Daredevil
plate glass less transparent than you! The amazing, everlasting,
all-fired and brass-bound miracle is that even a mutt like old fat
Teal didn't have the bracelets on you days and weeks ago. I could've
done it; except that, as I've explained, it'd've been embarrassingly
public. A day or two late, you decided it was time one of your
incarnations faded out, and you got away with it. You kidded Teal,
but you'd have to put up a bit of whole cloth big enough to cover the
world before you got me guessing! And I think that tots up to about
_that_. You never did anything particularly mysterious. I saw you
stick up Moraine's, and all the world knows how you wangled the
getaway from Marlborough Street Police Station. That was smart, I'll
say. But it didn't matter. A few little fish don't matter when
there's a whacking great whale jumping round the net. And that net
is now blocked in with sheet iron and reënforced concrete tough
enough to hold even you! D'you doubt me--d'you think I'm bluffing
still--or shall I fire off another tankful?"
Surcon said nothing. As Storm's staccato sentences shot out their
deadly burden, the Apex had receded further and further into his
throne, his jaw thrust out, his pale blue eyes gleaming like
pin-points of azure flame, his whole crouching position resembling
the compression of a wild animal about to spring. A crackling
electricity had oozed into the air. The trace of uneasiness which
had been in Surcon's eyes from the first had grown now into a raging
devil of fear, with hate, desperation, and fury leaping in to join
forces with it and bolster up its fundamental weakness. Storm's
gun-metal grey eyes, drilling without a waver into his father's blue
ones, were hard and pitiless.
"The Roman father is an old _cliché_," continued Storm's quiet, even,
compelling voice--quiet enough it was in actual physical fact, but
the explosive, dominating exclamation marks stabbed everywhere,
relentlessly, through the superficial placidity. "But I'm on the
road with a new line of goods: the Roman son! You can't expect mercy
from me. If you do, you're wasting good day-dreams. You've killed
men. One man you killed with your own hands, so Prester John told
me, and I'm inclined to believe him. Loonies--conceited
loonies--like you, don't take much stock of a human life or two when
their own hides are in danger of being tanned. I've killed men, too,
but not to salve my head-swelling. Because you're a murderer you've
got to die. That's the law, and in your particular case I think it's
a damned sound law. So sound that I'm here to supervise, personally,
the carrying out of the sentence. Maybe you thought you were one
hell of a bright boy catching me first shot with that taxi gambit.
Your fourth guess! A babe in arms 'd've seen that springe. It stuck
out ten miles! I let myself be roped because I didn't know where to
find you, and finding you happened to be the most important act in
the play. You thought you'd got a sucker, and now you've got to get
it into the ivory over your ears that I'm a red-hot Tartar. I'm out
gunning for Triangles! Once you're off the map I'm going to bounce
Lew, and anyone else who horns in on the bouncing 'll get a free
passage to Hell along with him. Lew won't be the only one. I guess
the world can muddle along well enough without Gat either, for that
matter, and there're a few others who'll share the same cemetery."
Morini himself was erect now, and the finger which crooked round the
hair-trigger of his automatic quivered eagerly. His baby blue eyes
were cold. A man of good education and more than average
intelligence, he was able to judge exactly how risky every second of
Storm's continued life was. Morini wasn't fool enough to mistake
case-hardened facts for an empty bluff.
"Say the word, Chief," he grated. "You can't keep him now. He knows
too much. If he gets away we're all done, and he's so slippery you
can't guarantee to hold him till he's dead."
"Yeh! You Gat!" Storm swung round. "Shoot and then get measured
for a coffin! You poor damned goop! Haven't you got it into your
bony coconut yet that I wouldn't have come rubing into this party
without being sure I was going out again O.K.? I've told the
Assistant Commissioner that if I'm not back in his office by twelve
to-night he's to open the envelope I've given him and act on what he
finds in it. By eight o'clock this morning there was a watch on
every port in England. An armed watch, Gat, with photographs and
descriptions of every big fish in the Triangle pond. You're on that
list! And you're not a Big Triangle--you'd want more savvy than
you're ever likely to have before you could disguise yourself so's
they wouldn't recognise you. Take it from uncle! Try not to be a
worse oaf than God made you, for the love of Mike! Hear me! This is
the way you get out of the mulligatawny. Make your boss see the
game's up. Once he's gone you stand a chance of staying. Without
him there'd be no Triangle. It takes a porky slab of hot dog like
he's got to run a bucket shop as big as this. And once there's no
Triangle I might feel kinder and more loving towards my fellow-men.
Which I don't mind telling you I don't at this moment. You've got a
gun. Take your choice. Certain death or an even chance!"
Then Storm turned his back on the gunman, as though he were never in
doubt of the alternative that gentleman would select, and faced
Surcon once more.
"Suppose you kill me," he rapped out, "Teal'll get you--sure! Maybe
you'd like to hear exactly what evidence Teal's got to hang you with?
Well, take it in pills again. One: he knows now you're Oscar
Raegenssen. Two: I've left him data enough to prove you're Snooper
Brome too! Chew that bullet, sweetheart!"
Surcon half-rose from his chair, white to the lips. That was a shot
he had never expected to hear blazed at him. The one secret he had
thought he had held even against Storm's acumen had been flourished
as certain knowledge with a calm assurance which staggered him. It
was uncanny. Yet he did not lose hold of practical thought. Almost
in the same flash his brain had seen and seized upon the only way of
escape which now lay open to him, and already he was whizzing it
through his imagination, moulding and developing it.
"That gave you a jolt, I'll bet!" Storm continued. "I guessed when I
saw you in Raegenssen's house the night I burgled it. I was sure
when I found you were the man who'd raked Mattock and Joan Sands into
the Triangle. Gosh! you're so easy, I wonder you've got this far!
Right. Let's get on. Three: given the first two scoops I've
mentioned they can prove you were the man who directed the sticking
up of Moraine's. Four: they won't be bothered much with proving you
ordered Miss Hawthorne to be killed by Morini after she'd seen you
that night in Hamilton Place and your Raegenssen costume. Five:
Raegenssen was the registered owner of the Billingsgate sawmill. Bad
break of yours, by the way, forgetting to sign the Deed of Sale in
the Raegenssen handwriting. I suppose you bought the place before
you'd fixed up what handwriting Oscar was to have. Six: Prester
John's evidence that you murdered, with typhus bugs, a man who wanted
to know too much about you. Seven: having proved you _are_ the Big
Triangle, you're therefore responsible for the deaths of several
people in the Piccadilly Circus beanfeast. I guess that little
bunch'll weigh heavy enough in the scales to send you to Hell
express, as soon as they can get you convicted and string you up.
Now crow!"
Storm paused and reached for his cigarette case. He gave one glance
at Morini, and saw that the gunman was leaning against the door again
with his automatic directed straight at his, Storm's, heart.
Storm lighted a cigarette and splintered the match between his
fingers, watching Surcon intently for every sign of the effect his
incisive sentences had had. Surcon's head was bent forward, so that
he looked at Storm from under the rim of his prominent brows.
"Understand me?" asked Storm softly. "Got that little mouthful under
your hat? Is it walking around squeaking at you? ... It's your cue.
Do you kill me and Miss Hawthorne--and hang? Do you lock us up and
try making a bolt for it--and hang? Or do you walk out into the next
room and shoot yourself without any fuss? Once upon a time your
family name must've meant something to you. D'you want the initials
on a prison wall, just over an inconspicuous grave, and your own life
history minutely recorded in every book on crime that's written from
now onwards? Or have you got a spark of decency left in you? Have
you got guts enough to stay dead like a gentleman? It's your shout.
Pay up, and nobody'll ever see the bill. Don't square it my way, and
you go to Tophet through a mud bath."
It seemed for a moment as if Surcon was searching his son's face for
any trace of relenting, but Storm's features were set in a granite,
ruthless, inexorable mask. And then the burning rage crept back into
Surcon's eyes.
"Are you much better than a parricide?" demanded Surcon fiercely,
literally shaking with passion. "Isn't your idea just to shelve the
responsibility for the act--and be the cause of it just the same?"
"Put it that way, if you like," returned Storm icily. "It happens to
satisfy what conscience I've got. And since I hold the whip hand,
what I say goes!"
The effrontery of his manner passed over the heads of his hearers.
They were becoming inured to it. His crisp, self-possessed manner
had ladled them out such a succession of incredible blows that their
senses were growing numb. He coolly usurped the position of
dictator, when all the time he was at their mercy--domineered,
bullied, insulted, mocked them until their wrath towered over him in
great boiling waves. And through it all he smiled serenely, punching
home the facts he had to deliver with the efficient force of a
piledriver. He didn't play his part as by rights an unarmed prisoner
should have played it--didn't give a hoot for the superiority of
their position--didn't give a damn for their spleen. One might have
thought he had the entire British Army drawn up in a hollow square
round the house in Buckingham Gate, just waiting to rush in if
anybody started rough-housing. Storm was his nickname, and now they
had some idea how he had earned it. He was Storm. It didn't count
with him that several unpleasantly large hornet's nests were jazzing
round his ears. He played out his lone hand with a blithe confidence
they couldn't cope with.
And he had got under Morini's skin.
"You've got to give him his, Chief," snapped Gat. "He said the
instructions to the bulls won't be opened till midnight--that gives
us more than twelve hours to make our getaway. We can go down to one
of the Channel seaside places and go off in small boats. We ought to
be able to make the French coast. It's risky, but it's been done
before. He may be your son, but you needn't see him shot. I'll do
it. You can't cling on to that stunt of locking him away--he knows
too much."
"You said it!" murmured Storm. "And I know a whole lot more than
I've spilled this morning. Shall I go on? If you'd like another
dose, you're welcome! You moron! Hear me, Gat! Don't you think I'd
seen that getaway scheme years before it ever penetrated your maggoty
skull? Keep on hoping! Why, you cheap C3 cretin, by this time the
whole Channel Squadron and the North Sea Fleet are ranging up and
down looking for just such an easy getaway. Think again, Gat, and
think fast!"
"I'll give you my answer, Captain Arden," said Surcon. "Morini,
bring Miss Hawthorne here."
As the door closed, Storm sized up his father. Surcon seemed to bulk