CHAPTER IX

THE FOOTSTEP IN THE DARK

At ten minutes to eight that evening there came the rattle of nails on the glass panels of the door of Flat 7. Desmond opened and Francis darted in. He caught his brother’s arm.

“Clubfoot!” he gasped.

Swiftly Desmond laid his finger on his lips. He turned and closed the door leading from the hall into the little sitting-room.

“One of Farandol’s men is inside,” he explained. “I’ve been staving him off all the afternoon, as I’m particularly anxious, for the moment, to keep the police out of this—at any rate, until I’ve heard your story!”

Francis nodded understandingly. “For a week,” he said, “a lame man, a foreigner with a misshapen foot, has been a patient in the nursing-home which occupies the second, third, and fourth floors of the house next door to this. He calls himself Dr. Deinwitz, a Czecho-Slovak lawyer, and was brought here by his son, a fair young man with a scar on his face. The son represented that his father was suffering from acute neurasthenia and was in need of absolute rest and quiet. He made it a stipulation that his father’s presence should be kept a secret, otherwise, he said, he would be pestered to death by visitors. In order to be quiet, the son insisted that his father should have a room at the back on the top floor.”

Desmond opened and clenched his hand. “Is he still there?” he asked tensely.

Francis shook his head despondently. “He went out for the first time to-day to go to the City on business. He has kept his room on, but I doubt—”

“He’s kept his room on?” Desmond almost shouted. “Then all is not lost. Wait here a second!”

He darted away, and presently Francis heard him telephoning in one of the inner rooms.

“You’ve no idea what a day I’ve had,” said Francis when his brother came back. “Professional secrecy is a tremendously effective cover against indiscreet inquiries. Young Deinwitz, in whom, of course, I recognized Clubfoot’s aide, Heinrich, seems to have subtly conveyed to the fellow who runs this nursing-home that his father was on the verge of lunacy. Naturally the matron and all of them shut up like oysters when I came barging in with direct questions at the front door. I had to get a letter of introduction from a pal of mine in Harley Street before I finally got into the place. I flatter myself I was rather good as a nerve specialist from Sheffield with a rich patient to ‘place’ . . .”

Desmond laughed happily. “Disguise, eh?”

“Only cheek pads and a toupet! But what are you looking so cheerful about? Old Clubfoot has given us the slip properly this time . . .”

Desmond slipped his arm in his brother’s. “Come inside and meet Sergeant Rushbrooke,” he said.

Francis found that the girl’s body had been taken away, but otherwise no attempt had been made to repair the disorder of the rooms. In an armchair in the sitting-room was a fresh-faced, blue-eyed young man whom Desmond introduced as Sergeant Rushbrooke.

A bell pealed through the flat.

“Bannington!” announced Desmond, and hurried to the front door.

“I got your telephone message,” said the Air Marshal, coming into the sitting-room. “Have you any news for me, Okewood? My God, this suspense is awful!”

He held out two trembling hands towards the young man. Desmond was fumbling in the inside pocket of his coat. He drew forth a thick wad of blue foolscap, folded twice across, which he handed to his visitor.

Bannington snatched at it and, with an eagerness that was almost painful to behold, unfolded it, scrutinized it.

“By the Lord! You’ve saved me!” he gasped and dropped limply into a chair. “How can I ever thank you, Okewood? Man alive, it’s a miracle! Tell me all about it!”

“Des.!” exclaimed Francis.

Sergeant Rushbrooke opened wide his blue eyes. “You didn’t say anything about this to me, sir,” he observed in rather a ruffled tone.

“You won’t be kept in suspense much longer, Sergeant,” said Desmond, and glanced at his watch.

He turned to the Air Marshal. “This was the way of it, sir,” he said. “Last night Miss Bardale was seated there at her typewriter typing out your report with her back to the bedroom door. The time was somewhere about ten o’clock. Suddenly from behind her she hears a noise in the kitchen. Her first thought is not for herself, but for her duty to you. She snatches up her papers—your original and the two pages of the fair copy she had made—and puts them in a place of safety before she turns to meet her murderer. When she sees his face, she attempts to flee back into the sitting-room. But, before she can escape, he is on her, choking out her life with his great hairy hands.

“Then follows the frantic search to find what he had committed murder to discover, a search frantic, yet methodical in its way, room by room, as you may see. It was the circumstance that he had prolonged the search to the very kitchen that made me think he had possibly not achieved his object. So I took up the hunt where he had left off and . . .”

He produced from a drawer in the table a filmy mass of pink edged with lace.

“She had rolled your papers up in her nightdress and put it back under the pillow. I found it wedged between the bed and the wall!”

Sir Alexander Bannington blew his nose violently. “But who was the murderer?” he asked.

Again Desmond consulted his watch. “I may be able to answer that question later,” he said. “For the moment the sooner you get that report in a place of safety the better, sir.”

“I’m inclined to agree with you,” replied Bannington. “Are you and your brother coming along?”

Desmond shook his head. “My work isn’t finished yet! But Francis will escort you back to the Air Ministry . . .”

“No need, I assure you,” said Bannington. “I have my car outside.”

“Believe me,” Desmond urged, “it would be better for you to have an escort!”

Francis drew his brother aside. “It’s no use trying to get me out of the way, Des.,” he told him. “You’ve got something up your sleeve. Now, haven’t you?”

He was smiling, but his brother remained serious.

“The important thing,” Desmond said, “is to get that report away quickly. Bannington has no idea of the danger he runs. When you’ve seen his memorandum into the safe, come back here by all means. If I’m not here I’ll be at the Yard. I may have some news for you . . .”

Desmond leaned forward and whispered in his brother’s ear.

Francis started. Then he said: “But I can’t leave you to face it alone!”

“I shan’t be alone,” Desmond answered. “Sergeant Rushbrooke is here to keep me company, and I have asked the Yard to send me down half a dozen men. Farandol was not there when I telephoned just now, but his substitute promised to send at once. They should be here by this. If you should meet them below, send the man in charge up to me, will you?”

“Well, Okewood, are you ready?” Bannington came out of the hall with his hat on his head. He held out his hand to Desmond.

“If ever I can show my gratitude for what you have done for me this night,” he said with deep feeling, “believe me I will!”

“It’s all in the day’s work,” said Desmond as he accompanied them to the door. “Good-bye.”

“_Au revoir!_” corrected Francis smilingly as he followed the Air Marshal out.

For full five minutes after they had gone, Desmond remained standing in the hall, sunk in his thoughts. He was interrupted by Sergeant Rushbrooke.

“Beg pardon, sir!” said the plain-clothes man, “but I believe there’s some one on the stairs outside!”

Like a flash Desmond’s hand shot out at the electric-light switch at the door of the sitting-room. There was a click and the room was plunged in darkness. Desmond pulled out an automatic.

“Have your gun ready!” he whispered to the detective. “Keep very quiet, but be prepared to shoot!”

The flat was in complete darkness. Before them, as they crouched behind the table, they saw the dim outline of the bedroom door. Beyond, where the kitchen lay, was blackness.

Very faintly, from the obscurity before them, a key rattled. Presently the cold night air softly brushed their faces. At the end of the flat against a background of silver moonlight a huge figure bulked immensely. A door closed softly and darkness fell again.

A heavy limping sound approached them; a step and a stump, a step and a stump, muted but audible. They could hear the floor boards straining as beneath some immense weight.

And now that uncouth shape loomed gigantic in the doorway of the sitting-room. Its breadth seemed to stretch from jamb to jamb. Some movement must have betrayed their presence, for there came the rasp of a harsh ejaculation. Then the room was flooded with light and Desmond’s voice rang out: “If you move I’ll shoot!”

It was Grundt, bareheaded, in the clothes of rusty black he always affected, his right hand, plumed with black hair on the back, grasping his rubber-shod crutch-stick. He had made a half-turn in the doorway, and now twisted his head round to stare at his challenger, his burning eyes blazing defiance, his cruel, fleshy lips pursed up in a contemptuous sneer.

“You can put your hands up, Herr Doktor!” said Desmond. “Quickly, please, or there might be an accident! And you can drop your stick!”

The giant cripple faced his aggressors squarely. He hesitated for an instant, then, with an almost imperceptible shrug of his shoulders, he slowly raised his hands, his stick rattling to the floor.

“Sergeant, would you mind . . .?” Desmond remarked in a colloquial tone.

Sergeant Rushbrooke crossed to the doorway and, with a dexterity born of long experience, ran his fingers lightly over the big man’s pockets, not forgetting, you may be sure, the inside breast pocket, where your professional gunman mostly carries his weapon, or the armholes of the waistcoat, very handy for concealing a knife.

“He’s not armed, sir,” he reported.

Desmond smiled sardonically. “You’re getting careless, Grundt! A few years ago you would not have been taken off your guard like this!”

But Grundt said no word.

“Your psychological powers are failing, too, my dear Doctor,” Desmond continued. “A woman’s wit defeated you. Celibacy has its drawbacks. If you had been a married man, now, you would have known that women have as great a predilection for curious hiding-places as a magpie!”

For the first time Clubfoot spoke. “You again!” he said in a voice thick with anger. “Always you!” His dark eyes were hot with passion and they saw the veins swell knot-like at his temples. “You are beginning to incommode me, Okewood. I must advise you to be careful!”

Desmond laughed. “If I hadn’t been careful during the last few weeks, I shouldn’t be here to-day,” he said. “You know that well enough, Grundt. However, you’re not going to do any more harm. Sergeant Rushbrooke!”

“Sir?”

“Go down and see if those police I asked for are there. Explain to the man in charge that it is essential that no one should leave this house or the houses on either side for the present, and ask him to be good enough to step up here to me. When you have done that, take a man with you and go to the nursing-home next door and inquire whether young Mr. Deinwitz is there. If he is, invite him to accompany you to Scotland Yard. If he won’t come, kidnap him! Understand?”

“Sir!” said the Sergeant who had learnt discipline in the Brigade of Guards. He seemed to hesitate. “Will _you_ be all right, sir?” he asked.

“Don’t you worry about me,” Desmond smiled. “Dr. Grundt and I are old friends! We shall enjoy a tête-à-tête!”

On that Rushbrooke clattered off and Desmond turned to Clubfoot again. Grundt seemed to have regained all his saturnine good-humour.

“You’ll hang for this job, my friend!” Desmond observed pleasantly.

Grundt bared his strong yellow teeth in a smile and made a little bow. “You have, of course, all necessary evidence against me. Your English justice, if I remember rightly, is exacting on this point.”

Unwittingly Desmond flashed an inquiring glance at him.

The cripple was quick to notice it and chuckled. “My dear Okewood,” he remarked suavely, “you are too deliciously naïve. Lieber Freund, do you really imagine you will ever secure the conviction of a poor neurastheniac for murder simply because, on the night after the tragedy, attracted by the light and the sound of voices, he penetrated the scene of the crime?”

“The key, man, the key!” Desmond broke in.

“The key of my back door opens the back door of this flat,” was the rejoinder. A large key dropped on the carpet at Desmond’s feet. “Try it and see!”

But now an interruption came. There was a ring at the front door. Three men in plain clothes appeared.

“From Mr. Farandol, sir,” said the foremost of the trio, a short, thick-set fellow with a dark moustache. “The Inspector was called away to a big case at Colchester. Our orders are to take the party to the Yard. We’ve a car below if you’d care to come with us.”

Desmond gave a sigh of relief. “By George!” he said, “I certainly will!” The perspiration glittered on his forehead. “I shan’t feel happy till you’ve got him safe under lock and key. Will you handcuff our friend? I’m taking no chances!”

The spokesman of the plain-clothes men, who gave his name as Sergeant Mackay, produced a pair of handcuffs and clasped them about Grundt’s hairy wrists. Clubfoot’s face was an impassive mask; but his eyes glinted dangerously.

They took him out of the flat and descended the stairs in a little procession.

A closed limousine stood at the door. They made Grundt get inside, and the sergeant shared the back seat with him; Desmond and one plain-clothes man sat opposite and the other man got up beside the driver.

It was a raw wet night. Baker Street was a nocturne of black and yellow. The car drove very fast, so fast, indeed, that Desmond drew the sergeant’s attention to it.

“Tap on the glass, sir,” said Mackay, “and tell the driver to slow down a bit.”

Desmond turned half round. At that moment a damp cloth was clapped on to his face. He sprang up in a desperate effort to evade it, for on the instant his nostrils had detected the sickly odour of chloroform. His head struck the roof of the car a violent blow; the pressure on his nose and mouth increased: he strove to breathe and felt that sickening, cloying sweetness drawn up into his lungs. He tried to cry out as his senses slipped away; he sought to struggle as a numbing warmth stole over his limbs. The car seemed full of faces and eyes that stared . . . especially one face, grey and bloated with cruel, fleshy lips that grinned and grinned . . .

There was a click as Grundt’s handcuffs fell apart. The big cripple chuckled and tapped Sergeant Mackay on the knee.

“And the other?” he asked softly.

“The one that came down just now? Heinrich settled him. The key of the office below came in very useful, Herr Doktor! The body is lying there now!”

Clubfoot purred his appreciation.

“Gut gemacht, Max, mein Junger!” he said.

The car sped on through the dripping night.