The Secret of Chimneys
“I’m afraid you don’t understand the position. I’m perfectly willing to
believe that you are on the side of the angels, and that these Memoirs
may damage your cause. Nevertheless, I’ve undertaken the job, and I’ve
got to carry it through. See? I can’t allow myself to be bought off by
the other side. That kind of thing isn’t done.”
The Baron listened very attentively. At the end of Anthony’s speech he
nodded his head several times.
“I see. Your honour as an English gentleman it is?”
“Well, we don’t put it that way ourselves,” said Anthony. “But I dare
say, allowing for a difference in vocabulary, that we both mean much
the same thing.”
The Baron rose to his feet.
“For the English honour I much respect have,” he announced. “We must
another way try. I wish you good morning.”
He drew his heels together, clicked, bowed and marched out of the room,
holding himself stiffly erect.
“Now I wonder what he meant by that,” mused Anthony. “Was it a threat?
Not that I’m in the least afraid of old Lollipop. Rather a good name
for him, that, by the way. I shall call him Baron Lollipop.”
He took a turn or two up and down the room, undecided on his next
course of action. The date stipulated upon for delivering the
manuscript was a little over a week ahead. To-day was the 5th of
October. Anthony had no intention of handing it over before the last
moment. Truth to tell, he was by now feverishly anxious to read
these Memoirs. He had meant to do so on the boat coming over, but
had been laid low with a touch of fever, and not at all in the mood
for deciphering crabbed and illegible handwriting, for none of the
manuscript was typed. He was now more than ever determined to see what
all the fuss was about.
There was the other job too.
On an impulse, he picked up the telephone book and looked up the name
of Revel. There were six Revels in the book: Edward Henry Revel,
surgeon, of Harley Street; James Revel & Co., saddlers; Lennox Revel
of Abbotbury Mansions, Hampstead; Miss Mary Revel with an address in
Ealing; Hon. Mrs. Timothy Revel of 487, Pont Street; and Mrs. Willis
Revel of 42, Cadogan Square. Eliminating the saddlers and Miss Mary
Revel, that gave him four names to investigate—and there was no reason
to suppose that the lady lived in London at all! He shut up the book
with a short shake of the head.
“For the moment I’ll leave it to chance,” he said. “Something usually
turns up.”
The luck of the Anthony Cades of this world is perhaps in some measure
due to their own belief in it. Anthony found what he was after not half
an hour later, when he was turning over the pages of an illustrated
paper. It was a representation of some tableau organized by the Duchess
of Perth. Below the central figure, a woman in Eastern dress, was the
inscription:
“The Hon. Mrs. Timothy Revel as Cleopatra. Before her marriage, Mrs.
Revel was the Hon. Virginia Cawthron, a daughter of Lord Edgbaston.”
Anthony looked at the picture some time, slowly pursing up his lips, as
though to whistle. Then he tore out the whole page, folded it up and
put it in his pocket. He went upstairs again, unlocked his suit-case
and took out the packet of letters. He took out the folded page from
his pocket and slipped it under the string that held them together.
Then, at a sudden sound behind him, he wheeled round sharply. A
man was standing in the doorway, the kind of man whom Anthony had
fondly imagined existed only in the chorus of a Comic Opera. A
sinister-looking figure, with a squat brutal head and lips drawn back
in an evil grin.
“What the devil are you doing here?” asked Anthony. “And who let you
come up?”
“I pass where I please,” said the stranger. His voice was guttural and
foreign, though his English was idiomatic enough.
“Another Dago,” thought Anthony.
“Well, get out, do you hear?” he went on aloud.
The man’s eyes were fixed on the packet of letters which Anthony had
caught up.
“I will get out when you have given me what I have come for.”
“And what’s that, may I ask?”
The man took a step nearer.
“The Memoirs of Count Stylptitch,” he hissed.
“It’s impossible to take you seriously,” said Anthony. “You’re so
completely the stage villain. I like your get up very much. Who sent
you here? Baron Lollipop?”
“Baron——?” The man jerked out a string of harsh-sounding consonants.
“So that’s how you pronounce it, is it? A cross between gargling and
barking like a dog. I don’t think I could say it myself—my throat’s
not made that way. I shall have to go on calling him Lollipop. So he
sent you, did he?”
But he received a vehement negative. His visitor went so far as to spit
upon the suggestion in a very realistic manner. Then he drew from his
pocket a sheet of paper which he threw upon the table.
“Look,” he said. “Look and tremble, accursed Englishman.”
Anthony looked with some interest, not troubling to fulfil the latter
part of the command. On the paper was traced the crude design of a
human hand in red.
“It looks like a hand,” he remarked. “But, if you say so, I’m quite
prepared to admit that it’s a cubist picture of Sunset at the North
Pole.”
“It is the sign of the Comrades of the Red Hand. I am a Comrade of the
Red Hand.”
“You don’t say so,” said Anthony, looking at him with much interest.
“Are the others all like you? I don’t know what the Eugenic Society
would have to say about it.”
The man snarled angrily.
“Dog,” he said. “Worse than dog. Paid slave of an effete monarchy. Give
me the Memoirs, and you shall go unscathed. Such is the clemency of the
Brotherhood.”
“It’s very kind of them, I’m sure,” said Anthony, “but I’m afraid
that both they and you are labouring under a misapprehension. My
instructions are to deliver the manuscript—not to your amiable
Society, but to a certain firm of publishers.”
“Pah!” laughed the other. “Do you think you will ever be permitted to
reach that office alive? Enough of this fool’s talk. Hand over the
papers, or I shoot.”
He drew a revolver from his pocket and brandished it in the air.
But there he misjudged his Anthony Cade. He was not used to men who
could act as quickly—or quicker than they could think. Anthony did not
wait to be covered by the revolver. Almost as soon as the other got it
out of his pocket, Anthony had sprung forward and knocked it out of his
hand. The force of the blow sent the man swinging round, so that he
presented his back to his assailant.
The chance was too good to be missed. With one mighty, well-directed
kick, Anthony sent the man flying through the doorway into the
corridor, where he collapsed in a heap.
Anthony stepped out after him, but the doughty Comrade of the Red Hand
had had enough. He got nimbly to his feet and fled down the passage.
Anthony did not pursue him, but went back into his own room.
“So much for the Comrades of the Red Hand,” he remarked. “Picturesque
appearance, but easily routed by direct action. How the hell did that
fellow get in, I wonder? There’s one thing that stands out pretty
clearly—this isn’t going to be quite such a soft job as I thought.
I’ve already fallen foul of both the Loyalist and the Revolutionary
parties. Soon, I suppose, the Nationalists and the Independent Liberals
will be sending up a delegation. One thing’s fixed. I start on that
manuscript to-night.”
Looking at his watch, Anthony discovered that it was nearly nine
o’clock, and he decided to dine where he was. He did not anticipate
any more surprise visits, but he felt that it was up to him to be on
his guard. He had no intention of allowing his suit-case to be rifled
whilst he was downstairs in the Grill Room. He rang the bell and asked
for the Menu, selected a couple of dishes and ordered a bottle of
Bordeaux. The waiter took the order and withdrew.
Whilst he was waiting for the meal to arrive, he got out the package of
manuscript and put it on the table with the letters.
There was a knock at the door, and the waiter entered with a small
table and the accessories of the meal. Anthony had strolled over to the
mantelpiece. Standing there with his back to the room, he was directly
facing the mirror, and idly glancing in it he noticed a curious thing.
The waiter’s eyes were glued on the parcel of manuscript. Shooting
little glances sideways at Anthony’s immovable back, he moved softly
round the table. His hands were twitching, and he kept passing his
tongue over his dry lips. Anthony observed him more closely. He was a
tall man, supple like all waiters, with a clean-shaven, mobile face. An
Italian, Anthony thought, not a Frenchman.
At the critical moment Anthony wheeled round abruptly. The waiter
started slightly, but pretended to be doing something with the salt
cellar.
“What’s your name?” asked Anthony abruptly.
“Giuseppe, Monsieur.”
“Italian, eh?”
“Yes, Monsieur.”
Anthony spoke to him in that language, and the man answered fluently
enough. Finally Anthony dismissed him with a nod, but all the while
he was eating the excellent meal which Giuseppe served to him, he was
thinking rapidly.
Had he been mistaken? Was Giuseppe’s interest in the parcel just
ordinary curiosity? It might be so, but remembering the feverish
intensity of the man’s excitement, Anthony decided against that theory.
All the same, he was puzzled.
“Dash it all,” said Anthony to himself, “every one can’t be after the
blasted manuscript. Perhaps I’m fancying things.”
Dinner concluded and cleared away, he applied himself to the perusal of
the Memoirs. Owing to the illegibility of the late Count’s handwriting,
the business was a slow one. Anthony’s yawns succeeded one another with
suspicious rapidity. At the end of the fourth chapter, he gave it up.
So far, he had found the Memoirs insufferably dull, with no hint of
scandal of any kind.
He gathered up the letters and the wrapping of the manuscript which
were lying in a heap together on the table and locked them up in the
suit-case. Then he locked the door, and as an additional precaution put
a chair against it. On the chair he placed the water-bottle from the
bathroom.
Surveying these preparations with some pride, he undressed and got into
bed. He had one more shot at the Count’s Memoirs, but felt his eyelids
drooping, and stuffing the manuscript under his pillow, he switched out
the light and fell asleep almost immediately.
It must have been some four hours later that he awoke with a start.
What had awakened him he did not know—perhaps a sound, perhaps only
the consciousness of danger which in men who have led an adventurous
life is very fully developed.
For a moment he lay quite still, trying to focus his impressions. He
could hear a very stealthy rustle, and then he became aware of a denser
blackness somewhere between him and the window—on the floor by the
suit-case.
With a sudden spring, Anthony jumped out of bed, switching the light on
as he did so. A figure sprang up from where it had been kneeling by the
suit-case.
It was the waiter, Giuseppe. In his right hand gleamed a long thin
knife. He hurled himself straight upon Anthony, who was by now fully
conscious of his own danger. He was unarmed and Giuseppe was evidently
thoroughly at home with his own weapon.
Anthony sprang to one side, and Giuseppe missed him with the knife.
The next minute the two men were rolling on the floor together, locked
in a close embrace. The whole of Anthony’s faculties were centred on
keeping a close grip of Giuseppe’s right arm so that he would be unable
to use the knife. He bent it slowly back. At the same time he felt the
Italian’s other hand clutching at his windpipe, stifling him, choking.
And still, desperately, he bent the right arm back.
There was a sharp tinkle as the knife fell on the floor. At the same