“We had been driving for close on three hours, when we reached a lonely lane. By the lights of the car I could see a steep hill before us, and I could hear the roar of the waves somewhere ahead.
“Suddenly he threw a lever over, the car bounded forward, and he sprang to the ground.
“Before I could realise what had happened, the machine was flying down the steep gradient, rocking from side to side.
“I have sufficient knowledge of motorcar engineering to manipulate a car, and I at once sprang to the wheel and felt for the brake. But both foot and hand brake were useless. In some manner he had contrived to disconnect them.
“It was pitch-dark, and all that I could hope to do was to keep the car to the centre of the road. Instinctively I knew that I was rushing to certain death, and, messieurs, I was! I was flying down a steep gradient to inevitable destruction, for at the bottom of the hill the road turned sharply, and confronting me, although I did not know this, was a stone sea wall.
“I resolved on taking my life in my hands, and putting the car at one of the steep banks which ran on either side, I turned the steering wheel and shut my eyes. I expected instant death. Instead, the car bounded up at an angle that almost threw me from my seat. I heard the crash of wood, and flying splinters struck my neck, and the next thing I remember was a series of bumps as the car jolted over a ploughed field.
“I had achieved the impossible. At the point I had chosen to leave the road was a gate leading to a field, and by an act of Providence I had found the only way of escape.
“I found myself practically at the very edge of the sea, and in my first terror I would have given every sou I had to escape to France. All night long I waited by the broken car, and with the dawn some peasants came and told me I was only five miles distant from Dover. I embraced the man who told me this, and would have hired a conveyance to drive me to Dover, en route for France. I knew that N.H.C. could trace me, and then I was anxious to get in touch with Hyatt and Moss. Then it was that I saw in an English newspaper that Moss was dead.”
He stopped and moistened his lips.
“M’sieur!” he went on with a characteristic gesture, “I decided that I would come to London and find Hyatt. I took train, but I was watched. At a little junction called Sandgate, a man sauntered past my carriage. I did not know him, he looked like an Italian. As the train left the station something smashed the window and I heard a thud. There was no report, but I knew that I had been fired at with an air-gun, for the bullet I found embedded in the woodwork of the carriage.”
“Did nothing further happen?” asked T.B.
“Nothing till I reached Charing Cross, then when I stopped to ask a policeman to direct me to the Central Police Bureau I saw a man pass me in a motorcar, eyeing me closely. It was the man who had tried to kill me.”
“And then?”
“Then I saw my danger. I was afraid of the police. I saw a newspaper sheet. It was a great newspaper — I wrote a letter — and sought lodgings in a little hotel near the river. There was no answer to my letter. I waited in hiding for two days before I realised that I had given no address. I wrote again. All this time I have been seeking Hyatt. I have telegraphed to Cornwall, but the reply comes that he is not there. Then in the newspaper I learn of his death. M’sieur, I am afraid.”
He wiped the drops of sweat from his forehead with a shaky hand.
He was indeed in a pitiable condition of fright, and T.B., upon whose nerves the mysterious “bears” were already beginning to work, appreciated his fear without sharing it. There came a knock at the outer door of the office, and the editor moved to answer it. There was a whispered conversation at the door, the door closed again, and the editor returned with raised brows.
“T.B.,” he said, “that wretched market has gone again.”
“Gone?”
“Gone to blazes! Spanish Fours are so low that you’d get pain in your back if you stooped to pick them up.”
T.B. nodded.
“I’ll use your telephone,” he said, and stooped over the desk. He called for a number, and after an interval —
“Yes — that you, Maitland? Go to 375 St. John Street, and take into custody Count Ivan Poltavo on a charge of murder. Take with you fifty men and surround the place. Detain every caller, and every person you find in the house.”
He hung up the receiver. “It is a bluff, as my gay American friend says,” he remarked to the editor, “because, of course, I have no real evidence against him. But I want a chance to ransack that studio of his, anyway.
“Now, my friend,” he said in French, “what shall we do with you?”
The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders listlessly.
“What does it matter?” he said. “They will have me — it is only a matter of hours.”
“I take a brighter view,” said T.B. cheerily; “you shall walk with us to Scotland Yard and there you shall be taken care of.”
But the Frenchman shrank back.
“Come, there is no danger,” smiled T.B.
Reluctantly the engineer accompanied the detective and the editor from the building. A yellow fog lay like a damp cloth over London, and the Thames Embankment was almost deserted.
“Do you think he followed you here?” asked T.B.
“I am sure.” The Frenchman looked from left to right in an agony of apprehension. “He killed Hyatt and he killed Moss — of that I am certain — and now—”
A motorcar loomed suddenly through the fog, coming from the direction of Northumberland Avenue, and overtook them. A man leant out of the window as the car swept abreast. His face was masked and his actions were deliberate.
“Look out!” cried the editor and clutched the Frenchman’s arm.
The pistol that was levelled from the window of the car cracked twice and T.B. felt the wind of the bullets as they passed his head.
Then the car disappeared into the mist, leaving behind three men, one half fainting with terror, one immensely pleased with the novel sensation — our editor, you may be sure — and one using language unbecoming to an Assistant-Commissioner of Police.
19. The Book
The house in St. John Street had been raided. In a little room on the top floor there was evidence that an instrument of some considerable size had been hastily dismantled. Broken ends of wire were hanging from the wall, and one other room on the same floor was packed with storage batteries. Pursuing their investigations, the detectives ascended to the roof through a trap door. Here was the flagstaff and the arrangement for hoisting the wires. Apparently, night was usually chosen for the reception and despatch of messages. By night, the taut strands of wire would not attract attention. Only in cases of extremest urgency were they employed in daylight.
Count Poltavo was gone — vanished, in spite of the fact that every railway terminus in London had been watched, every ocean-going passenger scrutinised.
Van Ingen had been given two days to get the “book”; this code which the unfortunate Hyatt had deciphered to his undoing. Moss had said Hyatt’s sister had it, but the country had been searched from end to end for Hyatt’s sister. It had not been difficult to trace her. Van Ingen, after