Daredevil
And I, Christopher Arden, of Albany, W.1, having been present during
the operations specified above, do hereby affirm and support the
statements of the above-named witnesses.
(Signed)
CHRISTOPHER ARDEN, Capt.
"That's simply for the official record," Storm said as he blotted his
signature. "I want a copy for my own use, also signed by all of you."
When the facsimile had been made out and witnessed, he went back to
make a fresh inspection of the clothes that had been taken from
Raegenssen's body. This time he made an interesting discovery, for a
more careful search of the coat revealed that there were some papers
sewn into the lining. Storm slit the silk with his penknife and drew
them out--four photographs.
For a while he stared at them, standing as if he were carven out of
granite. Every face that was there he knew, and the realisation that
he had stumbled upon the last secret of the Alpha Triangle thundered
through his head like the roar of a cataract.
"Je-rusalem!" he breathed.
At one stroke all the handicaps that had been piling up ever since
the disappearance of Raegenssen, and that had culminated in the
Piccadilly explosion that night, were swept away. Just by that one
slip. The body which lay stiffly stretched out on the stone slab was
not Raegenssen--was not even the man who had impersonated
Raegenssen--but it was simply the corpse of an unknown man of similar
height and build, and similarly bearded, with his hair and beard
bleached to the likeness of Raegenssen's Viking crop and Raegenssen's
clothes upon him to assist the identification which the terrible
mutilation of the features prevented. And, in putting his clothes
upon his substitute corpse, Raegenssen must have overlooked those
photographs stitched for safety into the lining. For the third
photograph was the face of a man whom Storm knew well by sight, and
had also known to be associated with the Triangle--but never had he
dreamed that that man was none other than the Triangle himself! The
other two--and Raegenssen was one of them--were mere effigies,
shadows, puppets that danced to the bidding of the Apex and served to
screen his own importance; but the third man was the Apex, the
keystone upon which the whole edifice depended....
Storm became aware that someone was breathing down his neck, and
swung round sharply. It was Joe Blaythwayt, his cherubic pink face
gone livid, his baby blue eyes almost popping out of his head.
Storm stepped pointedly away from the banker, and a crestfallen Joe
resumed the nibbling of his umbrella handle. Kit put the three
photographs together and buttoned them into the safety pocket on the
inside of his waistcoat; and as he did so the fourth fell from his
hand.
Teal picked it up and glanced at it before restoring it to his chief.
It was the picture of a girl of about twenty, and even the hideous
Victorian high-necked, leg-o'-mutton-sleeved blouse she wore and the
ugly, old-fashioned arrangement of her fair hair could not disguise
her striking loveliness. Even the impassive detective drew in his
breath with a quick hiss of admiration. And then Storm gently took
the print from him and put it away in his wallet.
"Who was that?" asked Teal.
Kit looked him straight in the eyes.
"That," he said evenly, "was Sylvia Mattock--my mother!"
CHAPTER XXII
STORM GOES GUNNING
It was not until they were about to leave the Thames Police Station
that the absence of Blaythwayt was noticed. The little man, after
being detected in the act of prying over Storm's shoulder, had faded
self-consciously into the background; and, from that obscure
retirement, he seemed to have sunk through the floor or dissipated
into air. Certainly he had subsided completely out of the tableau,
and Teal scratched his head in perplexity; for it was not to be
expected that Joe, having at last succeeded in getting his nose on to
an official scent, would make for home and a comfortable bed with a
feeling of sensatory repletion. There is no bloodhound so hot and
indefatigable on a trail as your enthusiastic amateur, whether he be
a collector of postage-stamps or particularly gory murders, and the
evanescence of Uncle Joe in those circumstances was provocative of
thought.
"I only hope the little goop hasn't gone off to try and pinch the
Apex himself," said Teal gloomily; but, knowing the sensational
leanings of his friend, he was none too easy in his mind on that
score.
No one was to know that, even as Teal voiced his prayer, an asthmatic
and flustered Joe Blaythwayt was panting out instructions to a
taxi-driver and scrambling into the cab to be driven swiftly
westwards....
"Never mind Uncle Joe," advised Storm. "I guess he'll keep--and he's
old enough to be loosed off without a chaperon."
They saw Malleson off in a taxi, and then hailed a second cab for
themselves. Storm, nearly worn out, was making for the Albany and a
long overdue rest; and Teal, beguiled by the promise of a strong
nightcap, accompanied him. They hardly spoke on the drive back, for
each was busy with his own thoughts. Teal's, it may be said, mostly
ended in question marks, but nevertheless the detective had acquired
a number of facts that night which opened up a maze of speculations
and startling possibilities. As for Storm, he was wondering vaguely
if he would get any sleep at all from then on until the Triangle had
ceased to be--so far-reaching were the results of his investigations
over the last two hours. His head still throbbed painfully from the
concussion of the Piccadilly Circus explosion, but his mind had taken
unto itself a new lease of energy. Everything had clarified
suddenly, partly through the stimulus of those four photographs,
partly because excessive weariness was already entering upon a
reaction--that reaction which takes one to a quality approaching
brilliance, when the whole body has become so tired that there are no
restraints whatever upon the heights which may be attained by the
feverishly soaring brain; a reaction which is very short and
transitory, and which is followed by a long period of even greater
lassitude than that which led up to it.
The taxi stopped in Piccadilly outside Albany Court Yard, and they
got out. Storm paid off the driver, and, as the cab drove off, went
after Teal, who had gone on ahead.
Teal was at the foot of the Albany steps, and Storm was well inside
the Court, before either of them noticed an extraordinary thing. It
was very dark, for the electric light mains had been wrecked by the
land mine, and one almost had to grope one's way along, foot by foot.
And then the moon came out from behind a bank of cloud and drenched
everything under its eye in a flood of nebulous silver light, and
Storm yelled a warning to Teal which made that slothful man spin
round with the agility of an antelope.
_The deep shadows cast by the three walls of the Court were alive
with men!_
Teal took in the situation at a glance. In a fraction of a second he
had leapt up the steps, obeying Storm's shouted command, and as he
sprang he jerked his automatic from his pocket. In those days, Storm
did not rely upon one gun--he carried two, and both of them were in
his hands now.
The promise of action had driven the last vestige of sluggishness
from Arden's brain, and almost without conscious thought he had
remembered the words of the Era advertisement and the orders of the
Apex given over the loud-speaking telephone that night. Teal was to
be killed, and he, Storm, was merely to be captured. Therefore Storm
had roared to Teal to make for cover and not stop to give battle; and
Teal, being a law-enforcing machine whose first instinct was
obedience, had obeyed automatically before he even grasped the
significance of the order.
_Crack!... Crack!..._
The enemy fired the first shots, and the din double-echoed resonantly
in the confined space. Storm retaliated with one gun at each of the
two flashes he saw, and a yelp of pain told him that at least one of
his bullets had found asylum. Teal had halted at the top of the
steps, and his gun blazed back at a third flash which barked in the
echo of Storm's twin reprisal. By then, the detective's intelligence
had made itself heard above the commands of discipline, and Teal was
not the man to run away from a fight to save his precious skin and
leave another man to face the music.
Teal's stance was simply asking for trouble. He stood exactly in the
right place for the moonshine to pick him out as a beautifully
illuminated target. Storm saw the danger and yelled another order as
he raced across to join the detective. But the smell of battle and
the sight of those sinister shadows closing in upon his chief had
made Teal go pig-headed, and he stood his ground obstinately.
In Piccadilly a police whistle screamed.
Teal fired again into the murky shapes which rushed upon Storm from
all directions. And then one of the shapes turned its course and
shot back twice at the detective. Storm saw Teal stagger and go down.
An instant later Storm himself had other things to think of.
There must have been fully thirty men lying in ambush along those
treacherous patches of blackness. The odds were hopeless. When he
started running, Storm had been making for the Albany entrance; but
there had been men hidden in the darkness on either side of the
steps, and now these barred his way and their fellows hemmed his
retreat via Albany Court Yard. There was only one horse to back.
The fact that all the shooting had been aimed at Teal seemed to
indicate that the order not to kill Kit still applied. Storm's only
chance, then, was to bank on the men obeying orders and try to put
the fear of God into them with merciless gunning from his own
quarter. Storm took that chance. His two automatics rattled like
machine-gun fire, and he saw one after another of the men in front of
him go down before that leaden scythe until he had cut a lane through
the blockade. Others were already closing in to fill the places of
the fallen, but, running like a sprint champion, there might be a
thin hope of breaking through before they could take up position.
What Storm hadn't--couldn't have--allowed for was the fact that there
must always be men behind him. Therefore he didn't see the arms of
the two men behind him swing up, didn't see the two skilfully-thrown
sandbags hurtle through the air--only felt the dull, sickening impact
of something heavy and yet yielding upon the back of his neck, before
he crashed to the ground and everything vanished in a whirling
infinity of blackness....
He came to on a sofa, with his head throbbing horribly, and his first
surprise was to find that he was in his own flat. The second was the
presence of a man he knew, who was binding up an ugly wound in Teal's
shoulder.
"Terry!" called Storm. "How did you get here?"
Terry Mannering looked up and smiled, but the haggardness of that
ordinarily cheerful young man made the grin unconvincing.
"That's all right, brother. You sit tight for a bit and get the bump
off your cranium. Havin' a solid ivory skull, you're still livin'
when by all rights you ought to be dead--in a large experience of
sandbaggin' and divers kindred sports, I may say I've never----"
"Cut out the bedside manner, Terry, for the love of Mud!" snarled
Storm weakly. "What's happened?"
He tried to sit up, and had to make several attempts before he could
overcome the sick giddiness that the effort caused. Terry went on
bandaging Teal, and tried to infuse flippancy into his tone as he
gave the account.
"Havin' missed our tame policeman," he said, "the Triangle coves had
rather come a mucker. Far as we can make out, the idea was to pip