Something had flashed upon me, white-hot and sudden, as an electric advertisement flashes out upon one at night. It was something that I had entirely and utterly forgotten until now.
"There was a man," I gasped, "a scoundrel who had been annoying Miss Shepherd for a long time. He wanted to marry her. She told me of it. And he was once a celebrated flying man!"
"Long ago, in the Great War," said Danjuro calmly. "Major Helzephron, V.C. I was aware of it."
"And one of the boys if ever there was one, sir!" Thumbwood broke in. "Warned off the course everywhere. I've got a bit of information too!"
I stared at them, trembling with excitement. And then reality, like a cold douche of water, brought me to my senses. Of course, it was impossible. The thing was a mere coincidence. Why, while the first ship – the Albatros– had been attacked, this man, Helzephron, was in London! He had travelled west in the same train with me and Connie.
"May I ask exactly what you know, Sir John?"
… I told Danjuro precisely what had happened at Paddington and how Connie herself had explained it.
He listened to me in attentive silence. When I had finished, I saw that a small leather pocket-book had appeared in his hands – everything that the fellow did had the uncanny effect of a clever trick – and he was turning over the leaves.
"So far," he began, "in the consideration of this problem we have been eliminating impossibilities, or improbabilities so strong that they amount to that. This has left us with a small residuum of fact, unproved fact, but sufficient to work from. One thing emerges clearly. It is the nature and personality of our unknown friend. It is not too much to say that he MUST be very like what we have imagined him to be. A certain person appears dimly on the scene – this Major Helzephron. Let us see how his personality squares with the personality we have been deducing. Mr. Thumbwood has apparently collected some information. I have done so, too. Let us pool results!" He looked at Charles, who blushed.
"Out with it, Charles; you've done splendidly," I said.
"Well, Sir John, I found out that this gentleman is a pretty bad wrong-'un, judging by the company he keeps. And he used to annoy Miss Shepherd something chronic. He'd wait at the stage-door and try and speak to her when she got into the car after the performance, and he was always leaving notes and flowers with the stage-door keeper. Miss Shepherd would never take them. She always sent them back from her room. It got so bad at last that she complained to the stage manager, and he had a plain clothes man from Vine Street there one night. Major Helzephron was told off pretty plainly, I hear. He used to come very nasty sometimes, and once or twice he was fair blotto! And Mr. Meggit, the commission agent, knows him well. He's done a lot of racing in his time, and no open scandal. But he knows how to work the market, and the best men won't lay him the odds no more."
I shrugged my shoulders. It was only what one expected. The man was one of the fast blackguards who infest the West End of London; that was all. There were dozens like him. The facts only seemed to prove that he could not possibly be connected with the Atlantic outrages.
"You see?" I said to the Japanese, sure that he would follow my thought. Then I thanked good little Charles and he left the room.
"That is the surface," Danjuro replied. "I cross-examined a woman who was in constant attendance on Miss Shepherd. From her I learnt just what your servant has discovered. But I went a little deeper. It is a case of genuine overmastering passion on the part of this man. Nothing less. He is of a dangerous age for that to come to him, certainly over forty-five years. A woman knows. But that is not all."
"So far we have learnt nothing of importance." I was getting restive, I wanted to be doing something. And yet, what was there to do? If I had thought all night by myself I could not have mapped out the situation more clearly. And as I looked at the little man, half lost in a big saddlebag chair, I felt ashamed of my irritation. A brain packed in ice was there, a logical machine of the first order. I could not expect humanity, sympathy, from such a one. Still, it would have helped! Hadn't I lost the one thing that made life worth living? What might not be happening to Connie even now?
… He read my thoughts like a book, confound him!
"I understand your feelings, believe me, Sir John," he said, "but I must go my own way. We have not been talking for an hour yet! And if it is any consolation for you to know, let me say that it is imperative that we leave London to-night."
"My nerves are strained. Please go on," I answered. "I can hardly tell you what a godsend your appearance on the scene really is to me."
"In my business as agent and guard to my patron, Mr. Van Adams, it is always necessary that I keep more or less in touch with a certain circle of what I may describe as the aristocracy, the brains of International Crime. It has proved useful. After my visit to the Parthenon this morning I called upon an old acquaintance, the Honourable James Brookfield."
"Lord Slidon's son? The man who got five years …"
"Yes. Of course, everyone knows his name. He made one little slip. Mr. Brookfield is very acute, and a great student of character. Entirely incapable of understanding a man or woman of decent morals and normal instincts, he is infallible in his judgment of the criminal type. Mr. Brookfield owes me any little service he can render, and I supplemented my request for information with a note for fifty pounds."
"And you learnt …?"
"That Major Helzephron is all we have just heard, but a far more sinister and formidable person than anyone suspects. He is a man of marked intellectual powers. Below the veneer of coarse pleasures and fast life in London and Paris, there is something that glows like a hot coal. His appearances in town are irregular and fitful. His real life, Brookfield is certain of this, is lived far away from cities. And it is a life with a purpose."
Quite suddenly and unexpectedly Mr. Danjuro began to reveal himself.
The last words were spoken in a changed voice. The flatness and monotony had vanished. The words vibrated in the room, and I felt the thrill of them. It was the power of personality, and from then onwards I was hand in glove with this bizarre thinking machine that Fate had sent me.
I tried to emulate Danjuro's dispassionate and scientific method.
"It is curious," I said, "that a real intellect should care to spend part of its time in rake-helling round the low clubs, the gambling-rooms and stage-doors of London. Such a thing is known, but it is rare."
"You put your finger instantly upon what seems a weak spot in my character sketch. But let us assume that it has been done with a deep motive."
"Ah!" He knew, or suspected, something more. He referred to his notebook.
"Two years ago a certain Mr. Herbert Gascoigne was expelled from Christ Church College, Oxford."
"Sent down, we call it; but go on."
"The case was a bad one. The young man had established a sort of gambling club and ruined several of his contemporaries. It was discovered that he was using a roulette wheel that had been tampered with. He came to London and drifted into the worst gang of swindlers. Major Helzephron met him. They became very friendly. The younger man was obviously under the influence of the elder. Finally Gascoigne deserted his old haunts and has disappeared."
I began to see light.
"On several occasions my astute friend, Mr. Brookfield, has witnessed precisely the same phenomenon. Some young man of the upper classes has been ruined socially, and our enigmatic friend has taken him up, been seen about with him, and so forth. Finally the young man vanishes."
"It is not philanthropy, Mr. Danjuro."
"It is not, and it gives rise to curious speculations. Where could a Napoleonic criminal, patiently planning and meditating a stupendous coup, find a better recruiting ground than among the desperate and ruined young men of his own class? The plan is in itself evidence of genius. They speak his language, he understands their way of thought; there are a thousand bonds between them. I can conceive no more solid and formidable combination than just this. The one last virtue remaining to these desperate and outcast young men will be loyalty to their leader. Society has cast them out, therefore they will make war on Society. Given that attitude of mind, a leader like Major Helzephron, and a plan so daring, and the thing becomes plain as daylight. And if this man had not fallen into an overmastering passion for Miss Shepherd there would have been no means of getting on his trail at all."
It was only with great difficulty that I could control my thoughts. We seemed miles nearer the truth than I had been an hour ago. Then one idea emerged clearly.
"Quite so. And isn't it all in our favour that we, and we alone, are in a position to connect Helzephron with the piracy? He will think himself perfectly secure?"
"I do not for a moment believe," Danjuro replied with emphasis, "that a single soul besides ourselves has the least suspicion. The man will have taken supreme care to cover his tracks. My inquiries could have suggested nothing to the people I interviewed. Mr. Brookfield thinks I required my information for quite another reason. Yes, Sir John, we have a task of immense difficulty and danger before us. You must recognize that to the full. My sincere belief is that it would be somewhat safer to venture into a cage of cobras than where we have to go. But" – he took out his watch – "it is five o'clock. Let us say that the game begins at this moment! Very well. We, and not the enemy, have scored the first point!"
He suddenly glided from his chair with a single sinuous movement. As he stood up he was transformed. The bland modern look faded from his face. It grew terrible. The eyes narrowed to slits of light, the square jaw protruded, the grey lips were caught up in a tiger-grin, and the slim body seemed to swell out with iron muscle like a wrestler stripped in the arena.
You have seen some of the real old Japanese colour-prints, pictures of the ancient Samurai or the frightful Akudogi shouting at you – yes? The flat, awful stolidity, the incarnate hate…
Then you have seen something of what I saw then.
Wow! Millionaire Van Adams was well served!
CHAPTER VII THE CURIOUS FIGHT IN THE RESTAURANT
"It is a good deal to ask, Sir John," said Danjuro briskly, "but, for the moment, will you place yourself entirely in my hands?"
"I am perfectly content to do so."
"Then permit me to press the bell." He did so.
"I left a black bag in the hall," Danjuro said politely when Thumbwood came in. "Would you please let me have it?"
The bag was brought. Danjuro placed it on the table and opened it.
"You are very well known, Sir John," he remarked. "Major Helzephron and his friends have either seen you at some time or other, or have certainly seen the numerous pictures of you that have appeared in the newspapers during the last few days. It is imperative that you change your appearance at once. I foresaw that and have brought materials."
I am afraid I whistled with dismay. The idea didn't please me in the very least. "Is it really necessary?.."
"Absolutely. But it will not inconvenience you. Will you go into your bedroom and clip off your moustache with scissors, afterwards shaving the upper lip clean? You see, the man who leaves London to-night must not in the least resemble the Chief Commissioner of Air Police."
I went and did it. I had to. When the operation was over I shouldn't have known myself, it made such a difference. I never knew that I had such a grim and forbidding mouth!
I returned to the sitting-room. Mr. Danjuro did not make the least comment, but he removed my collar and tie with the deftness of a barber and fastened a towel round my neck. Then he sponged my skin all over with some faintly pink stuff out of a bottle. When he had done that, he began on my hair with something else, and finally my eyebrows.
"May I ask what you are doing?" I said after a time.
"I am dyeing your hair black, Sir John. The dye can be removed at any time. The appearance is absolutely natural. The drug I am using is not generally known. I procure it from a friend in the Honcho Dori at Yokohama, and also the liquid which has already changed your skin from blond to swarthy. I will treat your hands in a minute."
I suppose I was three-quarters of an hour under his ministrations before he stepped back and looked at me critically. "Part your hair in the centre, instead of at the side, wear a low collar instead of a high one, and spectacles – they can be of plain glass – and you need not have the slightest fear of recognition. In fact, Sir John, as far as outward appearance goes, you have already ceased to exist!"
There was a mirror over the mantel-shelf. I stood up and looked. It was marvellous! It was uncanny, too. A dark-haired, dark-skinned stranger leered out of the glass at me, and I turned away with mingled feelings of amazement and disgust.
"Do you drive an automobile?" the Japanese asked.
I jumped at the suddenness of the question, for my thoughts were far away. "Yes, I have a touring car of my own in a neighbouring garage."
"It will be better not to use it. We shall take one of Mr. Van Adams' cars. It is ready."
I laughed. "I've a lot to hear yet, you know, Mr. Danjuro, though I have placed myself in your hands without reserve. But you made very sure of me beforehand, didn't you?"
"It is Mr. Van Adams' command," he answered simply, and I reflected that here, indeed, was a man with a single soul.
"We shall leave London at midnight," he went on, "and drive through the whole of the night. I, also, am an expert chauffeur, and we can relieve each other."
"Thumbwood can drive, too. Of course we take him with us?"
"He will be of the greatest assistance. Now, Sir John, if you want to take a little sleep, now is the time. I should like to consult with your servant, if I may, and have a chat with him. We shall have a good deal to do with one another."
Strangely enough, I did feel drowsy, despite my excitement. A couple of hours' sleep would refresh me wonderfully, and I knew it.
"Very well; I think it is a good suggestion. Say for two hours."
"By all means. I will carry out some other arrangements meanwhile. You shall have full explanations later on, and I thank you sincerely for the confidence you have reposed in me."
While we were talking we had left the room and crossed the hall.
"A pleasant sleep," he said, politely opening the door for me. "We will go and have a look at Major Helzephron later on."
"What?" I shouted.
"He is in London. I have never seen him and I must certainly do so."
"In London?" I cried, a dozen conflicting thoughts crowding and crushing into my mind.
"… It is the reason that we leave London to-night."
Then he had shut the door on me and was gone. I had known him less than two hours. I was a man accustomed to rule, whose whole life was spent in giving orders, and I lay down on my bed like a lamb without a further question. And, what is more, I did exactly as Mr. Danjuro had said. I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
At a little after eight Mr. Danjuro and myself sat at dinner at the Restaurant Mille Colonnes. Most people know that expensive and luxurious home of epicures, with Nicholas, its stout and arrogant proprietor, and M. Dulac, its famous chef.
We sat in the south gallery, at the extreme end, against the wall. The electric lights in the roof above us had been extinguished, and our table was lighted by candles in red shades. Indeed, we sat in a sort of darkness which must have made us almost invisible to the other diners, most of whom sat in the longer arm of the gallery at right angles to our own.
We, on the contrary, could see everything. We could look over the gilded rail into the hall of the restaurant below, and every detail of the gallery on our own level was clear and distinct, though there was such a towering erection of flowers and ferns in the centre of our table that it obscured what would otherwise have been a perfect view.
I wore a low, turned-down collar and a dark flannel suit. Danjuro, also, had changed his clothes, and, in some real but indefinite way, his appearance. He wore a flannel suit and a straw hat, and also a necktie which I suddenly spotted as that of my old college, Christ Church, Oxford. But the extraordinary thing about him was that he seemed fifteen years younger.
He had promised to explain at the "Mille Colonnes." As we began upon the salted prawns and the stuffed olives he did so.
"You are now Mr. Johns, an Oxford tutor, Sir John. I am a young Japanese gentleman, my own name will serve, whom you are coaching. We are going into the country with this disguise. It is one which will easily account for your being in the company of an Asiatic gentleman, and which you will have no difficulty in sustaining."
It was, indeed, a simple and excellent plan for avoiding undue curiosity. I said so, and then: "Now perhaps you will tell me where we are going. I have my ideas…"
"We are going west," he answered gravely. "To Cornwall."
My heart beat fast. It was what I wanted him to say. "To the home of Helzephron?"
"Yes. For it is there we shall be in the very centre of the web. In those far western solitudes, despite the recent opening up of the Duchy to tourists, there are still vast spaces of lonely moorland and unvisited coast where one may walk for half a day and meet no living soul. There is a great Hinterland between the little town of St. Ives and the Land's End that for all practical purposes is unknown and unexplored. Later on, I will show you certain maps… It is in one of the remotest spots of all that Major Helzephron has his house. I tell you, Sir John," he continued, with a sort of passion, "that in those lost and forgotten solitudes, where England stretches out her granite foot to spurn the Atlantic, strange secrets lie hid to-day! On those grey and lonely moors, where the last Druids practised their mysterious rites, and which are still covered with sinister memorials of the past, lies the explanation of the terror which is troubling the world! There, and there only, shall we discover the secrets of the air, and – if human skill and determination are of any avail – Miss Constance Shepherd!"
An obsequious waiter came with iced consommé. He was followed by the great Nicholas himself, bulging out of his buttoned frock-coat – Nicholas never wore evening dress – who bowed low and had a whispered confabulation with Danjuro.
I remarked on this unusual honour. "I do what I wish here," the Japanese replied. "It is, of course, through Mr. Van Adams. I hold this place in the hollow of my hand – as you will presently see!"
He gave one of his rare and weary smiles, and then said quietly: "Please do not get up or move. Major Helzephron has just come into the gallery!"
I could not have moved. His words turned me to stone.
"I felt sure," he went on, "that for a day or two Helzephron would show himself in London. Knowing what we know – or at least suspect – such a move was a certainty. He is in the habit of coming here. He booked his usual seat at this restaurant, and his usual box at the Parthenon Theatre – and for reasons obvious to you and me, if to no one else in the world! I confess to an anxiety to look upon this man."
"You have had this corner darkened?" I said quickly. "No one can see us here?"
"Not clearly. And Helzephron would not know who we are if he did see us. But, as he is sure to come upon us in Cornwall, it is better to take no risks. To that end I have had a little device arranged for us which proved of great service to me once in Chicago."
He bent forward to the mass of ferns and flowers in the centre of the table, disarranging the greenery at its base. At once a green-painted tube became visible, and then a slanting mirror, the size of a postcard.
"What on earth is that?" I whispered.
"An adaptation of the periscope!" he replied, taking a magnifying glass from his pocket, adjusting it, and bending over the mirror. "The lens is focussed upon Helzephron's table. With this magnifier I enlarge the image in the mirror. Ah! So that is the honourable gentleman!"
A faint hissing noise came from him. His face stiffened into fixed and horrible intentness as he stared through his magnifier at the little oblong of mirror.
"Shi-ban, Go-ban, hei!" he muttered. "There are two, then. I expect the younger man is the Honourable Herbert Gascoigne, of whom we have heard!"
The hissing noise continued, the ecstasy of attention did not relax for two or three minutes.
At last Danjuro looked up. His face, which had seemed carved out of jade, relaxed.
"Will you take my seat?" he said politely, handing me his reading-glass. "A little drama will commence in a few minutes. It will interest you!"
I gave him a glance of interrogation as we exchanged chairs.
"We shall be in Cornwall to-morrow, and in advance of our friends," he whispered. "But, in order that we may carry out our preliminary inquiries quite undisturbed, I have thought out a little plan by which, if all goes well, Major Helzephron will be detained in London for a day or two – you will see."
Trembling with eagerness I stared down at the mirror.
The periscope was perfectly focussed. The addition of the reading-glass made everything perfectly clear.
Two men in evening clothes were seated at a table. Their heads were close together, and they were talking earnestly. One was a tall, handsome boy of two-and-twenty, with a fair complexion and a reckless, dissipated cast of face. Young as he was, evil experience had marked him, and his smile was that of a much older man.
But I scarcely cast a glance on him as I stared at the coloured, moving miniature of "Hawk Helzephron." The man's face was deeply tanned; above the brows a magnificent dome of white forehead went up to a thatch of dark red hair – the forehead of a thinker if ever I saw one. The face below was seamed and lined everywhere. The thin nose curved out and down like that of a bird of prey. The mouth was large, well-shaped, but compressed, the chin a wedge of resolution. And, as he talked, I saw a pair of slightly protruding eyes, cold and fierce. The whole aspect of the man was ferocious and formidable to a degree.
"Watch!" whispered Danjuro.
I watched, and this is what I saw.
Into the picture came a thick-set, brutal-looking man, with a blazing diamond in his shirt-front. He was passing Helzephron's table when his dinner jacket caught a wine-glass and swept it to the floor.
The hawk-faced man looked up with a scowl and said something just as the portly Nicholas and a waiter appeared in the background, as if passing casually by.
The thick-set man bent down till his face was close to Helzephron's. He said something also, with an unpleasant smile.
Instantly Helzephron leapt up and drove his fist full into the other's face.
The fight that followed ended very speedily. The thick-set man took the blow calmly. Then, without heat, and in a fashion which instantly told me the truth of the matter, he set about Helzephron, hitting him where and when he chose, until a shouting crowd of guests and waiters separated the combatants and a policeman and commissionaire hurried them away from the gallery.
During all the tumult Mr. Danjuro sat quietly smoking a cigarette.
"That was Mr. Wag Ashton, the pugilist," he remarked. "Honourable Nicholas and the waiter saw that the honourable Helzephron struck him first. I think the Major will be resting for a day or two before Mr. Ashton summonses him for assault."
I felt faint with surprise and amazement.
"So you, you arranged …"
He interrupted me. "Now let us finish our dinner in peace," he said. "Some river trout, meunier, are coming."
An hour afterwards, with myself at the wheel, a huge sixty horse-power limousine, loaded with luggage and with Messrs. Danjuro and Thumbwood inside, was rolling down the Piccadilly slope.
To Penzance.
CHAPTER VIII
THE HUNTING INSTINCT IS STIMULATED BY A PROCESSION
