Daredevil
him because he could not understand it. It was so out of keeping
with the part of the lag under supervision. Truculence was regular,
and cringing was also in order, though less common. So, too, was
friendliness. But superiority--no.
"You look pleased with yourself," said Teal glutinously, falling back
into his _rôle_ of _ennui_ personified.
"So I feel," agreed Mattock. "Captain Arden has very kindly
permitted me to be released." He glanced at his wrist. "It's just
lunch time. Thank the Lord I'm spared the culinary abortions you
serve to persons in custody."
Teal's jaw dropped.
"Is that true?" he asked, and Storm nodded.
"I'm sorry, Inspector," he said officially. "I don't think any of
the charges against this man will stand. You will, however, keep him
under observation."
"I will!" asserted Teal grimly.
Mattock raised his hat and sauntered to the door with a smile.
There, he paused.
"I should keep an eye on Uncle Joe, too," was his parting shot.
Teal stared sombrely at the door through which the man had passed.
He shook his head sorrowfully.
"And there, by the Grace of the Devil," he muttered, "goes a man who
knows far, far more about the Triangle than I shall ever find out."
"I've also cancelled the warrant that's out against Raegenssen,"
Storm said. "I don't think any charge will stand against him,
either, yet. It's easy to prove that the signature to that deed
isn't his, and there's no chance of tracing those foreign bills. You
won't even get him by identification--nor will you get Mattock, for
the matter of that. Neither of 'em fit exactly."
He was tapping a cigarette on his case when the telephone rang, and
he was told that the call was for him. When he came back, the light
of war was in his eyes.
"Now we shall see some more battle, murder and sudden death!" he
said. "That was to say Mecklen's better. I'm going to get him to
court to-morrow, if there's a whole army of Triangles in the way!
And then we'll see if he'll squeak."
"He isn't the Triangle, anyway," said Teal gloomily. "Is it Mattock?"
Storm did not answer.
"Or is it Uncle Joe?"
Storm was intent upon the feat of throwing his cigarette high in the
air and catching it between his lips--a piece of amateur juggling
which he performed with skill.
"Then it must be Raegenssen," Teal said dreamily.
"Keep on guessing," Storm encouraged.
Mr. Teal shook his head and nipped the end from a rank cigar.
"You're so close, you'd make an oyster look like a yawning whale," he
protested in despair. "Now, why let Mattock out? I'll bet that man
knows all the things we want to know about Alphas and Apexes."
"Speak for yourself," murmured Storm, concluding his exhibition of
sleight-of-hand by throwing his cigarette over his shoulder from the
back and trapping it faultlessly.
Teal did not applaud.
"He must have had something exciting to tell you," he pondered aloud.
"Was it absolutely necessary to release him?"
Storm, who was striking a match, watched it flare, and then looked up
with his quick smile.
"Oh--sure!" he drawled. "He's going to kill Raegenssen!"
CHAPTER XV
ONCE A GENTLEMAN
Storm being an unconventional young man, it was not to be expected
that the private report on the Battle of Billingsgate which he sent
to Sir John Marker would be strictly in accord with conventional
ideas on the correct composition of such documents. Kit Arden had no
manner of use for formulas; jargon made him feel ill; in the presence
of the bugaboo of official phraseology he positively writhed. He
banged out his points with crisp simplicity, and framed them in
sentences like bullets.
The letter is worth quoting _in extenso_, for reasons which will be
apparent at sight.
When once the door of the sawmill had been opened, and the janitor
removed without noise, the fate of the Alpha Triangle hung by a hair.
In spite of the telephone call which told the men in the building
that their heavily armoured bag had lost its cat, they could not
forecast the minute in which the information so gained would be acted
upon. The future of the organisation was suspended by that slender
thread; our hope of being in amongst them, raising Hell, before they
could collect their wits. You already know how that thread was
snapped.
Whatever a man's genius, he cannot dream of terrorising a city--as
the Apex intends to do--without a large number of assistants. With
his young army of helpers locked away, he would have been
crippled--perhaps irretrievably.
However, we failed--so that's that. Anyway, all we made was an
attempt to maim, when our object is to kill.
One or two details stand over.
(1) Besides myself, two others got into the sawmill. One was Miss
Hawthorne, secretary to the late Lord Hannassay, who went simply in
search of adventure. The second was Joseph Blaythwayt, manager of
the City and Continental Bank, Lombard Street, who in his spare time
aspires to sleuthship. He is a friend of Inspector Teal, from whom
he had heard unpublished facts about the Triangle which (on his own
account) fired him with thoughts of honour and glory as an amateur
Sherlock. He is also one of the lives threatened by the Triangle,
which fact does not perturb him unduly.
(2) In my opinion, the telephone call which followed our departure
came by chance, and was not based on knowledge of any of our plans.
(3) Raegenssen's office was burgled last night, and the safe opened,
but I don't know if the men found anything. A lot of attention has
centred round Raegenssen lately, so I expect his obituary notice is
only a matter of days.
The Billingsgate raid having failed, I am basing my next move on the
Era advertisement. It will, of course, be risky; but if anything
goes wrong you will know what to do.
I can only guess how the Triangle will continue its campaign. I
probably have a better appreciation of that colossal mind than
anybody else; but if I gave you a logical prophecy, even you might
begin to regard me as an imaginative alarmist. The solid _fact_,
which you and everyone else has got to get hold of, is that for the
time being all the odds are on the Triangle. They have all the
advantage of surprise. Just now, the police aren't prepared.
Violent crime isn't familiar to them yet. They can't quite adjust
themselves to it--it'll catch them napping, and they'll take time to
get busy. There's a genius at the top of the Triangle--or a lunatic,
whichever you care to call him--and the police are neither geniuses
nor lunatics. They're just plain ornery men dealing with plain
ornery crooks, with all the odds on the crook. Crooks catch
themselves and each other, but there'll be no nosing the Triangle.
It can pay too well, and the little twisters follow the big money.
Gangs in the past have gone just because discontented members shopped
them. There will be no discontented members of the Triangle--why,
their chief can even pull them out of the hands of the police! The
rescue of the Billingsgate prisoners will add tremendously to the
prestige of the Apex.
I promised you the head of the Apex on a Triangle in a fortnight, and
that fortnight still has some time to run.
The brain of the Apex moves in such great leaps that nothing less
than genius could anticipate it from pinnacle to pinnacle. Against
that there is only one card to play--fear. Even genius has nerves.
Even genius can be made to worry about its neck.
I shall win.
The removal of Lew Mecklen from St. George's Hospital to Marlborough
Street Police Court was not advertised, but Storm did not doubt that
the Intelligence Bureau of the Triangle had its own sources of
information. He had asked for, and secured, a special escort from
Wellington Barracks, and they were served out with ball ammunition.
It was a wise precaution, for the soldier, being a lethal machine, is
less chary of using firearms than the London constable, who is a
civil institution into whose routine the more effective forms of
violence rarely enter. Apparently the Triangle admitted that Mecklen
was well guarded, for no attempt was made on the armoured car in
which the gunman rode with platoons of scarlet-coated men marching in
front and behind.
Lew was taken into the tiny court-room, and a stream of detectives
followed him and filled the rest of the space. Outside, uniformed
men blocked the tiled hall, and the military escort stood at ease in
the road.
The proceedings were brief, for attempted murder offers no option of
summary jurisdiction. Mecklen pleaded not guilty and declined to
instruct a solicitor. Evidence of arrest was taken, to which the
prisoner paid little attention. The verbal proceedings seemed not to
interest him, but he studied his surroundings curiously. He did not
cross-examine, and made no statement, and the whole business took no
more than ten minutes.
"Without a hitch," remarked Storm, in grim reminiscence of the formal
Press account of executions--"thanks to the Army!"
Mecklen was committed for trial, and, whilst the necessary papers
were being made out and signed, he was taken to a cell in the
adjoining police station. It was when they removed him and told him
that he would be taken immediately to Brixton Prison that he showed
his first sign of uneasiness. He asked if a message had come for
him, and, when informed that none had arrived up to that time, he
asked to be allowed to see a newspaper. On Storm's authority, the
request was refused, and Mecklen was handcuffed and led out between a
double rank of policemen. Teal went in front and Storm brought up
the rear, and as the cortège came into view of the street Teal halted
so suddenly that Storm trod on the prisoner's heels.
Pushing his way to the front, Arden found the detective staring up
and down the street with a ludicrously blank expression on his
sanguine countenance. Storm looked also, and his lean face hardened.
There was a cab rank in the road, and he went over at once and asked
a question of one of the drivers.
"About arf an hour ago," said the man. "Just after the man'd bin
taken in. A cop comes out an 'ands a note to the orf'cer, an' walks
away, an' then the orf'cer shouts _'Shun!_ an' off they goes."
"Did you see the constable's face?" asked Storm, and the chauffeur
scratched his head.
"S'pose I must 'ave, but I didn't take much stock of it. You don't
inspect every copper's dial wot yer sees--you'd get 'eart failure!
Just looked an ord'nary pleeceman to me. 'Ulkin' great feller,
oldish, walked as if 'e owned the earth--like they all do."
"Thank you," said Storm bitterly, and returned to the waiting group
on the station steps.
By that time the escort would be back in barracks. In the first
instance, there had been more than enough red tape, and no little
grumbling in high places about troops being called upon to do the
work of the police. A fresh escort would not be procured without
considerable delay, and perhaps not even then. And yet a military
guard Storm was determined to have. As it turned out later, he had
made a grave mistake in jumping to the conclusion that the dismissal
of the soldiery by means of a forged message was simply a ruse to
make him send Mecklen to the prison in the ordinary van and under
police escort only. Bearing in mind the Tower Hill affair, this was
the explanation he had reached, and it made him doubly set on
attempting no such hazard. He had Mecklen taken back to his cell,
and ordered a special watch to be mounted over him. Then he rang up
the C.O. at the barracks, and found that the two platoons had just
returned.
"You might find out if the officer kept my note," he said, and waited
until the requisite information was forthcoming. "He has? ... I'm