The Three Just Men · Chapter 16 (1/3)

XVI

Rath Hall

In one of the forbidden rooms that was filled with the apparatus which Dr. Oberzohn had accumulated for his pleasure and benefit, was a small electrical furnace which was the centre of many of his most interesting experiments. There were, in certain known drugs, constituents which it was his desire to eliminate. Dr. Oberzohn believed absolutely in many things that the modern chemist would dismiss as fantastical.

He believed in the philosopher’s stone, in the transmutation of base metals to rare; he had made diamonds, of no great commercial value, it is true; but his supreme faith was that somewhere in the materia medica was an infallible elixir which would prolong life far beyond the normal span. It was to all other known properties as radium is to pitchblende. It was something that only the metaphysician could discover, only the patient chemist could materialize. Every hour he could spare he devoted himself to his obsession; and he was in the midst of one of his experiments when the telephone bell called him back to his study. He listened, every muscle of his face moving, to the tale of disaster that Monty Newton wailed. “It is burning still? Have you no fire-extinguishing machinery in London?”

“Is the place insured or is it not?” asked Monty for the second time.

Dr. Oberzohn considered. “It is not,” he said. “But this matter is of such small importance compared with the great thing which is coming, that I shall not give it a thought.”

“It was incendiary,” said Newton angrily. “The fire brigade people are certain of it. That cursed crowd are getting back on us for what happened this afternoon.”

“I know of nothing that happened this afternoon,” said Dr. Oberzohn coldly. “You know of nothing either. It was an accident which we all deplored. As to this man⁠ ⁠… we shall see.”

He hung up the telephone receiver very carefully, went along the passage, down a steep flight of dark stairs, and into a basement kitchen. Before he opened the door he heard the sound of furious voices, and he stood for a moment surveying the scene with every feeling of satisfaction. Except for two men, the room was empty. The servants used the actual kitchen at the front of the house, and this place was little better than a scullery. On one side of the deal table stood Gurther, white as death, his round eyes red with rage. On the other, the short, stout Russian Pole, with his heavy pasty face and baggy eyes; his little moustache and beard bristling with anger. The cards scattered on the table and the floor told the Herr Doktor that this was a repetition of the quarrel which was so frequent between them.

“Schweinhund!” hissed Gurther. “I saw you palm the King as you dealt. Thief and robber of the blind⁠—”

“You German dog! You⁠—”

They were both speaking in German. Then the doctor saw the hand of Gurther steal down and back.

“Gurther!” he called, and the man spun round. “To my parlour⁠—march!”

Without a word, the man strode past him, and the doctor was left with the panting Russian.

“Herr Doktor, this Gurther is beyond endurance!” His voice trembled with rage. “I would sooner live with a pig than this man, who is never normal unless he is drugged.”

“Silence!” shouted Oberzohn, and pointed to the chair. “You shall wait till I come,” he said.

When he came back to his room, he found Gurther standing stiffly to attention.

“Now, Gurther,” he said⁠—he was almost benevolent as he patted the man on the shoulder⁠—“this matter of Gonsalez must end. Can I have my Gurther hiding like a worm in the ground? No, that cannot be. Tonight I will send you to this man, and you are so clever that you cannot fail. He whipped you, Gurther⁠—tied you up and cruelly beat you. Always remember that, my brave fellow⁠—he beat you till you bled. Now you shall see the man again. You will go in a dress for-every-occasion,” he said. “The city-clerk manner. You will watch him in your so clever way, and you shall strike⁠—it is permitted.”

“Ja, Herr Doktor.”

He turned on his heels and disappeared through the door. The doctor waited till he heard him going up the stairs, and then he rang for Pfeiffer. The man came in sullenly. He lacked all the precision of the military Gurther; yet, as Oberzohn knew, of the two he was the more alert, the more cunning.

“Pfeiffer, it has come to me that you are in some danger. The police wish to take you back to Warsaw, where certain unpleasant things happened, as you well know. And I am told”⁠—he lowered his voice⁠—“that a friend of ours would be glad to see you go, hein?”

The man did not raise his sulky eyes from the floor, did not answer, or by any gesture or movement of body suggest that he had heard what the older man had said.

“Gurther goes tomorrow, perhaps on our good work, perhaps to speak secretly to his friends in the police⁠—who knows? He has work to do: let him do it, Pfeiffer. All my men will be there⁠—at a place called Brightlingsea. You also shall go. Gurther would rob a blind man? Good! You shall rob one also. As for Gurther, I do not wish him back. I am tired of him: he is a madman. All men are mad who sniff that white snuff up their foolish noses⁠—eh, Pfeiffer?”

Still the awkward-looking man made no reply.

“Let him do his work: you shall not interfere, until⁠—it is done.”

Pfeiffer was looking at him now, a cold sneer on his face.

“If he comes back, I do not,” he said. “This man is frightening me. Twice the police have been here⁠—three times⁠ ⁠… you remember the woman. The man is a danger, Herr Doktor. I told you he was the day you brought him here.”

“He can dress in the gentleman-club manner,” said the doctor gently.

“Pshaw!” said the other scornfully. “Is he not an actor who has postured and painted his face and thrown about his legs for so many marks a week?”

“If he does not come back I shall be relieved,” murmured the doctor. “Though it would be a mistake to leave him so that these cunning men could pry into our affairs.”

Pfeiffer said nothing: he understood his instructions; there was nothing to be said. “When does he go?”

“Early tomorrow, before daylight. You will see him, of course.”

He said something in a low tone, that only Pfeiffer heard. The shadow who stood in stockinged feet listening at the door only heard two words. Gurther grinned in the darkness; his bright eyes grew luminous. He heard his companion move towards the door and sped up the stairs without a sound.

Rath Hall was a rambling white building of two stories, set in the midst of a little park, so thickly wooded that the house was invisible from the road; and since the main entrance to the estate was a very commonplace gate, without lodge or visible drive beyond, Gonsalez would have missed the place had he not recognized the man who was sitting on the moss-grown and broken wall who jumped down as Leon stopped his car.

“Mr. Meadows is at the house, sir. He said he expected you.”

“And where on earth is the house?” asked Leon Gonsalez, as he went into reverse.

For answer the detective opened the gate wide and Leon sent his car winding between the trees, for close at hand he recognized where a gravel drive had once been, and, moreover, saw the tracks of cars in the soft earth. He arrived just as Mr. Johnson Lee was taking his two guests in to dinner, and Meadows was obviously glad to see him. He excused himself and took Leon aside into the hall, where they could not be overheard.

“I have had your message,” he said. “The only thing that has happened out of the ordinary is that the servants have an invitation to a big concert at Brightlingsea. You expected that?”

Leon nodded.

“Yes: I hope Lee will let them go. I prefer that they should be out of the way. A crude scheme⁠—but Oberzohn does these things. Has anything else happened?”

“Nothing. There have been one or two queer people around.”

“Has he showed you the letters he had from Barberton?”

To his surprise the inspector answered in the affirmative.

“Yes, but they are worse than Greek to me. A series of tiny protuberances on thick brown paper. He keeps them in his safe. He read some of the letters to me: they were not very illuminating.”

“But the letter of letters?” asked Leon anxiously. “That which Lee answered⁠—by the way, you know that Mr. Lee wrote all his letters between perforated lines?”

“I’ve seen the paper,” nodded the detective. “No, I asked him about that, but apparently he is not anxious to talk until he has seen his lawyer, who is coming down tonight. He should have been here, in fact, in time for dinner.”

They passed into the dining-room together. The blind man was waiting patiently at the head of the table, and with an apology Leon took the place that had been reserved for him. He sat with his back to the wall, facing one of the three long windows that looked out upon the park. It was a warm night and the blinds were up, as also was the middle window that faced him. He made a motion to Mr. Washington, who sat opposite him, to draw a little aside, and the American realized that he wished an uninterrupted view of the park.

“Would you like the window closed?” asked Mr. Lee, leaning forward and addressing the table in general. “I know it is open,” he said with a little laugh, “because I opened it! I am a lover of fresh air.”

They murmured their agreement and the meal went on without any extraordinary incident. Mr. Washington was one of those adaptable people who dovetail into any environment in which they find themselves. He was as much at home at Rath Hall as though he had been born and bred in the neighbourhood. Moreover, he had a special reason for jubilation: he had found a rare adder when walking in the woods that morning, and spent ten minutes explaining in what respect it differed from every other English adder.

“Is it dead?” asked Meadows nervously.

“Kill it?” said the indignant Mr. Washington. “Why should I kill it? I saw a whole lot of doves out on the lawn this morning⁠—should I kill ’em? No, sir! I’ve got none of those mean feelings towards snakes. I guess the Lord sent snakes into this world for some other purpose than to be chased and killed every time they’re seen. I sent him up to London today by train to a friend of mine at the Zoological Gardens. He’ll keep him until I’m ready to take him back home.”

Meadows drew a long sigh.

“As long as he’s not in your pocket,” he said.

“Do you mind?”

Leon’s voice was urgent as he signalled Washington to move yet farther to the left, and when the big man moved his chair, Leon nodded his thanks. His eyes were on the window and the darkening lawn. Not once did he remove his gaze.

“It’s an extraordinary thing about Poole, my lawyer,” Mr. Lee was saying. “He promised faithfully he’d be at Rath by seven o’clock. What is the time?”

Meadows looked at his watch.

“Half-past eight,” he said. He saw the cloud that came over the face of the blind owner of Rath Hall.

“It is extraordinary! I wonder if you would mind⁠—”

His foot touched a bell beneath the table and his butler came in.

“Will you telephone to Mr. Poole’s house and ask if he has left?”

The butler returned in a short time.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Poole left the house by car at half-past six.”

Johnson Lee sat back in his chair.

“Half-past six? He should have been here by now.”

“How far away does he live?”

“About fifteen miles. I thought he might have come down from London rather late. That is extraordinary.”

“He may have had tyre trouble,” said Leon, not shifting his fixed stare.

“He could have telephoned.”

“Did anyone know he was coming⁠—anybody outside your own household?” asked Gonsalez.

The blind man hesitated.

“Yes, I mentioned the fact to the post office this morning. I went in to get my letters, and found that one I had written to Mr. Poole had been returned through a stupid mistake on my part. I told the postmaster that he was coming this evening and that there was no need to forward it.”

“You were in the public part of the post office?”

“I believe I was.”

“You said nothing else, Mr. Lee⁠—nothing that would give any idea of the object of this visit?”

Again his host hesitated. “I don’t know. I’m almost afraid that I did,” he confessed. “I remember telling the postmaster that I was going to talk to Mr. Poole about poor Barberton⁠—Mr. Barberton was very well known in this neighbourhood.”

“That is extremely unfortunate,” said Leon.

He was thinking of two things at the same time: the whereabouts of the missing lawyer, and the wonderful cover that the wall between the window and the floor gave to any man who might creep along out of sight until he got back suddenly to send the snake on its errand of death.

“How many men have you got in the grounds, by the way, Meadows?”

“One, and he’s not in the grounds but outside on the road. I pull him in at night, or rather in the evening, to patrol the grounds, and he is armed.” He said this with a certain importance. An armed English policeman is a tremendous phenomenon, that few have seen.

“Which means that he has a revolver that he hasn’t fired except at target practice,” said Leon. “Excuse me⁠—I thought I heard a car.”

He got up noiselessly from the table, went round the back of Mr. Lee, and, darting to the window, looked out. A flowerbed ran close to the wall, and beyond that was a broad gravel drive. Between gravel and flowers was a wide strip of turf. The drive continued some fifty feet to the right before it turned under an arch of rambler roses. To the left it extended for less than a dozen feet, and from this point a path parallel to the side of the house ran into the drive.

“Do you hear it?” asked Lee.

“No, sir, I was mistaken.”

Leon dipped his hand into his side pocket, took out a handful of something that looked like tiny candies wrapped in coloured paper. Only Meadows saw him scatter them left and right, and he was too discreet to ask why. Leon saw the inquiring lift of his eyebrows as he came back to his seat, but was wilfully dense. Thereafter, he ate his dinner with only an occasional glance towards the window.

“I’m not relying entirely upon my own lawyer’s advice,” said Mr. Lee. “I have telegraphed to Lisbon to ask Dr. Pinto Caillao to come to England, and he may be of greater service even than Poole, though where⁠—” The butler came in at this moment.

“Mrs. Poole has just telephoned, sir. Her husband has had a bad accident: his car ran into a tree trunk which was lying across the road near Lawley. It was on the other side of the bend, and he did not see it until too late.”

“Is he very badly hurt?”

“No, sir, but he is in the Cottage Hospital. Mrs. Poole says he is fit to travel home.”

The blind man sat open-mouthed.

“What a terrible thing to have happened!” he began.

“A very lucky thing for Mr. Poole,” said Leon cheerfully. “I feared worse than that⁠—”

From somewhere outside the window came a “snap!”⁠—the sound that a Christmas cracker makes when it is exploded. Leon got up from the table, walked swiftly to the side of the window and jumped out. As he struck the earth, he trod on one of the little bonbons he had scattered and it cracked viciously under his foot.

There was nobody in sight. He ran swiftly along the grass-plot, slowing his pace as he came to the end of the wall, and then jerked round, gun extended stiffly. Still nobody. Before him was a close-growing box hedge, in which had been cut an opening. He heard the crack of a signal behind him, guessed that it was Meadows, and presently the detective joined him. Leon put his fingers to his lips, leapt the path to the grass on the other side, and dodged behind a tree until he could see straight through the opening in the box hedge. Beyond was a rose-garden, a mass of pink and red and golden blooms.