The room was comfortably furnished. A small fire was alight in the tiny grate and a table had been laid, on which were displayed sandwiches, a thermos flask and a small silver basket of confectionery.
There was a door by the big four-poster bed.
"You may consider yourself fortunate in having the only room in the house with a bath-room attached," he said. "You English people are rather particular about that kind of thing."
"And you German people aren't," she said coolly.
"German?" he laughed. "So you guessed that, did you?"
"Guessed it?"—it was her turn to laugh scornfully. "Isn't the fact self-evident? Who but a Hun–"
His face went a dull red.
"That is a word you must not use to me," he said roughly—"hang your arrogance! Huns! We, who gave the world its kultur, who lead in every department of science, art and literature!"
She stared at him in amazement.
"You are joking, of course," she said, forgetting her danger for the moment in face of this extraordinary phenomenon. "If you are a German, and I suppose you are, and an educated German at that, you don't for a moment imagine you gave the world anything. Why, the Germans have never been anything but exploiters of other men's brains."
From dull red, his face had gone white, his lip was trembling with passion and when he spoke he could scarcely control his voice.
"We were of all people ordained by God to save the world through the German spirit."
So far he got when she burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. It was so like all the caricatures of German character she had read or seen depicted. He looked at her, his face distorted with rage, and before she had realized what had happened he had raised his hand and struck her across the mouth.
She staggered back, speechless. To her had happened the most incredible thing in the world, more incredible than her abduction, more incredible than all the villainies known or suspected, in this man.
He stood there glowering at her, unrepentant, half-tempted, it seemed, to repeat the blow. He had struck a woman and was not overwhelmed by shame. All her views of men and things, all her conceptions of the codes which govern mankind in their dealings one with the other, crumbled away. If he had fallen on his knees and asked her pardon, if he had shown any contrition, any fear, any shame, she might have gone back to her old standards.
"You swine cat!" he said in German, "Herr Gott, but I will punish you if you laugh at me!"
She was staring at him in intense curiosity. Her lip was bleeding a little, the red mark of his fingers showed against her white face, but she seemed to have forgotten the pain or the shock of the actual blow and was wholly concerned in this new revelation.
"A Hun," she said, but she seemed to be speaking to herself, "of course he's a Hun. They do that sort of thing, but I never believed it before."
He took a step toward her, but she did not flinch, and he turned and walked quickly from the room, locking the door behind him.
CHAPTER XII
INTRODUCING PARSON HOMO
When Beale left Krooman Mansions with his two companions he had only the haziest idea as to where he should begin his search. Perhaps the personal interest he had in his client, an interest revealed by the momentary panic into which her disappearance had thrown this usually collected young man, clouded his better judgment.
A vague discomfort possessed him and he paused irresolutely at the corner of the street. There was a chance that she might still be concealed in the building, but a greater chance that if he followed one of the three plans which were rapidly forming in his mind he might save the girl from whatever danger threatened her.
"You are perfectly sure you heard her voice?"
"Certain," replied Beale shortly, "just as I am sure that I smelt the ether."
"She may have been using it for some other purpose. Women put these drugs to all sorts of weird purposes, like cleaning gloves, and–"
"That may be," interrupted Beale, "but I wasn't mistaken about her voice. I am not subject to illusions of that kind."
He whistled. A man who had been lurking in the shadow of a building on the opposite side of the road crossed to him.
"Fenson," said Beale, "watch these flats. If you see a car drive up just go along and stand in front of the door. Don't let anybody enter that car or carry any bundle into that car until you are sure that Miss Cresswell is not one of the party or the bundle. If necessary you can pull a gun—I know it isn't done in law-abiding London," he smiled at Superintendent McNorton, "but I guess you've got to let me do a little law-breaking."
"Go all the way," said the superintendent easily.
"That will do, Fenson. You know Miss Cresswell?"
"Sure, sir," said the man, and melted back into the shadows.
"Where are you going now?" asked Kitson.
"I am going to interview a gentleman who will probably give me a great deal of information about van Heerden's other residences."
"Has he many?" asked Kitson, in surprise.
Beale nodded.
"He has been hiring buildings and houses for the past three months," he said quietly, "and he has been so clever that I will defy you to trace one of them. All his hiring has been done through various lawyers he has employed, and they are all taken in fictitious names."
"Do you know any of them?"
"Not one," said Beale, with a baffled little laugh, "didn't I tell you he's mighty clever? I got track of two of them but they were the only two where the sale didn't go through."
"What does he want houses for?"
"We shall learn one of these days," said Beale cryptically. "I can tell you something else, gentlemen, and this is more of a suspicion than a certainty, that there is not a crank scientist who has ever gone under through drink or crime in the whole of this country, aye, and America and France, too, that isn't working for him. And now, gentlemen, if you will excuse me–"
"You don't want any assistance?" asked the superintendent.
"I guess not," said Beale, with a smile, "I guess I can manage the Herr Professor."
* * * * *
On the south side of the River Thames is a congested and thickly populated area lying between the Waterloo and the Blackfriars Roads. Here old houses, which are gauntly picturesque because of their age, stand cheek-by-jowl with great blocks of model dwellings, which make up in utility all that they lack in beauty. Such dwelling-places have a double advantage. Their rent is low and they are close to the centre of London. Few of the houses are occupied by one family, and indeed it is the exception that one family rents in its entirety so much as a floor.
In a basement room in one of those houses sat two men as unlike one another as it is possible to conceive. The room itself was strangely tidy and bare of anything but the necessary furniture. A camp bed was under the window in such a position as to give its occupant a view of the ankles of those people who trod the pavement of the little street.
A faded cretonne curtain hid an inner and probably a smaller room where the elder of the men slept. They sat on either side of a table, a kerosene lamp placed exactly in the centre supplying light for their various occupations.
The elder of the two was bent forward over a microscope, his big hands adjusting the focus screw. Presently he would break off his work of observation and jot down a few notes in crabbed German characters. His big head, his squat body, his long ungainly arms, his pale face with its little wisp of beard, would have been recognized by Oliva Cresswell, for this was Professor Heyler—"the Herr Professor," as Beale called him.
The man sitting opposite was cast in a different mould. He was tall, spare, almost æsthetic. The clean-shaven face, the well-moulded nose and chin hinted at a refinement which his shabby threadbare suit and his collarless shirt freakishly accentuated. Now and again he would raise his deep-set eyes from the book he was reading, survey the absorbed professor with a speculative glance and then return to his reading.
They had sat in silence for the greater part of an hour, when Beale's tap on the door brought the reader round with narrow eyes.
"Expecting a visitor, professor?" he asked in German.
"Nein, nein," rambled the old man, "who shall visit me? Ah yes"—he tapped his fat forefinger—"I remember, the Fräulein was to call."
He got up and, shuffling to the door, slipped back the bolt and turned it. His face fell when he saw Beale, and the man at the table rose.
"Hope I am not disturbing you," said the detective. "I thought you lived alone."
He, too, spoke in the language which the professor understood best.
"That is a friend of mine," said old Heyler uncomfortably, "we live together. I did not think you knew my address."
"Introduce me," said the man at the table coolly.
The old professor looked dubiously from one to the other.
"It is my friend, Herr Homo."
"Herr Homo," repeated Beale, offering his hand, "my name is Beale."
Homo shot a keen glance at him.
"A split! or my criminal instincts fail me," he said, pleasantly enough.
"Split?" repeated Beale, puzzled.
"American I gather from your accent," said Mr. Homo; "pray sit down. 'Split' is the phrase employed by the criminal classes to describe a gentleman who in your country is known as a 'fly cop'!"
"Oh, a detective," smiled Beale. "No, in the sense you mean I am not a detective. At any rate, I have not come on business."
"So I gather," said the other, seating himself, "or you would have brought one of the 'busy fellows' with you. Here again you must pardon the slang but we call the detective the 'busy fellow' to distinguish him from the 'flattie,' who is the regular cop. Unless you should be under any misapprehension, Mr. Beale, it is my duty to tell you that I am a representative of the criminal classes, a fact which our learned friend," he nodded toward the distressed professor, "never ceases to deplore," and he smiled blandly.
They had dropped into English and the professor after waiting uncomfortably for the visitor to explain his business had dropped back to his work with a grunt.
"I am Parson Homo and this is my pied-à-terre. We professional criminals must have somewhere to go when we are not in prison, you know."
The voice was that of an educated man, its modulation, the confidence and the perfect poise of the speaker suggested the college man.
"So that you shall not be shocked by revelations I must tell you that I have just come out of prison. I am by way of being a professional burglar."
"I am not easily shocked," said Beale.
He glanced at the professor.
"I see," said Parson Homo, rising, "that I am de trop. Unfortunately I cannot go into the street without risking arrest. In this country, you know, there is a law which is called the Prevention of Crimes Act, which empowers the unemployed members of the constabulary who find time hanging on their hands to arrest known criminals on suspicion if they are seen out in questionable circumstances. And as all circumstances are questionable to the unimaginative 'flattie,' and his no less obtuse friend the 'split,' I will retire to the bedroom and stuff my ears with cotton-wool."
"You needn't," smiled Beale, "I guess the professor hasn't many secrets from you."
"Go on guessing, my ingenious friend," said the parson, smiling with his eyes, "my own secrets I am willing to reveal but—adios!"
He waved his hand and passed behind the cretonne curtain and the old man looked up from his instrument.
"It is the Donovan Leichmann body that I search for," he said solemnly; "there was a case of sleeping-sickness at the docks, and the Herr Professor of the Tropical School so kindly let me have a little blood for testing."
"Professor," said Beale, sitting down in the place which Parson Homo had vacated and leaning across the table, "are you still working for van Heerden?"
The old man rolled his big head from side to side in an agony of protest.
"Of the learned doctor I do not want to speak," he said, "to me he has been most kind. Consider, Herr Peale, I was starving in this country which hates Germans and regard as a mad old fool and an ugly old devil, and none helped me until the learned doctor discovered me. I am a German, yes. Yet I have no nationality, being absorbed in the larger brotherhood of science. As for me I am indifferent whether the Kaiser or the Socialists live in Potsdam, but I am loyal, Herr Peale, to all who help me. To you, also," he said hastily, "for you have been most kind, and once when in foolishness I went into a room where I ought not to have been you saved me from the police." He shrugged his massive shoulders again. "I am grateful, but must I not also be grateful to the learned doctor?"
"Tell me this, professor," said Beale, "where can I find the learned doctor to-night?"
"At his so-well-known laboratory, where else?" asked the professor.
"Where else?" repeated Beale.
The old man was silent.
"It is forbidden that I should speak," he said; "the Herr Doctor is engaged in a great experiment which will bring him fortune. If I betray his secrets he may be ruined. Such ingratitude, Herr Peale!"
There was a silence, the old professor, obviously distressed and ill at ease, looking anxiously at the younger man.
"Suppose I tell you that the Herr Doctor is engaged in a dangerous conspiracy," said Beale, "and that you yourself are running a considerable risk by assisting him?"
The big hands were outspread in despair.
"The Herr Doctor has many enemies," mumbled Heyler. "I can tell you nothing, Herr Peale."
"Tell me this," said Beale: "is there any place you know of where the doctor may have taken a lady—the young lady into whose room you went the night I found you?"
"A young lady?" The old man was obviously surprised. "No, no, Herr Peale, there is no place where a young lady could go. Ach! No!"
"Well," said Beale, after a pause, "I guess I can do no more with you, professor." He glanced round at the cretonne recess: "I won't inconvenience you any longer, Mr. Homo."
The curtains were pushed aside and the æsthetic-looking man stepped out, the half-smile on his thin lips.
"I fear you have had a disappointing visit," he said pleasantly, "and it is on the tip of your tongue to ask me if I can help you. I will save you the trouble of asking—I can't."
Beale laughed.
"You are a bad thought-reader," he said. "I had no intention of asking you."
He nodded to the old man, and with another nod to his companion was turning when a rap came at the door. He saw the two men exchange glances and noted in the face of the professor a look of blank dismay. The knock was repeated impatiently.
"Permit me," said Beale, and stepped to the door.
"Wait, wait," stammered the professor, "if Mr. Peale will permit–"
He shuffled forward, but Beale had turned the latch and opened the door wide. Standing in the entrance was a girl whom he had no difficulty in recognizing as Hilda Glaum, sometime desk companion of Oliva Cresswell. His back was to the light and she did not recognize him.
"Why did you not open more quickly?" she asked in German, and swung the heavy bag she carried into the room, "every moment I thought I should be intercepted. Here is the bag. It will be called for to-morrow–"
It was then that she saw Beale for the first time and her face went white.
"Who—who are you?" she asked; then quickly, "I know you. You are the man Beale. The drunken man–"
She looked from him to the bag at her feet and to him again, then before he could divine her intention she had stooped and grasped the handle of the bag. Instantly all his attention was riveted upon that leather case and its secret. His hand shot out and gripped her arm, but she wrenched herself free. In doing so the bag was carried by the momentum of its release and was driven heavily against the wall. He heard a shivering crash as though a hundred little glasses had broken simultaneously.
Before he could reach the bag she snatched it up, leapt through the open door and slammed it to behind her. His hand was on the latch–
"Put 'em up, Mr. Beale, put 'em up," said a voice behind him. "Right above your head, Mr. Beale, where we can see them."
He turned slowly, his hands rising mechanically to face Parson Homo, who still sat at the table, but he had discarded his Greek book and was handling a business-like revolver, the muzzle of which covered the detective.
"Smells rotten, doesn't it?" said Homo pleasantly.
Beale, too, had sniffed the musty odour, and knew that it came from the bag the girl had wrenched from his grasp. It was the sickly scent of the Green Rust!
CHAPTER XIII
AT DEANS FOLLY
With her elbows resting on the broad window-ledge and her cheeks against the cold steel bars which covered the window, Oliva Cresswell watched the mists slowly dissipate in the gentle warmth of the morning sun. She had spent the night dozing in a rocking-chair and at the first light of day she had bathed and redressed ready for any emergency. She had not heard any sound during the night and she guessed that van Heerden had returned to London.
The room in which she was imprisoned was on the first floor at the back of the house and the view she had of the grounds was restricted to a glimpse between two big lilac bushes which were planted almost on a level with her room.
The house had been built on the slope of a gentle rise so that you might walk from the first-floor window on to the grassy lawn at the back of the house but for two important obstacles, the first being represented by the bars which protected the window and the second by a deep area, concrete-lined, which formed a trench too wide to jump.
She could see, however, that the grounds were extensive. The high wall which, apparently, separated the garden from the road was a hundred yards away. She knew it must be the road because of a little brown gate which from time to time she saw between the swaying bushes. She turned wearily from the window and sat on the edge of the bed. She was not afraid—irritated would be a better word to describe her emotion. She was mystified, too, and that was an added irritation.
Why should this man, van Heerden, who admittedly did not love her, who indeed loved her so little that he could strike her and show no signs of remorse—why did this man want to marry her? If he wanted to marry her, why did he kidnap her?
There was another question, too, which she had debated that night. Why did his reference to the American detective, Beale, so greatly embarrass her?
She had reached the point where even such tremendous subjects of debate had become less interesting than the answer to that question which was furnished, when a knock came to her door and a gruff voice said:
"Breakfast!"
She unlocked the door and pulled it open. The man called Gregory was standing on the landing. He jerked his thumb to the room opposite.
"You can use both these rooms," he said, "but you can't come downstairs. I have put your breakfast in there."
She followed the thumb across the landing and found herself in a plainly furnished sitting-room. The table had been laid with a respectable breakfast, and until she had appeased her healthy young appetite she took very little stock of her surroundings.
The man came up in half an hour to clear away the table.
"Will you be kind enough to tell me where I am?" asked Oliva.
"I am not going to tell you anything," said Gregory.
"I suppose you know that by detaining me here you are committing a very serious crime?"
"Tell it to the doctor," said the man, with a queer little smile.
She followed him out to the landing. She wanted to see what sort of guard was kept and what possibilities there were of escape. Somehow it seemed easier to make a reconnaissance now under his very eyes than it had been in the night, when in every shadow had lurked a menace.
She did not follow him far, however. He put down the tray at the head of the stairs and reaching out both his hands drew two sliding doors from the wall and snapped them in her face. She heard the click of a door and knew that any chance of escape from this direction was hopeless. The doors had slid noiselessly on their oiled runners and had formed for her a little lobby of the landing. She guessed that the sliding doors had been closed after van Heerden's departure. She had exhausted all the possibilities of her bedroom and now began an inspection of the other.
Like its fellow, the windows were barred. There was a bookshelf, crowded with old volumes, mostly on matters ecclesiastical or theological. She looked at it thoughtfully.
"Now, if I were clever like Mr. Beale," she said aloud, "I could deduce quite a lot from this room."
A distant church bell began to clang and she realized with a start that the day was Sunday. She looked at her watch and was amazed to see it was nearly eleven. She must have slept longer than she had thought.
This window afforded her no better view than did that of the bedroom, except that she could see the gate more plainly and what looked to be the end of a low-roofed brick building which had been erected against the wall. She craned her neck, looking left and right, but the bushes had been carefully planted to give the previous occupants of these two rooms greater privacy.
Presently the bell stopped and she addressed herself again to an examination of the room. In an old-fashioned sloping desk she found a few sheets of paper, a pen and a bottle half-filled with thick ink. There were also two telegraph forms, and these gave her an idea. She went back to the table in the middle of the room. With paper before her she began to note the contents of the apartment.
"I am trying to be Bealish," she admitted.
She might also have confessed that she was trying to keep her mind off her possibly perilous position and that though she was not afraid she had a fear of fear.
"A case full of very dull good books. That means that the person who lived here before was very serious-minded."
She walked over and examined the titles, pulled out a few books and looked at their title pages. They all bore the same name, "L. T. B. Stringer." She uttered an exclamation. Wasn't there some directory of clergymen's names?—she was sure this was a clergyman, nobody else would have a library of such weighty volumes.
Her fingers ran along the shelves and presently she found what she wanted—Crocker's Clergy List of 1879. She opened the book and presently found, "Stringer, Laurence Thomas Benjamin, Vicar of Upper Staines, Deans Folly, Upper Reach Village, near Staines."
Her eyes sparkled. Instinctively she knew that she had located her prison. Van Heerden had certainly hired the house furnished, probably from the clergyman or his widow. She began to search the room with feverish haste. Near the window was a cupboard built out. She opened it and found that it was a small service lift, apparently communicating with the kitchen. In a corner of the room was an invalid chair on wheels.
She sat down at the table and reconstructed the character of its occupant. She saw an invalid clergyman who had lived permanently in this part of the house. He was probably wheeled from his bedroom to his sitting-room, and in this cheerless chamber had spent the last years of his life. And this place was Deans Folly? She took up the telegraph form and after a few minutes' deliberation wrote:
"To Beale, Krooman Mansions."
She scratched that out, remembering that he had a telegraphic address and substituted:
"Belocity, London." She thought a moment, then wrote: "Am imprisoned at Deans Folly, Upper Reach Village, near Staines. Oliva." That looked too bold, and she added "Cresswell."
She took a florin from her bag and wrapped it up in the telegraph form. She had no exact idea as to how she should get the message sent to the telegraph office, and it was Sunday, when all telegraph offices would be closed. Nor was there any immediate prospect of her finding a messenger. She supposed that tradesmen came to the house and that the kitchen door was somewhere under her window, but tradesmen do not call on Sundays. She held the little package irresolutely in her hand. She must take her chance to-day. To-morrow would be Monday and it was certain somebody would call.
With this assurance she tucked the message into her blouse. She was in no mood to continue her inspection of the room, and it was only because in looking again from the window she pulled it from its hook that she saw the strange-looking instrument which hung between the window and the service lift. She picked it up, a dusty-looking thing. It consisted of a short vulcanite handle, from which extended two flat steel supports, terminating in vulcanite ear-plates. The handle was connected by a green cord with a plug in the wall.
Oliva recognized it. It was an electrophone. One of those instruments by which stay-at-home people can listen to an opera, a theatrical entertainment or—a sermon. Of course it was a church. It was a very common practice for invalids to be connected up with their favourite pulpit, and doubtless the Rev. Mr. Stringer had derived considerable comfort from this invention.
She dusted the receiver and put them to her ears. She heard nothing. Beneath the plug was a little switch. She turned this over and instantly her ears were filled with a strange hollow sound—the sound which a bad gramophone record makes.
Then she realized that she was listening to a congregation singing. This ceased after awhile and she heard a cough, so surprisingly near and loud that she started. Of course, the transmitter would be in the pulpit, she thought. Then a voice spoke, clear and distinct, yet with that drawl which is the peculiar property of ministers of the Established Church. She smiled as the first words came to her.
"I publish the banns of marriage between Henry Colebrook, and Jane Maria Smith both of this parish. This is the second time of asking." A pause, then: "Also between Henry Victor Vanden and Oliva Cresswell Prédeaux, both of this parish. This is the third time of asking. If any of you know cause or just impediment why these persons should not be joined together in holy matrimony, ye are to declare it."
She dropped the instrument with a crash and stood staring down at it. She had been listening to the publication of her own wedding-notice.
"Vanden" was van Heerden. "Oliva Cresswell Prédeaux" was herself. The strangeness of the names meant nothing. She guessed rather than knew that the false name would not be any insuperable bar to the ceremony. She must get away. For the first time she had a horrible sense of being trapped, and for a few seconds she must have lost her head, for she tugged at the iron bars, dashed wildly out and hammered at the sliding door. Presently her reason took charge. She heard the heavy step of Gregory on the stairs and recovered her calm by the time he had unlocked the bar and pulled the doors apart.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"I want you to let me out of here."
"Oh, is that all?" he said sarcastically, and for the second time that day slammed the door in her face.
She waited until he was out of hearing, then she went back noiselessly to the sitting-room. She pushed open the door of the service lift and tested the ropes. There were two, one which supported the lift and one by which it was hauled up, and she gathered that these with the lift itself formed an endless chain.
Gripping both ropes firmly she crept into the confined space of the cupboard and let herself down hand over hand. She had about twelve feet to descend before she reached the kitchen entrance of the elevator. She squeezed through the narrow opening and found herself in a stone-flagged kitchen. It was empty. A small fire glowed in the grate. Her own tray with all the crockery unwashed was on the dresser, and there were the remnants of a meal at one end of the plain table. She tiptoed across the kitchen to the door. It was bolted top and bottom and locked. Fortunately the key was in the lock, and in two minutes she was outside in a small courtyard beneath the level of the ground.
One end of the courtyard led past another window, and that she could not risk. To her right was a flight of stone steps, and that was obviously the safer way. She found herself in a little park which fortunately for her was plentifully sprinkled with clumps of rhododendrons, and she crept from bush to bush, taking care to keep out of sight of the house. She had the telegram and the money in her hand, and her first object was to get this outside. It took her twenty minutes to reach the wall. It was too high to scale and there was no sign of a ladder. The only way out was the little brown door she had seen from her bedroom window, and cautiously she made her way back, flitting from bush to bush until she came to the place where a clear view of the door and the building to its left could be obtained.
The low-roofed shed she had seen was much longer than she had expected and evidently had recently been built. Its black face was punctured at intervals with square windows, and a roughly painted door to the left of the brown garden gate was the only entrance she could see. She looked for a key but without hope of finding one. She must take her chance, she thought, and a quick run brought her from the cover of the bushes to the brown portal which stood between her and liberty.
With trembling hands she slid back the bolts and turned the handle. Her heart leapt as it gave a little. Evidently it had not been used for years and she found it was only held fast by the gravel which had accumulated beneath it.
Eagerly she scraped the gravel aside with her foot and her hand was on the knob when she heard a muffled voice behind her. She turned and then with a gasp of horror fell back. Standing in the doorway of the shed was a thing which was neither man nor beast. It was covered in a wrap which had once been white but was now dappled with green. The face and head were covered with rubber, two green staring eyes surveyed her, and a great snout-like nose was uplifted as in amazement. She was paralysed for a moment. For the beastliness of the figure was appalling.