CHAPTER XXXIV

CONCERNS TO-DAY

The next day the London papers were full of the raid upon Merton Lodge, the tragic death of the well-known diamond-broker, Gregory Vernon, and the arrest of Jules Jeanjean and Egisto Bertini.

The police had given but the most meagre details to the Press, therefore the report was only vague, and no hint was forthcoming as to the actual charges against the three men, or that they had any connection with the cliff-mystery at Cromer.

The most sensational passage of the report, which was regarded as "the story," or principal feature by most of the papers, was the fact that Jules Jeanjean, having been charged at Bow Street with robbery and murder, was placed in the cells to be brought up next morning before the magistrate.

A warder, however, on going to the cell about half-past eight in the evening, found the prisoner standing before him in defiance.

"I refuse to be tried, after all!" he cried in English, in a loud voice, "I'll escape you yet!"

And before the man was aware of the prisoner's intention, he had placed his right hand to his mouth, and with his left held his nostrils tightly.

The warder sprung upon him, but beneath his teeth the prisoner crushed a small capsule of glass, while the fact that his nose was held caused him to inhale the gas compressed within the capsule, and next second he fell, inert, dead.

I read the report in breathless eagerness, and then I realized that Jules Jeanjean, alias Arendt, alias dozens of other names, had destroyed himself with that combination of nitrate of amyl and hydrocyanic gas, a single whiff of which was sufficient to cause instant death--the same lethal gas which the criminal had discharged in the face of young Perceval, and alas! into the faces of others of his victims who had been found mysteriously dead on the scenes of the bandit's daring and desperate exploits.

Truly he had been a veritable artist in crime, but as he sowed, so also had he reaped. The wages of sin are, indeed, death.

From Sommerville, a few weeks later, I gathered a few further interesting details.

The man Hodrickx, together with two other men named Kunzle and Lavelle, had been arrested while committing a clever burglary at a jeweller's in the Corso in Rome; while tests at the private wireless station in Arkwright Road and at the Villa Beni Hassan, near Algiers, had proved conclusively that messages could be exchanged, as no doubt they often were, but, being in a prearranged code, could not be read by the dozens of other receiving stations, commercial and amateur, which picked them up.

In due course Bertini, the ex-customs officer of Calais, was extradited to Paris, where he took his trial before the Assize Court of the Seine, and was sentenced to a long term of penal servitude, which he is at present serving at the penal island of New Caledonia, in the far Pacific.

As for myself, I still live in blessed singleness, and am a confirmed bachelor, and a constant investigator of problems of crime. With the ever-faithful Rayner, I still occupy my cosy rooms off Berkeley Square, and, I may add, am still an intimate friend of Lola.

But she is now Mrs. Edward Craig, mistress of Huttoft Hall, and wife of an immensely wealthy man. She is a prominent figure in the country, but none, save her husband, myself and Rayner, know that she was, not so long ago, the confederate of the cleverest gang of international thieves that has ever puzzled the police, or that she was then known to them as "The Nightingale."

Yes. The pair are both extremely happy, living solely for each other. Perhaps if I were not such a confirmed bachelor, an iron-grey-headed "uncle" to many a flapper niece, and jeered at by the schoolgirl reader of novels as an "old man," I might be just a little jealous.

But as things are, I am delighted to see my charming, delightful little friend so happy.

Often I am their guest at the fine, historic, sixteenth-century mansion standing in its broad park, a few miles out of Monmouth. Indeed, it is beneath their roof that, on this bright summer evening, while the crimson after-glow is shining over the tops of the distant belt of dark firs across the park, that I am setting down the concluding lines of this strange story of daring and ingenious crime, this drama which so nearly cost all three of us our lives at the hands of that unscrupulous gang of dastardly malefactors.

Edward Craig, and his wife, Lola, who returned from their honeymoon, spent first in Khartoum, and afterwards in India, six months ago, and have now quite settled, have just come in from tennis. As they stand together, upon the threshold of the big oak-panelled library, a handsome pair in white, hand-in-hand, hot and flushed from playing, Lola says, with a merry smile upon her bright, open countenance and a pretty accent in her voice--

"In your narrative of what has recently happened, M'sieur Vidal, please tell the reader, man and woman, that the long, grim night has at last passed, the dawn has broken, yet 'The Nightingale' still sings on more blithely than ever, for she is at last supremely happy. At last, Edouard!" she adds, throwing her white arms about her husband's neck. "At last!"

And the tall, handsome fellow in flannels bent until his lips met hers.

"Ah, yes, Lola, darling!" he whispered earnestly. "You are mine--mine--mine, for always. We have, as the Psalmist of old has put it, passed through the Place of Dragons, and been covered with the Shadow of Death. But God in His justice has smitten the transgressors, and we have been delivered from the hand of the ungodly, into a world of peace, of happiness, and of love."

THE END

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End of Project Gutenberg's The Place of Dragons, by William Le Queux