The Fourth Plague Read online

  The inspector agreed with a gesture.

  “When the amiable Thomas closed the door, our friend who delivered the parcel quickly put up a piece of canvas paper backed with a strong silk fabric. The door caught in the staple, but so did the strong silk. When he considered the coast was clear and he judged Thomas to be out of the way, he had but to pull the projecting end—”

  “I know the trick,” said the inspector. “I’ve seen it done a score of times.”

  “I suspected something of the sort,” said Tillizini, “but mostly I suspected a parcel. I thought, too, that the kidnapping of Smith was a ruse to get me out so that a warm welcome might be prepared for me when I came back.”

  “Have you found the man?”

  “He’ll be found,” said Tillizini, “by to-morrow morning.”

  “I’ve got men out now hunting for him,” said Crocks. “It’s rather a difficult job, Tillizini, dealing with your people.”

  Tillizini smiled.

  “They are somewhat different to the average English criminal,” he said. “One of these days when you are in Florence, Inspector, you must come to my museum and I’ll show you the skulls of typical criminals of all countries. I will explain then to you just why our Southern men are more dangerous to handle, and if you would be patient with me,” he favoured the policeman with his little bow, “I would then as briefly as possible give you the basis by which you may forejudge men’s actions.”

  “In other words,” said the Inspector, jovially, “you’ll give me elementary lessons in necromancy.”

  “Something of the sort,” said Tillizini. He had had half an hour with Crocks and with the Commissioner. Another crime had been laid at the door of the “Red Hand.” A worrying business for the English police, however satisfactory it might be to Tillizini.

  He rose from his chair and looked at his watch; it was nearly twelve. The inspector followed his example.

  “Where are you going now?”

  “I’m going back to my house,” he said, “will you come?”

  “I have an hour to spare,” said the other, “and I like your room, it’s rather restful. If I shan’t be in the way I’ll come round and get a few particulars at first hand.”

  “Come along,” said Tillizini.

  He passed through the broad corridors of Scotland Yard, down the stone stairway, and out by the entrance near the arch. The policeman on duty at the door saluted him respectfully.

  They strolled together leisurely back to the house in Adelphi Terrace. Tillizini rang; it was an act of laziness on his part that he did not find his key. There was no reply, and he rang again. Then he opened the door himself and stepped in. The two hall lights were burning, but there was no sign of Thomas.

  Tillizini closed the door behind him. Thomas was usually to be found in the basement. He walked to the end of the passage and called over the stairs, but again without reply. Neatly folded on a little dumb waiter, placed for better security beneath a glass, was a note. Tillizini pulled it out, took it up and read it. It explained much. It was addressed to the man, Thomas.

  “I have been arrested in connexion with to-day’s crime,” it said; “please bring my overcoat at once to Bow Street.”

  It was signed, “Antonio Tillizini.”

  Without a word he handed the wire to the English detective.

  “We will now go and discover things,” he said, and led the way upstairs.

  He did not trouble to arm himself because he knew the ways of the “Red Hand” too well to believe that any of the organization were present. They had probably had half an hour after Thomas had hurried away with the necessary overcoat. They would do what they wanted to do in ten minutes.

  He opened the door of his room and walked in without fear. He switched on the light. The room was in confusion. There had been a diligent and damaging search. The drawers of his desk had been ripped open and the floor was covered with papers and splinters of rosewood.

  Not even the chairs and the settee had escaped attention. They had been cut open and their stuffings pulled out. The legs of one chair had been lopped off as by a machette. Strangely enough, the little case of medicines, which still stood open on his desk, had been left intact. The “Red Hand” had too great a respect for Tillizini’s knowledge of chemistry, and they had had such illuminating lessons of his knowledge of high explosives, that they had left this severely alone, excepting that there was plenty of evidence that each phial had been carefully and cautiously lifted from its velvet-lined well and examined.

  With a quick glance at the damage done, the Italian walked with rapid strides across the room, lifted up one corner of the carpet and slipped back a narrow panel in the floor. It had been cunningly constructed by Tillizini’s own hand. It would be almost impossible for anybody not in the secret to know that such a receptacle existed. He thrust in his hand, and felt for a little while with a grim smile, then his hand slowly withdrew. The detective saw that he held a paper.

  “For the locket, thanks,” he read; “now you shall hear from us, Tillizini.”

  The Italian said nothing. He stood in the middle of the room, his hands clasped on his breast, his head sunk in thought.

  “They have taken the locket,” said Inspector Crocks, aghast.

  Tillizini did not reply.

  There came a knock at the door, and Thomas, still with his master’s overcoat on his arm, entered.

  “I’m sorry, sir; did you?” he began.

  Tillizini raised his head.

  “Thomas,” he said, “I have told you under no circumstances must you leave this house. Your failure to carry out my instructions, however, is mainly my fault. To-morrow I will draw you a little sign which you will see on any letter or wire I send, and know that it comes from me.”

  “I’m very sorry, sir,” said Thomas. Tillizini waved his apologies away.

  “It is nothing,” he said, “all this; rather,” he smiled, “I owe you an apology. You have a little child, have you not?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Thomas, wonderingly. “You carry his portrait in a locket, do you not?”

  “Oh, yes, sir,” replied Thomas. “Why, you know I do, sir. I brought you the locket to see the other day.”

  “I am sorry to say, Thomas,” said Tillizini, gravely, “that I have lost it—I hope it may be recovered. I put it in a safe place, I assure you.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing, sir,” said Thomas. “I can get another. It wasn’t worth half a crown.”

  “A token of a father’s love is invaluable,” said Tillizini, the corners of his lips turning up.

  He took his revolver from his pocket, pressed a spring near the trigger guard, and a little silver lid flew open in the butt. He held his hand under it and shook it, and something fell out wrapped in silver tissue. He unrolled the paper and handed the contents to Crocks.

  “I am almost inclined to ask you to keep this in Scotland Yard,” he said, “yet I don’t think they will burgle me again.”

  It was the medallion!

  “As for that which they have stolen,” Tillizini went on, “it is regrettable. I feel I shall never forgive myself for losing that charming locket of yours.”

  His voice was filled with gentle mockery, and the servant grinned a little sheepishly, mumbling his depreciation of any fuss at so small a loss.

  “I’m not at all annoyed, sir,” he said, awkwardly.

  What was true of Thomas was not true of the two leaders of the “Red Hand” who at that moment were sitting in a little room in Deptford examining with consternation and chagrin the plump and smiling features of a healthy child of two.

  XI. —LADY MORTE-MANNERY HELPS A FRIEND

  SIR RALPH MORTE-MANNERY WAS in an amiable mood. He had just read a most complimentary reference to his own perspicacity and genius in a French journal devoted to the interests of collectors. His gaiety had
affected the other members of the little dinner party, and had tempered somewhat the natural annoyance of the quashing of George Mansingham’s conviction.

  That unfortunate man had been released, not because the judges of the Appeal Court thought that his sentence was excessive, but because, in summing up, Sir Ralph had outraged most of the canons of good taste which it is possible for a judge to outrage.

  In giving judgment their lordships had said many bitter things about Sir Ralph; indeed, so unkind had been some of their comments, that Hilary George, listening with that air of delighted wonder which was his normal attitude toward life, had felt a sinking of his heart as he thought of the humiliation which by his efforts he had brought upon his sometime friend.

  Hilary was too good a man and too good a sportsman to exult in his victory. He was a strong man, too. None but a strong man would have taken the first train to Burboro’ and carried the news of the result to a man who would consider himself as being almost within his legal rights in slaying the messenger.

  There had been a stiff little meeting in the library; later, something like a reconciliation. Hilary, in terms which his old friendship permitted, gave the result of the finding, toning down the more vigorous of the judges’ remarks, and inwardly praying that The Times, in its record of the case, would sub-edit it as mercifully.

  Sir Ralph had been prepared for some such upset. He himself was an excellent lawyer where his prejudices did not interfere with his judgment. The lawyer in him had told him that his sentence had been excessive, just as the collector in him demanded as emphatically that the man should have been hung. But Hilary, with his baby face and his babbling humour, and his readiness to laugh at jokes against himself, had broken down the reserve of the older man, and had been invited to stay on.

  Over the dinner-table Sir Ralph even drank his health in facetious terms. The host’s humour was not of a great quality. But it was quite sufficient, as indeed it is in the case of all men whose flashes of humour are few and far between. He insisted on referring to Hilary as the “enemy” or “my oppressor,” and it gave him considerable amusement to do so.

  “Now, Hilary,” he said, with heavy jocularity, “you must give us all the news of the best criminal circles. What are the ‘Red Hand’ doing? Really, they are killing as many people as the motor-buses.”

  “Those people who know best,” said Hilary, gravely, “are viewing the inactivity of the ‘Red Hand’ with some apprehension. I happen to know the Government is rather worried about it. These men are brilliantly organized, and they will stop at nothing.”

  “Has anybody discovered,” asked Marjorie, “why they are rifling the collections? There was an article in the Post Herald about it the other day.”

  Hilary shook his head.

  “I’m blessed if I can understand it,” he said, “there’s something behind it. I don’t want to bother you, Ralph,” he went on, “but doesn’t it ever strike you, as a lawyer and as a man of keen perceptions, that there really might have been some ‘Red Hand’ move behind that burglary of yours?”

  Sir Ralph shook his head.

  “I shouldn’t think it was likely; of course, it might be so,” he conceded graciously, though in his heart of hearts he was perfectly satisfied that it was nothing of the sort.

  “Their latest exploit,” said Hilary, “was to kidnap one of Tillizini’s agents. The man was taken away overnight and turned up whole and hearty in the morning. For some reason they’d given an order for his release, being, I think, under the impression that they’d killed Tillizini and there was no necessity to retain his agent. The man could give very little account of his movements, except that he had been more or less stupefied by the administration of a drug which somewhat dulled his powers of recollection. He was unable to assist the police in locating the house where he had been taken. He was found in a dazed condition sitting on one of the seats on London Bridge in the early hours of the morning, and has been in a more or less semi-conscious condition ever since.”

  “That’s very interesting.” Frank, who was seated next to Marjorie, leant across the table. “I’ve seen men like that in Italy; it’s a sort of opium preparation that some of the peasants take. There is a slang term for it in Italian, an abbreviation of non mi ricordo.”

  “He remembers nothing, any way,” said Hilary, “except——” He stopped.

  “Except what?” asked Vera.

  She had been a silent listener to the conversation. She was looking very beautiful to-night, Hilary thought. She wore a dress of grey chiffon velvet, one big pink rose in her corsage.

  “I forget now,” said Hilary. He remembered that he had received his information in confidence and that he himself might be associated in the case at a later period.

  “By the way,” he went on, “I saw you in town the other day.”

  Vera reused her delicate eyebrows.

  “Really,” she drawled, “that was awfully clever of you. Where was I?”

  “You were in Oxford Street,” said Hilary. “That was an awfully swagger motor-car you were driving in; was it Festini’s?”

  She looked at him steadily.

  “Festini?” she repeated.

  “I thought I saw you with Festini,” he said hastily.

  For a man with such a wide knowledge of human creatures and, moreover, so versed in the ways of society, he seemed to be making an unusual number of faux pas.

  “I do not know Festini,” she said, “if you mean Count Festini, whose name one sees through the medium of the public press as moving in exalted circles; nor have I ever been in a motor-car in Oxford Street since I drove with Sir Ralph to Buzzard’s last Christmas.”

  “I am sorry,” murmured the barrister.

  Vera changed the subject with an easy grace. She was a perfect hostess, though she required all her self-control to prevent her showing the anger she felt.

  “Go on telling us something about the ‘Red Hand’,” she said. “What is this immense coup one hears about? I am awfully keen to know.”

  “Nobody seems to have any information on that subject,” said Hilary, “not even Tillizini.”

  “Not even Tillizini?” she repeated in mock amazement.

  “Not even Tillizini,” repeated Hilary. “He seems to be as much in the dark as any of us.”

  “People are getting a little jumpy,” said Sir Ralph, as, at a signal from Vera, the two women rose from the table. “There was another article in this morning’s paper. I know the journalists who are generally behind the scenes in these things expect something pretty big to happen. The police are guarding all the public buildings, and every Cabinet Minister is being shadowed with as much care as though the ‘Red Hand’ was a suffragist organization.”

  The party laughed politely at Sir Ralph’s little gibe.

  “I can confirm that,” said Frank, as he selected a cigar from the box which Marjorie offered him. “The various corporations responsible for their safety have asked a number of engineers to make an inspection of the bridges.”

  “Across the Thames?”

  He nodded. “There’s a water-guard every night for these,” he said; “all the signs are pretty ominous.”

  Sir Ralph and Hilary strolled away. They were both interested in the collection, and Vera joined the other two.

  “I am not going to stay long with you,” she smiled; “don’t look so alarmed, Mr. Gallinford.”

  She was genuine in her desire to propitiate him. His attitude towards her was a little strange and stiff. If she knew the reason, she gave no indication. In a way, he amused her. He was so open and so English. She experienced the resentment of her remote ancestry stirring within her at his dogged, unwavering honesty. Her attitude to the distress of Marjorie was at once polite and antagonistic. She, Marjorie, had remonstrated with him without effect. With all her pride in her lover, she desired that he should stand well wi
th others and should inspire in them the same admiration which she herself felt for him.

  Vera’s attempt at conciliation on this occasion was crowned with no greater success than her previous effort. After a while she yawned slightly behind her hand. She apologized laughingly.

  “Do not think you poor people are boring me,” she said, “but I’ve had some rather trying nights lately. Where are you going?” she asked.

  “I am going into the billiard-room to play Marjorie a hundred up,” said Frank, with an heroic attempt to be genial.

  Vera nodded.

  “And I’ve got my accounts to bring up to date.”

  She made a wry little face. “Pity me,” she demanded, with a smile.

  “Can I help you, dear?” asked Marjorie.

  Vera shook her head.

  “Accounts,” she said, with thinly-veiled acrimony, “are mysteries into which I trust your future husband will never initiate you.”

  With a nod she passed out of the room. She returned a few minutes later as though she had left something behind, and found the room empty. She made her way to the billiard-room; the game had just started, so they were settled for at least half an hour.

  She looked at the jewelled watch on her wrist; it wanted five minutes to ten. She came back to the hall and went up the stairs slowly, and as slowly walked past the museum. The iron door was closed, but its rosewood covering stood ajar. Ralph was engaged in an argument on the respective values of Renaissance artists which would last for at least an hour. She quickened her steps. At the other end of the corridor her own room was situated. Highlawns had been reconstructed to suit Sir Ralph’s convenience. In a sense it was convenient to her too, for she had chosen a small room in a wing which was never fully occupied unless Sir Ralph had an unusually large house-party.

  She closed the door behind her and locked it. It was a pretty room, furnished with taste, though it contained little that could by any stretch of imagination be termed valuable. Sir Ralph had his own views on the luxury of the age, and the simplicity, not to say the meanness, of his domestic arrangements, was a concrete expression of his disapproval of modern luxurious tendencies.