Daredevil
"Do you think I was the speaker?"
"I don't," said Storm. "For one thing, the voice I heard was too
deep for the best woman mimic on earth to have produced. For
another, you hadn't a key--you had to ring for us to let you in. Why
did you come back if you knew Jimmy was away? Who was going to let
you in?"
"I forgot I hadn't a key. Jimmy lost his the other day, and as I was
going away I left him mine. He was going to have another key cut."
"Uh-huh. Rather absent-minded of you! What'd you have done--slept
on the doorstep?"
She pulled off her hat and shook out her hair. Walking over to a
side table, she helped herself to a cigarette from a silver box. She
turned round with the lighted match in her hand.
"My God--are you _still_ here?" she exclaimed.
"That's real Mattock," Teal said, addressing Storm. "He tried that
on me the other day."
"I'm sorry--we are," said Storm. "Now hear me, Joan! Who else had
keys besides you and Jimmy?"
"No one that I know of."
Storm took a promenade up and down the room. She had rested against
the table, and he stopped in front of her, eyeing her steadily and
forcing her to meet his gaze. He said nothing, simply riveted her
with that thoughtful stare. And he saw that tense silence rasp her
nerves--saw her go a little paler under the paint and powder, and saw
the quick straining heave of her bosom. Saw her mouth twitch ever so
slightly, and saw the reflex, spasmodic jerk of her hand.
He smashed through her barricade of haughtiness by the sheer
relentless battering of his will, and at last she turned her head
away with a short shaky laugh and put a little distance between them,
placing herself on the opposite side of the table as though to break
away from that intangible attack.
"I hate talking like a detective story," Kit Arden said slowly,
"but--if you've told me the truth--it looks ... bad ... for Jimmy,
doesn't it?"
The blow that her intuition had sensed, namelessly and without logic,
had fallen. He saw her wince and grip the edge of the table for
support.
"I don't ... understand..."
"I'm sorry." Storm relaxed. The bombardment was lifted. His smile
was as light and care-free as if there had never been an Alpha
Triangle mentioned in that room. "That's all there is to be said,
then. Except that I'll ask you to pass on to Jimmy the advice I gave
Blaythwayt just before you came in. And that advice is, let up!
Play with fire if you must get a kick out of life, but never do
acrobatics on the chute of a blast furnace!... We'll move along
now--I expect you're tired."
Blaythwayt, squirming and panting for relief from those taut
surroundings into which he had stumbled, was in the van of that
withdrawal. He made for the door as a scared rabbit scuttles to its
burrow. Inspector Teal, more phlegmatically constituted, followed
him with less speed and more self-possession.
Kit was the last to go, and he stayed behind for half a minute. He
went up to Joan and held out his hand. She looked up at his face in
uncomprehending surprise, and saw that the hard lines had gone and
the flinty glitter was no longer in his eyes.
She put her hand in his, and he gave it a little squeeze.
"Kid," he said, "there's a lot of good in you. And one hell of a big
brick of courage. I won't preach--I know you'd hate that. But you
know what I mean."
How infinitely sweet and gentle his voice could be!
"I am sorry--honest!" said Storm. "But there's quite a way to go
between saying you're sorry and coming round with a wreath. In a
very few days the Triangle's going to smash, and you don't want to be
part of the bang. So don't be silly. Get Jimmy away.... Good luck!"
From the doorway she watched him stride down the corridor. She was
conscious of a vague, indescribable feeling deep within her.
Something that troubled her, that she could not understand and yet
was on the brink of understanding, seemed to have awakened against
her volition. Something pleasant and yet rather frightening.
Something that kindled up with the promise of a sweeping flame ...
something that had died, was reborn.
"Captain Arden!" she called, and he stopped.
"Hullo?"
"Captain Arden." Her speech was a little faltering, a little
tremulous. "You--you're the only busy I've ever met who was--pure
white--all the way through."
He smiled and waved his hand cheerily; and then he turned to the
stairs and ran down.
He found Teal and Blaythwayt waiting for him in the street, and the
detective had his friend's arm in an ominously professional grip.
"Joe and me," said Teal, oblivious of grammar, "is going to have
words!"
"I hope you won't be rude to each other!" said Storm piously.
They walked down Piccadilly together, and they had almost reached
Burlington House when all three of them saw an amazing sight.
Down in Piccadilly Circus, where the statue of Eros once stood, there
flickered into being for an instant a terrific blinding blaze of
violet light. It seemed to lurch up from the roadway in one colossal
wave of whirling, jagged, eye-tormenting luminance--a Cyclopean flood
of flaring amethyst which stunned vision and paralysed the brain. In
a thousandth of a second it was gone, splintering into a star-searing
burst of intolerable dazzling white radiance shot with zigzagging
streaks of orange fire. And right in the flash of that fearful
disintegration came a shattering, detonating thunder that rocked the
very earth under their feet and pounded and pulverised the senses
into an agony of quivering helplessness. And then, on the heels of
the awful reverberation, followed a mighty rushing wind which reeled
them out of all equilibrium and hurled them dazed and breathless to
the ground.
CHAPTER XX
MECKLEN IS DISOBEDIENT
On a hot summer night the library of Terry Mannering's house in Brook
Street was a cool alluring room.
Susan sat there, cosily stretched out in a deep armchair placed by an
open window. At the big centre table Terry was engaged in the
arduous task of selecting the probable winner of the St. Leger; and a
litter of sporting journals, both pink and white, a much-thumbed copy
of _Racing Up-to-Date_, an open volume of Ruff's _Guide to the Turf_,
and sheets upon sheets of notepaper covered with abstruse
calculations involving such weird factors as weights, lengths and
seconds--testified to his earnestness. His wife was sewing in the
chair opposite Susan. At times Terry would sit up abruptly and
explode into a concentrated malignant malediction upon every
congenital imbecile who ever had, ever did, or ever intended to essay
the unravelling of equine form; at other moments he would lean back
with a resigned look of martyrdom on his face, heave a long sigh, and
offer a fervent prayer to be caught up to heaven in a fiery chariot
before he reached the stage of dementia where it would be necessary
for him to be hailed to a lunatic asylum--which anguished
vociferations only served to convulse his audience with unsympathetic
hilarity.
Susan had been trying to read, but her mind refused to converge on
the printed word. It kept straggling off into other channels, and
she would recall herself with a start to find she had skimmed through
half a dozen pages without taking in the meaning of a single line.
At length this continual absentmindedness forced her to admit that
the effort of literary assimilation was, for that evening at least, a
hopeless failure. She looked at her watch. It was nearing
midnight--in spite of her abstraction, the time had flown past
unnoticed--yet she felt in no mood for sleep. Following another
outbreak of blood-curdling fulmination from Terry, she laid her book
down on her knees, clasped her hands behind her head, and decided to
give her imagination the rein it was straining for.
Her thoughts sped instantly to Storm. She strove to picture him in
her mind's eye, and discovered to her surprise that she could form
only the vaguest possible image. Little mannerisms of his, his
swinging gait, snatches of his staccato conversation, vivid
expressions he had invented--these were all the material she found to
her hand. The complete design eluded her. Even the attempt to
visualise his face resulted only in a mental blur. Being no
psychologist, this disability irritated and puzzled her.
But at least she could remember nearly every word of their exchange
that afternoon, and a soft smile curved her lips. Yes, she loved
him--loved him with all her heart and every atom of her being....
But her smile was not of motherly affection. (God help the man who
inspires that watery form of love!) It was a smile of pride, of
clean, wholesome, exuberant joy that he was hers and she his. He was
so fine, so sunny, so eminently sane and vital, so masterful--and yet
without any artificial, self-conscious, diluted, drawing-room,
flapper-thrilling, synthetic-cavemanishness about him--so dynamic, so
fresh and savoury--both intellectually and physically.... And she
was going to marry him. That pride she felt whenever she was with
him was to be hers always....
And so, after moments of delicious day-dreaming, her fantasy carried
her reluctantly to his immediate work--the Alpha Triangle. When
would the menace of that dread organisation be lifted from the city?
What was the secret of the Apex, that secret which if broadcast would
mean the lightening of the shadow which loomed over London--the
secret to preserve which the Apex was prepared for murder? The
thought recalled to her his threat to have her arrested unless she
married him that day. She had believed at first that he was joking.
The idea was too preposterous.... And yet, was anything preposterous
in those days, when a gang of killers such as one expects to
encounter only in the pages of the sensational novelist were trying
to blackmail the Centre of the World to the tune of fifteen million
pounds sterling--and were, moreover, almost daily giving convincing
evidence of their mercilessness and their ability to carry out every
threat they made? But why arrest her? The answer was easy: that she
might be more efficiently guarded than she could be in a private
house. And the alternative, marriage to Storm, would make her nearly
as secure. But the day he had given her for making up her mind had
gone by, and she had not married him--he had left the choice open to
her as if he expected her to ring him up and say: "Kit, old man, I've
changed my mind. D'you think you could spare the time to drop into a
registry office with me this afternoon?" Everything that was
romantic in her revolted from the cold-bloodedness of the idea. It
was unthinkable, and yet there had been a substratum of seriousness
underlying his light tone. What was the second condition? "_If a
certain gentleman now in custody escapes..._" Of course--but no;
even that didn't exceed the bounds of possibility, when already the
Triangle had rescued thirteen of its members from the Flying Squad
van in which they were being hustled to a police station. Who was
this man who might escape? And what was his particular importance?
She had no data for the solution of that problem, and branched from
it on to another tack.
Why should she be in danger at all, from any member of the Triangle?
What did she know, or what had she had the chance of deducing, which
might imperil the secret of the Apex? Here at least she had a little
knowledge to train on the question. She knew some people who were
connected with the mystery: Lord Hannassay, Mattock, Raegenssen,
and--Uncle Joe. The inclusion of her uncle amused her; but she left
him in the list because he had received one of the Triangle cards.
Now, what did she know about each? She took them one by one. Lord