guess as much. But I found out the way they were going to get
him, and that knowledge was
deadly. That's why I have had to decease.'
He had another drink, and I mixed it for him myself, for I was
getting interested in the beggar.
'They can't get him in his own land, for he has a bodyguard of
Epirotes that would skin their grandmothers. But on the 15th day of
June he is coming to this city. The British Foreign Office has taken
to having International tea-parties, and the biggest of them is due
on that date. Now Karolides is reckoned the
principal guest, and if
my friends have their way he will never return to his admiring
countrymen.'
'That's simple enough, anyhow,' I said. 'You can warn him and
keep him at home.'
'And play their game?' he asked
sharply. 'If he does not come
they win, for he's the only man that can
straighten out the tangle.
And if his Government are warned he won't come, for he does not
know how big the stakes will be on June the 15th.'
'What about the British Government?' I said. 'They're not going
to let their guests be murdered. Tip them the wink, and they'll take
extra pre
cautions.'
'No good. They might stuff your city with plain-clothes detectives
and double the police and Constantine would still be a
doomed man. My friends are not playing this game for candy. They
want a big occasion for the
taking off, with the eyes of all Europe
on it. He'll be murdered by an Austrian, and there'll be plenty of
evidence to show the connivance of the big folk in Vienna and
Berlin. It will all be an
infernal lie, of course, but the case will look
black enough to the world. I'm not talking hot air, my friend. I
happen to know every detail of the hellish
contrivance, and I can
tell you it will be the most finished piece of blackguardism since the
Borgias. But it's not going to come off if there's a certain man who
knows the wheels of the business alive right here in London on the
15th day of June. And that man is going to be your servant,
Franklin P. Scudder.'
I was getting to like the little chap. His jaw had shut like a rat-
trap, and there was the fire of battle in his gimlety eyes. If he was
spinning me a yarn he could act up to it.
'Where did you find out this story?' I asked.
'I got the first hint in an inn on the Achensee in Tyrol. That set me
inquiring, and I collected my other clues in a fur-shop in the Galician
quarter of Buda, in a Strangers' Club in Vienna, and in a little
bookshop off the Racknitzstrasse in Leipsic. I completed my evidence
ten days ago in Paris. I can't tell you the details now, for it's
something of a history. When I was quite sure in my own mind I
judged it my business to disappear, and I reached this city by a mighty
queer
circuit. I left Paris a dandified young French-American, and I
sailed from Hamburg a Jew diamond merchant. In Norway I was an
English student of Ibsen collecting materials for lectures, but when I
left Bergen I was a cinema-man with special ski films. And I came
here from Leith with a lot of pulp-wood propositions in my pocket to
put before the London newspapers. Till
yesterday I thought I had
muddied my trail some, and was feeling pretty happy. Then ...'
The
recollection seemed to upset him, and he gulped down some
more whisky.
'Then I saw a man
standing in the street outside this block. I
used to stay close in my room all day, and only slip out after dark
for an hour or two. I watched him for a bit from my window, and I
thought I recognized him ... He came in and spoke to the porter
... When I came back from my walk last night I found a card in
my letter-box. It bore the name of the man I want least to meet on
God's earth.'
I think that the look in my companion's eyes, the sheer naked
scare on his face, completed my
conviction of his
honesty. My own
voice sharpened a bit as I asked him what he did next.
'I realized that I was bottled as sure as a pickled
herring, and that
there was only one way out. I had to die. If my pursuers knew I
was dead they would go to sleep again.'
'How did you manage it?'
'I told the man that valets me that I was feeling pretty bad, and I
got myself up to look like death. That wasn't difficult, for I'm no
slouch at disguises. Then I got a
corpse - you can always get a
body in London if you know where to go for it. I fetched it back in
a trunk on the top of a four-wheeler, and I had to be assisted
upstairs to my room. You see I had to pile up some evidence for
the inquest. I went to bed and got my man to mix me a sleeping-
draught, and then told him to clear out. He wanted to fetch a
doctor, but I swore some and said I couldn't abide leeches. When I
was left alone I started in to fake up that
corpse. He was my size,
and I judged had perished from too much
alcohol, so I put some
spirits handy about the place. The jaw was the weak point in the
likeness, so I blew it away with a
revolver. I daresay there will be
somebody tomorrow to swear to having heard a shot, but there are
no neighbours on my floor, and I guessed I could risk it. So I left
the body in bed dressed up in my pyjamas, with a
revolver lying on
the bed-clothes and a
considerable mess around. Then I got into a
suit of clothes I had kept
waiting for emergencies. I didn't dare to
shave for fear of leaving tracks, and besides, it wasn't any kind of
use my
trying to get into the streets. I had had you in my mind all
day, and there seemed nothing to do but to make an
appeal to you.
I watched from my window till I saw you come home, and then
slipped down the stair to meet you ... There, Sir, I guess you
know about as much as me of this business.'
He sat blinking like an owl, fluttering with nerves and yet
desperately determined. By this time I was pretty well convinced
that he was going straight with me. It was the wildest sort of
narrative, but I had heard in my time many steep tales which had
turned out to be true, and I had made a practice of judging the man
rather than the story. If he had wanted to get a
location in my flat,
and then cut my
throat, he would have pitched a milder yarn.
'Hand me your key,' I said, 'and I'll take a look at the
corpse.
Excuse my
caution, but I'm bound to
verify a bit if I can.'
He shook his head mournfully. 'I reckoned you'd ask for that,
but I haven't got it. It's on my chain on the dressing-table. I had to
leave it behind, for I couldn't leave any clues to breed
suspicions.
The
gentry who are after me are pretty bright-eyed citizens. You'll
have to take me on trust for the night, and tomorrow you'll get
proof of the
corpse business right enough.'
I thought for an
instant or two. 'Right. I'll trust you for the
night. I'll lock you into this room and keep the key. just one word,
Mr Scudder. I believe you're straight, but if so be you are not I
should warn you that I'm a handy man with a gun.'
'Sure,' he said, jumping up with some briskness. 'I haven't the
privilege of your name, Sir, but let me tell you that you're a white
man. I'll thank you to lend me a razor.'
I took him into my bedroom and turned him loose. In half an
hour's time a figure came out that I scarcely recognized. Only his
gimlety, hungry eyes were the same. He was shaved clean, his hair
was parted in the middle, and he had cut his eyebrows. Further, he
carried himself as if he had been drilled, and was the very model,
even to the brown
complexion, of some British officer who had
had a long spell in India. He had a monocle, too, which he stuck in
his eye, and every trace of the American had gone out of his speech.
'My hat! Mr Scudder -' I stammered.
'Not Mr Scudder,' he corrected; 'Captain Theophilus Digby, of
the 40th Gurkhas,
presently home on leave. I'll thank you to
remember that, Sir.'
I made him up a bed in my smoking-room and sought my own
couch, more
cheerful than I had been for the past month. Things
did happen
occasionally, even in this God-forgotten metropolis.
I woke next morning to hear my man, Paddock, making the deuce
of a row at the smoking-room door. Paddock was a fellow I had
done a good turn to out on the Selakwe, and I had inspanned him
as my servant as soon as I got to England. He had about as much
gift of the gab as a hippopotamus, and was not a great hand at
valeting, but I knew I could count on his loyalty.
'Stop that row, Paddock,' I said. 'There's a friend of mine,
Captain - Captain' (I couldn't remember the name) 'dossing down
in there. Get breakfast for two and then come and speak to me.'
I told Paddock a fine story about how my friend was a great
swell, with his nerves pretty bad from
overwork, who wanted
absolute rest and
stillness. Nobody had got to know he was here,
or he would be besieged by communications from the India Office
and the Prime Minister and his cure would be ruined. I am bound
to say Scudder played up
splendidly when he came to breakfast. He
fixed Paddock with his eyeglass, just like a British officer, asked
him about the Boer War, and slung out at me a lot of stuff about
imaginary pals. Paddock couldn't learn to call me 'Sir', but he
'sirred' Scudder as if his life depended on it.
I left him with the newspaper and a box of cigars, and went
down to the City till
luncheon. When I got back the lift-man had an
important face.
'Nawsty business 'ere this morning, Sir. Gent in No. 15 been and
shot 'isself. They've just took 'im to the mortiary. The police are
up there now.'
I ascended to No. 15, and found a couple of bobbies and an
inspector busy making an
examination. I asked a few idiotic questions,
and they soon kicked me out. Then I found the man that had
valeted Scudder, and pumped him, but I could see he suspected
nothing. He was a whining fellow with a
churchyard face, and half-
a-crown went far to
console him.
I attended the inquest next day. A
partner of some publishing firm
gave evidence that the deceased had brought him wood-pulp propositions,
and had been, he believed, an agent of an American business.
The jury found it a case of
suicide while of unsound mind, and the few
effects were handed over to the American Consul to deal with. I gave
Scudder a full
account of the affair, and it interested him greatly. He
said he wished he could have attended the inquest, for he reckoned it
would be about as spicy as to read one's own obituary notice.
The first two days he stayed with me in that back room he was
very
peaceful. He read and smoked a bit, and made a heap of
jottings in a note-book, and every night we had a game of chess, at
which he beat me hollow. I think he was nursing his nerves back to
health, for he had had a pretty
trying time. But on the third day I
could see he was
beginning to get
restless. He fixed up a list of the
days till June 15th, and ticked each off with a red pencil, making
remarks in shorthand against them. I would find him sunk in a
brown study, with his sharp eyes abstracted, and after those spells
of
meditation he was apt to be very despondent.
Then I could see that he began to get edgy again. He listened for
little noises, and was always asking me if Paddock could be trusted.
Once or twice he got very peevish, and apologized for it. I didn't
blame him. I made every
allowance, for he had taken on a fairly
stiff job.
It was not the safety of his own skin that troubled him, but the
success of the
scheme he had planned. That little man was clean grit
all through, without a soft spot in him. One night he was very solemn.
'Say, Hannay,' he said, 'I judge I should let you a bit deeper into
this business. I should hate to go out without leaving somebody
else to put up a fight.' And he began to tell me in detail what I had
only heard from him vaguely.
I did not give him very close attention. The fact is, I was more
interested in his own adventures than in his high
politics. I reckoned
that Karolides and his affairs were not my business, leaving all that to
him. So a lot that he said slipped clean out of my memory. I remember
that he was very clear that the danger to Karolides would not begin
till he had got to London, and would come from the very highest
quarters, where there would be no thought of
suspicion. He mentioned
the name of a woman - Julia Czechenyi - as having something
to do with the danger. She would be the decoy, I gathered, to get
Karolides out of the care of his guards. He talked, too, about a Black
Stone and a man that lisped in his speech, and he described very