Part 21

“We will try to find it for you; but there is nothing beyond your suspicion that this gentleman has ever seen it. Probably, sir, you don’t possess a sovereign postal order, or a Kruger coin, or any of the other articles, even of your own?”

“I don’t,” replied Mr Slater. “Except, of course, some silver and copper. If it will satisfy you I will turn out my pockets.”

The Inspector looked at the complainant.

“You hear that, miss?”

“Oh, very well,” she retorted. “If he really hasn’t got it I shall be the one to look silly, shan’t I?”

On this encouragement Mr Slater made a display of his various possessions, turning out each pocket as he emptied it. The contents were laid before the Inspector, who satisfied himself by a glance of their innocent nature.

“I should warn you that I am going to bring out a loaded revolver,” said Mr Slater when he came to his hip-pocket. “I travel a good deal abroad and often in wild parts, where it is necessary to carry a pistol for protection.”

The Inspector nodded and examined the weapon with a knowing touch. The last pocket was displayed.

“That’s not what I mean,” objected the girl with a dogged air, as everyone began to regard her in varying degrees of inquiry. “You don’t suppose that anyone would keep the things in their pocket, do you? I thought you meant properly.”

The Inspector addressed himself to Mr Slater again in a matter-of-fact, business manner.

“Perhaps you would like one of my men to put his hand over you to settle the matter, sir?” he asked.

For just a couple of seconds there was the pause of hesitation.

“If nothing is found you withdraw all imputation against this gentleman?” demanded the Inspector of the girl.

“Suppose I must,” she admitted with an admirable pose of sulky acquiescence. In less exciting moments the young lady was a valued member of the Kingsmouth Amateur Dramatic Society.

“Oh, all right,” assented Mr Slater. “Only get it over.”

“You quite understand that the search is entirely voluntary on your part, sir. Hilldick!”

One of the other policemen came forward.

“You can stand where you are, sir,” he directed. With the practised skill of, say, a Custom House officer from Kingsmouth, he used his fingers dexterously about the gentleman’s clothing. “Now, sir, will you sit down and remove your boots for a moment?”

“My boots!” The man’s eyes narrowed and his mouth took another line. He glanced at the Inspector. “Is it really necessary----?”

“That’s it!” came from the girl in a fiercely exultant whisper. “He’s slipped them in his boots!”

“Idiot!” commented Mr Slater. He sat down and slowly drew slack the laces.

“Thank you,” said Hilldick. He picked up both boots and with them turned to the table underneath the light. The next moment there was a sound like the main-spring of a clock going wrong and the sole and the upper of one boot came violently apart.

“You scoundrel!” screamed Slater, leaping from the chair.

But the grouping of the room had undergone a quiet change. Two men closed in on his right and left, and Mr Slater sat down again. The Inspector opened the desk, dropped in the revolver and turned the key. Then all eyes went again to Hilldick and saw--nothing.

“The other boot,” came in a quiet voice from the doorway to the inner room. “But just let me have it for a second.”

It was put into his hands, and Carrados examined it in unmoved composure, while unpresentable words flowed in a blistering stream from Slater’s lips.

“Yes, it is very good workmanship, Mr Frankworth,” remarked the blind man. “You haven’t forgotten your early training. All right, Hilldick.”

The tool cut and rasped again and the stitches flew. But this time from the opening, snugly lying in a space cut out among the leathers, a flat packet slid down to the ground.

Someone tore open the oiled silk covering and spread out the contents. Six sheets of fine tracing paper, each covered with signs and drawings, were disclosed.

The finality of the discovery acted on the culprit like a douche of water. He ceased to revile, and a white and deadly calm came over him.

“I don’t know who is responsible for this atrocious outrage,” he said between his clenched teeth, “but everyone concerned shall pay dearly for it. I am a naturalised Frenchman, and my adopted country will demand immediate satisfaction.”

“Your adopted country is welcome to you, and it’s going to have you back again,” said the Inspector grimly. “Here is a pair of boots exactly like your own--we only retain the papers, which do not belong to you. You are allowed twenty-four hours to be clear of the country. If you have not sailed by this time to-morrow you will be arrested as Henry Frankworth for failing to report yourself when on licence and sent to serve the unexpired portion of your sentence. If you return at any time the same course will be followed. Inspector Tapling, here is the warrant. You will keep Frankworth under observation and act as the circumstances demand.”

Henry Frankworth glared round the room vindictively, drew himself up and clenched his fists. Then his figure drooped, and he turned and walked dully out into the darkening night.

* * * * *

“So you let the German spy slip through your fingers after all,” protested Mr Carlyle warmly. “I know that it was on instructions, and not your doing, Max; but why, why on earth, why?”

Carrados smiled and pointed to the heading of a column in an evening paper that he picked up from his side.

“There is your answer, Louis,” he replied.

“‘POSITION OF THE ENTENTE. WHAT DOES FRANCE MEAN?’” read the gentleman. “What has that got to do with it?”

“Your German spy was a French spy, Louis, and just at this moment a certain section of the public, led by a certain gang of politicians and aided by a certain interest in the Press, is doing its best to imperil the Entente. The Government has no desire to have the Entente imperilled. Hence your wail. If the dear old emotional, pig-headed, Rule-Britannia! public had got it that French spies were stalking through the land at this crisis, then, indeed, the fat would have been in the fire!”

“But, upon my soul, Max----Well, well; I hope that I am the last man to be led by newspaper clap-trap, but I think that it’s a deuced queer proceeding all the same. Why should our ally want our secret plans?”

“Why not, if he can get them?” demanded Max Carrados philosophically. “One never knows what may happen next. We ought to have plans and knowledge of all the French strategic positions as well as of the German. I hope that we have, but I doubt it. It would be a guarantee of peace and good relations.”

“There are times, Max,” declared Mr Carlyle severely, “when I suspect you of being--er--paradoxical.”

“Can you imagine, Louis, an Archbishop of Canterbury, or a Poet Laureate, or a Chancellor of the Exchequer being friendly--perhaps even dining--with the editor of _The Times_?”

“Certainly; why not?”

“Yet in the editor’s office, drawn up by his orders, there is probably a three-column obituary notice of each of those impersonalities. Does it mean that the editor wishes them to die--much less has any intention of poisoning their wine? Ridiculous! He merely, as a prudent man, prepares for an eventuality, so as not to be caught unready by a misfortune which he sincerely hopes will never take place--in his time, that is to say.”

“Well, well,” said Mr Carlyle benignantly--they were lunching together at Vitet’s, on Carrados’s return--“I am glad that we got the papers. One thing I cannot understand. Why didn’t the fellow get clear as soon as he had the plans?”

“Ah,” admitted the blind man, “why not, indeed? Even Inspector Tapling bated his breath when he suggested the reason to me.”

“And what was that?” inquired Carlyle with intense interest.

Mr Carrados looked extremely mysterious and half-reluctant for a moment. Then he spoke.

“Do you know, Louis, of any great secret military camp where a surprise fleet of dirigibles and flying machines of a new and terrible pattern is being formed by a far-seeing Government as a reserve against the day of Armageddon?”

“No,” admitted Mr Carlyle, with staring eyes, “I don’t.”

“Nor do I,” contributed Carrados.

IX

The Eastern Mystery

It could scarcely be called Harris’s fault, whatever the driver next behind might say in the momentary bitterness of his heart. In the two-fifths of a second of grace at his disposal Mr Carrados’s chauffeur had done all that was possible and the bunt that his radiator gave the stair-guard of the London General in front was insignificant. Then a Railway Express Delivery skated on its dead weight into his luggage platform and a Pickford, turning adroitly out of the mêlée, slewed a stationary Gearless round by its hand-rail stanchion to spread terror among the other line of traffic.

The most unconcerned person, to all appearance, was the driver of the London General, the vehicle whose sudden stoppage had initiated the riot of confusion. He had seen a man, engrossed to the absolute exclusion of his surroundings by something that took his eye on the opposite footpath, dash into the road and then, brought up suddenly by a realisation of his position, attempt to retrace his steps. He had pulled up so expertly that the man escaped, so smoothly that not a passenger was jarred, and now he sat with a dazed and vacant expression on his face, leaning forward on his steering wheel, while caustic inquiry and retort winged unheeded up and down the line behind him.

It was not until the indispensable ceremony of everyone taking everyone else’s name and number had been observed under the authority of the tutelary constable that the single occupant of the private car stirred to show any interest in the proceedings.

“Parkinson,” he called quietly, summoning his attendant to the window. “Ask Mr Tulloch if he will come round here when he has finished with the policeman.”

“Mr Tulloch, sir?”

“Yes; you remember Dr Tulloch of Netherhempsfield? He is on in front there.”

A moment later Jim Tulloch, as genial as of old, but his exuberance temporarily damped by the cross-bickering in which he had just been involved, thrust his head and arm through the sash.

“Lord, lord, it really is you then, Wynn, old man?” he cried. “When your Parkinson came up I couldn’t believe it for a minute, simply couldn’t believe it. The world grows smaller, I declare.”

“At all events this car does,” responded Carrados, wringing the hearty, outstretched hand. “They’ve got us two inches less than the makers ever intended. Is it really your doing, Jim?”

“Did ever you hear such a thing?” protested Tulloch. “And yet that wall-eyed atrocity yonder has kidded the copper that if he hadn’t stopped dead--well, I should.”

“Was it a near thing?” asked Carrados confidentially.

“Well, strictly between ourselves, I don’t mind admitting that it might have been something of a shave,” confessed Tulloch, with a cheerful grin. “But, lord bless you, Wynn, the streets of London are paved with ’em nowadays, paved with them. You don’t merely take your life in your hands if you want to get about; you carry it on each foot.”

“Look here,” said Carrados. “You never let me know that you were up in town, Tulloch. What are you doing to-day?”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” interrupted Parkinson’s respectful voice, “but the policeman wishes to speak with you, sir.”

“With me?” queried Tulloch restlessly. “Oh, good lord! have we to go into all that again?”

“It’s only the bus-driver, sir,” apologised the constable with the tactful deference that the circumstances seemed to demand. “As you are a doctor--I think there’s something the matter with him.”

“I’m sure there is,” assented Tulloch. “All right, I’m coming. Are you in a hurry, Wynn?”

“I’ll wait,” was the reply.

The doctor found his patient propped up on a doorstep. Having, as he expressed it afterwards, “run the rule over him,” he prescribed a glass of water and an hour’s rest. The man was shaken, that was all.

“Nerves, Wynn,” he announced when he returned to his friend. “I don’t quite understand his emotion, but the shock of not having run over me seems to have upset the poor fellow.”

“I was asking you whether you were doing anything to-day,” said Carrados. “Can you come back with me to Richmond?”

“I’m not doing anything as far as that goes,” admitted Tulloch. “In fact,” he added ruefully, “that’s the plague of it. I’m waiting to hear from a man who’s waiting to hear from another man, and _he’s_ depending on something that may or mayn’t, you understand.”

“Then you can come along now anyway. Get in.”

“If it’s dinner you mean, I can’t come straight away, you know,” protested Tulloch. “Look at me togs”--he stood back to display a serviceable Norfolk suit--“all right for the six-thirty sharp of a Bloomsbury boarding-house, but--eh, what?”

“Don’t be an ass, Jim,” said the blind man amiably. “I can’t see your silly togs.”

“No ladies or any of your tony friends?”

“Not a soul.”

“The fact is,” confided Tulloch, taking his place in the car, “I’ve been out of things for a bit, Wynn, and I’m finding civilisation a shade cast-iron now. I’ve been down in the wilds since you were with me.”

“I wondered where you were. I wrote to you about six months ago and the letter came back.”

“Did it actually? Now that must have been almighty careless of someone, Wynn. I’m sorry; I’m a bit of a rolling stone, I suppose. When Darrish came back to Netherhempsfield my job was done there. I felt uncommonly restless. I hadn’t much chance of buying a practice or dropping into a partnership worth having and I jibbed at setting up in some God-forsaken backwater and slipping into middle age ‘building up a connection.’ Lord, lord, Carrados, the tragic monotony of your elderly professional nonentity! I’ve known men who’ve whispered to me between the pulls at confidential pipes that they’ve come to hate the streets and the houses and the same old everlasting silly faces that they met day after day until they began to think very queer thoughts of how they might get away from it all.”

“Yes,” said Carrados.

“Anyway, ‘Not yet,’ I promised myself, and when I got the chance of a temporary thing on a Red Cable liner I took it like a shot. That was something. If there was a mighty sameness about it after a bit, it wasn’t the sameness I’d been accustomed to. Then, as luck of one sort or another would have it, I got laid out with a broken ankle on a Bombay quay.”

Carrados voiced commiseration.

“But you made a very good mend of it,” he said. “It’s the left, of course. I don’t suppose anyone ever notices it.”

“I took care of that,” replied Tulloch. “But it was a slow business and threw all my plans out. I was on a very loose end when one day, outside the Secretariat, as they call it, I ran up against a man called Fraser whom I’d known building a viaduct or something of that sort in the Black Country.

“‘What on earth are _you_ doing here?’ we naturally both said at once, and he was the first to reply.

“‘I’m just off to repair an irrigation “bund” a thousand miles more or less away, and I’m looking for a doctor who can speak six words of Hindustani, and doesn’t mind things as they are, to physic the camp. What are you doing?’

“‘Good lord! old man,’ I said, ‘I was looking for you!’”

It only required an occasional word to keep Tulloch going, and Carrados supplied it. He heard much that did not interest him--of the journey inland, of the face of the country, the surprising weather, the great work of irrigation and the other impressive wonders of man and nature. These things could be got from books, but among the weightier cargo Tulloch now and again touched off some inimitable phase of life or told an uninventable anecdote of native character that lived.

Yet the buoyant doctor had something on his mind, for several times he stopped abruptly on the edge of a reminiscence, as though he was doubtful, if not of the matter, at least of the manner in which he should begin. These indications were not lost on his friend, but Carrados made no attempt to press him, being very well assured that sooner or later the ingenuous Jim would find himself beyond retreat. The occasion came with the cigarettes after dinner. There had been a reference to the language.

“I often wished that I was a better stick at it,” said Tulloch. “I’d picked up a bit in Bombay and of course I threw myself into it when Fraser got me the post. I managed pretty well with the coolies in the camp, but when I tried to have a word with the ryots living round--little twopenny ha’penny farmers, you know--I could make no show of it. A lot of queer fish you come across out there, in one way or another, you take my word. You never know whether a man’s a professional saint of extreme holiness or a hereditary body-snatcher whose shadow would make a begging leper consider himself unclean until he had walked seventy miles to drink a cupful of filthy water out of a stinking pond that a pock-marked ascetic had been sitting in for three years in order to contemplate quietly.”

“Possibly he really was unclean--in consequence or otherwise,” suggested Carrados.

“Help!” exclaimed Tulloch tragically. “There are things that have to be seen. But then so was the sanctified image, so that there’s nothing for an outsider to go by. And then all the different little lots with their own particular little heavens and their own one exclusive way of getting there, and their social frills and furbelows--Jats and Jains and Thugs and Mairs and Gonds and Bhills and Toms, Dicks and Harrys--suburban society is nothing to it, Wynn, nothing at all. There was a strange old joker I’ve had in mind to tell you about, though it was no joke for him in the end. God alone knows where he came from, but he was in the camp one evening juggling for stray coppers in a bowl. Pretty good juggling too it seemed to be, of the usual Indian kind--growing a plant out of a pumpkin seed, turning a stick into a live snake, and the old sword and basket trick that every Eastern conjurer keeps up his sleeve; but all done out in the open, with people squatting round and a simplicity of appliance that would have taken all the curl out of one of your music-hall magicians. With him he had a boy, his son, a misshapen, monkey-like anatomy of about ten, but there was no doubt that the man was desperately fond of his unattractive offspring.

“That night this ungainly urchin, taking a cooler in one of the big irrigation canals, got laid hold of by an alligator and raised the most unearthly screech anything human--if he really was human--ever got out. I seemed to have had something prominent to do with the damp job of getting as much of him away from the creature as we could, and old Calico--that’s what we anglicised the juggler’s name into--had some sort of idea of being grateful in consequence. Although I don’t doubt that he’d have put much more faith in a local wizard if one had been available, he let us take the boy into the hospital tent and do what we could for him. It wasn’t much, and I told my assistant to break it to poor old Calico that he must be prepared for the worst. A handy man, that assistant, Wynn. He was a half-bred ‘Portugoose,’ as they say in Bombay, with the name of Vasque d’Almeydo, and I understood that he’d had some training. When we got out there he said that it was all the same to him, but he admitted quite blandly that he was really a cook and nothing more. What about his excellent testimonials? I asked him, and he replied with cheerful impenitence that he had hired them in the open market for one rupee eight, adding feelingly that he would willingly have given twice as much to qualify for my honorable service. In the end he did pretty much as he liked, and as he could speak five languages and scramble through seven dialects I was glad to have him about on any terms. I don’t quite know how he broke it, but when I saw him later he said that Calico was a ‘great dam fool.’ He was a conjurer and knew how tricks were done and yet he had set out at once for some place thirty miles away--to procure a charm of some sort, the Portuguese would swear from a hint he had got. Vasque--of course by this time he’d become Valasquez to us--laughed pleasantly as he commented on native credulity. He was a Roman Catholic himself, so that he could afford it. The next day the boy died and an hour later poor Calico came reeling in. He’d got a nasty cut over the eye and a map of the route drawn over him in thorns and blisters and sand-burns, but he’d got something wrapped away in a bit of rag carried in the left armpit, and I felt for the poor old heathen. When he understood, he borrowed a spade and, taking up the child just as he was, he went off into the pagan solitude to bury him. I’d got used to these simple ways by that time.

“I thought that I’d seen the end of the incident, but late that night I heard the sentry outside challenge someone--we’d had so many tools and things looted by ‘friendlies’ that they’d lent us half a company of Sikhs from Kharikhas--and a moment later Calico was salaaming at the tent door. As it happened, Valasquez was away at a thing they called a village trafficking for some ducks, and I had to grapple with the conversation as best I could--no joke, I may tell you, for the juggler’s grasp on conventional Urdu was about as slender as my own. And the first thing he did was to put his paws on to my astonished feet, then up to his forehead, and to prostrate himself to the ground.

“‘Sahib,’ he protested earnestly, ‘I am thy slave and docile elephant for that which thou hast done for the man-child of my house.’

“Now you know, Carrados, I simply can’t stand that sort of thing. It makes me feel such a colossal ass. So I tried, ungraciously enough I dare swear, to cut him short. But it couldn’t be done. Poor old Calico had come to discharge what weighed on him as a formidable obligation and my ‘Don’t mention it, old chap,’ style was quite out of the picture. Finally, from some obscure fold of his outfit, he produced a little screw of cloth and began to unwrap it.

“‘Take it, O sahib, and treasure it as you would a cup of water in the desert, for it has great virtue of the hidden kind. Condescend to accept it, for it is all I have worthy of so great a burden.’

“‘I couldn’t think of it, Khaligar,’ I said, trying to give his name a romantic twist, for the other sounded like guying him. ‘I’ve done nothing, you know, and in any case this is much more likely to work with you than with me--an unbeliever. What is it, anyway?’

“‘It is the sacred tooth of the ape-god Hanuman and it protects from harm,’ he replied, reverently displaying what looked to me like an old rusty nail. ‘Had I but been able to touch so much as the hem of the garment of my manlet with it before the hour of his outgoing he would assuredly have recovered.’

“‘Then keep it for your own protection,’ I urged. ‘I expect that you run more risks than I do.’

“‘When the flame has been extinguished from a candle the smoke lingers but a moment before it also fades away,’ he replied. ‘Thy mean servant has no wish to live now that the light of his eyes has gone out, nor does he seek to avert by magic that which is written on his forehead.’

“‘Then it is witchcraft?’ I said, pointing to the amulet.

“‘I know not, my lord,’ he answered; ‘but if it be witchcraft it is of the honourable sort and not the goety of Sahitan. For this cause it is only of avail to one who acquires it without treachery or guile. Take it, sahib, but do not suffer it to become known even to those of your own table.’

“‘Why not?’ I asked.

“‘Who should boast of pearls in a camp of armed bandits?’ he replied evasively. ‘A word spoken in a locked closet becomes a beacon on the hill-top for men to see. Yet have no fear; harm cannot come to you, for your hand is free from complicity.’