CHAPTER V

THE IKON OF SMOLENSK

Since his dramatic reappearance in the affair of the purple cabriolet, Dr. Grundt had passed wholly from Desmond Okewood’s ken. The villa, on the outskirts of Harlesden, to which Desmond had been carried, together with the house next door, had been taken furnished in the name of a certain Mr. Blund, which alias covered the identity of a gentleman only too well known to Scotland Yard; but neither he nor Grundt had returned to it. Though the Chief and his young men remained on the constant alert, though the police kept watch at all the ports, there was no sign either of Clubfoot or of his associates.

The Special Branch at Scotland Yard took the view that Grundt had fled the country. It was, indeed, remarkable that, easily identifiable as he was by reason of his monstrous deformed foot, he should have contrived to vanish without trace. In corroboration of the police theory was the circumstance that Clubfoot’s campaign of vengeance against the British Secret Service, its agents and helpers, which had already claimed some half a dozen victims, was undoubtedly suspended.

Francis Okewood was disposed to believe that Grundt’s narrow escape from justice on the last occasion had disinclined him from further adventures; but Desmond was sceptical.

“Clubfoot intends to get back on you and me, Francis,” he said, “and if he’s quiescent it means only that he’s planning some fresh deviltry or that he’s short of funds!”

After their startling discovery of Süsslein’s suicide, Desmond asked his brother to escort Miss Maxwell home.

“I’m going to borrow your ikon for an hour or two,” he told the girl, “and, if it won’t shock your sense of propriety, to ask you to put Francis up for the night . . .”

Patricia let her bright brown eyes rest inquiringly on Desmond’s face.

“Why not both of you? There’s plenty of room . . .”

“Maybe I shan’t want a bed at all!” replied the other enigmatically.

“You think something’s going to happen?” she challenged.

“Ever since you bought this ikon, Miss Maxwell,” was Desmond’s impassive reply, “I’ll venture to say there has not been a minute in which your life has not been in danger!”

“Oh, shucks!” she exclaimed. “What about your famous British police? Do you mean to tell me that foreign gunmen like this Madjaroff guy are allowed to run round and scare folks into hanging themselves? I expect, if the truth were known, Süsslein was in money difficulties, poor little man . . .”

“This is not a matter for the police, Miss Maxwell,” said Desmond. “If you’d left this ikon hanging up in your boudoir, I’d lay a small shade of odds that you wouldn’t have found it on your return!”

With a glint of strong white teeth Patricia Maxwell laughed outright.

“Now you’re trying to scare me!” she affirmed.

“Not at all,” returned Desmond. He pointed to the desk. “There’s the telephone. Just for the fun of the thing, call up your house and see whether anything has happened in your absence!”

His perfect self-possession and matter-of-factness sobered the girl. She looked at him curiously, then went slowly to the telephone. The two brothers, talking in undertones by the window, caught broken fragments of the conversation. When Patricia Maxwell replaced the receiver and faced them again, her self-assurance seemed somewhat shaken.

“Well?” said Desmond.

“I . . . I guess I don’t rightly understand,” she answered in a puzzled tone. “Some one’s been in and ransacked my boudoir. The butler says a man, claiming to come from the electric-light company, called this afternoon to look at the wall-plugs or something. Barton—that’s the butler—left him alone in the dining-room, which is separated from the boudoir only by a curtain, while he went to the back hall to answer the telephone. He was at the instrument for two or three minutes, he says, and when he returned he found the boudoir window open, the place upside down, and the man gone. Say, who is this clubfooted man, anyway?”

But, before Desmond could answer, a sharp “pss-t” from Francis called him over to the window. Kneeling at the sill, his brother was peering through the blind.

“I think they’re watching the house,” he said. “Did you notice if you were followed when you came here, Patricia?”

“I drove in a taxi,” the girl answered, “so I can’t really say.”

On the opposite side of the street a young man was pacing nonchalantly up and down, his face raised to the houses across the way. Even as they watched, they saw him lift his hand. Something white fluttered . . .

“Wait a minute!” said Desmond, and hurried into the adjoining bedroom.

The block of flats, of which he occupied the top floor, stood at the corner of a turning and the windows of the bedroom gave on the side street. Before the shop occupying the opposite corner a man was lounging. For an instant the light from the shop front fell on his face, a pale narrow face with a long white scar running horizontally beneath the right eye.

“Heinrich’s at the corner!” announced Desmond, returning to the living-room.

“Clubfoot’s aide, do you mean?” queried Francis.

Desmond nodded. “Which his other name is Kriege. Since he made that lucky get-away with Grundt in the affair of the purple cabriolet we have been looking up his record. He is said to be a first-class linguist and a marvellous hand at disguises. I shouldn’t wonder if he were not Miss Maxwell’s friend, Saumergue.”

He turned to the American.

“Would it bore you frightfully to stay and dine with us?” he asked.

“Why, no!” she replied. “But I thought you two boys were coming home with me!”

“It will be out of the question to leave the house for the present—at any rate, by the front door,” said Desmond, and picked up the telephone.

“I want to speak to Mr. Krilenko,” he said when he got the number he had asked for. “Is that you, Professor? Desmond Okewood speaking. I want you to come round here at once. You can’t? You’re in bed with lumbago? Damn! Well, I’ll just have to come to you, that’s all. Yes, I’ll be along in twenty minutes.”

“It’ll have to be the overhead route,” he said to his brother as he replaced the receiver.

Francis looked anxiously at him.

“Call up the Chief,” he said in an undertone, “and get help. You’re so devilish reckless, Des. What are you up to now?”

“If Miss Maxwell will lend me her holy picture for an hour or so,” his brother retorted, smiling graciously at the American, “I’m going to make a few inquiries. No need to worry the Chief—at least, not yet. Bolt the front door, will you, old boy? And if I were you I shouldn’t answer the bell while I’m away.”

The little lobby between Desmond Okewood’s bedroom and the bathroom was surmounted by a skylight to which a ladder gave access. When not in use the ladder was hoisted out of reach by means of a rope and pulley. Having buttoned the ikon beneath his waistcoat, Desmond lowered the ladder and mounted to the skylight. With a wave of his hand to Francis and Patricia looking up at him from below, he pushed up the skylight and scrambled through, pulling the ladder up after him; they heard the glazed trap slam and he was gone.

With the sure gait of one who treads a familiar path, Desmond made his way across the black leads, a mere shadow dimly seen between the soot-encrusted chimney-pots. The wind blew keen and lusty across the roofs, rattling a loose trap here and there and merrily spinning the chimney-cowls. Above the prowler’s head the sky glowed redly with the reflection of the London lights.

Desmond descended a rusty iron fire-ladder, clambered over a chimney buttress, scaled a railing, and at length halted in front of a low grey door. His hand glided along the stone cornice below until it came upon what he was seeking. Within the house a bell trilled faintly twice, then thrice. Then the door opened. A grey-haired woman, shielding against the draught a candle in her hands, stood on the narrow stair.

“Why,” she exclaimed, “you’re quite a stranger, sir! It must be fully three years since you last used the overhead route.”

Desmond grinned. “I thought I was out of the profession, Mother Howe,” said he, “but, dash it, I’m beginning to think they’ve brought me back!”

“Won’t you take a little something, Major?” said the woman, backing down the stairs, “just for old times’ sake?”

“I can’t stop!” Desmond answered. “I’m in the deuce of a hurry, Mother Howe, and that’s a fact!”

Two minutes later he stood in Saint James’s Street, waiting at the kerb for the taxi he had summoned from the rank. Sixty yards farther along two dim figures still kept their silent watch beneath the lighted windows of Desmond Okewood’s flat.

Six o’clock was ringing out from the clock-tower of Saint James’s Palace, that authentic witness of the pageantry of four centuries of English history, when Desmond Okewood crept away across the roofs. Francis and Patricia returned to the sitting-room. Francis suggested double-dummy bridge to pass the time of waiting. But Patricia shook her head.

“I’m thinking about poor little Süsslein,” she said. “I wonder why he committed suicide!”

“He’s not the first that Clubfoot has frightened into destroying himself!” said Francis.

“But why? What had Süsslein done?”

“I don’t know. But I imagine he was ordered to get the ikon out of you and he simply couldn’t face the consequences of his failure. Old Clubfoot has a devilish long arm, Patricia!”

“Tell me about this man Clubfoot,” she said.

So Francis gave her, as far as he knew it, the history of the man of power and mystery who, in the heyday of the Hohenzollerns, had wielded an influence second only to that of his Imperial master. He drew for her a picture of the man, ruthless, resourceful, vigilant, with the strength of an ox, the courage of a lion, and the cunning of a rogue elephant.

“If he wants a thing,” said Francis, “he’ll stop at nothing to get it. There’s only one man who has ever got the better of him, and that’s my brother Des. He’s a crazy devil, that brother of mine. He simply can’t live without taking risks. Ever since he left the Secret Service he’s been perfectly miserable. The reappearance of Clubfoot has made another man of him. But I’m haunted by the fear that Clubfoot will get him one day. That’s what makes me so anxious when he goes off suddenly like this.”

Patricia smiled rather incredulously.

“To hear you boys talk,” she remarked, glancing down at her pinky polished nails, “you’d think we were living in Ruritania or one of those exciting places in Booth Tarkington Land. I admit I was a bit taken aback to find that some one had rifled my boudoir; it may have been your clubfoot man, or it may just have been a common sneak-thief. But, for land’s sakes, what can happen to your brother in a city like London?”

The telephone pealed suddenly. The bell jangled noisily through the silent flat. The man and the girl exchanged a glance. There are moments when the sudden clamour of a telephone bell has an oddly frightening effect. Francis went to the instrument.

“Hullo! No, he’s not here. Who wants him? Oh . . .”

His manner became slightly more _empressé_.

“This is Francis Okewood speaking. Very good. Tell the Chief I’ll come right along.”

He rang off and turned to Patricia.

“It’s an urgent call from the office,” he said. “I believe I’ll have to go along at once. It’s a quarter to eight. Des. must be back any minute now. Do you mind being left alone for a little?”

“Of course not! You run right along and don’t mind about me.”

“You’re not frightened . . . or anything?”

“Frightened . . . nothing!” retorted Miss Maxwell with considerable emphasis. “Say, if that old dot-and-carry-one shows up, I’ll vamp him so hard he’ll just beat it back to Deutschland!”

Francis laughed. “Good for you. If you want anything, just ring for Batts, will you? I’ll be back as soon as I can. Bye-bye.”

The front door slammed.

As if struck by a sudden idea, Patricia went to the window and peered beneath the blind. The watcher still lounged on the opposite pavement. She observed him for a full two minutes. Then she saw him turn suddenly and walk swiftly down the street.

“That’s for Francis!” she said to herself.

She took up the cards and began to play Canfield. But she could not keep her mind on the game; her thoughts were busy with the strange and sinister figure who, that very morning, had loomed so large in her dainty drawing-room. She threw down the cards and went to the telephone. She would ring up the house and tell Barton she was dining out.

But now she could get no answer from the exchange. The line remained completely dead. She depressed the hook repeatedly without any result. At last she hung up the receiver, and going to the fire-place, pressed the bell-push in the wall beside it. Then she went back to the telephone.

No sound of life came to her over the wires. The line must be out of order, she thought. But then she remembered that Francis Okewood had used the instrument only a few minutes before. And no one came in response to her ring. A little feeling of fear crept over her like a trickle of ice-water running down her back. Why were both telephone and bell out of order?

Suddenly she heard the sitting-room door behind her open. Ah! the valet at last.

“I rang,” she said, speaking over her shoulder, at the same time depressing the hook of the telephone instrument, “to ask you what is the matter with the telephone. I can’t get a reply from the . . .”

The silence in the room made her turn.

At the table Dr. Madjaroff, her visitor of the morning, stood looking at her.