The Fourth Plague Read online

  Tillizini stepped back quickly. From a cupboard he took a strange-looking lamp and a coil of wire. He rapidly affixed the plugged end with a connexion in the wall, then he switched out all the lights of the room, and waited. Again the bright light flickered on the opposite bank.

  The professor touched a key at the base of the lamp, and from its conical-shaped projector shot a swift beam of soft blue light.

  Twice he did this, when the light on the other bank began to wink furiously and at a breakneck pace. Long wink, short wink, long, short; without a pause it raced onward with its urgent message.

  As the lamp spoke Tillizini answered it shortly. He read the message as easily as though it were in a printed book, for he knew English as well as he knew his mother tongue, and, moreover, he was an expert in such matters.

  The light on the other shore ceased talking, and Tillizini closed the window at which he had been standing, replaced his projector in his cupboard, and the little table on which it had stood against the wall. Then he drew down the blind and switched on the ceiling light.

  He stood over his desk and wrote rapidly the purport of the message he had received. It was written in small cramped signs which might have been, and probably were, a shorthand which he alone understood. He had scarcely finished when the musical thrill of an electric bell arrested him. He pressed an electric push inserted in the leg of the table, hastily slipped his notebook into a drawer, and turned as the door opened.

  The neatly-dressed manservant ushered in a visitor.

  “Inspector Crocks,” he announced.

  Crocks was short and stout and jovial. His head was as bald as a billiard ball, his peaked beard was shot with grey; he was a bourgeois of the bourgeois; yet, for all his unpromising appearance, Tillizini had no delusions where this smart policeman was concerned.

  “Sit down, inspector”—he indicated a chair. “A cigarette?”

  The inspector smiled.

  “Too subtle for me,” he said, “I’m a pipe smoker.”

  “Fill up,” said the professor, with a little smile.

  He did not insult his visitor by offering him tobacco, for he knew that it was an attention which all pipe-smokers resent, calling into question as it does their own discrimination and judgment.

  “Well?” he asked, as the other slowly filled his polished briar.

  “Your countrymen—if you will pardon me—are not helpful, they are a little—er—”

  “They are liars,” said the young professor calmly. “All men are liars when they are afraid, and I tell you these poor devils are afraid in a way you cannot understand. Not for themselves, but for their children, their wives and their old mothers and fathers.” He rose from the table and walked slowly up and down the room.

  “These men you want are merciless—you don’t know what I mean by merciless. It is a word which to you signifies a certain unjust harshness, cruelty, perhaps. But, my friend…cruelty!” He laughed, a bitter little laugh. “You don’t know what cruelty is, not the type of cruelty which flourishes on the shores of the Adriatic. I won’t tell you, it would spoil your night’s sleep.”

  The detective smiled.

  “I know—a little,” he said quietly, puffing a cloud of smoke and watching it disperse with a thoughtful eye.

  “Your idea,” the professor continued, “is to catch them—very good. And when you have caught them to secure evidence against them—very good again,” he said drily; “one is as easy as the other. Now my view is that they are vermin, society’s rats, to be exterminated without trial and without remorse.”

  He spoke quietly; there was no trace of emotion in his voice nor in his gesture. The hand that went searching for a cigarette in the gold box was steady; yet Crocks, no sentimentalist, shivered.

  “I know that is your view,” he said, with a forced smile, “yet it is not the view which finds favour in this country; it is a view which would get you into serious trouble with the authorities and might even bring you to the Old Bailey on the capital charge.”

  The professor laughed—a low, musical laugh. He ran his fingers through his grey-streaked hair with a characteristic gesture, then sank into the padded chair by the desk.

  “Well!” he said briskly, “what have you discovered?”

  The detective shook his head.

  “Nothing,” he said, “that is, nothing worth while. The gang is unreachable—the people who can give information are dumb brutes; they are either afraid, or in league with the ‘Red Hand.’ I’ve tried threatening them; I’ve tried bribing them; neither is of the least use.”

  Tillizini laughed softly.

  “And the ‘Red Hand’—have they made any further move?”

  The detective’s hand went to his pocket. He drew forth a bundle of papers enclosed in an elastic band. From this he extracted a letter.

  “This has been addressed to the Sa’ Remo Ambassador,” he said. “I won’t trouble to read it to you; it is the usual sort of thing. Only this time it is a child who is threatened.”

  “A child!”

  Tillizini’s black brows met in an ugly frown. “That is their principal card,” he said slowly, “I wondered how long they would keep their hands off the children; what does he threaten, our unknown?”

  “Abduction first—murder afterwards, if the abduction fails.”

  Tillizini took the letter from the other’s hand and read it carefully. He held the paper to the light.

  “This is the American gang—I thought we’d wiped them out, but it was evidently a bigger organization than I credited.”

  The musical little bell rang overhead. Tillizini raised his eyes, listening. After the shortest interval the bell rang again.

  The professor nodded. A big black box stood at one corner of the table—he unlocked it, the detective watching him curiously. With the turning of the key and the lifting of the lid, the front fell away, revealing three sedate rows of crystal phials.

  Tillizini took one from the front, slipped it in his pocket, then bent down and pressed the bell in the table.

  The door opened to admit a servant, followed by a fresh-coloured young man evidently of the working class. Crocks looked at him, saw he was an Englishman, and wondered in what way the two men had become acquainted. The young man accepted a seat at the invitation of Tillizini.

  “Well, my friend,” said the professor pleasantly, “you are willing to go on with this matter?”

  “Yes sir,” said the other, firmly.

  Tillizini nodded.

  “I got your message,” he said. He turned to the detective.

  “This man’s name is Carter,” he said briefly; “he is an out-of-work plumber, unmarried, without family, and prepared to take risks. You have been in the army, I think?” he said.

  The newcomer nodded. He sat uneasily on the edge of his chair as though unused to good society, and with obvious embarrassment.

  “I advertised,” Tillizini went on, “for a man who was willing to risk his life; I’m paying him two hundred pounds, and he is earning it.”

  Crocks was mystified.

  “Exactly what does he do?” he asked.

  “That,” said Tillizini, with a slow smile, “is exactly what he does not know.”

  He turned to the other man, who grinned sheepishly.

  “I carry out instructions,” he said, “and I’ve had a hundred pounds.”

  “Lucid enough, Mr. Crocks; he does nothing except live in a lodging in Soho, make his way to a wharf over there,” he pointed out of the window, “every evening at about this hour, signal to me a fairly unintelligible message, and afterwards walk slowly across Westminster Bridge, along the Embankment, up Vilhers Street, and so to my house.”

  He paced the room with long swinging strides.

  “He has taken his life in his hands, and he knows it,” he said. “I have told h
im that he will probably be assassinated, but that does not deter him.”

  “In these hard times,” said the soldier, “a little thing like that doesn’t worry you; it is better to be assassinated than to be starved to death, and I have been out of work for twelve months until Mr. Tillizini gave me this job.”

  “He receives two hundred pounds,” Tillizini went on, “by contract. I have paid him one hundred, I shall pay him another hundred to-night and his expenses. Probably,” he said, with a little smile, “he may escape with minor injuries, in which case I shall congratulate him heartily.”

  He turned briskly to the man.

  “Now let me have all the papers you have got in that pocket. Put them on the table.”

  The man dived into his various pockets and produced scraps of paper, memorandum, pocket-books—all the literary paraphernalia of his class.

  From his pocket Tillizini took the phial he had removed from the medicine chest. He unstoppered it, and a pungent, sickly odour filled the room. With the moist tip of the stopper he touched each article the man had laid on the table.

  “You will get used to the smell,” he said, with a smile; “you won’t notice it after a while.”

  “What is it?” asked Crocks, curiously.

  “You will be surprised when I tell you,” said the other. “It is double distilled attar of roses, the vilest smell in the world in its present stage, and this bottle I have in my hand is worth commercially, twenty-five pounds.”

  At a nod from Tillizini, Carter gathered up his papers and replaced them in his pockets.

  “You have a revolver?” asked the professor.

  “Yes, sir,” replied the man. “I’m just getting used to it. I don’t understand these automatic pistols, but I went down to Wembley the other day and had some practice.”

  “I hope that no occasion will arise for you to have practice nearer at hand,” said Tillizini, dryly.

  He rang the bell, and the servant came.

  “Get Mr. Carter some supper,” he ordered. He nodded to the man as he left.

  “What is the meaning of this?” asked Crocks.

  “That you shall see,” said the other.

  “But I don’t understand,” said the bewildered detective. “Why should you give this man so large a sum to do nothing more than send electric signals to you every evening?”

  Tillizini sat down at his desk.

  “Mr. Crocks,” he said, “it would be false modesty on my part if I pretended that my movements escape the notice of the ‘Red Hand.’ I am perfectly satisfied in my own mind that I do not go in or out of this house without the organization being aware of the fact. Every step I take is watched; every action of mine is considered in the light of a possible menace to the society.

  “This society knows that every evening I am engaged in the exchange of messages with a man south of the Thames. The very mysteriousness will naturally appeal to the Latin temperament, and its significance will be magnified. On the second night you may be sure that Carter was located. You may also be sure that he was watched from the wharf and followed to this house.”

  A light began to dawn upon the detective. “Then Carter is a decoy?”

  “A two hundred pound decoy,” said the other, gravely. “He knows the risk, I am paying him a big sum; fortunately he is something of a signaller, and so he is able to tell me through a code of our own what is happening on the other side of the river. I freely admit,” he smiled, “that so far nothing has happened worth recording.”

  “They will kill him,” said Crocks.

  “They will try,” said the other quietly; “he is a pretty resourceful man, I think. I am hoping that nothing worse will happen than that they will seek a gentler method of solving the mystery which surrounds him. Hallo!” The door was thrust open suddenly, and the servant flew in.

  “I’m very sorry, sir——” he stammered.

  “What’s the matter?” Tillizini was on his feet. “Is it Carter?”

  “No, sir—he’s in the kitchen. I heard a ring at the bell, and the girl”—he went on incoherently—“a girl sort of fell in. What am I to do, sir?”

  “Fell in?” Tillizini stepped quickly past him, and went down the broad stairs, two at a time, to the hall.

  The man had had sufficient presence of mind to close the door after the strange visitor’s appearance.

  Lying on the carpeted floor of the hall was the form of a woman. Tillizini, practised as he was in every subtle move of the gang, stepped forward cautiously. She lay under an overhanging light, and he was able to see her face. He lifted her and walked quickly back up the stairs with his burden.

  Crocks was standing in the doorway of the room.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  Tillizini made no reply. He carried the limp figure and laid it on the settee by the wall.

  “What happened?” he asked the man shortly.

  “I heard the bell ring, sir,” said the agitated servant, “and I went to the door thinking it was—”

  “Never mind all that—be brief,” said Tillizini.

  “Well, I opened the door, sir, and she must have fainted against it. I’d just time to catch her and to drag her into the hall before she went off.”

  “Did you see anybody outside?”

  “No, sir,” said the man.

  “You closed the door behind you, I see,” said Tillizini approvingly. “Really, I shall make something of you, Thomas.”

  From his medicine case he took a slender phial, removed the stopper, and wetted the tip of his finger with the contents. He brushed this along the lips of the unconscious girl.

  “She has only fainted,” he said, while with a quick, deft hand he felt the pulse, and his sensitive fingers pressed the neck ever so slightly.

  The drug he had given her had a marvellously rapid effect.

  She opened her eyes almost immediately and looked round. Then she caught sight of Tillizini’s face.

  “Don’t try to speak,” he said, gently. “Just wait. I will get you a little wine, though I don’t think you will require it.”

  She tried to sit up, but his firm hand restrained her.

  “Lie quietly for a little while,” he said. “This gentleman is a detective from Scotland Yard. You need have no fear.”

  “Are you Dr. Tillizini?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “My husband—you’ve seen him?” she whispered.

  Tillizini nodded again.

  “Yes, yes. He was the man who was sentenced at Burboro’.”

  A look of pain passed across the white-faced girl.

  “Yes, he was sentenced,” she said, weakly. “He was innocent, but he was sentenced.” Tears welled into her eyes.

  Tillizini had the narrow blue phial in the palm of his hand. Again he tilted it, and again the tip of his little finger swept across the lips of the girl. She knit her brows.

  “What is that?” she said. “It is very sweet stuff.”

  The professor smiled.

  “Yes, it is very sweet, my child,” he said, “but it will do you a lot of good.”

  His prediction was verified, for in a few minutes she sat up—calm and collected.

  “I heard you had been to see my husband,” she said. “I wanted to talk to you, but you had gone; and then I thought I would write to you, and I was starting my letter when a gentleman came.”

  “Which gentleman?” asked Tillizini.

  “The Italian gentleman,” she replied—“the one my husband said had asked him to go to Highlawn. Oh, I knew it wasn’t true that he burgled Sir Ralph. Poor as we were, he would never have done such a thing.”

  Tillizini nodded, he raised his hand with a reproving little smile.

  “Yes, the Italian came, and what did he want?”

  She was calm again.

&n
bsp; “He gave me some money,” said the girl, “and told me that he would see that my husband was released, and I was so grateful because I felt so sure that he would go to Sir Ralph and tell him, and George would be let out of gaol.”

  She was little more than a child, and the men who listened were too full of pity to smile at her naive conception of Sir Ralph’s power.

  “And then,” she went on, “he asked me a dreadful thing.”

  She shuddered at the thought.

  “He asked me to do that for which my husband was convicted.”

  “To go to the house?”

  “Yes,” she nodded.

  “And to take a package?”

  Again the girl nodded.

  “And you were to do this on Friday night?”

  His eyes were blazing with excitement.

  “Yes,” she said. “How do you know?”

  A little look of fear came into her face. She was out of her depth in these plots and machinations, this simple country girl, who had entered into the responsibilities and trials of marriage at an age when most girls were at school.

  “I know,” said Tillizini.

  He walked up and down the apartment, his hands thrust in his pockets, his head bent.

  “You won’t be able to do it now. They’ve watched you come up here; I suppose that’s why you came to me?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I am so afraid of these men. We are quiet country folk. We have never been mixed up in anything like this.”

  Tillizini considered a moment; then he took down the telephone receiver and gave a number. He had a brief conversation with somebody in Italian and he spoke with an air of authority. He hung the receiver up again.

  “I have telephoned for a lady to come here to take you to her house,” he said. “I don’t think these people will bother you at all, because you know nothing which can possibly affect them one way or the other. I suppose,” he said, turning to Crocks, “that you can give me a couple of men to look after this girl till she reaches the house where I am sending her?”

  Crocks nodded.

  “I’ll take her myself,” he said, jovially. “I am worth two men.”

  Tillizini smiled.