Daredevil
hand went groping for Kennedy's fingers. "Joan ... Joan ... Birdie's
goin'.... Never was much use to yer ... But yer ... all ... right
... _Joan!_ ... It's cold.... Kiss me...."
"We'll get in through the mews--most of these old houses have back
entrances that way," said Teal.
Unostentatiously a cordon had ringed round the gaunt, sinister house
in Buckingham Gate, and the mews behind was thronged with armed men
whose rubber-soled shoes had made no sound on the cobbles. Bill
Kennedy was in charge of the men in Buckingham Gate itself, and Teal
was left to direct the opening of the attack.
A minute study of the tire tracks showed that, although there were
six lock-ups along the west side of the mews, all the cars which had
recently passed in and out of the garage had entered and left by one
particular door. Teal made a careful examination of the lock, and
also tested the resistance to a steady, cautious push.
"One bar across the centre," was his expert verdict.
Then he drew up his men and gave them their instructions. There was
an odd furtiveness about the proceedings--the thirty men mustered in
the mews might have been conspirators meeting at dead of night to
hatch some nefarious plot, instead of burly, stolid plain-clothes men
with nothing more sensational about them than the police automatic
and truncheons with which they were armed. Even Teal, an unemotional
law-enforcing machine, found himself speaking in hushed tones,
although their danger lay far more in being seen than in being
overheard. Nevertheless, all the men were pressed close up against
the garage doors on the west side, to minimise the risk of being
observed by anyone who chanced to look out of one of the upper
windows.
"... And if any perishing sinner falls over his own feet this time,
like one adjective noun did in Billingsgate not so long ago," Mr.
Teal concluded, with whole seas of incandescent vitriol bubbling up
in his measured delivery, "I promise him he won't only wish he'd
never been born--he'll pray that there's no such thing as
reincarnation, when I've finished with him!"
With which horrific prognostication Mr. Teal moved off to take up his
position.
He glanced round, and made certain that the twelve men whom he had
detailed to assist in the breaking in of the door were stationed
ready on his heels; and then he took a Smith-Wesson from his hip
pocket and thumbed back the hammer.
"Ready?"
The question ripped out in sibilant warning, and a second later
things happened.
Teal's revolver thundered, and the heavy bullets shredded the lock
completely out of existence. Simultaneously, Central Inspector Teal
and his twelve good men and true hurled their total three-quarter ton
of bone and brawn against the barred door. And, with one prolonged,
rending, splinting crash, the door simply was not....
They burst panting into the garage, and might have come to a check
there among the miscellaneous assortment of trucks and cars but for
the spectacled man who happened precisely at that moment to be
emerging from the secret panel behind the tire cupboard. In an
instant he was whisking back, like a startled mouse which has peeped
out of its hole and looked straight into the eyes of a hungry cat;
but Mr. Teal, moving at a rate of knots which his weight and inertia
made to seem positively supernatural, crossed the concrete flooring
like a whiff of smoke. He reached out a long arm and grabbed the
horn-rimmed gentleman before that blushing violet could obscure
himself behind the closing slide.
"Carl, darling," hissed Teal, "why did you leave your happy home?
And how's Mr. Nitrogen Trichloride this merry morning?"
Before Mr. Schwesen could utter a suitable reply, Teal had yanked him
halfway across the place and smothered him in a stifling bear-hug.
And thereafter, while practised hands clicked gyves upon floundering
wrists, the eminent Austrian chemist found it necessary to reserve
all his energies for the task of avoiding suffocation. It was all
over in a trice, and, even as the remainder of the thirty poured in
through the broken door, Mr. Schwesen was on his way to the police
van which waited in Petty France.
The fat being thoroughly in the fire by now, speed became the order
of the day. Headed by Teal, whose injured shoulder was by this time
troubling him far more than he would ever have admitted, the
constables rushed through the cupboard and down the short tunnel to
the cellars. Two men were left to guard the end of the passage, and
the rest raced up the stairs.
The hall was deserted.
Moving as silently as they could, the detectives opened each door in
turn, finding large volumes of vacancy at every attempt. Two doors
only were left for investigation when Teal, issuing his orders in a
hoarse whisper, detached half his force to make a round of the
upstairs rooms and guard against an escape, similar to the getaway
the Triangle had brought off in Billingsgate, by means of an opening
into an adjoining house. At the same time, the front door was
unbolted without noise, and Bill Kennedy, together with some of those
who were watching Buckingham Gate, came in soundlessly.
And then Teal silently turned the handle of the first of the two
remaining ground-floor doors. A dark, narrow corridor fronted him,
and he signalled for only six men to accompany him. There was no
window or light of any sort in the runway, and when they had gone
twenty paces the faint light which filtered in from the gloomy hall
ceased to be of any assistance. As quietly as he could manage, Teal
kindled a match, and found that the passage terminated in a dead end,
the only outlet being a low door which opened off on the right.
Teal laid a cautious hand on the knob, and suddenly a tremor ran up
his spine, for the handle was turning of itself under his light
grasp....
Breathlessly he mouthed his men back out of the passage, and
flattened himself against the blind wall so that the opening door
would hide him from whoever came out. The oak swung back by inches,
nervously, and it was nearly half a minute before it closed again and
Teal saw a stocky, crouching shape silhouetted against the nimbus of
twilight which came from the hall.
Holding his breath, Teal leapt silently as any pard. His big hand
tightened round the man's throat before so much as a whimper could
disturb the stillness, and Teal lifted the furtive one bodily from
the ground and padded down the corridor with him.
"There's a long, long jail a-waiting--for you--dearie!"
Teal's voice stole to the man's ear drums in a husky pianissimo, and
Teal's ungentle fingers forced a scared face round to meet the light.
And then Inspector Teal, that sedate apostle of tranquillity, let out
an involuntary gasp of amazement, for the man he carried was Joe
Blaythwayt!
CHAPTER XXVIII
LAST ROUND
Storm's face was bleak, but his two guns might have been gripped in
vises mounted on rock-based foundations for all the quivering they
showed. He thought that the colossal impact of Morini's bullet must
have broken a rib, for, although no revolver in the world loaded a
charge heavy enough to penetrate that wonderful steel-chain armour,
the imperviousness of it was no defence against the sheer shock of
the blow. Every breath he took stabbed an excruciating pang through
his lungs. Yet his gay, reckless fighting smile was on his lips;
and, when he spoke again, his voice was still deadly even, still
rippling so deceptively smoothly over jagged slivers of quartz.
"Free Tip Number Two--straight from the stable--Big Triangle: When
you flick out the king of trumps, never start in gloating until
you're dam' sure the other man hasn't got the ace tucked away in his
fist some place! This is where you look round for your umpteenth
guess! All of you. And listen--just bat so much as an eyelid, one
of you frogricked horse thieves, and you'll find out where fleas go
when they've dined off a dope-soaked suicide! Anybody care to try
it? No? Nobody curious? I'll say you're a crew of unenterprising
sons of a Port Mahon baboon! And I'll bet less than twelve hours ago
you were all scratching each other's backs and telling yourselves
what a tough lot of hell-for-leather fire-eaters you were.
Je-rusalem! You make me tired. What about it--huh? Can't you even
raise one lone cuss-word among the lot of you? Tough? Gosh! I'd
like to have the whole boiling of you aboard a good old-fashioned
windjammer with a hard-case bucko mate to help me teach you real
toughness."
They said nothing. One or two were on their feet, but even they
remained safely motionless, having apparently no wish to court the
certain death which lurked in the breech of the automatic that roamed
so hopefully from head to head. And Storm went on baiting them,
playing for a few minutes' grace in which to recover slightly from
the stunning results of the shot he had taken and to formulate some
scheme for getting Susan loose from the ropes without exposing
himself to attack.
"You poor wet fish!" The tang of his whiplash contempt bit tellingly
into the raw ends of their vanity with every measured stroke. "A
suckling could boss a gang of white-livered slum rats like you! Hold
up London itself for fifteen million? Take an expert's advice and go
off and practice on hen-rabbits till you get stringy enough to hold
up a hysterical old woman for fifteen cents and get away with it.
I'm disappointed. I'm a plain ornery fighting machine--I'll fight
anyone, any time, any place, and any old how--and I thought I'd
landed the goods when I picked on you. Instead of which I find I'm
bullyragging a grown-up Sunday School. This is my second guess!
After grubstaking a stumer like this, I'm going fishing for tadpoles
next time I feel bored. It's more exciting, and a heap more
dangerous."
He had them writhing under the scourge, knew that every iota of the
smart sank right in where it was meant to go--but still they stayed
their hands. Tenacity of life, for the moment, held them at bay.
Only for the moment. Storm knew that it couldn't last. It was only
a question of time before someone gave the cue for the next movement
of the ballet, and that time wasn't likely to be over-long elapsing.
Very soon they must realise their strength, just as he realised his
weakness. He was alone in the house, and no one knew where he was.
No rescue party had been arranged for at the critical moment. If
they attacked him in one concerted mob, he might kill half a dozen of
them if he were lucky, but after that they'd have their revenge. And
Susan would be left to face the final racket....
Zero hour.
Already he had pondered every detail of the room. As far as he knew,
there was only the one exit--the door through which he had entered.
There might be others--in fact, there probably were--but those
hangings which surrounded the room were as bad as a fog. There
wasn't a hope of gaining sufficient time to poke round all the four
walls until one spotted the necessary bolt-hole. Therefore....
"Big Triangle, this is a private bus," Storm said. "Get off! Go and
play with your friends in the audience."
One gun motioned him away from the platform, and then returned to aim
on Surcon's heart. The Apex hesitated, but there was a flaring
menace in Storm's grey eyes which brooked no refusal.
"And keep those hands of yours miles away from everything!" added
Storm.
Slowly the Apex stepped off the daïs and walked towards one wall in
the body of the room. Then Storm dropped one gun into his coat
pocket, stooped swiftly, and gained possession of his knife. Backing
in front of the silver sign to which Susan was bound, he felt for the
cords which held her. Once found, a couple of rapid slashes, and she
was free....