellow and a damned judgmatical briber. His reports on the German situation have been admirable, and the Prime Minister was delighted. Finucane came over to get his head patted and also to submit certain plans for the development of our arrangements in Germany.

“Finucane got in from Brussels on Friday evening by the train that reaches Victoria at nine-twenty-five. He was to see me on the following morning. He engaged a room at the Nineveh, changed into evening dress, and went off to get a bite to eat and see life at the Hexagon. At five minutes to midnight he left the Hexagon alone and apparently perfectly sober. He never reached his hotel and has neither been seen nor heard of since!”

Desmond whistled. “Did he have the goods on him?”

The Chief laughed dryly. “Not Finucane! He carried it all under his hat!”

“And you’ve got no trace of him, no clue?”

Somewhere in the house an electric bell trilled. The Chief looked at his watch.

“As far as we know the last person to speak to Finucane before he disappeared was Madeleine McKenzie,” he said. “By a fortunate coincidence there happened to be present at the Hexagon that night a young detective from Vine Street named Rimmer, who was keeping observation on a gang of West-End crooks. This bright young man remembers Finucane perfectly. Apparently Finucane spoke to the girl and, sitting down at her table, ordered a bottle of champagne. The McKenzie girl left first and Finucane remained to finish the bottle. Just before midnight he paid the bill and went away. The curious thing is that, while Finucane and the girl were drinking together at the table, the flower-woman approached, just as she did to-night, and gave the girl a bunch of flowers. And, again, just as we saw this evening, on receiving the nosegay the girl promptly left the place . . .”

“A signal, eh?” queried Desmond.

“Obviously,” said the Chief. “But what does it portend?”

The door opened. Watkyn, the Chief’s butler, a massively built ex-petty officer, with a pair of shoulders like an ox, was there.

“Captain Elliott!” he announced.

“Perhaps Elliott can tell us!” remarked the great man as the butler ushered into the library that selfsame youth whom, slightly merry with wine, they had seen but half an hour ago at Madeleine McKenzie’s table at the Hexagon.

The Chief wasted no time on introductions.

“Well?” was his greeting.

“We carried out your instructions to the letter, sir,” said the youth. “She’s a very ladylike, attractive girl, not a bit the sort of skirt you meet knockin’ about places like the ‘old Hex.’ I pressed her very hard to let me drive her home, and I really thought I was getting on with her pretty well. But all of a sudden she kind of dried up and said she had to go . . .”

“When was that?” snapped the Chief.

“How do you mean, ‘when’?”

“At what stage of your conversation, with the lady did this change come over her?” said the Chief testily.

“Oh! after she was given some flowers by old Bessie!”

The Chief nodded grimly. “Well, and then?”

“We followed her taxi. She went home to Duchess Street. I left Robin to keep watch and follow her if she should leave the house.”

Again the Chief nodded. “Thank you, Peter,” he remarked, more gently this time. “That’ll be all for to-night. You can pick Robin up on your way home and send him to bed. And hark’ee, the pair of you steer clear of the Hexagon until further orders, do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the young man. “Good-night, sir.”

“Good-night, Peter.”

After the door had closed on him the Chief turned to Desmond.

“We took a statement from the girl. Her story absolutely tallies with Rimmer’s. She had a touch of neuralgia, she says, and went home early that night. She lives in furnished rooms in a most respectable house near the Langham Hotel, and if she is what she seems to be, she certainly does not ply her trade there. And yet what is the mystery of these flowers?”

“Was she asked about them?”

The Chief shook his head. “I was afraid of raising her suspicions. If it is a code a question like that would make them change it. But three times this week I’ve despatched some of my people to the Hexagon to get into conversation with the girl, different types each time, and I’ve got only negative results. The first man I sent posed as a rich Colonial newly landed in London, exactly the sort of fish that the West-End crooks and their decoys are always trying to land. She let him buy her a drink; Bessie, the flower-woman, came across in due course and gave her a bunch of white carnations, and presently she made an excuse to join a party at another table. But—note this well!—she did not leave the place until closing time, when she took a taxi home alone.

“Two nights later I sent another fellow along. His orders were to sit in the girl’s line of vision, but on no account to address her first. Nothing happened. She made no advances to him; nobody else spoke to her, and she received no flowers. She stayed until closing time and again drove away to Duchess Street by herself.

“To-night, by my instructions, young Elliott took her on. As when Finucane was with her, she received, as you saw, a nosegay, not of white flowers only as my Colonial got, but of white flowers mingled with blue. Forthwith she drops young Peter and his friend and goes home. Strange, isn’t it?”

“It is, indeed,” observed his companion. “It would help us enormously if we knew what flowers she was given the night that Finucane disappeared!”

“I agree. But Rimmer didn’t notice. We could have cross-examined old Bessie; but if this is a code, she’s certainly in it too; and I will _not_ scare them off it until I see more clearly . . .” He paused and, ticking each point off on his fingers, resumed presently: “If it’s a code, this is what I make of it. General instructions to the girl: sit around at the ‘Hex.’ every night, make no advances, but only receive them. A white flower means, ‘Drop the fellow; he does not interest us, but stand by’; a white and a blue say: ‘The fellow does not interest us; you can go home.’”

“By Jove!” commented Desmond, enthusiasm in his voice, “this is getting jolly interesting, sir!”

“Yes,” agreed the Chief. “But where does it take us? Up against a blank wall. And meanwhile Finucane’s disappearance remains a mystery, and the _morale_ of my staff is being ruined! This negative result business leads nowhere. I want something positive to show whether Madeleine McKenzie is or is not at the bottom of this baffling affair.”

“What about old Bessie? Who gives _her_ her orders?”

“We’ve drawn blank there, too! My men are in the crowd at the ‘Hex.’ every night to watch the old strap. Fellows often buy flowers from her for ladies at the ‘Hex.,’ but, as far as my young men have been able to see, no one has sent any flowers to Madeleine!”

Desmond was silent for a moment. “In that case,” he said presently, “there is only one way of finding out whether the young woman is being used as a decoy; that is, to send her some one prominent, a really big fish, and let her employers know, if possible, that he’s coming. We shadow our decoy and see where he leads us!”

The Chief chuckled delightedly. “What I like about you, Okewood,” he said, “is that your instincts are so unerring. You have hit precisely upon my plan. Listen! There is at present working for me in Germany a gentleman who is commonly known in this office as Murchison of Munich, you have never met him, for he is a recent acquisition, a banker by profession and a first-rate economist with a natural ability for Intelligence work. For the last eight weeks he has been in southern Germany carrying out an investigation into the transfer of German wealth abroad. I flatter myself that we have been able to cover up his tracks so successfully that, in his capacity as secret agent, he is actually known by sight to myself alone. Do you follow me?”

Desmond nodded.

“Now,” the Chief continued, “the important thing about his mission, from the standpoint of our present dilemma, is that the big German industrialists have lately become aware of the presence of one of my fellows in the inner ring of their councils without, however, being able to identify him. I am virtually certain that the kidnapping of Finucane (to whom Murchison—did I tell you?—has been reporting) was intended as a warning to me that they are on the alert. A word to a certain ‘double-cross’ of my acquaintance giving away the identity of Murchison of Munich, and a hint dropped in the same quarter that, on a certain evening, the party in question is to be found at the Hexagon, will infallibly bring Clubfoot into the open again . . .”

“Clubfoot? Why Clubfoot?”

“Because,” said the Chief gravely, “our crippled friend, Dr. Grundt, the redoubtable master spy of Imperial Germany, has transferred his allegiance to the German industrialist ring, which, as you know, is the heart and soul of the great conspiracy to restore the fortunes of Germany as a militarist monarchy. Grundt to-day is the instrument of the coal and steel bosses, the real masters of modern Germany . . .”

“He has been working for them ever since his reappearance, do you think?”

“Undoubtedly. Now, see here again. If, when Murchison appears at the Hexagon, Madeleine McKenzie is used as the decoy, we shall have acquired the certainty that it was she who lured Finucane away. And if subsequent developments don’t lead us back to old Clubfoot, damn it, I’ll eat my hat!”

“But supposing your surmise does not prove correct,” Desmond objected, “you’ll have given away one of your best men!”

The Chief smiled and shook his head. “No, I shan’t! Murchison of Munich is going to stay quietly where he is in South Germany . . .”

The eyes of the two men met.

“Bear in mind,” added the Chief, “that nobody has ever seen Murchison of Munich except myself!”

There was a significant pause.

“And I do so hate painting my face!” remarked Desmond irrelevantly.

The Chief laughed. “I knew I could count on you, Okewood. Very little disguise will be necessary if you will consent to sacrifice your moustache. All I ask you to do is to dine at the Hexagon at eight o’clock to-morrow evening in the guise of Mr. Murchison of Munich. You can leave the rest to me. And if, in the course of the evening, you should recognize that brother of yours—well, don’t! Now as to this question of your make-up . . .”