Daredevil
way. The only things that will detonate it now are heat--that is the
reason for the ice--or a severe shock, such as you might give it if
you let it fall. Is that clear?"
"Yessir."
"Very well. You know the _Daily Record_ offices?"
"Yessir."
"You have made yourself familiar with the appearance of John Cardan,
the editor, as you were told to--you are sure you can recognise him?"
"Yessir."
"Excellent. Then you will go at once to Ludgate Circus, taking a
ninety-six 'bus, and wait outside the office. Take the calorimeter
with you. He leaves the office between half-past eleven and
midnight. When he comes out, take the little bottle out of the ice,
and slip it into his pocket. Then walk quietly away--the explosive
will take a little time to warm, and that'll give you as long as you
need to get out of range without attracting attention. Have you got
hold of all that?"
"Yessir."
"You can keep the stuff in your pocket--the ice will make it
perfectly safe unless you should happen to fall down. Now please
tell me exactly what you are going to do."
Birdie licked his lips again, and then recited his orders haltingly.
Once or twice he was pulled up, and he was not allowed to go until he
had mastered every detail. At last the rehearsal seemed to satisfy
the Voice, and he was dismissed. He put the calorimeter with its
deadly burden into his jacket pocket, keeping his fingers round it to
prevent the ice spilling, and shuffled to the door, white-faced and
shaking.
"So long, mates," he chattered with a rickety attempt at jauntiness.
"See you all later...."
Then he was gone.
"Martinez will drive Morini down to the Embankment immediately,"
continued the Voice. "You will try to remove Inspector Teal. Morini
will shoot, and Martinez will then drive back to Buckingham Gate via
Blackfriars Bridge and Road, Lambeth Road, Lambeth High Street, Broad
Street, Prince's Road, Kennington Street, Upper Kennington Lane,
Vauxhall Bridge, Grosvenor Road, Chelsea Bridge Road. Go through
Hammersmith, circle back via Chiswick, go north through Hampstead,
and get to Buckingham Gate by way of Tottenham Court Road, Charing
Cross Road, and the Mall. I'll repeat that. Take down the important
points on a scrap of paper. Ready? Blackfriars Bridge, Lambeth,
Vauxhall Bridge, Chelsea, Hammersmith, Cheswick, Hampstead, Tottenham
Court Road. Right. One other thing. Wait till you get Teal alone.
If he comes out with Arden, follow and watch your chance. The usual
bonuses will be..."
"_Teal! Isn't radio wonderful!_" murmured a flippant voice.
Every man in the room spun round. With their backs to the door, they
had been so absorbed in the words of their Chief that they had never
noticed the faint creak of the opening door, nor the two soft paces
that had brought Storm and Teal into their presence.
They jerked round as though hot needles had been run into them, half
rising from their seats, with groping amazement in their faces. The
microphone had proved its utility, and the loud-speaker had suddenly
gone dead. The men who had been listening to it stood rooted to the
ground, petrified, while they strove to whip their minds into
grasping the situation. Storm watched them, smiling, a cigarette
between his lips, his hands deep in his pockets. Beside him, the
torpid avoirdupois of Mr. Teal leaned against the door,
expressionless of face, motionless except for the intermittent
oscillation of his inferior maxilla.
Storm's lazy grey eyes swept their blank faces.
"I hope we don't intrude!" he drawled politely.
CHAPTER XVIII
PESSIMISM OF MR. TEAL
Morini was the first to recover his equilibrium. He swept a deep bow.
"You're welcome," he said. "Come right in--how did you get in, by
the way?"
"The door was open," said Storm. "So, as we meant to pay you a call,
we thought we wouldn't put you to the trouble of locking and bolting
it."
Teal was inspecting with interest the playing cards and markers that
lay on the table.
"What's the game?" he asked inquisitorially, addressing the
redoubtable Horring; but that holdup expert was less suave than his
confrère.
"I'd like to know the meaning of this intrusion," he broke out
heatedly. "I don't know what sort of a country you call this, if a
few friends can't get together for a round of cribbage without
policemen----"
Teal cut short his protest with one raised reproving hand.
"I shan't argue," he stated mildly. "I suppose _-age_ does enter
into it."
He could be subtle on occasions, could Mr. Teal.
Storm wandered over to the loud-speaking telephone and examined it
curiously. Eventually he traced the flex which contacted with the
telephone plug, and disconnected it. He looked round for the
telephone proper, and, locating it, fetched it over and connected it
up.
"2 LO seems to have closed down," he remarked. "A pity--I love
listening in!"
He looked at Morini with a quizzical smile, as though expecting the
obvious rejoinder to come from that quarter; but, if this was his
hope, he was disappointed. Then he lifted the receiver and waited
with it held to his ear.
"Exchange? ... I've just been called, and I think we've been cut off.
Can you tell me where the ring came from? ... What's that? ... Are
you stone-cold certain? ... Well, pass me on to Supervisor ...
Supervisor? ... I'm Captain Arden of Criminal Investigation
Department. I want you to make absolutely certain whether any call
has been put through to this number during the last hour...." There
was a longer delay, and then he got his answer. "Thanks very much.
Good-bye."
He turned his back to the table and lounged against it, his eyes
narrowing.
"I'm told," he said, "that this number hasn't been called since this
morning. Broadcasting with an ordinary telephone is a joke I'm not
going to buy!"
Their dumbfounded faces were his answer. It was as clear as anything
ever has been that they were no more able to account for the facts
than he was. Even Morini's composure suffered a jar, and the pucker
that appeared between his eyebrows indicated that he was endeavouring
to reach an explanation.
Storm examined the wall plug, and found two insulated wires running
down the wainscot and stretching along the floor in the groove
between the ceil and the carpet. They led him halfway round the room
and then right-angled round the frame of a door. Trying the handle,
Storm found that it was locked.
"I'll have the key, please," he requested.
"We haven't got it." It was Morini who made the disclaimer. In the
absence of any acknowledged leader, he automatically answered for all.
"Explain!" Storm rapped back.
Morini shrugged.
"You want a whole lot of help, Captain," he gibed. "I thought you
were Mother's Infant Prodigy. If you don't know, I'll tell you that
door opens into a flat that's really part of this one, but the dame
who lives there's gotten very proper notions about ladyhood, and we
poor common folks aren't allowed to go in. She's just the obliging
owner who lets us use this room to talk in--there's two entrances,
and she keeps her own one private."
"What name?"
"Ask me again, Doc. We've never seen her."
Storm reached to his hip and took out a compact wallet from which he
selected a skeleton key of a type appropriate to the make of lock.
He was successful at the first attempt, and the door creaked open on
unoiled hinges.
"Look after these gay birds, Teal," he ordered, and passed into the
other flat.
He found himself in a tastefully furnished sitting-room in the
decoration of which the work of a woman's hand was evident. He only
stopped to glance behind and under the chesterfield, and then went
through the door which faced him. He arrived in a light airy double
bedroom, and here again the signs of feminine habitation were not
lacking; but this, too, was empty, though he peered under the bed and
tentatively prodded the dresses which hung in the wardrobe in quest
of a cached fugitive. He moved on to the bathroom, but discovered no
one lurking there.
After that futile search he recollected the telephone wire, and went
back to trace it. It ran around the sitting-room and disappeared
over the sill of a window. Leaning out, he saw that it hitched over
a common porcelain insulator--from which it swept off to join the
junction of other telephone wires. The result dissatisfied him, and
he tracked the wire a second time, and on this journey he found that
it was tapped very neatly, the secondary wires running under the
carpet out of sight. Without compunction he shifted all the
furniture which stood in the way, and rolled back the rugs,
disclosing twin threads that crossed the floor. Following them up,
he trailed them to a bookcase, and saw that they vanished into a hole
trimly bored in the base.
He stood up and scrutinised the shelves. One row of leather-bound
volumes struck him as being rather too good to be true, and he
essayed to open the glass-fronted door in order to make a closer
study, but found that it was fastened. Once again he had recourse to
his wallet, and after a few minutes' work with a small steel
instrument he had the case open. He now found that the row of books
was simply a range of dummy backs, which he could pull wide like a
second door, revealing a small cupboard. Within he brought to light
what he had more or less expected--a phone transmitter mounted on a
bracket, and a pair of radio headphones. These he removed, and then
pushed back the secret door and, after some difficulty, relocked the
case over it. The rest would keep; and he left the instruments on a
chair and went back into the larger sitting-room, closing the
partition door behind him.
"What're we going to do with these people?" he interrogated the
detective, and Teal spread out his hands.
"Suspected of conspiracy--Vine Street _pro tem_. We didn't hear much
of that broadcast sermon, but we did hear somebody telling 'em to
express me to a better world," he added with grim amusement.
Morini's hand went to his hip, and in answer to that movement Teal
shifted something in his hand so that the light caught it. He did
not seem to have stirred a fraction--his jaw still vacillated
mechanically, and his tired eyes showed little sign of animation.
But the fact remained that a wicked-looking Webley had flown into his
right hand and was even then focused upon the gunman.
To his concealed surprise, Morini smiled, and brought up his hand
with nothing in it more lethal than a cigarette-case.
"You're too suspicious, officer," Gat observed. "Shooting you with
Captain Arden for a witness would be foolish. No. I was just about
to point out that police stations and Flying Squad vans haven't
exactly proved to be the real original cat's pyjamas so far, have
they?"
Storm conferred aside with the detective.
"Would conspiracy to murder be a sound charge?"
"Granted it only gets two of 'em--you've got special powers, haven't
you?"
"I doubt if my special powers'd be superior to a writ of _habeas
corpus_" Storm objected.
Teal shrugged.
"It's worth trying," he said. "The only thing is, we'd have to send
'em to Pentonville right away--stations don't seem to hold 'em. Even
if we put 'em in stir straight off, I shouldn't bet on their staying
put--the Triangle might turn up with an amateur Army Corps and
besiege the jail," he added morosely, and Storm laughed.
"Pollyanna--you little ray of sunshine--shut up!"
The Triangle menace was festering to a head, and for all the
lightness of his tone he knew it. It was the season for striking
swift blows, here, there, and everywhere. From then onwards the gang
must be attacked and raided wherever and whenever the dimmest spook