Daredevil
"Are you being funny," demanded Susan, "or is there likely to be more
trouble?"
He looked at her steadily, eyes half closed, his cigarette between
his lips.
"You're scared!" he said.
"Well, I'm not absolutely praying to be killed."
There was a short silence, for he had no wish to alarm her unduly.
And yet, to minimise the danger would not be the thought of anyone
but a born fool. He turned his eyes on Blaythwayt.
"Are _you_ scared?"
"I can't say I've thought about it seriously," confessed Joe. "I
really don't see that I have much to fear--far less, anyway, than I
have to fear from bank robbers and kiters--that's an American word
for bank swindlers," he explained unnecessarily. "Inspector Teal, my
very good friend, always says that violent crime is foreign to this
country. A few attempts by dagoes and suchlike, perhaps, but they
can easily be rounded up. It's just a coincidence that a threat
should have come to me. One can understand them being sent to the
others. Public men are bound to receive threatening letters, but
they very rarely come to anything."
Storm would have liked to point out the minor coincidences of alcohol
diluted with aconite, and firework displays in Albany Court Yard and
Hamilton Place, but refrained.
"What's your honest opinion, Kit?" Susan persisted.
"Oh, well, Mecklen's in hospital, and we've got Morini's description.
There may be a bit of fun before he's found," he conceded easily,
"but I don't think you need be afraid. I'd like you to stay with
some friends of mine, though, while Hannassay's away. You don't want
to be alone in that huge house--besides, it's so dull. You'll like
'em--Terry Mannering's a great lad. But don't go liking him too
much, because he's already married!"
"You needn't be afraid of that," she told him coldly, and did not
realise for five minutes why he smiled.
Blaythwayt pulled out his watch.
"I'm afraid I really must be off, Captain Arden. It's nearly a
quarter to three--please don't think I'm rude, my dear fellow, but
Business..."
When Joe Blaythwayt spoke of weighty matters he always gave the
impression that he talked in capital letters.
In Salisbury Square he inspected every inch of the silver Hirondel
with an almost childish awe.
"I wish I could afford a car like this," he said wistfully. "Can she
Go?"
"Go?" scoffed Storm. "She's the fastest thing on wheels that you can
use on the road! I've tried her up to a hundred and fifteen at
Brooklands." He had an inspiration. "Get in and let's have a
run--I'll be taking Susan home, anyway."
"Can we really?" said Joe, and Storm had shepherded him into the back
seat before he had quite decided whether to accept the invitation.
He had, apparently, forgotten the calls of Business.
They whirled round Trafalgar Square, and Storm hesitated momentarily
between Cockspur Street and the Mall. He decided on Cockspur Street,
and to this day the thought of the far-reaching effects of that
casual decision makes him gasp.
Oscar Raegenssen, waiting for the arrival of his luxurious Navarre
cabriolet, saw a man whom he particularly wished to avoid sauntering
down from Pall Mall. He looked up and down the street, but there was
no sign of his car. With a slight gesture of annoyance he started to
cross the road.
He stepped directly in front of the bonnet of Storm's car. The fine
drizzle that was falling lay on the road like thin oil, and Storm
knew at once that it would be impossible to pull up in time on the
treacherous surface, for he was doing over thirty miles an hour. He
wrenched the wheel over to the right as he braked, and one wing just
caught Raegenssen as the Hirondel skidded round. Luckily the street
was almost deserted, and the silver car turned completely round in a
space of feet and fetched up against the kerb, facing back towards
Trafalgar Square.
It was a magnificent piece of driving, but the most masterly driver
in the world could not have saved Raegenssen from that blow.
Storm jumped from his seat and ran towards the stunned man, an
excited Joe hard on his heels. He picked the Swede up in his arms
and carried him to the pavement. He was loosening the clothes about
Raegenssen's throat, with Blaythwayt trying ineffectually to assist,
when a tall, oldish man elbowed his way through the crowd and knelt
down beside him.
"Your boss, Mattock," remarked Storm briefly.
Raegenssen was not badly hurt. He was even then recovering
consciousness. His eyelids flickered dazedly, and his lips framed an
almost inaudible word.
"_Sylvia ... Sylvia..._"
"He's coming round," said Storm to the constable who had joined the
group. "He stepped out right in front of me without looking where he
was going, but I only grazed him."
"This gentleman is Captain Arden of the Special Branch," announced
Blaythwayt pompously.
Storm was searching in his pockets for a card, and Susan saw that his
jaw was tightened up so that the muscles stood out in faintly
serrated knots, and his eyes were abnormally level.
Wondering, she looked at the others. Joe Blaythwayt was standing by
importantly with a broad smile on his face, and yet he was trembling
with excitement. Mattock had looked up from applying first aid to
his employer, and was staring at one of the other two--she could not
be sure which. His features were contorted, his mouth working, and
there was a blaze in his eyes that set her heart pounding against her
ribs like a trip-hammer.
CHAPTER VI
IMMIGRATION OF THE UNGODLY
Storm breakfasted with Hannassay on the morning his lordship left for
his holiday. It was an unexpected invitation, but Lord Hannassay
came to the reason of it without delay.
"I have made arrangements for you to be given complete charge of the
case," he said. "You will probably get the official intimation when
you reach the Yard."
His usual abruptness of manner was conspicuously absent. He spoke
restrainedly and rather artificially, like a man who has planned out
his speech in advance and intends to adhere rigidly to a premeditated
sequence of words.
"You will have _carte blanche_, and you may use any means you think
fit within--and, by special arrangement, without--the law to round up
the Alpha Triangle. I am convinced that the menace with which we are
faced is the greatest in the history of crime."
"I'm glad to have your support," said Storm. "I more than scent
rodents myself! But I thought I was in for some job persuading the
authorities I wasn't an alarmist."
The peer nodded absently and stirred his coffee. He seemed hardly to
have heard Kit's remark, and when he spoke again it was in the same
mechanical way as before, as though he neither anticipated nor
required interruption.
"Strictly between ourselves, Captain Arden, I know the secret of the
Alpha Triangle." He pushed away his plate and lighted a cigar.
"That, I think, should surprise you. You will ask, also, why I do
not place my information at the service of the police. There is a
reason for that--a reason which I cannot explain to you now, but
which will be clear to you when, and if, you run the gang to earth.
The Alpha Triangle is an organisation which came into existence
originally for the purposes of revenge--the purpose for which it was
organised by a genius who, I sometimes think, is mad. You have, of
course, been interested in the murder--it was murder, by the way--of
Joubert, a few months ago. That was the first crime of the Triangle,
and yet I offer for your contemplation the paradox that until five
minutes before the murder there was no Alpha Triangle."
Storm sat without comment, although he was literally amazed at the
confession he had just heard. Lord Hannassay, whose eyes throughout
had been fixed vacantly on the opposite wall, after the fashion of a
child repeating a lesson, looked at him suddenly and surprised that
look of consternation.
"Exactly--I am deliberately admitting that I am, in a sense, an
accessory," he said with a smile. "I must ask you to accept the
extraordinary situation, the cause of which will be apparent to you
at the successful conclusion of your labours. The Alpha Triangle,
then," he went on, "from being a purely revengeful society, became an
acquisitively criminal one. I ask you to take my word on that score,
for although the Triangle has committed no acquisitive crimes up to
date, I have every reason to believe that it will make up for the
deficiency in the future. This transition, already an accomplished
fact--in the spirit, if not in the deed--must have already occurred
to you as a probability. What, indeed, could be more natural than
that such an organisation, having established a powerful and
unscrupulous society for taking its vengeances, should visualise the
possibilities for material gain latent in such a society? The power
is there--a power, Captain Arden, which, if you knew its magnitude
and the utter, cold, superhuman inflexibility of the man who controls
it, might make even you, in spite of your reputation for physical
prowess and indomitable courage, turn back from the task you seem so
eager to undertake."
For all the precise, calculated levelness of Lord Hannassay's voice,
there was an earnestness behind his pedantic sentences that pricked
the small hairs on the nape of Storm's neck like a chill wind. And
yet this was a purely reflex sensation, for Storm smiled lightly and
flicked the ash from his cigarette with leisured care.
"I'll take the risk," he drawled.
Lord Hannassay nodded slowly.
"I thought you would," he said. "You're the sort that would."
"And that's not what they call 'sand,' either," said Storm, and his
mocking smile flitted elusively across his lips. "I'll give it you,
Lord Hannassay, straight, that I'd rather tackle anything else under
the sun than this Triangle business. And I could throw in my
hand--I'm not a detective, and I'm not even in Special Branch
regularly. I stay on simply because it's a challenge. I've got some
sort of a reputation among disreputable people--_Storm won't be beat
till he's buried, and maybe not then_, they'll tell you. And they've
got it all wrong! It's pride--arrogance--conceit--anything you care
to call it. But all it stews down to is just that I'm too bucked
with myself--it'd break my heart to have to admit I was beaten! I'd
sooner go down fighting, because if I'm beaten that way I'll never
have to admit it."
He spoke without a trace of affectation, and yet it was an analysis
he had never made to anyone in his life before. Later, Lord
Hannassay knew the reason for that frankness, yet even at the time
Storm's simple directness appealed to him.
The peer rose and held out his hand.
"I call that 'sand,'" he said quietly. "Captain Arden, you have my
very best wishes. I'm--scared of that Triangle. It's got me
jumpy--that's honest." He had relapsed into his old jerky style.
"It's bigger than I ever dreamed such a thing could be. Queer thing:
sometimes I don't care, sometimes I wish I could speak. Probably
you'll be killed; sometimes I'm sorry, sometimes it doesn't seem to
matter. Yet I like you extraordinarily. Look an easy man to
frighten?"
Storm viewed the splendid physique, seemingly unimpaired by age, and
his glance wandered to the masterful poise of the big head on the
broad shoulders. He smiled as he shook his head.
"I'm afraid," said Lord Hannassay with a grim matter-of-factness that
was more startling than any emotional outburst.
"Is that serious?" Storm asked incredulously, and Hannassay nodded.
"Same as you--I'd like to be out of it. Sooner or later, I think,
I'll have to pay for my knowledge of it. And yet, if I placed that
knowledge at your disposal, even on your assurance that it would go