Daredevil
seats of the mighty. The blinds in all the downstairs windows were
drawn, and there was no sign of life about the place.
For a moment he stood at the foot of the steps, and if the suggestion
had not been so palpably incongruous one would have said he was
listening intently for a sound he half expected to come from beneath
his feet. Then he inserted his latchkey in the lock and passed
inside.
The panelled hall was in twilight, and his footsteps rang out
hollowly on the uncarpeted parquet. The soles of his shoes gritted
on strewn earth, and sporadic cakes of dirt disfigured the rest of
the floor. Peering into one room, he found it filled almost to the
ceiling with a great mound of soil and clay.
A door at the back opened suddenly, and he was confronted by a burly
man, stripped to the waist.
"Getting on, Torino?" queried Mr. Surcon shortly, and the giant
nodded.
"Very well, _signor_."
From head to foot the man was stippled and plastered with mud, and
the streaming perspiration had cut eccentric patterns in the mess.
He led the way through the kitchen and opened a second door. Before
them yawned a flight of stairs which led down into the earth,
shrouded in a half-light in which danced the beam of the Italian's
flashlight as he guided his employer towards the cellars. The steps
themselves were inches deep in trodden clay, and down one side ran
two heavy insulated cables. From below them came a muffled thud and
clatter.
Presently they met another man, half-naked like the guide, who bore
on his shoulders a huge basket of earth, and almost on his heels came
a second. Surcon passed them with a brief word of greeting.
They reached the cellars and made their way with difficulty across
the layer of soil which cloyed their feet. At the far end of the
vault yawned a circular hole, and it was from this that the sounds
they heard came.
"We have done eighty yards," said Torino. "Another twenty will be
sufficient. That engine is a marvel. To-night we finish."
"There's been no difficulty?"
"None, _signor_. We have many men, and they are relieved before they
tire. There are no complaints, for the pay is good."
They stumbled down the tunnel towards the bobbing light that showed
in the distance. The roof was low, and they had to bow their heads;
even so, Surcon cracked his head once on a buttress and swore softly.
A third man, similarly laden with a muddy basket, passed them, and
they caught the heavy tread of the two they had passed on the stairs
returning.
At length they reached the end.
A powerful electric bulb swung from a stake driven into the earthen
roof, making the tunnel almost as light as day. Right up against the
ultimate wall was a thing of shining metal on a wheeled truck. The
power cables connected with two large terminals on its outer casing,
and over it hovered a wizened man with a rag and an oilcan. It
thrummed and thudded with the quiet-efficiency of its compressed
strength, and from its stern a stream of earth poured down an iron
channel into the waiting baskets. Other men, stripped to the waist
and sweating, snatched away the baskets as they were filled and
rushed them away. From time to time the engineer slewed the truck
round so that the machine attacked a fresh area, and once he adjusted
a winch that raised it bodily on the truck to burrow at the height of
the passage.
Surcon tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned drawing a greasy
hand across his forehead.
"It gives no trouble?" he asked in German, and the man shook his head.
"_Nein, Herr._"
"The dynamo runs well?"
"_Recht wohl, Herr._"
"_Sehr gut!_"
Accompanied by Torino, he retraced his steps laboriously, for the
tunnel had a distinct upward gradient from the point where the engine
was working. He was glad to return to the comparative freshness of
the hall, for the atmosphere below was close and almost insufferable.
They entered a room at the back of the house which had once been a
beautiful dining-room. Now the polished mahogany table was scarred
and stained, and the remains of a meal were congealing on the chipped
plates. A pack of cards was spread on the seat of one chair, and a
dozen empty beer bottles stood by the wall.
With a gesture of distaste Surcon swept the debris from one end of
the table, dusted a chair with his handkerchief, and sat down
delicately. His companion followed suit without these precautions.
"Where are the others?" asked Ezra.
"They sleep upstairs, _signor_. In an hour they relieve those who
are working now."
"There is enough room for the earth?"
"Barely, _signor_. Much will have to be spread on the floor of the
tunnel and in the cellars. A little will go in the upstairs room
where the relief are resting."
They spoke in Italian, for Mr. Surcon was a linguist.
He took out a bulging wallet and counted out a large sum, and passed
the notes across the table.
"There is the pay," he said, "and there is a hundred per cent. bonus
for finishing so soon. You will go from here to the other foremen,
and tell them to promise their men the same if they complete their
work at the time I have ordered."
"_Grazie, signor--subito._"
"When they finish, they will return to headquarters. Only two need
remain--yourself and one other. It is understood?"
"_Perfettamento._"
The reason of his visit disposed of, the whim seized him to make a
second tour of inspection below. This time he did not penetrate the
tunnel, but sat on an up-ended packing-case in the cellar, gazing
down towards the winking luminance that showed where his machine
ploughed on tirelessly. The clamour and purr of it hypnotised him.
He realised then, as for the first time, the colossal daring of his
plot, and its immense simplicity. The shaft which faced him was
paralleled by six others, in various stages of progress, that were
being driven to his command at that moment, by similar machinery. He
had a stabbing comprehension of the immensity of the Power he was
moulding to his hand....
The man Torino, breaking out of the gloom with one of the
waste-baskets on his back, paused at the look of intentness on his
master's face.
"It is the plan of a genius," he said softly. "So simple--and so
unbeatable! It will mean wealth for all."
Surcon nodded.
"Wealth.... But this little hole will be used last. It is our
safety-valve--our trump card. While this remains unused and a
secret, there can be no danger."
He followed his foreman back to the sty of a living-room and sat down
with his chin in his palms, staring into vacancy. The Italian
lighted a rank cigarette and searched among the bottles for an
unopened one, which he failed to find. Neither spoke, for each was
busy with his own thoughts, and the rap-clang of the brass knocker on
the front door made them both start.
"See who it is," ordered Surcon, and Torino nodded and tip-toed from
the room.
He was back in a moment with a small innocent-looking man whose
china-blue eyes swept round the dining-room in one wary all-embracing
glance.
"Morini!" snapped Surcon. "Why the devil have you come here? Fool!
Would you lead the police----"
"The bulls aren't after me," said Morini calmly. "Arden was on the
spot as usual--damn him!--but your idea of having two cars was a
brain-wave. He smashed his car into the Carillon, just as I
expected, and I jumped from the Navarre. Gee!--I've never seen a man
look so sick! He started gunning from the wreckage--plumb in the
middle of West Cromwell Road--but we were round the next corner too
quick for him."
He spoke without Mecklen's nasal twang, for "Gat" Morini had once
been a gentleman--notwithstanding which fact he was infinitely the
more dangerous of the two.
"Did you get Marker?"
"Not fatally, though he may die. I always know to a fraction of an
inch where my shots go. Arden was so much on the premises he worried
me a little, and I misjudged the speed of the car."
Surcon shrugged.
"It doesn't matter," he remarked. "Gunning is crude--I have a better
plan now. A few days----"
"A few days, in which Arden may put you behind bars." Morini leaned
against the door and began to pour flake tobacco into a curled slip
of paper. "You underrate that man, Chief. He's cool--so cool he
nearly gives me cold feet. And tough--he's just a slab of Bessemer
on two legs." He fixed his cigarette with one deft twist and lighted
it in the same movement. "I've met him before, and it was too even a
chance between us to make me feel comfortable!"
"Are you scared?" demanded Surcon malignantly. "Because, if so----"
"_Scared_," said Morini equably, "is a word folks who know old Gat
just don't use when I'm around. But I don't mind 'em knowing that a
coffin isn't my idea of a good time."
Surcon regarded his subordinate in silence, his big hands locked
together on the table, his heavy brows lowered.
"Well?"
"Let me go gunning for him, Chief," begged Morini. "I tell you, I
won't feel comfortable in this game till Arden's riding in a black
buggy. He'd be easy--he takes any risk. He got Lew, but Lew always
was too nervy to be much good at close work. I shouldn't have missed
him that night."
Surcon shook his head--reluctantly, one might have thought, but none
the less definitely. His fingers untwined, and he flattened his
palms slowly on the mahogany in a simple gesture that conveyed better
than words the utter finality of his decision.
"No. I'll deal with him. He needn't be killed. We can hold him
until the Government have paid up, and then he can go."
"You seem to have a soft spot in your heart for that guy." Morini
flicked up an interrogative eyebrow. "Is he your long-lost brother
or something?"
Surcon ignored the question.
"How's Rodriguez?"
"Nearly dead. He'll go out to-night for a certainty. Trouble is, we
can't have a doc. in with that place looking like a cross between an
arsenal and a barracks."
"I'll give instructions about him by telephone."
Surcon rose and buttoned his coat. He picked up his hat, and Morini
stood aside to give him passage.
Surcon paused in the doorway, and his eyes fixed the gunman with a
cold warning in them that was more acidly menacing than his words.
"You understand?" he said. "Leave Arden to me. If you kill him, you
will die. That's all."
Morini showed his teeth.
"_Is_ he your brother, Chief?" he taunted, and then the flame of
concentrated venom that licked out of the big man's eyes made him
shrink back. In that moment, with that one level gaze, Surcon,
unarmed in the presence of a professional killer, showed who was
master.
"No--he is my son," he said simply, and was gone.
An hour later he sat at ease in an armchair, reading over the
proclamation that was to appear in every London newspaper the next
morning. It was a notice absolutely without precedent in the history
of crime--an ultimatum set out with all the cold-blooded arrogant
effrontery of a Note from an unscrupulous Great Power to an
insignificant Power--a manifesto that was staggering in its
presumptuous authoritativeness, before which the imagination reeled
away with uneasy incredulity.
CHAPTER XII
TOURS IN BILLINGSGATE
Respectable young ladies of gentle nurture do not as a rule haunt the
obscure purlieus which lie east of London Bridge, down towards the
river, at one o'clock in the morning; but then, although Susan
Hawthorne might have pleaded guilty to the gentle nurture part of the
clause, it is doubtful whether she would have admitted her
respectability. Respectability and old Smiler, her beloved father,
tutor, friend, and companion in the all-important years between
fourteen and twenty, were two factors which in the eyes of the