The Fourth Plague Page 15

To the People of London.

  We, the Directors of the “Red Hand,” demand of the English Government—

  (a) The sum of Ten Million Pounds.

  (b) An act of indemnity releasing every member of the Fraternity from all and every penalty to which he may be liable as a result of his past actions.

  (c) A safe conduct to each and every Member of the “Red Hand,” and facilities, if so required, for leaving the country.

  In the event of the Government’s refusing, after ten days’ grace, we, the Directors of the “Red Hand,” will spread in London the Plague which was known as the Fourth Plague, and which destroyed six hundred thousand people in the year 1500. The bacillus of that plague is in our possession and has been synthetically prepared and tested.

  Citizens! Bring pressure on your Government to accede to our demands, and save us the necessity for inflicting this terrible disease upon you!

  It bore no signature or seal. It was absurd, of course. Evening papers, necessarily hurried and having little time to analyse its true meaning, made fun of it. But a different note appeared in the comments of the morning papers. Every known scientist and doctor of note who was reachable had been interviewed, and they one and all agreed that there was more than an idle threat in the pronouncement.

  The papers called it variously, “The Terror,” “The Threat of the ‘Red Hand,’ “Blackmailing London,” and their columns were filled with every available piece of data concerning the terrible scourge which had swept through Italy and Ireland in the year of desolation.

  “It’s a terrible business,” said Mansingham again. “I am afraid there is something in it.”

  The girl nodded.

  With a courtesy which is not usually found in men of his class, he accompanied her to the end of the field, and assisted her across the rough stile leading on to the road. She had made a detour from the little station to speak to Mansingham. She was interested in him, and it was a pact between the barrister and herself that she should keep, as he put it, a friendly eye upon his protégé.

  It was a glorious morning; the world was flooded with the lemon sunlight of early spring. The trees were bright with vivid green, and primroses and wild violets flowered profusely by the hedgerows. She shook away the gloom and depression to which the thought of this terrible menace had subjected her, and stepped out briskly, humming a little tune.

  Half-way across the field, Mansingham, retracing his steps, picked up one of the papers she had been carrying, and hurried after her.

  She had a twenty minutes’ walk before she reached Highlawns, which stood some quarter of a mile from the town’s limits, but she was of an age, and it was such a morning, when one’s feet seem to move without effort, and song comes unbidden to the lips.

  She heard the whirl of a motor-car behind her, and moved closer to the hedge to allow it to pass. Unconsciously she turned to see who was the occupant. At that moment the car jarred itself to a standstill at her side. A young man, dressed from head to foot in a white linen dust-coat, sprang out.

  “Count Festini!” she cried in amazement.

  “Count Festini,” he repeated, with his most charming smile. “I wanted to see you, won’t you get in? I am going up to the house?” he said.

  She hesitated. She would much rather have walked that morning. But it would have been an act of rudeness to have refused his offer of a lift, and besides, it occurred to her that she was already overdue for breakfast, and Sir Ralph’s temper of late had not been of the best.

  She stepped into the car, and at that moment Mansingham, a little out of breath, broke through the hedge behind it.

  “What a curious idea,” Marjorie said, as Festini took his place beside her.

  “What is a curious idea?” he asked.

  “A closed car on a day like this,” she said. “Why, I thought you Italians loved the sun.”

  “We love the sun,” he said, “untempered by such winds as you seem to produce exclusively in England.”

  He stepped forward and pulled down a red blind which hid the chauffeur and the road ahead from view. She watched him without understanding the necessity for his act. Then with a quick move he pulled the blinds down on each side of the car. It was now moving forward at a great pace. At this rate, she felt, they must be very near indeed to Highlawns. They had, in fact, passed the house, as the embarrassed Mansingham, clinging to the back of the car and waiting for it to slow up so that he could restore the girl’s paper, saw to his bewilderment.

  “Why do you do that?” the girl asked coldly. “If you please, Count Festini, let those blinds up.”

  “In a little while,” he said.

  “I insist,” she stamped her foot. “You have no right to do such a thing.”

  She was hot and angry in a moment as the full realization of his offence came to her.

  “In a moment,” he repeated; “for the present we will have the blinds down, if you don’t mind.”

  She stared at him in amazement.

  “Are you mad?” she asked, angrily.

  “You look very pretty when you’re angry,” he smiled.

  The insolent assurance in his tone made her feel a sudden giddiness. They must have passed Highlawns by now.

  “Stop the car,” she demanded.

  “The car will stop later,” he said; “in the meantime,” he caught her hand as she attempted to release the blind, “in the meantime,” he repeated, holding her wrist tightly, “you will be pleased to consider yourself my prisoner.”

  “Your prisoner!” exclaimed the affrighted girl. Her face had gone very white.

  “My prisoner,” said Festini, pleasantly. “I am particularly desirous of holding you to ransom. Don’t you realize,” his eyes were blazing with excitement, “don’t you realize,” he cried, “what you are to me? I do. In these last few days,” he went on, speaking rapidly, “I have seen all the wealth that any man could desire. And it is nothing to me. Do you know why? Because there is one thing in the world that I want more than anything, and you are that thing.”

  Both his hands were holding her now. She could not move. She was as much fascinated by his deadly earnestness as paralysed by the grip on her arms.

  “I desire you,” he said. His voice dropped until it thrilled. “You, more than anything in the world—Marjorie. You are unattainable one way; I must secure you in another.”

  The girl shrank back into a corner of the car, watching the man, fascinated. She tried to scream, but no sound came. Festini watched her, his eyes glowing with the fire of his passion. His hot hand was closed over hers almost convulsively.

  “Do you know what I’m doing!” he said, speaking rapidly, “do you know what I’m risking for you? Can’t you realize that I am imparting a new danger to myself and to my organization by this act? But I want you; I want you more than anything in the world,” he said passionately.

  She found her voice.

  “You are mad,” she said, “you are wickedly mad.”

  He nodded.

  “What you say is true,” he answered moodily, “yet in my madness I am obeying the same laws which govern humanity. Something here,” he struck his breast, “tells me that you are the one woman for me. That is an instinct which I obey. Is it mad? Then we are all mad; all animated creation is mad.”

  The fierce joy of possession overcame him; she struggled and screamed, but the whir of the engine drowned her voice. In a moment she was in his arms, held tightly to him, his hot lips against her cheeks. He must have caught a glimpse of the loathing and horror in her face, for of a sudden he released her, and she shrank back, pale and shaking.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, huskily, “you—you say I am mad—you make me mad.”

  His moods changed as swiftly as the April sky. Now he was pleading; all the arguments he could muster he advanced. He was almost cheerful, he swore he would release
her, reached out his hand to signal the driver, and repented his generosity.

  Then he spoke quickly and savagely of the fate which would be hers if she resisted him. It was the memory of that tall, handsome lover of hers that roused him to this fury. He was as exhausted as she when the car turned from the main road, as she judged by the jolting of the wheels. After ten minutes’ run, it slowed down and finally stopped.

  He jumped up, opened the carriage door and sprang out, then turned to assist her. A cold, sweet wind greeted her, a wind charged with the scent of brine. She stood upon a rolling down, within a hundred yards the sea stretched greyly to the horizon. There was no house in sight save one small cottage. About the cottage stood two or three men. She uttered a cry of thankfulness and started off towards them, when a laugh from Festini stopped her.

  “I’ll introduce you myself,” he said sarcastically.

  She turned to run towards the sea, but in two strides he was up to her and had caught her by the arm. Then a huge hand gripped his neck, with a quick jerk he was spun round. His eyes blazing with anger, he turned upon his assailant. George Mansingham, tall and broad, grimed with the dust of the road, for he had maintained an uncomfortable position hanging on to the back of the car for two hours, met the vicious charge of Festini with one long, swinging blow, and the Italian went down to the ground stunned.

  The girl was dazed by the suddenness of the rescue, until Mansingham aroused her to action.

  “This way, miss!” he said.

  He caught her unceremoniously round the waist, swung her up as if she were a child, and leapt across a ditch which drained this section of the downs.

  “Run!” he whispered. He too had seen the men and guessed they were in the confederacy. The girl gathered up all her reserve of strength and ran like the wind, Mansingham loping easily at her side.

  The wind carried the voices of their pursuers. One staccato shot rang out, a bullet whistled past them, then some one in authority must have given the order to stop firing. And indeed it was more dangerous for the men than for the fugitives.

  There was a coastguard station half a mile along the cliff road, and, although neither the girl nor Mansingham realized the fact, they instinctively felt that the coastline offered the best means of escape. Then suddenly Marjorie tripped and fell. Mansingham stopped in his stride and turned to lift her. As he raised her to her feet he uttered an exclamation of despair.

  Facing him were two men, indubitably Italians, and their revolvers covered him. He had come against the “Red Hand” outpost.

  It was all over in ten minutes. The pursuers came up, the girl was snatched from his protecting arms. He fought well; man after man fell before his huge fists. Then a knife, deftly thrown, struck him by the haft full between the eyes and he went down like a log.

  Festini, breathless, his face marred by an ugly redness which was fast developing into a bruise, directed operations.

  “If you make a sound,” he said, “or attempt to attract the attention of any person you see, you will have that person’s death on your hands, and probably your own.”

  He spoke curtly, impersonally, as though she herself were Mansingham.

  “Do not hurt him,” she gasped. She referred to the prostrate form of the farm-labourer, now stirring to life. Festini made no answer. He was of a race which did not readily forgive a blow.

  “Take her away,” he said.

  He remained behind with his two familiars. “I think we will cut his throat, Signor,” said Il Bue, “and that will be an end to him.”

  “And an end to us,” said Festini; “this coast is patrolled, the man will be found, and the whole coastline searched.”

  He walked a dozen paces to the edge of the cliff and looked down. There was a sheer fall here of two hundred feet, and the tide was in.

  “There is twenty feet of water here,” he said, significantly.

  They carried the reviving man by the head and feet to the edge of the cliff. They swung him twice and then released their hold, his arms and legs outstretched like a starfish. Round and round he twirled in that brief space of time, Festini and the other watching. Then the water splashed whitely and the dark figure disappeared.

  They waited a little while, there was no reappearance, and Festini and his lieutenant retraced their footsteps to the cottage, the third man following.

  XIV. —TILLIZINI LEAVES A MARK

  THE PERIOD OF ULTIMATUM was drawing to a close. For four days longer England had the opportunity of agreeing to the terms which the “Red Hand” had laid down.

  In his big library at Downing Street, occupying the chair which great and famous men had occupied for the past century, the Prime Minister, grave and preoccupied, sat in conference with Tillizini.

  The Italian was unusually spick and span that morning. He had dressed himself with great care, an ominous sign for the organization he had set himself to exterminate. For this was one of his eccentricities, and it had passed into a legend among the criminal classes in Italy, that a neat Tillizini was a dangerous Tillizini. There is a saying in Florence, “Tillizini has a new coat—who is for the galleys?”

  The Prime Minister was fingering his pen absently, making impossible little sketches upon his blotting pad.

  “Then you associate the disappearance of Miss Marjorie Meagh with the operations of the ‘Red Hand’?”

  “I do,” said the other.

  “And what of the man, Mansingham?”

  “That, too,” said Tillizini. “They were seen together in a field where Mansingham was working, his book and his coat were found as he had left them, and then he and she walked together to the stile. He is seen by another labourer to walk back slowly across the field, to suddenly stoop and pick up something, probably the lady’s handkerchief or bag, it is immaterial which. He runs back to the stile, jumps over, and evidently follows the lady. From that moment neither he nor she are seen again. One woman I questioned at a cottage by the roadside remembers a big car passing about that time. I place the three circumstances together.”

  “But surely,” said the Prime Minister, “they would hardly take the man. What object had they? What object in taking the lady so far as that was concerned?” Tillizini looked out of the window. From where he sat he commanded a view of Green Park, a bright and spirited scene. The guard had just been relieved at the Horse Guards, and they were riding across the parade ground, their cuirasses glittering in the sun, their polished helmets so many mirrors reflecting the rays of light. He watched them sadly, and the great crowd that marched on either side of them. Not all the arms of England, all her military and naval strength, her laws and splendid institutions, could save her from the malignity of the “Red Hand.”

  He turned with a start to the Prime Minister, and found that gentleman regarding him curiously.

  “In a sense,” he said, “I do not mind this abduction, always providing that neither of these people are injured. I cannot understand why they should have bothered; but it is these side issues of private vengeance which invariably bring the big organizations to grief.”

  “Seriously, Professor Tillizini,” said the Premier, “do you think that these men will carry their threat into execution?”

  “Seriously, I do,” said Tillizini. “Your experts scoffed at the idea of the ‘Red Hand’ being able to cultivate this particular germ. The ‘Red Hand’s’ reply must have been a little startling to them.” He smiled. “If I remember rightly they sent a little of the culture to your Bacteriological Institute. Animals which were inoculated died with all the symptoms which have been described by the fifteenth-century writers.”

  The Premier nodded his head.

  “We cannot give the money, that is impossible; you recognize that, Professor?” Tillizini assented.

  “It would mean the negation of all law; it would create a precedent which would put an end to all the authority of civilizat
ion; it were better that all England should be ravaged by this disease than that a single penny should leave the Treasury. That is my view. I am prepared,” he said quietly, “to accept not only the responsibility of that action, but the first consequence of these men’s machinations. This I have intimated through the public press. The only hope is that we may secure the culture, and not only secure it, but locate the laboratory where the cultivation is being made. It is a hope,” he shrugged his shoulders. “I know you are doing all you can, Tillizini,” he said quickly, “and Scotland Yard—”

  “Scotland Yard is working splendidly,” said Tillizini. “Your police organization is rather wonderful.”

  He rose to his feet.

  “Four days,” he said, “is a very long time.”

  “You will take any steps you deem necessary for the public safety?”

  “You may be sure of that, sir,” said Tillizini.

  The Premier twisted his blotter in his preoccupation.

  “They say of you, Professor,” he said deliberately, “that you do not hesitate to commit what in the eyes of the law-abiding world might be considered as criminal acts, in order to further justice.”

  “I have never hesitated,” said Tillizini, “if you mean—”

  “I mean nothing in particular,” said the Premier; “only I tell you this, if you deem it necessary to go outside the law to administer preventive punishment, I assure you that I will secure you the necessary indemnity from Parliament.”

  Tillizini bowed.

  “I have to thank your Excellency for that,” he said, “and you may be sure I shall not abuse the power, and that no crime I commit will ever need an act of indemnity.”

  The Premier looked up in astonishment.

  “Why?”

  “Because,” said Tillizini, with his sweetest smile, “my crimes are never brought home to me.”

  With another bow he left the room.

  Outside the house in Downing Street. Inspector Crocks was waiting.

  “I got you some telegrams,” he said, genially. “I am rapidly deteriorating into a private secretary’.”