Daredevil
"I can't unless you open something," Storm pointed out.
This fact hadn't occurred to Lew, and after a while the door was
moved a cautious three inches.
"T'row it out."
Storm obeyed, and the door was fully opened and the ammonia jet stuck
into his face.
"Git down--an' no rough stuff, or I'll draown yuh wit' this."
Storm got out, smiling amusedly at the apprehensive care with which
Lew trained the spray on his every movement. Storm's jaw was thrust
forward, his cigarette canted almost vertically, his lips, drawn up
at the corners, showed a gleam of white teeth. Everything functioned
exactly as per invoice. He was in the enemy's camp, and every muscle
in his body was tingling with joyous anticipation.
"Frisk 'im," snapped Mecklen.
Arden opened his arms as a habitual criminal does in the police
station, and the first taxi-driver came up and searched him. The
taxi-driver was not gentle or squeamish, for the bullet which had
zipped past his ear had alarmed him considerably, and he made what he
thought was a thorough fanning. That he found nothing was not his
fault; he even prodded Storm in the small of the back, doubtless with
memories of the Marlborough Street episode, but drew blank. Storm
had sixteen-inch biceps, and the chain mail he wore effectively
disguised the outline of his arm-holsters. At length the chauffeur
stepped back and signified that he was satisfied, but Lew did not
lower the squirt.
"Over thar--by thet cupboard," he ordered. "Start anyt'ing, an' I'll
douse yuh!"
"You're mad as a meat-axe, Lew," said Storm commiseratingly. "I want
to see the Big Triangle first. You flatter yourself! I guess I can
kill you any time."
"Yah!" sneered the gunman, and Storm winced.
"You do make vulgar noises, Lew," he protested mildly.
Mecklen leaned over the syringe he still pointed at Kit's face.
"Listen, buddy. Thet heavy date o' yores is hyar, an' yew kin tell
her ole Lew's sweet on her. We got the moll right hyar, an' she'll
never git out again."
"That's why I came," said Storm calmly.
Mecklen scowled. As we have seen, he was not a man of high
intellect, and Storm's frigid imperturbability made him uneasy. Like
the armour of assurance which enveloped Snooper Brome, it was
something which he couldn't deal with. It was as hopelessly out of
his depth as the fourth dimension. Every way of attack he tried he
came up against those invisible spikes, and bafflement filled him
with futile anger.
"I was told ter kill her, but I jest brought her home an' necked her.
Don't that make yuh feel glad?"
"Not half so glad as you'll feel when I shoot you through the stomach
instead of through the heart!"
"Last night she gimme the air, but before I'm t'rough she'll be proud
ter marry me," persisted Lew.
Storm rolled his cigarette across to the other corner of his mouth.
"Loud cheers!" he drawled. "Going to reform, are you?"
One of the chauffeurs had opened up the panel at the back of the tire
cupboard, and was standing waiting by the gap. Mecklen jerked his
head towards the tunnel.
"In wit' yuh!"
"Sure!"
But Storm paused before stooping in, for the glaring hate in the
gunman's eyes had roused in him an irresistible temptation to add a
final tab to his brief baiting of that unlovable murderer.
"You know, Lew," he murmured affably, "every day and in every way you
grow more and more like an overfed dog-louse!"
Then he entered the passage, and as he went Mecklen landed out a
vicious kick. Storm never stopped or looked round. Mecklen would
keep a little longer. Kissed Susan, had he? Arden reckoned that
that kiss would turn out to be the most expensive one in Lew's
amorous career. As for the kick, that would only add extra zest to
the extraction of due payment. Lew's shins were within easy reach of
a smart backward hack, but Storm deemed it inadvisable to court a
fresh shower of ammonia, for he knew he would need all his faculties
to be at concert pitch during the next hour or two, and his eyes were
still twinging from the effects of the first dose he had received.
They emerged into the cellars, and one chauffeur led the way to the
stairs. Halfway across, Storm's foot brushed against something which
went rattling across the stone floor, so that Lew and the other man
pulled up with a start.
"Only a mouse," said Storm genially. "I'll hold your hands if you're
scared."
"What was it?" demanded Mecklen sharply.
He was peering around fearfully, and presently he saw what had made
the noise--a fountain pen heavily encrusted with gold work. He
picked it up and looked at it suspiciously.
"Thet yores, Arden?"
"Oh, yes," said Storm boredly. "Combination turnip-slicer,
gramophone, trouser-press and portable aeroplane."
He reached out a hand for it, but Mecklen thrust the pen into a
pocket and pushed him away.
"Keep movin'," he growled. "Funny, ain't yuh? Mebbe yew'll be sick
presently."
"I shall if I see much more of you," remarked Storm crudely.
"One day," threatened Lew sullenly, "I'm gonna make yuh wish yew'd
never bin born. Yew flap yore mouth too much. I'm gonna----"
"I'll be there," yawned Storm, and Mecklen relapsed into a pugnacious
silence.
As Storm climbed the steps an odd, dancing, metallic laughter
glittered in his grey eyes. That fountain pen had given an entirely
new twist to the situation, and as yet he was unable to gauge whether
the twist was going to be big or small. For Storm knew and had
recognised the ornate filigree with which the pen was embellished,
and he wondered what business James Norman Mattock might have in
Buckingham Gate that morning.
CHAPTER XXVI
SECONDS OUT OF THE RING
"Believe we've met before, Captain Arden," said the Apex. "Somehow I
can't get into the way of calling you Kit."
"Don't bother to try," advised Storm. "Somehow, I can't get into the
way of calling you father."
Ezra Surcon sat down again on his throne, taking in every detail of
Storm's appearance with a keenly appreciative eye. It was a strange
meeting between father and son, that. Family love is mostly a matter
of long proximity, and there had been none of that between those two.
No affection was in their clashing glances--Storm's interrogating,
half-mirthful, accusing, dangerous, assured, level; Surcon's full of
frank admiration blended with a trace of fear. Neither hate nor love
was in the air, yet the atmosphere bristled with something far more
potent. Circumstances had thrown them together to do battle on
opposite sides of the law; battle to the death, fought out with words
alone right up to the final _mêlée_--surely the strangest encounter
in the annals of crime.
"You're like your mother, son," said Surcon slowly. "You've got that
cornfield Saxon hair of hers, and her eyes. And yet you're _me_....
I used to stand up that way, once--that proud, reckless way...."
There was a short silence, while Storm met his father's gaze
inscrutably, and Morini propped the door, an automatic swinging
unobtrusively in one hand. "You're clever--like I am," said Surcon.
"You found me--probably nobody else could have."
"Yeh!" agreed Storm. "But you're like Lew--you flatter yourself.
You weren't so very difficult, although I grant you--every
time--there was a lot of luck in it. And now the game's up. I've
got you. What're you going to do about it?"
Surcon raised his eyebrows.
"Do about it?" he repeated.
"You said it! You're right where I want you. Hear me! I'll tell
you a home truth you missed through not bringing me up yourself
instead of slinging me into a workhouse when my mother died. And
that home truth is that there's one big wad of conceit swollen up
above your ears, which same has just landed you in the fishiest
kettle of fish you ever dived into in your sweet life! You think
you're sitting on several square miles of velvet. You've got me,
you've got Miss Hawthorne, and you figure it out you've got every
card in the pack neatly stacked up in your own private mitt. Guess
again! Maybe you think I'm bluffing. Guess twice more! I never put
up a bluff unless I've got an even chance of pulling out if it's
called. That applies now. Scotland Yard have got your little
dossier nicely tied up in pink ribbon, just waiting to travel along
to the Public Prosecutor. And d'you know where you'll be when that
dossier makes its speech? On the drop, Big Triangle, plumb on the
drop! It's all sealed up, because just now this game happens to be a
private one, and I don't want any policemen sitting in if I can help
it. But if I don't rock into Scotland Yard by midnight--the witching
hour!--the seals'll be broken, and that means the hangman'll be
earning big money about eight weeks later. Which prison'd you fancy?
Pentonville--Wormwood Scrubs--Holloway--Brixton? ... I expect it
could be arranged."
Surcon stared as though he could not believe his ears. Here was his
prisoner talking calmly about executions, and all the minor troubles
that were coming to the Big Triangle, when all the time Morini had
the bead on him, and would use it at a word! And, in spite of their
terse, slangy phraseology, Storm's words carried conviction in every
ice-flecked syllable.
"When I say I know everything, I'm understanding the case," Storm
went on. "God Himself couldn't raise a longer charge sheet than I'm
going to hand out to you right now. We'll take it in tabloids. All
clear? Then I'll shoot. One: I know all about your treble life and
your fake deaths. I know the beaver who was hoicked out of the
Thames last night was no more Oscar Raegenssen than he was the King
of England. There never was an Oscar Raegenssen--except you in fancy
dress! I've proved that, and there's a little _billet-doux_ from the
Home Office pathologist himself to prove it twice over. Not to
mention Miss Hawthorne's little piece. I know why you loved that tin
can you called a safe in your office--I've slid out the shelves and
opened up the dinkiest little cubby-hole any crook could want for a
lie-low. Why, I've even got your photographs in your two side-line
costumes. Olaf the Seabird, complete with false beard, comes into
the picture gallery. Just to show you there's no ill-feeling, I'll
give you a free tip which I'm afraid you'll never have a chance of
using. Here it is. If you must disguise yourself like a
dime-novelette detective, never get in the way of an auto. You're
liable to be knocked silly, and then you forget to fake up your
voice--suppose anyone's snooping around who knows both of you, that
kind of lets a whole menagerie of cats out of your bag."
"I'm glad you allowed the element of luck," remarked Surcon
ironically, although a certain tenseness in his voice spoilt the
effect.
Storm flicked some ash from his cigarette.
"Share and share alike! If I was lucky in that, you were the most
doggone lucky crook that ever went on a jag. Suppose the man
detailed to look after your mischief had been anyone but me? Think
he'd've let you go off smiling? You get a third free guess! Only I
don't like my relatives being pushed through traps in execution
sheds--it's rotten bad for the health of the genealogical tree.
Besides, the papers'd make such a song about it. _Apex Caught By His
Son.... Captain Arden, Police Hero, Gets Father's Death Warrant_....
Thanks all the same, but I don't laugh at jokes like that!"
"And what is your alternative?"
"You'll hear that all in good time," said Storm. "Wait till I've
finished my speech, and don't interrupt. It's rude. Right! Item
Two: I know exactly why you sent your cheap Bowery lead-slingers
clinking for the men you did. I know why Cardan was killed, and
Marker nearly, just like I know why Hannassay died. Why, I've seen