CHAPTER XVI

THE HOUSE IN PIMLICO

At five minutes to eight on the following evening, Desmond Okewood took his seat at the table which had been reserved for Mr. Murchison at the Hexagon. Next to the door, two tables away, the McKenzie girl was seated, eating her dinner with the air of quiet simplicity that Desmond had already remarked in her. She was again in black, but the Spanish comb was gone, and she now, wore a smart little black hat whose curving brim and sweeping black aigrette emphasized the rather wistful piquancy of her features. Desmond fancied he could detect about her a vague air of excitement, of expectancy. At any rate, there was a faint glow of colour, in her pale cheeks.

Desmond Okewood was feeling particularly pleased with himself. I, who had known him all his life, came in with a party and passed him by without recognizing him, as he told me gleefully afterwards. And yet, as the Chief had said, very little disguise had proved necessary. With grease-paint and powder Desmond had blocked the healthy tan out of his face, a touch of rouge on the cheek-bones had altered the set of his features, and a subtle change had been wrought in the expression of his eyes by the simple process of shaving off the outer corner of the eye-brows and correcting their line with a black pencil. The sacrifice of his moustache and the addition of a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles had sufficed to achieve the Chief’s object, which was to render Desmond’s general appearance both nondescript and negligible.

Suddenly the young man felt a little tingle of excitement. Bessie, the flower-woman, whom he had noticed offering her wares among the serried ranks of loungers at the long bar, was crossing the room. A man at a table on the edge of the dancing-floor bought a bunch of violets for the girl with him. A nasty-looking old woman, Desmond decided, as Bessie approached, with small eyes, dull and lifeless, and thin lips set in a fixed, unmeaning smile.

She passed him by and stopped at the McKenzie girl’s table. From her basket rested on the white damask she took a cluster of deep red carnations and laid them silently, with her eternal smirk, beside the girl’s plate. No word was exchanged between them; with a grateful smile at the woman the girl pinned the flowers in the front of her dress and Bessie passed on.

Desmond waited. Excitement had dulled the edge of his appetite, and he made a pretext of eating while he narrowly watched the girl. Once or twice he caught her glancing archly at him from under her heavy black lashes, and now, as he looked at her, she let her dark eyes rest invitingly on his.

He beckoned to the waiter.

“Ask the lady in black by the door whether I may offer her a glass of champagne,” he said.

The man nodded understandingly, and the next moment Desmond was facing Madeleine McKenzie across the table.

Her complete self-possession was the first thing that struck him, for she was obviously quite young. She was not coy about the informality of their meeting, and she received his introductory banalities about the crowd and the band and the food with an air of amused indifference which piqued him.

She made him talk about himself, parrying with skill all his efforts to draw her out. Little by little, so sure and sympathetic was her touch, Desmond found himself entering into the spirit of his part, talking of the life of Munich, the Opera, the little _théâtres intimes_, the huge, noisy _brasseries_.

“You are used to a life of excitement, then?” she said.

It was Desmond’s cue. Swiftly he took it.

“Indeed I am,” he answered. “I’ve been only a few hours in London, and I’m sick of it already. Does any one ever have a good time here?”

The girl flashed a glance at him from under her long lashes. “If you know where to look for it,” she said softly.

“I bet you know your way around,” Desmond replied.

She shrugged her shoulders prettily. “My ideas of a good time might not agree with yours,” she countered.

“What are your ideas of a good time?” he asked.

She sighed. “Gambling!” she answered, “if I could afford it.”

Desmond grew alert on the instant. Was this the secret of Finucane’s disappearance, cleaned out in a _tripot_ and ashamed to show his face again?

“Now you’re talking,” he said. He lowered his voice. “Tell me, do you know where there’s a game?”

She scrutinized his face, turned up to hers. “If I thought you were to be trusted . . .” she began.

He shrugged his shoulders. “If you think I’m a police spy! However, I dare say I can find my own way to the roulibouli!”

“Now I’ve offended you,” she said, and laid her hand on his arm. “Are you really keen?”

“Keen? Gambling’s the only sort of excitement worth while, and I’ve tried most sorts. The shaded lights, the green cloth, the click of the ball, the scrape of the rakes—the night should have four and twenty hours if I had my way!”

“Come closer!” said the girl. “Leave me here and drive to the clock outside Victoria Station at the entrance to the Vauxhall Bridge Road. Wait for me there. I mustn’t be seen leaving with you. The police watch the Hexagon!”

The crucial moment had arrived. Desmond glanced quickly round the room. There was no sign of Francis or any of the Chief’s men. Well, his orders were to go through with the adventure. He paid the bill and left the girl at her table. Half an hour later, as he waited in front of the clock-tower at Victoria, a taxi drew up and a white hand tapped softly on the glass.

The girl stopped the cab in front of one of those tall, gloomy houses that face the river in Grosvenor Road. Behind them, over an arch of lights, the trams thumped across Vauxhall Bridge; before them, beyond a wilderness of warehouses and wharves, the glow of South London shone luridly in the night sky.

The house was dark and, save for the taxi quietly chugging at the door, the street was deserted. The girl jumped out first and, a latchkey in her hand, was already at the front door as Desmond alighted. For an instant he hesitated. What had happened to Francis and the others? Had the Chief failed him? Should he go on? His orders left him no choice. He had to play his part and leave the rest to the Chief. He felt in his jacket pocket for the reassuring chill of his automatic as he turned to pay the cab.

“How much?” he asked the driver, an apple-cheeked greybeard.

“Something’s gone wrong, Des.,” replied the man in a low voice, the voice of Francis Okewood. “The Chief’s people were to have followed us. Back out of this while you can!”

“Psst!”

From the top of the steps the girl was signalling to Desmond to make haste.

“Have you change for a ten-shilling note?” Desmond said aloud to his brother, and added in an undertone: “I’m going to see it through. But get help quickly!”

And with that he followed the girl into the house.

They crossed the hall, a dingy place in which a gas-jet in a stained-glass lamp burned dimly. The girl stopped at a door at the end and, producing another key, unlocked it. They entered another lobby, very spick and span with its white paint and red Wilton pile carpet and brilliantly lighted. The murmur of voices came from swing-doors that led off it and the air was heavy with the fragrant aroma of cigars.

At the end of the lobby, with their backs to the entrance door, a man and a girl stood. The man had his arms about the woman and his face was buried in the aureole of her golden hair. Desmond heard a sharp exclamation from Madeleine.

“Paul!” she cried sharply.

The couple sprang apart. Like a fury Madeleine turned on the woman.

“What are you doing with my husband?” she demanded, and advanced menacingly towards her, her eyes blazing with anger and her thin hands shaking. “He’s mine, you . . . you painted slut!”

The woman gave a cry of terror and bolted through the door into the adjacent room. Madeleine would have followed her, but the man stepped between them and seized the girl by the wrists. He was a big, showy fellow, in the forties, in evening dress, very well groomed, with sleek dark hair and a dark moustache.

“Stop that, d’you hear?” he commanded. He spoke with a marked foreign accent.

Furiously the girl wrenched herself free, “I’m sick of it all!” she cried. “Sick of being trifled with. Do you understand? Haven’t I lowered myself to the dirt for you? Haven’t I acted the part of a common prostitute to help you, and this is all the reward I get? . . .”

The man looked apprehensively at Desmond.

“Come, come,” he said to Madeleine in a voice that was intended to be persuasive; “don’t make a scene in front of our friend here! It was—ha, ha—only a joke of mine—to make you jealous, little woman . . .”

“Lies, lies, always lies!” the girl burst in. “But I’m through with you now. Do you understand? You’re welcome to your Lotties and your Nancys and your painted French women! I do no more dirty work for you after this!”

The man bit his moustache. His eyes were very evil. He controlled himself with an effort.

“Dirty work?” he said. “What a horrid word, Mado! Come, now, take your cloak off! I’m sure our friend wants a game . . .”

But the girl would not be pacified. “Horrid word, is it? Then what became of the other I brought here for you?”

The man’s face darkened horribly. “That’s enough. Do you hear?” he cried, and clapped his hand over the girl’s mouth. But, with a fierce effort wrenching herself free: “Go, go!” she cried to Desmond. “For the love of God, get out of this house! If you don’t . . .”

But her voice died away on a stifled scream. Two men in evening dress had suddenly appeared, and, lifting her bodily up, bore her struggling away up a stair that curved upward from the end of the hall. Desmond, springing instinctively forward to her aid, found his way blocked by Paul. Behind him, in the doorway leading off the vestibule, against a background of dim green light, sullen and forbidding faces now scowled. And a burly, thick-set man in a dinner coat, with a broken nose, had quietly posted himself between Desmond and the door.

“Miss McKenzie,” said Paul suavely, “is subject to these _crises de nerfs_. I must apologize for the disturbance, Mr. . . . Mr. . . .”

“Murchison!” said Desmond abstractedly.

He was wondering whether he had alarmed himself unnecessarily. It was not the first time he had been in a London gaming-hell, and the curious muted hush beneath the green-shaded lamps of the room off the lobby was as familiar to him as the dim figures he could descry about the table watching with painful intensity the measured movements of the banker as he drew the cards from the shoe. Perhaps the scene he had just witnessed was merely one of the habitual encounters between a bully and his victims.

Yet the girl’s warning had obviously been sincere. Who was “the other” of whom she had spoken? Finucane? . . .

“My name is Geyer,” the man Paul was saying. “Felix, take the gentleman’s coat.”

So saying, with a gesture of odious familiarity, he clapped his arm about the young man. Before Desmond realized what he was up to, Paul had drawn from the other’s jacket pocket the automatic pistol.

“You don’t mind?” he said. “It’s a rule of the house!” And he handed it to the man he had called Felix.

With a sinking heart, for now he knew he had the worst to fear, Desmond silently followed his mentor through the swing-doors.

An air of expectancy rested over the card-room. The atmosphere was warm and so thick with the fumes of tobacco that at first Desmond was conscious only of a sea of white faces turned towards the door. The throng about the table parted to make way for him as Paul Geyer led him up to the table.

“A new member of our circle, my friends,” Geyer’s voice trumpeted triumphantly through the room; “a desperate gambler who loves the green cloth!”

He stood between Desmond and the table, his hands very white in the pool of light shed by the low-hung, shaded lamps. He stepped aside.

Desmond found himself facing The Man with the Clubfoot.

Grundt was holding the bank. His great hairy hands were spread out on the table, one resting on the _sabot_, the other with its knotted fingers sprawling over swathes of shining playing-cards. His vast torso was leant back in his chair and his red and fleshy lips drew noisily on a glowing cigar held securely between his strong, yellow teeth. Beneath their shaggy, tufted brows his dark eyes flamed defiance, insolence, triumph; indeed, there was an indescribable air of arrogance about his whole attitude and demeanour.

Desmond’s first thought was Francis. How long would he be in procuring assistance? Help could not arrive yet awhile, for it was not half an hour since they had parted. Was not the immediate question rather how long could Desmond hold Clubfoot off?

And then, with a sudden thrill of hope, he remembered his disguise. Grundt would, he knew, murder Desmond Okewood out of hand. But might not Murchison of Munich gain a brief respite? Yet would the disguise, summary as it was, stand the test of those keen and terrible eyes that even now were searching his face?

There was no light in the room, Desmond reflected with satisfaction, other than the shaded table-lamps; and, for the present, the features of Murchison, fully described and circulated through the medium of the Chief’s “double-cross,” were uppermost in Clubfoot’s mind. But—and with a pang the realization came to Desmond—the voice was the great betrayer. If he must speak—and he could not remain dumb without arousing suspicion—disguise his voice as he would, Grundt must inevitably recognize it.

But now Grundt was addressing him. “Herr Murchison, hein? Es freut mich sehr! A gambler, was?”

He grunted and puffed meditatively at his cigar. “Gambling is a very pleasant pursuit,” he continued amiably. Then his voice grew grim: “But it has its drawbacks, Herr Murchison. The loser pays!”

With an effort he straightened himself up in his chair, shook the ash from his cigar into a tray, and leaned across the table.

“Who’s been leaking to you?” he demanded.

Herr Murchison’s hands were shaking violently. His pallid features seemed to be distraught with sheer fright. Through his large goggles he blinked feebly, idiotically, at his questioner.

“My friend,” said Grundt, placing one black-thatched hand palm downwards on the green cloth, “your activities in South Germany are inconvenient to me. With your English gold you have been corrupting my wretched compatriots, plundered and pillaged by the rapacious French, your allies . . .” His fingers clawed up a card. “I shall crush your organization, you and your helpers and your helpers’ helpers . . . like that!” The gleaming millboard wilted in his powerful grasp. “Where are your headquarters?” he rapped out, snarling, and added over his shoulder: “Meinhardt, take a note of his answers!”

Herr Murchison cast a panic-stricken glance round the silent, forbidding circle of attentive faces.

“Answer me, you dog!” thundered Clubfoot. “I’ve plenty of means at my disposal to banish coyness! Come on! Out with it! I’m not going to waste my time tearing it out of you piecemeal! Are you going to make a clean breast of it? Yes or no!”

Herr Murchison extended two trembling hands. “Give me time!” he murmured weakly. “I will tell you what I can!”

A light of sudden vigilance appeared in Clubfoot’s eyes. The man’s whole manner changed on the instant. He seemed to bristle. “Time?” he repeated as though to himself. “Paul,” he called, “come here!”

Paul Geyer crossed the room and stood behind Grundt’s chair. Clubfoot whispered something in his ear. Without leaving his place, Geyer gave a muttered order to a man at his side, who noiselessly left the room.

Grundt took out his watch and laid it on the table before him. “I have exactly five minutes to spare,” he said. “In that time I propose to turn you inside out, my friend, or, by God, we’ll see what the old-fashioned methods of cross-examination will do!”

He moistened his lips with his tongue, like some great beast of prey licking its chops.

“I’m waiting!” he said.

Shaking in every limb, Herr Murchison opened his lips to speak. “My headquarters are . . . Munich!” he said in a strained voice.

“Turn your head to the right!” shouted Grundt suddenly. “Turn your head, I say! Meinhardt, Felix! Thrust him down under the lamp!”

Strong arms forced Herr Murchison brutally forward until his chest rested on the cloth. His spectacles fell off. The bright light streamed full in his face.

“Desmond Okewood, bei Gott!” roared Grundt. “You poor fool, did you think you could hoodwink me? Don’t you know that a man can never disguise his ears? Himmelkreuzsakrament, you and I have a long account to settle, and this time”—his voice shook with concentrated fury—“I’m going to see that it’s paid!”

Then came a hoarse shout from without: “The police!” and the sounds of a violent scuffle. Immediately the room was a mass of scrambling, jostling figures. The light went out almost simultaneously . . . at the very moment that Clubfoot clawed a great automatic from his pocket. In the clammy, noisy darkness Desmond flung himself across the table straight at the throat of that sinister gigantic figure facing him.

His opponent struggled fiercely, but the chair impeded him. Desmond hung on grimly, determined that, this time, his old enemy should not escape him. Then the light went up and Desmond found himself looking into the mocking face of Paul Geyer. Two uniformed constables pounced upon him, and Desmond relaxed his grip.

“I’ll have the law on you,” gasped Geyer, tugging at his torn collar. “Though I do keep a table, that’s no justification for half murdering me! Take his name and address, Inspector!”

Touching his cap, the Inspector drew Desmond Okewood aside. “You’ll be Major Okewood, I’m thinking,” he said. “Your brother has been like a wild man about you!”

“Where is he?” asked Desmond.

“There’s a passage under the road to a wharf beside the river,” the Inspector answered. “It connects with the house here by a trap in the back hall. There’s a lame man escaped that way . . .”

“A lame man?” queried Desmond in dismay.

“Aye! Mr. Okewood went after him with a couple of my chaps!”

He was interrupted by the appearance of Francis himself, breathless and dishevelled. Only his taximan’s uniform remained to recall his disguise of the night.

“He’s away!” he gasped, answering his brother’s unspoken question. “Vanished into the night! The men are beating the place for him, but those blasted wharves are a regular rabbit warren, and it’s as dark as be-damned outside. Who’s your fat friend?”

He indicated Geyer, who, violently protesting, was being led away by his captors.

“When the light went out,” said Desmond, “Clubfoot changed places with him. He knew this fellow only risked a fine for keeping a gambling-den. It was my own fault. I over-acted and put the old man on his guard. Where’s the girl?”

“Disappeared. We’ll get her at Duchess Street, I shouldn’t wonder!”

“What’s the bag here? Do you know?”

Francis made a grimace. “Nothing very great, I’m afraid. Some vague foreigners and a brace of bruisers. None of Clubfoot’s gang, at any rate. They must have smelt a rat, for as we were picking the lock a fellow unexpectedly opened the front door and gave the alarm!”

“I know,” said Desmond. “Clubfoot got suspicious when I asked him to give me time, and sent this chap out to see if there were any police around. By the way, what happened to the Chief’s crowd?”

Francis raised his eyes to heaven. “Somebody will be sacrificed for this night’s work. Their car burst a tyre in Victoria Street and they lost sight of my taxi. The arrangement was, you see, that they were to follow the girl and not you. Instead of ringing up headquarters to report, they went careering all over Belgravia, and when I rang up the Chief on leaving you they hadn’t turned up. So we simply asked the nearest police divisional headquarters to raid this place as a gambling-hell. It seemed the quickest way of getting assistance!”

They were silent for a moment. Then Desmond said: “I must say I should like to have known how those flower signals were worked.”

“We pinched old Bessie to-night,” his brother replied, “and she spilled the beans. A confederate, instructed by Grundt, tipped her off the colour by means of a handkerchief as he stood at the bar—red, blue and white, or white. As to the meaning of the various colours, I think the Chief’s diagnosis was correct. Clubfoot apparently had found out that Finucane was an habitué of the ‘Hex.’ in the old days and laid this plot to trap him. Poor Finucane! The girl got the signal of red carnations for him, too!”

A week later a tug off Charing Cross Pier fished up in its screw the dead body of Finucane, bound hand and foot, with a bullet through the head. The Hexagon Buffet knew the McKenzie girl no more. Nor did she ever return to Duchess Street. As an old offender, Paul Geyer was given a month’s imprisonment for keeping a gaming-house, and, as an alien—he was Russian-born—recommended for deportation. In respect of the death of Finucane no charge was brought against him, for want of evidence.

Meanwhile The Man with the Clubfoot remained at large.