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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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The Grand Magazine, April 1913, with
"The Octopus of Garden Square"
"NOW, I consider is that this is about as good a book as was ever written. It's interesting, it's sensible; it hasn't got a lot of frills and things, and it's valuable. Listen to this, Fortworth!" said Mr. Smiler Bunn to his fellow-crook, Lord Fortworth, in their London flat one afternoon.
"Listen to this—it's written by a man who knows what he's talking about." He proceeded to read slowly, and with considerable emphasis, from a slim volume entitled "Queries at a Mess Table," which he had bought that morning:
"'Cheese may be taken in moderation with advantage'—mark that, Fortworth—'with advantage, after dinner. A small quantity is considered to assist the digestion ... Toasted cheese, no matter of what kind—for in all the consistence becomes close by toasting—is the most indigestible article that can be eaten, and I am sure accounts for disturbed nights and troublesome dreams.' Absolutely true, Fortworth. 'Yet, alas! what is nicer than a well served up Welsh rabbit, and what a wonderful flavour cheese adds to many dishes—macaroni, etc.! After this, one may assist the gourmet by reminding him that the juice of the pineapple at the end of a meal is an agreeable and powerful digestive agent.' Now, that's a thing worth reading and worth remembering. And the little book is full of sound sense like that. We'd better tell Sing Song to get in a couple of pineapples to-night."
Fortworth nodded.
"Very fine bit of writing," he said. "How about wine? Does the man mention drinks?"
"Mention drinks—man alive, he's got a whole chapter on 'em! It's entitled 'What Shall I Drink?' Shall I read it?"
"Sure—half a minute, though. It makes me feel thirsty. Touch the bell."
Smiler rang for Sing Song, his Chinese man-servant, and ran his eye quickly through the chapter which he was about to read.
"Listen, Fortworth—this man is a genius. He says: 'Of the strong sweet wines—Constantia, Malaga, Tokay, Malmsey—they are best appreciated with a plain biscuit, when the stomach is not full. Thus taken they are a wholesome substitute for tea.' So bring in some of that Tokay we've got, Sing Song. Never mind about the biscuit. That's a matter of taste."
Sing Song vanished, and the reading continued until the Tokay arrived, when the partners proceeded to drink the health of the author of the cheering volume which had so aroused their enthusiasm.
Just as Mr. Bunn was on the point of resuming, Sing Song entered again with a note for Lord Fortworth—now known to the public as Mr. Henry Black.
The ex-Baron took the note, glancing carelessly at the address, and suddenly paled a trifle.
"What's up?" asked Smiler, watching him.
Fortworth showed him the envelope. It was addressed to "Lord Fortworth," not, as was usual, to "Mr. Henry Black," or "Henry Black, Esq.," according to the taste and fancy of the sender.
Smiler whistled—a low, discordant whistle.
"Better open it," he suggested.
Fortworth inserted his thumb under the flap.
"I don't like it, Flood" (Smiler Bunn was still Wilton Flood in private life), he said heavily. "I've got an idea there's trouble floating about somewhere. Some guy has got on to me, and it might be awkward."
It may be explained here that in the days when from his zenith as a self-made millionaire brewer, banker, company-promoter, and all-round money captain, he had taken a high dive to the depths of an almost limitless insolvency, he had not waited to answer any of the innumerable questions which hundreds—yea, even thousands—of creditors were waiting to ask him. Not at all, Acting on the advice of Mr. Smiler Bunn, then a friend of the family, he had performed the operation he sometimes described as "pulling his freight" with such swiftness of decision, and, with the aid of Smiler, masterly skill, that a day after the news of his hopeless smash—due to wild speculation with a view to making greater dividends for a tolerably hungry crowd of Shareholders—he had vanished as completely as the capital of his various companies. His wife, a wealthy American, born in Dublin, had promptly left him at the first sign of his ruin, and, indeed, it was only due to Mr. Bunn that Fortworth was not even now sojourning at Parkhurst, Portland, Dartmoor, or some one or other of our leading official resorts. Smiler, who had lost the hard and dishonestly-earned savings of a lifetime in the Fortworth smash, nevertheless stuck to the fallen financier. As he put it with cynical bluntness, "If Fortworth's specs had turned out well, and he'd been able to pay that gang of shareholding wolves that are now howling for his blood an extra five per cent., they would not have asked any questions as to how he got it. They'd have sharked it and asked for more. But as the specs went wrong they got it in the neck—good and heavy—and serve 'em right. Teach 'em not to be greedy."
So he and Fortworth, warm friends already, with almost identical tastes, became partners. That had been some years before, and no one that mattered had ever recognised in the black-haired, clean-shaven Mr. Henry Black the red-headed, short-bearded Lord Fortworth. Even the police had given him up.
And now he had received a note addressed boldly to "Lord Fortworth."
He read the letter. It was quite short, and was addressed from 412, Garden Square, London, W. It ran:—
### LETTER
My Dear Lord Fortworth,
Can you make it convenient to do me the great favour of calling to-night at nine o'clock and discussing with me the science of swindling and the art of absconding—two features of our present-day civilisation upon which I should greatly like to have the opinion of an expert such as yourself.
I am, my dear Lord Fortworth,
Yours very sincerely,
Lubin Lazar.
Fortworth dropped the note.
"A nasty, polite, dangerous swine," he growled, suddenly purple-faced.
Mr. Bunn looked grave.
"A blackmailer!" he said. "It was bound to come. Sooner or later in our line of business you tread on one, and he crawls up your trouser leg. Ever heard of him before? It's a loppy kind of name—sort of a cross between a country dance and an old clo' man's parade."
Fortworth shook his head slowly, his brows knitted.
Smiler's face set hard.
"I don't like the sound of the man," he said. "These polite sports are pretty cold-blooded cards when it comes to collecting the ready iron as a general rule. We shall have to go and see him—after dinner."
He rang for Sing Song.
"Ever heard of a sarcastic tough named Lubin Lazarite—no, Lazar—Lubin Lazar, Sing Song, my lad?" he asked.
The Chink shook his head slowly.
"Ah, it's a wonder! You know most of the crooks in the town," said Mr. Bunn sourly, for he was disappointed. "Skate out." Sing Song "skated," smiling blandly.
"Well, we've got a couple of hours before dinner; it's only about half-past five. We might do worse than go over to Garden Square and have a look round," continued Smiler. "Or I'll go alone; he probably knows you."
Fortworth, with language, agreed that perhaps it would be wiser for Smiler to do the scouting by himself, but he insisted that his partner should not in any case harm Mr. Lazar, even if opportunity arose. He wished to reserve that pleasure for himself, he explained, with the air of a grizzly bear who has just been visited by a stiff-stinged hornet.
"We ought to get Lubin carted without violence," said Smiler reprovingly. "Neatness is what we wart to use with him."
He put on his hat, attached himself to a cigar, and sallied forth.
An hour later he was back, but had little news.
"It's a biggish, dark house opposite a kind of church," he said, steering a whisky-and-soda to a place where it would be safe. "Mysterious kind of a house. He had one visitor while I was there. Poor man, I should say, judging from the look of him. Youngish, nervous party, looked half-starved. I shouldn't be surprised if Lubin has got his net round him, too. I arranged to be drifting past when he came out, and he wasn't any happier than when he went in."
"If we don't get any more out of him than he does out of me," replied Fortworth, with a somewhat bloodshot smile, "he won't get much."
"Ah, well," said Smiler soothingly. "We'll see what his particular stomach-ache is to-night. I hope that lemon-coloured Chink got the pineapples in all right."
Fortworth reassured him, and they began to prepare themselves to get ready for the chief rite of the day—dinner.
Even the advent into their lives of Lubin Lazar could not destroy their interest in dinner. They were neither young nor emotional, and they permitted no outside issues to affect their inside tissues.
IT must be admitted that the partners looked a more than ordinarily hefty brace to tackle when at about ten minutes to nine they stepped out to the superb Van den Plas-bodied Rolls-Royce limousine car which helped them through life. Reasonably tall, broad like the side of a battleship, built "chunky," as Fortworth put it occasionally, with smooth, slightly hard, clean-shaven faces, and correctly attired from the crown of their opera-hats to the soles of their dress-boots, they did not somehow strike one as being the sort of individuals that the gentle confidence trick man or any dark alley tough would approach with genuine optimism.
Sing Song, who, with his usual ability, had contrived to wind up dinner in his best cordon-bleu style, and yet leave himself time to make a quick change, was at the wheel, and lost little time in sliding them over to Garden Square.
They alighted, and Mr. Bunn tendered his last word of advice.
"Easy with him at first," he said quietly, for he was fully aware of the big, business-like automatic pistol that sagged the pocket of Fortworth's dinner-jacket under his furs. "Let him show his hand before we show him his error."
Fortworth nodded grimly. Even as Smiler's hand hovered over the bell-push the door swung open and a lady appeared. Evidently she was just leaving the house. She seemed a little excited, and was talking in queer, rather pretty broken English to the man-servant who was showing her out.
"I wan' that you should tell heem yet again eef he not to leave alone my husban' that I shall fin' a plan yet. This is mos' cruel ting he try to accomplish—to crush, to grind under the heel—"
She saw the Bunn-Fortworth Combine waiting on the step, stopped talking suddenly, passed out, and went slowly down the street. She was rather shabby, but very pretty and graceful, with something about her that made one think both of Tokio and Paris.
"Lazar in?" asked Fortworth of the man-servant.
Evidently they were expected, for the man closed the door and conducted them to a room across the rather dark and gloomily-furnished hall.
He announced them—"Two gentlemen, sir!"—and left.
The partners found themselves facing across an elaborately carved writing-table one of the hugest men they had ever seen. He was six feet six tall, if an inch, but his breadth was so terrific as to make him at first glance seem almost short. His face was probably the most handsome the partners had ever seen—but only in the sense that the chiselling of the features was without flaw, for there was no expression upon it. It was utterly blank and inscrutable. The eyes were of a singular dull green, lightless and dead. There was no trace of colour, red or pink, upon the uniformly olive complexion, and the man's hair, thick, heavy, parted in the centre, and brushed away from the parting in a perfectly flat sweep, was snow-white. He made a strange and terrible figure as he sat facing the partners, perfectly still, perfectly silent, waiting.
Mr. Bunn afterwards confessed to Fortworth that when he stood there taking in Lazar's appearance he experienced for the first time in his life a thrill of fear. And Fortworth, in turn, confessed that he, too, had endured the same-sensation.
"He made me think of a thundering great white python that had got you, but wasn't in a hurry to begin on you," said Smiler.
But they were not the kind of men to allow the appearance of any man—or white python either—to cow them long. Unconsciously, perhaps, Fortworth pressed with the inside of his forearm the comfortable bulge of the big repeater in his pocket, and was cheered on the instant. He had seen too many strange men and sights in unswept comers of the world to permanently lose his nerve before the man Lazar, and Mr. Bunn, too, had a rarely-tapped vein of cold-blooded pluck somewhere in him, upon—which he now proceeded abruptly to draw.
Fortworth took out the letter with a jerk,
"You Lazar?" he asked, the veins across his forehead beginning to bulge a little.
The blackmailer nodded.
"Sit down," he said in a slow voice, so shrill and reedy that the partners almost started. They had expected any kind of voice but that thin, high note. It was weird.
"No, you white-headed hound," rasped Fortworth. "We won't sit down, I want to know just what you mean by this. I take it you've got something to say about it. Say it, then, and we'll settle it now."
Smiler shrugged his shoulders slightly. He had urged the advisability of diplomacy on Fortworth. But he knew from the thick note of rage in his partner's harsh voice, from the pale, glaring eyes, and the gorged veins that were cording themselves on his heavy forehead, that the only kind of diplomacy the ex-millionaire was in the least likely to employ was the kind that is backed up by a .45 "gun."
Without a trace of emotion and without a movement save of the lips the gigantic man at the writing-table answered:
"You are Lord Fortworth, the bankrupt, who absconded eight years ago. I have all the facts, all the proofs. You will pay me one hundred thousand pounds within one month, or I will hand you over to the police."
It was simple, undisguised blackmail, There was not the least attempt to gloss the thing. There was no embroidery upon it, as Smiler said afterwards.
"I want 'yes' or 'no,'" continued Lazar. "I am busy. I have no time for talk. The sum is one hundred thousand pounds in notes, bearer bonds, jewels or cash. That is all."
Smiler broke in hurriedly, as Fortworth gasped.
"He hasn't got the money," he said simply. "How can he pay if he hasn't got the money? You're one of the cut-and-dried yes-or-no guys. Well, so are we. You want one hundred thousand pounds; he hasn't got twenty thousand. So what are you going to do about it?" It was the truth; it sounded true because it was so.
Lazar recognised it.
"Very good. He must pay the twenty thousand," he said, wholly cold-blooded. He made an alteration on a slip of paper before him as he spoke.
"And you can go to hell!" bawled Fortworth, fighting mad. He lugged out his big pistol and jammed it into the face of the expressionless giant at the table.
"Move a finger and I'll splash your brains into the coal-scuttle!" He gasped for words; he had so much to say that the phrases seemed to jam in his mouth.
Lazar stared at him without a tremor.
"You will pay within seven days," he said in the tones of a man concluding an ordinary business deal. His eyes shifted, looking over Fortworth's shoulder and a little to the left of him.
"No," he said. "Don't shoot."
The partners wheeled.
Two men stood in a corner of the room with rifles—not pistols, but rifles—levelled on Fortworth and Smiler Bunn. There was a singular quality of brutality in the fact that the men had rifles—the partners were aware of it simultaneously.
Fortworth choked himself to silence and dropped the repeater.
"Seven days?" said Smiler blandly. "You will have to extend that time. A man can't realise to his last penny within a week. Make it a month, Lubin, and I give you my word that—"
"I cannot accept the word of a fat blackguard whose criminal tastes are only paralleled by his gluttonous tendencies," interrupted Lazar coldly. Evidently he had been making careful inquiries about the partners.
"Why, damn your eyes!" stuttered Smiler, so taken aback that even Fortworth grinned.
Lazar rose, towering over them.
"Go," he said. "One week."
They hesitated, surveyed the men with the rifles, and finally went. The man-servant was waiting for them just outside the door. They followed him into the hall—sullenly. But with his hand on the catch of the outer door, he paused and spoke in a low whisper, his eyes stealthily watching the door of Lazar's room.
"I shall call at your flat at two o'clock to-night. Be in," he said. His lips did not move, and without even looking at them he opened the hall door and ushered them out.
They went down the steps, and even as Sing Song switched on his engine and they were on the point of stepping into the car, they were accosted by a tall, thin, shabby man, who was standing close by the kerb. In the lamplight they saw that his face was white and drawn. His long moustache hung down, limp and untended, and his eyes glittered wildly from their cavernous sockets.
"Are you gentlemen victims also?" He jerked his head sideways, indicating the house of the blackmailer.
Fortworth fired up.
"Not by a tankful, old man," he said, with the fey, deadly hilarity of a roused fighting man.
The shabby nondescript, who talked like a gentleman, gazed curiously at them.
"I talked like that once," he said, "but I've lost my nerve now," and snapped his fingers sharply. It must have been a signal, for a woman appeared from behind the car, opened the door, and entered. Smiler recognised her as the girl who had made him think of Tokio and Paris.
"If you will give my wife and myself a lift to your house I think we might talk things over to our mutual benefit," said the shabby man.
The partners looked at each other, nodded, and the three joined the lady in the car.
The shabby man seemed to brighten up a little, and plunged into his explanation without delay.
"It has been my lot to hang round the den of that octopus, Lazar, quite a good deal," he said, "and I have come to learn that when a car which obviously belongs to a rich man stops at Lazar's door it usually brings a rich victim—like myself. You look surprised. Nevertheless I possess an income of six thousand pounds a year, of which five thousand nine hundred goes regularly to Lazar—blackmail, every halfpenny of it. Why I find myself compelled to pay this outrageous sum does not matter, any more than why Lazar is victimising or attempting to victimise you and a host of unfortunate people besides. But it cannot continue—it is my life-blood. I can't fight him—he can destroy me. I have been unfortunate beyond belief. And the society is in chaos, bewildered with a multiplicity of impracticable schemes."
"Society? How society?" asked Smiler,
The shabby man looked surprised.
"Do you not know yet that a number of Lazar's victims have formed themselves into a society to exterminate him? If it were only a matter of his death it would be simple; any one of us would gladly destroy him at the first opportunity. But he has protected himself too well, He has documents—dossiers, you may say—of the case of each victim put away in the keeping of some unknown confederate, and in the event of Lazar dying a violent death the confederate is instructed to use the documents against the people concerned as vindictively and harmfully as he can. That is why he has not been killed long ago."
Fortworth scowled. If what this man said was true, there were two of the blackmailers—one active and one a sleeping partner.
"We must find the second man—the confederate," said Smiler Bunn. "Shadow Lazar all the time; intercept his letters—things like that."
But Fortworth and the shabby man—Kendale, he called himself—did not look hopeful.
"He's guarded against that," said Kendale.
The girl, who had been leaning back in a corner, stirred suddenly, leaning forward.
"I have jus' the ghos' of a plan," she said softly. "It has but jus' come to me, and perhaps he is not very good plan. But he is better than no thing." She looked only at Kendale.
"You mus' not be angree," she said. "You promise me that?" He nodded, and she smiled.
"I think that man who has open the door and shut him when we go to see Lazar, and admit us to enter the house, has feel a little interest for me. He have not tol' me anything of love, but I have think his eyes speak of it two—three—times, those day when I have insist to see Lazar and beg him that he do not blackmail more. Thees evening also his eyes they are kind for me, but he say no thing, perhaps because these gentlemen are come to the door."'
It was the shabby man's turn to scowl, but the girl put up her hands, laughing.
"There is not need for angree," she said in her queer, tangled, pretty broken English. "I have no thought for that man—not any man but for you. Only I jus' tol' you those thing."
"And quite right, too," said Smiler Bunn heartily. "Why, you ought to be proud, man. If that guy who doorkeeps for Lazar has weakened on Madame here, it's a compliment to her and a gift to us. Why, he's calling to see us to-night, and if we play our cards correctly he's the key that's going to pick the Lazar lock. I think he's pretty well through with Lazar anyway ... but we'll see."
The car drew up at the mansions in which the partners occupied a first-floor flat, and they entered the building.
"What made you sort of confide in us, Kendale?" asked Fortworth curiously as they went up.
The shabby man smiled.
"Well, you looked as though you were the sort that would put up a pretty sporting fight with that blackguard before you gave way," said Kendale. "That was it chiefly, I think. And probably it is what Lazar's doorkeeper thought."
Fortworth nodded.
"Well, although I don't mind admitting he made us look a little foolish to-night, I guess you're right. Why, if it comes to a pinch, or if Lazar did no more than put my friend Mr. Flood off his appetite, I believe, apart from what we should do, that little primrose who drove the car to-night would catch him and torture him in some gentle Chinese way until he'd got the name of his partner, then kill them both, and burn their houses down, and enjoy doing it."
Kendale laughed.
"A friend in need, eh?"
"Sure," said Fortworth, "and a wonderful cook."
IT needed little discussion for the partners to realise that nothing very effective could be done against Lazar until the butler or doorkeeper had called, and his reason for calling had been disclosed.
Therefore, with their accustomed bluff hospitality they devoted the remainder of the evening to entertaining, not without success, Kendale and his beautiful wife. It was not difficult to understand that the doorkeeper had fallen in love with Soya Kendale. The Bunn-Fortworth Combine in the course of business and pleasure had encountered many pretty and charming women, but as Fortworth expressed it later, Mrs. Kendale, despite her simple, inexpensive and, indeed, rather shabby costume, had the rest of the Venuses whipped from the word "Go." Sweet, unaffected, a little quiet, and obviously adoring her husband, she pleased the two old wolves immensely. Aided and abetted by Kendale, they encouraged her to talk simply for the sake of hearing her delicious mistakes, and Smiler found it necessary to make many visits to the kitchen in order to correct and improve upon an already sumptuous supper which Sing Song was preparing.
"We don't want Mrs. Kendale to go away from here with any idea that we starve our guests or strangle em with any charity dope, my lad," he was careful to explain to the busy Chink. "Understand that."
Naturally the result was a meal of a kind which the Kendales had not faced for many moons, and to which they did justice. The partners joined them—successfully, as usual.
At two o'clock precisely the electric bell whirred sharply, and a moment later Sing Song showed in and announced "Mr. Robur Roburton."
It was Lazar's doorkeeper.
He was one of those dark, square-faced men, with a jaw like the butt-end of an anvil, and deep, dark, watchful eyes.
He seemed very self-possessed, but the partners noticed, nevertheless, that his eyes brightened as they fell on Soya Kendale, to whom he bowed scrupulously, Then he faced the others.
"An association with Mr. Lubin Lazar, extending over some six months or more, has taught me the habit of being direct," he said quietly; "and I think that you gentlemen would prefer to get to work without preliminaries. Very good." Although he was addressing himself to the men of the party, his eyes returned again and again to Soya Kendale.
"I have decided that Mr. Lazar's business must come to an end. I need not go into the circumstances which compelled me to join him, any more than we need go into the matters which caused him to blackmail you gentlemen. Briefly, I have come to the conclusion that Lazar's methods are too brutally merciless, relentless and drastic to be allowed to continue; the suffering he causes to some scores of unfortunate people is altogether out of proportion to his gains, enormous though they are. For instance, no less than three of his victims have committed suicide in the last four days—one in London, two in Paris. He works the Continent and America as well as this country. The man is an octopus, with tentacles spread everywhere. For some time past I have been looking for two or three determined and absolutely reliable men to help me deal with him, and when you two gentlemen came to-night I fancied I had found them. I overheard your interview, I have come to ask if you will co-operate; it will be dangerous to the last degree, for Lazar is a man of infinite resource and has a bodyguard of ruffians that fear nothing in the world but the contingency of being discharged from their lucrative Service with him. Yet it can be done: we can draw his teeth at least, but we must do it to-night. There is not time to outline my plan; you must put yourselves at my disposal, and do with minute scrupulousness all I say. And to-night. Believe me, this is your best and possibly even your last chance of freeing yourself from this man until you are sucked dry, and even then you will be watched in case you make more money. You cannot guess nor have I time to describe the immense organisation which Lazar controls; but this I can say, that with the disarming of Lazar systematic blackmail will practically cease to exist in this and many other cities, for he does not decentralise."
He paused a moment, waiting. His words, quietly spoken though they were, had rung with truth. The man knew what he was saying. That he believed it to be completely true was as obvious as the fact that he loved, or at least was on the verge of loving, Soya Kendale. Probably it was the contemplation of the unhappiness of the girl which had guided his decision to break with Lazar.
"What do you say, gentlemen?"
"We agree." They spoke simultaneously.
Robur Roburton smiled—a quick, short smile that was gone in an instant.
"Good!" he said. "Let us start now. Mrs. Kendale, perhaps, will wait here until we return."
He went across to the girl, extending his hand.
"Good-bye, Mrs. Kendale," he said softly, looking at her as a man sentenced for life might look his last at a bright, busy, sunlit street.
She shook hands.
Outside, Sing Song pushed himself blandly into prominence.
"Please, mastel, you wanting me?" He gazed at Smiler yearnfully with his mouth open like a dog begging to be allowed to exterminate rabbits.
Smiler looked interrogatively at Roburton, who ran his eye calculatingly over the tough, muscular form and whale neck of the Chink, and nodded.
"Fall in—at the back," Smiler, and the Chink fell in.
They walked to Garden Square, and they were a hardy-looking crew. Robur Roburton explained his plans and gave his instructions as they went. Association with these capable gentlemen, brief though it had been, seemed to have restored to Kendale a good deal of that "nerve" which he had lost, and he hummed softly to himself as he went, lightly twirling a lead-loaded cane which he had found in the umbrella-stand at the flat, and which was capable of felling a camel at one blow, properly steered.
Arrived at No. 412, Garden Square, Roburton produced a latchkey, opened the door, and the party passed silently in.
As they entered the hall a switch clicked and the place was suddenly flooded with light. A man who had been sitting in the darkness rose—a big, clumsy, pistol-like weapon in his hand. Roburton explained a little later that it was an air-pistol, powerful enough to send a bullet through a man, and practically silent.
The man lowered the pistol as he recognised Roburton, and stared interrogatively. He was a big, savage-looking brute, one of the rifle brigade the partners had met in Lazar's room. Roburton went up to him, whispering softly.
"What say?" asked the man, stooping a little, half-turning his head, craning to hear what the doorkeeper said.
If he had tried he could not have posed better for Roburton's purpose. He was just at the right distance, at just the right angle. Roburton's fist, with all of Roburton's hundred and sixty pounds weight behind, took him on the curve of the jaw, and he went down on the soft Turkey carpet like a wet sponge. In a second Sing Song was on him with a coil of rope, and in an incredibly short time he lay bound, gagged, and helpless at their feet.
"Once!" said Smiler with satisfaction. They followed Roburton down a narrow passage. The house was silent as death, and they were lighted only by the sparse ray from an electric torch carried by Roburton. They passed through a sliding panel and came upon a long flight of steps, down which they went in single file.
Three steps from the bottom Roburton stopped.
"Miss the last step; don't tread on the last step," he said warningly. "It's live—the last man who trod on it at night was electrocuted."
They felt themselves paling.
"This is a man-trap of a house," snarled Fortworth. "I want Lazar bad."
It seemed to Smiler for a moment that an icy-cold butterfly was fluttering up and down his spine. Before Roburton had come upon the scene he had been planning to pay a night visit to the house with Fortworth.
"I'm glad Roburton fell in love with that little woman—glad like a child eating cake," he muttered.
The narrow passage, lined with enamelled bricks, along which they now proceeded, seemed to be some forty yards long, and, warned by Roburton, they went silent as a string of phantoms.
They went down three very steep steps—the treads were so narrow that they were ledges rather than steps.
Even as Roburton stepped again on level ground something hissed sharply immediately in front of them.
"Ah!" said the doorkeeper, and swung the long, thin tarnished sword which the others, wondering, had seen him take from a rack of trophies on the wall of the hall.
There was a wet plop, as though half a ripe pear had fallen on the hard brick, and a sudden sound of slithering.
"A cobra! Stand back, for God's sake!" hissed Roburton. His light searched the darkness before them. The ledge-like steps led down into a little pit formed by sinking the floor of the passage some five feet. Across the pit was lashing and squirming the divided body of the snake, and on the far side near a similar set of steps was another of the hooded horrors, its head reared high over its nest of coils, awaiting them.
Of a sudden a shaking fit seized upon Roburton.
"T-t-t-ake the l-l-light," he said to Smiler Bunn, his teeth chattering. "I s-s-shall be all r-r-r-r-right in a m-m-minute."'
Smiler took the light, and with his free hand fumbled for his flask, his eyes fixed intently on the sinuous, swaying neck of the killer that hissed gently on the far side of the pit:
"Minute be damned!" said Mr. Bunn. "You take a pull at this."
Fortworth unscrewed the top, and Roburton sucked greedily at the rare old brandy without which Mr. Bunn rarely went out on business.
"Mastel!" Sing Song squeezed past Kendale, whose "nerve" had gone again, and whose breath came and went in a queer, dry whistling. "Mastel, me no 'flaid snakee—killee comflabil. Me show. Plenty snakee China."
He took the torch and sword and dropped into the pit, from which they had scrambled. Quite what he did they could not see, but in a second or so there sounded another of those wet "plops," and the hissing of the beast ceased.
The Chink came back, smiling blandly as ever.
"Putee paid him billee," he said, and respectfully took his place in the rear again.
Roburton, steadied by the brandy, stiffened himself.
"Good!" he said. "Snakes always give me the shudders. I didn't quite expect them there to-night either, I just took the sword in case. This was a new pair. The last couple died, and I did not know the new ones had arrived yet."
"Where are we, anyway?" asked Fortworth sullenly; "and how many more obstacles are there in this race?"
"No more between us and Lazar—that I know of—except another man at the end of the passage. We are in the tunnel leading from 412 to 406, Garden Square. Lazar is Lazar at 412, but he is Mr. Remer-Venn, a collector of antiques, at 406."
"Huh!" grunted Smiler. "He's very nearly collected four moderns and a Chink in his tunnel to-night. We'd better make a move."
They passed the pit.
Some three yards farther on Roburton stopped again and asked Smiler for his torch. Then he directed both rays on the floor a few feet in front of him.
"What's wrong?" asked Smiler in his ear.
"Those floor bricks—see? They tun across like a ridge; they're half an inch higher than the floor. I don't like 'em."
Smiler pondered.
"Look as though they might be meant to be trod on. Try 'em with the sword."
Roburton pressed the square of slightly raised bricks. The sword bent, but nothing happened. Still Roburton shook his head. Sing Song, impatient to get to Lazar apparently, stepped forward again.
"Me tleadee on blicks—plessee foot on," he volunteered.
But this unseen danger was different from visible cobras.
"You close your face, banana," growled Smiler, "and keep your place, d'ye hear? You're getting above yourself."
Sing Song slunk back, and they all stared at the little square of bricks.
"I wouldn't tread on 'em for half a million," muttered Kendale.
"Only a blank fool would offer more than that," snapped Fortworth.
Their nerves were on edge.
"Pull off the air-pistol at it," suggested Smiler. "Is it a repeating tool?"
"Yes, three shots," said Roburton. "I'll try one."
He pulled off; there was a tiny hissing pop, and the bullet hit full in the centre of the raised patch. At the same instant, whistling through the air with a note so sharp as to be a scream, a huge blade flashed in a semi-circular rising sweep from the base of the tunnel wall a few feet on the far side of the raised bricks. It sheered over the suspected spot and shot into position against the wall on the expedition's side of the passage, quivering like a steel tongue. It was enamelled white, and was engraved to match the bricks of which the tunnel was built. The whole device was much as though one had fixed a vast handle-less table-knife to the floor and bent it down, curving it sideways and back along the ground, until it fitted with a twist in the bottom of the wall, the tip being secured by a spring working in conjunction with the raised bricks. When "set" the blade fitted so well into the specially grooved base of the wall that it was invisible, but now it was "thrown," the infernal trap was obvious.
The party stared wildly at each other. Had any one of them trodden on those bricks he, and any two behind him, would have been lopped in half like cucumbers.
Smiler pulled himself together with a very sickly smile.
"If it hadn't been for Roburton and me, Sing Song," he said hoarsely, for he was shaken, "you'd have been in a fine state ... all over the passage, practically speaking."
"For pity's sake let's get out of this," said Kendale, and began to laugh hysterically.
"Shut up!" hissed Roburton viciously, but the wild mirth of the overstrained man rang louder.
Fortworth seized Kendale by the throat.
"Quiet!" he ground out, "Quiet, or I'll kill you!"
Taken at the right moment, Kendale's hysteria subsided.
But nevertheless he had been heard. A door opened at the end of the passage a few yards along, a flood of white light poured in, and a man appeared at the opening. But Roburton was expecting him, and even as the guard swung up his arm the doorkeeper's pistol gave its queer little breathless "pop," and the guard fell forward, shot through the hip. His pistol clattered out of his hand along the floor towards them.
"Good! Now for Lazar," said Roburton. They hurried forward, leaving the wounded man temporarily to look after himself.
They went up an interminable flight of steps, still in a bricked tunnel, like a pack of hounds.
"We are inside the wall of No. 406," explained Roburton as they went. "The steps lead to two rooms at the top of the house—and this is the only way by which these rooms can be entered, except by a fire-escape through the window. The rooms are cased in with steel, like strong rooms with a window. He keeps all his papers here. If we had gone in at the door of 406 we couldn't have got into the rooms at all. There is a secret door, no doubt, but only Lazar knows it."
He signed for silence.
The stairway curled now like that of a church tower.
"Wait here!" whispered Roburton, and crawled round the last comer.
A few seconds later he was back beckoning. Soundlessly they followed him. The stairs ended in a level platform leading to a door through which could be seen a brightly-lit room.
In the room was a big desk, and a man of gigantic stature was sitting at this desk, asleep, his head resting on his arms, which were spread on the desk before him.
"The lair of Lazar!" whispered Roburton with a theatrical touch, due probably to the nervous strain he was enduring.
They stared.
And even as they stared one of the blackmailer's arms slid off the desk, slowly, inertly, striking heavily against the edge of the chair seat. So it hung laxly.
"See that?" whispered Smiler, and there was something in his voice that thrilled them.
A second passed, then suddenly, as though acting on impulse, they all walked quietly into the room.
Smiler touched the man on the shoulder. But he did not move—for he was dead. There was a little bullet hole in his right temple.
They lifted him—four were needed to do it with decency—to a couch a the side of the room. Then Mr. Bunn crossed over to pull down the blind.
So it was he who noticed the little starred hole in the window pane.
"Someone shot him from a house on the other side of the Square," he said. But none of the others—except Sing Song—heeded him. They were at the big safe in the corner, the door of which hung open. It was crammed with papers—each neatly endorsed with a name.
Presently Kendale rose, a bundle in his hands, his eyes glowing. Evidently he had found the documents, letters and so on which had given, or helped Lazar to retain, his power over him, And a moment later Fortworth had his.
Roburton—evidently a victim who had been called upon to pay blackmail in the shape of service rather than money—presently found his bundle.
"Good!" he said.
But Mr. Bunn disagreed.
"You might think so," he said. "But I don't believe in going through a safe without looking in the money-box compartment."
Then he took his turn at the safe. The drawers were crammed with money—notes and gold to the value of two thousand pounds.
Smiler and Sing Song packed the money in a small brown bag they found near the desk, while the others examined the various papers relating to themselves.
But as Mr. Bunn closed the bag an idea occurred to him.
"Who shot Lazar? Have you got any idea, Roburton?" he asked.
Roburton nodded.
"I can guess—a man named Talen whom Lazar had bled dry. He could not have had more than the price of a rifle and the rent of an attic to use it from. He was in his day a prize-winner at Bisley."'
Kendale nodded corroboration.
"He was a member of the society," he said. "He was always swearing to settle with Lazar. It was bound to come. His wife died a month ago, and—I suppose he just didn't care so long as he got even with Lazar. He's probably been waiting his chance across the Square by day and night, and to-night it came. Lazar must have been busy, and switched on the light without pulling down the blind!"
"That made him an easy mark for a shot like Talen. He's probably been dead some hours," added Kendale.
Smiler dumped the bag of money on the desk.
"Well, we've leaving here," he said. "You'd better divide the money with the needy ones of your society of victims, Kendale. Or, say, half to them and half to Roburton."
But Roburton shook his head.
"I didn't do this for money or for hatred of Lazar,"' he said, looking them all squarely in the eyes. "I did it for love of a woman I shall never see again—but whom I have helped to make happy."
They knew whom he meant—Soya Kendale.
There was a pause. Then Roburton went on:
"You people had better get out now, We'll get back through the passage, and you can leave the rest to me. I'll see that the money goes to the right people, and their 'dossiers' too. I can deal with Lazar's guards and with—Lazar also."
The Bunn-Fortworth Combine glanced at each other. Roburton was right—in every way. He knew the houses, the secrets of the place, the guards, the victims of the blackmailer—everything. He was the right man to wind up the thing.
They returned along the way they had come—Roburton having switched off the current that made a death-trap of the electric step—and so went quietly out into the street, four of them, as they might have been four revelers homeward bound from a card party.
Soya Kendale was curled up on a big lounge in the flat fast asleep when they arrived home. She looked very sweet and pretty, and they had no difficulty in understanding that Roburton found it easy to pity her first and so come to love her.
"That man may have been a blackmailer's butler," said Smiler softly, "but he was a white man to-night, whatever he was yesterday or will be to-morrow. That's what. Fetch in the old brandy, Sing Song."
The Kendales left the flat next morning for Paris, where they settled down, and a few days later Roburton called.
"Everything's fixed," he said briefly. "I sail for New York next week. You'll hear no more of Lazar."
What he had done with the guards, with the body of the blackmailer, with the "dossiers," with Lazar's loot of years, and so forth, he did not say, Nor did the partners ask. He gave them the address of the man Talen, and this, with their knowledge of how Lazar was killed, was all they needed as a safeguard against the improbable eventuality of being entangled in the killing.
Then he left. They never saw or heard of him again.
SOME six months later they read in a morning
paper that a curious subterranean passage had been
discovered in Garden Square; but there was no mention
of anything else, no "gruesome discoveries" or
"mysteries."
"Well, Flood," said Fortworth, summing up, "whatever Roburton did, he did thoroughly."
Smiler agreed.
"Yes," he said thoughtfully, teaching for the kidneys, "Yes. He was a thorough kind of man."
Which was true.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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